[Review] The Soulkeepers

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I've known GP Ching for a while after discovering her shorter works through the #FridayFlash phenomenon on Twitter, and I've always found her to be an absolutely lovely person, not to mention incredibly supportive of other writers. When I discovered she was releasing a book, I was naturally excited to read it since I already knew I enjoyed her writing.

The Soulkeepers is the first book in a planned series (book two, Weaving Destiny, is slated for September 2011). The blurb reads thus; The night sexy and mysterious Abigail Silva comes to Jacob Lau's bedroom window, he doesn't believe she's real let alone a supernatural force who lives just across the street. Abigail says she's his Helper sent to train him as a Soulkeeper, a gifted warrior responsible for protecting human souls. But Abigail has secrets, and as Jacob is pulled into her strange world, he learns those secrets could cost him his family, his girlfriend, and even his soul.

It's a really interesting concept, and like nothing I've read before. Jacob seems to be your usual teenager struggling to fit into a new school in a new town after his mother disappears. He has trouble with the "popular crowd" and can't wait to get out of this dull new town that he hates so much. That might seem fairly run of the mill, but not many teenagers begin their books by coming back from the dead. Nor do they see their mothers fighting monsters. Most of all, they're not usually Soulkeepers - Jacob has a mystical bond with, and power over, the element of water. He encounters the local botanist, Dr Silva, who turns out to be a lot more than she appears, and she starts training him up to be able to fulfil his destiny. Along the way, he gets himself a girlfriend in the shape of Malini, a fellow social outcast.

If the word 'soul' gets you thinking that this is probably a bit deeper than your usual "teen with a superpower" fiction, then you'd be right. It's not just about teenagers throwing tantrums and pouting all over the place (are you listening, Bella?) In The Soulkeepers, Jacob encounters questions of faith, both in humanity and in a higher power, and the book really kicks things up a gear when we meet the villains of the piece - the fallen angels. They're a truly nasty bunch, which leads to an amazing setpiece between our hapless heroes and the demons in disguise, but I won't say much more because I don't want to spoil it.

Now, I've always been a sucker for angels (Michael is my favourite, in case you were wondering) but having had a fairly secular upbringing, I'm not overtly keen on religious fiction. However, GP has such a knack for storytelling that The Soulkeepers is a less a story about religion and more a story about finding faith - it doesn't necessarily have to be in a particular deity, even just faith in the universe itself will suffice. Jacob's quest for peace with the Almighty could be substituted for anything - hell, if Dr Silva was two feet tall and green, then Jacob could easily be the young Skywalker.

As far as characters go, GP has created a cool bunch here. Jacob is moody but with good cause, and Malini strikes me as being that quiet, shy kid at school who would actually be a really awesome friend if you bothered to say hi. The relationship between them feels very genuine and unfolds at just the right pace. Dr Silva is completely badass, and I actually found myself warming to her more and more as the book went on. However, favourite character has got to be Gideon - you'll see why.

All in all, I really enjoyed The Soulkeepers, and got so engrossed that I think I read the last quarter of the book in one sitting. I highly recommend it, and I award it five blunt pencils!

You can check out more about the book at its website, www.TheSoulkeepersSeries.com. You can also buy the paperback from Amazon, as well as the Kindle version, and if you have a non-Kindle e-reader, The Soulkeepers is also available from Smashwords!

Print is Dead

Tweet I noticed this the last time I watched Ghostbusters, but then my boyfriend found this and sent it to me on Facebook. As I'm a devout Egon fan, I thought I'd share it with you to prove that all these bloggers who think they're so clever by predicting the end of print have actually been outdone by a character from a movie that came out in 1984. Suck on that, Konrath.

Here be monsters

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In the wake of the hysteria surrounding vampires and the never-ending obsession with zombies in popular culture, and to a lesser extent werewolves, I've been rather fascinated by the other monsters that I feel have been somewhat ignored. While the rest of the world tries to decide whether it prefers blood-sucking, lycanthropy or good old fashioned flesh-eating, I've been sat here championing the cause of mummies. Look at the all-powerful Imhotep when he's been fully revived at the end of The Mummy. Who would you rather have, a sparkly disco vamp with possessiveness issues, a moody werewolf who has a worse time of the month than you, a shambling rotting corpse who is truly more interested in your brains than your beauty, or an immortal sorceror from Ancient Egypt? Ooh toughie. (N.B. I feel compelled to exempt Carrie Clevenger's Xan Marcelles and Sam Adamson's Northern Vampire from my comments, as they're both ace)

I actually wrote a mummy story a while ago. True, No Flash is more of a vehicle for my pent-up rage regarding tourists and the fancy cameras they don't even know how to work, but it still stars a mummy. Naturally my fascination with ghosts and spectres knows no bounds, particularly due to my fondness for a particularly dashing Cavalier known as Fowlis Westerby, but I'm not averse to writing corpse brides either. A few weeks ago I decided to resurrect the skeleton from the B-Movie Monster graveyard, while changelings got in on the act soon after. I finally dipped my toe in the waters of science fiction with Evolution, and I think it was at this point that I suddenly realised what I was doing. I was exploring the idea of monsters.

Humans have had monsters for thousands of years. True, those of the cavemen were probably not as imaginative as the Minotaur or the Hydra, but they would be monsters nonetheless. Classical mythology is rife with monster stories, and when you think about it, Lucifer has provided an entire religion with a boogeyman for centuries. We have monsters to justify our fears, but also to create a sense of control. Abandoned buildings can be unsafe, particularly at night, so what better way to keep people out than to install a wandering ghoul who will eat your soul if you venture inside? And how many children have been told that a monster (usually of their parents invention) will get them if they don't do what they're told?

Monsters make excellent metaphors, too. Vampires are often made to stand in for the dangers of illicit passion, while zombies represent the power and threat of the mindless mass. An entire sub-genre grew up around the fear of Communism in 1950s Hollywood, with the best example by far being the 1954 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. No one watching the film can possibly forget what sector of society the Pod People are intended to represent. It says a lot about the engulfing fear of the time that later versions feel neutered and sterile by comparison - indeed, the fear has not been successfully transposed onto another enemy.

In a lot of ways, monsters represent a particular facet of Sigmund Freud's theory of the uncanny. Freud talks about many principles which engender uncanny feelings in a person, but the one relevant to monsters is that of the so-called "return of the repressed". Rather, a person forces their fears, guilt and doubts into their unconscious through repeated acts of repression, but rather than staying there, these feelings return to plague the person. In many ways it is a form of paranoia, in that the person projects these feelings into the space around them (see Robert Wise's The Haunting for a masterclass in this) but in the case of the monster film or story, these feelings take corporeal form in the shape of the monster that plagues them. I took that incredibly literally in Calling All Skeletons, when the past actions of an aspiring politician come back to bite him in the ass, but writers and artists have been dealing with this for years. Some call it karma - I call it uncanny.

Over to you. What kinds of monsters do you enjoy writing, or reading about? And more importantly...why?

Photo Prompt 40

Tweet Latest prompt, ready and waiting.

If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.

The fortieth prompt is Gateway.



All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!

Massive announcement

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It is my honour, privilege and pleasure to announce that my very first novella will be coming out within the next few months! The Guns of Retribution will be published by the super awesome Pulp Press on 24th September 2011, with the Kindle edition coming out slightly earlier.

Some of you may know a bit about my novella already, but I've tried to restrict myself from talking about it on here in case I inadvertently jinxed myself (how's that for promotion?). I'm indebted to Rob Diaz, Carrie Clevenger, Sam Adamson, Jen Brubacher and Adam Byatt for their invaluable assistance during the beta-reading and editing stages. I spent some months writing The Guns of Retribution earlier in the year and I'm so relieved that it'll see the light of day.

The Guns of Retribution is a revenge tale set in the Old West, centered around a young bounty hunter named Grey O'Donnell. You may have heard Grey's name most recently after I described how he came through on a ouija board to say thank you during a paranormal investigation. Accompanied by his apprentice, Billy, and an orphaned Apache named Mahko, Grey is on the trail of Blackjack Bud Hudson, who is wanted for murder. Hudson leads him back to Grey's home town, Retribution, which is now a pit of debauchery run by the crooked sheriff, Jasper Roberts. Grey's return reminds Jasper of their chequered past and they end up on a collision course - only Grey isn't the only one out for Jasper's blood.

Image by http://www.cgpgrey.com/

I set The Guns of Retribution in Arizona, and I did a fair amount of research to ensure that while yes, it's a pulp story, it's also a reasonably accurate one. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, and working with Grey proved to be an eye-opening experience - he not only chose his own occupation, he also dictated the choice of point of view, and made plenty of plot suggestions of his own. I truly hope you love him, and the book, as much as I do.

Of course, September's still a fair way off, so in the meantime, I can't recommend the other Pulp Press titles enough, particularly Danny Hogan's Jailbait Justice, which I reviewed back in April. It's still only 70p in the UK, and 99c in the US, which is an absolute BARGAIN considering how utterly ace it is.

Friday Flash - Evolution

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This story has been taken down as it is now out for submission!