The Amazing Spider-Man

If you enjoy any portion of the superhero trend in movies of the last fifteen years or so (Has it been that long? I don't know...) then you know that recently the Spider-Man franchise has been rebooted from the trilogy made with Toby McGuire and recast with Andrew Garfield as everyone's favorite wall crawler. I have to say that when I first heard (Read?) the news a couple of years back or so that an actor who was considered as a teen "heart-throb" was going to be playing the precocious Peter Parker as well as my favorite Marvelite Hero, I wanted to bang my head against the wall and scream, "Parker is NOT a heart-throb! He's the geekiest damn science nerd who ever crawled out of the high school of obscurity and made people believe that superheroes were actually real human beings!" Okay, maybe I did scream that, but it was in the privacy of my own living room, which doubles as my office, since I am a full-time fiction writer, but there was no one around other than my two cats and all they ever do during one of my rants is yawn, stretch and roll over into a new position on the couch, carpet, dining room table, kitchen counter, my keyboard or wherever else they happen to be laying at the moment.

Still, I puffed out my cheeks, exhaled a whole damn bunch of times and shook my head vigorously before deciding to just wait it out and see how it went with this new actor.

Today I ventured alone, since my son was busy at home with his two kids and his girlfriend's daughter and a bunch of stuff he needed to do and couldn't go with me, although I know he wanted to. I decided that if the movie was any good and worthwhile I would take my son and grandkids to see Spidey later on and shell out the extra bucks for me to see it again, just because that's the way I am with these superhero flicks if I like them.

Naturally I was over an hour early and bought my ticket, then wandered about the mall a bit until I was still nearly an hour early and the previous showing had yet to finish so those within could vacate the theater. When the janitors completed their sweep-through of the aisles I took my place (Some say it's more like I am assuming my throne, since I always take the same seats at the position I consider to be the very best seats in the house and the reason why I get there so early) in my seat and waited through the preliminary features the movie theaters make us slog through these days. I mean, seriously, I DVR all the TV shows I like just so I don't have to watch commercials and have the ability to fast-forward through them and then I pay big bucks at the theater to see those same commercials all the way through. Sheesh. Gimme a break.

The movie finally began and the similarity between Peter Parker and this new, younger actor was immediately obvious. This kid might be a heart-throb to certain teenage girls (Those that are perhaps twelve years old?), but to me he personified the geeky science nerd that is Peter Parker. Okay, one hurdle out of the way, but what about...

As the movie played on the changes were obvious. Gone was the iconic scene where Parker, dressed in his make-shift "Human Spider" costume ventures to the arena so he can make the money to buy himself a car as a wrestler. In its place was...Well, you'll have to watch the movie to know how they went about this area of Spidey's history in order to get Uncle Ben to that place where he is killed by the guy Peter refused to stop for committing a crime. Obviously they wanted this movie to be completely different while still retaining the flavor of the origin story for Spidey and in my opinion, it worked very well and was more up-to-date than using a wrestling sequence.

Once Peter put himself through the paces and Spider-Man was born I nodded my head and decided that yes, this kid was every bit as good in the role of Spider-Man as he was in the role of his secret identity. Two hurdles out of the way.

The actress chosen to portray Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) would not have been my choice, since her eyes were slightly too far apart for my taste and her mouth a bit wide as well, and then she spoke and her voice, which was a bit too raspy, grated slightly on my nerves and eardrums. But throughout the movie she proved she has the ability to act well enough to make herself believable as Peter's first girlfriend, according to the comics, not the old movie franchise, where I always wondered why they had Petey with MJ instead of Gwen, who was his girlfriend in the comics until she was killed by the Green Goblin. There was even a scene toward the very end where everything is getting all dramatic that her portrayal actually made my eyes tears up. I think it was more something getting in my eye at that moment than the story-line, yeah, that must be it.

The one seriously jarring note for me was the way the Lizard looked. Perhaps they were basing his appearance on the most recent Marvel characterization of this scientist-turned-villain, I don't know, since I haven't read the comics since about 1979, but I was used to how Dr. Curtis Connors' reptilian "giant gecko" villain looked in the comics and this grinning gargoyle with the hideous, deep, stupid-sounding voice was not it. There were redeeming qualities to this villain, but his face was not one of them and I am someone who has been waiting for the appearance of the Lizard ever since the very first time I saw Dr. Connors presented as Peter's science professor in college in the earlier franchise.

Okay, I lied; one last thing I did not like about the movie was the ease with which Parker was able to come up with a rubberized Spidey costume. I mean, seriously...in the comics he sews his own costume out of regular cloth and his sewing is shown in the movie as well, but really? Where did this kid even get this rubberized material in webbing pattern, let alone the ability to sew it seamlessly and make it actually work for him without splitting at the seams? And his rubberized booties instead of the socks used in the comics, because, naturally, as every comics geek knows, Spidey has to have a thin material on his feet so his wall-crawling powers will work, right? How does this work when he's wearing two-inch thick soles? Aaarrrgghh! Okay, settle down and just go with the flow, bub, go with the flow...

All-in-all I came out of the theater (The first person in and the last person out, as usual) with the feeling that as much as I had enjoyed Toby McGuire's Spider-Man acting ability, in my mind Andrew Garfield is the new Amazing Spider-Man. I look forward to seeing what he can do in future movies of Ole Webhead.

* * *

Delicious Food and Great Service

Over this past Fourth of July holiday my wife and I went out to the Pacific Ocean (Ocean Shores off the southwest coast of Washington State) for two days. We booked our room at the Quality Inn and although the rates were good (senior citizen/AARP discount applied) and the service was good, the bed was atrocious. We both spent two nights of tossing and turning and being grumpy in the morning and my wife is the type who can sleep anywhere easily. Not here she wasn't. I'm a light sleeper, but once I get to sleep I sleep well and soundly. I never found much in the way of slumber these two nights at this place.

In contrast to our sleeping arrangements, we ate at several restaurants and I have to say that the Home Port restaurant was excellent in every detail. Both times we ate there, for lunch the first time and a late breakfast the second time, we had the same server, Beverly, who was a fun, fireball of a lady with a louder than loud voice, but fun to quip back and forth with and did an excellent job in providing our meals for us.

For lunch the first day my wife ordered the crab sandwich (Of course, as she is a huge crab fan and will eat crab anywhere, anytime if it is available). She had a crab sandwich at another restaurant the previous day and wasn't nearly as pleased with that which she was served at Home Port. She ate every bite and enjoyed it all.

I ordered the Reuben sandwich, which is something I thoroughly enjoy, but often am disappointed with. It seems not everyone knows how to make a Reuben the way it should be made. The Home Port not only makes a great Reuben, but excels in this particular sandwich. I ate every bite as well and licked my fingers clean.

The next morning, once we had everything packed up and in our car and had checked out of the "Restless Sleep Inn" we headed back to the Home Port, hoping to get breakfast. We made it barely in time, as it seems they quit serving breakfast at 11:30 am and it was 11:26 when we walked in. Surprisingly, we had Beverly as our server once more and she remembered us (A plus in a server) and treated us appropriately, which means she insulted me and let me know she tried to have us seated elsewhere, but what she could she really do about it, eh? My kind of server.

This time my wife had the crab omelet (told you, didn't I?) and I had the biscuits and gravy with two eggs (over easy) and sausage links. Once again my wife was working hard to finish off her omelet, not wanting to leave any of that delicious concoction on her plate, though she was overly full when she finished and couldn't even stop for a latte afterward. I hummed and practically sang as I chomped on every bite of my breakfast and really should have remembered to ask to have my eggs placed on top of the biscuits and gravy, as this is how I like them best. The flavor was delicious, the thickness of the gravy was perfect (not soup-thin and not so thick it was brick mortar) and flavorful and the sausages were two short, but thick little fatties that were packed with deliciousness.

Everything was great at the Home Port restaurant, so if you are ever in the Ocean Shore's area of Washington State, stop in and say hi to Beverly while you discover how truly great their food is.

Mmm - mmmm, good!

* * *

DC Goes PC - FAIL!

IN the politically-charged environment within which we live today it seems everyone is concerned with being viewed as being as politically correct (sic) as the next guy. There is certainly no shortage of people who really don't give a rat's ass about the topics society as a whole seems to be concerned with, not the least of which today is same sex gender equality. The religious right wants us to believe that homosexuality is demonic while pro-gay groups seem bent upon telling us if we aren't in favor of gays we are just as doomed as the religious right says gays are.

In just such a malicious environment Marvel Comics Group recently stated they were making a superhero gay (X-Men Northstar will soon be marrying his boyfriend) and DC Comics naturally reacted (not responded, which is a key point here) by stating that one of their heroes would soon be anounced as being gay. Thus, a retired Justice Society member, the original Green Lantern from the "alternate Earth" wherein reside all the superheroes from the 1940s who subsequently were shelved once the Golden Age of comics met its demise at the end of the same decade, was ordained to be the one to "bite the bullet" and become gay. Alan Scott, even though he has been shown to be much older than the Silver Age heroes (those from the 1960s), including his Green lantern counterpart, Hal Jordan (most recently of movie-flop fame), and has a daughter in the comics universe (Jennifer Lynn Hayden, aka, Jade), who has served, among other things, as the first female Green Lantern of Earth.

It seems that in its eagerness to be viewed as "equally PC" as Marvel, DC has injected homosexuality into a character that has such a well-known and definitive heterosexual persona. Those in charge at DC obviously felt they were under the gun, so to speak, in getting a gay hero out front so all could see they were not lagging behind anyone when it came to "being sensitive" to the gay issue, but the best they could do was to reboot one of the most decidedly non-gay heroes they have ever had (Okay, I could see where Superman would be out of the question), but wouldn't it have been better had they introduced a new character or at the very least taken one of their newer heroes who was already enjoying popularity among the younger readers of today, rather than "outing" an old geezer like Alan Scott, even if they did magically rejuvenate him in their newly rebooted DCverse? Certainly there are many heroes out there who could easily fit the bill better than one created over seven decades ago.

My views on this was that DC wasn't and still isn't actually interested in having a gay hero (anymore than Marvel is, but that's another issue - no pun intended), they simply didn't want to be viewed as not being interested. Their grade on this reboot?

"F" for FAIL!

BEST Vampire Story Since Bram Stoker

It's been awhile since this site has seen a new eBook review and the reason is I've not only been busy, but got tired of so much of the crap I was finding to read. Seriously, if you are going to write a book, make it interesting, okay?

Having recently read "Being Mrs. Dracula", by new author Faith Marlow, I decided it was time to dust off my keyboard and write a new review.

Anyone who has ever read Bram Stoker's Dracula novel or even only seen one of the movies made off this classic vampire tale that set the bar for all the others to come, knows that his tale was based upon the true life of one Vlad III Dracula or Vlad Tepes (translated from Romanian as Vlad the Impaler), who was the third son (having two older half-brothers) of Vlad II Dracul (translated as Dragon). Vlad III was also a Prince of Wallachia, the area in Romania which he lived. In the Bram Stoker novel Count Dracula had three wives, all vampires at the time of the telling of this tale, but little is actually known about these women. This is where Faith Marlow's new novel comes into play.

In "Being Mrs. Dracula", Faith Marlow gives us serious insight into the lives of the three wives of Count Dracula (at least from her own point of view). Little is actually known about the real Vlad III's wives (except that he only had one at a time), so this new novel delivers completely new information on a literature level that no one (to my knowledge) has ever covered before. This is a very refreshing approach to an old theme and the most unique vampire novel I have read in years.

Each of these three wives writes in her own voice as she keeps a journal of her life after meeting Vlad III Dracula (Son of the Dragon), which means that initially we hear the tale only from the view of Dracula's first wife, Valeria Karajan-Dracula, a natural-born Romanian herself. Later, after much time has passed and we have a well-rounded view of this union between wife and blood-sucker, the second wife is introduced and then the third. Each has a unique story to tell and does so in her own inimitable fashion.

In most cases I prefer a book that is dialogue driven, but this one, the first novel penned by Faith Marlow, is more along the lines of narrator-driven, which caused me to approach reading it with a careful eye. Soon after beginning my reading I found I was enjoying the words penned by this neophyte author and hated having to put it down in order to get to bed. The next day I was back at it as soon as I could and within a few days I had the entire book finished, but wished there had still been more to read.

"Being Mrs. Dracula" is not only told from a unique perspective (the wives), but is, in my humble opinion, the best vampire novel since "Interview with the Vampire", by Ann Rice, which set the modern day standard for writing such novels. It also is the only novel I have ever read that captured the flavor of Bram Stoker's original and carried it forward with a truly interesting story line. Not only will you learn who these three women were that the most famed vampire of history chose to become his wives, but you will find yourself falling in love with them and the trials and conflicts each one faced as she found herself married to a man most considered at the time to be the cruelest man on the face of the Earth, only to discover there was a reason for his viciousness that most never knew.

Pick up a copy of "Being Mrs. Dracula" from Smashwords. You will be very glad you did.

If we're lucky someone in Hollywood will notice this book and decide to make a movie of it. Let's hope they remain true to the author's creativity.

* * *

Rousing Family Situation

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Family Reunions Can Be FUN!!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Captain America, The First Avenger

Captain America, The First Avenger

    I love superhero movies. Anyone who's read this blog for long knows that and also knows that when I see one I think is exceptional I write about it here, in this eBook review blog. So far this year I've seen Green Hornet, Thor, and Green Lantern. But the best superhero movie I've seen this year has to be Captain America.
.

Why? I thought about that. And to me it's the human factor.
.

Green Hornet was done as a comedy, and although I liked it, still it was a comedy typical of the humor of Seth Rogen, so it really can't even be classified in the superhero category.
.

Thor - well, what can I say about Thor? He's a god. Nothing actually human about him. Sure, that was a movie with lots of special effects and costuming that was superb, but Thor doesn't relate well in the humanity category.

Green Lantern has always been my favorite superhero of all time. Basically I covet his ring. The movie, like Thor, was filled with great action, superb special effects, a great storyline - and Green lantern. At the time I saw GL it was the best superhero movie I had seen all year.
.

But then I went to the theater and saw Captain America, The First Avenger.
.

I've always liked Cap. He's a real guy and he was conceived and created back at the onset of World War II with the idea of having a hero who specifically fought against the Nazis. He brought the war home to millions of Americans in the pages of the comic book he starred in and then, like Batman before him, Cap was given a side-kick - Bucky. The two of them went on to beat the hell out of the Nazis for the duration of WWII, but when the war ended there no longer was a place for the ever-fighting captain.
.

He vanished into Limbo until resurfacing in the fifties to fight the Communists during the "red scare" era. This was a lackluster Captain America, however, possibly because not everyone in America believed in the red scare and felt the tactics being used by those in Government to "fight the Commies" was unconstitutional. They were right.

Then our ever-returning Cap was resurrected once more in the early sixties, being found frozen and subsequently placed in suspended animation. All traces of the fifties-red-scare-Captain were scrubbed from the pages of comics with the return of the real Captain America.
.

This is the Cap we pick up on in the movie: Captain America, The First Avenger.
.

A crashed plane is located in the arctic and once it is uncovered the frozen body of the erstwhile Captain is discovered - suspended in ice by the process that turned him into America's answer to Hitler's "super soldier". That's when we turn back to the early forties and get our first glimpse of...
.

Steve Rogers - the man before the Captain. Steve is a little man. He's short. He's weak. He can't possibly weigh more than ninety pounds soaking wet with a towel wrapped around him. Bullies single him out to be their target, because he's such an easy mark. He obviously can't fight, but he refuses to back down. That makes for a lot of bruises and busted up ego. Steve doesn't care. He hates bullies.
.

But the worst thing about Steve Rogers is that America has just gotten involved in WWII and enlistment is at an all-time high across this nation. Men are signing up in droves to head over to Europe and fight the Nazis. Steve Rogers? He's classified as 4F. That means he's rejected as unfit for combat duty. He's a sickly, underdeveloped wimp in the eyes of the doctors examining him and they know if he ever gets even close to a battle line he'd get his ass kicked in seconds. No sense in sending an American boy overseas when you know beforehand he doesn't stand a gnat's chance in hell of coming back alive.
.

But there's nothing Steve Rogers wants more than to fight Nazis, not because he wants to kill them, but because he sees them as the consummate bullies and Steve hates bullies - with a passion. So much so that he ventures around to five separate enlistment centers hoping beyond hope that he can bluff his way through one of them. He doesn't. What he does accomplish is to come to the attention of one Doctor Abraham Erskine, late of "der Fuhrer's" own super soldier program where he barely escaped with his life and fled to America.
.

Dr. Erskine is recreating his super soldier program in America for the US government in the hopes of building an entire army of such soldiers that will be able to demolish the troops of Nazis trying to overrun the world. What he gets is Steve Rogers, because the serum used magnifies whatever is intrinsic within a person. If he's a bully, he will be truly evil. If he's an idealist who loves his fellow man, he will be a champion for truth, justice, and the American way.
.

That's what I liked most about this movie, Captain America, The First Avenger. Not the superhero exploits, although they were excellent. Not the buffed image of Chris Evans as he charges across Europe beating the hell out of Nazis and rescuing captured American soldiers. Not the fact that he fights against true evil in the form of one Nazi who is the sole recipient of Dr. Erskine's prior experimentation and renaming himself the Red Skull (Take note of the fact that this same actor - Hugo Weaving - played "Mr. Smith" in the original Matrix movie and in this one his name is "Herr Schmidt". Ya gotta love Hollywood's sense of humor). Not even that iconic red, white and blue costume with the singular white star emblazoned upon the chest and the stripes running vertically down his abdomen. What I like best about this movie is the fact that Steve Rogers epitomizes everything those of us who were raised on comic books and subsequently internalized every bit of what the heroes within their pages had to offer - his love for humanity and his desire to protect it from itself.
.

If you don't go to another movie at the theater all year, definitely be sure to see Captain America, The First Avenger. No need to see it in 3D - regular is just as exciting. And be certain you stay until after the credits for the "first look" at the Avengers movie being released next year. It's well worth the wait.
.

Captain America The First Avenger - the BEST superhero movie this year and of all time in my humble estimation. See it.

* * * * *

Other eBooks from Smashwords you might enjoy reading:



Bug, Naked & Horny by Jackson Williams. $0.99 from Smashwords.com
What would you do if you suddenly sprouted dragonfly wings and found you could spit acid out your ass? Those problems are bad enough for Paula Sterlington, but she's also now only four inches tall, homeless and buck naked. Then she meets Mike Henderson who shows her size really doesn't matter, as long as the sex is great. And Paula has developed an insatiable lust for seriously hot horn-dog sex.


Sexposing SupraBabe by Jackson Williams. $0.99 from Smashwords.com
Maureen Donnigal has found herself endowed with super powers unlike any Super before her. Her only restriction is she can never have sex with men, only women. So what is she supposed to do when the Irish mob in Chicago kidnaps her parents and holds them hostage until she agrees to have brutal, wild sex, all recorded on DVD in order to discredit her to the world and ruin her reputaion?

Blue Rose by Andrew Burke. $4.99 from Smashwords.com
Blue Rose is a gritty and confronting novel set in Western Australia’s conservative late Fifties and early Sixties. It follows the turbulent life of Rose, a young teenage runaway with resilience, innate intelligence - and a good singing voice.


Isadora DayStar by P.I. Barrington. $1.99 from Smashwords.com
When drug addled assassin Isadora DayStar finally snags a major interplanetary killing job, she thinks it will both support her habit and revise her status as the laughingstock of her profession. Instead, she embarks on a journey that brings her face to face with her tortured past.



Tracer's Blues by N.C. Hyzy. $2.99 from Smashwords.com
Three short stories introducing Bets Tracer who wants to be a PI in the worst way. If only she had a clue... by the author of the bestselling White House Chef Mystery and Manor House Mystery series, writing under her N.C. (not cozy) pseudonym.


Judgment Day by Patricia Shannon. $2.99 from Smashwords.com
Janine Day is devastated when her fourteen-year-old daughter commits suicide after being sexually assaulted by a man she first met in a chat room on the Internet. Jan decides that the law and the courts aren’t doing enough to stop these vicious criminals from preying on gullible teenagers, so she seeks her own justice. In her own way.

* * * * *

From Jacob M. Drake
.

   

F.U.L.L. M.O.O.N. W.E.R.E.W.O.L.F.
A Novel of the B.A.B.E.S. Megaverse

Ebook Price: $3.99 USD. 84919 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on June 3, 2011
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

Hector Silva had been recruited by S.T.U.D.S., the counter-part organization to B.A.B.E.S., both covert agencies that took qualified humans, although one utilized only males while the other only females, and transformed them into super-powered operatives who utilized their abilities toward locating, stopping and imprisoning criminals throughout the city of Chicago. During the process that endowed him with his new super-abilities, however, something went horribly wrong and Hector Silva, rather than becoming a hero, was tansformed into a large, slavering, drooling, ravenous werewolf. Comprised of a human-lupine hybrid body, his mind completely devoid of the human intellect, Hector Silva escaped the S.T.U.D.S. labs and took to the streets of Chicago. ****Adult theme - Not for immature readers.

.

 

Forever the Dark Grave
Ebook Price: $3.99 USD. 76460 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on December 23, 2010
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

Free from his enslavement, the vampire known as Phoenix searches for the way to stop his former master from enslaving all mankind. He discovers powers within him not common to other vampires and meets the most ancient of all his Kind. But werewolves try to keep him from success. Then he is once more trapped by those he once served and placed in a tomb that will be for him forever the dark grave.

.

 

Darkness in the Light
Ebook Price: $4.99 USD. 140520 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on November 29, 2010
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

Nic Draca wakes in a puddle in an alley, a tattoo etched on his face. Worst of all he finds he now has a taste for blood - human blood. As he discovers what happened to make him this way he finds himself becoming entrenched in a world of darkness he never knew existed. Both vampires and werewolves are real in the world he thought he knew. Where does he fit in? Second in the Forever Darkness Series.

.

 

Dark Angel: Fallen
Ebook Price: $3.99 USD. 110800 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on June 1, 2010
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

What if your greatest wishes could be fulfilled? What if granting those wishes meant fighting for your life against the greatest obstacles? With one homeless orphan having his wishes granted meant saving his life and fulfilling his greatest dreams - until he learned at what cost they were granted. Now he has to use everything he has to survive. Everything comes with a price - especially happiness.

.

 

Superion
Ebook Price: ONLY $0.99 USD. 62900 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on March 21, 2010
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

On a world where many beings have great power Solarian is the greatest of them all - until the day an unknown super-hero fell from the sky - someone who was almost Solarian's identical twin called Superion. Who is he really and why has he come just when the greatest danger to Earth surfaces and a trio of villains runs rampant? In a new series of The Many Worlds of the Solarian challenges await.

.

 

Forever Undead
Ebook Price: $4.99 USD. 101610 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on March 14, 2010
 Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

When a family man finds his less-than-perfect life turned completely upside down by his becoming a vampire everything he knows and values is called into question, especially when other vampires expect him to assist them in staging a coup that will result in the ravaging and enslavement of all humans. He must then decide what it means for him to live forever. First of the Forever Darkness series.

.

 

Rebirth of the Gods
Ebook Price: $4.99 USD. 164250 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on March 12, 2010
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

In ancient times there were beings who were worshipped as gods. Some have wondered if these were actually divine beings or merely those with special power? On one Earth exist beings with such Power who are seen as heroes or villains. One of these villains flees to another Earth and assumes the guise of a god...and demands to be worshipped in his own way. ****Adult theme - Not for immature readers.

.
. 

B. A. B. E. S.
Ebook Price: $2.99 USD. 75320 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on February 28, 2010
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

There's a new breed of hero in town: B.A.B.E.S. The Bioenergized Alpha Beta Electrolyte Stimulation process turns willing female participants into superheroes, but not everything is at it seems. Il Divavolo lurks in the background to turn these heroines into her minions. Villains just want them for their bodies. Isn't sex what moves this society? A collection of erotic stories not in comic books. ****Adult theme - Not for immature readers.

.

 

S. T. U. D. S.
Ebook Price: $2.99 USD. 80710 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on March 7, 2010
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

The B.A.B.E.S. operatives aren't the only super-powered beings operating out of Chicago any longer. Now they have male counterparts to contend with as well as all the others out there looking to capture them and use them for sexual purposes. Are the men of S.T.U.D.S. a force for good or evil? That's what the B.A.B.E.S. have to find out for themselves. Can they take what S.T.U.D.S. dishes out? ****Adult theme - Not for immature readers.

.
 
The Complete Book of B.A.B.E.S.
Ebook Price: $5.95 USD. 153030 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on May 12, 2011
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

If you enjoyed reading B.A.B.E.S. or the sequel S.T.U.D.S., but wanted to read stories from each book alternately without changing books, now you can. Both B.A.B.E.S. and S.T.U.D.S. have been joined together into one HUGE volume containing all the stories from each at one low price. Start reading and enjoy. ****Adult theme - Not for immature readers.

.

 

Pumpkin Jack Skull and Other Tales of Terror
Ebook Price: FREE! 63710 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on February 27, 2010
Available FREE at both Smashwords and Amazon.

A teenage boy discovers more on Halloween than he bargained for. A child realizes his mother is a powerful witch. A hero comes to understand the truth of what lies within him. Seven tales of terror fill the pages of this collection of short stories of the supernatural. Be prepared to have your spine chilled and your stomach churned. Not for the squeamish.

.
   

Xkalibur
Ebook Price: $2.99 USD. 68730 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on February 25, 2010
 Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

Patrick Riley, college student, suddenly finds himself holding two ancient swords - and his body transformed into that of a metallic warrior. Is it possible his old friend Cameron Kensington can help or have Cameron's own changes made him the enemy? The second book of The Many Worlds of the Solarian. There are too many changes coming to miss a single installment.

.

 

Parallels
Ebook Price: Now ONLY $0.99 USD. 87350 words. by Jacob M. Drake and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on February 20, 2010
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

Marshall Montgomery is a young man with extraordinary powers who is completely alone with no one to share his powers with - until he discovers a parallel universe where others with meta-human abilities exist. Marshall implements a method for traversing the dimensional barrier and begins a new life. But is it all he expected it to be? Book One of a new series "The Many Worlds of the Solarian".

.

From Jackson Williams
.

 

New Life
Ebook Price: $3.99 USD. 85140 words. by Jackson Williams and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on February 4, 2011
Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

This is a biographical account based upon the true life story of Brooke McKellogg, a young woman who was born male and realized at an early age she was intended to be a girl. This stirring drama reveals the heartaches and joys of Brooke's life as she grew through her teen years and underwent the gender reassignment surgery necessary in order to become the real girl she was meant to be.

.

 

The Ladyboy Killer

Ebook Price: $0.99 USD. 28469 words. by Jackson Williams and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on July 14, 2011

Available at both Smashwords and Amazon

Not everyone enjoys lives filled with great or even interesting events. Some lives are so boring they would make turtles yawn. For one low-level office worker named Geoff that's certainly the case, until one night while working late when he receives an unknown visitor who turns his entire world upside down. Prepare to laugh, weep, and use a lot of tissues. Hope you're reading this in private.

 

NecroTales
Ebook Price: $2.99 USD. 29240 words. by Jackson Williams and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on December 31, 2010

Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.
Necrillia, the Mistress of Death gives a humorous take on those within the grave and other tales of death and dying, including re-animated corpses, morgues after hours, the not-yet-dead, and those about to be dead. These all give us a humorous look at life and what might lie beyond it. Must be 18 years of age or older to read this book. All characters used within are 18 or older.
.

 

Meri XXXMas Cherry
Ebook Price: $2.99 USD. 31210 words. by Jackson Williams and published by Crescent Suns e-Books  on December 27, 2010

Available at both Smashwords and Amazon.

Meri Garner was raised cherishing her virginity. Until she found out how much more fun she could have being promiscuous. With the help of her best friend Meri auctions her virginity off on the internet. This and other erotic stories will titillate you for hours. All characters in this book are 18 years of age or older. Must be 18 years or older to read this book.
.

# # # #