Who Is Esther May Morrow?

Who is Esther May Morrow? Why is it that her strange shop, resembling something out of medieval England, has remained unchanged from the nineteenth to the twenty-third centuries. What is she selling? And who will come to buy...?

Find out in ESTHER MAY MORROW'S BUY OR BORROW, a one-of-a-kind paranormal short story anthology:

SPELLBOUND – featuring an eight-year-old boy and an old army canteen.

GIN RUMMY - Set in 1899. Featuring a professional cardsharp with a dark secret and a desire to win at all costs.

CRETACEOUS – featuring an old man, his dying dog, and a chance for immortality.

THE FACE NEVER LIES – featuring a vengeful Marine and a special pocket watch.

MISS OLIVIA - Set in Hollywood 2237. Featuring a celebrated male prostitute and his unrequited love…for Olivia de Havilland!

Eerie, amusing and always original, these stories address the personal journeys of five haunted individuals, for whom quirks of time shed new light on their dilemmas. No one who enters Esther May’s shop is ever the same again.

Coming June 7 at Eternal Press.

http://www.eternalpress.ca/

I'm Proud to Present...The Eleven-Hour Fall

Well, the time has finally arrived. After much planning, writing, rewriting, climbing and general parachuting into unknown territory, my first novella, The Eleven-Hour Fall, is out today.

The folks at Eternal Press have been a pleasure to work with. My editor Heather Williams really understands the sci-fi genre, and you can see from the book cover how talented the artists are at EP. This one was designed by Shirley Burnett, and it's a corker.

So, on to the story itself...

It’s an exciting blend of science-fiction, romance and survival adventure.

What if you fell from a great height...toward a ground you couldn’t see…and hours later, you were still falling?

For love, for survival, on a mysterious planet light years from home. With the man of her dreams unconscious in her arms, astronaut Kate Borrowdale must escape the treacherous peaks of Kratos and traverse a strange, hidden world beneath the clouds…

And now for a short excerpt:

A quick glance here, a fleeting glimpse during a barrel roll there: Kate's knowledge of the world below was snatched from a dizzying descent. The violet sky streamed as colors in a fresco, running while still damp. Tremendous jets of gas washed up from below, pluming to giant mushrooms from tornado slivers.

But who are you trying to blame, Katie girl - no one ordered you on this frozen rock. You've got what you came for; he's just in a coma, that's all. Next time, next time, next time...

Her clock read 15:34. The fall had lasted how long? An hour and five minutes? That couldn’t be right. They seemed no nearer to the swirling cloud below. Another updraft caught them and Kate felt like they were floating again.

Kratos was a large planet in terms of circumference, yet physicists knew very little of its topography. The range of mountains in the northern hemisphere, the peaks of which Kate's party had partially surveyed, suggested mind-boggling geography. Scans, however, had failed to penetrate successive cloud layers. Experts cited an electromagnetic anomaly in the atmosphere as the reason for this. As a result, estimates of the height of those peaks varied by many miles. The surface of Kratos was, as yet, an unexplored world.

After all their bullshit, I'm the one left praying to a parachute.

Kate tried to relax through a fairly deep breath. Her shoulders ached. The fall now seemed smooth, consistent, almost gentle as they stopped spinning. Her throat was dry and ready for cracking. A terrible hunger began to swell inside as she tasted inviting flavors in her saliva, or at least thought she did. Remington never so much as twitched in her clutches.

To read the rest of Kate's adventure, buy The Eleven-Hour Fall in brand new e-book form at Eternal Press. You won't be disappointed!

A Legend Remembered

I love classic movies. They make life tough for modern efforts, which is exactly the way it should be. Too often studios feed us swill, thinking we won't notice - and I'm sure some don't - but the genuine filmgoers among us know what it takes for a film to pass muster. We've seen how they should be done, in colour or in black-and-white.

Recently, Paul Schofield and Richard Widmark, two of our great screen actors, passed away. I was going to write a column about Widmark, one of my favourite "forgotten" stars, but today, sadly, another legendary actor has died. And this one has left me reeling.

CHARLTON HESTON - Aged 84

My dad told me stories for years about the old 50's cinemas - a world before multiplexes and credit cards and digital projectors. He said you used to get two movies (an 'A' and a 'B'), a newsreel, a weekly serial, and a few trailers all for the price of one ticket. Ladies used to sell ice cream and popcorn in the aisles, and during the epic films, there was always an intermission when you could stretch your legs, go to the bathroom or stock up on more drinks for the second half. OK, and the roof of the theatre occasionally leaked. It actually snowed inside during one screening of Alpine WW2 actioner Where Eagles Dare.

But one of these epics was the film that kick-started his love affair with cinema and music, when he was ten years old. His mother (my grandma) had a blistering argument with a woman wearing "a bloody great big hat" sat in the row in front. But it was the film itself that frightened, excited, awed him that night. Ben-Hur is the quintessential biblical epic. Its scale is unsurpassed even today because, far more than backdrops and extras, the story of Judah Ben-Hur and his quest for revenge against his old Roman friend Messala is set against the great turning point in history. The life of Jesus Christ. That my dad is a staunch atheist says everything - Ben-Hur is still his favourite film, for its passionate music, its emotional power and its eye-popping grandeur.

AND for Charlton Heston.

Muscular, charismatic, and with a strong voice, Heston commanded the screen so completely in all his films that he practically carved his own legend.

Early starring roles in excellent films like The Naked Jungle, The Greatest Show on Earth and The Big Country promised much, and he delivered big time as Moses in De Mille's The Ten Commandments. Heck, he even voiced God for the burning bush! His towering portrayal of Ben-Hur earned him an Oscar, and two years later he played perhaps the greatest knight in movie history as Spanish legend El Cid, opposite Sophia Loren. That happens to be my dad's second favourite film.

More complex roles followed in the 60's, mostly historical figures such as Gordon of Khartoum, a unique medieval War Lord, and Michaelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy. In the seventies he gave legitimacy to the oft-maligned but always entertaining disaster movie cycle, featuring in Earthquake, Airport '75, and Gray Lady Down. He also played a variety of western roles throughout his career, the most famous being Will Penny and Peckinpah's Major Dundee.

He was and will always be bigger-than-life. Who else could have played so many huge, pivotal characters and remained undaunted? He was an icon, a historical presence, the embodiment of moral virtue on screen. Tonight, my dad and I are going to pick out one of his movies to watch.

He died aged 84. The world suddenly seems that much less epic.

Farewell, Mr. Heston, and thank you.

History's Deadliest Crocodile Attack!

Now only 99 cents on Amazon Kindle! http://amzn.to/NPEtW9

In Februrary 1945, 1,000 Japanese troops retreated into the swamps of Ramree Island. Most were never seen again. Inspired by actual events during WW2, this is the fictional account of one soldier's struggle to survive the deadliest crocodile attack ever recorded!

You can check out the book trailer here!
Learn about saltwater crocodiles here!
And to read about the history behind the book, visit:
www.robertappleton.co.uk/sunsetonramree.htm

SUNSET ON RAMREE
A novelette, 15,000 words.
Written by Robert Appleton.

An excerpt from Chapter 1 - PRELUDE

It is 16:45 and the British forces have outflanked us. Word spreads throughout our battalion that there is no escape. The mangrove swamp – a thick, stifling, fetid place of only damp reprieve – suddenly provides our only protection. And it is here, in the coming hours, that from the jaws of our defeat, Nature will try to snatch us for herself. There are a hundred unseen ways for a man to die. We can never give in, and time must therefore be the grind of the blade, that by our own hand we draw death – an honourable death. What end waits for me, I wonder? My name is Shigeatsu Nakadai. I do not want this sunset to be my last.

An excerpt from Chapter 5 - FUGUE

Though you wouldn’t know it to look at them, crocodiles are among the quickest animals on the planet. There’s a split-second between an impala bending to drink and a crocodile leaping up with a sideways swipe, clamping its jaws around its prey, and starting the dreaded submergence. Once those jaws are locked, the hold is iron-clad; it’s almost impossible to pry them open.

On land, though only for short sprints, they can move extremely fast. In water, they are kings. Their muscular tails propel them upward with shocking speed toward their prey. It’s not hard to see why they’re feared even more than sharks in many Indo-Pacific regions. And as Ramree Island lies in the Bay of Bengal, we are in the heart of their domain.

It starts with one or two attacks. A quick cry of pain, a splash, limbs thrashing to escape, and if the water is too shallow for the crocodile to pull its man down for drowning, it will roll him over and over on the surface. There is nothing more terrifying than hearing that sequence – the staggered scream, the tail lashing the surface, the loud spurts of water being thrown aside. There might as well be a hundred crocodiles for the sheer panic that ensues on the bank ahead of us. As the men trample vegetation while fleeing the water’s edge, their flesh is torn on the sharp bracken. The smell of blood is in the air. On top of that, we have wounded soldiers among us, casualties of both British bullets and the previous crocodile attack. If these reptiles are attracted by open wounds, every last one ought to be headed this way.

What’s worse, they like to feed at night...

Don't miss SUNSET ON RAMREE, the action-packed war story by Robert Appleton.

http://amzn.to/NPEtW9

Writing A Novel A Century Too Late

In April 2005, I embarked upon a sci-fi/fantasy reading and writing extravaganza. After years of armchair rivalry with novelists - I hadn't even written a book yet, let alone had one published - I finally put my boasts of "I could write that!" to the test.

My weapons were the masters of the genre - Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. I delighted in Verne's Mysterious Island, devoured Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series and was frankly awed by a '2 in 1' edition of Wells' The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. Over the next six months, I also managed to squeeze in 2o,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Land That Time Forgot, Burroughs' Pellucidar cycle and two novels by H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines and She.

"Tally-ho!" How could I write any other way? The eloquent (often wordy) prose of those fine authors cast such a spell over my first attempt at a novel that when I later came to re-read what I had done, I couldn't believe how Victorian my sentence structure, vernacular and verbal formality had become. Words like "ingress", "precipitous" and "whither" peppered my prose. Of course, my novel was a time travel adventure and did have an upper crust Englishman in the title role, but the totality of this classical influence took me aback. In short, I knew it could never be published in the twenty-first century.

"Rotten luck, old chap."

It was a bittersweet achievement. Six months' work had resulted in a pretty good, epic adventure with no hope of publication. The Basingstoke Chronicles, as it later became, was a victim of too much research - and not enough. I had exhausted the classical greats yet failed to ground the work with a modern sensibility. The story was circuitous, like many of Burroughs' - a tale within a tale, which the hero recounts to his friend on a deserted cove in Devonshire, Southern England. And the time travel aspect was integral, not merely a gimmick to reach another world. The spirit of the book was more speculative than postmodern, naive as opposed to ironic, an intrepid excursion into the unknown, a la Haggard.

In the meantime, I went off to write other things, including romantic sci-fi survival series The Eleven-Hour Fall and WW2 action horror Sunset on Ramree, but I never attempted another full-length novel. The sheer time and effort I'd spent on what had ultimately become a folly, left me reticent.

I'm now a published author of four e-books. The "modern" writing style flows easily (and more simply) and I'm about to embark on a part-time writing career. So the other day I thought it amusing to look back over Basingstoke and see what had gone so awry. To my genuine surprise, I ended up loving what I'd written!

The story remains intriguing, the mystery is a good one and the characters are clearly defined and fun. Yes, it reeks of Burroughs, Verne and Wells - in an amateur sense - but I realized that I'd in fact achieved everything I'd set out to. A classical-styled time travel adventure.

I've re-written it for pacing, passive voice, wordiness and repetition. I've tightened scenes and clarified the sci-fi exposition. It's now 10,000 words shorter. But, by and large, it's The Basingstoke Chronicles I dismissed so completely three years ago.

Will it ever get published? Who knows? Maybe I really would have to stumble upon a time machine. I suspect Victorian presses would gladly offer it as a twopenny serial. A few shelves below The Land That Time Forgot. No one would be happier than I, of 2008.

And you know what? It inspired me to write the prologue for a new sci-fi novel - my best piece of writing yet. And who was the first name off the bookshelf this time? Carl Sagan. Hey, it's not like I'm ambitious or anything...

For Anthony

Anthony Minghella, perhaps the most lyrical director of epic-intimate movies since the great David Lean, has died at the age of 54. He was one of my favourite filmmakers.

Turbulent WW2 odyssey The English Patient portrayed tragic romance on a scale unseen since 'Dr. Zhivago' in 1965. Brilliantly played by Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas and Juliette Binoche, the story eschewed generic love-in-harsh-times formula and delved deeper into themes of identity, allegiance and all-consuming passion.

Every frame glows in that film. Minghella was an artist of the first order, a man of great sensitivity, who continually asked questions with his work.

The Talented Mr. Ripley again explored identity and jealousy, and presented a misunderstood central character for whom no country or milieu ever truly fits. Matt Damons's Tom Ripley is a chameleon. Unlike the English Patient, he wants to belong but can't. Social congruity is beyond his grasp. All he can do is pretend, with often tragic results.

No less elegant than his epics, The Talented Mr. Ripley sensitively revealed a true monster. Minghella spices his dark tale with wit and ingenuity, and by the end I found myself rooting for the sociopathic killer.

Cold Mountain is another epic odyssey, this time set during the American Civil War. Like 'Gone With the Wind', it examines the collateral of a war fought on one's home turf. Inman (played by Jude Law) leaves Ada (Nicole Kidman) to fight for her own survival at home, while he in turn is traumatized by combat and goes AWOL. Powers beyond them keep them apart, yet even such a fleeting love gives them the strength to endure...and possibly reunite.

There's a haunting poetry in Cold Mountain. On one level, we've seen it all before - the fight to get home - but Minghella's screenplay constantly addresses what 'home' becomes in a Civil War. Inman meets a young, widowed mother whose house is under siege by marauding troops. Ada's friends suffer under the cruel 'home guard'. It's a desperate story, lyrically told. War has turned everything upside down.

I haven't seen Minghella's debut film Truly, Madly, Deeply or his last one, Breaking and Entering. With just the three films I've mentioned, though, his mark on cinema is guaranteed. He was a poet, a humanist and a generous spirit.

Thank you, Anthony.

The Gentleman of Horror

He played a villain in Star Wars and a roguish fop in Olivier's Hamlet. He's probably killed Dracula more than any other actor, and has certainly resurrected more corpses. A superb Sherlock Holmes, he was equally adept as a master criminal.

I can think of few better actors than Peter Cushing.

In the heyday of Hammer Horror, eloquent men battled to save buxom beauties. Gothic sets loomed large and stately. Even cheap backdrops and props had a charming theatricality. And the very best of Hammer, usually directed by Terence Fisher, would cast an immediate spell over willing viewers. They were eerie, tangible, classical.

In today's "horrors", boys swear a lot, barbie spends most of her time on the phone, and high school gossip features prom-inently. In other words, instantly disposable. I can't think of one teen horror film in the last ten years I've watched more than once.

Of course, they do make the odd period horror nowadays - Branagh's Frankenstein, Coppola's Dracula, Sleepy Hollow (an excellent tribute to Hammer) - but there's something missing. A focus, a simplicity of story and style, consistency.

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) was a breakthrough role for Cushing. While the famous 1933 Universal Frankenstein featured a wobbly, over-the-top doctor, Cushing made him not only abrasively self-confident but, more importantly, sophisticated. As bad as the character became (pretty bad!), we wanted him to succeed because, though misguided, he really was a genius breaking new ground. Cushing portrayed that cruel intellect perfectly.

Indeed, throughout the series, if Frankenstein was left to his own devices, he would probably achieve everything he set out to. It is the moral inflexibility of friends, colleagues and society that foils Frankenstein at every turn. Unlike the 1933 original, Cushing's character, not the monster, is the film's focus. To my mind, this approach is far more intriguing. Dissecting the mind of the brilliant creator, as opposed to the dumb creation, leaves less room for pathos, more scope to explore this destructive obsession. I can think of few actors better able to convince of the rationale behind an immoral decision.

In 1958, Hammer released The Horror of Dracula, with Cushing in the role of Van Helsing. Again, the actor anchored this patently silly mythology with utter conviction. Especially when using props, he made the scenes completely believable.

A string of sequels followed (for both franchises). No matter the quality of the film, he was dependable. A remake of Karloff's The Mummy proved successful, in which played the hero opposite Christopher Lee's startling monster. What struck me about Cushing's performance in that film was how precise his diction was. An English gentleman, an eloquent star.

Amid a rash of forgettable horror projects, he made perhaps the definitive version of Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles. Again with Hammer, he was sophisticated, wily, he listened. Cushing never hogged a scene. A subtle reaction can play as vital a role as a bravura monologue. As Holmes, he mastered both.

Popular with his colleagues as well as his countless fans, Peter Cushing gave legitimacy to an entire generation of British horror, and remains, to this day, the definitive gentleman of that particular genre.