Author Archives: Brian B Baker

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About Brian B Baker

I write horror stories, review books, and talk about depression, and how I get through all of it.

Review For Forgotten Sisters by Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo

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My oldest and I went to Chicago when they were six. It was Father’s Day weekend. I’ve wanted to go to Chicago since I was a kid. I’ve been a Blackhawks fan since I was in Mites. If you don’t know, I was seven or eight. I’ve been fascinated by it. By the lake, the river, and the sports teams.

We went to the Adler Planetarium. We stayed at the Hotel Lincoln, where I had a ghost experience and attended a Cubs game at Wrigley.

Cina knows Chicago. She knows what the air tastes like in the winter. How the river freezes, leaving chunks of ice floating through it in the winter. She brings this knowledge to every story about Chicago. Its presence drips from the prose in her books and stories.

She takes you into her stories and their fairy tales the way no one can. She knows the city, the fairy tales she reconstructs and places them into the city’s history.

We should all know the story of the Little Mermaid, either from Disney or Hans Christian Andersen, but it’s Andersen’s version she takes hold of in Forgotten Sisters.

It opens with two sisters. They’ve suffered a tragedy, but we don’t know what it is early on.

The sister’s link to a series of deaths in Chicago opens many things about the story. Cynthia takes hold of the narrative of death, intricately weaving a tale about grief, loss, and death. The death from long ago and the death of the sister’s parents weave a tapestry rich with the history of Chicago, the ghosts who haunt the city, of which there are many, and take us on a journey of discovery with the main character.

Anyone whose lost a loved one knows this journey. We’re angry about what happened. We wish we could have fixed it, but in the end, we find our way to dealing with it the best way we can.

We think about that person often. We remember the good times we had. We consider what we lost when they left, and we sit in these memories.

We are born in a world where loss is inevitable. Sometimes we see it coming. Other times, it strikes when we least expect it.

Cina is one of my favorite writers. She carries a story through to the end. She makes the connections. I found tears in my eyes when I finished this book.

I try not to give spoilers in my reviews. You should come into Forgotten Sisters blind. I didn’t give much away. This has jumped to one of my favorite reads of the year. I can’t wait for its release.

I watched Exorcist: Believer so you don’t have to, A Review

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I went into this knowing the reviews; maybe that skews this, but I don’t think so.

It takes a bit to get into, just as the original film did.

There will be Spoilers in this review.

Two girls, one of whose mom died when she was born, after a blessing in Haiti moments before the earthquake hit.

Fast forward 13 years. The girl wants to communicate with her dead mother. Her friend, from a religious family, takes her into the forest beyond their school to help her communicate. Why a little Christian girl knows how to communicate with the dead is beyond me. They disappear for three days (Jesus’s three days reference).

They return, and neither remembers what they did or where they went for those three days. It’s left to the viewer to figure it out, which we don’t have to because weird things start to happen. One girl wets the bed. Hello, Regan, at the party.

The connection to the original movie is based on a book Chris McNeil wrote. The mom from the first movie. She has no contact with Regan.<–save for later.

Here’s a bright spot in this review. The two young actors who play the young girls are amazing. They dive into the parts. They are Olivia O’Neill and Lidya Jewett. Give these two more roles. They were brilliant.

She throws herself on the floor, which is a habit that both of the girls do. Convulses and ends up in the hospital. Let’s move to other parts that stick out for me.

The tropes are everywhere. This is the 2020s. Necks snapping, girls cursing at their mothers, throwing themselves on the floor, that’s old hat. It’s an overused trope that was done better in other movies.

Let’s move to a part that made me laugh. The various religions unite, like The Super Friends. Catholicism and its rite of exorcism come to save the day, but it doesn’t happen that way.

So, smoke comes out of the girl’s mouths. I was waiting for Sam and Dean to show up.

I will leave it to you, but the overt religiosity of it, the trope-filled script, and so many things make me give it a bad review. The end shot is excellent. I love the original and the book. I don’t think Green should be allowed near horror again. Halloween was good, Kills was awful, and Ends along with this were terrible.

Now, I’m going to watch the original to cleanse my palette.

The days grow

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There are moments in my writing where the days grow wider. The wind blows outside. There are times when I see things more clearly than others, and then, there are times like now.

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve written anything decent. Reading Tim Waggoner’s book lit some sort of fire, though it may have been a combination of several things.

I did a ghost hunt at Mercur Cemetery with the Utah Chapter of the HWA this past Friday. I got some great pictures of a sunset. That night has been with me since. I think about how old it is. The Town of Mercur went away in the early 1900s. After two fires and the closure of a mine, it fell apart. This happened to many towns around the same time.

The cemetery sits on a hill overlooking the valley below, but there was something about that night. Something about the sounds. The feelings, and then there was how I felt and my youngest felt. I’ve always been sensitive to places like that. It was their first time at a place like that. They did not enjoy it. It was overwhelming to them.

I’ve talked to them about it since. They’re getting better. But the atmosphere of that place is different. The air shifts when you walk up the hill to it. It’s subtle, but they and I noticed it.

I’ll be using that trip to work. It’s the least I can do. I may post pictures from it. I got some great ones. It was the uncomfortableness of it. It wasn’t the dark, but the sounds. The chittering in the dark. It has stuck with me.

Review for Let Me Tell You A Story, by Tim Waggoner

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I’ll start this with a few comments. I’ve read the other two books in this series. They’re two of the best “How To Write” books. The other books on that list are Stephen King’s On Writing, On Writing Horror By the HWA, and John Gardner’s On Becoming A Novelist. Some of these are not true “How To” books. King’s is more of a memoir, plainly stated on the cover. The others are How To Write books. Yes, King’s book has a section on “How To,” but the majority of the book is a memoir and a damn good one.

Tim’s books stick with horror, and while the first two, especially the first book, are great for beginners, the third book feels like it’s for those further along in their writing.

I loved this one as someone who has moved in a different direction with their writing. The first two helped me get started. This one is helping me move along in a number of ways.

I stopped writing for the last couple of months. But this is bringing me back.

This book is about Tim analyzing his own stories. Some of which were written a number of years ago. This feels like Tim talking to his younger self. Telling stories about the writer he was. Going through the stories is an analysis of the stories, but also a trip and memoir about the writer he was and is.

I’ve read my older stuff and see the progression from that writer to the one I am now. I see the elements repeating themselves, as they have for Tim.

Now, the part I can’t talk about. I did not do the exercises in this book. Doing them and reading the book for a review would take a bit longer. I will do them when the book comes out and share them here. I spent a few weeks doing the exercises in the other two books. I intend to do that with this book as well.

I’ll say that Tim gets better with each one of these. I’m sure he’ll be up for another Stoker for this one and probably win.

This series of books has helped me find my voice, fix writing issues, and improve my grasp of the craft. His idea in the first book of creating bags and pulling things from them gave me the idea for the novella I have coming out next month. It was woods, mental health, and cults. I ran with it from there. I got my copy through NetGalley, but as with the others in this series, I’ll purchase the physical copy. I need to get through each of the exercises. You all will be the first to know when I do.

Here is a link to Amazon for the Paperback, the Kindle, and Barnes & Noble for this book.

Moving ahead and through

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I’ve had this problem with who I am for a long time. Am I the kid whose parents divorced when he was eight and threw his world into shambles? Am I the 18 year old who was sent home from Marine boot camp?

I used to be really angry with my parents about their divorce. My mom left when I wasn’t home and nothing was explained to me. Her and two of my sisters just weren’t at our house anymore. We all went to therapy together, but it was a ruse, or at least felt like it to me. I knew something else was going one. I was eight. I had no idea the minds of adults.

Over time, I’ve grown to understand what they went through. That eight-year-old boy may not understand, but this 47 year old man does, and that’s good enough for me to move forward.

That 18 year old boy didn’t know what the hell was happening. He said something about his lungs. He didn’t have any lung issues, but had a reaction when he was working one night. He took that as something worse. It’s something he, and I, have had to deal with for almost 30 years. Sometimes the consequences of honesty are not what you expect. Sometimes they change your life. I’ve been angry with what I said that day. It’s taken a long time to forgive that boy. He’d barely experienced anything in his life. He’d barely lost his virginity(Something that was a big deal then, but not as much now). I think that boy needs to be forgiven. He wanted that title worse than anything. He didn’t know the consequences of his actions. He was just a kid who wanted to get away from his family.

I never planned to come home after boot camp, except to see my grandmother. She passed away while I would have been at boot camp. It’s a nice thing to say that if I’d have made it through boot I’d never have talked to her again. She visits me often. I don’t believe in things happening for a reason. It’s bullshit.

I see where my life is. I see that boy I was, both at eight and 18. He would be amazed we’re married, have kids, and writes books. Neither of them would have believed it.

It’s time to do something now that I’ve let them go. There’s a force in me that rears its head on occasion. I call it the monster. It’s been leashed for too long.

Let’s take it for a ride.