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December 2009
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February 2010

Graphic Novel Round-Up: Unwritten, Chill, Wimbledon Green

UnwrittenThree graphic novels reviewed. The golden thread this time? Books. The power of books. The strange call to collecting books. And even the danger of hiring a "book" author to write a graphic novel...

Unwritten (Carey / Gross): The team from Lucifer team up in this new, slightly post-modern fantasy. Tom Taylor lives in the shadow of his missing father - but even more in the shadow of "Tommy Taylor", his father's Potter-esque fictional creation. 

As things start to get a bit weird (serial killers, death threats, magical tattoos...), Tom Taylor starts out on a quest to figure out what's really going on. He doesn't get too far in this first collection, but the set-up is very intriguing. 

A bit of Fables (what with the "power of stories" shtick) and a bit of The Magicians (with its combination of angst and fantasy). The lead characters are, so far, slightly forgettable - with the absent father being the most appealing of the lot. However, the story is great - and the occasional creative segue to "Tommy Taylor books" (or Rudyard Kipling's diary) is incredibly well done. Carey and Gross should settle in for a long and fascinating run. One to keep following. 

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Underground Reading: The California Voodoo Game by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

California Voodoo Game  On a personal note on the progression of time, I remember picking up my copy of The California Voodoo Game from the second-hand section of Rainy Day Books (Fairway, Kansas) and reading it while my mom was at work. I was, at most, 13. 

This was the first book I ever read in the Dream Park series - and it lead to some pretty wild speculation about my own future career. Somehow I parlayed my skills at math (awesome) and tennis (not so hot) to become a fearsome warrior the likes of which the world had never seen... 

Two decades later, I suck at math, Rainy Day Books is on Twitter and The California Voodoo Game is as wildly entertaining as ever.

First published in 1992, The California Voodoo Game is the third and final book in Niven and Barnes' Dream Park series. The overriding premise is that, in the 2050s, the ultimate spectator sport is Live Action Role Playing (LARP). The geeks have successfully inherited the earth.

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PK Interview: Scott Andrews (Part 2)

Previously, we talked to Scott Andrews about his inspirations for his Afterblight books and his uniquely self-aware young protagonist. In Part 2, we touch on a few of his future projects, including Children's Crusade (released in May). (A few exclusive scoops below the jump!)

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Children's CrusadeLee's growing up a bit now, and so are his adventures. Initially he defended the school, but now he's liberated Iraq and defended the British Isles from invasion (from the US, no less). 

He's accomplished a lot for something that can't even get his driving license yet. How will he top this in Children's Crusade?

The first book was very interior and personal, kind of like a horror movie; the second was a big, widescreen war movie. Book three, which will probably be Lee and Jane's last outing for the time being, is hopefully a blend of the two. But it's more Jane's story than Lee's this time around.

Jane has some serious stuff from her past to deal with, so it's an extremely personal mission for her, but there's also a really nasty and powerful enemy to fight, albeit not one quite as OTT as the entire US Army! The bad guys in book one were cannibals, in book two they were warriors, in some ways the villians of book three are the worst of the bunch in that they don't kill you or eat you, but they'll treat you as if you were cattle, totally dehumanising you.

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PK Interview: Scott Andrews (Part 1)

We're extremely pleased that author Scott Andrews took the time to answer a few of our questions this week. Not only did he thoughtfully address our gibbering queries, but also treated us to a few scoops. 

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School's Out

Previously in the Afterblight series, readers had been exposed to the Big, Apocalyptic Picture. 

But, in School's Out, you chose to drill down to the disaster's impact on an isolated - essentially inconsequential - location. What lead you to focus like this?

Partly the old dictum of 'write what you know', partly an deep affection for the original BBC series Survivors.

I know about boarding schools and all their little madnesses, as I've suffered in them as both student and teacher - there's an awful lot of autobiography in School's Out and a lot of therapeutic bloodletting as I took great pleasure in killing people from my youth!

Also, the thing that worked for me about Survivors was that these were people who were not directly involved in events - they didn't know anything about the plague, they weren't special, they were just ordinary folks trying to deal with the consequences of somebody else's fuck up. That appealed to me. That sense of trying to live through a huge event but not having any sense of the big picture, of what the hell is really going on.

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If you've got a moment, and feel like running the gauntlet of their medieval, browser-loathing CAPTCHA system, vote for Pornokitsch in Critters' "Best Review Site".

Voting ends January 14th. I'd suggest a Chicago-style "early and often" method, but they frown on that sort of thing. Spoilsports.


Steampunk x Flowerpunk

Steampunk ElfA new genre idea hits the shelf and - within a few best-selling years - the vampires and elves sneak in. This seems to happen during the life cycle of almost every geeky sub-genre. 

For steampunk, this is particularly insidious - and confusing.

Fantastic alternate histories have existed for a while, but the core premise of steampunk isn't a mystical one - it is a technological one. Steam technology is the backbone of steampunk - the revolutionary, imaginative resource that shakes up the system. Steampunk is an exaggerated analogue of the real world upheaval that came with the industrial era.

Once a single elf raises his pointy-eared head, everything starts to get muddy. Adding magic adds another resource - in fact, it adds another system of resources. For the sake of clarity, this isn't steampunk. It is something else entirely.

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PK Interview: Rebecca Levene (Part 2)

The second part of our interview with author Rebecca Levene. In the first installment, we discussed writing for shared worlds, the secrets of the Afterblight and introducing alien life into Emmerdale. 

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Anno Mortis. Romans - tigers - chariot chases - zombies.

Simultaneously one of the best-researched and outright campiest books I read all year. How did this come about?

Anno MortisThanks. I think. When I heard about Tomes of the Dead, my very first thought was “Brilliant – I can do Roman zombies!’. Really, what’s not to love? I’ve been a huge fan of I, Claudiussince I was a teenager – in fact, I recently went on a pilgrimage to Robert Graves’ house on Mallorca. And it was childhood reading of a collection of retold Greek Myths called The God Beneath The Sea by Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen which first got me interested in fantasy as a genre.

The classical world is full of such great characters, too – especially Caligula, who I challenge you not to write in a camp way. Aside from the whole raising-armies-of-the-dead thing, everything I say about him in the book is true, including – reportedly – the fact that he tried to make his horse a consul. He was bananas, but also kind of tragic, always in the shadow of his beloved father, Germanicus, and genuinely devastated by the death of his sister.

Many of the other characters in Anno Mortis were real – which actually presented a problem when I wanted to kill some of them off, but couldn’t because they’d go on to become Claudius’s chief of staff, or whatever. And I absolutely adore Petronius. He wrote the world’s first novel – and it’s completely filthy. What a star.

What was the editing process like for something like this? Do Abaddon send little notes back, "a little too educational" or "needz moar tigerz"?

We tend to discuss the need for more zombie tigers before the book’s actually begun. Once it’s written, Jon – or now Jenni – sends back detailed notes on a line-by-line basis. They’re both fantastic – and I’m not just saying that to get them to commission me more, though let’s be honest, it can’t hurt.

What can you tell us about Cold Warriors (2010 release)? Occult spies chasing down apocalyptic artifacts... it sounds fantastic.

Cold Warriors Cold Warriors is the first in a new series created and written by me for Abaddon, called The Infernal Game. It’s coming out in May next year, and it’s best described as a cross between The Bourne Identity and The Omen. Here’s the blurb:

‘You died 20 years ago. Welcome back.’

At the peak of the Cold War, the British secret service formed the Hermetic Division, an agency charged with using supernatural means to defend the nation. Its primary mission: to find the mysterious Ragnarok artefacts, said to have the power to end the world. 

Tomas Len was the Hermetic Division’s most senior agent, until he volunteered to take part in a dangerous voodoo ceremony. Morgan Hewitt is a young assassin who has an unnatural affinity for death, which strikes everyone he cares about. 

Together, they’re sent on the trail of a corrupt Russian oligarch rumoured to be selling one of the Ragnarok artefacts. The journey will take them across Europe and into the darkest reaches of the occult. And it will uncover the terrible secret that has shaped both their lives…

The second book is currently called Ghost Dance and scheduled for August, I think. There should also be a third book, as long as I can come up with an outline Jon’s happy with.

And, finally, amongst your (many) non-geeky books and TV writing, you've slipped in a Beginner's Guide to Poker. Are you any good?

No, I’m rubbish. I know how to play poker well, but I can’t do it because I’m incapable of remembering cards or calculating odds. More importantly, I have about as good a poker face as Wile E Coyote. Really, I might as well hold up a placard saying “Yikes!” every time I’m dealt a bad hand.

Your fantasy poker fivesome?

Ooh. Well, it would have to include Johnny Moss and Nick the Greek, who played the first poker world tournament against each other – even though they’d wipe the floor with me. Then I’d pick Petronius, just for the chance to meet him. Jennifer Tilly, because from Bride of Chucky to poker champion – how cool is that? And finally Ian Fleming. His books are horribly misogynistic and racist, but it’s the closest you could get to playing poker with James Bond.

Thank you very much.

Kill or Cure and Anno Mortis are both available for purchase through Amazon or your local bookstore. Cold Warriors is available for pre-order


PK Interview: Rebecca Levene (Part 1)

The Pornokitsch team was honored to have author Rebecca Levene drop by (virtually speaking) for our site's first interview. 

Ms. Levene has penned countless hours of series television (with another show in the works) and books for all ages: kids, grown-ups and awkward adolescents.

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Kill or CureLet's start in the Afterblight. 

First, what's it like writing in a shared world like this one - and directly following someone like Si Spurrier (who set the bar pretty high with The Culled)?

It was pretty daunting following Si. He’s a terrific writer with a unique voice and I didn’t feel I could – or should – imitate it. That’s why I decided to keep the narrative first-person, which seemed the series style, but to write it from a different, female viewpoint. Writing in a shared world is obviously more limiting than writing something entirely original – but it takes the burden of world creation off your shoulders, too. And being bone idle, I didn’t really object to that.

Is there a big 'map' of the Afterblight somewhere? With "don't write here - Paul Kane's claimed it" or "if you use Vegas, don't forget the druggie cultists"? 

When I wrote Kill or Cure, there was no map – just a brief series bible and Si’s book. These days I don’t know, though I suspect it may exist only in the head of Jon Oliver, our editor. I think writers do tend to be respectful of other people’s creations and generally steer clear of them. In fact, most of the Afterblight writers seem to be penning their own self-contained trilogies within the larger world, which I think works well.

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