Monday, July 29, 2013

HEROIC task to create a fictional VILLAIN today (as new James Bond "NO TIME TO DIE" movie makers discover)


Do No. No (not today, anyway)
Many writers, including James Bond creator Ian Fleming, confess to experiencing great difficulties in creating villains.

“Make them too psychotic and they start to win sympathy,” he said.

Make them normal and, well… a sinister villain has to be abnormal, I suppose. Or unusual.

Even the word 'sinister', meaning left-handed, suggests a departure from the normal

Hence Dr No had the metal hand thing.

RL Stevenson’s Long John Silver had a peg leg.

Captain Hook in Peter Pan had a hook.

But today, it's increasingly difficult to match them.

After all the furore, it would take a courageous writer today to give another villain a cleft lip (Lone Ranger) or make them an albino (The Da Vinci Code).

Or dentally challenged (Jaws in the James Bond movie).

Or a pair of gay men assassins (Diamonds are Forever)

Or an evil black crime boss (Live and Let Die)

Choose any ‘difference’ and there’s going to be a society out there that will stand up and complain.

It’s simply lazy writing they say.

Try it.

Is your villain too ugly?

Be sure that there is a society somewhere to protect the visually impaired (and we won’t talk about the vision impaired).

It probably explains the popularity of masks (Hannibal Lector) and a rash (or should that be a slash?) of baseball and other scream masks in slasher stories.

One of my most sinister fictional character was a veiled adversary in my Egyptian archaeological thriller The Smiting Texts.


Not to mention a revivified Isis in THE EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY MURDERS




UPDATE A Society has earnestly petitioned the James Bond movie makers to avoid villains with facial disabilities as in the villain in the new James Bond movie NO TIME TO DIE

Sunday, July 28, 2013

The Ultimate Tutankhamun documentary - and the earring issue

Didn't kings wear earrings?

The recent, and enjoyable, TV documentary 'Ultimate Tutankhamun' speculated that the famous golden mask of the boy king might have belonged to a female originally since the ears were pierced for earrings (unusual for a king, the documentary suggested).

Yet don't several other images of Tutakhamun, like this one, also indicate pierced ears? 

Either that or remarkably pronounced dimples?



Saturday, July 27, 2013

Great Egypt Discoveries in Adventure Fiction - Amazon Kindle



Egypt’s Lost Labyrinth (The Smiting Texts) 



 Hathor’s holocaust sun (The Hathor Holocaust)


The Stone Book of Thoth (The Ibis Apocalypse)
 

The hidden discoveries of the world’s Egyptologists (The Anubis Intervention)


A shattering eye-in-the-sky revelation (Egypt Eyes)


The Lost Library of Seshat (The Forbidden Glyphs)



Ancient Egyptadventure fiction by Roy Lester Pond

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

"I didn't think that novels (about archaeological adventure) like this could be written today"*

The age of archaeological adventure is alive and heart-kicking

Anson Hunter novels are set amid today's realities - not taking refuge in an early era like the Indiana Jones adventures... revealing surprising facts combined with unseen realities and dangers to today's world from the ancient past...

*Read Between The Lines Reviewer.

Begin this investigative series here