A graphic novel for those new to the medium:

On no shortage of occasions have I gushed about the awesome creative works of Joseph and Alexander Lagos, the brothers behind THE SONS OF LIBERTY graphic novels. Recently Alexander started a new project with J. Michalski, with artist Derlis Santacruz and SOL colorist Oren Kramek. 

ZOE: OUT OF TIME is about a teenage girl in the future whose father develops a time machine. I'll say nothing more about the plot, since the first installment ($1.99) is brief on its own, and a wonderful piece of eye candy at that. Consider these points:

1) It's not the kind of time-travel story that you've read before. Though the trope is common, the take feels fresh.

2) The artwork is fantastic, easy to understand, rich, and vibrant. No redundant face or body styles--each character was crafted individually and the hard work shows. On top of that, dude...Zoe is hot. 

3) OUT OF TIME is the first of four installments. It's only $2 on Amazon. I read it on my freaking phone and I could still see everything perfectly. Very sharp.

That's about it, really. Go entertain yourselves. (Check out their Facebook page as well.)

Then, get back to work.

Just some pics from the last month or so.

Surprisingly good. Wish I was able to get it somewhere other than California. 

If you've read my manuscript RESOLUTE, you know why I was excited to see this.

Horsepower.

A friend sent this in. I suspect there was a dare behind this picture.

Our little guy likes to be outside, apparently!

He's gonna be a ladies' man.

Books Read in May: LIFE AFTER THEFT by Aprilynne Pike

LIFE AFTER THEFT is an excellent YA stand-alone that doesn't toe the line of standard genre fare. It's a ghost story, but not overtly paranormal. It's a romance, but not exclusively. More than anything it's a well-written buffet of clashing character conflicts, with certain plot points paying homage to The Scarlet Pimpernel. 

What I loved about it most was the strength of the characters. I would count four of them as the Main Character, because the story could have been told just as powerfully from any one of their points of view. (In fact, Pike released a prequel novella, ONE DAY MORE, written from the POV of the ghost.) While other books in this genre would have spent a lot of time focusing on the ghost aspect of the tale, LIFE AFTER THEFT only used it as a paving stone on the road from act 1 to act 3.

The basic gist of it is that Kimberlee, a spoiled bratty rich girl in Santa Monica, CA, is a kleptomaniac. She steals stuff all the time. Can't even help it. After her untimely death in ONE DAY MORE, she becomes a ghost, bound to haunt her old private school. Roughly a year later she meets Jeff (the POV character of LIFE AFTER THEFT), a new boy in town who somehow has the ability to see and interact with Kimberlee. She enlists his help to return the things she stole, thinking it's her only way to move on.

But there are two major problems with that mission: Kimberlee stole A LOT of stuff, and she angered a ton of people in the process. The consequences are very real when things go sideways, as they frequently do throughout the story.

I won't say any more than that about the plot. I was also impressed by Pike's convincing portrayal of a teenage boy, from inside the mind of one. I've read other YA books by women who try to write boys and, well, they got it wrong. Pike didn't, and that's noteworthy.

As a content warning, there's frequent profanity throughout the book, as well as underage drinking and sex. It's not presented glamorously, but it's there, just FYI.

I highly recommend getting the novella (it's an eBook) and reading it first. I think it helped me to better understand Kimberlee from the beginning, and I liked the added perspective to the story.

That is all. Enjoy!

Everything About Science Is Wrong

Sometimes it is you who destroys the angel.

In 2004, some tool made a documentary about how fast food can kill you, and evil fast food companies were trying to kill you by making all their food deadly and stuff. He then went on to eat nothing by McDonald's three meals a day, for a whole month. I guess he gained a ton of weight and his liver started shutting down. He paraded this as proof of the nefarious intentions of Big Fast Food.

All he proved was the theory of natural selection. Why? Because if you're dumb enough to try to live off of fast food for thirty days, Mother Nature and the Big Man Upstairs will do the world a favor by pulling you out of the gene pool.

The documentary was called Super-Size Me. I have not watched it. I will not watch it. Do not tell me to watch it. I will disrespect you if you say I should watch it. 

I just finished an experiment of my own, and by experiment I mean forced diet as a result of my new super-secret job (hunting Nazi zombies? cultivating a Hogwarts garden? you decide). I lived off of crappy, fried, lamp-warmed food for a month. What wasn't wrapped in wax paper was purchased from the shelf of a convenience store. Every time I ate, I hated myself. I swore I wouldn't use a scale until three weeks of hard dieting and exercise had passed.

Then this morning I cheated, and checked my weight. I was two pounds under what I weighed when I started my month-long culinary suicide.

Boo-yah. 

Not actually taken in 2004.

Screw you, science.

Looking back, though, I attribute it to portion control. My new job involves a lot of sitting. That being the case, I don't need two thousand calories a day. Often I doubt I even broke 1600. I stayed comfortably full, and I worked. Three meals a day were not a necessity.

To the man who made that documentary--and to his ilk who subscribe to the same belief system as he does--it is not McDonald's fault that you eat their food. This is America. You have access to an unprecedented abundance of information and nutrition alike. If you do not avail yourself of the former to educate yourself about the latter, it is your own damn fault.

Now get back to work. 

"The Emperor's Soul" by Brandon Sanderson

You know by now that I'm an adoring fan of Sanderson's work. Of everything he's published so far, I've read a good 70%, and I pre-ordered the two YA releases that he has coming out this year. The man is brilliant, weaving complex characters with unique worlds and magic systems. THE EMPEROR'S SOUL is no exception.

The jacket description says it's set in the same world as his debut novel ELANTRIS, but I didn't find any explicit links within the text of the story. A couple of character names mentioned in passing sounded like they could be Aonic in origin, and that's it. So you don't need to read ELANTRIS to enjoy this novella.

The magic system has to do with forgery. Once you know the history of a thing, you can draft a glyph that you will then stamp onto that thing, thereby changing its nature. (E.g., a broken piece of furniture can be made new by stamping it with a glyph that says it was well-kept throughout its life, etc.) 

The main character, Shai, is an expert forger. It's this fact that saves her life when she's caught replacing a priceless painting with a forgery in the emperor's palace. The emperor's cabinet members decide to make her forge a new soul for the emperor, who was recently attacked by assassins. They managed to use forgery to save his body, but unless they can get a new soul for him in record time, the assassin's deed will go public and the empire will fall into chaos.

I don't want to give away any more than that. Like with his novella LEGION, there are many unique and cool ideas, each of which could've been its own story, but Sanderson fearlessly ran the ideas up against each other to create an even better book. 

You should get a copy.

Janette Rallison's Blog

To proceed to Janette Rallison's blogs, click one of the following links:

janette-rallison.blogspot.com

cjhillbooks.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

Spartan Race vs. Tough Mudder

Today I ran the Las Vegas Spartan Race, out at Lake Las Vegas with the lovely people pictured above. Two of them are named Zach. This amuses me.

In October I participated in the Las Vegas Tough Mudder. Both of these events are "mud runs," less than half a marathon in length and replete with military-style obstacles. They're also outdoors, making them much more difficult and tiring than other runs.

(On average I can run a 9.5-10 minute mile on asphalt. In the desert, that changes drastically.)

Since the Spartan Race is put on by different people than Tough Mudder, I compared the two a lot in my head, and thought I post my experience based on a couple of contrasts:

RACE CAMP: Both were similar. You showed up, flashed your ID, signed a waiver and got your race packet. This included a number for you to pin on, and then someone would write that same number on your arms in black marker. TM used a less potent marker, most of the number washed off during the course. SR's marker clogged my pores and I had to use a pumice stone to get it off. Some of it is still there and I now have abrasions, so yeah. BUT, the Spartan people did give us nifty little Spartan helmet stamps for our faces, which...also...didn't wash off...

HEATS/STARTING LINE: TM had you hop a six-foot wall and climb into what is essentially a box with the other people in your heat. They played the national anthem, then "Eye of the Tiger," then told you to have a good time and call for a medic if you're injured.
SR had some dude at the head of the crowd shouting champion stuff about how you're a Spartan and this is a battlefield, etc. etc. We heard him go through the same spiel every fifteen minutes when we were at the race camp. It got old. But, he did pop a smoke bomb and chucked it for us when we started, which was cool. 

OBSTACLES: TM's obstacles seemed to be more endurance-based for a cardiocentric workout. Others were really "showy," like flaming hay bales or electrical shock wires. I was personally disappointed in some of TM's obstacles. Most of the ice in the Arctic Freeze was melted, and the electrical shock wires weren't on by the time my heat went through them--and that was only the afternoon.

SR's obstacles seemed to deal more with muscular force. Pick up a sandbag, carry it through an obstacle course. Bind your ankles and bunny-hop over these hay bales. Pick up this 80-lb weight and take it up there. Flip this tractor tire six times. 

Another key difference: each TM obstacle had a bypass. If you didn't want to do it, you could just walk around. Each SR obstacle was manned by a race coordinator, and if you tried to bypass it or if you failed, they made you do 30 burpees on the spot. You don't want to do 30 burpees.

Both had an equal amount of "crawl on your belly through gross mud or else barb wire will cut you" obstacles. They had comparable amounts of uphill and downhill running, and while SR had less water obstacles, they did have a longer swim, which helped to get rid of the mud.

WATER STOPS/OUTHOUSES: TM had more outhouses, but about the same amount of water stops. However, they had snacks and stuff too, while SR didn't. SR also seemed to run low on water. We never got shorted, but we could see the supplies dwindling after a few hours.

FINISH LINE: TM had you run through "scary" electrical wires that weren't on. SR required you to jump over a pile of flaming logs, then get whacked by gladiators holding padded sticks. You tell me which one makes for a better photo op.

CLEANUP: Oh man, SR definitely wins this one. TM set up what was basically a human car wash, you walked through a wood-and-PVC scaffold and the staff hosed you down until they figured you were good. But you weren't good. You were cold, still half-dirty and all-miserable.
SR, on the other hand, set up a rubber platform with a bajillion hoses and you could hose yourself down, hose down your stuff, wring out the dirt, hose it again, take as long as you needed to get the bulk of the groties off you. It was much, much better. 

TEAMS AND TIMES: SR definitely has the competitive edge here--some teams even competed for cash prizes. I didn't see that come up much at TM (though I've heard they have such events elsewhere.)  A big difference is that SR gives you a chip that you tie to your wrist, and it tracks you across the course. By the time I finished it had given me my time, my rank among the whole racing body, my rank among men, and my rank among men my age. (I was in the top 25%, which was pretty cool.) 

MAP: TM posted a complete map of the course online, with obstacle descriptions. SR only handed out said maps on-site, and didn't really tell us where to get them. 

PERKS: Both events landed me a decent shirt. TM's shirt was breathable lycra Under Armour; SR's is a regular cotton poly T-shirt. SR also gave me a medal. TM had more free food at the finish line. Immediately following a mud run, I would prefer the food. But the medal is cool.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Still don't know what SR's photography deals will be like. TM had photographers throughout the course, but I didn't order any shots because of their outrageous prices. Some of the best photos were when my wife shot us from the spectator trail. (Whoops, that sounds bad.)

So it's apples to oranges in the end. Mud runs are a fun way to get in shape and spend a day with your friends doing something to give you bragging rights. Find one near you, make sure you check out the trail, and go for it!