Book Review January / February 2013

I decided to tackle some of the classics of the horror genre these last couple of months. 

I'm sure we all think we know these stories but unless you actually read the original, then all you know is an adaptation which in many cases contain just a fraction of what the original author imagined.

Wordsworth Editions - Classics

Frankenstein

By Mary Shelley

ISBN: 9781853260230

We're all familiar with the square headed, lumbering and mono-symbolic monster of the Hollywood films, but the creature originally created by Mary Shelly bears no resemblance to this image. At times he is very articulate and despite being the perpetrator of several murders the reader has to accept a degree of sympathy for him, and the real villain of the piece is the monster's creator Dr Frankenstein. The story is not so much a horror story, having been polished and tweaked by Mary Shelly since its initial concept that wet week spent in Geneva, but is a love story and travel journal of the scientist who gave life to his created cadaver.

Wordsworth Editions - 

Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural

The Phantom of the Opera

By Gaston Leroux

ISBN: 9781840220735

if this was published today no doubt it would find itself on the 'Dark Romance' shelf, for the mysterious phantom is besotted with the opera singer Christine Daaé. When he finds that he cannot have her by fair means then foul will have to do. Again this is another story that has had many variations turned into stage and film, but how many actually capture the true feeling of the original? Presented as a report of an investigation to add further weight to the mysterious detective story.

 

Wordsworth Editions - 

Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural

Dracula and Dracula’s Guest & Other Stories
by Bram Stoker

ISBN: 978-1-84022-627-0

This is a double volume, Dracula and then a short story collection Dracula’s Guest & Other Stories. For the moment I've just read Dracula, the other volume in this book will come later in the year. This is another one those stories you think you know because of the many films and uses of the character, but it's one that I'm ashamed to say I had not got round to reading. For those of you who haven't read it either I suggest you grab a copy or download to your ekindy-pad-dodar-wotsit of choice.

Presented as collection of documents written by several of the main characters of the book, the collected works tell of Mr Harker's initial visit to Count Dracula as he arranges to come and live in England. Obviously not a good advertisement for immigration. The Count arrives and brings with him his dark cloud of vampirism, and soon sets about spreading himself across London. There are points in the book, maybe because we're more familiar with the old vamps these days that you want to take the characters and shake them but remind yourself this is one that set the bar in the first place.

And finally for something a little more modern.

Titan Books

Supernatural: Rite of Passage 
by John Passarella

ISBN: 978-1-78116-111-1

The boys are back! It seems like an age since I last read a book based on the TV series Supernatural. It was great to get into an old banger alongside Sam & Dean with Bobby in toe for an adventure set during series 7.

An Oni is in town, here to cause disaster and death to the local population by manipulating bad luck and disasters waiting to happen so that where ever he goes a trail of devastation follows. But this isn't his first visit, and he's back for a reason...

With Sam having moments of madness and chatting to his old bunk buddy Lucifer, Dean has a lot more to keep his eyes on. The book captures the mood of series 7 well, and provides a nice stop gap between episodes to help any withdrawal symptoms.

For more info on these books:

http://www.wordsworth-editions.com

http://www.titanbooks.com

Review 2011 or The Story So Far...

Good old BigLee, he’s already reviewed last year, made resolutions for this year and prompted us to vote in the blog awards, me - well  - I’m playing catch up. It’s almost a year since I started this blog, early February actually so not quite at my first anniversary yet. However I‘d like to take this moment to thank those that passed by, dropped in and said hello and maybe even stuck around for a blog or two.

This blog has certainly been an extra driving force for me to try out new ideas and whilst surfing other blogs I’ve seen many other great ideas I wish to try out, but the problem - there is just never enough time.  I’ve managed to get quite a lot done last year, but I’ve still got many unfinished projects hanging around which I really do need to get finished before I start anything else.

Let’s see, a quick round up. The ghost town I’m building out of coffee sticks has four finished models, one awaiting varnish and a sixth one almost completed as far as the coffee sticks go. 

This one has not been featured yet and is another attempt at making the model out of all recycled materials – an old pizza box, a dessert box and a toilet roll forming the base with the coffee sticks around the outside. These are ok once the sticks are on and the glue is dry, but during construction they really do feel very flimsy. I’m also experimenting with the Quality Street coloured transparent wrappers to give creepy light in the windows on this one. (The toilet roll is to add stability on the inside - Photos coming soon I promise).

A couple of country cottages and town houses were completed, but the one based on Zandina’s house has not progressed since the last time it was featured. I ran out of space to have all these models lying around, and when I had guests over they had to be boxed up and not all of the models have made it back out yet. This is also true for the remainder of the work on the ruined castle pieces. Some of these I also wanted to base up and add grass and some foliage to as well. 

However, before I do that some pieces are supposed to play a role in one of our D&D games, but we haven’t reached that part in the campaign yet despite having planned this out with our GM over a year ago now. See some of BigLee’s posts for the saga of our rather on and off attempts at completing this campaign.

The ghost town and the graveyard pieces are for a campaign I’m planning myself, and I hope to get some actual work done on that this year, and you never know maybe even play some of it. This is a campaign based on the TV Series Supernatural using the role play mechanism by Jamie Chambers and published by MargaretWeis Productions Ltd. It does mean I need to spend some more time reading, making notes and trying to develop actual plot ideas rather than spend weekends model building. 

Maybe I should do this part now whilst the weather is less than friendly, as due to space restrictions I don’t really have the room inside to model build so easily. I also have a whole pile of figures to be painted for this campaign as well, however as there is a remote possibility that one or more of my potential players may be reading this I’m my fingers still as to what these figures actually are, let’s just say some of them come from the excellent workshop that is Heresy Miniatures.

The Doctor Who Tapestry came out to play again, I hope to get as much done as possible, but finding source photos to reference some older stories is proving a bit of problem at the moment. 

Another problem I hope to overcome very soon is the book Karl, Birth of Mystery. My publisher has been somewhat lacking in effort this year, and I think he’ll be getting a new year’s kick up the backside very soon. I will keep anyone who has placed an outstanding order up to date personally with developments – and I hope to have some news in the next week or so once production ramps up again.

Thanks for the support and well, let’s see what 2012 brings. 

Final Fog Feature

Just when you thought Halloween was gone from the shelves, see last posting where I substituted Christmas snow blanket for Halloween Spider’s Web, I was visiting Basildon when I spotted a sale on Halloween decorations. Although at first I never found any spider web I did find some interesting bits and pieces. 

When I mentioned to the young lady tidying the sale items that I was looking for spider web the reply I got was, “Yes, we’ve got some, what colour?” Not what I expected, but I was told they had black and white. I said I’d take some of each and she came back with black, white and a packet of green. 

My eyes lit up, that will produce some real ghostly mist and fog. Many thanks to the girls working in Birthday’s Party Shop at Westgate Basildon, for their helpful and friendly service.

 

Here, especially then for Luckyjoe, are some extra foggy photos with the snow blanket, and the three colours of spider web around the gravestones.

Green Spider Webbing as Spooky, Ghostly Fog.

White Spider's Webbing as Creeping Fog

Black Spider Webbing. More like smoke.
Would be good also for 'Supernatural' style Demon activity.

Snow Blanket as Ground Cover Fog

The Old Graveyard

To go with the ruined church piece I decided to start making some tile pieces, that when put together will form an old graveyard. These can be used to make up a diorama of an old churchyard or arranged in different configurations to give different graveyards in different locations, some more run down than others. 

I’m basing the various concepts on some of the older graveyards locally, and the graveyards featured in Vampire Diaries Series 1, and various episodes of Supernatural. 

I started by finishing off the church ruin itself, where some of the filler had formed small lumps I decided to paint these up as mould growing on the ruins. These were painted using Games Workshop’s Bleached Bone and Bubonic Brown, and Americana’s Deep Periwinkle.

With two pieces of card and some small cut up pieces of polystyrene from the washing machine packaging I started to layout the first two tiles of the graveyard. The first has a large double arched entrance way now slightly collapsing and some random external wall pieces. The other is more interior, with mainly graves in various states of disrepair and some at an angle implying subsistence.

These I then covered in wall filler, but this time before plastering it on I mixed it with some PVA glue and black acrylic paint giving a very dark grey initial effect to base material before I started. This will make the stonework look very different to the walls of church itself.

To layout the actual grave areas I’ve added some light stony areas. (Talus by Woodland Scenics, Fine Natural.)

Coffee Stick Houses – Part One

First of all I would like to thank Big Lee and The Angry Lurker for welcoming me to the world of blogging, and to those who have started to follow me already. I hope I don’t let you down, and yes, you have Big Lee to thank / blame (delete as applicable) for me being here blogging.

When Big Lee featured some of my buildings in a previous post the buildings made from mainly coffee sticks seemed to get some interest, so I thought I’d start by talking about them in more detail.

Several separate thoughts came together to set me on the road to building these models, and in true tv ‘reality/talent’ show style I can honestly say when I list these they are in ‘no particular order’ any more.

(1)    Big Lee was GM for a while (yes he has been the GM in the past – and a good GM he was too) – he gave us a setting on the edge of a hell like place where everything was wooden construction and coated in sand.

(2)    At the end of the second series of Supernatural, Sam Winchester found himself in a derelict old western-type town, and the atmosphere of the place even before the action started was very creepy.

(BTW I’ll probably draw further inspiration from Supernatural in later projects – personally I wouldn’t mind giving the RPG based on this series a go at some time in the future.)

(3)    I sat in the local coffee shop holding a wooden stick, fiddling with it after I had finished stirring my hazelnut latte (guess where that came from...) and thought that the wooden stick would be great for planking on the side of a building. So I gathered up as many as I could.

(4)    I saw a model magazine (not sure which one it was now – will see if I can still find it and credit it at a later date) where a feature was made on wooden buildings.

In the end it was inevitable where this was going.

I started  at first using the coffee sticks as planking seen here, along with the roof tiles made from cereal packets and lower walls made from balsa and wall filler, but when I started gathering the sticks from the staff restaurant at work, word got round and soon many people were saving their sticks and my supply soon grew.

It was time for bigger projects with the wooden sticks.

Thinking back to that set on Supernatural  I set out to make a town that was just slightly wrong. It was to look abandoned but not entirely derelict. So the edges would be rough, any mistakes made cutting wood to length would be patched up rather than made perfect. In short it was to look like the people who had lived there once had tried to make a go of it, but for whatever reason their civilization had failed.

The models were started in the same way with foam board frame work and cardboard roof, but the entire exterior was then built up using just the coffee sticks.

The first stage was to place on the main support beams, these were glued on using PVA glue, and then a second layer was stuck over them to give the support beams extra thickness. Then the planking sides were fitted in. If the planking sides didn’t always fit then one or two were allowed to angle up slightly – this gave the impression of warping on the building – you can see this in one of the photos.

After that it was basically a job of cutting and sticking the rest of the wooden sticks in place.

Eventually when the entire foam board structure was completely covered I under coated in black paint, then painted over with a dark brown, then a lighter brown & white mix and finally dry brushed with white to give the aged effect. The windows had a couple of coats of black paint to make them really blacked out. I have some other ideas as to what to do with the windows at a later date.

I worked on two models at the same time, as you have to give drying time for the glue to set when placing the sticks otherwise the whole lot ends up in a big mess if you try to be too adventurous in one sitting.

Since these were built (and I might do some final fiddling with them before they get finally get put onto a game table) I have started a few more from this set. These I’ve taken more candid photos of in their earlier stages of construction so when I return to these I’ll be able to go into more detail on how they were constructed and how any mistakes were ‘boarded’ over.