CHOMP Review at Dread Central

Dread Central is one of my favorite horror news/reviews websites, so it was very cool to see this review of Chomp. (I was an Associate Producer, which means that I did everything writer/director Lynne Hansen told me.)

http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/129146/chomp-2014/

TRIVIA: The review was written by Todd Rigney, who wrote the fantastic novella Found, which was turned into one of my favorite horror movies of the past several years. So that makes it even cooler.

GZME at SIBA

This past weekend I went to Raleigh, North Carolina for the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) Fall Discovery Show, where I signed way-early Advance Reading Copies of The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever, which won’t be out until March 1st, 2016.

My friends Richard Dansky and Melinda Thielbar live in the area, so they ensured that I had great BBQ, great tacos, great cider, and great doughnuts, in addition to the great company. For all of my life up to this point, I wasn’t able to say, “Hey, I’ve eaten at a restaurant that brings free fried pork skins to your table before you order,” but now I can!

UPDATE: I’m quoted in the Publishers Weekly recap of the event.

Pixels

Several months ago, I saw the trailer for Pixels. Never had I been so conflicted about a movie. Because having ’80s video games attack the earth is the greatest idea for a movie ever!!!!!!! but the preview looked pretty awful.

It came out. Word of mouth and reviews were toxic. I was never quite able to work up the enthusiasm to see it for myself, though deep in my heart I thought that maybe people were just going into knee-jerk It’s-an-Adam-Sandler-movie-so-it-sucks mode, and that it could be a lot of fun.

Last night, because I am an absolute PARTY ANIMAL when my wife is out of town, I decided to go see A Walk in the Woods. Then, at the last second, I thought, hey, Pixels starts 15 minutes earlier, I’ll see that instead!

Yes, kids, sometimes in life we make the wrong decisions. The only other people in the theater were a mother and her 10-year-old son, but they left halfway through, presumably because the 10-year-old felt like his intelligence was being insulted. Rarely has a movie conveyed a more tangible sense of, “Y’know, we just don’t care. Like, at all. Where’s the craft services table?”

Humor is subjective, so when I say that every joke is spectacularly, embarrassingly lame, I may be wrong. I can say that Adam Sandler is set up to be a nice guy, who consoles our sobbing heroine after she learns that her ex-husband is getting remarried. Then he tries to kiss her. She rebukes him for his poor timing. He gets angry, starts insulting her, and treats her horribly for much of the film…and I’m pretty sure you, the viewer, are supposed to be saying, “Yeah! That’ll teach that stuck-up chick!”

The “video games in the real world” special effects are pretty cool, and it’s not the movie’s fault that the trailer shows all of them. I’ll accept that being good with a track-ball and a fire button somehow translates into being more skilled at shooting centipedes out of the sky with a laser rifle than the military, because this motion picture is not supposed to be realistic.

Yes, the beginning is specifically set in 1982, when they send the tape into space that is found by the aliens, and the movie doesn’t give a s**t about whether the games represented actually existed in that year, but I don’t…okay, no, I have to admit it, that kinda irked me.

Q*bert talks. Who the hell decided that Q*bert should talk? The whole POINT to Q*bert is that he speaks in random gibberish!  Didn’t they see Wreck-It Ralph???

Anyway, what I guess I’m saying is: Pixels is terrible.

WOLF HUNT(S) For Cheap!

It’s SALE TIME! That’s right, this week the Kindle editions of Wolf Hunt and Wolf Hunt 2 are only $1.99! That’s a lot of blood and body parts for not a lot of money. Buy one. Buy both. Buy Wolf Hunt and read it really quickly before the sale ends to figure out if you want to buy Wolf Hunt 2. Or be a rebel and read Wolf Hunt 2 first! You have the power!

Get Wolf Hunt right HERE and Wolf Hunt 2 right HERE.

Tell everybody!

“Immunity” In Your Ears

Episode 24 of the Bare Knuckle podcast is live! And, by golly, it contains a reading of my short zombie tale “Immunity” read by host Pete Mesling, who also reads a story by Ray Garton, in addition to one of his own. Check it out! It’s freeeeeee!!!

http://thebareknuckle.blogspot.com/2015/09/episode-24-garton-strand-mesling-radio.html

Welcome to September!

I’ve been posting regular (brief) writing updates on my Tumblr blog. It’s not meant to be a fascinating blog (especially since all I’m really working on these days is my fantasy novel The Odyssey of Harriett) but for those of you interested in that extra bit of stalking material, it’s there!

I’m more than a third of the way done, which would be halfway if this were a normal-length book by me. But it’s going to be my longest novel, so I’m only a third done. I’m looking forward to arriving at the point where I’d be completely done if this were a normal-length book.

Did I mention that Benjamin’s Parasite is back on Kindle? Of course I did. It’s only one blog update down. But I’ll save you the time of doing all of that tiring scrolling, and give you the link RIGHT HERE. When people say they like my books, I don’t tend to say, “Which one was your favorite? Which one was your favorite? Tell me, dammit, I’m needy!” but if I did that, I’d guess that Benjamin’s Parasite would make the top five.

Hey, look, it’s the link again! That way, if you missed clicking it in the previous paragraph, you don’t have to move the mouse pointer all the way back up there. C’mon, reward my considerate nature!