Nina Munteanu Signing The Last Summoner at Chapters Markham

Nina wearing her intelligence glasses...

I'm signing my latest historical fantasy The Last Summoner at Chapters in Markham (Woodside Mall) on Saturday May 25th at 1-4 pm.

Come join me for lively discussion, argument, laughter and debate on the "what ifs" of history and on feisty lady knights, medieval battles and customs, and time travel.

Get your personally autographed book of The Last Summoner, three months on Amazon's Bestseller list. Special "prize" for 50th customer! :)

Nina Munteanu Discusses The Last Summoner at Alternative Grounds

A few Fridays ago I had the pleasure of doing a lecture / discussion and reading of The Last Summoner in the Roncy district of Toronto. The historical fantasy takes us back to Poland in 1410 on the eve of the Battle of Grunwald between the warrior monks of the Teutonic Order and their oppressed Prussian slaves. The Lady Vivianne Schoen, Baronness von Grunwald has a vision … a vision of a different battle. And a different world. When she discovers that she can alter history, she is branded and chased as a witch. Vivianne flees through a time-space tear to an alternate present-day France, ruled by Teutonic Black Knights; where she must decide how to remake the history she authored...Every choice has its price...

The Venue

Located on 333 Roncesvalles Avenue, in the heart of the Polish District (affectionately known as Roncy), Alternative Grounds is a cool funky intellectual granola kind of coffee house. LOL! What does that mean? Deep with high ceilings, the café opens into an eclectic assortment of tables and seats that range from old 60’s vinyl chairs to comfortable couches, surrounded by warm shades of brick wall, adorned with original art work and wooden shelves.  A small globe of the world sits on one table. You help yourself to one of a variety of unique mugs and fill up with fresh roasted fair trade coffee. People sit in groups, chatting, or alone with their laptops. Many are obviously regulars. You can see it in their body language; like the place belongs to them. 

“Alternative Grounds Coffee House and Roastery is a community-based business,” says Linda Burnside, owner. “We believe that the practice of business and the strengthening of community should go hand-in-hand.” Their café is rooted in the concept of “welcome”, evident in the arrangement

The Coffee

Alternative Grounds originated in 1995 as a roaster of only fairly traded coffees; back when little attention was paid to fairtrade and why it was important, says Linda. Alternative Grounds was one of the first licensees when in 1998 Fair TradeMark Canada, an independent fair trade licensing and regulatory body came into being. They are the only roaster in the area that roasts solely fair trade coffees and in 2005 they became a certified organic processor.

Alternative Grounds Café roasts and custom blends their coffees daily, providing the highest and freshest quality coffee you can get and supports the people who actually grow the beans and are stewards of the land. That’s what fair trade means. “It also helps show that there are other ways of doing business, ways based on mutual trust, cooperation and respect,” says Linda. They are a member of Cooperative Coffees, which allows them to access a wide variety of coffees and collectively contribute to the development and support of emerging cooperatives. It’s a win-win scenario.

The Journal Writer by Nina Munteanu Now Out

The second book in my Alien Guidebook Series The Journal Writer: Finding Your Voice was released in March 25, 2013 by Pixl Press (an imprint of Starfire World Syndicate) and is now in bookstores around the world, including Chapters, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other quality bookstores.

The Journal Writer: Finding Your Voice is a guidebook for anyone who writes. It provides steps on how to get started in journaling, how to keep going and how to keep safe. I discuss the full range in expression from writing on the computer, the use of social media and sharing on the Internet to the benefits of good old-fashioned handwriting on paper.

Here’s a small excerpt of the book taken from the Introduction:

There are as many reasons for writing a journal as there are people in the world: to express, to heal and clarify, to create, learn and influence, to record, to celebrate, to share with friends or the world even...and everything in-between. The journal is a way to connect—to yourself and to others—with gentleness, compassion and deeper understanding. It’s a “safe home” where your deepest thoughts can reside without fear of judgment, blame or need for justification. A place where you can be just you. 

From the private locked notebook to digital files to global blogs and Facebook, writers today have so many choices for expression. We are all writers and there is something out there for you. 

This guidebook will help you make the right choices. I go over the tools you need to consider before you get started. I also show you the steps on how to get started and—just as important—how to keep going. I cover how to get the most out of your journal writing experience and discuss safety issues. To help, I provide you with examples and practical exercises. References appear at the end of each chapter. There’s also a bibliography at the back in case you want to read more and an index to find things in here.Enjoy, learn and, above all, have fun!  

The Alien’s Guidebook Series is dedicated to helping and empowering men and women through writing and

the creative process. Whether you’re writing fiction or expressing yourself through “life” or “wellness” writing, my hope is that The Journal Writer—like its predecessor The Fiction Writer: Get Published,Write Now!—will help you and others achieve your goal.

If you think The Journal Writer can give you and others important life skills, please tell others about it! You can provide a review on Amazon or email me (nina.sfgirl@gmail.com) with a testimonial that I can use to help promote this book on helping others journal and write expressively.

The Journal Writer was commissioned by Romanian publisher Calin Vlasie of Editura Paralela 45, who had already translated and published The Fiction Writer in 2011 (Manual de Scriere Creativa. Scriitorul de fictiune).  I attended the launch of The Fiction Writer in Bucharest in November 2011 and drank copious amounts of Romania’s national drink Tuica (plum liquor that packs a punch!) with my publisher.

Scriitorul de Jurnal: Descoperirea vocii interioare (The Journal Writer: Finding Your Voice) was published by Editura Paralela 45 and launched at the Gaudeamus Book Fair in Bucharest in November 2012.

Romanians can buy Scriitorul de Jurnal:Descoperirea vocii interioare (The Journal Writer: Finding Your Voice) on the Editura Paralela 45 site and various other online bookstores.

About Editura Paralela 45:

Editura Paralela 45 Publishing House was founded in November 1994 by Calin

Vlasie. Over the years, the company specialized in the production of books, magazines, newspapers and copybooks. Their main branch offices in Romania include Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca.

They originally focused on educational books and contemporary Romanian literature. Since 2000, editorial production diversified; they currently publish Romanian and foreign literature, social and human sciences, philosophy, history, religion, law, economics, science books, art books, practical books, literature for children and teenagers, university textbooks, didactical methods books, handbooks and auxiliary books.

Currently, Editura Paralela 45 Publishing House develops three series and 54 collections, covering over 90 editorial areas including: biography, business, children, Christian, college, fiction, computer, cookbooks, criticism, cultural studies, diet, drama, education, enternainment, erotica, essays, family, fitness, food, foreign languages, health, history, how to, language, law, lifestyle, literature, mathematics, medical, memoir, parenting, philosophy, poetry, psychiatry, reference, relationship, religion, school, science, self help, software, spirituality, sports, teaching, technology.. Most of these collections are registered with the State Office for Inventions and Trademarks (OSIM). From 1994 to 2011, they have published over 3200 titles in over 13 million copies.

The publishing house participates in key book fairs in Europe (Paris, London, Frankfurt, Bologna, Geneva, Tel Aviv, etc.) and has won numerous awards, both for editorial work and its published books. Awards include: International Book Fair "Gaudeamus" ("Excellence Award" in 2001 and 2008), the Writers Union of Romania, Association of Professional Writers in Romania, Romanian Academy, the Writers' Union of Moldova, Romanian Publishers Association, magazines "Cuvantul" "Romania literara", etc., the "Francophonie Award”, the Prix Saint-Exupery / ValeursJeunesse (2006).

Editura Paralela 45 has translated and published numerous foreign books (from English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Swedish and so on). Foreign publishers that they worked with include: Harper Collins, Ebury Press, A. M. Heath & Co, Hay House, MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, Transworld (from UK), Curtis Brown, Facts On File, Grand Central Publishing, Hyperion, Knopf Doubleday Group, Pearson Technology Group, Penguin Group (USA), Albin Michel, Actes Sud, Calmann-Levy, Bayard, Robert Laffont, Tallandier (France), Bertelsmann, Ullstein, Eichborn, Rowohlt (Germany). And now Starfire World Syndicate (USA)!

Join Nina Munteanu at Indigo in Yorkdale Mall (Toronto area) for Book Signing of The Last Summoner

Oblivion Review: Earth is a Memory Worth Fighting For...

I just recently experienced the visually stunning motion picture Oblivion in an IMAX theatre and I highly recommend it. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (based on his graphic novel), this SF action thriller is worth seeing on the big screen. It takes place in a devastated NYC (no longer recognizable as a vast lonely landscape of buried skyscrapers and dried up rivers). It’s 2077, sixty years after aliens invaded and destroyed the moon and much of the planet as consequence. This film is LARGE. Kosinki’s spectacular imagery and M83's other-wordly and evocative score must be seen large.

Technician Jack Harper (Cruise) and Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) are assigned to mop up the remaining resource extraction of a "fallen" Earth, before they join what's left of the human race, who have settled on Titan, Jupiter's moon. Victoria oversees operations and communicates with mission commander Sally (Melissa Leo) in the Tet (a large space station orbiting Earth) from the 3,000-foot high Sky Tower, a posh high-tech home/work station where she and Jack live. Meantime, Jack risks his life daily, servicing the droids that chase after "scavs" (remnant aliens), who keep sabotaging the giant resource harvesters.

Jack and Victoria have been stationed there for five years and are due to leave in two weeks. Faced with the prospect of leaving Earth, Jack grows maudlin for humanity’s home. Without disclosing to Victoria or Sally, he’s been collecting Earth memorabilia (e.g., baseball cap, toys, sunglasses, books); It doesn’t help matters that he is haunted by dreams of living in pre-war NYC with another woman (Olga Kurylenko).

Every day Jack leaves his ultra clean and tidy Sky Tower home and descends to Earth's gritty and dangerous landscape. On some level, he thrills in the place, finding a strong connection between its vast and lonely landscape and his own identity. Jack is a man in search of an identity; he was 'mindwiped', after all (to keep the scavs from getting important intel if he was ever captured). Jack desperately summons shadows of memories and collects Earth memorabilia every chance he gets. "Is it possible to miss a place you've never been, to mourn a time you've never lived?" he reflects. When he finally learns what he truly is and the heinous role he (and those like him) unknowingly played in the near-destruction of humanity, Jack does the only thing he can; he sacrifices himself to save what's left of humanity and those he loves: "If we have souls, they're made of the love we share. Undimmed by time, unbound by death." 

Showatcher.com calls Oblivion “a slick 21^st century science fiction pulp actioner” with genuinely amazing CGI and action set pieces. Showatcher adds that “it was refreshing to witness a film that, though it did not break new ground, held the attention of a jaded sci-fi audience.” A large part of its attention appeal lies in its “techno-bass” musical score composed by Joseph Trapanese and Anthony Gonzalez with M83 (a French electronic/shoegaze band named after the spiral galaxy Messier 83). They elegantly orchestrated a score that was locked in step with the narrative imagery of Claudio Miranda in a viscerally synchronized life-pulse. The score surges and ebbs like an intelligent sea; at times assaulting the senses with an open-throated tsunami of crushing sound; at others a throbbing caress of longing nuance.

Many reviewers (see the litany on Rotten Tomatoes) have trashed the film for various reasons, from plot holes and appropriation, mismanagement of suspense, to it being a Tom Cruise film. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian calls Oblivion "bafflingly solemn, lugubrious and fantastically derivative sci-fi, which serves up great big undigested lumps of Total Recall, AI, Planet of the Apes--with little snippets of Top Gun."

Roy Klabin of Policymic is less kind: “Unfortunately, I got to see an early preview and doubt it will satisfy even the most dim-witted of audiences…the film’s unsubtle commentary on our own use of robotics in warfare is lackluster and anticlimactic…the weak story is sprinkled with a heavy dosing of famous actors [with] wooden-faced expressionless performances.”  

David Dizon of ABS-CBN News calls Oblivion “an idea-movie, except the idea seems like a rehash of ideas from other, much better sci-fi flicks.” He and others cite Mad Max, Moon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Halo, Matrix, and Star Wars Episode 1 as examples. Dizon calls Oblivion “a pretty movie served cold.” He claimed that the movie’s sin wasn’t in the “idea” department, but in the way it was executed.

I couldn’t disagree more on all counts.

Oblivion is not a “pretty movie” and certainly not served cold. Vast. Beautiful. Eerie. Elegant. Visceral. Memorable. I also saw many similarities with the various films Dizon and others mentioned (I would include Bladerunner and Solaris in the mix). But here’s the thing: science fiction is the literature of “the large”. SF metaphorically explores our evolution, the meaning of our existence and our place in the universe through premise and idea. It is not surprising that viewers will see similarities with other films in Kosinski’s meditation on the nature of the soul, identity, self-actualization, love and community.

Several reviewers suggest that the film flirts with such big questions” yet makes no effort to fully answer them. Showatcher adds, "Where the film falls short is not in its visual styles; and its pacing can be forgiven in that it actually builds to a satisfying conclusion. The film falters with its need to include cliched action set-ups... the film addresses some very interesting questions of the human soul, religion, and the meditation of loneliness; however, it never takes it as far as it could. Instead we are left with a slick visual style and action scenes."

Good art always asks the big questions; unlike propaganda and polemic, good art also lets the viewers answer those big questions for themselves. This concept is not as palatable to North America’s multiplex crowd, eager for easily accessed answers.

Some movies are like appetizers or snacks. Others, like Kosinki's Oblivion, returns the film experience to a full meal, engaging all one's senses and where sound (its own character) marries with setting and actors to create an epic and heart-thrilling experience. Like many things in life, and certainly in good art, the most potent aspect of communication lies in the often subtle and oblique non-verbal narrative. Good art "shows more than it "tells".

For those receptive to his art, Kosinski--like Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Soderbergh in Solaris--lets the imagery and score express a sensual dance that invokes both mind and heart. 

In the final analysis, Oblivion is a simple film dressed elegantly. Oblivion goes beyond surface plot constructs and intellectual proselytizing; it dives deep into thematic representation to pose questions on identity, love, community, and the meaning of "home". Rather than offer up a platter-full of rhetoric, Kosinsky keeps the narrative slim; instead, he provides us with a multi-filigreed tapestry of sensual possibility.

And choices.

After making the startling discovery of who and what he is, Jack transcends his "mind wipe" and remembers what is worth remembering. In a final scene, Jack tells Sally why he is doing what he must do, even though it means his certain death. He quotes from an old book that he'd picked up earlier in the movie (Lays of Ancient Rome narrated by Centurian Horatius): "to every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late. And how can a man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods." 

Ben Kendrick of “Screenrant” summarizes what lies at the core of the film: “Oblivion could have easily been a convoluted and indulgent movie-going experience; instead, the film keeps a restrained focus on Jack’s character journey—which, thankfully, is an “effective team” of drama and post-apocalyptic adventure.”

Do me a favor; when you go into the theatre to watch this film, park your intellectual self at the door and bring all your senses with you. This film needs to be FELT. Prepare to participate.