All posts by ERTorre

E. R. Torre is a writer/artist whose first major work, the mystery graphic novel The Dark Fringe, was optioned for motion picture production by Platinum Studios (Men In Black, Cowboys vs. Aliens). At DC Comics, his work appeared in role-playing game books and the 9-11 Tribute book. This later piece was eventually displayed, along with others from the 9-11 tribute books, at The Library of Congress. More recently he released Shadows at Dawn (a collection of short stories), Haze (a murder mystery novel with supernatural elements), and Cold Hemispheres (a mystery novel set in the world of The Dark Fringe). He is currently hard at work on his latest science fiction/suspense series, Corrosive Knights, which features the novels Mechanic, The Last Flight of the Argus, and Chameleon.
Books/Literature

Corrosive Knights, a 8/7/17 update

I’m seeing the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not yet close to finishing book #7 in the Corrosive Knights series.  In fact, there are still several months of work to be done and my hope is that it will be completed and released by later this year or, if worse comes to worse, the beginnings of next year.

No, the light at the end of the tunnel I’m referring to is the end of summer.

How I long for it to finally end!

I love my daughters but, both being in college means working on the places they live in.  The last week we headed out to where my younger daughter is going to College and went in two cars filled to the brim with her stuff (not to brag, but when I was a young ‘un, all I needed fit into a suitcase!).

We unloaded the material, had a one day mini-vacation, then spent a full wasted day waiting for an IKEA delivery that never showed up.  The next day, our last in those northern lands, forced us to rent a van and haul hundreds of pounds worth of to-be-put-together furniture from the warehouse that was supposed to deliver it to us (they screwed up, plain and simply, and couldn’t deliver on our last day there), then take said furniture up a flight of stairs (no elevator at my daughter’s apartment), and put it all together in time to then drive the five hours back home where I needed to be because by the next morning at the bright and early hour of 6 A.M. I needed to take my wife in for a medical exam.  To those worried, don’t be… it was a routine exam and everything was perfect.

The past week is an encapsulation of the summer in general, where I feel I’ve made progress on my writing but am seemingly always being pushed into other endeavors.

As someone who prides himself on writing a certain amount each day, its frustrating as hell but, on the positive side, its sometimes good to “step back” from what you’re working on, give your brain a chance to not think about what you’ve been writing, to then return to it later and find yourself far more “fresh” and energized.

I’m hoping that’ll be the case.

School starts for them both in the next couple of weeks and then, until Thanksgiving and unless something else happens, it’ll be just me and the computer.

There’s not a whole heck of a lot more writing to be done before I can start revising the book in earnest and I’m just dying to get there.  Corrosive Knights Book #7 is the conclusion to the Corrosive Knights Saga and I want to make sure I’ll give everyone out there their money’s worth.

And as I said before, just because the story ends there doesn’t mean there won’t be at least one more book set in that universe.  Indeed, I’ve already got Book #8 of the series written (at least a full first draft) and it will serve as an “epilogue” to the series and, best of all, because I’ve already written such a fully formed first draft, it will be out very soon after #7 is released.

That much I guarantee you!

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 12

Didn’t take me all that long to go after one of the bigger icons of the sci-fi age, the “holy trinity” as it were.

Without further ado:  Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Larry, Curly, and Moe… The Three Stooges!

I kid, I kid!

Everyone knows this is a picture of The Marx Brothers! 😉

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 11

The beauty of doing these images on an iPad (I swear I’m not getting any money for talking about this) is that its giving me far more freedom to experiment with my art than I’ve had before.  Back in the 1990’s and when I worked in comics as an inker, while doing so using brush and on paper, I had to get everything done “right” for if I didn’t or screwed up, it was a pain to white out large and small areas to correct any errors.

Thus and as mentioned, I wasn’t prone to experiment too much which, I worried, stifled my art.

Now, by doing this using the iPad, I can easily erase any areas I’m not happy with and can also try out new things… different line thickness and blotchier blacks.  Truly the sky is the limit.

In this latest sketch, I used an image of Paul Newman -an odd one as he had a beard and fairly long hair- and, after inking it, colored it using bright, Moebius (Jean Girard) inspired colors. Fun stuff!

General

When can I get my Model 3…?

The Tesla Model 3, their least expensive/most affordable electric vehicle, has hit the streets!  Well, 30 of them, anyway.

For those who haven’t seen them, they look like this:

Image result for tesla model 3

The fact that 30 vehicles have been released may not sound like much but Elon Musk, the CEO of the company, boldly predicts we’ll be getting much more of the vehicles in the coming months.

He better hope this will be the case because, according to this article by Seth Fiegerman and presented on CNN…

Tesla now averaging more than 1800 Model 3 reservations a day

Its easy to be cynical and knock the limp numbers (so far) of Model 3’s available but, according to the article, Mr. Musk anticipates 1500 more vehicles produced in the third quarter (which we’re in) and, following this, 10,000 vehicles per week through the end of the year and into the next.

Which still means that if you’re pre-ordering the car, it will take a while to get your hands on it.  There are reportedly 450,000 pre-orders and, with the new orders coming in and assuming you decide to pre-order yours, you’ve got to wait through to the 4th quarter and, further assuming the 10,000 vehicles per week thing winds up being right, you’ll have to wait another 44 or so weeks before getting your own Model 3.

What’s most encouraging about all this is that there sure seems to be a big demand for these vehicles.

As I’ve said before, I’m happy with anything that’ll get us off combustion engines.

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 10

I have to say, I’m having incredible fun doing these pictures.  Here, for picture #10, I’m going back to the 1986 really intense thriller featuring Rutger Hauer as a seemingly unstoppable killer whose life mission is to make C. Thomas Howell’s life miserable.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Hitcher!

In 2007 the film was remade with the protagonist/hero of the feature being Sophia Bush versus C. Thomas Howell.  Getting Sean Bean to play the Hitcher wasn’t the worst idea, IMHO.  I thought he was a good choice but the film itself…

…well…

Stick with the original.

E. R. Torre Art

Sketchin’ 7, 8, and 9

1 Comment

Sorry for the dearth of posts of late but I’ve been away for the past few days (University is starting which means I have to help my daughters move into their new digs).

While I haven’t been able to post quite as much as I want to, I have kept up with my illustrations and here you get three for the price of one, a real bargain!

First up, Lauren Bacall…

I think the piece came out only OK.  As I mentioned before, that’s the way it goes with artwork.  You can think something is working and then it mostly works -or not- but when you’re done, you move along.  Which I did…

Here’s Charles Bronson from The Dirty Dozen, a film that was clearly the inspiration to the comic book The Suicide Squad and, therefore, obviously the movie’s inspiration as well.  Only The Dirty Dozen presented a coherent plot! 😉

When I started this piece, I thought I would abandon it.  It just didn’t look like it was “working” for me.

And then, like magic, it did.

I won’t say this piece is one of my favorites -it feels like it would benefit from color especially given how “simple” it is- but I definately captured the Bronson “look”.

Finally:

Ah, extreme success!

As I also stated before, sometimes you may just miss and sometimes you hit a home run.  Here, with this Christopher Lee Dracula picture, I feel I’ve hit a home run.

The image captures the frenzied, animalistic look of Mr. Lee’s Dracula, easily one of my favorite portrayals of the dark Count.  Love the feathering on this piece.

By the way, if I wasn’t clear about it before, let me do so here: All this was done using an iPad and an Apple Pencil on the Procreate program.  Though it may look like pen and ink, this is all computer images.

Enjoy!

Books/Literature

The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) a novel review

In today’s book market, there is a demand for mystery novels with titles -it seems!- that have the word “Girl” or “Woman” in them.  These novels also seem to involve characters who aren’t always reliable narrators and plots which delve into these mysteries from a decided female angle.

I spotted a copy of The Woman in Cabin 10, written by Ruth Ware, in Costco one day and, after reading the brief description on the back cover, was intrigued enough to give it a try.

Mind you, the plot of the novel, involving a reporter who gets to travel on the premiere trip of a luxury -but relatively small- cruise ship and meets a woman who then apparently vanishes from the trip, sounded curiously similar to the plot of director Alfred Hitchcock’s first really big successful film, 1938’s The Lady Vanishes.

Look, I’m not going to mince words here: The Lady Vanishes is a far better overall work and, if you know of the film and/or have fond feelings for it, you may find Ms. Ware’s book not only a rather bold appropriation/modernization of that story but, also, a rather weaker one at that.

Which isn’t to say the book is a flop.

Far from it.

The Lady In Cabin 10 (let’s abbreviate it to LC10 from here on, ok?), involved a main character who is very much like some of the “unreliable” narrators in the books I mentioned above.  She’s something of a flake, not certain where she’s going with her life and winds up with the reporting job only because her superior, who would have gone, is pregnant and unable to.

When we first meet her, she’s also been the victim of a home invasion/burglary and because of that trauma -and too much liquor- is also suffering from lack of sleep.

When she boards the ship and meets the lady in Cabin 10, it is purely by coincidence and, when she thinks the woman was killed, she finds that no one on the ship knows of her and, further, Cabin 10’s designated occupants never showed for the trip and therefore the cabin was supposedly empty.  The ship’s passengers, including an ex-lover, suspect she may be losing her mind, but she persists and, eventually, solves the mystery.

Again, The Lady Vanishes features essentially the same plot.  In that movie, a woman on a train trip meets another, elderly woman who subsequently vanishes.  Our heroine (who isn’t unreliable as far as that goes) finds no one knows of the missing woman and some aboard the train begin to question her sanity.  She persists and, eventually, solves the mystery.

LC10 is, alas, not a great book but I did enjoy Ms. Ware’s writing style and was curious to see where it was all going.  You could certainly do much worse than spend some time reading this particular book.

Having said that, you’d probably have a better time simply catching the Alfred Hitchcock film.

General

So, like…

…did anything interesting happen last night?

POLITICS FOLLOW… beware!

Obamacare Repeal Flames Out In The Republican Senate

Incredibly, it was John McCain who wound up being the vote to end this latest round of “repeal and replace”.  The same John McCain who was brought in hastily from surgery (and diagnosis of having brain cancer), to supposedly be the vote to bring this over the hump.

However, yesterday, Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham gave what I thought was a pretty bonkers news conference where they talked about what a farce the “skinny” repeal bill was and how Mr. Graham, in particular, was reluctant to vote for it unless assured it wouldn’t be passed by the House “as is”.

Mr. Graham: If you feel the bill is a farce and don’t want it passed, then don’t vote for it.

Which, in the end, is what Mr. McCain did.

Though very much liberal in much of my ideology, for many years I’ve felt Mr. McCain was a Republican one could at least reason with.  In more recent years, I have to be honest, I felt he was losing it.  The presidential race against Barack Obama saw him nominate Sarah Palin for the VP role, which in my estimation was not only a stupid move but probably played a big part in his eventual loss.

It’s been said “Obamacare” will eventually fail.  I hear this is an exaggeration.  I also hear that many of the states that have the biggest problems in this era of the Affordable Care Act (which is the proper term for Obamacare), have problem because they didn’t want to implement the full extent of the ACA’s provisions.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I experienced Canada’s “socialized” medicine… and it was freaking great.  I’ve experienced some of Europe’s socialized medicine as well, and frankly, it too is great.

I don’t like this Darwinian system we’ve had up until the ACA.  I don’t like the idea of people potentially going broke later in life or as a result of some kind of catastrophic medical need.

There are better ways to go and, sadly, the world outside our borders seems to have embraced this quicker than we have.

Perhaps with this later failure both parties will finally -finally!– get together and form a coalition that actually improves upon the ACA rather than trying to gut it.

Perhaps.

Computers/Electronics

Oh…my

Found this article over at digitaljournal.com and written by James Walker:

Researchers shut down AI that invented its own language

Whew…

If I understand the article right, Facebook developed an AI system that, they realized, was creating its own language to interact with each other.

Gulp.

I’ve written fiction involving AI machines.  The sudden realization that AI machines -even rudimentary ones- may be “intelligent” enough to create their own language to interact with each other…

Wow.

Just, wow.

Should we be amazed?  Afraid?  Equal parts of both?

Perhaps.

Movies

The Drowning Pool (1975) a (very) belated review

A while back I caught -for maybe the fourth time- the 1966 Paul Newman detective film Harper (you can read my full review of the film here).  Based on the Lew Archer detective stories by writer Ross Macdonald, Harper is considered a great second generation version of the old hard-boiled detective movie genre.

Ross Macdonald, to me, was a great writer who wrote many great novels and his Lew Archer books are high up there on my list of re-readable works.  Having said that, it is also clear Mr. Macdonald (actually a pen name for Kenneth Millar), was very much mimicking the Raymond Chandler detective novels, even as he was doing a magnificent job at it.  I can see where some might find it difficult to admire Mr. Macdonald’s work because it owes so much to Raymond Chandler, but, again, his works are so damn good it eventually doesn’t matter.

One of the more interesting bits of casting in the movie Harper was having Lauren Bacall in it as the matriarch of the screwed up family Harper (Paul Newman, reportedly, wanted the Archer name changed because in the 1960’s he was on a roll with movies featuring characters whose name began with an “H”.  I’m not kidding) is investigating.  This bit of casting was especially satisfying as one of her classic roles had her co-star, with husband Humphrey Bogart, in the Raymond Chandler novel adaptation The Big Sleep (1946), which as I stated above was mimicked so well by Ross Macdonald in his novels.

Harper, to me, is a damn good movie thought I don’t feel it quite reaches the level of The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon or Murder, My Sweet.  It feels over-long and, sadly, the near cameo role played by Janet Leigh (who is quite good in the film, nonetheless), could have been clipped without affecting the movie much at all.

Nearly ten years later and in 1975 a sequel to Harper was released entitled The Drowning Pool.  Returning to the role of Lew Harper was Paul Newman.

I’d seen the film a while back and didn’t think all that much about it.  In general, most critics felt this film was an inferior production, though like Harper it was based on, and adhered to, the Ross Macdonald novel.

A few days back I noticed it was being played on a cable channel (TCM?) and decided to give it another look.  I set the DVR and, a couple of days afterwards, sat down and gave the film a look.

And I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.

Don’t get me wrong, The Drowning Pool is not as good a film as Harper.  The plot kinda rolls along and there’s plenty of talk but not a whole heck of a lot of action.

Yet the movie intrigued me and -I won’t lie- I found myself immersed in it.

Paul Newman, as noted, returns to the role of Lew Harper.  When the movie opens, he’s flown into New Orleans and meets up with Iris Devereaux (played by Paul Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward).  Mrs. Devereaux, it turns out, was an old flame of Harper’s and is now married and living in an old Plantation house.  She was, and its implied still is, something of a wild child and has apparently had a fling or two on the side.  A recently fired chauffeur, it appears, is sending blackmail notes to her demanding money or her affair(s) will be revealed.

Because Mrs. Devereaux lives under the steel thumb of Olivia Devereaux, the mother of her husband and a woman who supposedly keeps everyone in the household in line, she fears that if this information is revealed she’ll be cut off from the family and its fortune and sent packing.  Worth noting is the implication her husband, the barely seen in the movie James Devereaux, is heavily implied to be a closeted homosexual whose marriage to Iris is a sham and therefore her fears are very real.

So Iris Devereaux calls on Harper to find the chauffeur and make him stop sending the notes and Harper agrees to do so while getting involved in the machinations of the Devereaux family and people who know them.

He soon encounters Iris’ daughter, the angry and even wilder-child Schuyler (Melanie Griffith in one of her first movie roles) as well as the chief of police Broussard (Anthony Franciosa) and his very hot tempered deputy, Franks (Richard Jaeckel).  In time, Harper will also bump into J. J. Kilbourne (Murray Hamilton), who may be pulling several strings behind the scenes.

Interestingly, much as I liked the movie Harper and still feel it is a superior movie, I came away feeling The Drowning Pool more effectively captured the tone of the Ross Macdonald novels, and for that I have to give the film a huge plus.

Again, The Drowning Pool may not be a superb film but it is a pretty damn good one and like Mr. Macdonald’s novels it unravels in a slow yet satisfying way, giving you time to sink your teeth into almost every character and realize how it is they interact with -and against!- each other.

Ross Macdonald’s Archer novels tended to feature complex -and very screwed up- family interactions and this movie gives it to us in spades.  The ending is shocking, sad, and leaves us wondering what could have been, another familiar theme present in the Archer novels.

In conclusion, its nice to revisit a film you didn’t think all that much of and find it a better experience than you thought.  While today’s ADD audiences might find the movie too slow to sit through, I enjoyed soaking up the ambiance and characters present in The Drowning Pool.

The embedded trailer below, alas, cuts off some 1:15 seconds in.  No matter, its not a terribly good trailer for the film and makes everything look more tongue in cheek than it was…