Month: December 2021

Writing and Life Combined — Amy Long- Writer

I’ve managed to find a tribe, a writing tribe, that understands the difficulties in balancing writing with everyday life. Specifically, motherhood! It is a wobbly, disjointed, dance of time and attention. When you have young kids like I do, the demands on your time are especially high. I’m lucky that both my boys have started […]

Writing and Life Combined — Amy Long- Writer

THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR. (2020) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR. (2020) BASED ON THE WRITINGS OF HENRY JAMES. A NETFLIX DRAMA CREATED BY MIKE FLANAGAN.
STARRING VICTORIA PEDRETTI, CARLA GUGINO, HENRY THOMAS, AMELIA EVE, OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN, TAHIRAH SHARIF, T’NIA MILLER, RAHUL KOHLI, KATE SIEGEL, BENJAMIN EVAN AINSWORTH AND AMELIE BEA SMITH.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is the companion series to THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, and, as far as I know, there are more to come, so yay. I enjoyed them both but, as in HILL HOUSE, there’s an awful lot of repetition in BLY MANOR that could have been chopped out, reducing the sprawling series from nine episodes to a tighter, more condensed six or even seven.

The story is basically a modern day re-telling of Henry James’s chilling novella, THE TURN OF THE SCREW, brilliantly filmed as THE INNOCENTS in 1961, in which two wealthy orphaned children are haunted, if not possessed, by the ghosts of two deceased servants. Bly Manor is the seat of most of the action, and fans of a good linear style of story-telling will be tearing their hair out after only a couple of episodes, so be warned, lol.

Dani Clayton is the pretty young American au pair who comes to Bly Manor to care for eight-year-old Flora and ten-year-old Miles, whose parents died in an accident in India, where they’d gone to try to repair a troubled marriage.

Dani is engaged by the children’s uncle, the stiff-upper-lipped business toff, Henry Wingrave, who only wants to be notified by Dani if someone actually dies or has a leg hanging off. And, even then, the doctor should still be the first port of call. Henry has his reasons for being stand-offish. Henry has his secrets. They will all out, in time.

The staff at Bly, besides Dani, includes Hannah Grose, the housekeeper, Owen the chef- yep, little Timmy and Tammy Snot-Nose have their own Paris-trained chef, the little snots!- and Jamie, the female gardener (yes, I suppose women can do that job now if they like), who takes a shine to Dani. A shine which is reciprocated. A reciprocated shine. In short, lesbians, lol. In a Henry James television adaptation, of all places, who’d have thunk it…? Well, it’s 2020 here, after all.

There are a lot of dead people floating around Bly Manor, including but not limited to Miss Jessel, the previous governess who committed certain deeds upon her own person, and Peter Quint, her lover and Henry Wingrave’s sort of go-fer or valet. Dominic and Charlotte, the children’s posh parents, are still hanging around as well.

People who die at Bly don’t seem to know they’ve died. It’s a real problem, and causes a lot of congestion in the passageways. I won’t spoil it for you by hinting at who’s dead and who’s not. Suffice it to say, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, that Bly Manor is the kind of place where people throw ducks at balloons and nothing is as it seems.

Doors open here into the past, the present and even the future. Faces appear at the window, or in the bath-water. It’s like a carnival of the dead, and no-one ever moves on to wherever they’re supposed to go to when they croak. What they need here is some kind of conductor, you know?

‘That’s right, move along here now, no queue-jumping, we’ll all get where we’re going in plenty of time. ‘Ere, wot you fink you’re doing, skipping the queue wivvout a ticket? Lord luv-a-duck! You’ll be the death of me one day, you lot will. ‘Ere, you! I thought I said NO BLEEDIN’ QUEUE-JUMPING…!’ And so on, etc.

The episodes in the middle are so repetitive they’ll do your head in and could easily have been slimmed down to make for easier viewing. The presence of the plague-doctor and the Lady in the Lake are explained eventually, which I appreciated.

Ironically, my favourite of all the nine episodes was the black-and-white one near the end, in which the origin story of the ghosts of Bly Manor is laid out for us. The story of the two noble sisters, Viola and Perdita Willoughby-Lloyd, is gripping and really, really sad.

The scenes with Viola locked in the room that represents death, until such time as her sister inadvertently frees her, really captured my imagination, and as for the Lady of the Lake, doomed to fade over time like cushion covers in the sun (Every mother ever in the summer; ‘Quick, the sun’s out, close the curtains! The sun will fade the cushion covers!’), well, I loved that story but wept over it too. It’s just too sad, and yet, we’ll all end up the same way, won’t we? It’s too sad to even contemplate…

The gorgeous Carla Gugino from GERALD’S GAME and THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE is narrating the story to an American wedding party. Victoria Pedretti is excellent as the au pair who won’t give in to the ghosts who are trying to take Miles and Flora. There’s more to like than dislike about this Gothic drama-slash-ghost-story, I think, and, overall, I enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to the next instalment in the series.

THE HAUNTING OF WOKING PIZZA EXPRESS, maybe, an emporium sure to be haunted one day in the future by the ghost of a non-sweating monarch who only ever wore a suit when he came to town and had never been upstairs in a certain person’s house, so that couldn’t be him in the photograph? We viewers are eagerly awaiting confirmation…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

4 reasons why ebooks are better than physical books — INKISH KINGDOMS

Are ebooks better than physical books? That depends on the reader but we give you some reasons why some people think they are better This is not a discussion, nor a fight, nor our intentions are to piss the sensibilities of those die-hard lovers of paper books. Our intentions are to share with readers why we read […]

4 reasons why ebooks are better than physical books — INKISH KINGDOMS

PANIC ROOM. (2002) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

PANIC ROOM. (2002) DIRECTED BY DAVID ‘FIGHT CLUB’ FINCHER.
STARRING JODIE FOSTER, KRISTEN STEWART, FOREST WHITAKER, JARED LETO AND DWIGHT YOAKAM.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I love this brilliant home invasion film. I watched it in the cinema in 2002 and was completely blown away by it. It’s a slick thriller that any writers would do well to study if they want to learn about plot, and the plotting of a good, tight story. The film-makers take a simple enough premise as the basis for a story, then just keep ramping up the tension till the whole thing explodes in a massive crisis.

Jodie Foster is excellent as Meg Altman, a recently divorced woman who moves into a fantastic four-storey brownstone in New York City’s Upper West Side. Her millionaire ex-husband is in pharmaceuticals, so he can afford the rent, and he now lives with a supermodel, the prick, after breaking up his marriage.

With Meg is her pre-teen daughter, Sarah, played by a boyish-looking but unmistakable Kristen Stewart from TWILIGHT. The house is miles too big for them, of course. What the hell do a woman and a child want with all that space? The house lends itself perfectly to the plot, however.

On their first night in the huge, largely empty old house, it’s dark, windy, rainy and altogether spooky. Three men break into the house. When Meg spots them purely by accident on the security cameras in the panic room next to her bedroom, she grabs up a sleepy Sarah from the floor above and the pair of them flee for safety to the panic room.

Irony of ironies, the reason the three men have broken in is in the panic room, i.e., a stash of cash or bonds hidden there by the house’s previous occupant, a millionaire. This means that the terrified mother and daughter can’t just sit out the robbery in peace and comfort in their panic room. Those three guys are hellbent on actually coming in…

Forest Whitaker plays Burnham, who installs panic rooms for a living and works for the security company who services this particular house. Jared Leto plays the millionaire’s spoiled, bratty grandson, who’d prefer to steal his Grandpa’s bonds and keep them all for himself rather than wait for everything to be doled out legitimately in the will.

The third guy, Raoul, is a real loose cannon, a thug brought along by Junior. Raoul doesn’t care if he kills or maims anyone on this job, and that’s the difference between him and Burnham. Burnham doesn’t want anyone hurt and is deeply unhappy with the fact that the mother and daughter have moved in to the house a few days earlier than they were expected to.

Burnham is the only thing standing between Meg and Sarah and the nasty ugliness of Raoul’s foul nature and Junior’s greed and impulsivity. Will he come through for them? Add to all of this the fact that Meg gets claustrophobic when in small spaces and Sarah is prone to diabetic comas and needs her glucose injections. From a special bag. Which is not in the panic room. Oh, and Meg hasn’t connected the panic room phone yet…

The tension just keeps being ramped up and up, as I said earlier, until everything all spills over into a breath-taking climax. Jodie Foster, even though I believe she was pregnant at the time, is particularly athletic and throws herself all over the place in a really impressive manner for the duration. I just love the film, anyway, and I have good memories of seeing it in the cinema. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it too. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234
 
  

THE GREEN MILE. (1999) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE GREEN MILE. (1999) BASED ON THE BOOK BY STEPHEN KING. DIRECTED, WRITTEN AND CO-PRODUCED BY FRANK DARABONT.
STARRING TOM HANKS, DABBS GREER, MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN, DAVID MORSE, BARRY PEPPER, JEFFREY DEMUNN, HARRY DEAN STANTON, SAM ROCKWELL, JAMES CROMWELL, BONNIE HUNT, PATRICIA CLARKSON AND DOUG HUTCHISON.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a phenomenal film, three hours and nine minutes of sheer brilliance, although people often have trouble with its length. Not me, though. I loved every second of this intensely emotional and multi-award-winning movie. It was perfect viewing for Christmas Night this year, when we really wanted something to take our minds off the bad COVID news…!

Tom Hanks is absolutely fantastic as prison officer Paul Edgecomb, who, in 1935- during the Great Depression- is in charge of Death Row in America’s Cold Mountain Penitentiary. He runs a tight ship, but with kindness and compassion as his watchwords rather than cruelty and harsh discipline.

Agitated men are likely to riot, he maintains, but treating condemned men with calm dignity goes a long way towards keeping things serene in the sad and lonely part of the prison they call ‘the Green Mile,’ due to the colour of the floor covering…

Paul is helped in his work by Brutus Howell, Dean Stanton and Harry Terwillinger, all of whom are really good, decent men who share Paul’s ideas around keeping the men calm and feeling as good and positive as they can feel, given where they are…

The one bad apple on Paul’s staff is Percy Wetmore, who, because of his connections at the prison, seems to get away with the worst behaviour possible towards the inmates, whom he loves to taunt, bully, torment and openly remind about their destination, the electric chair, as if they needed reminding.

You’ll be rooting for a suitable come-uppance for Percy all the way through the movie, as his actions towards the inmates become ever more despicable. You will not be disappointed, but I’ll say no more. No spoilers here, lol.

The biggest thing happening on Paul’s Green Mile during this particular year is the arrival of the physically enormous but quiet and child-like black man known as John Coffey, ‘like the drink, but not spelt the same.’

Played magnificently by the sadly deceased Michael Clarke Duncan, John Coffey has been accused of the worst crime a black man can commit, the rape and murder of two pretty little white sisters. There seems to be no doubt as to his guilt, as he’s been caught red-handed with the bodies, so to speak.

After John Coffey ‘heals’ Paul of the worst darned urinary infection he’s ever had in his life, simply by laying hands on the affected area- much to Paul’s surprise!- Paul and his staff come to realize that there’s something extraordinary about this gentle giant.

When he brings Mr. Jingles, a very special player in this eye-opening drama, back to life after a particularly disgusting act of violence by the power-crazed Percy Wetmore, there seems to be no doubt at all about John Coffey’s healing powers.

Paul and his men start to wonder if the big man mightn’t be able to do something for the prison governor’s wife Melinda, who is dying an especially horrible death from cancer. Dare they chance it…? It’s all to play for, folks.

In the case of Death Row inmate Edouard ‘Del’ Delacroix, Percy Wetmore’s sadistic act of omitting to wet the sponge that goes on the head during electrocution shows us two things clearly. One, Percy Wetmore is the worst kind of lowlife, and the poorest decision the otherwise sound Paul Edgecomb makes in the whole film is to let Wetmore have a hand in Del’s execution.

Secondly, a method of execution that can cause a man to burn to death in agonising pain if someone neglects, deliberately or otherwise, to wet the sponge that goes on the head, is barbaric and needs to be changed. The electric chair, aka ‘Old Sparky,’ was probably one of the most brutal ways to take a man’s life by order of ‘a judge of good standing.’

I’d personally prefer to see the death penalty abolished worldwide, but, if it must take place, then something painless, something that allows the person just to slip away quietly without knowing that it’s happening, is what’s needed.

The penalty, after all, is to deprive the prisoner of his life for what he’s done, and not to have him endure the physical torments of hell while that life is being taken away from him. Right? Okay, lecture from a bleeding heart liberal over, lol, but there’s a lot of food for thought there.

Except just to say that the recently deceased Harry Dean Stanton plays a prison trusty in the film called Toot-Toot, who is happy to lend his living body to Paul and his men when they need to do a practice run on Old Sparky.

It says a lot about them that they take the job so seriously, and don’t want to make an inmate’s experience of electrocution any worse or more painful than it needs to be because of any mistakes or slip-ups of theirs. Too late for poor Del, though, unfortunately.

The film is book-ended by two modern day pieces in which Dabbs Greer- the Reverend Alden from LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE- plays an elderly Paul Edgecomb, relating the story of John Coffey’s miracles to a lady friend in a nursing home.

The film also has a bit of a supernatural twist to it involving the wonderful Mr. Jingles, truly the bestest mouse performer in a film ever. If only Mouseville were a real place! Mr. Jingles would be celebrated every day like the little rodent superstar he is, and dine nightly on the finest cornbread till it was coming out his mousie ears.

THE GREEN MILE is one of Stephen King’s best ever movie adaptations. I’d waste no more time in watching it if I were you, that’s if you haven’t already. Enjoy it, but keep a box of tissues handy. (No, not for that, you perverts!) Trust me, it’s a weepie to rival even TITANIC. Happy Christmas, anyway, and a happy and prosperous New Year to you and yours. And God bless you, Mr. Jingles, wherever you are.

      AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234

Kate’s Review: “Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?” — The Library Ladies

Book: “Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?” by Harold Schechter and Eric Powell (Ill.) Publishing Info: Albatross Funnybooks, July 2021 Where Did I Get This Book: I own it. Book Description: One of the greats in the field of true-crime literature, Harold Schechter (Deviant, The Serial Killer Files, Hell’s Princess), teams with five-time Eisner […]

Kate’s Review: “Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?” — The Library Ladies

On Becoming A Writer: Linda Lee Lyberg

Go Dog Go Café

An important part of every writer’s journey is the transition from seeing ourselves as “someone who writes” to seeing ourselves as writers.  We asked all the Go Dog Go Baristas to tell us a little bit about their journey as a writer.  We hope you enjoy learning more about the Baristas and are inspired by their stories.

LindaWhen you did you start writing?

I have written all of my life, mostly for those close to me. I started to get serious about my writing in February 2017.

What kind of writing do you do?

I write various forms of poetry, and short stories.

Where do you find inspiration for your writing?

A lot of my writing comes from personal experience. Nature inspires me, the supernatural intrigues me, and I love a story with a good hook at the end. I surround myself with books, and read all types- from instructional…

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