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Month: March 2021

[NEWS] Smarch Updates

Smarch Updates

Smarch? You’ve never heard of Smarch?

Click on the Youtube link. (It’s work safe, honest)

Convention News:

December’s Rhode Island Author Expo is still on and should be in person. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.

Boskone was a well attended virtual con was enjoyable from my living room.

Look like Necronomicon 2021 is not going ahead as originally planned and has been pushed to 2022 along with San Diego Comic Con. I’m happy both of these conventions decided not to attempt 2021.

Book 1 News:

While book 2 is plugging along and the price of the ebook version book 1 is $0.99 on every electronic platform.

Music News:

Last bit of news is I’ve found on Youtube some hour long ambience music from Star Wars and while I have a lot of the soundtracks already, it’s nice to hear some ambience music while I write. The ads popping up are easily ignored.

RKB’s Picks:

 


The Head on Amazon Prime is a murder mystery set in the cold tundra of Antarctica. A multi-national team of scientists face several months in darkness before the summer team arrives but when they do they only find two survivors. Overall, the series if a fun watch even if the flashback style of story telling can get a little grating and deafens the suspense since the first episode shows all the dead while the series unspools with their demise one by one. Overall: 4 out of 5.Beast Wars: Transformers on Tubi and Transformers War for Cybertron on Netflix. Growing up in the 80’s I was raised on afternoon cartoons so Transformers, GI Joe, Robotech, Captain Harlock and such turned me into a nerd. Doctor Who circa Tom Baker on PBS and Star Trek: TNG on Fox just cemented it.So when Transformers The Movie came out in the 80’s, it was the first taste of PTSD since a lot of the Gen 1 Transformers died in order to make way for more toys. I have no idea who thought purple was a good color scheme but wow there’s a lot a purple in Galvatron’s crew to the point of squinting and several minions all look the same.

Beast Wars Transformers is one of the better Transformer shows because while it is a show based on merchandise, the characters and stories weren’t aimed at kids. The characters and their voices are unique enough to make them all stand out (Rattrap, Dinobot, Blackarachnia, Megatron) and yes, while some even die their deaths aren’t just throw away to make way for new toys. The Gen 1 nostalgia doesn’t kick into high gear until the end of Season 2. At nearly 50 episodes, the show is worth watching beginning to end.

It gets a five out of five.

I would disregard it’s direct sequel: Beast Machines. It’s completely different animal and while it tried something different it was too different and not as enjoyable as Beast Wars. It’s bad when a few of the voice actors flip out at the fact their characters have changed so much. Sure, it’s the same characters and voice actors but the writers swung and struck out.

Transformers War for Cybertron could learn a few things from Beast Wars. While the show among a few other Transformer shows have decided to focus on the Cybertron before Gen 1, it’s a good nostalgia attempt that only fails on two points in my opinion: 1. Too short a season doesn’t allow for the characters to stretch. It feels like it’s rushing at points. 2. The male voice actors don’t do any favors due to too many of them trying to sound gruff. The woman voice over actors are dead on perfect and make them rememberable.

I bring up both of these series because War of Cybertron Volume 3 dips into Beast Wars continuity if the last shot of Dinobot has anything to say about it.

It gets a four out of five.

eBook Giveaways!

An awesome collection of sci-fi eBooks are available in the month of Smarch!
An even bigger collection of sci-fi eBooks are available in the month of Smarch!
Free eBook from Patty Jansen.

Novel Spotlight!