Best TV ever
Mario here:


What I'm reading: Alchemystic by Anton Strout.











One star reviews, what to do about them? Over at the League of Reluctant Adults, we take our most blistering one-stars and secretly repost them on our list group, where we gleefully jeer the reviewer. Our comments range from ridiculing the reviewer's poor English skills to speculating on their sexual proclivities and moral failings. But what about responding to the reviews on Amazon? I've read two different philosophies. Elle Lothlorien says to reply to the reviewers directly as a form of customer service. Another successful writer, Collen Collins, takes the opposite approach. She explains that you don't even click on a one-star review because Amazon tracks every click (who doesn't on the Internet?) and the more clicks a review gets, the higher its profile in the search algorithms. She goes on to explain how to "undo" a click.

At the last MileHiCon, CJ Henderson complained that modern television was a waste of time. Melinda Snodgrass jumped back at him; her rebuttal was that television programing has never been better. I have to agree with her. Today's shows benefit from bigger budgets, improved technology, and a lack of editorial restraints that hobbled earlier programming. Who wouldn't want to see an episode of the The Dick Van Dyke Show where the writers could've cut loose like Seinfeld or The Big Bang Theory?

Like many of you, I've gotten hooked on the great serial dramas offered by cable. What we fiction writers can learn from these shows is that they are all essentially soap operas. We are drawn into the lives of the heroes and villains and we tune back every week to catch up on the foibles of our favorites.

The Sopranos is over and done with. We hold our breaths for the absolute final season of Breaking Bad. In the meantime, what show should I sink my chops into? Despite the recommendations, I couldn't latch onto Battlestar Galactica or Dexter. The Walking Dead...meh. Mad Men lost me. I enjoy historical pot-boilers but was disappointed by Magic City. The premise is great: vice and corruption in Miami during the Rat Pack years. Visually, the show has a beautiful Mid-Century aesthetic and it hits the right historical notes. However, the gangster tropes repeat every mobster movie that I've seen. Boardwalk Empire is another series that I'm tepid about. Again, the set design and costumes...amazing! The historical backdrop...ching! ching! ching! But the character focus is too scatter shot, the plot complications too Byzantine (to the point I feel the need to take notes), and the narrative lacks much urgency.



So what's at the top of my Netflix queue? Hell on Wheels. It's an engrossing and unflinching look at life during post-Civil War America. We know the railroad was built across this country but do we realize that every foot of rail line was originally laid by hand? It's obvious if you think about it, but you have to see these teams of men hacking at the ground with pickaxes and sledge hammers to appreciate the effort. Every character brings a rich backstory: poor-mouth Irish immigrants, freed slaves smoldering at the humiliations they're forced to endure, former rebel soldiers traumatized by defeat, Native Americans about to get buried by ruthless "progress," camp prostitutes who clutch at dignity. What draws me into the show are the textured moral ambiguities in a lawless land. The show rubs our face in the ugliness and brutality of life on the frontier: a black man gets lynched; the Cheyenne braves are anything but noble; the hero of the show, Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount), plays the most flawed bad ass ever. My complaints about the series are the lack of regular frontier women other than Lily Bell (Dominique McElligott)--not every woman out west was a whore. And I can't believe that men back them could be so cruel to one another. The men in this Hell don't form friendships but alliances.

Labels: Anson Mount, Breaking Bad, Elle Lothlorien, Hell On Wheels, Melinda Snodgrass

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 7:04 PM  9 comments

  Who's your bad ass daddy? Mario here:


What I'm reading. The Coldest War, by Ian Tregillis.











Here's a commercial message to help keep us off the street corner.

I'm teaching at Writers Online Classes. Sign up for, How to Sharpen Your Writing. It's a tough market out there and let me shine a little bit of wisdom by sharing how to add some sparkle to your prose. Whether you choose to scatter that sparkle on vampires, that's your call. We don't judge.

Now to our regularly schedule programming.

The East Coast is about to get pounded by the Frankenstorm, Hurricane Sandy, which in a weird way. gives us a bit of respite from all the campaign hollering.

So to continue giving you a break, let's talk about bad ass characters. What made me think this was this clip I stumbled across from Rocky III, featuring the villain, Clubber Lang. Over the years, Mr. T devolved into a parody, but if you watch this video, you'll see what a bad ass he could play.


Cable TV has also given us a great crop of bad asses, especially Breaking Bad. 


Starting with, Walter White (Bryan Cranston).








The sketchy and scary, the chief goon Mike Ehrmantraut (Johnathan Banks).







The icy and manipulative king pin, Gustavo "Gus" Fring (Giancarlo Esposito).







And no doubt, the baddest ass cop since Dirty Harry, Hank Schrader (Dean Norris).









 Fans of True Blood and Walking Dead have their faves, so chime in.
Only a few more days to the end of the Lego Ghost Train Contest sponsored by the University of Doom. It's an easy way to snag a great present and take the burden off St. Nick's wallet.

Labels: bad ass, Breaking Bad, Clubber Lang, Ian Tregillis, Writers Online Classes

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 8:59 PM  0 comments

  Number One Book Mario here:

While Jeanne is galavanting at San Diego Comic Con and working herself into a lather over Joss Whedon, we here at Biting-Edge Corporate are holding down the fort.


Holding down that fort includes watching the new first episode of Breaking Bad for Season Five. It's no surprise to you that Biting-Edge welcomes hard-boiled noir, the darker the better and nothing on TV comes close to satisfying our jones for grisly, gritty, and bloody as Breaking Bad. Season Four seemed to have ended the big story questions, but no. A lot more intrigue and double-crosses remain.


Breaking Bad fits right in with the book at the current number one spot in my reading queue, Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill. It's a collection of short stories, interwoven into a brutal narrative of crazed vengeance and rural justice. Gander at this amazing cover, illustrative of the desperation and bleakness within the narratives.The writing is not just fresh, but extraordinarily punchy and evocative.











Example:

A tweaker gets busted during a night poaching deer.

The cruiser's door slammed. Boots trailed over the loose gravel. Wayne watched the headlights black out the features of the approaching officer in the driver's side mirror. His right hand gripped the wooden stock of his Marlin lever-action 30-30 in the seat beside him that he had used to kill deer several hours ago. The Need square-danced with the amphetamines in his bloodstream , driving the fever in his brain to a boil, and he opened the door.

An eye-for-an-eye revenge about to go very wrong.


Rusted ringer washers. Gas stoves. Dry rotted tires and busted television sets decorated the flat rock hollows. The country yards of rusted trailers and broken-down farmhouses with abandoned red clay tractors. Vehicles on cider blocks. It was the poor man's fairy tale of rural survival. Hines could smell the survival's waste like the sweat that his pores excreted as he sped down the valley road.

Labels: Breaking Bad, Crimes in Southern Indiana, noir

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 7:42 AM  4 comments