DVD Pick of the Week:If you call in the next 15 minutes we’ll even throw in…

As I said when I reviewed a movie called “I Sell the Dead” I do not like my horror & comedy blended together. With that being said David Bruckner’s, Jacob Gentry and Dan Bush’s 2007 The Signal is a phenomenal movie.

What sold me is The Signal is told is within three genres, which they brake-up into “Transmissions” and the end result is three little movies that when put together tell a whole viciously brutal story.



The 1st part of Signal is straight up Horror and it’s told in Horror’s perfect form. The opening scene looks a 70’s horror movie, and just as your about to look at the cover of the DVD to make sure you’ve got the right movie we find out it’s a movie there’re watching because all of a sudden the TV loses its signal.

We’re introduced to Maya & Ben two people who are clearly in love…but we find out the woman is married and Ben is not her husband. After realizing the time Maya tries to call her husband but her phone is dead and so is Ben’s house phone, so she flees from his apartment to race home. On her way she notices that things are “off” somehow and when she gets home we see why she’s having an affair. Her husband Lewis is large, brooding, and has a short temper and it’s clear she is afraid of him. It’s a slow and intense build-up before we’re thrown into full-blown madness and learn the signal on the TV is a transmission and it’s being broadcast over every single TV, radio station, and phone. And it’s turning men into monsters.

The 2nd part of Signal is comedy. It’s so over the top, dark and vulgar it’s disturbing, and it’s also the most violent and gory part of this film. You guys all know that I am not a big fan of gore for gore’s sake but by offsetting the outrageous satire with the excessive violence is what sold me. And sold me in a big way.

The last part of Signal threw me for a loop. It’s scary, suspenseful, and somehow romantic. Actually The Signal’s under current is a love story, the whole movie revolves around Maya and the two men who love her. Her husband’s love has turned dark, obsessive, and dangerous while her lover Ben’s love is pure, patient and romantic. All throughout Signal we watch Maya and Ben have flash backs of each other and we follow their horrific journey as they to try and find each other in a horrific world that has gone utterly mad.

This movie really worked for me. I really like the way Signal break between genres to let you know there is going to be a change of pace so I am giving it 5 Stars

But wait there’s more….

So remember I told you that the opening scene looks like a 70’s horror movie? Well it is…sort of. The movie used in the opening of Signal is a little film called “The Hap Hapgood Story” And it’s featured in the DVD extra’s. It a short film only 10 minutes long but is one of the most frightening movies I have seen in a long time.

Hapgood pays homage to the horror movies of the 70’s it’s the kind of horror I grew up with and it’s the type of horror that I prefer.

“The Hap Hapgood Story” scared me more than The Signal so it also gets 5 Stars

That’s a 40-dollar value!

There are three other short films included on the DVD they are all shorter versions and different perspectives of the feature film and each is called Transmissions. Transmission 14: Technical Difficulties, Transmission 23: The Return and Transmission 37: Crosstown Traffic. My favorite of the three is Transmission 23: The Return but all of them are pretty brutal.

5 Stars for Transmission 23: The Return and 3 ½ Stars for Transmissions 14 & 34

I cried for 15 min.

A Conversation with a Fellow Blogger.

Hello readers, as I’m sure some of you have seen I have a page inviting other bloggers, writers, producers or anyone who has something to say or promote to be a guest on my blog.

Today we’re going to spend some time talking to my dear friend Amani Darby. She is my principle partner in crime, my 1st editor, & my literary rival. We’ve known each other for over 10 years and her opinion where my writing is concerned is paramount. I love her writing and she has agreed to let me post a piece of her work here and I get to pick the story!

So let’s hear what Amani’s got to say…

What do you think makes a good story?

I think a good story is something that pulls you out of the here and now and suspends you in someone else reality and a great story makes you want to say in that reality.

How much reality goes into your characters, are they your alter ego’s, based on people you know or completely made up?

I think they are little of both of being made up and based on other people. Because of the way that I write they come to me; a situation comes to me or a dialog comes to me, and as I flush the person out memories of how someone responded to a situation or I how responded to a situation in my life that’s what helps bldg the person. It’s like being born, you’re not a complete person at anytime in your life, and I think that when I write neither are the people I write about.

What type of genre do you write in and why?

I have no fucking clue!

Do you work from an outline, or do you just start writing and see where you end up?

I just start writing usually from a dream. That kinda makes me feel asinine…its really hard to answer these types of questions with out saying you don’t write from an outline, I think what I like most about the way I write its visceral, it’s vivid because my ideas do come from a dreams.

Where do you as an author draw the line on gory descriptions and/or erotic content?

I don’t think I draw a line although I have noticed that our writing assignment, that you didn’t do by the way, grab # 1 was my 1st story that had real cussing in it, even my son/editor asked me why is she was talking like that. I think there’s cussing in that piece because it’s so internal.

Besides writing you’re also an editor, which do you enjoy more writing or editing and why?

I think they are completely two different beast and I cannot say that I enjoy one more than the other. It’s like asking which of your kids is your favorite and that’s impossible to answer because your kids are little pieces of you.


Despite the fact that I have read your short stories and poetry you insist that you are not a writer…why do you say that?

I hate you for this question. I think I feel that way because everything thing you’ve read of mine and out of every piece of my work we’ve talked about there are only two of them that are finished and one is a poem…I think I am still in the birthing process.

In closing is there anything else you would like my visitors to know?

Understand that my piece are always in process and my reality is just that my reality, if that offends you please seek professional help.

As promised I'm now going to post one of my favorite pieces from Amani, it's a newer one and it was assigned to us through our writing group. It doesn't have a title yet, she just posted it under the name of the assignment...it's called Grab Bag # 2. It was a 15 minute timed drill, the 1st sentence had to be There was no time for sleep now.... and the story had to use the words vision, memory, gifts, and beckoning.

The following story and others from Amani can be found on her blog @

http://amanidarby.blogspot.com/
**********************************************************
There was no time for sleep now that the ritual place and time had been decided. Now we must prepare since the beginning of memory for the tribe this ritual had been performed by the High Priestess and her children but with the flash flood only two months ago our new High Priestess would have to have a helper that was me.

I had worked for the last Priestess and her family and since I had not been in her house that night I was assigned to help the new Priestess. What no one in the tribe was aware of was that I was a Priestess in my own right a Priestess of Marahat I had communed with Marahat and asked for the chance to be the new Priestess and this was the village’s interpretation of that wish.

My visions were strong and I knew that Mallaleha would soon be just another gift for the Gods. As the sun rose on the western horizon I saw the line of villagers bearing gifts for the ritual in two days time. Mallaleha appeared in the doorway beckoning me inside the temple to begin the preparations. I felt a small twinge of guilt as I knew in two days time she would cease to exist and then my family line would hold the most powerful spot in the village.

My children hidden in the swamps and high lands could come down and enjoy life as I wrote and dictated the rituals and spirituality of the tribe. What power what justice oh what vengeance would I hold in the palm of my deformed hand. What no one seemed to understand was that our deformity is what caused us to see the visions of the gods and was the only reason one of us always served the High Priestess without us she would be a shame a lie.

Now it was time for one of us to hold the position. It was our birthright, our gift to make up for the imperfection the Gods had given us and one I was fully prepared to kill for.

DVD Pick of the Week…a month in review.

Made in Hong Kong.

Believe it or not my best friend Star and I spent our beautiful sunny Seattle days last year indoors watching movies imported from Asia. We watched “Old Boy” 5 Stars, “Cello” 5 Stars, “No Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” 5 Stars, “Time” 5 Stars, “A Tale of Two Sisters” 5 Stars…way too many to list here and by far our favorite was a movie called “The Curse of the Golden Flower” 5 Stars.

We were dazzled by the sheer beauty of the film and scandalized by it’s deep and complex plot. We both thought that this would be the be all end all of modern Chinese cinema, but then comes along a little movie called “The Legend of the Black Scorpion” This 2006 Huayi Brothers rendition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet was nominated for seven, count 'em seven Hong Hong Film Awards and there are no words that I can think of to describe its perfection.
5 Stars

Seen it all before.


I can handle indie films with poor lighting and strange “artistic” camera angles. I don’t need an all-star cast, outstanding special effect, or a million dollar production movie to be entertained.

However if I have to watch one more zombie movie with bad acting, a non-existing plot line, and a predictable ending I am going to shoot someone in the face.

Wolf Wolff’s 2008 Virus Undead (The Beast Within) not only gets Zero Stars but two thumbs down as well.

I’m not a fan of whodunits but this little gem made a lair outta me!

M. Brian King’s 2009 Night Train, not to be confused with Clive Barker’s 2009 The Midnight Meat Train (we’ll talk about that later) is super fun to watch because your not sure which genre your watching and your not even sure what year it is. A man boards a train, and it's apparent that his sick because he’s popping pills like its M&M’s, and another passenger gives him alcohol, and dun dun dun! He dies.

The man who gave him vodka opens the box the dead man is holding and sees diamonds inside. He convinces the other passenger in the car and the conductor to throw the body out of the train so they can keep & split the jewels. We soon find out that every person on that train and even the little Pomeranian have something to do with that damn box. We spend the next very stressful 91 minutes trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and what the hell is inside that box!

5 Stars.

No not the one from the Twilight saga…the other one.
In 2004 Mark Edward Robison released a film called Breaking Dawn. We are introduced to a young medical student who is assigned to psychiatric patient Don Wake as her final exam. At 1st she cannot get through to her patient because he would not speak to her, but when he finally starts talking her tells her about a man named Malachi who is watching them and warns her not to drink the coffee.

She dismisses his claims as delusions until she becomes aware of a man following her, complete strangers start to come up to her to warn her about Malachi, and then she shares his paranoia and stops drinking the coffee. Half way through the movie you can kinda see the ending coming but all and all it’s a decent little indie film that’s worth watching.

3 ½ Stars out of 5

Seattle Crypticon 2010

Hello you guys =D Well as you know I spent my Seattle weekend at Crypticon. I met other authors, film producers, star-gazed at celebrities, ran from zombies bought some jewelry, ate too much, saw a couple of screenings for movies and had a rip-roaring good time. Instead of posting a zillion pix, I've compiled my favorites and made a little video...

I would have had a gazillion more kick ass pix but my stupid battery died...grrr...enjoy!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Taking time to give back…

To those of you who know me personally, know I think nothing when it comes to giving back to my community.

To those of you who do not know me, I own and operate a company called Seattle Crystal Concierge and thru my company I donate heavily to The Girl Scouts, The Susan G. Komen for the cure, Girls Inc, UNIFEM, local domestic violence shelters in the Seattle area and Operation Homefront.

I just got home and recv’d an email from a client telling me about an organization called “Girls Right Now” she was explaining in her email that because I tend to help organizations geared towards girls and women thru Seattle Crystal Concierge that now I might be able help girls as a writer.

This is kinda big deal. From the very beginning I’ve always, always, always written about and will continue to write within the horror and sci-fi genres. When I was just a little girl everything I read was written by a white male, before I started my business and I was working on ships and as a diesel mechanic I was surrounded by white males…I really didn’t know anything else.

The book that had the most profound effect on me was a little book called Fledgling written by an author you may have heard of named Octavia E. Butler and I didn’t read that book until I was in my late 20’s. It was the 1st time I’d ever read a story where the main character looked like me, who talked like me and the author looked like me and the 1st female writer that wrote like me. (Calm down, my delusions of grandeur is not so far off the Richter scale that I believe that I’m as a phenomenal writer as Octavia Butler. My point is we both write in the same genre)

Before I read Fledgling I was always editing The Darkness to what I thought would be a good fit for “the mainstream readership” i.e. white male readership, but when I was finished I found other writers like me authors like Tananarive Due, L.A. Banks, and and then I found a copy of Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora on a Seattle Public Metro Bus and nearly lost my mind…it was like finding the Holy Grail!

I undid the edits I had made. It was no secret that both my main characters in The Darkness are women…what I was editing was that both of them are black. I wrote The Dakness they way I wanted to with characters who look like me...and now I'm being published.

Do I still read books from white males...Heck yeah I do! Stephen King, and Dean Koontz are still the love of my reading life, but I have to admit I've been flirting with the books by Scott Sigler and one way or another I'm getting Patricia Briggs' autograph...but being true to myself and my writing was the best thing I've ever done.

I’m going to do what ever I can to support and bring awareness to Girls Wright Now, I have a photo shoot and an interview that will be taped schl’d for next month, and I’ll be wearing a Girls Write Now t-shirt for both events, there is a link to their site from my blog…and I’ll be donating $1.00 from my 1st 100 book sales to Girls Write Now.

Plumes of Arrogance.

Before I even knew that The Darkness would be published I always told my family and friends that if I ever did become published that would be getting a tattoo of an ink bottle and quill on the inside of my right forearm because I am right handed.

Over the years I have been collecting pix of feather quills, flipping through tattoo magazines for other ink and quill tattoo’s and putting together a general idea of what I wanted my tattoo to look like…and for the most part it was going to look like the everyday glamorous quill’s like the one on the right hand side of this blog under “tools of the trade”

Though I didn’t know it at the time, my idea’s of my feather quill’s began to change when I wrote and posted a piece entitled “Colors part 2” (you can find it under the January archive) along with a comment by an anonymous poster, which lead me to put up the picture of the peacock in dedication to the hateful comments that anonymous left.

So when the time came around to get the tattoo to commemorate my first book and even though the feather of geese are traditionally used for the ink and quill I began to look at a different bird for the plumes of my pen…









Like I said, keep an eye on me.