Authorpalooza at Dog-Eared Pages

Today, I hit a new milestone for Apocalypse Later: I participated in my first author signing event, Authorpalooza at Dog-Eared Pages in Phoenix. I sold as many books as you can count on neither hand, but I had a blast anyway, catching up with wonderful authors I already knew and discovering wonderful authors I didn't, learning all the way. Here's where it begins and I can build from here.

Dog-Eared Pages is a real discovery of a used bookstore nestled away in a strip mall in northeast Phoenix. The address is 16428 N 32nd St, Phoenix, AZ 85032. To make it even more awesome than any used bookstore is to begin with, it's run by an author, Anna Questerly, whose historical trilogy for young adults, The Minstrel's Tale, I bought a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed.

I found myself sat indoors out of the Arizona sun on what became known as the 'accent table', given that it housed one strange Englishman in a kilt and one lovely French lady, Vijaya Schartz, who writes novels that refuse to be categorised.

I loved how she described her sales pitch: her main series is 'science fiction with sex' to potential male buyers, but 'romance with science fiction' to the female equivalent. Really, she writes science fiction and romance all in the same book, unless she's writing historical, romance and fantasy, all in the same book. Why be pigeonholed?

The same could be said for Vijaya herself. Beyond writing over twenty novels, she acted on stage and television, sang in cabaret and exhibited paintings. She earned a place on the French national gymnastics team, obtained a black belt in Aikido in Hawaii and studied yoga in an ashram in India. In her spare time she has hosted a radio show and run most of the local author organisations. She certainly keeps herself busy.

While her covers range from hard science fiction to traditional romance, it's her Chronicles of Kassouk series, beginning with White Tiger, that stand out the most, with their elegant font and their striking images of the eyes of big cats. It's always these that people hone in on first.

I didn't check, but Vijaya may have written the oldest book being signed, as the earliest of her many novels dates back to around the year 2000. The author I've seen around the longest, though, is Kris Tualla, who we first bumped into at the Glendale Chocolate Affaire, a great place to meet local mystery and romance authors.

She writes several series of historical romance and suspense and is doing her best to put her setting on the romantic map. 'Norway is the new Scotland' she proclaims, having written a whole slew of novels about the Hansens, set as far apart as the 14th and 19th centuries. She's currently filling in the gaps in between.

Her newest books are A Discreet Gentleman of Mystery, the fifth in her Discreet Gentleman series, and the novella In the Norseman's House.

Emmy-nominated journalist turned contemporary romance author Morgan Kearns is a regular at local book events too. Her website suggests that she's approached 'random young hotties' to ask them to pose for her book covers, but I didn't get a second glance today. I'm only three words short of joining that company!

As the baseball jersey she wore today highlights, many of her romances tie to sports, which her Deadlines & Diamonds series suggests is apparently a popular combination. I'm not big on those wacky American sports, though, so I'm more likely to pick up her vampire playboy series, The Gossip of Mysterious Lane.

Sharing Morgan's table was a bubbly lady going by two names.

Under her real name of Sharon Arthur Moore, the one she taught under for 39 years, she writes historical fiction, women's fiction and culinary mysteries, a delightful genre if ever I've encountered one. I adore the title Mission Impastable, the opener for her Dinner is Served mystery series. It's followed up by Prime Rib and Punishment.

She uses the exotic pseudonym Angelica French for her steamier erotic romance novels, like Streetwalker and Sex for Sale, which feature Carrie, a prostitute who hates sex, and Harlan, who runs a bordello.

Another author I've seen before is Ethan Russell Erway, who I found at Phoenix Comicon last year, drawn in by the excellent covers of his two adventure novels for children. They centre around the character Michael Belmont, who I've heard described as 'Indiana Jones meets Harry Potter'.

He also writes science fiction, with his Bleeding Star Chronicles currently in its fifth volume, all of which are collected together in an anthology. I hope his steampunk series, beginning with the novella, Blowing Off Steam, makes it into print sometime soon, but we may need to wait for the whole series to complete first.

V S Nelson was a new name to me today, but she's been keeping busy turning out epic fantasies the size of doorstops. They're easily recognisable as the purple books, which works well, and they mix up genres in a similar way to Vijaya Schartz.

The Sekhmet's Guardians series are paranormal, romance, adventure, historical, you name it. Just don't blink or there will be another doorstop ready to go.

Braving the Arizona sun with a charming accent was Camelia Miron Skiba, who apparently writes multicultural romance. I never knew how many subgenres there were.

Her Dacian Legends series have covers that leap out, all black and white with a single other colour sneaking in to catch us unawares. Hidden Heart looks rather enticing too.

I was on something of a budget today, but I couldn't resist picking up a book from Fran Orenstein, a lady who may just write in a different genre for each day of the week, or at least for a differently aged audience.

Her titles are well picked ones that leap out: Death in D Minor, The Mystery of the Green Goblin or The Spice Trader's Daughter. Best of all may just be Fat Girls from Outer Space, which isn't what you think; it's a contemporary novel for tweens.

It was The Book of Mysteries that I snapped up, a collection of three fantasy adventure novels for young adults (The Wizard's Revenge, The Gargoyles of Gothica and The Centaurs of Spyr), because anything that revolves around a disappearing bookshop run by a magician has to be in one of my signed bookcases. The fact that the cover looks rather like a cyclops grichle was just icing on the cake.

Fran was nestled inside Dog-Eared Pages, just on the other side of the Bargain Books area, with a couple of other authors.

Science fiction author Alan Black's mother explained in one anecdote why Amazon reviews are so important. I've been told before that if a book reaches the 50 review mark, which is much harder to do than it sounds like it should be, Amazon will promote that book. When Metal Boxes reached that target, Black became the Amazon Author of the Week, and promptly sold 4,200 books during that period. That's like Easter, Christmas and Wookiee Life Day all at once.

Black's science fiction novels sound like throwbacks to the great stories I grew up reading, courtesy of my mother's home library. They're described as 'young adult science fiction military action adventure', but to me they sound like Heinlein's juveniles, which I recently re-read in entirety. Chewing Rocks is his other sci-fi yarn, but he also writes general fiction (the Ozark Mountain series, with Bernice Knight) and comedy (Chasing Harpo, about an orangutan on the lam).

Last, but certainly not least, was Kiki Swanson (who is not to be conflated with KiKi Swinson, who Google seems to want me to look at it instead).

Swanson is a former Presbyterian church leader who writes fictionalised versions of real historical stories. If I didn't have to get back to my own table to try to sell my own books, I could happily have talked to Kiki for the rest of the day.

Perhaps her books, like My Will Be Done and Yes, I Can!, could be best described as stories, as they sound like wells in which to dive and experience, the most enlightening of books to read.

And that wraps up Authorpalooza, except for that strange Englishman, the only author attempting to sell non-fiction today and clearly not finding the right audience. Just to make this post complete, I should mention my two books about film. The covers are at the top of the page.

Huh? An A-Z of Why Classic American Bad Movies Were Made looks at 26 different reasons why people thought it might be a bright idea to make movies and explains through 26 different movies why they weren't quite so bright after all.

Velvet Glove Cast in Iron: The Films of Tura Satana runs through every feature film and every episode of a TV show credited at IMDb that Tura Satana, the star of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! appeared in.

Many thanks to my better half, Dee Astell of Countess Chaos Creations, who took all the photos.

I've linked to each of the author's pages above, but here's a list for easy reference with fresh links.

Dog-Eared Pages: http://www.dogearedpagesusedbooks.com/
Countess Chaos Creations: https://www.facebook.com/CountessChaosTheChronicler

Alan Black: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alan-Black-Paperback-Writer/259372705810
Ethan Russell Elway: http://www.ethanrussellerway.com/
Angelica French: http://www.angelicafrench.blogspot.com/
Morgan Kearns: http://www.morgankearns.com/
Sharon Arthur Moore: http://www.sharonamoore.com/
V S Nelson: http://www.authorvsnelson.com/
Fran Orenstein: http://www.franorenstein.com/
Anna Questerly: http://www.annaquesterly.com/
Vijaya Schartz: http://www.vijayaschartz.com/
Camilia Miron Skiba: http://authorcameliamironskiba.com/
Kiki Swanson: http://www.kikiswansonbooks.com/
Kris Tualla: http://www.kristualla.com/

PFF and IHSFFF 2014

I'll be posting much more on these events in the future, as they're the cornerstone of film in the Phoenix area, but the schedules have been posted to the Phoenix Film Festival's website for both the Phoenix Film Festival and its sister event, now subsumed into it, the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival.

As these pages are designed to help festival goers figure out how to schedule their day, the index pages I've posted to Apocalypse Later might help those also interested in the sweeping scope of the festivals, especially as I also link to the IMDb pages for each film. These will remain in place after the festivals finish for future reference. I'll link each title to my reviews as I post them.

Here's my index page for the 2014 International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.

Here's my index page for the 2014 Phoenix Film Festival, now in its 14th year.

I'm buzzed to see some of the titles on offer, especially Mike Flanagan's Oculus, his widely acclaimed follow up to my favourite film of the last decade, Absentia, which won Best Horror Feature in 2011. Bizarrely, it's advertised as playing on the horror/sci-fi side of the event, but listed in the schedules as part of the mainstream side. Whichever side it's really playing on, I'll be there with bells on.

Other films I'm keen to see on the PFF side are the opening night film, Locke with Tom Hardy (though that will be tough to get into), The House That Jack Built from Henry Barrial, who made the 2012 Best Sci-Fi Feature winner, Pig and the enticing feature 45RPM. The competition features were so good last year, I can't wait to find out how the Phoenix Film Foundation have followed up with this year's selection.

On the horror/sci-fi side, there's Sion Soto's Why Don't You Play in Hell?, which beat out Oculus for the top honours at TIFF Midnight Madness this year, Fangoria editor Chris Alexander's Queen of Blood and The Sacrament, whose director, Ti West, will be there to present his film.

Running Wild Filmography

Regular readers at Apocalypse Later will know that my first review of every month is of a movie from Running Wild Films.

I just posted March's choice, which is Belly of the Whale, their entry into the IFP Phoenix Breakout Challenge. You can find my review here, and if you like what you read, you can watch it for free at YouTube.

This all started back in July 2012, when I was working through the Arizona Shorts selection from that year's Phoenix Film Festival. Purely by chance, my first review that month was Shine Like Gold, directed by Travis Mills, who had co-founded Running Wild Films with Gus Edwards. Even back in 2012, Mills had become a prolific filmmaker and it seemed like a laugh to review another of his films, The Ruffians, when August came around, and so on. After all, I'd catch up soon enough, right?

Well, a couple of years on and 21 monthly reviews later, plus reviews of a couple of features in between, I'm not remotely catching up. In fact, Mills is rocketing away from me, having set and achieved the insane target of making no less than 52 short films in the 52 weeks of 2013, all adapted from stories in the public domain. Those were screened en masse at a three day festival at Mariscos Vuelve a la Vida, a charming Mexican restaurant at 16th St & Roosevelt. It's hardly the first place you'd expect to attend a film festival but it was a memorable event.

Each of these 52 films can now be watched online through Vimeo on Demand. Cost is $26 to rent them all or $52 ($1 a film) to buy them all. They can be rented or bought individually too. I'll be reviewing all these films starting in July. If Mills can make 52 films in 52 weeks, I can review 52 films in 52 weeks, right?

One thing that Mills said during a Q&A session at this festival was that Running Wild Films had made around 80 movies. I knew he was understating the case immediately, given that the 52 films screening that weekend plus the 22 I'd already reviewed at that point come close on their own and there were many left for me to watch. The question was how many they actually have made and the answer wasn't apparent.

So I did some research and conjured up this list. It's entirely not official, but hopefully Mills or Edwards can give it a once over, then fix my mistakes and fill in the gaps. I've included links to my reviews and to the IMDb pages, where they exist, along with ratings from my better half and I, as per Apocalypse Later standards.

My current count is 103: 48 short films, plus the 52 from his self imposed 2013 challenge, and 3 features to boot. Others are in the works, of course, some of them completed but not yet available. Their next feature is Duel at the Mound, currently surpassing its target at Kickstarter.

For those interested, my favourite is still The Big Something, their quirky debut feature, while the best, in my humble opinion, is probably The Memory Ride, in the version that strips the original ending.

Rating System
1 - Abysmal | 2 - Bad | 3 - Poor | 4 - OK | 5 - Good | 6 - Excellent | 7 - Classic

Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
The Big Something	2011	5	5	Travis Mills	IMDb
The Detective's Lover	2012	4	4	Travis Mills	IMDb
The Men Who Robbed the Bank	2013	4	4	Travis Mills	IMDb

Short Films
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Man/Woman/Motel Room	2010	5	5	Travis Mills	n/a
The Night Life	2010			Travis Mills	n/a
Hate	2010			Gus Edwards	n/a
Encounter	2010	4	3	Travis Mills	IMDb
Absolution	2010			Gus Edwards	n/a
The Young Wife	2011	4	4	Travis Mills	IMDb
The Gardener	2011			McKenzie Goodwin	n/a
The Guitar	2011			Gus Edwards	n/a
The Blind Man	2011	3	4	Travis Mills	IMDb
Detective's Calendar	2011				n/a
Last Kiss at Sunset	2011				n/a
Five Things a Detective Does in the Dead of Night	2011			Travis Mills	n/a
Two Voices	2011			Gus Edwards & Travis Mills	IMDb
Night Train to Phoenix	2011	5	5	Travis Mills	IMDb
Detective Shaves	2011	2	3	Travis Mills	n/a
Augusta: The Plainfield Ghoul	2011				n/a
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot	2011	4	5	Travis Mills	IMDb
Comanche	2011			Travis Mills	n/a
The Sunset Limited	2012	3	3	Travis Mills	n/a
Therapist	2012	4	3	Travis Mills	n/a
A Month in Mississippi	2012			Travis Mills	IMDb
Off Track	2012	5	5	Travis Mills	IMDb
Just Cause	2012	5	6	Gus Edwards	n/a
Dad	2012				n/a
The French Spy	2012	3	3	Travis Mills	IMDb
The Memory Ride	2012	6	6	Travis Mills	IMDb
Escort Driver	2012	3	4	Travis Mills	n/a
Friday Nights Alone	2012	5	4	Travis Mills	n/a
A Little Haven	2012			Travis Mills	n/a
Itty Bitty Bang Bang	2013	5	5	Travis Mills	IMDb
I Don't Even Know Your Name	2013	4	4	Michael Coleman	n/a
1	2013				n/a
2	2013				n/a
Food in the Alley	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
Boykin	2013	5	5	Travis Mills	n/a
Wander in the Dark	2013	4	4	Boban Gligoric	n/a
The MacGruffin	2013			Kyle Gerkin	n/a
Banana Justice	2013	3	3	Travis Mills	n/a
Star Babies	2013	6	5	Travis Mills	IMDb
The Lady of New Orleans	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
Ranch Hands	2013			Christopher Murray	n/a
Perorities	2013			Colleen Hartnett	IMDb
Spectacles	2013			William Long	IMDb
Mozart/Beethoven	2013			Nathan Foley	n/a
Catch the Frog	2013	5	5	Travis Mills	n/a
Foster, You're Dead	2013			Kyle Gerkin	n/a
Belly of the Whale	2014	5	5	Kyle Gerkin	n/a
Little Man in the Boat	2014				n/a

52 Films/52 Weeks
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
The Sisters	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Bartleby	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
Two Hearts That Beat as One	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
You Touched Me	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
An Encounter	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
Araby	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
A Little Hero	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
I Want to Know Why	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
Two Gallants	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Head and Shoulders	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Other Woman	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Kiss	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
The White Stocking	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
A Respectable Woman	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
A Desertion	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
A Painful Case	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
The Bookkeeper	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Liar	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
The Thief	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
Horseshoes	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
My Roomy	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Harmony	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Useless Beauty	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
Counterparts	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Return	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
A Mother	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Tennessee's Partner	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Catastrophe	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Three Strangers	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
A Lodging for the Night	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Cask	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Young Goodman Brown	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
Berenice	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
A Watcher by the Dead	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Man of the Crowd	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Country of the Blind	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Grace	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
The Captain's Story	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Test Case	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Devil and Tom Walker	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
A Little Cloud	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Clay	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
A Pair of Silk Stockings	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Bum	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
After the Race	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
A Day in the Committee Room	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Eveline	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Boarding House	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Locket	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
Out of Season	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb
The Dead	2013			Travis Mills	n/a
A Piece of Steak	2013			Travis Mills	IMDb

Hello World!

Hola and welcome!

I'm Hal C F Astell, the critic in a kilt, and I've been writing movie reviews at Apocalypse Later since 2007.

I'm proud of that site, which has evolved considerably since its early days. It now contains well over two thousand reviews which, between them, add up to well over two million words. I've also expanded into print, with Apocalypse Later Press publishing two books in May 2013, as you can see from the covers up there under the logo. There are more on the way.

While there was never a focus to begin with, Apocalypse Later gradually found one in reviewing the sort of films that most reviewers don't review: short films, microbudget films, old films, foreign films, etc. For instance, this year, amongst the film challenge reviews, festival reviews and new genre reviews, I'm also covering all 36 of the films Charlie Chaplin made in 1914, his debut year on screen, posting each review a hundred years to the day after they were originally released. Here's #5, Between Showers, posted today on its centennial. I also have many other projects already in process or planned for the future.

So Apocalypse Later is going from strength to strength, and that's the only place it's going, but it's very deliberately only a movie review site and I'd like to keep it that way. It's becoming clear that I need somewhere else to post all the other things I'm writing that aren't movie reviews. For instance:

- It would be great to have a place where I can highlight when filmmakers quote my reviews on DVD covers or in film trailers, when I'm referenced on Wikipedia or when another blogger says something really cool about me, like this page at The Thin White Dude's Reviews that ranks Roger Ebert and I in the same set of four reviewers.

- With two books behind me and more on the way, I need a venue to highlight where I'll be doing book signings (like the next Authorpalooza at Dog Eared Pages in Scottsdale, AZ on 29 Mar 2014) or convention panels about movies (like Phoenix Comicon from 5-8 Jun 2014). Come on down for a return to last year's popular panel about the Awesomely Awful '80s!

- I'd like to be able to point out when I hit a new monthly sales record... like today, for instance. My books have been out for ten months and I've done next to no publicity, building sales through word of mouth and search traffic to Apocalypse Later, but February just trumped last December as my best month thus far.

- I'd also like to highlight new customer reviews of my books on Amazon. You know, Amazon publicise books with fifty or more customer reviews; each of mine has a puny three at the time of writing. I'm starting to get out there myself and review books I've enjoyed by other local authors. Hopefully they'll return the favour.

- Since early 2013 I've been programming mini-film festivals at local conventions, like LepreCon, CopperCon, DarkCon and, next weekend, Wild Wild West Con at Old Tucson Studios (7-9 Mar 2014). It's going to be a real treat to screen steampunk short films in the saloon set that has been seen in so many classic westerns (and more recent ones like The Three Amigos). I'd like to be able to tell you where and when I'm going to be, what I'm going to screen and where you can see some of these wonderful films if you can't make it to the events.

- I've been writing articles about local Arizona film for the WOD, a free monthly newspaper, but previewing events is difficult when publication dates are inconsistent. I need somewhere where I can post whenever needed. This is especially important when trying to maintain a monthly sweep of upcoming local film events (festivals, premieres, screenings etc). The web also allows me to add in any that aren't pointed out to me in time for publication.

- While my main focus is on movie reviews, I've reviewed books, music and even a play in my time. It would be useful to have a venue to post these things online under my own banner.

- I often get asked by filmmakers who submit their work for review at Apocalypse Later whether I can post anything other than a review. There's plenty of news, even after reviews are published. Some films don't see a release until long after I've posted a review, while others land local screenings or major festival appearances that are worthy of note. It would also be nice to highlight when films are posted online at YouTube or Vimeo for all to see.

- Most importantly, there's new material to highlight. I'd like to be able to point out upcoming movies by filmmakers I've enjoyed in the past and advertise Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns, like the current one for Running Wild's next feature, Duel at the Mound.

- I don't review every movie I watch, so it would be useful to have somewhere to just throw out odd impressions when I'm not planning a full review. Having worked through every film featuring Jason Statham, my better half and I are doing the same with Johnny Depp, but most of those films are far too mainstream to cover at Apocalypse Later. I'd happily throw up some analysis online, though, if only I had somewhere to throw it. The same goes for our travels through the IMDb Top 250 (I just dropped from 208 to 207 today because Swades, another Indian film I've never heard of, finally made up there).

- And, as Yul Brynner used to say in The King and I, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So, here's the answer to all these scenarios, the cunningly titled Apocalypse Later, Now! It won't replace Apocalypse Later, it'll complement it, especially once I get a different banner up. That site will remain dedicated to quality film reviews; this site will cover everything else.