Guest Post: Beaky Malone Blog Tour

Barry Hutchison has to be one of my favourite middle grade authors - I've loved everything that I have read of his, starting of course with the fabulous Invisible Fiends series. His new book, Beaky Malone World's Greatest Liar, was published a couple of days ago and is no exception to this - it is laugh out loud funny from beginning to end. I am really chuffed that Barry wanted to stop off at The Book Zone on his Beaky Malone blog tour, to tell us how he got into writing funny stories:

FUNNY STUFF, GOOD. PUNCHING ME IN THE HEAD, BAD 

I wasn’t a funny kid. I was the quiet one in class, reasonably studious without being brilliant, and usually found quietly reading a comic in the corner when all my work was done for the day. There was nothing notable about me whatsoever, other than my height. I was abnormally tall for my age, and by the time I’d hit 8 years old, I towered several inches above the rest of my class.

This didn’t go unnoticed by the kids in the years above, and soon I was the target for bullies three or four years older than I was. One kid in particular – I can’t remember his name, so let’s call him Bashy McBashface – spent weeks tormenting me, before finally catching me alone one day as I walked home from school.

I can remember his sneering spotty face, his bunched fists, his home-cut crop of ginger hair and his very obvious intent to pummel my head and torso into the pavement. He had another kid with him – his cousin, if I remember rightly, who had two silvery snot-trails as a permanent fixture on his top lip – who alternated between egging Bashy on, and keeping an eye out for trouble.

I was terrified. Too terrified to even raise my fists. Bashy McBashface was HUGE, and had a reputation for being the best fighter in school. I, on the other hand, was a tall, skinny kid who had a reputation for reading The Beano, and for once coming first in the school sports skipping race. It was less Rumble in the Jungle and more Certain Death in That Bit Behind the Shops.

Bashy’s fist drew back. My mouth opened. Words tumbled out all on their own.

Bashy stopped. He cocked his head to the side like a dog. He frowned.

Then, to my amazement, he threw back his head and laughed.

My mouth started moving again, and this time I listened to the words. They were jokes. No, not jokes, observational comedy about our school, the teachers, the other pupils. I even started to crack wise about the current situation, telling Bashy to pass on to my parents that I’d gone to a better place, and leaving instructions as to who to will my ZX Spectrum and Star Wars figures to.

I had no idea where it was coming from, but I was glad it was coming from somewhere. I made Bashy laugh so much that he completely forgot about pounding my face into a two-dimensional oval (much to his cousin’s disappointment). It turned out I had a latent superpower: I could make people laugh.

The next few years passed in a blur of jokes, impressions, pratfalls and other routines. I became “the funny guy” because, as it turns out, the funny guy is far less likely to get his head kicked in than all those other, non-funny guys.

It was only right, then, that when I’d embark on a professional writing career two decades later, the obvious choice of genre would be… um… horror. My Invisible Fiends series (which was first reviewed right here on this very blog) was a violent and occasionally downright disturbing scare-fest designed to have kids and adults alike too scared to turn the light off at bedtime.

It wasn’t until I started reading the reviews, though (and we all read the reviews, even if we pretend we don’t) that I discovered it was funny, too. Most of the reviews commented on the humour, even though I hadn’t really been aware I’d put any in there.

From there, it made sense to try writing funny books, and I’ve never looked back. I now get to spend my days making myself laugh (always an attractive quality) as I write everything from books to TV animation – and even The Beano.

I’d love to say the reason I write funny stuff is because I want to keep the national smiling, but if I was forced through a Beaky Malone-style Truth Telling Machine, I’d have to own up to the fact that the real reason I write comedy is because I’m worried that, if I don’t, everyone’s going to catch me on my own behind the shops one day, and give me a long-overdue kicking.

So, er, read Beaky Malone: World’s Greatest Liar! It’s hilarious, has brilliant illustrations by the amazing Katie Abey and might – just might – stop you punching me in the head.

Huge thanks to Barry for writing that for us. Beaky Malone, World's Greatest Liar was released in the UK on 2nd June.

Guest Post: Iron Fist Blog Tour

It is always a cause for some personal celebration when Andy Briggs releases a new book. I loved his Tarzan series and I can't wait to read Iron Fist, the first book in his new The Inventory series, especially given its brilliant summary:

The Rules: if you find a secret inventory of utterly deadly battle tech. 

1) Do not try it.

 2) Do not tell anyone. 

3) Do NOT let thieves in behind you. 

What’s more secret than top-secret? The Inventory. Home to the deadliest inventions the world isn’t ready for. Invisible camouflage. HoverBoots. Indestructible metals. Plus a giant creature of chaos: war robot Iron Fist. No one has ever broken past the state-of-the-art AI security system. (Seriously, most bad guys have no idea this stuff is even there.)

Problem 1: the security robot wasn’t ready for a gang of kids wandering in. 

Problem 2: they’ve ONLY brought the ruthless Shadow Helix gang in behind them. Seriously dumb, but it’s a bit late for ‘sorry’. 

Say hello to trouble: the Iron Fist is in the wrong hands!

Today I am overjoyed to be welcoming Andy to The Book Zone, as he gives us an introduction to his main character, Dev:

ENTER THE INVENTORY WITH DEV PARKER

Call him Dev, not Devon, which is his full name. He hates that. The only time he hears his full name is when he is in trouble – which is often. That’s not because he’s a trouble causer, he’s just easily bored. All those lessons in school, he already knows that stuff. Or he thinks he does, but has probably forgotten.  How can he learn anything interesting in school when he lives in an underground complex that houses the most advanced and incredible inventions ever made?

He lives with his uncle, Charles Parker, who is the Inventory’s curator. Their relationship is not exactly fun. Uncle Parker is cool mannered and not very talkative especially when Dev keeps asking about his parents. He doesn’t remember them and his uncle never has the time to talk about them. In fact, Dev doesn't know if they’re dead, missing or simply not interested in him. Not that he dwells on it too much. He’s gone beyond worrying about them – why bother when he can strap on a pair of HoverBoots and fly around the Inventory… even if he’s not allowed to touch any of the exhibits.

Breaking those rules drives his Uncle completely bonkers. To enforce his point, Charles Parker has the help of Eema – an artificial intelligent giant metal sphere with an emoji face and a chirpy personality. She is a battle robot, so is armed to the teeth! Despite that, Dev is more than happy to pit his wits against her as he sneaks into forbidden areas of the Inventory.

Dev’s dreams are to leave all of this behind him. There is a big wide world out there, and living underground – even surrounded by amazing stuff – can be boring, especially if you’re not allowed to touch any of it. It’s not as if he has friends. His Uncle’s strict secrecy orders means Dev has never had the opportunity to befriend anybody. Which, as he grows older, becomes more irritating. He’s constantly trying to avoid being picked on by the school thug, Mason, and is tongue-tied when he has the chance to talk to Lot, a girl with an infectious smile that he desperately hopes he’s not developing a crush on.

One final thing to tell you about Dev is that he has a, well some call it an ability, others call it a phenomenon and to others it’s a disability or neurological condition, called synaesthesia. He sees numbers and letters as colours and sounds because his brain scrambles how he senses such things. It’s a strange, and real, affliction. Some sufferers could easily tell you that yellow plus green equals six; the problem for you and I is that it really does. Dev’s condition is a lot more advanced, and something he has turned to his advantage in a very peculiar way…

So, go down to the Inventory yourself and meet Dev in his first adventure: IRON FIST. The further he delves into the world’s greatest secret the more answers he will discover about himself, his parents, his condition and… he might just make a few friends along the way...

www.andybriggs.co.uk

@abriggswriter

The Shadow Keeper Blog Tour: Guest Post by Abi Elphinstone

Today I am delighted to be welcoming the fabulous Abi Elphinstone to The Book Zone, as part of The Shadow Keeper blog tour. Abi's debut book, The Dreamsnatcher, was my favourite middle grade book of 2015, and its sequel, The Shadow Keeper, is even better! Abi is here today to tell us about some of the weird and wonderful items she has in her writing shed, but the wonderment doesn't stop there, as on Monday we will be giving you a chance to win a copy of The Shadow Keeper!

Top 10 Strangest Objects In My Writing Shed

    

One of my favourite things about school visits is showing children the weird and wonderful objects I’ve picked up on my travels. And with recent book research adventures involving living with Kazakh Eagle Hunters in Mongolia (you can read about that here) and chasing the northern lights in the Arctic, my writing shed is fast becoming a treasure trove of extraordinary items. So, here you go for a run down on the Top 10 Strangest Objects In My Writing Shed:

1. An arrow fletched with buzzard feathers. Catapults are my weapon of choice but when the witch doctors stepped things up a gear in The Shadow Keeper I threw in some bows and arrows as well. In the run up to writing the book, I learnt to fire a long bow at Barbury Shooting School and afterwards I bought a flint-tipped arrow from an antique shop in Portobello Road, London.

2. A human finger bone. There is a particularly evil band of smugglers in The Shadow Keeper. Barbarous Grudge is the thug at the top and he is often seen chewing the finger bone of a government official who tried to stop him smuggling years ago.

3. A gold tooth. Barbarous Grudge again for this one, I’m afraid. The legend goes that he fended off eight tax officials in a smuggling raid then stole their money to melt down the coins to cap eight of his teeth in gold.

4. A wolf fang decorated with silver. I bought this in Mongolia when I was living with the Kazakh Eagle Hunters. There are wolves in The Shadow Keeper but perhaps not the sort you’d expect…

5. A sheep’s ankle bone. This was given to me by a family living in one of the most remote settlements I have come across, at the foot of the Altai Mountains in Mongolia. Mongolian children play games with the bones and when I come to writing my Eagle Huntress book, I’m going to include the ankle bone and the girl who gave it to me, a five-year-old cat wrestler called Angela.

6. A shaman’s dagger. My little brother bought this back for me after his time living with the Reindeer People in northern Mongolia. The handle is made from reindeer antler and it is one of the most magical and fierce things I’ve ever seen. It’ll be a part of my next series – an Arctic adventure – because I already know there will be an evil shaman wreaking havoc out on the ice.

7. A plastic moth encased in glass. As odd as it sounds – and inspiration for the book I’m currently writing: a wild adventure amidst mountains, moors and lochs.

8. Animal Spirit cards. In The Shadow Keeper, Moll has a very special bond with a wildcat called Gryff. Sometimes I take these spirit cards to school visits and readers can find out what their spirit animal might be. Mine is a fox, apparently: ‘has many allies in the woodland, a sure-footedness in the physical world, is always concerned about family members & travels far afield.’

9. A catapult carved by one of the last ‘true’ Romany gypsies, Pete Ingram. He painted Roald Dahl’s wagon for the film premiere of Danny, The Champion of the World, and the catapult he gave me is made from ash with a beautiful horse head carved into the handle. It’s magnificent and I’m lucky my main character, Moll, hasn’t pinched it yet – because catapults are kind of her THING.

10.

A highland cow teddy. Because why not (and because Siddy takes a fancy to one in Book 3).

~~~

Huge thanks to Abi for taking the time to tall us about all these amazing things she has in her writing shed. The Shadow Keeper was published yesterday so make sure you go out and get your copy now. Although if you have not yet read The Dreamsnatcher, you really must do this first!

    

The A to Z of Railhead - C is for Cleave (by Philip Reeve)

It was only a year or so ago that I was bemoaning the general lack of space set science fiction for young adult and younger readers (although if you're a long time reader of The Book Zone you will know that I have been moaning about this for a good few years). However, in the last 18 months publishers have obviously decided that space is cool and marketable again (anything to do withh the forthcoming Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens?). In my opinion, Philip Reeve's Railhead is the best book so far (and by far) in this long overdue new wave of YA space opera (it's TRAINS IN SPACE. Need I say more? It was published two days ago and it is flippin' brilliant!)) and today I am honoured to be welcoming the great Mr Reeve himself to The Book Zone as part of the A to Z of Railhead tour. 

C is for Cleave

When I started to write Railhead, I wanted to write about a future that was worth living in - a positive vision to set against all the dystopias and apocalypses of recent fiction. So how did I end up starting in a dump like Cleave?

Zen's hometown was a sheer-sided ditch of a place. Cleave’s houses and factories were packed like shelved crates up each wall of a mile-deep canyon on a one-gate world called Angkat whose surface was scoured by constant storms. Space was scarce, so the buildings huddled into every available scrap of terracing, and clung to cliff faces, and crowded on the bridges which stretched across the gulf between the canyon walls - a gulf which was filled with sagging cables, dangling neon signage, smog, dirty rain, and the fluttering rotors of air taxis, ferries and corporate transports.

Well, maybe a hero needs to start out in some place where he’s not content. Otherwise, why would he go looking for adventure?

Between the steep-stacked buildings a thousand waterfalls went foaming down to join the river far below, adding their own roar to the various dins from the industrial zone. The local name for Cleave was Thunder City.

A few years ago, on my wife’s birthday, we went to Lydford Gorge, on the far side of Dartmoor. It’s a place about as unlike a futuristic industrial city as you could imagine. The river Lyd flows through the deep gorge. There is a famous waterfall called The White Lady, and a beautiful, mossy path leading up through the oak woods, beside the rapids. There’s also a spot called where the river plunges down into a deep chasm. Some previous landowner bolted metal walkways to the rock-faces so that sightseers could venture closer. The walkways are rusted now and maybe unsafe; they were certainly closed off the day that we were there. But looking at them from the higher path made me think about a whole city built in that way, jutting from vertical cliff faces, half drowned in waterfall spray. Ideas lie in wait for us in the landscape, and they’re not always the ideas that we expect.

The Mad Apprentice Blog Tour: My Life That Books Built by Django Wexler

The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler was one of my favourite books of 2015. I was therefore thrilled when I received an email from Penguin Young Readers over in the US, asking if I would be interested in hosting Django as part of a blog tour to celebrate the release of the sequel, The Mad Apprentice. If you've not yet read The Forbidden Library then you really must as it is middle grade fantasy at its very best, and I'm about to dive headlong into the sequel.

My Life That Books Built by Django Wexler


I'm old enough to remember a world of kid's books very different then what we have today.  Frankly, at least in my memory, it wasn't great.  I like to joke that all we had were numbered series by hack writers (think The Boxcar Children) and Newbery Award-winning books about dead dogs. That's not completely true, of course, but the genres we now think of as MG and YA were a lot less vibrant and fun than they are now.  Fortunately, my first job was as a page at my local library, and I started blazing a trail through their science fiction and fantasy shelf early on.

While I ended up as a fantasy author, in my youth I was far more of a science fiction reader.  The library shelf provided a lot of the classics: I loved Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, and David Brin's Earthclan series. I was a big fan of short stories -- while Asimov's Foundation books mostly leave me cold, his short fiction is amazing, packed with character, humor, and great ideas.

One book that particularly stands out is Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. One of the wonderful things about reading at that age was that I had no idea what was considered "great" science fiction and what wasn't -- I was picking things off the shelf essentially at random, and it's always interesting to me what lines up with the accepted canon.  A Fire Upon the Deep was one of my favorites, which I relentlessly pushed all of my friends to read, and it's really nice to see how it's been enshrined in the SF canon.  On the other hand, I loved some books, like Robert L. Forward's Dragon's Egg, that have now been mostly forgotten by modern SF readers.

On the fantasy side, my tastes were a little pulpier.  I devoured the Dragonlance series, at least those portions of it that Weiss and Hickman wrote, and followed them to their excellent Death Gate Cycle and lamentably unfinished Starshield series.  I read a lot of Piers Anthony, perhaps too much -- I remember one vacation where I'd equipped myself with a backpack full of Xanth books, reading maybe a dozen in two weeks, and I think I reached critical pun overload.  Terry Brooks and David Eddings also made regular appearances on my list, although our library's collections of both were frustratingly incomplete.


I can remember a few books that came as revelations to me; the kind of thing that makes you think, "Wait, you can do that?"  In addition to Vinge, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was like this, as was Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.  I devoured Neil Gaiman's Sandman over the course of about a week, on the train to my summer internship in the city sometime during high school.  Good Omens, too, was an eye-opener, and from there I got hooked on Terry Pratchett, who takes up several shelves in my personal library.

Basically, I read whatever I could get my hands on.  By modern standards, it was kind of a strange mix of juvenile and adult fiction, but it was what was available in the genres I loved, and the distinction never bothered me much.  As long as it was fun, I was on board!  (And no dead dogs.)

~~~

Huge thanks to Django for taking the time to write this for us. The Mad Apprentice has already been released in the US, and it is due to be published in the UK next month.

Red Eye Blog Tour: My Magnificent Seven Scariest Books by Alex Bell (author of Frozen Charlotte)

And so the nightmares continue....

Yes, the Red Eye blog tour is back at The Book Zone, this time with author Alex Bell telling us about her Magnificent Seven Scariest Books. Alex is the author of Frozen Charlotte, one of the two books released this month by Red Eye, Stripes Publishing's new YA horror imprint. I've just finished Frozen Charlotte and it is very creepy and pretty terrifying on a psychological level. And if you have a phobia about porcelain dolls (which are creepy as hell at the best of times) the you certainly won't want to be reading this one at night time.


And so, over to Alex and her seven scariest books:


1. The Haunting of Toby Jugg by Dennis Wheatley - The first half of this book contains some of the best understated, unnerving horror I've ever read. You definitely feel the terror and helplessness of the main character in this one.

2. The Shining by Stephen King - I read this classic horror tale whilst staying in a very old hotel in New Orleans. As haunted hotel stories go, this has got to be one of the best. It’s a shame the topiary animals were replaced by a hedge maze in the film.

3. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James  - One of my favourite classic ghost stories – this creepy tale has an unreliable narrator and an ambiguous open ending as well as some pretty terrifying encounters in the house and the grounds.

4. This House is Haunted by John Boyne – John Boyne can write anything and excel at it. His ghost story is very much in the Dickensian tradition and contains some of the most bone-chilling scenes I’ve ever come across. A total masterpiece.

5. Florence and Giles by John Harding – I love this re-imagining of The Turn of the Screw. The language is a real treat and like nothing else you’ve ever come across before.

6. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane – Not a horror book as such but Shutter Island definitely creeped me out with its themes of paranoia, madness and self-destruction.

7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson – Another classic ghost tale, this one definitely delivers its fair share of scares.

~~~

Huge thanks to Alex for taking the time to write this for us. The Red Eye Blog Tour is about to come to an end, so please head on over to http://reading-in-between-the-lines.blogspot.co.uk for its final stop.

Guest Post by Chris D'Lacey (A Dark Inheritance blog tour)

A Dark Inheritance by Chris D'Lacey was published by Chicken House earlier this month. The first book in the brand new The Unicorne Files series, A Dark Inheritance is thrilling story with X-Files/paranormal themes and a definite whiff of conspiracy. Today I am really happy to be hosting a guest piece from Chris as he embarks on his UK blog tour:

Remembering Rafferty Nolan

When I was at university, studying biology, there was a particular lecturer I really enjoyed hearing.  His name escapes me now (it’s been a long time since I was a student) but his field of interest was genetics.  Over a period of weeks he taught us, among other things, about the discovery of the genetic code and the structure of DNA.  He told it like a real story, chapter by chapter – the four bases, the alpha helix etc. – and I remember being so gripped that I would get to the lecture theatre early to be sure of getting a good place.  That was the closest I came to being a science nerd.  Not too long after university my life began to move down a literary path and science became something I relied on simply to pay the bills.  But I’m certain that lecturer had a huge influence on my writing.  I still love a good scientific mystery now, and occasionally it shows in my books.

This is partly what fuelled the central theme of A Dark Inheritance, the first in my new series The UNICORNE Files.  I love anything that might be said to lie on the extreme edges of science, particularly those subjects that have no robust scientific credibility yet can’t quite be dismissed as hokum.  The one that pops up in A Dark Inheritance is the fascinating phenomenon of cellular memory.  To explain: people who’ve had organ transplants sometimes make the extraordinary claim that they have some memory of their donor or that they’ve inherited some of their donor’s personality traits.  Imagine a forty-year-old man who has never been interested in gardening receives a new kidney and suddenly begins to know the Latin names for plants or has a strong urge to visit garden centres.  He then finds out that his donor was a keen gardener.  That would be cellular memory.

There have been many theories put up to explain it and I don’t have room to go into them here.  Some people believe that every cell in the human body has full ‘consciousness’.  And to hark back to my genetics teacher, in one lecture he dealt with the captivating subject of totipotent cells, which have the ability to differentiate into a complete organism from a single cell state.  Wow.  So where does this lead us?

Well, in an early review of A Dark Inheritance, the reviewer said they didn’t ‘get’ cellular memory.  Fine.  Hand on heart, I don’t ‘get’ telekinesis or past-life regression or out-of-body experiences – or my beloved dragons, for that matter – but I don’t have to believe in a thing to want to explore it in a work of fiction.  Subjects like these are toys in a writer’s attic, there to be picked up, played with and re-imagined.  With cellular memory, I did what all writers do, I lodged the idea into my subconscious and let it bubble away for a while.  It eventually came back with an interesting question, “What if the donor had died in an accident, but the person receiving the organ remembered something that would suggest the death wasn’t an accident?” And away I went.

A Dark Inheritance is a kind of ghost story with a twist.  The notion of cellular memory is used to unravel the truth behind the untimely death of a girl called Rafferty Nolan.  To say any more than that would be to say too much.  Writing the story hasn’t made me believe in the subject any more now than it did before I started.  But my mind is open and the truth is out there.  A fantasy writer wouldn’t have it any other way.

A Dark Inheritance by Chris D'Lacey, out now in paperback (£6.99, Chicken House) 

Guest Post by Michael Grant (Light Blog Tour)

I am honoured today to welcome Michael Grant to The Book Zone as part of the Light Blog Tour. Michael's here today to tell us what it is like for him on a real world book tour. I was very fortunate to be able to listen to Michael last autumn when we welcomed him in to school to talk to our Year 9s. If you ever get the chance to listen to him then I suggest you grab it!

Thanks to the Book Zone for Boys for letting me blog tour on this blog.  I’ll try not to say anything embarrassing.

So, I am visiting the UK in October on what we like to call “Book Tour.”  I think this will be my sixth or seventh UK book tour, though my first for MESSENGER OF FEAR.  I’ve also done one such tour, for GONE and BZRK, in Australia and New Zealand, one for GONE to Netherlands, a quick dash to Ireland, and of course many such excursions around the States.

My non-US tours are different from my travels around the States.  In the States I know the lay of the land, so to speak, so I fly un-accompanied and generally eschew the offered limousines in favor of renting a car.  In the UK I travel with a publicist, most often by train.  We don’t really do trains in the US, we do cars.  I’m a Californian by birth and we do cars to an even greater extent than other Americans.  California is the birthplace of car culture.

As a part of genus Americanus, species Californius Irascibilus, I am uneasy on trains.  Trains run on schedules and that means I am out of control of my movements.  It means I cannot decide to pull over and go shopping.  It means I cannot park and sleep unobserved.  It means I cannot drive through a fast food restaurant and eat a burger with one hand while driving with the other while adjusting the radio while puffing on a cigar while cursing other drivers and offering useful hand-signals meant to convey my lack of satisfaction with their driving skills.

Being a Californian requires a great deal of eye-hand coordination.  

It seems unsafe somehow to just sit in a train.  God only knows who’s driving the thing and whether he or she is paying attention.  And it’s strange not being on my own.  The publicists are invariably charming, tolerant, bright, tolerant women young enough to be my daughter, who have the unenviable job of guiding a cranky old fart through busy stations and into schools and bookstores where I manage to irritate teachers and administrators by saying things I shouldn’t.  

Did I mention that the publicists are tolerant young women?  One of my favorites sometimes reads religious works.  I like to think she was an atheist before being paired with me and that I drove her to seek the solace of religion.  

Anyway, we careen around the country in trains, stopping here and there so that I can address auditoriums full of kids who’ve escaped math class to hear me ramble on about how much better their lives will be if they’ll only buy my book.  (Which in case you missed it is called, MESSENGER OF FEAR.)  I suppose they should also read my books, but the fact is I’m there to sell books, so, really, what they do with the book is entirely up to them.

I have a love-hate relationship with Book Tour, but always end up having a lot of fun in the UK.  Once I broke away and drove a rented car across Scotland.  As you know, Scots, like Brits, drive on the wrong side of the road, so it wasn’t perhaps my best driving effort.  (Sorry about the side mirrors, you folks parked in Edinburgh, but the road was pretty narrow and I was on the wrong side of it, after all.)  But generally it’s the train, which I have to say, is almost always on time, usually clean and not always packed to the rafters.  

I know Brits often complain about the trains, but it lacks the conviction of a Californian complaining about traffic.  And with no opportunity for useful hand gestures and the possibility of gunfire in response, it all seems just a bit tame.  

In any event, British folk, I will be there soon.  Or may already be there by the time you read this.  You may want to fold in those side mirrors in case I break free and get my hands on a steering wheel.

It’s still drive on the left, right?

Banished Blog Tour - Guest Post by Liz de Jager - My Favourite Action Movies

Last month I posted my review of Banished by Liz de Jager. I have known Liz for a few years, after she took me under her wing when I first started blogging, and pretty much became my Yoda/Mr Miyagi/Splinter/Patches O’Houlihan/Gandalf/etc. 

Having sat in many a London eatery listening to Liz's trials and tribulations on the road to publication I couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy, and now I'm really honoured to be hosting Liz for the final stop on the Banished blog tour. Liz and I are both huge fans of action films and we also share similar tastes (we'll watch, and usually enjoy, pretty much anything as long as the action is turned up to 11), and so it was a no brainer when we were talking about a topic for this guest post. So it is over to Liz to tell us about her favourite action movies, and how they influenced her writing (warning: some of the clips contain violent scenes, but hey - it's a blog post about action movies!):

My Favourite Action Movies by Liz de Jager

I am a big fan of action movies. I blame my dad and my brother, basically. I was inducted into the cult of martial arts movie at a very young age. I remember crying endlessly when I heard Bruce Lee had died.  My brother mourned him for months. 

Since moving to the UK in 2000 my husband and I have been dedicated film goers and dvd / bluray buyers and we like taking chances on the movies that get 2 star or 3 star reviews because we’ve learned not to trust the ‘sophisticated’ palates of those folks who do review movies as invariably these people want things we might not be so keen in i.e. movies without explosions. 

I looked through our massive dvd collection and started pulling dvds out.  I thought: I’d write a blogpost of about five favourite movies. No. I pulled out over fifty DVDs.  (And will have to restack them later again, my poor back).

Martial arts movies and Westerns were my staple diet growing up. Jackie Chan, Steven Segal and Bruce Lee and the gods forgive me, Jean Claude Van Damme too.  All the Ninja movies? I’ve watched them.  And loved them, utterly.

Most folks, when they visit my tiny house, assume that the martial arts movies belong to my husband. They’d be wrong.  Thanks to the relatively inexpensive dvds available here in the UK my collection has sprouted.  These are some of my favourite martial arts movies:

***

Zatoichi

Ichi

Jade Warrior

Red Cliff

14 Blades

Mulan (not the decrepit Disney version)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

The Legend of the Shadowless Sword

The Duel

The House of Flying Daggers

Fearless

Shogun Assassin

Seven Samurai

Versus

Hero

Curse of the Golden Flower

The Banquet

Seven Swords

I’m not including any of my Bruce Lee movies in this, because basically, take it as a given: these have to be part of your life because they are cinematically engaging and they star Bruce Lee. Netflix also has a great selection of martial arts movies which they rotate, some of them very hard to come by.

The other action movies I adore and watch on a regular basis either on dvd / when they’re on TV for any reason at all:

The Raid & Dredd

Basically both The Raid and Dredd have peripherally the same premise: it’s attack the block with guns.  But it’s two very different movies.  The Raid is slower, with a lot more hand to hand combat.  There’s a fight sequence in The Raid that just blew my mind.  It’s four on one against our hero, Rama. 

It’s just superb.  In Dredd, the sequences are tough and fun and the one-liners are great.  I especially love Dredd as it was partly shot in South Africa and the opening taxi chase scene…I know exactly where it takes places.

Die Hard – all of them, yes even the fifth one, mostly for Jai Courtney who we will be seeing in the new Divergent movie out this year.  Jai I think is an action hero in the making.  But basically, the first Die Hard is our go-to movie to watch at Christmas, right Hans?

Jack Reacher – I am a big fan of Lee Child’s books and was VERY unhappy when Jack Reacher got cast and Tom Cruise got the leading role.  He’s not a big guy.  Jack Reacher is a big guy.  However, Cruise fills the screen really well and there are some epically bone-crunching fight scenes in Jack Reacher, specifically showing how difficult it is to swing a weapon in an enclosed space in the bathroom / house fight sequence.

Taken – Liam Neeson’s outstanding and utterly over the top movie that has one of the best fight sequences I’ve ever seen…set on a boat cruising the Seine in Paris.  Just great stuff.

District 13 and the sequel District 13 Ultimatum

These two movies – urgh, love it so much. Created by Luc Besson (one of my favourite and craziest writers / directors / movie producers) are so much fun and very socially aware. The free-running (parkour) scenes are INCREDIBLE.  It’s because of this that I made the one character in Book 2 – Vowed – be a free runner of sorts.

Here’s a scene from the first one -

Pacific Rim

Huge ridiculous fangirl of Guillermo del Toro and a huge ridiculous fangirl of mecha and kaiju thanks to a steady diet of Robotech and Godzilla movies growing up.  PR has some insane fight scenes between monsters and robots but, it also has a great sequence between Beckett and Mako Mori where they have a bout to see how drift compatible they are.  There’s also a punch up between Beckett and Jack and ouch, it looked like fun.

From Dusk till Dawn

It has to be on this list – huge influence of my misspent youth.  George Clooney is superb in this and basically the fight sequence when they get to the bar against the vampires for the first time is utterly splendidly gory and perfect.

Chronicle

Chronicle is just brilliant – a slow burning movie about what would happen if you suddenly woke up one morning and you had superpowers, you and some of your mates.  What would you do? It’s superb because it feels real, yes there is shaky-cam, but that’s just how the story develops and it allows the director some interesting leeway towards the end.  Dane de Haan is superb in this and the fight sequence at the end between him and his erstwhile best friend…is cringeworthy and incredibly sad and poignant.

Leon

Do I even have to mention Leon? It is the granddaddy of action movies.  Filmed in 1994, it’s another Luc Besson movie.  It stars Jean Reno as the titular Leon and a very young and tiny Natalie Portman as Mathilda.  This movie had a great influence on me writing Banished.  Mathilda’s hair is basically Kit’s hair at the start of Banished and Kit’s Uncle Jamie is a bit Leon, only more talkative and possibly a lot more unpleasant if given half a chance to show it.

Starship Troopers

Just…watch the trailer, it is insane.

It is also one of the most progressive movies of its time because it shows unisex showers in the cadets’ training sequence – something you would never get away with these days and the thing is, the camera never lingers and it is never gratuitous.  The movie is also quite the commentary on how governments mess with your brain and perception of what happens in places where you have to rely on reports filtered through third parties.

Reservoir Dogs

Gory, brilliant dialogue.  The ear scene.  All of it.

Ronin & From Paris With Love

We’ve had this conversation on Twitter in the past about which car chase / car race scene is better.  The one in Ronin or the one in From Paris With Love?

You decide:

Ronin:

From Paris With Love: 

The Bourne Movies

All four of them – but my favourite scene has to be in the first Bourne movie (Bourne Identity) when Jason is sleeping rough in the park near the bank and some cops come over to move him on and they get a bit handy.  It’s the first time we see Jason actively react to something and thus far we’re not entirely sure who he is or what his training is. And then, bam, in 5 seconds flat he’s taken out two armed cops!

Drive

Stylistically Drive has to be one of the most beautifully shot movies.  The soundtrack is also perfect.  It’s a slow burner and you’re never quite sure what to expect of the driver but when it comes to the fight sequence in the lift, you have NO doubt who this guy is.  And you definitely want to cross the street when you see him. 

13^th Warrior

This movie always just makes me want to write.  The music is evocative and beautiful. Antonio Banderas is great and the Norsemen are all supremely grouchy and perfect.  The fight scene towards the end, between the village, the Norsemen against the Venn? Muddy and awful and perfect. 

Brotherhood of the Wolf

I am a big fan of Mark Dacascos.  I love his movie Only The Strong as well as his turn as The Crow in the TV show.  In Brotherhood he plays Mani, a Native American who travels to France alongside his friend Chevalier Gregoire de Fronsac.  Fronsac has been tasked by the King of France to hunt down the mysterious Beast of Gevaudan.  And obviously, shenanigans happen.  One fantastic fight scene is between Mani and these wild insane French hunters and it is epic.  Sadly, I can’t link to the trailer as there’s quite a bit of nudity!!

Dog Soldiers

A bunch of Brit soldier go on manoeuvres in the forest.  They stumble across a weird killing site…and then they’re attacked…by werewolves.  I love this movie so much for so many reasons.  It’s the group of soldiers who are superb to watch, the action is non-stop and when there’s no action it is so tense! Also, I really like Spoon. 

Centurion

This movie.  Grim and dark and shot in some of the coldest places in Britain.  A bunch of Romans fight behind enemy lines in an attempt to stay alive.  It also stars Michael Fassbender who underwent an incredible ordeal filming this, along with his fellow cast.  The action is fast and furious and it’s very physical and a bit unpleasant too.

Night Watch

A Russian actioner written and directed by Timur Bekmambetov.  The action is crazy as can only be done by Timur Bekmambetov.  The forces of dark and light fight for control over our world.  It has vampires and shape changers and it’s utterly crazy and I adore it.  It’s action movies on meth, basically.

Crying Freeman

Oh, Yo the Potter – another Mark Dacascos starring movie.  I obsessed about this movie for years.  Basically Mark’s character becomes this lethal assassin who is seen to kill a bunch of Yakuza gangsters by an artist.  Shenanigans ensue.  And epic fight sequences. Swords, katanas, slow motion explosions.  Loads of love for this movie and one I’m about to rewatch as I’ve not seen it in an age. This based on the Crying Freeman manga and anime.

The Losers

I love the graphic novels by Andy Diggle and Jock so when they announced they were doing a movie of The Losers…well, I was dubious.  But, if you take each thing as a standalone, then it works.  The movie stars Zoe Saldana amongst others and her fight sequence with Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a hotel room is bonecrunchingly excellent.  The whole movie is fun – thank heavens it came out before The Expendables – with the added sass delivered by Chris Evans as Jensen.  This is one of my favourite scenes. EVER.

   

***

I have so many more movies to share but maybe I hold that over till another day.  I’ve gone on long enough and I hope you’ve enjoyed my selection I’ve presented.

Banished is packed full of action – and a lot of the fighting was tried out (I have the bruises) to see if it would work in real life and what it would be like to throw or kick things in a certain way.   I didn’t want to have my characters do things and not personally know how it felt. 

Obviously I do not condone punching people in the head or pulling a knife or a sword on anyone ever, and I ask you to bear in mind that Banished, like all the movies I’ve mentioned above is merely fiction.  Except for the part where monsters are real.  That part is true. 

Maybe.

Guest Post: Rick Yancey's Top 5 Sci-Fi Books (The 5th Wave Blog Tour)

Today I am honoured to be joined by Rick Yancey, author of The 5th Wave. Rick has kindly joined us here on The Book Zone to tell us about his all-time favourite Sci-Fi books:

1. The White Mountains by John Christopher. One of the best, most “realistic” take on aliens I’ve ever read. Creepy. Moving. It justfeels like a real alien occupation. Find this book and its sequels. Trust me.

2. Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. The man wrote like a thousand books, so I haven’t read all of them (how did he have time towrite all of them?), but this is hands-down my favourite Asimov. Mind-blowing, complex, so well-structured. A movie could never do it justice.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. Another landmark work of sci-fi. In this case, the movie does do the book justice.

4. Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle. Forget all the movies. This novel takes the genre, smashes it to pieces and reassembles it into a savage satire and a searing social commentary. The ending is three thousand times more chilling than the original movie’s.

5. 1984 by George Orwell. Okay, I confess most people don’t consider this, the original dystopian masterpiece, a sci-fi novel. But it was set in the future (he wrote it in 1948), and it includes technology that did not exist in Orwell’s time. And, like all great science fiction, it is more about now than some distant future.

And now here is the next extract of the audio book. If you have been following the blog tour you will already know that a different snippet is being released each day - more details can be read on the banner over to the side of this blog, or if that is too small I have included it at the end of this piece.

My Life That Books Built: Guest Post by Andy Briggs (The Jungle Warrior Blog Tour)

Towards the end of last month I posted my review of Tarzan: The Jungle Warrior by Andy Briggs. When I as asked by the nice people at Faber if I would be interested in hosting Andy for a stop-off on his blog tour, naturally I jumped at the chance. I asked if he would be interested in adding to my slowly growing feature called My Life That Books Built, and he duly sent through this great post about some of the books he loved when he was younger.


BOOKS THAT ROCKED MY WORLD

We all want to know what movies our favourite actors watch, what songs pop stars listen to, so it’s no surprise that one of the most frequently asked questions an author gets is “What is your favourite book?” This is often followed by “What do you think the best book you have written is?” (it is always the last one) - and of course “What car do you drive?” (a Land Rover) and “How much do you earn?” (not enough!). So, let me focus on the first question.

When I was younger, and even now, I adored comic books. Telling a story in 20-something pages, with only several panels per page is a real art form, and amateur writers could do far worse than study how well crafted those stories can be. For me, Spiderman, Daredevil and the X-men were my top three comics for consumption. The stories rattled along with a lightning pace, while the characterisation was subtle and allowed to develop over the course of years.

Comics gave way to books, and I discovered Gordon Boshell’s Captain Cobwebb series of eleven children’s books, which are sadly now out of print. They follow the fantastic exploits of two brothers, David and Toby, who undertake missions for their Uncle Septimus who mysteriously disappeared while sitting in a fairy ring. These stories were like dynamite for my imagination, unlike anything I had encountered before.

Another ground breaking book - which I still re-read as often as possible - is Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Forget the film or the (rather good) TV series, the book is a fantastic journey through the galaxy that will leave you breathless from laughing so hard. I would highly recommend the whole series.

 Of course, I found J.R.R. Tolkien, and still regard The Hobbit as one of the finest fantasy books every written. And speaking of fantasy, you can’t go wrong with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, especially the earlier books (particularly Mort) which remain bonkers and addictive.

 Sometimes I need a book to give me a shot in the arm and drag me kicking and screaming through a riotous adventure. For this, I would prescribe anything by Clive Cussler, particularly his Dirk Pitt stories. Cussler manages to effortlessly take a piece of history and weave it into a modern day adventure that will grip you by the throat until you turn the last page. They are a master class for frenetic adventure storytelling.

 Of course, I can’t leave out Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes - along with Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World - which formed my childhood impression of reading. Both books take place in the dark jungles and venture into the unknown. Reading such books made me want to become a writer and they left my mind open enough to want to explore the world and realize that, even with our global communications and advanced technology, there are still places in the world left undiscovered... waiting for their stories to be told.

TARZAN: THE JUNGLE WARRIOR is out now, published by Faber.