Charlotte Geeks’ Joey Paquette asked New Pulp author, Bobby Nash 5 questions and he tried to answer them seriously. Or so he claims. Check out Bobby’s answers here.
About Charlotte Geeks: The Charlotte Geeks are a blended family of individuals who enjoy a multitude of fandoms in the sci fi, fantasy, anime, online, and gaming realms. We strive to provide our members with a feeling of acceptance and inclusion along with a social outlet where we can all freely “geek out” without prejudice or ridicule. We are a social organization that boasts free membership and free thinking (and as available, free fun!). We do not operate for profit, nor do any of the members of the leadership team receive any compensation for their efforts.
Raymond “Ray” Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) died today at age 92, leaving behind a legacy of pioneering special effects work and a filmography that has deeply influenced writers, artists, and filmmakers for generations.
Dubbed by Starlog as “The Man Who Work Miracles”, he was one of the most influential movie makers who was himself inspired by Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation in King Kong. He took O’Brien’s efforts and improved upon them, branding it as Dynamation.
Although he resided in England for the majority of his adult life, Harryhausen was born in Los Angeles. King Kong was the spark that set him on a course towards a career in film, meticulously creating miniatures that could be photographed a few frames at a time followed by the tiniest of movements, followed by more frames, until the model appeared to move across the screen. This was done with artistry and engineering know-how long before Industrial Light and Magic brought computer-aided technology to the process.
When the legend met the student, they bonded quickly and Harryhausen was given pointers to improve his work through trial, error and art classes. Along the way, he befriended fellow Angelino Ray Bradbury, just at the beginning of his fantastic career. Little wonder they both belonged to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Science Fiction League, linking the trio until their deaths.
Like O’Brien, Harryhausen strove for realistic creatures to confront the live-action performers, drawing inspiration from the myths and legends familiar to people the world over. He began his professional career with George Pal, contributing to his series of Puppetoon shorts. World War II intervened and Harryhausen was assigned to the Special Services Division, continuing to make movies. This proved an invaluable tutorial and lab for experimenting with his animation techniques.
Soon after leaving the service, he embarked on the first of several dream projects that would dot his career. He did some demo footage based on H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds but the project never materialized. Instead, he was hired to work on Mighty Joe Young, letting the master and student work together and earning them earning them the Academy Award in 1949 for best Special Effects. Harryhausen was hired solo to provide the effects to The Monster from Beneath the Sea. When a connection was made to Bradbury’s story “The Fog Horn”, the film was renamed The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the story’s original title and was released to acclaim and box office success in 1953.
By this point, Harryhausen had developed the technique that saw him shoot the actors then animate the creatures, splitting the image between foreground and background, the latter becoming a rear projection with the models before it. With mattes, the images were combined and Dynamation was born, although it was named later.
Harryhausen continued to evolve his work and then made the leap to color with The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1958. By now, he was partnered with producer Charles H. Schneer – beginning with It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) — who helped him perfect the shift to color, experimenting with different stocks until the look was right. Given the requirements of the models, Harryhausen became far more intimately involved in the story than most effects men ever did, ultimately co-directing many features although Director’s Guild rules denied him his proper credits.
The Sinbad series of films found an eager audience in the later 1950s and early 1960s as all things fantastic played well on screen. It offered adults, and their children, a wholesome escape from the Cold War tensions. It wasn’t all fantasy and monsters as Harryhausen and Schneer also produced several science fiction tales, such as 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957).
They continued to produce works that stretched the imagination until 1963 and what is considered by many his finest outing, Jason and the Argonauts. Here, there was the amazing complex battle with the skeletons and the multi-armed gorgon. Little wonder that Tom Hanks, who first saw it as a kid, proclaimed years later, “Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane…I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!”
Despite this pinnacle of technological achievement, tastes were changing and he endured a series of box office failures. After losing his contract with Columbia Pictures, he wound up in England working for Hammer Films’ One Million Years B.C. (1967). That film’s success allowed him to on to make The Valley of Gwangi (1969),a labor of love considering it was O’Brien’s unrealized dream project.
Harryhausen endured a lean 1970s, kept in the minds of readers thanks to Ackerman’s devoted retrospectives in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Finally, thanks to Star Wars, inspired in part by Harryhausen’s work, the appetite for fantasy was back and he revived Sinbad beginning with The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. This and its sequel Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger were suddenly feeling dated and jokey, not at all what modern day audiences found palatable.
He put everything he had into his Greek myth opus Clash of the Titans (1981), working with protégés Steve Archer Jim Danforth, much as O’Brien mentored him. With a star-studded cast and the addition of the impressive Kraken, the film was a last hurrah but for audiences now used to computer-generated effects, it looked and felt dated. Harryhausen was effectively retired, like it or not.
Thankfully, his work was rediscovered with h advent of magazines like Starlog, the rise of cable television, and a new generation of fans enchanted by his creations. As a result, he released several lovely books about his career: Film Fantasy Scrapbook, An Animated Life, The Art of Ray Harryhausen, and A Century of Model Animation. With the arrival of home video, Harryhausen personally oversaw the restoration and transfer of his films, from VHS to Blu-ray.
Harryhausen relocated to England in 1960 and in 2005, donated his archive, some 50,000 pieces, to the National Media Museum in Bradford, England. His efforts have not gone unrewarded such as being given the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for “technological contributions [which] have brought credit to the industry” in 1992, handed to him by Bradbury, and a special BAFTA award, delivered by director Peter Jackson.
Hollywood didn’t forget Harryhausen either, with Columbia’s parent, Sony, naming their main screening theater after him and his receipt of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
His influence and spirit will live on for generations to come thanks to his films being available to enjoy and the generations of filmmakers he inspired.
(Michael ran this piece on MichaelDavisWorld.com and asked that we run it here at ComicMix in place of his regular column. After reading it, you’ll know why!)
When is making a short zombie film an act of protest?
When the heroes and heroines are black. When there is no Sacrificial Negro to fulfill the fantasy that our lives matter less than white lives. When there is no cooning, shucking or jiving. When no black “Spiritual Guide” exists only to ennoble and enlighten white characters. When artists and backers unite to circumvent cultural barriers to tell our own stories.
As authors and screenwriters, we never set out to become filmmakers. But after years of options, pitches and meetings, we realized Hollywood is just a money machine following the ticket-buying habits of America as a whole. It will never lead. It was time to stop waiting for Hollywood to translate our stories to screen.
So the idea for our short film Danger Word was born.
Danger Word, adapted from our YA novel Devil’s Wake, is a coming-of-age short film about a 13-year-old girl surviving in the woods with her grandfather after the zombie apocalypse, and how her birthday celebration goes badly awry. (We have signed film and television veteran Frankie Faison, pictured above, to play Grandpa Joe.)
But that’s just the logline. It’s really about creating imagery of our families caring for each other, and the bitter lessons all children face on the path to adulthood. In the tradition of Night of the Living Dead, it’s a horrific social prism reflecting our real world’s trials.
The history of blacks in horror, fantasy and science fiction films has not been pretty. The casting of Duane Jones as the lead of “Night of the Living Dead” transformed fears of black power into a fable of disintegrating society—and never forget that the lead character’s advice got everyone killed. Supernatural films from The Shining to The Green Mile specialize in black characters with amazing powers who die so that white people can live and grow. Minus the amazing powers, we recently saw this example replayed in television’s “The Walking Dead” and the death of T-Dog. Morgan Freeman has played God more often than he’s been passionately kissed onscreen. In the cinema, Will Smith has saved the world more often than he’s made love. And let’s not count the number of films in which the ONLY black character dies while white characters survive and get the girl.
When’s the last time you saw an American film where the only white character died while the black characters survived? It’s pretty obvious that this is working out some deep unconscious fears and preferences on the part of artists and audiences.
It’s absurd. And totally understandable. The mythology of every group of human beings is built around one idea: “God made us first, and loves us best.” Every group…except black Americans.
Fairy tales in all cultures exist to preserve the central values and beliefs of the societies that create them. And just as black people tend to pay special attention to films with black stars, white audience (not absolutely, but statistically) prefer films with people who look like them as the leads. And when non-white characters are leads, they like them to be singular, not sexual competition, and preserve social values they personally hold dear. Note the anger toward Will Smith’s son Jaden in internet chatter over the upcoming science fiction film After Earth. Smith is passing along his accumulated cultural capital, and that threatens the status quo in a way that Smith as an individual does not. (The real “gap” is not between black and white income…but between black and white inherited wealth. The amount of capital, financial or cultural, passed from generation to generation.) Films are also a part of our children’s inheritance.
Tananarive’s supernatural love story My Soul to Keep sat at a studio for seven years without getting made. (We optioned it to the studio before our son was born, and he was in second grade before we got the rights back.) When Steve’s dystopian martial-arts fable Streetlethal was in development, the first question he was asked was: “Can we make the lead white?”
Many of you have similar stories. Enough is enough.
But we have to proceed carefully. And one reality is that there is no faster way to go broke than to personally finance a cinematic passion project. Like our director and co-producer Luchina Fisher (Death in the Family), we don’t have a hedge fund and giant investors. We have to raise the budget through crowd funding—or community funding, as we call it.
If the audience is there, if people like you believe that our children deserve stories of heroism and ingenuity, that OUR children need to see themselves as central to creation…that we have as much right as anyone else to cheer for people who look as if they could live in our mirrors…movies like Danger Word can exist, and feed something deep within us. There is no hour of the day or night when white audiences cannot turn on their televisions and see images of power and sexuality and courage. No day of the week they cannot go to the movies and not see these images fifty-feet high on the silver screen. No hour they cannot pick up books or comic books and have their fantasies reinforced: We are the kings and queens. We are the best. We are the most powerful, sexiest, smartest, most courageous and beautiful creatures in the world.
Joseph Campbell’s archetype of “The Hero’s Journey” says that our myths and stories are the village elders telling us “this is what life will be.” And that understanding leads us to the understanding of our Selves. And that without that understanding, we are vulnerable to any external programming. Say, for instance, programming that says we are less than, or should only live in support of. That we are not as central to creation as anyone else. And that is not a legacy we will pass to our children. Or yours.
With the example of artists like Ava DuVernay and her AFFRM distribution model, a new day is dawning in black independent film. Black-themed horror could be “The Next Big Thing” in the footsteps of Asian horror, with fresh image systems and cultural references.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and Danger Word is ours.
Please help us by spreading the word and donating what you can.
Steven Barneshas published 28 novels of science fiction and fantasy. He has been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Cable Ace awards. His television work includes The Twilight Zone, Stargate and Andromeda, and his “A Stitch in Time” episode of The Outer Limits won an Emmy Award for actress Amanda Plummer. His alternate history novel Lion’s Blood won the 2003 Endeavor Award. He won an NAACP Image Award for In the Night of the Heat, a mystery novel co-authored with his wife, Tananarive Due, in collaboration with actor Blair Underwood. Visit his website atwww.diamondhour.com.
Tananarive Dueis the author of a dozen novels, including the supernatural suspense novels My Soul to Keep and The Good House (both formerly in development at Fox Searchlight). She is the recipient of an American Book Award. In 2009, she received an NAACP Image Award with Steven Barnes and actor Blair Underwood for their Tennyson Hardwick mystery novel In the Night of the Heat. Her website is atwww.tananarivedue.com.
The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers has announced their Scribe Award nominees for 2013.
Acknowledging excellence in this very specific skill, IAMTW’s Scribe Awards deal exclusively with licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books. They include original works set in established universes, and adaptations of stories that have appeared in other formats and cross all genres. Tie-in works run the gamut from westerns to mysteries to procedurals, from science fiction to fantasy to horror, from action and adventure to superheroes. Gunsmoke, Murder She Wrote, CSI, Star Trek, Star Wars, Shadowrun, Resident Evil, James Bond, Iron Man, these represent just a few.
The Scribe Awards are being presented in July at ComicCon International.
ORIGINAL NOVEL
Darksiders: The Abomination Vault by Ari Marmell
Pathfinder: City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt
Mike Hammer: Lady, Go Die! by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
Star Trek: The Persistence of Memory by David Mack
Star Trek: Rings of Time by Greg Cox
Tannhäuser: Rising Sun, Falling Shadows by Robert Jeschonek
Dungeons and Dragons Online: Skein of Shadows by Marsheila Rockwell
ADAPTED NOVEL
Poptropica: Astroknights Island by Tracey West
Clockwork Angels by Kevin Anderson
Batman: The Dark Knight Legend by Stacia Deutsch
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises by Greg Cox
AUDIO
Dark Shadows: Dress Me in Dark Dreams by Marty Ross
Dark Shadows: The Eternal Actress by Nev Fountain
Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: Project Nirvana by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright
Sometimes you are born for a life of adventure and sometimes adventure recruits you into its cause. For George Lucas, the latter approach is preferable as witnessed in Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and Willow Ufgood in Willow. While Skywalker unknowingly had it in his blood, Willow was far more the ordinary person thrust into an extraordinary cause.
Lucas conceived of Willow’s tale back in 1972 and kept it rattling around his mind until technology was sophisticated enough to tackle it on film. Casting Warwick Davis as Wicket in Return of the Jedi probably began the move from backburner to the front of the production slate even though it was another five years before the film began production. By then, Lucas was no longer interested in directing, instead choosing Ron Howard to mount his first major fantasy. By then, Howard, who was a directing contemporary of Lucas although they traveled in different circles, had just finished Cocoon, a science fiction tale dosed with lots of humanity, and that’s apparently what Lucas wanted.
What we got in 1988, though, was an uneven tale with loads of nice scenery and nifty Industrial Light & Magic special effects but none of the characters sang and Howard definitely seemed out of his element. A new edition, with an excellent transfer, has just been released on Blu-ray by 20th Century Home Entertainment.
The story is not especially original as Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh) of Nockmaar wants no rivals and to forestall a prophecy, has every pregnant woman in the kingdom imprisoned. Of course, a woman manages to give birth to her child, who turns out to be Snow White, er, The One. To protect her, the mother sacrifices her child, sending it in a small boat on the river where it is found by Willow’s children. Willow is a Hobbit, er, Nelwyn; a farmer, happily married, and not seeking a change in his life. The baby, though, upends everything, especially as the Queen’s hounds come hunting. Willow and the baby, Elora Danan, flee, encountering Madmartigan (Val Kilmer), who is a handsome Daikini; a disgraced knight who swings a mean sword. Following instructions, Willow will risk everything to safely deliver the child to the good king and queen of Castle Tir Asleen. Meantime, Madmartigan encounters and romances Bavmorda’s daughter, Sorsha (Joanne Whalley), getting his just reward. For the two hour and six minute running time, you pretty much know what’s going to happen, and you’re rooting for the heroes.
The screenplay, written by Bob Dolman (How to Eat Fried Worms), based on Lucas’ long-simmering concepts, is overly predictable and none of the characters manage to sparkle. Kilmer is too grim, Marsh too broad. Davis’ title character is earnest but flat, given little to work with. Even former Munchkin Billy Barty is overly broad as The High Aldwin, the magician who takes Willow on as an apprentice. He’s forgiven considering how awful the Brownies (Kevin Pollak and Rick Overton), the two French-accented companions, are. That said, Howard still shows the film’s potential in some lovely quiet moments between the characters. Saddled with a so-so story and inexperienced with the demands of special effects, these are few and far between, which just makes us yearn for more. Darker than your typical kids’ fantasy, this overall holds up on rewatching, which has explained its enduring commercial success. As recently as last month Kilmer tweeted there will be a sequel, but after all this time, it remains wishful dreaming.
Shot partly in New Zealand, it has lovely views and the SFX are fine for when they were crafted but clearly budgetary constraints kept some of the more exciting set pieces from completion, saving them for use in the Marvel adaptation or novelization (speaking of which, go find the Chris Claremont-penned of tie-in sequel novels). James Horner delivers a familiar and lackluster score, that doesn’t help the overall feel of being a retread.
The new transfer is superior to the 2001 DVD release. Lucas and company personally oversaw the work so the print is clean and the colors are well balanced. The THX soundtrack is equally glorious and makes for an improved viewing experience.
The special features have chosen to skip the Davis commentary from the previous release but does offer up the other ones, including Willow: The Making of an Adventure (23:29), a 1988 documentary; From Morf To Morphing (17:24), with visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren; and, Willow: An Unlikely Hero – Personal Video Diary of Warwick Davis (10:53), with some interesting on-set videos he shot during production.
New to the disc is Willow: Deleted Scenes with Ron Howard (12:32) includes the completely dropped subplot with Sorsha’s father, some of Willow performing magic tricks, and a “fish boy” scene that ILM couldn’t quite get right. There is also a brief one minute-plus montage of the film’s lush Matte Paintings.
Were we about to pitch this book as a possible movie to a Hollywood studio, we would present it as a super amalgamated cross between Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot” and Lawrence Kasdan’s “Silverado.”
If you are an avid reader, then we no need to tell you that the new pulp genre known as the Weird Western is extremely popular these days. From anthologies and novels, it is a fantasy theme that has captured the fancy of readers everywhere. “The Six-Gun Tarot” is the best Weird Western book on the market today.
The setting is post-civil war in a Nevada mining town called Golgotha. For reasons known only to a select few, it is the nexus of good and evil at the heart of the universe. Locked up its mountains lies an ancient evil that existed before creation and here Belcher dives into Lovecraft territory head-on setting forth the book’s primary plot conflict. The beast, known as the Black Wurm, is about to be released from captivity and if it succeeds it will destroy the world.
Thus is falls upon a handful of truly memorable characters to save creation. These include Sheriff Jonathan Highfather, a man who cannot be killed; his deputy, a half-breed Indian coyote-changeling called Mutt, a young fifteen year old boy, Jim Negrey, on the run from the law who possesses a mysterious all-powerful eye said to contain unimaginable power and the beautiful but deadly Maude Stapleton, a Southern Belle secretly trained in ancient martial arts and occult practices.
That is only a sampling of some of the fantastical citizens of Golgotha that play an active part in this cataclysmic battle between light and dark, good and evil. There’s also Auggie, the local shop merchant who keeps his dead wife alive in a vat of chemicals put together by the town’s eccentric inventor and Malachi Bick, the saloon owner who just may be a fallen angel sent to protect mankind at the beginning of time.
“The Six-Gun Tarot” is one of those rare books that kept surprising us from chapter to chapter. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any weirder, it did just that until we became totally enraptured by Belcher’s daring and exuberant imagination. It certainly has no bounds. This is a book we recommend to all lovers of fantastic fiction and assure you once you’ve ridden into Golgotha, you won’t want to leave.
Journey to the far corners of your imagination with Willow, for the first time ever on stunning Blu-ray! Written and produced by George Lucas and directed by Ron Howard, the film tells a timeless fantasy tale in which heroes come in all sizes…and adventure is the greatest magic of all. In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the unforgettable classic has been fully digitally restored and debuts on Blu-ray and DVD Combo Pack March 12, 2013 from Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
The Willow Blu-ray and DVD include a dazzling array of extras with never-before-seen exclusive content such as deleted scenes with remarks from Ron Howard, a personal video diary of Warwick Davis, matte paintings and much more. In addition, look out for Ron Howard’s new introduction for the original 1988 featurette “The Making of an Adventure,” as well as special effect legend Dennis Muren’s new intro to his piece, “From Morf to Morphing: The Dawn of Digital Filmmaking.”
Special Features include:
NEW – Willow: Deleted Scenes with Ron Howard
NEW – Willow: An Unlikely Hero – Personal Video Diary of Warwick Davis
The Making of an Adventure with an all new introduction from Ron Howard
From Morf to Morphing with an all new introduction from Dennis Muren
Matte Paintings
Easter Egg
Our friends at Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment have given us two copies to giveaway. Entries must be received no later than 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, March 13. The decision of ComicMix is final. In order to win your very own copy of Willow on Blu-ray Combo Pack, simply answer the following question:
What did Ron Howard direct immediately after Willow?
One of the new methods authors are using to reach readers is bundling their works so readers get a set of novels to read at a discounted price. The latest such digital initiative comes from Bundle of Holding, which is offering six novels of fantasy and science fiction. The brains behind the bundle include Matt Forbeck (Brave New World), Chuck Wendig (Hunter: The Vigil), Jenna Moran (Nobilis, Exalted), Stephen D. Sullivan (D&D/AD&D, Chill), Rafael Chandler (Scorn, Spite), Sarah Newton (Mindjammer, Legends of Anglerre), Derek Pearcy (In Nomine), and Aaron Rosenberg (Asylum, Spookshow).
What makes them a unique set of authors? They are all noted game designers who have since added exciting fiction to their credits. “As game designers, we’ve all spent years building worlds and adventures and characters for other people to play in and with,” said Forbeck, who writes the Magic: The Gathering comic for IDW as well. “That’s just one chunk of spinning a fantastic tale, of course, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any group better at it. With the Bundle of Holding, you get to pay what you want to read what happens when writers with that rare skill set cut loose in worlds they’ve built for themselves.” Forbeck’s contribution to the bundle — Hard Times in Dragon City — is one of the bonus books that patrons receive if they pitch in more than the up-to-date average. It’s a fantasy noir murder mystery novel set in a mountain city surrounded by zombies and ruled over by a dragon emperor who offers the citizens his protection for their fealty.
“It’s a natural evolution,” Rosenberg explained. “Game designers are worldbuilders and storytellers, except in our games we set everything up so the gamemasters and the players can create the stories. Most of us have our own stories to tell too, though, and we do that in our individual game campaigns but sometimes we branch out into fiction, where we can tell stories to a much wider audience than a single game group.” His offering for the bundle, The Birth of the Dread Remora, is a dashing space-opera reminiscent of the old Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Lensman books. “It’s a genre I’ve always loved,” he said, “and one I was really excited to write.”
Bundle of Holding also offers an added twist. Readers have the option of paying the talent the money or it could be donated to either Reading is Fundamental or Child’s Play, both excellent charities dedicated to improving childrens’ lives through games and reading. Readers could also split their payment between the consortium and the charities so everyone benefits.
Another unique touch is that the reader sets the price. They could offer up as much or as little as they want but if the offer exceeds the average, currently $16.08, the reader’s bundle would include two additional bonus books. With nearly seven dozen sold, the writers behind this initiative are jazzed.
The books being offered include Fable of the Swan, Hexcommunicated, Hero Worship, Birth of the Dread Remora,Irregular Creatures, Tournament of Death, with the bonus books being Hard Times in Dragon City and Mindjammer. All told, purchasing these one by one for the Kindle would cost almost $23, but by setting your own price there’s sure to be substantial savings. Additionally, the books will come free of DRM, providing increased flexibility in where these can be read.
There are just over two weeks left on this unique promotion.
As you know, Peter is facing some horrific medical bills in the coming months and everyone is doing their part to help out. This now includes his publisher, Random House, which has temporarily reduced the eBook price of his fabulous fantasy, Tigerheart, to a mere $2.99.
The pastiche of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan was originally released in 2008 and remains one of his proudest achievements.
For those unfamiliar with it, here’s the official description:
For all readers who have ever lent an enthusiastic ear to a wonderfully well told tale, or tumbled gladly into pages that could transport them anywhere, now comes novelist Peter David’s enchanting new work of fantasy.
Action-packed and suspenseful, heart-tugging and wise, it weaves a spell both hauntingly familiar and utterly irresistible for those who have ever surrendered themselves to flights of fancy, and have whispered in their hearts, “I believe.”
Paul Dear is a good and clever boy, doted on by a father who fills his son’s head with tall tales, thrilling legends, and talk of fairy-folk, and by a mother who indulges these fantastic stories and tempers them with common sense. But Paul is special in ways that even his adoring parents could never have imagined. For by day, in London’s Kensington Gardens, he walks and talks with the pixies and sprites and other magical creatures that dwell among the living-but are unseen by most. And at night in his room, a boy much like himself, yet not, beckons to Paul from the mirror to come adventuring. It’s a happy life for Paul, made all the more so by the birth of his baby sister.
You can find it for this low, low price at Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook and it comes highly recommended by those who have read it.
A big thank you to Nook’s Ali T. Kokmen for helping make this a reality.
(Michael ran this piece on 
