Happy Mother's Day... a dedication for all those mothers in horror!

It's Mothering Sunday here in the UK, so I hope everyone has had a day of either being spoilt rotten by their offspring, or else showing their mothers how much they mean to them.

It's true that you never know the amount of sacrifice made by your parents until you become a parent yourself, so today's post is dedicated to the 'mothers' in horror and the lesson we may learn from them about how NOT to raise your child...

Norma Bates – Psycho

Possibly not the best example of a great mother, Norma preaches to her son, Norman, that all women are whores (except herself of course)and sex is evil. They live together in an unhealthy state of co-dependence until Norma takes a lover and drives Norman insane with jealousy. He then kills Norma and her lover and preserves his mothers corpse. Norman goes on to develop a split personality, taking on his mother's identity, and goes on to kill anyone who threatens his belief that his mother is still alive.

Ellen Ripley - Alien 3

Okay, I'm probably stretching the definition of 'mother' on this one, but in the third Alien movie Ripley becomes implanted with the Queen alien embryo. Despite others wanting to surgically remove the embryo she refuses, but then surprises them all by throwing herself into a giant furnace just as the queen is bursting from her chest. She still manages to grab the alien and drag it down with her, but you feel her emotional pain as she is doing it. Some part of her feels empathy for the alien.

You've got to love Ripley as a character. She is the ultimate tough bitch who is harder than all of the men she works with, but she still manages to have a soft side that makes you love her. She is a mother, but her daughter dies at the age of 66 while Ripley is in hyper-stasis. This loss and then her subsequent 'adoption' of Newt, a child she saves from the aliens in the first Alien, makes you warm to her otherwise tough character.

Sarah Conner - Terminator (1 & 2)

Now this is a woman to contend with. One hell of a tough cookie, she will do anything to protect her son, including sporting some serious firearms and muscles that would make a grown man weep.

Happy Mother's Day to them all!

M.x

New blog launched today – check it out!

Just a quickie today to let you all know that myself and fellow Vamplit author, Nicole Hadaway, have teamed up to create a brand new blog dedicated to all things supernatural. We hope you’ll take a moment to head over there and check it out.

Something Wicked

We have big plans for the blog, with lots of competitions, reviews, and author features.  Become a follower by next Friday and you’ll be in line to win a box set of the True Blood series.  The competition will be open to both sides of the water as I am in the UK and Nicole is Stateside!

Enjoy!

Supernatural blogging…

For hundreds, even thousands of years, in every culture known to man, there have been stories of the supernatural. Whether it be ghosts or demons, vampires or werewolves, even the existence of angels and a God, the supernatural has filled our lives.

The topic had spawned some of our best loved writers and film makers.

What beats the thrill of feeling cold fingers down the spine, the tears of fear pricking the backs of the eyes? The possibility of a world existing just beyond our consciousness holds the promise of excitement, danger, and maybe even romance….

Here we will be blogging about every aspect of the supernatural. From fiction to fact, if it has to do with the supernatural, we will be blogging about it. Both being writers ourselves we will also be featuring other writers who want to showcase their work, and of course, we will be keeping you informed about projects of our own.

Nicole Hadaway, author of the novel Release, has a few upcoming short stories and hopefully later this fall, the novel Return. She also blogs over at All Things Smart and Scary.

Marissa Farrar is the author of the vampire novel, Alone, and also has a second novel due out in May.

Marissa and Nicole are connected through Vamplit Publishing and wanted to bring together their love of vampires and the supernatural, providing sometimes the same, other times different perspectives on the amazingly popular paranormals.

We hope you'll join us for book reviews (Nicole is fond of pointing out that her review of the Anne Rice novel, Angel Time, was featured on Ms. Rice's own Facebook page -- but she promises to cut that out in about 2 months time ;-), movie reviews, features on upcoming novels, and authors.

Also join us for some great competitions and giveaways – starting next Friday with our huge True Blood giveaway. And the best part? Because we have a foot either side of the pond (so to speak) the competitions will be open to both the UK and the States!

Please feel free to leave us comments - we love to hear your thoughts!

Double trouble!

Back on-line and a review – Jodi Picoult: Handle with Care (2009)

I am finally back on-line! Hurrah!

It feels like it has been forever since I have had the internet and, however sad I may be, it has felt a bit like I have had my life on hold.  So now I am back and trying to catch up on lost time.

Just because I only write horror doesn’t mean I only read horror (though I do read a lot of horror!).  I’ve decided to branch out a little about what I write about on my blog, because I have a new, totally horror based project which will soon be coming to fruition.

I’m sure there will be some of you out there who hate Jodi Picoult, but I am a fan.  There was a little while where she was becoming a bit formulaic, and she still is to a certain extent, but what she does she does well.

Handle with Care is about a little girl called Willow who is born with OI - Osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease).  She has multiple broken bones before she is even born and has over fifty breaks by the time she is five.  The story is essentially about Willow’s mother, Charlotte, suing her obstetrician (who is also her best friend) who she believes missed a sign that would have told her about Willow’s disease and so would have given her the option to terminate the pregnancy.  But to sue her doctor also means saying in court that if she had of known about the disease then she would have aborted the pregnancy.  Heavy stuff, huh?

I really enjoyed this novel. Picoult has a way of making you feel empathy for every character, but also disliking them a little as well.  She writes each chapter from a different characters point of view which helps you get insight into their emotions and motives.  Nothing and nobody is black and white in her novels.  One minute I found myself taking one characters side, the next the oppositions.  Throughout the novel I was putting myself in each of the characters positions . On the front cover of each of her books is the question, ‘what would you do?’ and I honestly found myself asking myself that the whole time.

Though I did really enjoy the book, and found it hard to put down, I was a bit disappointed with the ending. I won’t spoil it for everyone, but the book does have a bit of a sting in the tail that left me feeling a little cheated.  Even so, I would still highly recommend Handle with Care – an honestly written novel that leaves you thinking…

M x

Still waiting…

I am now on countdown until the BT engineer turns up and changes my life by installing Broadband.  The mobile internet service didn’t work out so well for me as I only had very sporadic connection which led to some extremely harsh words being said to my much loved laptop! Still, only six days to go now and I will be back up and running!

In the meantime it is amazing how much else you get done when you don’t have the internet to distract you.  I have been reading ferociously and so storing up plenty of books to review once I am back in the swing of things. I have also re-discovered the library (who knew you could just take books out for free?!).

After the trauma of moving house I am also back into my writing (thank God!).  I hate it when I am not writing – it kind of makes me feel like my day has been a waste if I’ve not written something.  I’ve also discovered that I find it very difficult to work if I am feeling unsettled and distracted.  I don’t really suffer from the dreaded ‘writer’s block’ as such, but if ever I find it hard to write it is because something else in my life isn’t quite right.

So in the meantime please be patient with me.  As soon as I have my broadband back up and running I will have another exciting project to let you know about.  For all of you who know Nicole over at Smart and Scary, keep your eyes open!

M. X

Back In Blighty!

 

I’m back!  Oh my God, I’m back!!!

Huge apologies for the lack of blogging/emails/any other kind of contact with anyone.  We have finally made the move back from Spain to England and with it has come the million different things that need organising – the number one thing being the phone line and internet connection.  After several conversations with British Telecom (civilised quickly degraded to shouting, which then turned to begging) and still no further on, I have finally resorted to the extremely expensive but unfortunately necessary pay-as-you go method in order to get internet connection.

For me not having internet is a bit like not having electricity or gas; it’s a bit of a necessity.

Anyway, we are finally back and it all feels a bit weird.  We are in a new city, though everything seems strangely familiar.  I have to admit it was lovely to wake up the other morning to find a clear blue sky and a scattering of snow on the ground. It has done nothing but rain in Spain for the past three months (I know!  Crazy –huh?).

Even so, always there is that nagging feeling of ‘have we done the right thing?’ I do worry that I am one of those people who is never happy wherever they are and is constantly looking for the next best thing without realising how good I’ve actually got it.  Maybe that is just a lesson I am slowly starting to learn…

Mx

Review: The Unborn

When I sat my family down to watch this movie it was under a hail of protest - I was the only one who really wanted to watch it - and when The Unborn started I felt a familiar sinking feeling that I had seen this all before.

The Unborn starts off as a typical teenage horror movie - young attractive girl is babysitting and discussing her recent 'bad dream' with her equally attractive, valley-girl-type friend on the phone when she hears voices coming from the baby monitor.

The main character Casey is being haunted by a freaky-looking little boy and one of her eyes starts turning blue. She goes to a doctor who tells her that this has something to do with her being a twin in the womb, and so naturally she suspects the little boy haunting her is her unborn brother...

Except it isn't.

It is actually a Dibbok, an evil demon that has been hanging around her family for the last few generations, starting with her grandmother in the Holocaust. There is an interesting link back to Auschwitz and the doctor who did tests on twins (a real occurrence, and for anyone who is interested there is an amazing novel written by Lynda La Plant about twins separated during these tests), but this is just skipped over, which was disappointing as it would have actually made for an original storyline! As it was the movie basically just went back to the demon trying to kill everyone around Casey.

I would have really liked it if this movie had gone down either the 'twin wanting to be reborn' route, or the 'Auschwitz' route, but as it was The Unborn was basically just another movie about a random demon wanting to kill everyone. It is a shame because there were some really creepy moments, such as when Casey wakes up to find herself suspended on the ceiling, facedown, and see's herself still lying in bed only for the bedcovers to be pulled down to reveal the freaky little boy curled up beside her. There are also some moments that reminded me of The Exorcist, with people being wrenched so their bodies are on backwards and doing a weird spider-walk while chasing people.

This definitely isn't a must see movie, but it did fill in a few hours on an otherwise dull night, and all of my family were still talking to me by the time it finished, so I guess it couldn't have been that bad!

Mx