Theme Song and BookBanter Interviewed Update

Just wanted to give BookBanter Readers an update on two items: the original BookBanter theme song that I was working on, and the short film where BookBanter was interviewed.

Theme Song: Work continues on this as time and schedules allow. I’m working with my good friend Chris Fletcher, who has the software, the instruments, and is the brilliant musician behind it all, while I “produce and supervise.” “Summer Nights,” as the theme song is titled, is about 3/4 of the way there. What’s left is to lay the Spanish guitar track down and then it’s just a case of tinkering, refining, and fine-tuning to make it sound perfect and to make sure the length and timing is right. I’m very pleased with how the theme song came out, so my plan is to run it at as the opening of the podcast and then to continue at a lower volume as I begin my introductions for the episode. And at the end of the episode, the theme will return with a grand finale send off. But at the moment Chris and I have very different schedules, so its hard to meet, coordinate, and work on the recording. However, every free moment where we can link up we will. As to when the theme song will be ready, I’m not certain and don’t want to make any guarantees, but I will make a hesitant guess and say possibly by the end of the month.

BookBanter Interview: I don’t think I ever really talked much about this other than through Twitter updates, but about six weeks ago BookBanter was filmed and interviewed for a piece about how media and media creation has changed, as it is no longer necessary to be employed by a profitable film company to create good quality media material. BookBanter is the perfect example, in that it is a podcast that I started from scratch and was able to record, put together, produce, and upload on a podcast site all with almost free software and programs. But it was a fun 20-minute interview with various shots of me at my place, recording, using my typewriter, and a nice view of what I call the “wall of books.” The last update I heard from the person who recorded the interview was that he was working on editing it and would be uploading a copy to me some time this week. So this should be appearing hopefully some time in the next seven days or at least in the near future. I will likely link to it here, on the blog first, and then feature it on the BookBanter site in some way.

And that’s the scoop on that; will let you know once I get any more news or updates.

Death Troopers a la carte

Just wrapped up reading Death Troopers a couple of hours ago, and for my first Star Wars Universe book, I really enjoyed it. It doesn’t quite get the full five out of five stars, or four out of four “books” according to the BookBanter rating scale, for a couple of reasons which I will get to after talking about what I liked about the book.

Death Troopers employs a perfect recipe for a great horror novel, with a multitude of key ingredients. When cooking the perfect horror dish, it is always important to have some necessary base ingredients (like your flour, butter, eggs), such as darkness, space, the unknown, a virus, zombies, vampires, etc. Sometimes multiples of these base ingredients can be combined to make a stronger dish, where the extra “minor” ingredients simply add to the already good story.

Death Troopers excels in combining a number of these base ingredients. You have:

1/2lb of outer space
3 tbs of the unknown
1 qt of zombies
6 oz of blood and gore
2 cups of virus

And what makes the dish especially tasty are the extra ingredients:

1/2 L of the “sitting on the edge of your seat fear that everyone just might die” feeling
1/2 cup of cool Star Wars spaceships
1/4 cup of cool Star Wars references
A pinch of some familiar characters who show up

Death Troopers is a fantastic thrill ride that starts out as seemingly ordinary, well, as ordinary as a prison barge in a galaxy far far away can be, with little going on, and then goes to hell and pandemonium real soon, ratcheting up the stress, fear and excitement with the turn of each page.

The only things not giving this book a perfect review are:

1) The book weighs in at around 230 pages, and I was left wanting another couple hundred;

2) If it were a longer book, Schreiber would’ve had more time to explore the interesting characters he created, and more of their back story;

3) Also he would’ve been able to explore the reasoning behind the virus and the zombies; he does a fine job of explaining them, but the ideas was so cool that I wanted more.

Still, Death Troopers served (pun intended!) to pique my interest in the Star Wars novels, and clearly this is Del Rey’s intention as the book features a couple of chapters from Aaron Allston’s Star Wars Fate of the Jedi, Book 1: Outcast. Plus there’s a handy timeline (as I’m sure there is in every Star Wars book) listing how each and every Star Wars book fits into the continuity of the six movies.

After finishing Death Troopers, one wonders if Schreiber may be returning to the Star Wars Universe, and possibly within his own horror storyline.

I’ll be sure to ask when I interview him on Tuesday.

Now on to his other book: No Doors, No Windows.