AFTER RESONANCE with WRITER BRAD ABRAHAM

Brad Abraham, somewhere in his 'hood, NYC 2014

BRAD ABRAHAM is best known as a screenwriter whose best work includes the films FRESH MEAT, STONEHENGE APOCALYPSE. and miniseries ROBOCOP PRIME DIRECTIVES.  He is also writer and creator of the acclaimed comic, MIXTAPE.  His current and upcoming film-TV work includes the Sci-Fi thriller THE PICCO INCIDENT and the TVO kids series NOW YOU KNOW.  He's also been a prolific journalist, most famously as a long-time writer for Rue Morgue Magazine, and his work has also appeared in Fangoria, Starburst, and Dreamwatch magazines.  A  graduate of the prestigious Image Arts program at Ryerson University, he makes his home in New York City.

What was the process of thought that brought you to the MIXTAPE concept and format?

BA: There’s two answers to that. The first can be found on page one panel one of Mixtape #1. It was while packing up my things to move to NYC that I found an old box full of mementoes from my teenage years. There were yearbooks, there were copies of SPIN and Rolling Stone magazine, there were letters from friends, photo albums ... and mixtapes.  Lots of mixtapes.

MIXTAPE Vol. #1 by BRAD ABRAHAM

Author's Creative Brand:
"Mixtape"
Genre:  Comic Book / Young Adult Existentialism
Length:  issues #1-5, 22 pages each; 110 pages in total
Ardden Entertainment

My 9 Reader 'Hot-Button' Considerations:

1. World's Immersion:

Garrison Creek is the small town where our characters have grown up together.  In this microcosm of the world, friendships have remained close and familiar through the formative years until now...teens about to forge outward by the end of the summer and high school graduation, entering young adulthood.  School hallways of commiseration, house parties of socialization, and the cars some of them are now driving, extend out from the insular bedrooms lined with band posters, and beyond the head-phones of personalized soundtracks.  One of their group has burst the bubble, traveling beyond the Creek.  At this key juncture she has just returned from Europe.

The chosen music in each character's own headspace, defines their moods, following them through the developments in their lives.  This is an early 1990's period piece and writer Brad Abraham has designed stories of expanding YA awareness through the importance of what each young mind was listening to in that time; music as emotional guideposts/gateways of expressing just how big all their personal worlds were becoming...beyond what they knew to be safe.

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #19-24

EXCERPT #19:
"Unaware of the weight coming to break my body, I lay back on innocent elbows gazing at limitless Universe."

EXCERPT #20:
"Caresses like sun-kisses from within, and kisses like head-rockets firing into stratospheric heights."

EXCERPT #21:
"Karma.  Things continue working things out," she shrugged.  "Chaos.  Things co-mingle, create something more."

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #13-18

EXCERPT #13:
"It's a midnight symphony, orchestrated chords to every solitary, biting, billowing pang."

EXCERPT #14:
"I was like a fresh sheet of paper, ball-point just beginning to swirl a penmanship across my consciousness."

EXCERPT #15:
"A descending base-line, catching sight of cranberry hair pulled into girlish braids just brushing her shoulders."

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #7-12

Pursuit is a compelling mind-set; one could pursue tangible objects, distant destinations, monetary sums, or any number of other desirous attractions...a fantastic spread of delectable foods.

My own pursuit is in chase of those wonderful IDEAS floating the unconscious ether.  I care to map the inner worlds, qualities of dreams, nightmares, from the silence and into descriptive illumination.

I have always been attracted to the idea I would eventually render a body-of-work that only I was "meant to render in just that way."  There is something undying about a note-perfect or chaotically beautiful rendition from the stuff of dreams.  Immortality may be found in a book which captures some marvelous visions, universal truths, or honest feelings about being alive...since we're here. One may as well have their own unique "say."  Ernest Hemingway published his first novel, "The Sun Also Rises," over eighty years ago, and long after his passing, that vintage volume of thought he cared to write, sits on my bookshelf.

I wish to express myself through writing to other thinking, dreaming minds, sharing what storms and streams about inside my imagination.  Since I was a child, I have understood this desire.  Through all those winding, challenging branches in the random road, this guiding light has never left me.

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k. EXCERPTS #1-6

W.T.M.B.a.w.c.k.:  

MY NOVEL-IN-PROGRESS

240+ pages and counting...

Published Excerpts #1 - 6

My Vintage Underwood Typewriter

Gifted and photographed by Vaysha Hirsch

I've released these random excerpts from within my novel as tasters.  These are from the outskirts of my inner world, as mysterious puzzle pieces.  No plot-points from my emerging book are touched on.  No key characters are revealed.  No true notion as to what sort of story I am writing, can be gleaned.

What I do share, are examples of my writing voice from the novel, my first steps toward making contact with eventual readers of the finished work.  Little tidbits of cathartic sharing from this author.

There is an artful limitation to the 140 characters of a tweet, and creating quality sentences in full, non-truncated words, is a challenge; The bite-sized structure, influenced choosing these pieces.

I have collected the six excerpts here on My Indie Book preceding the eventual arrival of the rest...

SUMMONED by RAINY KAYE

Celebrating the New Release of...

SUMMONED
A Debut Novel by RAINY KAYE
with Immortal Ink Publishing
237 Pages

MY IMPRESSION:

Great hook for the title.  Rainy has taken this mythology for her own, revised and re-envisioned.  That is what it takes, to rise above the derivative and own what has been done before.  And yet, has this concept been done before?  I think this concept, in its incarnation, is fresh.  In a paranormal author universe of vampires, witches, and werewolves we have mostly seen time and time again, Rainy Kaye has summoned a rendition of the Djinn or GENIE that transcends cliche visuals and assumptions we typically have in our minds, for this sort of being.  Of the many paranormal concepts that I have become aware of over the last few years, SUMMONED struck me as one that is of an instantly recognizable originality.

I have not been reading indies for review, lately.  In fact, my reading, when I have had time, has been in classic genres.  I have yet to read SUMMONED but on my short-list of indie must reads, this book is definitely on my mind.  I believe Dimitri will strike his own unique paranormal accord with readers...