Best ever ghost images caught on tape!

Check out this link on MSN.

It has some seriously spooky images of real life filming of ghosts and the stories behind them. Seriously spooky stuff…

Motherhood (2009) and a post dedicated to all those writing mothers out there!

 Motherhood is about a woman struggling with the realities of motherhood, coping with her children growing up, and still wanting to realise her dreams as a writer.

While this movie flopped at the box office, I suspect that is simply because the picture house wasn’t filled with writing mothers (all too busy either writing or taking care of kids to get to the cinema!). Uma Thurman plays a character completely unlike her usual glam self. She is trying to organise her daughter’s sixth birthday party while trying to meet a deadline. She is struggling with the feeling of having lost ‘herself’ when she became a mother, and is trying to fit in writing time between all of the other challenges (an incontinent dog, a husband who has the unfortunate habit of going missing whenever he is needed to most, and a car that needs to be moved every other minute to make way for LA film crews).

The movie follows her day, including her obsessive blogging. She is described as an ‘over-sharer’ and even accidently reveals some intimate secrets of her best friend (played by Minnie Driver) on her blog (haven’t we all upset someone at some point, with something we have said!!!).

Then a minor dalliance with a delivery boy makes her wonder if she should even be with her husband and she freaks out, running away from her family.  Will she make it back in time to pull off her daughter’s party?!

It’s a simple, heart-warming movie I think all writing mothers will appreciate. So much of it resonated with me. As a mother to two girls, I know what it is like to desperately try to fit as many writing hours in between all of the other challenges life throws at us.  It’s hard, but, (and I am sure I am speaking for the majority of other writing mothers out there), we do it because it is what keeps us sane.  Even though I haven’t had a full nights sleep in five months, the cleaning never ends, and I’ve not had a night out without the children in forever, I am kept sane by the knowledge that at the end of the day I can sit down in front of my laptop and lose myself in my other, imaginary worlds for a while.

So this post is dedicated to all the other writing mothers out there. And may there always be enough junk food and Nick Jnr to keep the kids happy while we write!!!!

The Crazies (2010) review!

As a toxin begins to turn the residents of Ogden Marsh, Iowa into violent psychopaths, sheriff David Dutton tries to make sense of the situation while his newly pregnant wife, Judy, and two other unaffected townspeople band together in a fight for survival.

There wasn’t anything terribly original about this movie – okay, I know it was a remake anyway, so maybe the original was original at the time, but I did just feel as though I had seen it all before.

The best part of the movie was where the army came in and started to separate people according to their body temperatures; a raised body temperature indicating the person was sick.  Here the wife is taken, as she is pregnant and so has a slightly higher temperature.  This part felt far more realistic to me and therefore more scary. The fear people felt at being separated from their children and partners immediately had me thinking about how I would feel if I were in their place – always a good sign to me that I am getting into the film!

Here the movie stepped up a notch. Some of the parts where Judy is strapped down in the hospital and there is a crazy guy running around impaling people with a pitchfork, literally had me hiding behind my fingers!

The movie was definitely improved by looking into the way the government handle the disaster and not just what happens to the people. In a way it was the government’s treatment of the people that was the crazy thing – not just that the infected went mad. 

I thought it was a bit too lucky that the sheriff and his wife (a doctor) just happened to be among the very few people not infected. I don’t know if I missed something (maybe where their house was meant the water source reached them last – I don’t know), but it did seem like a bit of a lucky coincidence.  There were also some parts, particularly towards the end, that were a little unbelievable.  At one point the couple sit in the huge glass window of a diner, drinking coffee as though it were a regular Sunday morning.  The lights are on and they are in full view of everyone, even though they know the army and the ‘crazies’ are out there – and they wonder why they get found? Duh?

However, overall the movie was fast-paced, violent, and, most importantly, scary!  If you’re looking for a decent weekend movie to rent that will be a good watch, but you won’t need to expend too much brainpower over, then you could do a lot worse than The Crazies!  A decent remake, for once.

Something Wicked 7/10.

Domination...one Pumpkin Seed at a time.

Hello, I'm James Garcia Jr. If you do not know me yet, that is okay. You will. I am here to assist our friends Marissa and Nicole as they do their little part to orchestrate Vamplit Publishing's master plan of ruling the publishing world. It is early, but very soon words such as "Vamplit", "Bestseller" and "Empire" will be universally appearing in the same sentences...

[The sounds of crickets can be heard]

Okay, we're working on it, though!

(In a nearly inaudible whisper) Really, we are.

What do you say we start again? I'm James. As you get to know me, feel free to call me Jimmy. My novel, Dance on Fire, was published by Vamplit Publishing. It's the same house that brought you Alone and Release. Just like Marissa's and Nicole's e-books, my novel is about to become a paperback, too. We're all terribly excited about this, so you should be hearing more as the days begin to grow cooler and summer finds itself driven away for another year. Dance on Fire is a crossover Christian/Horror novel about vampires, but I didn't post today to discuss my novel. I posted to talk about the novel of yet another Vamplit Author, Timothy Hobbs.

In a day and age when many vampire novels are romanticized, comes a book that seems to want to strike a blow right into the very heart of the topic.

"...will no longer attempt to date these entries. There is no point. I am dying, of that I have no doubt. I feel I have no connection with the physical world and that I am floating. An animal's corpse lies in the middle of the room. It has a wretched marvelous stink. It is difficult to concentrate. My brain is on fire and all light is painful. My throat is aching and parched but the thought of water is dreadful. The sound of scraping feet resonates in the darkness. Groans of hunger are joined with my own. Vairaja appears through the blackness. His face is strained and pale. His touch icy. We kiss each other on the neck and taste the saltiness of our blood. I must drink for two. My belly swells.

"...I no longer see the day. Only shadows bring comfort. The dead walk around me, their howls of hunger are ghastly. My child's wails are silent in the womb."

Very often readers proclaim that they simply could not put a novel down. Well, I will tell you that I work 10.5 hours a day in my day-job, write for three blogs and finally a local on-line magazine; however, whenever all of those were done, and the family was happily doing their own things, I was back in that bedroom with the Kindle, wondering what in the world might happen next. If it weren't for the fact that I had deadlines to meet, I would have skipped a few of them in order to read this book. It's that good.

Part of the reason why I am so excited about this novel is due to the fact that just when I thought that I might have seen it all, came a tale from somewhere otherworldly. Told entirely through diary entries and over the course of centuries, we glimpse the people that were, and the changes that occurred when they became the creatures that they will forever be. Another thing that is refreshing about Mr. Hobb's effort is we get to see the lineage of multiple generations of these. Without revealing their names and thus spoiling the story, we get to see one of these vampires create a second, who much later creates one of his own, and so on.

These Vampires do not have meet/cutes, but bond only for security and feed to survive. The characters are as multi-dimensional as I have ever seen in print. The vampires are not simple monsters. They are beings that used to be people; people who used to believe certain things and rationalize and love, and we watch with horror as everything that they ever were, changes.

I must note that this novel is not for the faint of heart. It gave me cause to cringe more than once. I was almost in disbelief a time or two, contemplating what might happen, but not actually thinking that the author would go there. He went there. That's not to say that the novel is objectionable or graphic for the sake of attempting to be shocking. For me, personally, I liked the idea of this novel getting us back to the basics, and that is horror.

If you like a good horror novel that is intelligent and ground-breaking...I offer you The Pumpkin Seed.

And Someone New!

Hi everyone!  Nicole and I are thrilled to announce that James Garcia Jr has agreed to join the Something Wicked team!  As author of the brilliant ‘Dance on Fire’, we are thrilled to have him on board.  Because he is a fellow Vamplit author, we also feel that we are ‘keeping it in the family’, with him helping out with reviews while Nicole is away (and hoping he’ll hang around long after she comes back!).

While I am here, has anyone got any opinions about the new look of the blog?  I liked it, but my husband simply said, ‘why have you got birds flying over it?’ (He is not a horror fan and the significance of birds went completely over his head!)

Any feedback would be much appreciated – good or bad!

Movies I’ve watched this week that I would recommend…

The Game (1997).  Michael Douglas plays a man who has been given the gift of a real life game for his birthday, but then finds the game is a con set out to destroy him… or is it?

Its an oldie (when I say ‘oldie’ I am thinking back more than ten years!), but a goodie. I was actually amazed that I hadn’t come across it before.  There are lots of twists and turns, and for once, the twists are actually believable!

I Love You, Man. (2009).  A funny spin on a dating movie because it is  essentially about a guy going on ‘man-dates’ to find a friend, and Best Man for his wedding.  When he finds such friend it starts putting strains on his relationship with his fiancé.  This one has some laugh-out-loud moments!

Adventureland (2009).  A quality ‘coming of age’ film about a geeky undergrad who has to take a nowhere job at a theme park.  Funny, with some really sweet moments.  Good acting really makes the movie!

So there you have it.  If you’re looking for something decent to watch then you can’t go wrong with any of these three.  Happy watching!

Someone missing…?

 

Hi all, Marissa here. I just wanted to give everyone an update about why the other half of the Something Wicked crew is missing. 

Sadly Nicole has some personal stuff going on at the moment so she is taking a little time out from the blogging world.  She is greatly missed, but will be back with a vengeance when she has everything sorted. 

In the meantime I will still be posting all my supernatural movie and book reviews, and I am hoping that a couple of fledgling Vamplit authors will stop by to introduce themselves and guest post while Nicole is away.

I’m also hoping to share some news with you about the release of my new novel, The Dark Road, very soon!