Interview with author Alayna Williams + giveaway!

Today the Sheep welcome UF author Alayna Williams to the site! If you have yet to check out her amazing books NOW would be a great time to start. Truly a wonderful mix of fantasy, mystery and magic! Stay tuned till the end folks because Alayna has been kind enough to offer up a signed copy of her latest book Rogue Oracle! 

While Alayna gets our Tarot card reading all set up we'll move on to the giveaway! One lucky commenter is going to walk away with a signed copy of Rogue Oracle AND some fun Sheep swag items. Make sure to double your chances of winning by following our blog! In the comments below please give us:

1. Your Email Address

2. Have you ever had a Tarot card reading? If so what did it say and if not would you ever consider getting one?

Contest runs until July 31st at midnight.

Good luck!

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Posted By Blogger to NEW CINE BUZZ at 7/29/2011 11:00:00 PM

READ MORE - Interview with author Alayna Williams + giveaway!

The New Movie Nora Weston's Guardian 2632

I'm not a big fan of the time travel genre, but Nora Weston launches into a tour de force arm flailing tumble down the rabbit hole of temporal fiction. While reading the book, though, I couldn't help but feel that I fall distinctly outside of the target audience of this story. Because of that, I will break this review into two parts; First will be a largely critical review of the book as a consumer of hard sci-fi... then again as someone who enjoys an awesome B-Movie action hero romp through death, blood and violence.

The plot summary goes as following: Dr. Zane Grayson is head of a time travel agency whose purpose seems to be temporal purification. Zane and a small army of genetically altered supermen travel into the past on missions to make sure that events unfold the way they were supposed to. While indulging in an illicit habit of his, browsing time or "time surfing", Zane stumbles upon something that causes him to reconsider his place both in space and time.

In retrospect, Guardian 2632's plot doesn't actually feel like a time-travel plot. In my opinion, the story of Dr. Zane Grayson could have been told without any wormholed traipses into the past at all. Maybe It's just because time machines are such a mark of high science fiction that the author couldn't help herself... I blame H.G. Wells. Let me give a fairly concrete example of what I'm talking about. There is a point in the book where Zane is forced to spend some length of time in the year 2632. There is a sense of urgency in the good Doctor as he frets about getting back to the past in time to prevent some impending doom. Except for vague references to rules set out by Dr. Grayson himself, this drama is artificial. He should be able to return to the past the moment after he had previously left.

Coming in at just over 200 pages, my next criticism is that the book tries to do too much in too few pages. I could easily see the book expanded out to twice its page count. It would help the suspension of disbelief quite a lot to see the various explicitly named gadgets explained out through a combination of exposition and plot rather than as a bullet point in the glossary at the end of the book. Let's hear a little history about StaticAirVI or give us a flashback to the smart alec quantum computer's first steps with its version of Dr. Chandra. Finally, I get that love at first sight is a reasonable plot device... and coupled with being at the right place at a right time (literally)... mad crazy love can result. I would have really liked to have seen more expression and introspection from Dr. Grayson and his main love interest.

Anyway... enough of the negative nancyness... let's talk about what I liked about the book. Weston shows a lot of creativity and doesn't get shy about writing punch-in-the-face action. Also.. as an Asian-American, it's nice to see stories focused on one of my peeps. Yellow Pride! Looking for a little terror? Just imagine super-inhuman scaly skinned Time-Mercs popping out of thin air to take you out; muscular giant gila monsters of the future... and they'll stop at nothing to have your squishy bits dripping through their claws... yeah. terror.

There's also something awesome about rampaging into the past without care for the consequences. It's like that classic Simpson's episode where Homer ends up mucking up his future via his time traveling toaster. Nothing tickles the asskick funnybone like futuristic beam weapons melting 20th century concrete. Nothing.

Oh, Katie! Nora Weston's world? Coke is good. Pepsi is bad. Thought you should know!

READ MORE - The New Movie Nora Weston's Guardian 2632

Dan Abnett Interview, plus prizes!

Sabbat Worlds Cluster: One Ghost and Two Sheep Meet

Today we get to sit down and talk with author Dan Abnett, a highly esteemed Warhammer 40,000 fiction author. Among his works are the incredibly awesome Gaunt's Ghosts series, novels about the Horus Heresy, and the screenplay for the Ultramarines movie. He also has written numerous comics for Marvel and DC and comes with a list of credentials longer than your arm and twice as impressive. Unless you have like a robot arm or something, oh sorry, I forget myself at times. Anyway, Richard and I are fething thrilled to be interviewing Dan today who is a living legend in the field. 

And a big thank-you to Dan for being so cooperative and patient with us. Now as you probably noticed there is in fact a prize giveaway. Dan has been gracious enough to donate a signed copy of his latest book, Embedded, as a prize for this interview. Now it may not be 40k material, but it's a science fiction story about soldiers in the near future so if you're a fan of Gaunt and his Ghosts, you'll probably like this book too. Now to be eligible for this prize you must do the following.

Leave a comment on this interview with the following two pieces of information:
1. A valid e-mail address.2. Your favorite character from any of Abnett's books. (And preferably a little as to why.)

The polls will close on Thursday, 4th of August, 2011 at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard time. Double your chances to win by following our blog. Winner will be randomly selected and announced the next day, or Saturday at the latest if work gets in the way. Again a big thank you to Dan and I encourage everyone to pick up one of his books. Except for maybe Katie. They've got no smut in them so she'd just get bored. Everyone else should read them, though.

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Posted By Blogger to NEW CINE BUZZ at 7/29/2011 08:58:00 PM

READ MORE - Dan Abnett Interview, plus prizes!