Soap Box or Mission Statement?

Welcome to my blog!

So whats it all about?  Well ever since I was a child I have been a fan of science fiction, fantasy and in particular horror movies and books.

For me they have always been a way of escaping, of travelling somewhere new and exciting that is more special than buying a plane ticket and just flying to another country - you cant get onto a plane and go visit Khazad-dûm with Gandalf, but you sure can buy the book or watch the movie and stand with him on that bridge as the Balrog comes out of the smoke (I am really looking forward to the Hobbit... ).

Who didn't watch this scene and think Gandalf was the coolest.
I would probably have run at this point though...

Anyway recently I got a new Google Nexus 7 (its not an iPad.  Deal.) and have been getting books on the Kindle app for that which is great because not only can I carry my library with me effectively at all times, but when my wife and I move next we wont have to carry as many books.  Have you tried moving a small library?  Its not fun!

Having said that I have also discovered a minor problem, which I discovered a long time ago with movies: there are lots and lots of ebooks out there on Amazon, but finding the really good ebooks is near impossible without a long trawl through junk.

Thats always been a problem with movies, my wife and I have seen so many really bad B movies over the years, but the thing is that there arent actually that many movies out there and you can usually tell the quality of the movie from if its in the $2 bin at the Reject Shop or not.

A couple of quick Amazon searches illustrate the problem.

Zombie Ebooks
A guilty passion of mine.  Zombies, whether slow (Romero style) or fast (Dawn of the Dead 2004 style) or diseased and gushing blood 28 Days Later style are awesome.  Also possibly done to death according to a lot of commentary I have seen.

A search of Amazon for Zombie Ebooks comes up with 4,776 hits of which only 2,552 have more than 3 stars as a rating - the rest being mostly terrible.

Vampire Horror Ebooks
Come on, we all love vampires.  A search for Vampire Horror Ebooks comes up with a more modest 3,666 hits, again only 1,779 with 3 or more stars, but with the added problem that most of them arent horror at all.  I  don't want a teen romance where a 100 year old vampire is drawn in due to some strange fascination with a 16 year old girl.  Thanks Twilight.  Don't get me wrong those books have their place but I want the Lost Boys that I remember from my childhood (even if I also remember that was just a little bit comedy come teen romance) - scary, evil, inhuman.

Keifer Sutherland agrees with me.  Vampires are bad ass, not sparkly.

Now I happen to love the fact that Amazon lets writers self publish, and that programmes like Kickstarter are helping indie film makers bring their visions to life,  but the side effect of this is the result of those searches; a  large amount of dross to filter through to find the gems.

They are there.

My goal is to find them and post about them here, along with movies that I watch and love.

Hopefully I will also improve my own writing and provide some enjoyable reading at the same time.