The Wachowskis have made yet another box-office bomb in the form of Jupiter Ascending. But that doesn’t mean that all of their films are terrible. I would like to draw your mind back to a time when they seemed like they were going to be the next Ridley Scott.

I’m talking, of course, about 1999 when The Matrix debuted and wowed audiences with its unique visual style and intriguing metaphysical ideas. Do you think this movie has already been dissected to death, and there’s nothing new to say about it? Well, I’ve got a whole new take on it that will have your head spinning.

It turns out that The Matrix is an example of cinematic chiasmus. That is, its first half mirrors its second half so that the film’s events all line up beautifully, creating a symmetrical whole. It joins an exclusive club of other superb sci-fi…

*I received a complimentary copy of this book, and I’m leaving a voluntary review*
This is a dark, gritty, legal/crime thriller. There’s murders, secrets, lies, cold cases—basically everything you’d want in a fantastic book. Let me tell you about it.

The plot is simple: A mafia boss is caught red-handed by the police, having murdered his rival and his daughter’s lover. The bloody knife is still in his hand. There’s no denying it, he’s going to jail. His lawyer, sees the case as quite simple—or it would have been, if our mafia boss would just talk to him. But there’s something he’s hiding, something he’s not revealing. And how can his lawyer defend him without all the details? The daughter is in shock, hospitalized, the victim is dead, and the main suspect isn’t talking.

At the same time, the lawyer’s wife is working on freeing a…

Last year I stirred up some stuff (as I’m prone to do), when I admitted I very rarely reread books. You can read a blog post about it here, but the short story is, I just always have something new I want to get my hands and eyes on. It’s not something I do on purpose, I don’t actively decide that I’m never going to read a certain book ever again, it just kind of happens.

Anyway, a few people called me out and said that you have to reread books to truly understand them, so I decided to do an experiment and try.

I chose Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as my book to reread, because of two reasons: 1 – it’s one of the few books I know I read when I was younger (15 years ago or so), and 2 – it’s on of the few…

Another great book I’ve just finished, Spider’s Web is the third book in the Magdalena Series, and follow Maggie and her special ops team as they take on secret missions for the government.

I haven’t read the other books in the series, and even though this is the third, it works well as a standalone. Even though I was confused about some of the information of the past books that I was fed, it was kind of like a puzzle for me, trying to piece together and understand what had happened before.

This book is very many things on top of each other, spy thriller, crime mystery, family drama. It’s a big all-in-one. To give you a hint of the plot, we’re thrown straight into it when Maggie is kidnapped. Where will she be taken, who’s her kidnappers and why do they want her, and will her team get to…

Twitter is a great place to be if you’re an author. (Or a writer, or a poet, or whatever you want to call yourself. If you make symbols that create words, in any capacity, Twitter is great). Just search for the hashtags #WritingCommunity or #AmWriting, and you’re in.

The #WritingCommunity has helped me a lot. I’ve met so many amazing people on there, people who keep me entertained, people who answer questions, and people who give me ideas.

But more importantly, I’ve gotten a lot of confidence from Twitter. Confidence in my own writing.

Because one thing I’ve always struggled with, is comparing myself to others, and to what other people do. When it comes to writing, this means I often read something and think I should do this and this and this, or this, and ‘I should do this too’. Luckily (kind of), I never do. As in, I…

Whoa! – This book surprised me a lot. It’s difficult to know where to begin, so let’s start with some plot:

There’s two protagonists; Kathy Masters and Cindy. Kathy is a woman on her way out in the world, working as a photographer, employed by the Galactic Geographic Society. Cindy is just a child, and by coincidence, they’re both on the S. S. America when it gets boarded by pirates. Thus begins the story of their 9 years aboard the Rapier.

This is a fantastic sci-fi adventure. There’s spaceships, space battles, fascinating planets, and of course aliens. And it’s all mixed together with a kind of 1600’s piracy-vibe, and it’s amazing. I was hesitant at first, thinking it was a bit slow to start, but this book is exactly the reason why I never put a book down before I’ve gotten well into it, because it got so good.