All posts by correia45

My novel, MHI, is in Entertainment Weekly

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Pick up a copy of Entertainment Weekly.  On Page 69 is the best-sellers chart.  Entertainment Weekly will contact one big independant bookstore and use their list.  Luckily for me, this week was Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction & Fantasy mega-store.

#1  Outlaw Demon Wails –  Kim Harrison

#2 Snake Agent – Liz Williams

#3 Monster Hunter International – Larry Correia

#4 White Night – Jim Butcher

#5 Goblin War – Jim C. Hines

#6 Rollback – Robert J. Sawyer

#7 Night Life – Caitlin Kittredge

#8 Liaden Universe Companion – Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

#9 Into a Dark Realm – Raymond E. Feist

#10 Across the Face of the World – Russell Kirkpatrick

Not bad.  Not bad at all.  Keep in mind that this is a self-published work by a wannabe hack writer.  The only reason I’ve had ANY success at all has been because of you guys taking a chance on my book, and then telling your friends.  My contract has been sent, and soon I’ll be published by a real publisher.  Then we’ll see what we can do! 

Seriously, for all of you that had my back, thanks.  Now all we need to do is sell a bunch of the professional version so they’ll publish MHI:2 also. 

Looking at that list, holy crap, that’s some stiff competition.  I read Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar Saga in Highschool!  Jim Butcher is like the man.  (hell, he’s got his own show on the  Sci-fi channel, how friggin’ cool do you have to be for that?) 

NOTE:  This is the Entertainment Weekly with Tina Fey on the cover.  When I picked up 3 copies from my local Barnes & Noble, the clerk looked at me kind of funny, but I just told her that I thought Tina Fey was remarkably hot for a liberal.  She just nodded and rang me up. 

As a bonus, don’t just buy it for Monster Hunter International, it does have an article on The Great One, Charlton Heston.  And anybody who questions the fact that Charlton Heston is The Great One, show them a copy of one the greatest movies ever made, BEN HUR, then scissor kick them in the throat for daring to question his awesomeness.   

Monster Hunter International: DISCONTINUED

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Ha, I knew that would get your attention.

I sent off the paperwork to discontinue my self-published version of MHI, and sent back my signed contract for the “As of Yet Unnamed Big Publishing House” version. 

The downside?  It will probably be 6 months before MHI is available again from Unnamed Big Publishing House.  (they’ll get named here as soon as I cash the check).  Which means that if you want a copy of the original MHI, what’s out there in circulation right now is what’s out there.  Uncle Hugos probably has some copies.  Amazon has them in stock, but I don’t know how many.  Even if they don’t have them listed as in, if you click on the Used & New copies availabe link, there’s some there from the POD publisher.  Barnes & Noble has managed to screw the pooch the entire time, and hardly ever have it in. 

I got 20 more copies for myself on the way, and that’s it.  I figure I’m going to stash a bunch of those for myself.  Just in case I ever become famous, so in ten years I can sell them on E-Bay for stupid amounts of money and pay my house off, so I can move out to the country and build myself something that the government and the media will refer to as a “compound”. 

Movie Review: Southland Tales

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405336/ 

I’m waffling on this one.  Part of me wants to give it a bad review, part of me wants to give it a decent review. 

The good:  It looks pretty.  Honestly, the shots are great.  The camera work is interesting.  The “motif” I guess you would call it, was kind of art schoolish, but kept your attention. 

The performances were good, and it was really good to see some well-known actors be totally out of character.  The Rock still continues to surprise me, because you would think that somebody who came up as a professional wrestler would be a mediocre actor, but every performance he’s done has been good.  Sean William Scott is good as usual (I also think Stifler is underated).  Buffy the Vampire slayer is passable as a dimwitted porn star.  Justin Timberlake was better than expected, but then for some reason does a musical number, or something. But the best performance was to see Jon Lovitz playing a murderous scumbag.  Plus, Jon Lovitz punched out Andy Dick, in real life, so Jon Lovitz rocks. 

The bad:  The plot is disjointed, and even though I know that’s what the director was going for (come on, this is the guy that made Donnie Darko) this one was just a touch much.  It was too long.  Like way too long.  It started to drag in parts where the multiple-personality plot twists just went on and on. 

And worse than that was the social-commentary.  It was heavy handed and obnoxious.  If you’re going to have social-commentary in your film, even if I disagree with you, fine, whatever, but do you really need to keep smacking the audience in the face.  “Look how edgy I am!  Republicans are bad!  Elephants humping!  SUVs humping!  BAD!  BAD!” 

So the film tries to comment on the Iraq War, George Bush, politics, the environment, energy concerns, the news, terrorism, the Patriot Act, and the media, all during a plot about time-travel, drugs, magic energy machines from the ocean, blimps, marxist terrorists, the end of the world, none of which is actually explained, and I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out if Sean William Scott was supposed to be Jesus.   It feels like it is trying to be serious, and then it morphs into Hudson Hawk. 

So overall, eh… I’d say see it if you’re a movie nerd.  Most of my regular readers will roll their eyes and get sick and tired of the social commentary (look flag draped coffins!  EDGY!) wheras people that live in Berkley will nod as if they get it, (but I don’t really think there’s anything to actually get).  If you’re not a movie geek, save your time and rent something with zombies in it.  Yes, weird, artsy, sometimes annoying, and about 30 minutes too long, even by my relatively patient attention-span standards, my review gives it an ambivelent thumbs sideways.