I am so stoked to be able to bring you this review. I’ve been waiting for Black Butler to be translated into English for over a year.

A short distance from London, just beyond the fog-cloaked forest, there stands a well-kept manor house.

Kuroshitsuji, or Black Butler, is an awesome gothic tale about a butler who can do absolutely anything. The art in the manga is the best gothic craftsmanship I have ever seen. In fact, before the English translation came out, I had to talk myself out of buying the Japanese version several times because I loved the art so much. I just wanted to hold such beauty in my hands and study the details even, if I couldn’t read the darned thing!

I just finished the English translation version and I am not disappointed in the least. The story and characters live up to the awesome artwork. So, what’s it about?

The Black Butler, Sebastian, is the kind of man anyone could use around the house. He can clean, garden, make the most delicious sweets, and even rescue you from kidnappers. Most would say that his type of know-how is impossible in a mortal and they would be right. Sebastian’s master Earl Phantomville, a twelve-year-old boy named Ceil who is obsessed with games. Being the head of the family that owns Funtom, Britain’s leading confection and toy making manufacturer, liking games is a must.

The other servants of the house are comical, but useless. After all, who needs maids, gardeners, and man servants when one has Sebastian the greatest butler of all time? These other servants make it difficult for Sebastian to do his job by constantly messing things up, destroying china sets, poisoning the garden, and eating the Earl’s desserts. The Black Butler always saves the day with his quick wit, speedy service, and ultimate all around wonderfulness.

My favorite scene is when Sebastian is riddled with bullets and then stands, his coattails all in tatters and looks at the bullets in his hand. Then he throws all the bullets back at the baddies, effectively sending them to their graves. After the fight, he picks up his master and calmly walks for the room while apologizing that dinner has not been prepared.

As I have said, this artist is awesome. I haven’t been this excited about a manga artist since Kaori Yuki’s Godchild. From ruffled cravats and tailored suits to ornamented chandeliers and elaborate tea servings, every detail is beautiful. Even the chibi portions of this manga are well done.

A fun detail is that each chapter, Sebastian makes a special dessert for Earl Phantomville. The dessert is shown up close with a banner stating things such as:

Today’s Dessert: Apricot and green tea mille-feuille.

This awesome book includes seven pages of author notes with translation notes outlining everything you’d like to know about what is described in the book, including what mille-feuille is.

The author is definitely into portraying authentic Victorian England settings and clothing, but I’ve never seen a manga artist pay this much attention to customs, history of the time, and even what people might have been talking about during dinner.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the author:

I like black…
…It’s a color that can’t be violated by any other colors.
It’s a color that simply keeps being itself.
A color that sinks more somberly than any other…
…It’s a passionate, gallant color.
Anything is wonderful if it transcends things, rather than being halfway.

If you haven’t bought a manga yet, this is the one to start with. Few others are in it’s league. You can find out more about Black Butler at Amazon.com.

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Horrorfest III: Tales of Terror

A Second Life Convention presented by Bookstacks

Notice By Kghia Gherardi, Organizer

This month on the thirteenth, Bookstacks will commence Horrorfest III: Tales of Terror. You might not live to see the Ides of March this year! We will have a full schedule of events with numerous authors reading their works, including Mike Stackpole. The survivors will continue on the fourteenth when, amongst other events, Tobias Buckell will make one of his rare appearances in-world to read “Spurn Babylon.”

In other events you will be able to swap poetry with author Emerian Rich in the graveyard. Or learn about real life horrors with Mark Eller. Find out how to incorporate horror sound effects to your own shows. Sample Crap Mariner’s short shorts. Participate in a costume contest and attend a fashion show for the fashionably undead. And that’s not all! Bookstacks will be running all its normal events, usually with a twist…a twist of Terror.

Saturday, March 13
•9:00 am – Horrorfest opens with new and classic tales read by West of Ireland storyteller Gyro Muggins.
•10:00 am - Emerian Rich, author and host of the Horror Addicts podcast, hosts a workshop on creating horror sounds for podcasts…or simply to scare your friends next Halloween.
•11:00 am – Simeon Beresford serves as quiz master for a horrific game of Book Trivia. The winner of the game will take home 500 lindens, and the person in the best costume in the theme will also win 500 lindens.
•1:00 pm – Emerain Rich reads from the sequel to Night’s Knights
•2:00 pm – Science Fiction Saturday
•3:00 pm – NYT bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole will give you nightmares when he reads one of his scary tales
•4:00 pm – Join Emerian Rich for the annual sharing of scary poetry in the graveyard. There is more out there than “The Raven”
•5:00 pm – Crap Mariner offers his own take on terror with his 100 word stories and scary shorts
•6:00 pm – Author and host of the Hell Hole Tavern podcast, Mark Eller, will remind us that not all horror is fictional with his real life tales.
•7:00 pm – Live performance by Scream Machine*

Sunday, March 14 (please note: Daylight Savings Time begins in the US)
•11:00 am – Henry Snider reads from one of his stories about occult, parapsychology and esoteric studies
•1:00 pm – Off the Shelf interviews Mark Eller, author and host of the Hell Hole Tavern podcast
•3:00 pm – Poetry Libre’s Open Mic
•4:00 pm – Award-winning author Tobias Buckell reads “Spurn Babylon”
•5:00 pm – “Twenty Ten Horror and Chills Couture Event” – Fashion Show for the Fashionably Undead from the Infinite Focus Fashion Agency
* Scream Machine is brought to us by Grave Concerns Ezine

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Red Angel is a masterfully drawn manga with an awesome color cover that gives just a hint at the gothic art inside. Author and manga artist, Makoto Tateno, brings to life the story of Mika & Eru who are brother and sister vampires.

For those of you who might have read her other works Happy Boys or Yellow and didn’t like them, I believe that Red Angel deserves a chance.  You see, Mika & Eru are not like other vampire brothers and sisters. They have one unique quality that sets them away from the bunch. They just happen to reside in the same body.

Reminiscent of the novel, The Need by Andrew Neiderman, the brother and sister pair have a problem… whatever one of them does, the other has to live with. In Red Angel, this has to do with them moving constantly to keep their secret. Their crimson wings often leave mortals in a state of awe. Whether they feed or not, they usually cause death somehow and flee the scene.

Artwork in this book is beautiful with a nice dark feel throughout and gothic vignettes portraying a couple enjoying a kiss as massive wings shelter them or a flight of crows bordered by intricate crosses and lace. Tateno has a way of portraying action in the still shot so convincingly that the reader can almost feel the wind whip around them as wings flap, causing feathers to float by.

Each chapter is a different town and the vampire pair is not always the focus. We get to meet a couple of “bat men” who turn into bats but are not vampires, and Anney, who is holy and able to suck energy from vamps. Mika meets another vampire and finds out the hidden truth behind who she is and where she fits into creation.

There is a four-page extra in the back by the author, explaining the characters, ideas, and how the book was first published. Categorized as a Yaoi, I disagree. Perhaps it is just stuck into that category because of the woman and man in the same body. I find that the story is very unlike many Yaoi and the difference between the brother and sister is so definite, the reader really believes they are two different people simply sharing the same mortal-like shell.

You can find out more about Red Angel at Amazon.com.

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Yesterday, I finished the first draft of a test story for a new setting I am developing.  Wow, that was a vague sentence, but it sounded like I really said something didn’t it.

I liked it.  I haven’t written an Urban Dark (Gothic) Fantasy since 1996.  I blame Emerian for my return to Horror writing.  I love the genre, abandoning it only after I felt trapped in the rules and requirements it puts on fiction.

After my near breakdown in November, and the many months of recovery, I realized that I am tired of playing by everyone else’s rules.  I have always been bound to one system or expectations.  The world I grew up in is gone, and there is little to nothing I can do to bring it back.  I have to just pick up from the mess that exists now and move forward.

If I can be allowed a cliché: “Be the change you want to see.”

A couple weeks ago, I started working on an idea.  It was strange and scared me a bit.  Unlike anything I have ever written, I didn’t have a model, or genre to define it.  I am not claiming that it is original.  I am sure somewhere someone has written something like it, but it is mine.  It is the type of story I want to read.

Form

My biggest hurdle has been getting beyond the structures of the novel and the short story.  I agree with H P Lovecraft that the best fiction is pulled off with the same craft as a well devised hoax.  So I started playing around with ways to tell a strory directly and from oblique angles.  I would love to share some of these stories, but they may be included in the final project, so I don’t want to release them early.

My biggest inspiration comes from comics.  I love the shared universe, and I would love to find some writers to help me out on this project.  The idea of the setting as hero mashed up with characters that readers will really care about excites me.  In the end I would like this story to spawn blogs, vlogs, and podcasts set in the world, expanding it holding to the canon.

I have never been accused of dreaming too small, LOL.

Test Everything!

If I had any advice for the writers out there it is this.  Test everything!  If you get an idea, no mater how outlandish, bizarre, or out of the mainstream.  Give it a try.  See how it comes out, then move forward based on the results.  I have found a new setting I love writing in.  Who knows what you will find.

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A new story is boiling in my mind.  It scrapes at the inside of my skull like Athena trying desperately to get out.  The cast of characters came to me quickly, but they needed names.

…names…

Sometimes, I feel like names are the bane of all authors.  They have to fit the character and the setting, and work well with each other.  That might sound simple, but for me it spirals into a series of questions just short of the Spanish Inquisition.

Eric’s First Rule of Naming

No character in the story can have the same name as a member of my immediate family.

That is hard.  In this particular story, there is a character that feels like a Christopher and another who feels like a Donna, but my sister’s name is Chris and my mother-in-law’s name is Donna, so both of those names are out.

I made this rule when I was really young, when family thought characters with the same name were really ways to talk about them.  (sigh)

There is a practical reason for this too.  Writers can be sued if people think characters in their stories are based on them.  It makes naming a bit challenging for me, but it is a wise thing to do.

Eric’s Second Rule of Naming

Names must flow together well.

Flow is a hard thing to talk about.  The easiest way to think of name flow is that the names need to sound like they belong together.  Families and regions have certain naming conventions, and as a Speculative Fiction writer, determining those conventions are important.

Older fiction didn’t bother with this, so we ended up with names like Blork, Gort, and Xanthon.  Names that sounded outlandish, but were just weird.

H. P. Lovecraft thought a lot about the names of the creatures in his fiction.  Cthulhu for example is based on the greek work Cthon which means underground, and he intentionally wanted something that was hard to pronounce and that would be pronounced differently by everyone.  He thought it helped to lend the character an unknowable and alien quality.

Eric’s Third Rule of Naming

Love the names you choose.

Writing a novel or series is akin to marriage.  You are going to spend every moment of every day with these characters rummaging around in your head.  It can take months or even years to write and edit a story.  It is a commitment.  Make sure you are committed to the names you choose so you don’t end up with a Dwigt in your manuscript.

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Akira Lives?

Albert and Allen Hughes are finalizing a deal to direct the live-action Akira. So it’s still in the works but I don’t have hopes of seeing the movie any year soon. (via /Film)

Stan lee’s Super Seven Series

Stan lee’s Super Seven Series is a new project which will be distributed in print, online, on air, and retail channels. It’s nice to see more comics especially one of the big boys adding the simultaneous online distribution model to the mix.

The series will be about: Seven aliens who find themselves stranded on planet Earth after their spaceship crashes, only to be befriended by none other than Lee himself. Taking them under his care, Lee becomes their leader and enables them to resume their lives as superheroes on earth.

Stan Lee is excited because it’s “the first time that I’ll actually be a continuing character in a far-out, original superhero series.”

I enjoyed his cameo’s in the various marvel movies and think it would be fun to see him as a reoccurring character.

(via tubfilter)

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It’s pretty bad when you look at the cover of a manga a week after reading it and can’t for the life of you remember what it was about. It’s even worse when you flip through it and still can’t remember. That’s how it was with X/1999 Prelude.

For those of you mesmerized by words like Voom, Woosh, SKRTCH, and Shaaaa… you will find pages upon pages of them with the confusing swirl of vortex art that denotes quick fighting sequences. Unfortunately, Dragon Ball Z-like action scenes overshadow this plot. Zombies are supposed to be attacking the main character, but you can’t really see anything but glimpses.

What is X/1999 about?

I am still not sure. It seems the lead character has been away and returns to Tokyo to get attacked a lot. It is not clear what his goal is or if he even has one.

Highlights?

Well, there are a couple. First, a cool sword forms from a girl’s hand. Second, there is an awesomely drawn princess with white eyes and an elaborate costume.

You might ask why I purchased X/1999 Prelude in the first place. Well, this was definitely a case of cover misleading. I saw the moon and the red splotches (which I assumed blood), along with what looked like bridge girders in the background and an ebony-haired hero. This is a good example of me not following my own advice. As I said in a preview post titled, How To Choose A Manga, I missed step #5, which is:

5. Flip through the book and check out the art. Is the detail inside as good as the cover art? Is it appealing to you? Is the printing bad, or is it crisp and clean? Do you stop every so often to let a “wow” or a “ooooohhhh” slip from your lips? If you realize it’s a steampunk fantasy once you get inside and you don’t like that sort of tale, please don’t buy it just because you like the cover. You will be disappointed.

Luckily, I bought this one early in my manga-buying days and hopefully have learned my lesson. I wouldn’t recommend buying this series unless you are a big DBZ fan or enjoy constant action with little plot.

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Image via Wikipedia

Doctor Who By Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is penning an episode for Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who.  The episode is to air early in Season Six.

– it’s quite possible that I might have written an episode. And if I had, it would originally have been called, ‘The House of Nothing,’ but it definitely isn’t called that any more.”

That rocks!  I can’t wait to watch the episode.

What do you think the episode could be about with the working title The House of Nothing?

(via DoorQ)

Spider-Woman Enlists With Avengers

Spider-Woman: Marvel announced she will be joining the Avengers team when the comic re-launches as part of their new Heroic Age line up of comics.

(via SciFiPulse)

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When we think of Valentine’s day, we often think of poetry, so for today’s post, I thought I’d bring you a book of poetry themed comics. Those of you who like poetry, but have yet to pick up a manhwa, then Nabi The Prototype by Yeon-Joo Kim is for you. A particularly beautiful passage reads:

Like the shy camellias
That blossomed
On a sheet of white
Summer paper…

Red flowers are blooming
On the surface of the snow.

Or perhaps,
It is a crimson cloud touched
By the sunset afterglow…

This manhwa is a group of love stories about people who have grown up together or traveled together on a great quest, whether it be a quest of distance or time. From tales about falling love with your kidnapper, to falling in love with your best friend from childhood, this book explores what love can mean in many different forms. I found the most touching tale was about an orphan who feels unwanted and unloved, but she finds out that her father, a poet, thought her name was the best poem he ever wrote.

Because of it’s poetic style, this book may be hard for straight fiction readers to understand. I found it was similar to Shakespeare in that if you did not understand it the first time, a second read and another viewpoint would bring the meaning to life.

This is a Korean manhwa, read in the English direction. The art style in this book is decidedly Korean with elaborate costuming and stylized hair. I’d recommend this book for anyone who likes to look beyond the obvious and experience love stories truly unique.

You can check out Nabi the Prototype at Amazon.com.

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I love the Dune series, read the books and yes even own the David Lynch movie that has some loose references to the books.  I even share with many the desire to “erase the image that David Lynch did.”  That is what Frank Herbert’s Dune a 2002 mini-series remake did.

What benefit could a Dune remake bring to make it worth doing another one so soon?

“I’d love it to be 3D, of course. It’s the kind of movie that has the scope to be 3D. Will they do it in 3D? I’d push for that, but I don’t know. As a viewer, I’ve just been watching Avatar with my kids twice in the theater already and had a blast. It’s an amazing experience.”

We would all love to experience Shai-Hulud in all it’s greatness.  If 3-D is all that can be brought to the project please don’t waste our time.  A visual ride without all of the depth that dune brings would be as empty as pouring our water out on the sands.

There are so many other books that could enjoy a good remake or to be made into a movie and some that would serve far better for a hyper visual trippy 3-D experience.  Take for instance many of Piers Anthony’s works.

(via SCI FI Wire)

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