Steve Rasnic Tem's The Mask Shop of Doctor Blaack

(My apologies to Steve Rasnic Tem. I had originally planned to have this out much earlier in the Halloween season but life got away from me. Oh, and that's not a typo. It really is Dr. Blaack with two "a"s.)

Everyone loves a good Halloween tale and that includes your loving blogger, slaving away over a hot keyboard to bring you his latest review. This is a time of year that I look forward too starting on November first, and I was really looking forward to reading Steve Resnic Tem's The Mask Shop of Dr. Blaack. And I'm happy, because I was really impressed. Tem did a good job with this one.

I haven't read much YA Horror. I'm aware of the whole Goosebumps thing and I read the first three books from the Series of Unfortunate Events series, but it's not something I'm well versed in. That might have to change though, because I really got a hoot out of this one. It was creepy enough that it made me feel a little apprehensive, but not bad enough that I would hesitate to let my twelve-year-old daughter read it.

I'm going to mention something here that's kind of a spoiler. I don't generally do spoilers and, generally speaking, anything that I absolutely HAVE TO include to make a review usually show up in the first few pages and don't ruin anything, but this time it's a bit different. The fact is that The Mask Shop of Doctor Blaack is a good to great story. The caveat is that this thing takes a long time to get started. I was just having a conversation with a friend. I mentioned to him that it took me longer to get through the first fifty pages than it did for me to get through the remaining two-hundred fortyish pages after that. Once it gets moving though, it rocks.

Our heroine is a girl named Lauren. She's twelve years old and too mature for trick or treating. She could give some of the kids in my neighborhood a lecture here. Maybe she should. Err... well if she existed anyway. At any rate, she's got a problem. Her parents want her to take her little brother Trevor out trick or treating and she's kind of stuck. The first part of the story deals with mainly this issue. It's not until after she accepts it and heads off to the Mask Shop to get costumes for both herself and her brother that things really get started, but once they do...

The Mask Shop of Doctor Blaack really gets going when Trevor's mask gets stuck to his face. And I don't mean stuck as in "pour some hot water in to dissolve the glue." I mean stuck as in "this thing is magical and isn't coming off until Halloween and then only if you're lucky." The even bigger problem is that Halloween isn't for a couple of days and she has to keep the world from discovering the problem. It's a lot of fun.

I won't go too far into Lauren's character arc except to say that it's pretty amazeballs. She does a lot of maturing over the course of a single novel and it makes sense in the context of the story. It builds slowly but it's nice to see. I grew up in an era where a lot of children's books (there was no such thing as a YA genre in the long ago era of the Eighties) dealt with minor problems and the protagonists didn't change much. Tem puts his heroine through a situation that not every adult would be equipped to deal with and she takes it head on. If things don't always go as planned, well, that's life. She finds a way through and that's what's impressive. There is one specific issue that I don't seem to agree with her on, but she makes her own decision and at twelve, that's pretty impressive.

Lauren shows more leadership than a lot of the adults I've known too. There are times when she has to take the blame for things she didn't do.  There are times when she has to deal with problems she has no way to anticipate. There are times when she has to keep Trevor encouraged. She can't take credit for any of it or the secret of the stuck mask will be out. None of it would be easy, but she does what needs to be done and doesn't complain about it. This is a young lady with chutzpah.

Trevor, for his part, is a little trooper too. There are times when I'd expect a child that age (like my daughter) to break down and cry. The fact of the matter is that he does whine a bit but in his case, so would I and I'm a grown man. He gets through things though, even when they're not easy. I like this kid.

The thing that makes The Mask Shop of Doctor Blaack work so well is that everyone else acts the way you would expect them to if everything was normal. Tem has built his world so well that it's almost seamless with our own. There's just that one tiny little exception about weird masks that stick on faces and do crazy stuff and nobody knows about that. It's close enough to be familiar and just far out enough to be weird. It works perfectly.

I know I got into this a bit already, but it really did take this book a long time to get started. I spent the first fifty pages or so wandering off to do laundry, or checking my Facebook or checking to see how many hits my last post had, etc. Once it took off, it really took off, but if you're going to read this one you need to be patient. The thing is, I do kind of wonder how much of the lead in to this book was really necessary. It really feels like the first fifty pages could have been condensed down to one or two. I think the book would honestly have worked a lot better that way. All in all though, it's still an enjoyable read and, if you're into the Bella character from Twilight, it does kind of work I guess.

Bottom Line: 4.25 out of 5 Dangling Straps

The Mask Shop of Doctor Blaack
Steve Rasnic Tem
Hex Publishers, 2018


The Mask Shop of Doctor Blaack is available for purchase at the following link:

How this Author Got his Co- Warren Hammond

(I'm really excited here everybody and let me tell you why:

I received an email one day from Sarah Craft, publicist for Hex Publishers. She offered me a chance to review some work in a new franchise they've got cooking over there called Denver Moon. I read a little bit about the book and it's got me stoked. Not only is it Science Fiction, and this is an SF blog, but it's a detective story. I got my start reading detective stories with the Hardy Boys and, even if my current consumption of mystery is mainly through police procedurals on TV, I still love them. But it gets better.

In my very first post I wrote of how comic books/graphic novels are totally SF. I've loved comics since I was a wee little Jimbo and my neighbor gave me a bunch of older books that his nephew was done with. AND NOW I GET TO REVIEW A GRAPHIC NOVEL!!!! YAY!!!!! It'll be my first review of a comic.  I'm geeked. So thanks to Sarah and Hex for that opportunity. I have the first two comics of Metamorphosis, the graphic novel. They're entitled Murder on Mars and Rafe's Revenge. I also have a copy of the novella, Denver Moon: The Minds of Mars. I haven't reviewed them yet because they haven't been released and I'm not sure what the legalities are regarding publishing a review for something that hasn't been released.

I was also offered the chance to host a guest post by one of the authors and I jumped at the chance. JABAMR is a place where authors are encouraged to share their thoughts with the public. So without further ado, here are the thoughts of Warren Hammond about co-authoring a piece. Oh, and thank you for the opportunity to host a guest post and review some really cool stuff!)

It was about two years ago when Josh Viola sent me an email. “Let me buy you a beer,” he said. “I have a project I hope will interest you.”

Sold by the first part, I met him on the north side of Denver. We’d gotten to know each other a bit over the preceding year or two. Josh is the owner of Hex Publishers, and I’d written a short story for his company’s very first book, Nightmares Unhinged. Then came book signings and more short story anthologies, and dare I say, we became friends.

Then came his offer of a free beer and a mysterious project. “I have this great idea,” Josh said. “A detective on Mars, and her name is Denver Moon. We can write it together.”

I wouldn’t say I was immediately taken with the idea of co-authoring, but I wasn’t opposed to it either. Lots of writers collaborate, especially in movies and television, where much of the content we see is produced by committee. Co-authoring is rarer in the book world but certainly not unheard of.

“Tell me more,” I said.

Josh elaborated on the story concept. “Denver Moon is a PI. Her sidekick is an artificial intelligence that’s been installed in her gun. Oh, and she’s colorblind.”

“Colorblind?”

“Yes, but somehow that gives her an advantage.”

“How would that work?”

“I have no idea. What do you think?”

And that’s how it started. The sharing of ideas. The shaping and honing of those ideas. The creation of story.

Like most creative projects, you don’t know where to start, until you start. A short story seemed as good a place as any. Josh took the first stab by writing the first draft. Then I went in for the second crack. We were just starting to learn how to work together, and we passed the story back and forth a few times, each time making the story stronger and more complete, until finally, both of us were happy. That story, Metamorphosis, then became the basis for our graphic novel.

Enter a third collaborator, Aaron Lovett. Aaron is an artist, and I’d been plenty impressed by what I’d seen of his work. He’d done the cover art for Nightmares Unhinged, and I’d seen early versions of a comic book that became Tooth and Claw. Truth be told, Aaron was a huge reason I got involved in the Denver Moon project. Josh had been clear from the beginning that he wanted to do a three-issue comic, and I knew right then, I might never get an opportunity like this again. It’s a common dream amongst authors—especially those who write SF and fantasy—to see a story you wrote turned into a graphic novel. So how could I pass up the opportunity to see a story I co-wrote through the lens of an artist as talented as Aaron?

As I write this, Aaron is working on the third and final issue, and I can’t wait to see it. To me, this is the exciting part of collaborating. We all bring our own talents and perspectives, and the ultimate beneficiary is the work itself. Like the short story and the graphic novel, I couldn’t have written our next project, a novella, on my own. And neither could Josh. The novella, Denver Moon: The Minds of Mars, was product of the two of us.

This time we changed our process, and I was the one who wrote the first draft. We’d meet after every two or three chapters to discuss what was going to happen next, and only after I’d gotten to the end did Josh go in to clean it up, flesh it out, and add his personal touch.

Some co-authors use a different method. One author might write all the scenes from the point of view of one character, while the other author takes responsibility for a second character’s POV chapters. A friend of mine co-authored an urban fantasy series, where one author took the action scenes, and the other took the romantic scenes. I’ve also seen co-authors who simply break up the responsibility for chapters into odds and evens. In the end it doesn’t really matter as long as the reader can’t tell who wrote what. In fact, as my memory fades, it gets hard for even me to tell.

Our next novella (for now titled the unimaginative Denver Moon: Book Two) is currently under way. The first 9,000 words are written, and Josh and I met over beers just a couple nights ago to discuss what’s coming next in Denver’s world. We both had a ton of ideas. Some we’ll keep. Some we’ll have to toss. And some will stew in our collective mind until they morph into something new and unexpected.

After this next novella, we don’t know what’s next. We’ve thrown around some ideas, but to this point no decisions have been made. We’ll work that out later. Anything for an excuse to have a beer with a friend.

Some of the Hex Publishers products listed above are available for sale at the links below: