Dean Koontz, Watchers [review by starlight]

"We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness." 

Watchers is an early suspense novel from Koontz, which cemented his career as a best-selling author and competitor in the horror/sci-fi genre Stephen King had already begun to dominate. The premise is clearly imaginative - Travis Cornell has come to believe that he is cursed to a life of love and loss, and he comes across an incredibly intelligent dog in the wilderness of the Santa Barbara mountain range in California. At the same time he feels he and the dog are being tracked by an unnatural, inhuman stalker, which at first he takes to be a mountain lion or something of the sort, but he is soon filled with such a primordial fear that he feels something else is prowling after them. The dog, named Einstein for his human-like intellect, finds ways to communicate his fears to Travis, who has to uncover two mysteries - how did this freakishly smart dog come to be a stray wandering a forest, and what is Einstein so afraid of?

Christopher Paolini announces new Eragon book, entitled Inheritance (Nov 8, 2011) [breaking news musing]

An announcement came out from Alagaesia.com, sharing the title of the last book of the Inheritance Cycle. It's called Inheritance. Very original.

The last book, Brisingr, also suffered from a lack of an original title, although it may not seem so. The word means fire in Paolini's elvish/magical language, and was pretty much the obvious choice. Brisingr was released in late 2008, so the coming of Inheritance has been long in the making, and readers were quite demanding of news for the final installment. Now we've been given the release date, November 8 2011, so we can prepare for the final 6 months before the book is finally available, 3 years after its predecessor.

So I know what I'm rereading and blogging about over the summer. I'm curious as to whether I will still enjoy Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr as an adult reader. I guess I'll let you know.

Black Holes and Revelations, A Stellar Muse Album [review by starlight]

Our hopes and expectations/Black holes and revelations

I am in no way qualified to review music. Sure, I've been listening to the stuff for the greater part of 22 years, but I am not a musician. I can't comment on the subtleties and complexities of texture, or the talent required to compose and play these songs. But I've been wanting to discuss Black Holes and Revelations on my blog for some time. It has some very interesting speculative aspects to it, and I'd like to recommend this record to anyone who likes new prog rock... or just music at all. I think it's really accessible to anyone. Even if pop music is your thing, songs like Starlight will catch your attention.

Twitter turns 5 today - happy anniversary, tweeters [breaking news musing]

It's twitters fifth anniversary today. The first tweet was sent on March 21st, 2006.

Just wanted to take a second to say what I like about Twitter. I've always liked to have an outlet to speak my mind, which is a pretty obvious thing for a blogger to say, but it's true. Before my first blog (on xanga), I loved when MSN got that status bar type thing where you could post song lyrics, a funny thought, a description of yourself etc. I liked that I could post something personal, or not, and that it wasn't intrusive because no one would see it unless they were looking for it. If they wanted to talk to me or wanted to know what's going on in my life, they could see this little blurb, but otherwise, they would never have to see. And I can be very annoying with my random thoughts!

Atheist Tales - It's coming [story time by starlight]

Here's the website. Still not available to order yet but today it was published. Just waiting on distributors.

Follow on twitter @atheisttales. There's also a page on Facebook.

Thanks for the support!

What is Atheist Tales you ask? Check it out here.