Enhanced by Courtney Farrell

Publisher: Fiction Foundry Press
Pages: 310

From the cover:

At the Institute, they breed people like livestock. One powerful doctor decides which children get to grow up, and which will die. Losers are dumped in the savage slum outside Institute walls. Those kids never come back. Sixteen-year-old Michelle is a perfect specimen, destined for a luxurious life as a breeder. When her brother and her boyfriend are both mysteriously culled from the breeding program, she jumps the wall to find them. Alone in the ghetto, she’s in trouble until handsome, streetwise Dillon stakes a claim to her. She’s mortified by her attraction to a Normal. But the doctor is using the missing boys in a twisted experiment, and she needs Dillon’s help to stop him. Michelle must rescue the boys, but a plague is spreading, the doctor is after her, and Dillon isn’t thrilled to help find her lost boyfriend.

Excerpt:

“The game is every man for himself,” Salomon announced. “Your objective is to be the first to push the large black button on the south wall of the gym. You will be timed. Certain, eh-hmm, difficulties may impede your progress. That is all. You may begin.”

Younger boys surged forward, but stopped when they saw that none of the older ones were rushing in. “Difficulties!” Brian reminded them, putting a hand on Nick’s chest to keep him from charging in there like an idiot. “That means a trap. There’s always a trap.”

“More than one, usually,” Seth added grimly. “These tests aren’t all physical, they test your problem-solving capacity too.”

The boys fidgeted uncertainly at the boundary, peering in but carefully staying outside the white painted line on the floor. The smallest ones looked sick with apprehension. Tests turned nasty once kids turned thirteen, and this would be their first hard one. Deaths during tests were rare, but they did happen, especially among the youngsters.

“Who wants to run in there and spring it for us?” Brian grinned. No one did. He bent to yank his shoes off, muttering to himself, “He had his off.” A few other kids followed suit.

“Where’s the big black button?” Nick demanded, hopping up and down to get a better look. “I don’t see it!”

“Neither do we.” Brian grabbed the wiry kid and hoisted him up for a better view. Nick grabbed a wad of Brian’s hair and nimbly stood up on the bigger boy’s shoulders. He hadn’t taken off his shoes.

“Ow, Nick, that hurts.”

“I see the button!” Nick shouted, leaning dangerously to one side to look between poles. “It’s way up high! Too high, and too far from the next pole.” The kid swayed and deftly hopped down before falling. “I don’t see how anyone’s going to reach it.”

The doctor touched a finger to his glowing bracelet and his platform rose, carrying him up and away. His high laugh echoed back from somewhere near the ceiling. “Bonus points to Nicholas Arnold, for being the first person to pose the right question. And the clock is ticking.”

“Go!” Guys in the back began to push. “We’re being timed!”

“Fine, go.” Brian stepped aside and let an eager eighteen-year-old shove his way in. The muscular black boy put one tennis shoe over the line and the green lights on his bracelet began to move in a swirling pattern around and around his wrist.

“Look!” The boy held up his arm.

“Dhorian, you’re on!” Seth bellowed. “Go!”

Dhorian hesitated for a moment, and then grabbed the line that hung off the nearest pole. He began to climb. Boys held their breath, leaning in to see what would happen. Nothing did. For a long moment everything was still, and then a shout came from above. “I made it! I’m up!”

A stampede began as boys surged across the line. Some became entangled in the foam bushes. Those turned out to be horribly sticky, and getting through them was nearly impossible. A few guys made it to poles and began to climb. Seth, Brian, and Todd waited behind the white line. “Let ‘em trigger it for us,” Todd breathed, but nothing happened.

Simultaneously, their three bracelets made warning beeps and the lights turned orange. “Aw, hell, we’re out of time!” Brian exclaimed, and waded into the foam forest with his friends. Behind them, the wall slid shut, leaving the room in sudden darkness.  

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Knowing Starring Nicolas Cage

Running Time: 130 minutes
From: Escape Artist and Summit Entertainment
Genre: Thriller/Science Fiction

From the Movie Poster: What Happens When The Numbers Run Out?

As the movie opens it is 1959, the William Dawes Elementary School is finally finished with construction and to commemorate the occasion, they're burying a time capsule with drawings of the future kept safe inside. That is except for Lucinda Emery, she's burying numbers....

Flash to present day - 50 years later - Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury) is participating in retrieving a time capsule. Inside are pictures, except for one that ends up in Caleb's hands. His father, MIT Professor and astrophysicist John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) sees correlation between the numbers and catastrophes throughout history. Hurricanes, plane crashes, the Kennedy Assassination, floods, fires, 911, shootings, and the death of his wife one year earlier in a hotel fire. And there are three dates left on the paper. He soon discovers that a second group of numbers gives location in longitude and latitude. Who will he tell? What will he do? Caleb has started having visions and visitors who wanted to take him away, to protect him.


John tries to contact Lucinda, but she has died from a drug overdose due to medications prescribed for her presumed mental illness. Her daughter, Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne), first rebuffs John only to seek him out later, saying her mother always told her the day she was going to die....it will happen in just two short days. And her daughter, Abby (Lara Richardson - also plays young Lucinda), has started to have visions and visitors who want to take her away, protect her. What is happening?

As John further works with the numbers, more information is discovered, in two days 33 people will die, maybe one of them Diana. It will be a mass catastrophe like the Earth as never seen. John is an astrophysicist who has been predicting solar flares, but the flare that is to occur is the biggest recorded in history, it was suppose to happen in space. But something has happened and now it is directed at Earth. John discovered with Diana's help that instead of 33, it is actually EE, Diana's mother's term for Everyone Else. It would seem the destruction of Earth is at hand and no one can prevent it. The visitor are only interested in the children who have had the visions, to rebuild on another planet, another tree of life.

Nicolas Cage happens to be one of my favorite actors since Valley Girls and Peggy Sue Got Married. The 1980's were a long time ago, but that's when I discovered him. I have seen nearly all of his movies, a few I wish I hadn't, but only a few. In Knowing, he is the one who figures out all the events that have happened and that are yet to come. He has fallen away from his pastor father since the death of his wife. He can't accept that there is a God that would take someone so important away from him. Later, after remembering his wife's wishes, he makes peace with his family as they wait together for the end to come.

Knowing is a scifi thriller that can be viewed as just that, a thriller. Others have said it should be viewed through a biblical eye, viewed as the hand of God and the rebirth of mankind. I'll let you choose. I knew none of this before agreeing to go see the movie. It was an excellent movie as long as you're a viewer who enjoys massively destructive movies. The special effects were amazingly well done. This movies brings CGI to a new level, in that the opening scene of the movie shows the Earth imploding in on itself, the viewer just doesn't realize what it is, that it is in fact the Earth, and doesn't know why.........yet.

Here's the trailer for Knowing.


And some fun from Valley Girl in 1983.


And to back 1986 for Peggy Sue Got Married.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS-An Alien Affairs Novel Book One by Katherine Allred

Publisher: Avon / Harper-Collins Publishing
Pages: 356
Release Date: March 31, 2009

From the Cover: Kiera Smith wants one thing out of life -- to be normal. But stronger, faster, smarter, and more impervious to damage than her brethren, Kiera is a genetically engineered person unlike any others.

As a special agent she's been assigned to protect the indigenous Buri race from the none-too-honorable conglomerate Dynatec. And it's just the challenge she's been looking for: take down the largest independent trade company in the Galactic Federation and save a race of aliens from extinction, while resisting the advances of the handsome Buri leader.

Kiera Smith is a GEP working for Alien Affairs and Dr. Daniels, and the worst nightmare of the conglomerate, Dynatec. Nothing sticks to that company, they're like Teflon, that is until Kiera is assigned to the planet they're trying to appropriate, Orpheus Two. And they're doing it legally, according to Chapter Twenty of the Galactic Federation edict. The indigenous race occupying the planet will die out within one hundred cycles (one hundred Earth years) and by rights, Dynatec can claim the planet as their own. It's Kiera's job to make sure that the problem can't be prevented and that the Buri race is not used or destroyed. She only has two short months to accomplish this goal.

Max, her Articially Intelligent ship and Crigo, her massive rock cat, will be her only assistants. There is no time for anthropologists to arrive on Orpheus Two to help with speech, customs, and rituals. She have to rely of her wits, and thanks to Dr. Simon Gertz, her creator, she has genetic enhancements that other GEP's can only dream of. She's intelligent with psi abilities that include empathic awareness and she's almost indestructible, only a shot to the head or heart can kill her. The information she has about the Buri and Orpheus Two is what Dynatec has turned over to Alien Affairs and she can bet it's been tainted. To make matter worse, an old enemy has joined Dynatec's crew, Captain Frisk accompanied by Quilla Dorn, clone and GEP megamillionaire.

The Buri are a magnificently exotic race with hair and eye that match, dense bone structure, and larger than average height making her six foot body look 'normal', her one true desire. Orpheus Two is a tropical paradise teaming with spectacular wildlife such as the colorful little dragon birds that would rival other planets, but this cannot be Dynatec's reason for trying to acquire it, what's so valuable and unique? One of the Buri in particular has caught Kiera's eye, Thor, the leader is even more extreme than the others. There are only 70 Buri left on the planet and if there is any chance of saving them, she has to figure out how to make their females more reproductive to continue life on this beautiful planet.

When she arrives in Buri village, she spots Thor. There is almost an instant connection to the man. He is equally entranced with Kiera, legend has it that Thor's mind bond mate will have hair as golden as the sun. Kiera's own lovely locks are as blonde as a sun goddess. Almost all the Buri are enthralled by Kiera's appearance and when they see how fast she can heal, all agree she will be the next Shushanna (healer and one with the Lamatti) and mate to Thor. Unfortunately, the Buri neglect to tell Kiera this fact until after the marriage has taken place and bonding with Thor is consummated. The only way to release the bond is by death. Kiera knows she will never harm Thor, the one man that has made her whole.

There are many question that need Kiera's attention. What is Dynatec after? Why Orpheus Two and the Buri? How will she save them? Will they survive Dynatec's occupation?

Katherine Allred has created a magical world full of mystery and suspense. The heroine is an ass-kicking hard as nails agent, but soft in all the right places. The hero, Thor, is a leader willing to sacrifice all to save his people and his love. You almost become part of this new world of the Galactic Federation as you move through her pages. There many other stories waiting to emerge, the story of Claudia and Ghost has yet to be told, Churka (Thor's sister) and her mate, as well as Kiera's role in Buri history as Thor's mate and Shushanna, and I'm sure Dynatec is just taking a breather. This novel was a page turner from start to finish that grabbed your attention from page one and left you looking at the last page wondering if that was all. Close Encounters is paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and scifi all rolled up in one great book. I highly recommend this book for all those who seek adventure, action, and romance that will knock your socks. If you'd like more information on Katherine Allred's new book, Close Encounters, check out her website or Eos Books, both are good sites for great reads. Katherine Allred also writes contemporaries under the name Kathy Allred and Amethyst Ames (some look to be paranormal under this name as well). She also has Book Two complete and in editing, and researching Book Three of An Alien Affairs Series.

Here's a peek at the new trailer for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS:



Dottie