The One that started with Guitar Hero..

In all honesty I am a bookworm.

I could read till the cows came home (except when they did I’d shout at them and tell them to go away again)

When I was at school I didn’t like the whole reading as a class thing because I liked reading at my own pace (on numerous occasions I would get told off for reading forward.)

The other day I was hanging out with my Bro and he was playing Guitar Hero World Tour. He was struggling with one bit on the drums, so I tweeted about it and waited to see if anyone out there on Twitter could answer the question. Then Matt came to our rescue. Later that day Matt was looking for bloggers to review his book I thought why not, you know a bit of you help me I’ll help you in return. 

I’m currently reading Pride and Prejudice as part of Jane Austen January as hosted by Elle at Pipe Dreams and Professions – it would be something different and put my reading skills to some use.

I read through the first chapter and emailed Matt with some questions as follows.

(Btw I’ve just been back to Matt’s Blog to find out URL’s and stuff like that – I ended up reading one of his posts, and I get a mention how fab is that!)

In a couple of sentences can you introduce yourself to me?

Well, I make a living as a software developer, and I’ve done that for almost ten years now. I’m also a bit of a pianist and a composer — you can find some of my music on my site. My wife and I live in El Paso, Texas, where we were both born and raised. We spent a few years up in Washington state, and came back down once we decided just how nice it was seeing the sun every once in a while.

How did you get into writing?

I’ve written off and on for as long as I can remember. One day though, a couple of years ago, my dad called me up and said he’d found a couple of old short stories and poems of mine. He said I should keep at it, maybe try and get something published. I started writing short stories again, and remembered how much fun it was, so it kinda stuck with me that time around.

If you had to name two or three writers who influenced you, who would they be?

Oh gosh. The first one is really easy: Stephen King. I love his conversational style, how it sounds like you’re just sitting around talking with friends instead of reading a book. The second one I’d choose would probably have to be Poe; I’ve always kinda liked the gothic flavor, and he was definitely a favorite of mine when I was growing up.

Also, what genre would you put your stories into?

That’s something that I’ve had the hardest time trying to figure out — when you’ve read Like Glass and have a suggestion, let me know 😉

I’m a movie geek and love going to the cinema or just curling up with a DVD, if we were to see Like Glass on the Silver Screen who would you have playing Rob Jackson? Cindy? Bill?

Hmmmm…. I think Rob Lowe might make a decent Rob Jackson. I almost want to say Keanu Reeves would be good too, but he’s a bit too “surfer” for the part. Cindy isn’t a major character in the novel overall, but Janet, the real love interest (you’ll see that once you get a couple of chapters into it) would probably do well with Jennifer Love Hewitt, maybe Jennifer Morrison (she plays Dr. Cameron on House). I think Matthew Lillard would probably do pretty good for Bill.

Are we able to know what Bill did do Rob or does that come out in the rest of the story (or then again do we just have to wait and see?)

Yeah, that’s what a good chunk of the book after Chapter 1 is about 😉

(I can tell you if you want but that would spoil it! You need to read it!)

I really liked the story and for nearly all of it I was glued to it and couldn’t put it down at all. I think this annoyed CJ quite a lot!

Over all it was good and I would read it again. Having chatted briefly via email to Matt about the characters and who he thought he would have in the role should it be a film I think it made it easier for me to kinda visualise the characters and what was going on. Matt is good at describing the characters and being able to help the reader to visualise what is going on and what the buildings and people look like.

About half way through there is a section were one of the characters has a bit of a breakdown so the storyline becomes a bit muddled between past, present and future tenses. I struggled to keep up with what was happening at these points. However after it had happened the story line straightened out again and made sense.

The ending is a little sad as you just think everyone is going to get their happy ending the way it should have been at the beginning then Matt throws in just one more twist to leave the reader guessing right to the end.

I struggled with the language as there is quite a lot of swearing through out the book – or at least more than I’m used to! However I did like the story over all and would definitely look and reading the next book that Matt produces, who knows I might be reviewing it!