Under Angels is now haunting Dark Delicacies, the San Fernando Valley’s home of horror, located in the heart of Burbank. Tons of books, videos, merch, and paraphernalia for horror/thriller buffs.
Drop in for a spooky hang on Saturday, lucky October 13, 2012, at 2 PM. There will be a total of five authors present, signing their respective books. Restaurants and bars nearby as well. Make an afternoon out of it! A perfect way to kick off the Halloween season.
Scheduled:
Jace Daniel, author of Under Angels
Crossword puzzle enthusiast Pete Durante is a war dog trainer stationed near the Los Angeles Harbor during World War II. After he cracks an enemy code that helps end the war and saves millions of lives, he gets driven to suicide by a vengeful intelligence officer named Rip Greamer. To save his family from an even darker fate, Pete must follow his dog beyond the grave and into a purgatorial maze of tunnels beneath Los Angeles to solve one final puzzle.
Under Angels is a ghost story that includes Los Angeles history, UFOs, anagrams, the K-9 Command Unit, WWII cryptography, love, tragedy, second chances, and Greamer, who is either a covert government agent or something far worse.
Sean Patrick Traver, author of Graves’ End: A Magical thriller
A modern-day witch helps an undead detective solve the mystery of his own resurrection in this magical thriller with a touch of classic LA noir!
Los Angeles PI Dexter Graves was pretty sure his life ended back in 1950, after a mysterious femme fatale shot him through the head. When Graves involuntarily rises from his grave sixty years later, he finds himself drawn to freelance sorceress Lia Flores, who introduces him to an underworld he never could’ve imagined. Lia sets out to discover the meaning behind Graves’ unexpected intrusion into her enchanted life, but neither the witchgirl nor the skeletal detective has any idea they’re being set up by an old-school player on the LA scene: mobster/monster Mickey Hardface, also known as Mictlantecuhtli, the ambitious king of the Aztec realm of the dead.
Funny and fast-paced, this genre-bending love letter to the City of Angels blends surreal magical fantasy with the narrative drive of a taut crime story. Epic in scope and rooted in California history, GRAVES’ END adds a new chapter to the mythology of the post-Halloween holiday known as el Dia de los Muertos–the Day of the Dead.
Melissa L. Finch, author of The Fire of the Eclipse
The world of 18-year old Valairia Sullivan begins to fall apart when her troubled older brother, Charles, dies from a heroin overdose. Violent and traumatic events fill her days as she mourns his loss. Far away in the Wrightwood forest resides a mysterious group of women who want to help heal Valairia of the dangerous power that now resides within her. But the strange and beautiful man who has been sent to guide her to Wrightwood, fills Valairia’s heart with terror and irresistible seduction. She fears he may be a cruel spirit, or the loss of her own sanity. The fate of the world is at risk in this classic romantic battle between good and evil. Set in the glamorous and fast-paced world of Los Angeles and merging into the haunting forests of the San Bernardino mountains, enriched with pop culture, raw emotional conflicts, eroticism, and fantastical plot twists, The Fire of the Eclipse will suck you in during the full cycle of the moon.
Bart Brevik, author of Outer Darkness
What would you do if your family was under attack by a violent Satanic cult? That’s the position Jim DiMario is in – but has he found out too late? A successful pastor of a large suburban church, Jim’s life unravels when he investigates an animal mutilation that has taken place in his quiet, upscale community. Seemingly by chance, he meets two strangers in his quest for the truth – each of whom have their own reasons to investigate the grisly mutilations. Jim soon finds himself in too deep when problems arise for his friends & family. His world spinning out of control, Jim discovers that he is the focus of a Satanic cult – the shadowy Temple of Anubis, who’s true motives are more sinister than mere animal sacrifices. With time ticking away before Samhain, the most unholy night for the occultists, Jim and his allies face a desperate gamble to save his daughter’s life from the Satanists who have abducted her. Will he realize too late that his worst enemy is part of his own inner circle?
Peter Clines, author of 14
Padlocked doors. Strange light fixtures. Mutant cockroaches.
There are some odd things about Nate’s new apartment.
Of course, he has other things on his mind. He hates his job. He has no money in the bank. No girlfriend. No plans for the future. So while his new home isn’t perfect, it’s livable. The rent is low, the property managers are friendly, and the odd little mysteries don’t nag at him too much.
At least, not until he meets Mandy, his neighbor across the hall, and notices something unusual about her apartment. And Xela’s apartment. And Tim’s. And Veek’s.
Because every room in this old Los Angeles brownstone has a mystery or two. Mysteries that stretch back over a hundred years. Some of them are in plain sight. Some are behind locked doors. And all together these mysteries could mean the end of Nate and his friends.
Or the end of everything…
Dark Delicacies map:
Dark Delicacies on the web: http://darkdel.com
Under Angels book trailer: http://underangels.com/trailer
Under Angels reader reviews on Amazon: http://underangels.com/reviews
Via SpaceRip:
Explore the biggest question of all… in 1080p. How far do the stars stretch out into space? And what’s beyond them? In modern times, we built giant telescopes that have allowed us to cast our gaze deep into the universe. Astronomers have been able to look back to near the time of its birth. They’ve reconstructed the course of cosmic history in astonishing detail.
From intensive computer modeling, and myriad close observations, they’ve uncovered important clues to its ongoing evolution. Many now conclude that what we can see, the stars and galaxies that stretch out to the limits of our vision, represent only a small fraction of all there is.
Does the universe go on forever? Where do we fit within it? And how would the great thinkers have wrapped their brains around the far-out ideas on today’s cutting edge?
For those who find infinity hard to grasp, even troubling, you’re not alone. It’s a concept that has long tormented even the best minds.
Over two thousand years ago, the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers saw numerical relationships as the key to understanding the world around them.
But in their investigation of geometric shapes, they discovered that some important ratios could not be expressed in simple numbers.
Take the circumference of a circle to its diameter, called Pi.
Computer scientists recently calculated Pi to 5 trillion digits, confirming what the Greeks learned: there are no repeating patterns and no ending in sight.
The discovery of the so-called irrational numbers like Pi was so disturbing, legend has it, that one member of the Pythagorian cult, Hippassus, was drowned at sea for divulging their existence.
A century later, the philosopher Zeno brought infinity into the open with a series of paradoxes: situations that are true, but strongly counter-intuitive.
In this modern update of one of Zeno’s paradoxes, say you have arrived at an intersection. But you are only allowed to cross the street in increments of half the distance to the other side. So to cross this finite distance, you must take an infinite number of steps.
In math today, it’s a given that you can subdivide any length an infinite number of times, or find an infinity of points along a line.
What made the idea of infinity so troubling to the Greeks is that it clashed with their goal of using numbers to explain the workings of the real world.
To the philosopher Aristotle, a century after Zeno, infinity evoked the formless chaos from which the world was thought to have emerged: a primordial state with no natural laws or limits, devoid of all form and content.
But if the universe is finite, what would happen if a warrior traveled to the edge and tossed a spear? Where would it go?
It would not fly off on an infinite journey, Aristotle said. Rather, it would join the motion of the stars in a crystalline sphere that encircled the Earth. To preserve the idea of a limited universe, Aristotle would craft an historic distinction.
On the one hand, Aristotle pointed to the irrational numbers such as Pi. Each new calculation results in an additional digit, but the final, final number in the string can never be specified. So Aristotle called it “potentially” infinite.
Then there’s the “actually infinite,” like the total number of points or subdivisions along a line. It’s literally uncountable. Aristotle reserved the status of “actually infinite” for the so-called “prime mover” that created the world and is beyond our capacity to understand. This became the basis for what’s called the Cosmological, or First Cause, argument for the existence of God.
Silent film footage taken in 1909 by Thomas Edison at Stormfield (CT) at Mark Twain’s estate. Twain (Samuel Clemens) is shown walking around his home and playing cards with his daughters Clara and Jean. The flickering is due to film deterioration, but this is the only known footage of the great author.
(via Naumkeag01)
Was tooling around with some tasty ideas on the djembe today and figured on writing them down as an eight-bar groove for referencing later. I’ll video it when I have my camera lady available.
I’ve found that traditional African syllabatic dictation doesn’t really connect well with my mind. I tend to see the music better with classical dictation. So (click image for large version):
The first two bars are a simple syncopated groove between bass and tone. Home base. This one’s rooted in the Amen Break. Embellish the funk out of it as needed.
Bars 3 and 4 have a trippy sort of flip-flop thing happening between L and R, with accents on the upbeat across Bar 4. Notice the paradiddle at the beginning of Bar 3, setting up the sixteenth notes that’ll bring you back to your lead hand on the downs.
Bars 6, 7, and 8 have a cool sort of over-the-bar displaced triplets thing going. Been playing with that riff a lot. Great for soloing. Endless applications. Play with it and you’ll see.
NOTE: I’ve got the tempo at 178bpm for dictation purposes only. It actually feels half that (i.e. four bars at 89bpm), but it’s easier to write it down in double time.
This is just a Note to Self and anybody else who can use it as a tutorial or reference.
PROBLEM: You’ve got a djembe with its first row of diamonds complete, yet the head still needs tightening. However, the verticals are still too tight for a complete second row.
SOLUTION: Pull a row of staggered diamonds using the Mali weave. In this case, one new diamond on every third vertical. With 27 total verticals on the drum, I’ve applied 9 new evenly spaced diamonds.
