It's time to get infected...

I have just finished Justin Cronin's book, The Passage...

At the end of the book, heart in mouth and palms sweating from more than just the clammy English summer, I did something that I haven't done for a while - I found myself flicking a few pages back, skim reading again, turning the last page and staring at the last few blank pages. As if there was something I'd missed... As if by doing this I could make there be more or the promise of more...

Damn you, Cronin!

The Passage is a sprawling epic, very much in the style of Stephen King's The Stand, bringing a refreshing take on the vampire mythos that will have the Twi-hards shuddering... "I don't like it, they're not pretty like Edward, but maybe beneath the glow they have melancholy souls... Maybe if I give one a hug? God! Noooo! Garrrrrrrrrr-herrrrtzzzz... Blerg..." Sorry, a bit distracted there.

The Passage is the tale of a virus, found in bats in the arse-end of some evil heat-drenched jungle. Everything, as you would imagine when mixing said virus, government scientists and a tale of horror, goes horribly, bloodily wrong and gets wronger and wronger with every page. Until the Earth that once was, is gone and all that's left is a pocket of humanity, clinging to the light, no longer living, just surviving. Add to this a special child who seems older than her years, some feisty women, broken families, a brother with itchy feet, a geek or two and millions of glowing feral creatures that want to rip nine in ten of them apart - leaving one in ten with a bite that will forever change them...

This is The Passage.

This is the return of the Vampire as a thing to be feared.

This is a return to horror as a survival epic that makes us glad to be alive when-ever we close the pages.

This is a book that will infect you, just as those metallic teeth gently cut into the soft flesh of the one in ten spreading the disease, a biblio-bite that will leave you wanting more and wanting everyone else to read it as well.

I haven't felt like this for a while, felt exhausted from the journey of reading and catapulted from another universe at the end. Another world which though deadly and full of hurt, I miss and would re-enter in a heartbeat because I miss them, the people I met, the friends made and lost and the story left unsaid...

To say I loved The Passage wouldn't convey how I feel, parts of that book terrified me and I cried more than once. I think my reading life would have been less without it.

But there is a problem... I want more! And now! Luckily in an online interview Mr Cronin said that this wasn't a tale that could be told in one book, but something that would take three to accomplish...

So where is it?

What do you think you're doing, doing a US and UK tour to promote the book when you should be writing?

Seriously though, it's a great, scratch that, phenomenal, no... A superlative novel and I'd like to thank Mr Cronin and wish him all the best on his tour and with the next two books. Just... Faster would be better...

You can read about the creation of The Passage at the end of the product description of the book of Amazon and I can't help but think that it won't be too long before Justin Cronin's daughter, Iris, has a book out of her own...

Check out the following websites for some scary video footage of infected attacks and more info on the book and author:

www.findsubjectzero.com

http://enterthepassage.com

* * * * *

Justin Cronin will be appearing Monday 5th July at 6:30pm at Norwich Millennium Library, Norwich, UK. Tickets are £2 available from the library or Norwich Castle Street, (01603 767292). This may be our only chance to see him in this neck of the woods, before he becomes too cool for East Anglia and the infection becomes too widespread...

Addicted to the cowl...

I will openly admit that I have an addictive personality and that when I get hooked on a game I pretty much don't do anything else... But I think I only get maybe two or three games a year that I love that much. If that. And some games you play through only because you've started them... A game unfinished is a half eaten cake, it seems a shame to waste it. Although there have been a few I've turned my back on with a smile hoping they wither in misery unopened for months on end, knowing they are unwanted... You know your names...

The first Assassins Creed was a little like that. I started it, enjoying the design, landscapes, plot and game play but found the controls increasingly irritating, until in the end I gave up and cursed it to gather dust behind the pile of favoured titles.

My brother bought us the second game for Christmas '09 and I was unsure until I played it. Everything that I loved about the first game is there, the beauty in the animation, the amazing location designs, crisp rendering and morally ambiguous behaviour – but the controls are a dream. No more creeping up behind someone to slip a knife between their ribs and suddenly pulling a sword – ninja stealth fail. There is just a grace of movement and the perfect balance of flesh and metal – assassination as ballet, with a rogue-ish smile.

I won't deny that there have been times when I've launched myself off of a building to crumple a good six storeys below, due to poor aiming and that there have been moments of pure Tomb Raider vertigo, sweating palms as I try not to look down... (I know it's only a game! But heights totally freak me out!). But I consider those to be faults in the player rather than in the game. No one's perfect, right? But this game comes close – even to the extent that there's some Assassin Tomb raiding that would put Lara to shame.

I think the thing that makes me love the game the most are those moments when it pauses to revel in its own beauty, usually at the top of a synchronisation point. There is a haunting beauty about seeing your character perched on the top of a lighthouse at night, sparks from the fire below floating up past him towards the star filled heavens – followed by the dive down that you feel certain is going to break him in half. (Most of them a four-scream-Lara fall...).

Then he jumps out of the straw and struts away, letting hay fall from his clothes with a swaggering nonchalance...

Now where did I put the controller?

* * * * *

I wrote the above love letter to Assassins Creed II a fair few weeks ago, shortly before finishing the game. Between then and now...well, I got the craving to climb high places, dive into straw, slip that sharp silver between deserving ribs...

I bought Assassins Creed again and gave it another try and going back to it I have no idea why I had problems with it in the first place; the game is exquisite. Yes, there are improvements that they made in the second game that I miss in the first; the day to night game transitions are glorious and really add a dimension to the sneaking and posing at the top of towers; the ability to swim and dive from high points into water; and the story line is a leaner stealthier beast. But... Damn it, I'm as addicted to the first game as I was to the second and that says something.

It just goes to show that first impressions can be wrong; sometimes when you don't get on with a game, it's not the games fault - you just haven't developed enough as a monk impersonating, knife wielding dealer of death to appreciate it.

The problem I now have is that I and the hubby are competing to use the Xbox - he wants to shoot slack jawed yokels in cowboy hats and put women on train tracks, and that's when he's not wandering around in the dark, snivelling into his torch and wondering where all his flares went. Me, I just want to collect flags, kill the oppressors and climb real high. If this keeps up we may have to buy a second Xbox.

Now there's an idea...

Colds and damp sand

If anyone out there has the cure to the common cold, stop being selfish and share... I think I've either had one cold for five weeks or two colds humping each other for the same duration... I'm getting to the point where I'm prepared to either napalm it out with alcohol and curry or marry the damn thing - Table for two Mrs Twistedwitch-Cold?

Whatever... The last couple of weeks have been a harvest festival of book reading and dvd/tv watching; I cruised through the Steig Larson trilogy, read a couple of urban fantasy titles, a children's fantasy, a horror proof I've had kicking around for about three years and am now ignoring all else for a proof that just may be the next big thing... I'll let you know when I've finished it. Tv-wise, we've just finished watching the final episodes of Lost and 24 and one was really cool and the other was a meta-physical shambles. I'll leave it up to you to decide which was which.

Whilst we haven't made it to the cinema for a few weeks, we keep catching up with films on dvd and Holmes has to be the most recent viewing of note. I have to admit, I wasn't impressed by the trailers at the time, but Downey Jnr really stole the show. The film was a tangental re-telling of the essence of Sherlock Holmes, were he too self absorbed to be socially aware, smug with his incredible intelligence and somehow charming and utterly irritating at the same time... Like House in a frock coat really... The whole film looked authentic enough to soot up your eyeballs and Downey Jnr yet again proves that he's more than just a clothes horse for a cool costume.

Writing... I've done some. We're working on Cheesemint scripts at the moment and I have a short story to try and cobble together in the next week mixing myth and military, so wish me luck. But here's some of the random writing practice that came up in the last week - it started off really nostalgic and golden and turned swiftly towards the sitting-in-the dark-rocking-and-babbling with very little warning. Sorry about that. I'll try and curb that next time...

Deeper Than Damp Sand

The rope trails down the rock face and frays into nothing miles away from the waves kissing stone below. I could remember when there once used to be a path here, little more than a wish clinging onto the cliff and you hung onto the rope for dear life as you crept around the corner to get to the beach beyond. The beach that couldn't be seen from land or sea.

I glance behind me, thinking I hear footsteps scuffing the impacted earth and there's no one there, only the breeze shaking the brambles. I keep looking back, expecting the faces from twenty years before to tumble around the corner, sunburnt and their hair salt-styled from the sea... Somewhere above me I can hear a bird singing, its song mixing with the sea and wind into a perfect moment of summer.

The tension in my gut draws me back to the frayed rope and I grab it, feeling the years coiled in my hand. As if with one pull, the world could cast off years, the path would scramble from the sea to cling to the rock, the lines would fade from my skin and the air would be full of familiar laughter.

“Just jump in, stop wasting the summer...”

I hear him, just like he's there and I spin round, the smile already on my face. But the path's empty, just bramble shadows and dreams.

I look back at the sea and lean over the end of the path, holding onto the rope as I watch the waves below. The water looks less blue now, like grey metal buckling a long way away. My knuckles are the colour of bone around the rope and my skin looks wrapped tight enough to split, all scars and lines.

The singing bird darts out from the hedge behind me and flutters out over the sea, swooping in its song. Before I know what I'm doing, I've kicked off my shoes and jumped. Feeling the wind rush to encourage me, the sun sparking off of those giggling waves.

The water is a cool slap, knocking laughter into bubbles as it pulls me into its blue embrace. I fight to the surface and let the laughter peal, hearing it bounce off of the cliff and ringing back at me like a memory. I tread water, surprised at its warmth, glad that the summer heat has been seeping into it for months. I flip the hair from my smile and start swimming for the curve in the cliff and the beach beyond.

The sea laps my ears as I turn the corner doing a careful breaststroke and there it is, the beach where we used to spend most of our summers. Apart from the path, nothing has changed, the cliff's shielded it from erosion and it remains a sweep of golden sand, with a few boulders bathing in the shallows.

I find the sand beneath my feet and wade through the water to the dry sand, hot and oozing through my toes. I turn, taking it all in, the shelves cut into the cliffs by the sea, the perfect sand, the sky like a polaroid from every summer that ever was. If I close my eyes I'll be eighteen again, standing here at the start of the summer, waiting for the magic to happen.

I open my eyes and walk over to the closest rock, sitting with my bare feet in the water and feeling the heat in the stone drying my clothes. I sit facing the cliff, trying to remember, where it was, where to dig...

My knees sink into the warmth of the sand as my fingers burrow deeper, into the damp layer abandoned by sea and sun, digging until my nails hit metal. The biscuit tin is heavy with emotion as I pull it from the sand, the red paint infected with a crust of rotting wet metal. I go back to the rock, back to the sunlight and rest the cold metal on my lap, watching the sea and listening to the melody of the coast.

I don't need to open the tin to know what's inside it, we each left something behind that summer; my battered yellow Walkman, Rory's horror book he was reading at the time, Paul left the folding knife he'd only just bought, Joe, the watch he'd had since he'd been twelve. And Si...Si left something else, something too big to fit in the tin. Si left his boat, buried in the sand beneath, like a warped Viking funeral, the oaks tucked beneath the seats beside bottles of water, wine and salt, and a bloodied travel blanket.

The thing inside the blanket we all left. A friendship ended, an accident, a body – whatever you'd call it. Our secret. Our oath to silence. Our lives forever changed by dumb bad luck, too many drunk teenagers on a boat and a friend caught in the undertow and washed up on our favourite beach the next morning.

I close my eyes and tip my head back into the sun, listening to the seagulls fight high above the waves. The tension in my stomach has gone now. It wasn't nostalgia dragging me back here, just guilt and sadness buried deeper than damp sand.

I go back to the hole and brush the thin layer of sand from the blanket, feeling something shifting beneath, things that were once joined, now rattling loose like promises in a tin. I put the box back and fill the hole, smoothing the sand flat with slow hands. Then I lay down and let the sun sink into me, lulling me to sleep as I wait. If I wait long enough the tide will wrap me in its whispers. If I wait long enough I'll be eighteen again, surrounded by friendship that could last forever.

If I wait long enough I won't care that there's no way off of this beach.