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Review of E W Hemmings ‘Talking To Gravestones’

I read over the first chapter because really I feel like first impressions are the most reliable when it comes to inkitt. The first chapter is where you decide to read on or not.
I like the start, it’s nice and steady with a great deal of emotion and it really pushed that feeling of lose and melancholy onto me. That feeling of wishing that nothing was real and I really enjoyed that.
Other than that, not a lot happens in the first chapter, it’s quite short so I didn’t expect any great developments and the first person narrative is notorious for focusing on emotions and subjective interpretations over actual substantive events.
The writing style is very emotive, I liked it a great deal, very easy to read and not a cringe so far. A lot of the time stories like this get lost in the angst and become very cringe worthy but this kept a level timbre of it’s cringe.
The reason I called it a morbid fairytale is because of the description of the body bag swallowing her boyfriend up, I really liked that imagery. Put me in her mind for a minute, made it all feel dreamlike, as if he wasn’t really dead and this was just the start of a really messed up fairytale. Kind of makes you think whether anything she’s experiencing from then on is really real or if her mind is so shattered from the loss that she’s creating a world where she can see her boyfriend again in a fantasy.
There were a few errors and sentences that sort of tripped me up but overall I thought it was very competent and I would recommend it.

You can check this story out on inkitt by following this link Talking to gravestones.

0

Green Sunday Chapter 7 ‘Take up space’ (Raw)

Latest unedited chapter of Green Sunday for your reading pleasure, well an excerpt of the first proofread anyway. Things been been going pretty well since I launched my author page, lots of like, few new reviews on inkitt, can’t complain.
As always if you want to read the rest of this chapter you’ll have to go on inkitt which I’m sure is compatible with tablets and all that stuff, completely free, I just do this dirty trick to get more clicks, aint I nefarious?

Green Sunday Chapter 7

~

The sun rolled down the hill faster than usual. Candlelight lit Tj’s mom’s little dining room. The sounds of knives and forks scratching plates, filled the silence of the dimly lit room.

“So how did you and TJ meet” Tj’s mom asked. Cutting through the awkward silence of this intimate little meal. The table consisting of her and her son and a strange green haired girl he’d brought in off the streets. Smelling faintly of dried blood.

“We met at the mall actually” The girl said turning a wry smile up at TJ. Who was sweating into his food as he kept his gaze locked on his plate.

“I’m sorry, did you tell me your name? I get a little ditzy sometimes.” His mother said feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Like she’d walked out of one dream and into another unannounced.

“Sunday” She said.

“Well that’s a pretty name, TJ, don’t you think that’s a pretty name?” His mother said turning the heat up on TJ.

“Err yeah.” TJ said looking up from his plate of macaroni and cheese to glance across the table and back to his plate again.

“Do you live around here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before, I mean I think I’d- I mean-“

“Ah no, I just got here, err my… Dad travels a lot for work” Sunday said, choosing her words surgically.

“Well I think the candles were a nice touch. We don’t get to use the dining room much these days, it’s just been the two of us for a while now”

“Yeah well it was Tj’s idea, he said it would give the room some atmosphere, right?” Sunday said, sticking her oar in enjoying watching TJ squirm.

“TJ and I aren’t used to entertaining. After his father left, we mostly kept to ourselves.” Tj’s mom said, stirring her pasta with a fork in a maudlin fashion.

“Mom” TJ whined

“That’s right TJ hates me telling everyone our life story.” His mom smiled with a melancholy intake of breath “Oh you’re finished?”

Sunday looked down at her plate and then back at TJ’s mom, “Yes, thank you, it was lovely”

“What a polite girl” Tj’s mom said as she collected the plate in front of Sunday, a warm smile on her face. “You’re welcome to stay in the guest bedroom across from me if you’re too tired to make it home”. His mother said as she fluttered out of the room with the dirty plates.

“No that’s ok I think I’m just gonna bunk with TJ and fuck his brains out all night”

TJ’s perfectly timed sip of milk sprayed all down his shirt as what she said worked it’s way through the gears of his head.

“That’s nice” Tj’s mom said from the kitchen clearly not hearing anything she said.

Sunday handed TJ a napkin and smiled trollishly. He snatched it from between her two fingers and began to dab his shirt with the tiny napkin.

“Do you think we should tell her?” He whispered.

“Why worry her? Nothing should happen tonight as long as we don’t light the house up like a Christmas tree. Or make too much noise, I thought the candlelight thing would be cute.” She said reclining in her dining chair.

“But she has to know”

“She’ll find out.” She said as she closed her eyes for a moment, putting her hands behind her head in a relaxed position.

“You know something, tell me-“TJ said a hint of anger in his hushed voice.

TJ’s mom barrelled into the room with some sort of lopsided cake and plonked it down in between the two. Completely oblivious to the mounting tension she just crudely carved in half.

“Desert”.

~
The door to TJ’s bathroom opened like a sealed vault door. Or an alien craft bellowing steam from the door that had been sealed for a good hour and a half. Sunday walked out barefoot wearing an old xxxl walking dead t-shirt that went down to her knees. Rubbing her whole head with a towel like she was trying to polish a lamp.

Her legs clean, were surprisingly dainty looking, little cuts and plasters but her skin looked soft and smooth. TJ stopped dead on his made up futon on the floor of his room. She opened one eye underneath the towel and saw he was looking at her. She dropped the towel on the floor and crossed the room to the window.

“Thanks for the shirt”

“Err no problem”

“Let me guess, you wanna know if the curtains match the drapes?” She smiled as she turned back towards TJ.

“Err, wut no! I wasn’t!” TJ’s face turned a purply red colour and his tongue swelled up in his head.

She perched on the windowsill and looked out at the cool quiet trees swaying in the dark. There were fires burning in the distance, muffled screams carried by the shiftless night. The smell of the smoke was almost sweet and homely to her. She sighed after taking in a lungful through the small crack in the window.

She cocked one of her legs up on the sill and TJ almost burst a blood vessel.

“Err I made up the bed, I’m fine here” He said motioning to his crude futon.

“Ok” She said dreamily staring out the window.

“What’s happening?” He bit his bottom lip as he said it, almost not wanting to know.

He could see her blank expression reflected in the black window.“It’s a game.”

~

If you like what you read so far, read the conclusion of this chapter on inkitt;
Green Sunday Chapter 7

Cheers!

 

 

5

Review of Black Gold by R A Sewell

Just got a lovely if a bit cunty haha review for Green Sunday so I thought, what with being a nepotistic shitlord I’d fire back and write a lovely review for the talented author and fellow traveller R A Sewell.

So thar she blows (that has literally nothing to do with the plot nor the quality of the work, I don’t know why I wrote that, probably because it’s a sort of nautical story but I can’t remove it now because I’ve written out this explanation, fuck it here’s the review).

I’m so sorry, I guess this rates my overall maturity level, as soon as I saw the captains name was James Woods, I instantly cast him as the actor James Woods and couldn’t stop thinking about videodrome (hence the odd title of my review).

Just had to get that out the way ha.

Now to the review.

I just read the first chapter so far and I thought the story was pretty good, I don’t usually like when stories get right into the action but this really actually catches you off guard. You almost feel exactly as I imagine the crew of the boat feel, caught completely with their trousers down.
It’s very pulp, with the femme fatal and the visceral violence, I really enjoyed the description of the gun fire and the use of sensory information. You could literally smell the bullets as they were fired and it added a whole new level to the description and put me right in the room.
Instantly it reminded me of a classic action movie from the mid-nineties like Die Hard three or something and that I really enjoyed, I loved that period of gritty, yet slightly campy/pulpy action movies.
The plot I found a little trouble with, not a lot is given to why this happening, I know right, der money but there are hints there that it’s something more with the mysterious tattoo. But I had to mark this a little lower just because I thought the plot was a little contrived, I liked what was happening but how could these terrorists/thieves/nebulous bad guys sneak up on this giant super tanker and take it over in a matter of moments?
Surely they have armed guards on a super tanker or radar or something they could use to detect pirates, it’s not like you really sneak up on someone in the indian ocean, least of all a giant super tanker named the ‘Goliath’, probably crewed by hundred of people, all not watching the horizon or any device that might tell them a ship full of heavily armed dudes is coming to rob them.
I do have faith though that this is probably elucidated on later in the plot but I was a little annoyed that it wasn’t made clear that it was night time at the start of the chapter or listed on the date stamp. I’m sitting here imagining this is all happening mid-morning while they still have croissant crumbs on their shirts you know. Just a time stamp or just a little description of the night would go a long way to setting the scene and adding more plausibility to them being boarded like that without them having a clue.
I loved all the technical language in regard to the boat ‘stuff’, I didn’t understand any of it, but I’m sure somebody who knew anything about boats would, and that’s the point, it’s add something.
Frankly I don’t have much to say about the writing style and the grammar and punctuation, it’s very professional and very competent and it shows what I’m guessing is a lot of experience, so I can’t fault it in the slightest.
The only thing I feel like sticking to you for is fact you didn’t delete the ‘start writing here…’ bit. Schoolboy error mate haha.
I was reading the end thinking ‘Start writing here? they just got on a lifeboat, why are they writing, what?’ then I realised.
It’s not big deal, takes two seconds to fix, I just thought my being confounded at it for a few minutes was slightly amusing.

Overall I really liked it and I would read on and recommend it.

If you wanna read it you can check it out on inkitt by following this glowing title Black Gold.

Cheers.

3

Finally got around to making an Author page, aren’t I special?

I have finally become incredibly pretentious and yes, I am now a big deal, for I have my own author page on the exclusive site known as facebook. It’s got a picture of me looking suspiciously like a male Jessica Jones and a lovely backdrop of Chernobyl’s famous fairground (I’ve never been due to the background radiation).
Hopefully I wont become an egomaniac…I AM JESUS CHRIST!!!
That was quick. I put this off for a long time, partially out of laziness, err no probably all out of laziness, but I also didn’t really have all my eggs in one basket last year.
I had a lot of irons in the fire with comics and anthologies and this and that and felt weird about just promoting my own work and or myself, it just felt a little weird and a little self fellatory, and I’m not that flexible.
I always saw these pages as sort of a place for hacks to pat themselves on the back and I’m not fond of that, I dreamed of being one of those secluded writers living in a basement never to be seen by the public. Or like Lovecraft, living alone and eating nothing but pasta in a spooky old house only going out to get more pasta, writing cool stories for people to find when I’m dead and say; “Huh”.
But I recently just felt like my prose stuff is what’s taking up almost all my time/passion/love and it deserves it’s own platform and room to grow and have more eyes put on it and me too. I don’t think I look too bad if I do say so myself.
I just thought it was time to come out of the shadows a little and really put my balls on the chopping block. And maybe if I spend all my time convincing other people I’m some ‘big deal’ I might start believe it myself and become insufferable or I might actually sell a book ha.
So all my blogs and inkitt stuff/interviews/updates/jive will be coming through that page for some reason, oh so you can put a face to this tripe and maybe fall madly in fandom with me.

Peace out.

Oh yeah this is the link ha.
https://www.facebook.com/RykBrinkAuthor/

4

Green Sunday Chapter 5 Little man, what now? (Raw)

I’m having the second chapter of this edited as we speak so I should be releasing that shortly, been falling behind recently on actually writing it because of you know what 4 so I’ve almost run out of content from this book to post, ‘almost’.
Let me know what you think and as always you can check out the full chapter here http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/5.

~

“MOOOOOOMMMMMM!?!?” Tj screamed frustration and a hopeless terror filling the emptiness in his chest. He heard the shower turning off and waited a few seconds, breathing restlessly through his mouth, his throat burning, child tears queuing at the corners of his eyes.

“WHAT?” He heard as the bathroom door opened.

“WHERE’S MY STUFF???” He shouted to stop from bursting into a tearful downward spiral of self loathing and impending doom, inflated his chest to keep his lungs from collapsing.

“YOUR LITTLE FRIEND FROM NEXT DOOR CAME OVER WHEN YOU LEFT, HE SAID; YOU SAID HE COULD BORROW SOMETHING FROM YOUR ROOM, IS EVERYTHING OK?” Her voice trailed off at the end and Tj felt pricks of looming dread on the back of his neck.

“YEAH MOM, JUST STAY INSIDE, I’M GOING NEXT DOOR!”

“OK”.

He picked himself off his bedroom floor, he felt like throwing up, his legs were hollow and he struggled to stand, but he had no choice. He swallowed hard and put his hand on the knob of his bedroom door, he closed his eyes and whispered a pathetic prayer to himself to any god that would listen and when he opened his eyes he was outside the door of his neighbour’s house.

Their house was almost identical, they were built at the same time but apparently everything was the opposite way around, Tj had never been there before because his neighbours were massive douchebags and he had hated them since childhood when they would pour lemonade on his head and roll him in the sand pit. He got a really good look at the interior purely because the door swung wide open as he put his hand on the knob.

The hallway was a crime scene, pictures smashed on the floor, furniture looking off kilter, shoes tossed aside, small drops and telling trails of blood. It looked staged, fake, like the set of some cheesy rural crime drama.

He stepped in through the door frame gingerly trying not to touch anything or make a sound but instantly his visions of a silent entry were broken by the distinct sound of glass crunching under the rubber soul of a dora the explorer slipper. Why he didn’t change into some more practical shoes he wondered to himself, but his reflection was distracted by a flashing battery light shining through a bloody shirt.

He pinched the corner of the shirt bending at the knee awkwardly leaning over a turned over wardrobe at the bottom of the stairs, he pulled the damp shirt towards him and it drew across the device with a slow stickyness, the damp blood throwing up a musty copper smell as he pulled it closer to him.

He pulled the shirt all the way off revealing a small digital handycam, the same one they used in the backyard to record their show. He picked it up gracefully by the handle strap and turned it around to look at the viewfinder.

~

Thanks for reading, don’t forget to check out the rest of the chapter and the previous chapters at http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

0

First impressions of Fallout 4 (totally not a review)

I’m a little ashamed to say I’m on my second play through. Not because I have no life but because when I got into work, one of my friends told me he was on his fourth and I was dismayed.

I’m gonna try and refrain from fangirling too hard because that makes me sick and it just isn’t me. And this is by far a perfect game but its pretty freaking close.

The game itself didn’t take too long to install and load up although I wished I would have just downloaded it so I could have had my own private mini midnight launch instead of waiting feverishly for the post and deluding myself that it might have come a day earlier like that one time ages ago I may have imagined. Although obviously I fucked it up and had to reinstall it because I let it download the update mid installation so it was all installing from the net and I couldn’t see the entire loading bar which drove me nuts so I had to reinstall for sanities sake.

But when it was finally loaded, I started and found myself oddly gripped by the opening live action cinematic and then created my character of which I based on David Morrissey’s depiction of the Governor from Walking Dead. And before you jump down my throat calling me a philistine for using that version and not the fu manchu moustachioed comic and novel version (all of which I’ve read exhaustively, except the latest novel I think), I say fuck you David Morrissey is better looking, face it.
I think his face and his depiction of the Governor is also a lot more rounded and likeable and I was actually sad to see the show stick with the comic storyline and his death, when they went off the rails mid season and used the books a little I thought he might have been remodelled into an ongoing character and that would have been more interesting than just sticking to the source material with a few deviations.
I think his character was perfect for the character displayed by the voice actor for the male protagonist in fallout 3 Brian Delaney. I was initially sceptical about the voiced protagonist as the previous games had silent protagonists and voiced protagonists in rpgs like mass effect can get a little annoying and break immersion slightly because it feels less like you are the main character and more like you’re watching the main character do stuff.
But I have to say it really sold the immersion and the emotion at the start of the game, the game didn’t kid me and expect me to care about the main characters wife or kid (like in fallout 3 where you’re supposed to care about your fictional dad played by Liam Neeson) but I was very aware purely through the voice actor’s acting that the main character did care about his wife and child and that sort of sold the emotion of the game.
And when the ‘event’ happens, I really felt like someone who had been tossed into this hostile landscape, whose home and everything he’s known had been destroyed and had to sleep on the floor of truck stops office while it rained and radiation clouds blew through with only a dog to keep him company. It really felt morose and beautiful and that you had to live another day to get revenge and to rebuild a life for yourself and make something beautiful out of all the ugliness that surrounded you and I really loved it.
Despite that, I was proved right about the downsides of the voiced protagonists, mainly and I see a lot of chatter about this, it’s almost impossible to be evil.
Now I suppose you could just kill everyone but its hardly enslaving people and eating babies a la Fallout 3 is it. And the evil dialogue options just sound angsty and mean in Brian’s voice, he just seems too nice a guy to do all that fucked up shit. So twinned with my David Morrissey Governor smooth talking gunslinger character, he came off less monstrously evil and more misunderstood monster. Less Count Dracula more Frankenstein’s monster.
And to be honest I really dug that, good and evil are so subjective so losing the karma system and making good and evil more ambiguous seemed like a step in the right direction. If anything the karma system just evolved into the companion approval system, so depending on which character you pick to come with you, determines what you want to say or do to impress them. But again not one companion is Hannibal fucking lector, where would be the practicality of that? Every character, evil, cruel, vindictive or not has to be in some way likeable or redeemable so that you enjoy their character and want to follow their progression and I think Bethesda delivers on that well.
The factions are also really interesting and have their own sort of style; on my first play through I sided with the minutemen and set about uniting the settlements of the commonwealth, basically creating a people’s army. I don’t know what it is about this game that’s different from elder scrolls, in Skyrim and Oblivion I really didn’t see a problem with joining the mages guild and using the magic I learned for a little bit of thieving on the side. Or joining the fighter’s guild and then turning those talents to assassination, but in F4 the factions are a little more involved, a little more compelling. I couldn’t swear allegiance to the minutemen and then swear an oath of service to the Brotherhood of steel, it really feels like you’re either one or other and each faction is heavily tied into the main plot of the game unlike in Elder scrolls where each faction is its own quest line in a way. I can’t say which I like more to be honest; I think they both have merit.
The game play is great, the exploration (which is always the crux of rpgs like this) is top notch, the anal crafting is minecraft levels of addictive, I literally had to pull myself away from it just to actually play the game main game it’s so intoxicatingly addictive.
I think they really nailed the levelling and perk system too; it’s perfect for someone like me that likes to create a lot of distinct characters and loathes everyman grinders who spend ages making a character that’s good at literally everything. I’m sitting her playing my talker, small guns character and I can’t wait to start a big guns character who swings bats at people, now I’m playing that character and I can’t wait to play my slashy stealthy character who uses silenced weapons and crafts his own explosive traps.
But the game as a lot of people have said; is not really an rpg, the dialogue wheel is a little stunted and the voice actor does make it seem like you’re further away from the actions than you’d like.
Overall, I’m enthralled by it, I want to get lost in it, I almost feel like I rush it just to try and absorb everything I can get, I want to experience everything and I can’t wait for dlc.

 

0

Green Sunday Chapter 4 Everyday is like Sunday (Raw)

Another excerpt from the next chapter of Green sunday. I’m losing a lot of hours in the day, still under the power armoured boot of fallout 4 and this new workout is really killing me so I didn’t have much time to do anything else today but copy and paste this excerpt. Well I hope you like it and as always if you want to read the rest of the chapter you by going on inkitt http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters/4

~
On the edge of town, halogen lights burned cold with a tinny buzzing sound that was both soothing and nauseating with a hangover.  Early morning was shaking its head and wondering what happened, it was dark, the air was thick and electrifying. A gas station sign flickered on and off, it was empty, a dead time, the cold concrete forecourt stood bare and desolate and dirty and drab, cricket sounds etcetera etcetera.

The stale, sterile light inside the gas station, lit everything up with an off colour sickly blue tint. It was just a small town gas station like you’d see in any crappy slasher movie. A one story affair with minimart inside stocked with all the essential corn and meat based snacks and energy drinks that turned your piss green and soupy.

“Daryl! You better not be sleeping again, anyone else steals any gas I’m gonna take it out of your ass!” A booming cigar scarred voice came from somewhere in the back, through the thin corkboard walls of the gas station. A young man with his feet up on the counter slid the magazine covering his face off one eye and opened it casually, before fixing his chair to the upright position and surreptitiously letting the magazine fall into his half cupped hands giving an ever so effortless yawn.

“Shut up you old fuck, I’m still living, nobody out here” He said in a semi raised voice which he then quickly lowered to address himself “Gotta be four in the morning, no one needs gas in this goddamn town no more, everyone driving those piece of shit rollerskate cars they got”.

Daryl rearranged himself in his seat and got as comfortable as he could get with his eyes open, reclining only slightly. Pausing to look around and take a whiff of the cool night air cut with the smell of disinfectant on top of latent smells of puke and piss with a definitive lingering scent of really cheap booze that would burn your gut worse than drinking straight from the gas pump. But it was probably cheaper to drink from the bottle.

He took a second and resigned himself to the fact nothing was going on and the roads were dead and dark and he rationalized a resting of the eyes. Gradually letting his heavy lids close and become hazy. Taking last winking glances at the transparent glass doors of the minimart entrance. Just as he hit the point of no return with his dozing the doors parted soundlessly and then closed again quickly giving him pause to whether he really saw anything.

His eyes opened and rolled to the attention position as if waking from a coma, he could have sworn he saw someone come in. He strained to hear, slight padding damp noises, a stray wondering off the street drawn by the smell of stale complex carbohydrates.

He straightened up into his seat and stepped back into his body he was on the cusp of drifting off from and looked around. “Err can I help you?”

A rustling sound, cans rattling; instant foreboding crossing the brow beneath his trucker cap, a dry damp grease formed where he rested the magazine while he was sleeping and sweat rolls off it now as he feels the urgency of being alone. “Hello?”

Sounds of gumming and biting, ripping, crinkling, a dog for sure, he curved around the counter picking up a tire thumping bat from under his seat. Walking briskly full of action around the front of the counter until reaching the door at which point all his nervous energy left him with a cough and he became lifeless and limp trying desperately to hold the bat firmly in a clammy palm, dangling by his side like a twig.

“Who’s there?” Daryll called out like all those other clichés in the movies, and he cursed himself for falling into that trap but a new sudden fear of the unknown twisted in his guts now and he felt compelled to ask.

A scuttling sound of bare feet on linoleum, sent a cold shiver up his spine and a dry gob of spittle down his throat, the noise got deeper in the back of the store and he felt his feet dragging him listlessly in the direction of the sound, the bat swinging at his shins languidly.

“Hello” He called out again groping at the wet walls of his sanity trying to come up with any number of reasonable conclusions to this event; a dog, a cat, a racoon, a crazy homeless guy, a drunk chick, some hungry pothead or all of the above.

He turned the snack isle slowly, which was oddly paired with feminine hygiene products. He rested his shaking hand on the side of the metal shelves and forced himself to look around it from where the noise emanated. His body felt numb and pulses of adrenaline coursed through his brain and sent shocks all the way down to his fingertips.

Hunched over a small mound of assorted snacks and raw or semi-raw meat products, he saw the naked back of what appeared to be a child. His skin looked cold and drawn and wet, like a fish or a lizard almost. He was so pale he looked almost blue and he hunched over the food making soft sopping gnashing sounds.

“Hey! What’s going on here, you’re gonna pay for all that” Darryl said beginning to trail off at the end as some of his strength came back briefly, breathing in, pumping up his chest and breathing it all out again.

The child almost without turning lurched at Daryll, who with a sudden surge of nervous strength kicked him to the ground again dropping his bat with the feral rush of energy. The child staggered back and twitched frantically on the ground, his mouth frothing with a pink and red substance that came from all the openings on his face, deep red veins rising up on his cheeks and forehead. His teeth exposed, with the look as if they’d been cut on bone or razor wire, his eyes rolled back and forth in his head, cheetos crumbs stuck with blood to his fingers as they scratched at the linoleum floor trying for some traction like a beetle knocked on its back.

~

Thanks for reading and again if you want to read more you can at the following link;
http://www.inkitt.com/stories/25507/chapters

 

0

Dexter vs Dexter

As usual I have nothing more than a topic in my head to start this semi-literate ramble brainfart type endeavour and the longer I stay away from fallout 4 the harder it gets to breath. But I really enjoyed the dexter books hence the name of the blog. I also really liked the show and I wanted a somewhat side by side comparison, keeping the spoilers to a minimum.

The first book is called ‘Darkly Dreaming Dexter’ and it’s essentially the basis for the first season of the tv show. Which I shamefully admit I watched before I started reading the books because I’m a pleb, there you go, happy now?

I do this a lot in fact, I watched the walking dead before I read the comics and then I read the novels but the comics came first so that doesn’t count. I watched the silent hill film before I even knew they were games, the same with the resident evil series. So all around I’m a big media pleb, ain’t life grand?

After the first season of the show it gets a little squiffy. In the first book it wraps up nicely, ok I lied there are gonna be some spoilers. But in the show it wraps up a little skew because in the show, he kills the ice truck killer but in the book he lets him live and he recurs later on in the fourth and fifth book and becomes somewhat of a pivotal character.

The book is a lot more morally grey since he doesn’t actually have inner conversations with his dead adoptive father Harry and instead communes with a supernatural entity inside himself which he calls the ‘Dark Passenger’. He alludes somewhat to this in the show but it’s done a little cack-handedly in my opinion because it’s brushed off as if it’s an addiction whereas the book goes full fahrenheit/indigo prophecy syndrome with fucking demons and voodoo and ancient Babylonian gods.

… Which I actually rather liked but someone obviously conked that on the head because it never really goes back to that in the book and the show gives it a wide berth for probably good reason, it begs beliefs I guess. Too tinfoil hat, Alex Jonesy I guess, I thought it was fun but I guess that was a rabbit hole that might have taken the books up the garden path and since I really liked the following books and I’m still reading them into book seven tells me it wasn’t all that bad.

The first things you notice between the books and the show, in the show he’s this bad ass judo serial killer who kicks the entire ass all the time for some reason. It was cool but in the books he is less John Wayne and more John Cusack… in con air, the film where he didn’t do much.
It’s not that I don’t like him being more vulnerable but I feel like a lot of the time he doesn’t get to be the hero of his own story and after like the tenth time he’s faced death but been saved at the last minute it gets a little annoying.
I mean I don’t begrudge it for using a device like that, I try my fucking damnedest to avoid that ‘ooh he’s about to be killed but then someone saves him at the last minute’ thing, but it’s like literally an unavoidable tension building device. I can’t really think of one of the books from the series where it doesn’t happen except the first now I strain my brain.

Another massive difference is the scope of the book, in the show we follow all these other characters like Batista and his sister Deborah as they have their own arcs but in the book it’s a first person narrative from Dexter’s perspective so these characters become window decoration. And this may sound like a criticism but when you’ve got a TV show about a blood spatter expert by day serial killer by night, I don’t really give a shit about how his friend’s love life is going unless it somehow connects to the serial killy stuff you know, it’s just fluff, useless TV show filler nonsense and the book cuts through it like crate paper to get to the good shit.

That being said the structure of a TV show meant that he had to kill someone per episode and the show handled that quite nicely, a little like the freak of the week supernatural/Buffy style. But in this case the monster was human. But even supernatural couldn’t keep that up and the books don’t even really try to have a murder per however many chapters. On average he’ll killer around one or two people a book, which is perfect because it really allows for a lot of emotion and tension and it really gets into the right frame of mind, it’s deliciously descriptive without making you want to gag like American Psycho levels of gore. It’s subtly macabre, casually sick and twisted, I love it ha-ha.

I think the biggest difference is that Dexter’s kids are fully fleshed out characters… somewhat in the book, whereas in the show they’re just flaccid annoying extras, in the book they have inner workings of their own. And spoiler alert, although there evil father isn’t in the books, what he left behind inside them is enough to make them interesting as they turn out to be just like Dexter. That being said, Lindsay hasn’t really gone into that aspect of their characters yet. Dexter has promised to ‘show them the ropes’ but he never seems to get around to it. He’s always so wrapped up in himself and his work and his ‘other work’ to really take the time and I can’t help empathising with that I guess.
Dexter is an animal and he deals with things as they come I guess, his own self interest and self preservation will always trump training his foster kids how to murder people.
In terms of where the story is going I think that’s going to be a big future problem because spoilers, his brother, the ice truck killer seems to take a keen interest in the kids and there may be a clash of who’s wings they’ll be taken under, Dexter being discernibly the lesser evil.

I genuinely love and get swept up in these books, I suppose in a scary way I and Dexter (Jeff Lindsay the author) have a similar inner voice and I love his style and his wit and the more and more I read the more influenced I get by his dark wit.

That’s fangirling enough for one blog haha, thanks or reading/.

 

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Green Sunday Chapter 2 This Charming man (Unedited)

This is the second chapter of my romzomcom novel work in progress Green Sunday, it’s currently in the process of being professionally edited but in the mean time I thought it would be fun to post an excerpt from the raw manuscript.
I just posted this as an excerpt because the whole chapter is about four thousand words long, which is just way too long for a blog. So if you want to read the rest you can on inkitt by following this link Green Sunday. 

An old TV sitting on a greasy looking shelf played in the background in a local greasy spoon diner on the edge of town. Accompanied by the sounds of knives and forks sword fighting and people taking value deluxe bites out of reasonably priced burgers and washing them down with complimentary milkshakes.

“The Pudgiwara corporation said they were sorry for dumping the one thousand tonnes of toxic waste in the bay and they said they’d never do it again” The news anchor furrowed his brow sincerely before quickly moving on to the next segment “In other local news a young boy of fourteen was arrested after a prank backfired outside his suburban home. The boy; who is yet to be named for legal reasons, was tricked by his friends into believing that another biological outbreak like the one in Arkham, Louisiana was occurring. Police state the boys wore make-up and ragged clothing and pretended to be the undead. The boy fearing for his life retrieved his 22. Calibre rifle he received for his third birthday and slaughtered them all in his back yard”

“Hahahahahahahahahaha!” Incongruous laughter broke out and it seemed like all the knife and fork sword fights ended abruptly but the laughter went on regardless as the story played out in between mouthfuls of raw hamburger meat.

“The fourteen year old boy, then fearing for the fate of his family, went into his suburban home and strangled his entire family to death with a draught excluder”

“Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahaha!” A dirty hand, topped with dirty chipped nails scooped up a clod of hamburger meat from a bowl as he laughed.

“What’s going on out here?” A fat sweaty man in an apron and not a lot else came out of the back and stood quizzically next to a middle aged red head waitress with a face like a leather riding saddle.

“Some crazy guy, all he ordered was a bowl of raw hamburger meat and he’s just been sitting there eating it, then he just started laughing” The middle aged woman said, her face wrinkling up in places never before thought possible.

The fat man’s sweat patches grew under his apron; he started to look like he belonged in a sauna or in a tropical plant house as he breathed heavily.

“The boy is currently under observation at Hellspass psychiatric hospital” The man’s laughter began to run down like the motor of a car slowly sliding into park, a greasy hand touched the arm of his salvation army coat and the slow come down took a sudden bump.

“Hey buddy you’re freakin’ people out, can ya keep it down? People are trying to eat” The fat chef said in an apologetic tone as he furrowed his brow into painful ‘v’s, which seemed to stretch all over his slippery bald head.

“What’s that?” The man said without turning his head, a chunk of un-chewed hamburger meat falling from his mouth onto the semi-clean counter as he opened his mouth and turned his bloodshot eyes in his skull.

“I said-“

“I heard what you said”

“Huh?”

“I just can’t tell what I’m looking at” He picked his teeth with a dirty nail and sucked his gums, dislodging raw meat from his teeth.

“Look buddy, we aint looking for no trouble, I think you better just pick your sorry ass up and leave- right now!”

“Did you make this?” The strange homeless guy squeezed the hamburger meat in his hands, letting it ooze through his bony fingers. He had shoulder length mousey brown hair with a beard, completing the homeless chic, his features were thin and gaunt, dark eyes hidden under heavy lids. He wore a long olive drab army jacket that went all the way down to his ankles just barely hiding the fact he was wearing plastic bags tied with string around his feet instead of shoes. To complete the ensemble a threadbare shirt and pair of pants that looked like they were stolen from an old people’s home washing line. Printed across the front of the jacket was a name written in bold dark green lettering ‘CARPENTER’.

“What’cha talking about buddy? That’s raw hamburger meat, aint nobody ‘made’ it, drifters like you don’t belong here, it’s time for you to move on now!”

“You know, I used to be just like you”

“Get ou-!” A glob of hamburger meat cut off the chef mid sentence, the slimy gelatinous meat by-product getting in his eyes and nose. It felt like a fist made of lumpy snot hit his sinus wall and he felt disorientated long enough for the dishevelled man to kick a bar stool under his feet from his seated position. The chef fell forward as the stool hit his shins, tripping him; Carpenter rose like a jack in the box from his stool to slam the chef’s dirty face into the counter.

He pressed the chef’s face into the clean-ish off colour lime green diner counter spreading blood and raw meat and spit all over it, the chef strained dreamily as his skull was pressed against the hard surface.

“You know it’s rude to interrupt someone when they’re eating.” Carpenter, squeezed the chef’s head with his forearm pressed against it tightly, the veins on the chef’s head stuck out like rail road tracks, pumping hot kitchen grease. Carpenter took his other hand and ran his finger up from his face taking up some of the hamburger meat, getting under his nails, he sucked his finger.

He took the pressure off and sat back on his stool like he got up to get the salt and the chef stuck to the counter with blood and sweat and hamburger meat, peeled off and his unconscious body hit the linoleum floor of the diner like a sack of dried hams, parting stools and chairs and brows as he fell. The diner fell silent, food went un-chewed in open mouths, coffee cups shook uncontrollably, babies continued crying, the dishevelled man went back to watching the news and laughing.

~
If you’ve read this far you can check out the rest of the chapter on inkitt by following this link Green Sunday.

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