Category Archives: About The Characters
Book Review: The Chosen: Rise Of The Darkness
Reblogged from Horroraddicts.net. Many thanks to David for his review.
Alex is a man who is down on his luck, he lost his fiance’ and parents and is now being plagued by horrible visions. In these visions he sees a wasteland of dead bodies and a beast that is not human. Alex struggles to find answers and has been going to paranormal conferences to find them. Over time he meets some investigators and learns of a prophecy that will bring about the end of humanity.
An old god will arise bringing an army of demons and zombies to kill all the humans and start a new world order. Alex finds out he is the chosen one who can stop the coming darkness and save the world as we know it. Not only will Alex have to fight one old god, there is also another spirit who is trying to gain power and Alex has to fight his inner demons as well. He has help from a team of paranormal investigators, but will it be enough to stop the darkness from taking over?
The Chosen: Rise Of The Darkness by C.A. Milson is a story with a lot going on. Alex is the star and my favorite character but he’s only a small part of a big story. I loved the character of Alex because of the transition he goes through. He goes from rock bottom trying to get over the tragedies in his life to being the only one who can save humanity. The interesting part of his character is that he doesn’t want any of this, he doesn’t want the power that is growing within him and he doesn’t want to be responsible for saving the world. He wants his fiance’ back and a simple life. Alex is thrust into a horrible situation and doing what he has to do. I liked him because I think most people can relate to him.
There were some great villains in this story, one is Tanzac who was a fallen angel and the other is Jamison who is an evil spirit who hates everyone. Jamison is the perfect villain, he was a cult leader and spent his life and death influencing people to do bad things. Jamison is the kind of guy in a book that I love to hate. Tanzac the other bad guy is sympathetic and actually shows compassion at points in the book. I love it that this book has a villain that seems to be very complex and another that you just want to see destroyed.
My favorite part of this book was a scene where a man decides to do a mock satanic ritual to get revenge on a couple of people. While he does some evil deeds he awakens something far worse. I liked how the demon that shows up does good by default. The characters in this story are great and complex. In addition to the characters there is a theme about new beginnings in this book and good coming from evil along with some religious metaphors. My only problem with Rise Of The Darkness was that I felt it lacked suspense at times but the great characters make up for it. Rise Of The Darkness is the beginning of a trilogy and its a good book about good versus evil.
Get the Ebook at ASJ Publishing.
Teaser: The Chosen – Prophecy’s End
First posted over at Horroraddicts.net.
Teaser: The Chosen – Prophecy’s End
Prophecy’s End… Book four in The Chosen series. This is where it all ends, and the conflict between Jamiesonn, Tanzac and Alex comes to a head. One shall emerge from this victorious and the fate of humanity will be decided. To be judged and condemned to Hell on Earth, or be saved and life continues as “business as usual”.
After almost being killed by his alter ego in the past, Alex has been thrown into the vortex that descends into the sinister darkness that is Tanzac’s world. Trapped, alone and scared out of his mind, Alex hopes for his own fleeting salvation. But will this ever present darkness finally have its day and destroy the prophecy of the Elders?
This book has been a long time coming, and I admit that I have procrastinated a heck of a lot on this one. It is not because I do not want to write it, it is more a case that life – real life – sometimes gets in the way of doing what I need to do 🙂
The storyline – from beginning to almost end – I have all in my mind… Somewhere in those dark murky places where imagination takes root and springs forth like a cesspool of ideas. Needless to say, there are some very graphic scenes in this one, and for those who think Jamiesonn is downright cool, then you are in for a real treat of what I do with him in this installment …
Prophecy’s End brings into the fold Laura. Jamiesonn’s precious little girl. So not only does Alex have to contend with his alter-ego, Jamiesonn, Tanzac and his minions, but also Laura, who is a little hell-raiser in her own right.
Back along for this ride will be some old friends, some new ones, and of course who can forget the Judas who betrayed him in the beginning…
The things that lay in wait in the darkness will have their day in this book, and when I get done with this piece, I am sure that some of you will be in for what will be an unexpected ending… One that even I am not sure what that will be 🙂
Keep watch for Prophecy’s End. And be terrified of the darkness. It is coming… Scheduled for release in late 2016.
Meet My Character: Laura from Not So Ordinary Girl
Laura
Is he/she fictional or a historic person? Fictional
When and where is the story set? She’s Not So Ordinary is set in Melbourne Western suburbs.
What should we know about her? Laura is the girl you would never expect to meet. Highly intelligent, perceptive, and has a dark side to her persona that not many people see. Laura had a sheltered upbringing to a point. Her mother, Cathy, used to be one of the most popular girls in school, until one event changed her life and she became a recluse and fled her hometown of Gympie to try and hide from the demons that stalked her. Not much is known of Laura’s father. Either he was dead or was a dead-beat loser who knocked up Cathy and dumped her. Cathy never really spoke of the man who impregnated her. Whenever the subject was brought up, Cathy would break down and cry, and the subject was avoided.
Cathy died when Laura was around thirteen years old. Laura never found out who her father was.
The storyline starts with Laura, a 20-something year old woman who works for a small business in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Laura’s first and only boyfriend (Tony) served in the army and went off to war in Iraq, never heard from again.
We first see Laura celebrating with other workers at the home-office of her boss, they are celebrating the success of getting a new large client, which means that the business will be finally stepping up in the world with moving to a real office in the area. For Laura, and another person, Garratt, that means that they are being considered for a promotion at work to be made assistant manager. The promotion comes with a small increase in salary and more time out of the office, meeting new clients. But Garratt is smooth, charismatic, and down-right dirty when it comes to getting any kind of advancement.
Before long, things begin to happen, and demons from Laura’s part start to surface. But is it all an illusion or is the charade just a part of a larger plot?
What is the main conflict? Her main conflict is the love of her life, Tony, who is deployed in Iraq. She yearns for him to come home safely to her.
What is the personal goal of the character?To find true love. Or at least, an aspect of it to find happiness.
Can we read more about it? She’s Not So Ordinary is available as paperback and Ebook on GooglePlay, Amazon, Kindle, and soon as Audiobook. The film version of the novella is scheduled to be filmed in late 2015. Find out about the film HERE.
Meet My Character: Karen from The Chosen Series
Welcome to the Meet My Character. Today we will meet Karen.
Karen
Is he/she fictional or a historic person? Fictional
When and where is the story set? The storyline of The Chosen is set in the not top distant past, and ends with the final book set in the very not to distant future.
What should we know about her? Karen is the type of girl who is always searching for something better in life. The daughter of a drunkard mother, she grew up thinking that it was perfectly okay to use and abuse men, as long as it got her what she wanted. She is intelligent, cunning, manipulative. Karen is a party-hard girl and she especially loves it when men fight over her.
Her fav pastimes are spending too much time in-front of the mirror; Spending her boyfriends (yes, she has many boyfriends) money; Drinking; Getting stoned, and having sex (although this one ranks up pretty high on the list).
What is the main conflict? Karen’s only conflict is trying to find a way to escape the small town life. After witnessing the horrific deaths of Tom and Jeff (by the demon, Lutancix), her salvation comes by Alex, who arrives in Winmont to investigate the paranormal incident.
What is the personal goal of the character? Her only focus is to get out of the small town and live in the city. She has no clue what she will do beyond that.
Karen is one of the three main characters in the Chosen Series. She plays an important role in Bloodline Of Darkness, and (spoilers) she is manipulated in Prophecy’s End to bring about the downfall of Alex. Just who manipulates her, I will not say as that will give you the ending 😉
There is a feature film adaptation of the first book. You can find out about that film HERE.
Meet My Character: Jamiesonn from The Chosen Series
Welcome to the Meet My Character. Today we will meet the bad-ass Jamiesonn and find out what makes him tick
Jamiesonn
Is he/she fictional or a historic person? Fictional
When and where is the story set? The storyline of The Chosen is set in the not top distant past, and ends with the final book set in the very not to distant future.
What should we know about him/her? For those who has read previous books in The Chosen series, you will know that Jamiesonn is not the type of demon you want to mess with. Originally born in 1329 in the remote village of Nesikan, Russia. He grew up for the most part in a small hut with his mother, Olga. During his younger years, he was the victim of verbal and physical abuse on a daily basis. By the time he was a teenager, he had been so conditioned to the abuse that each day, he almost looked forward to what form of punishment he would suffer at the hands of his mother.
Soon after his 15th birthday, he met his cousin, Danska, for the first time, and in the spring of 1345, he married his beloved, and for a season, a hope for a better life….
His idealistic life quickly became a nightmare, as the abuse from his mother continued, and he was married to a woman who despised him no end. A year after they were married, Danska gave birth to a stillborn, male child, which naturally was not his. It was then, that his eyes were opened and he became blood-thirsty for revenge. His undying hunger for vengeance fueled his insatiable rage.
He got his revenge… Six years later. I wont say what happens, but during the years he left that shit-hole he became “a better man”…
If I tell any more, that would give away the game. So you’ll just have to have a read of the books to find out just how evil he truly is.
What is the main conflict? Jamiesonn never found peace. Neither in life or death. After his horrific murder (no spoilers here on how he was killed), he came back to haunt the living, and of course, create his own kind of mayhem for anyone he wants to torment. Which just happens to be everyone 🙂
What is the personal goal of the character? His personal goal? Complete and total world domination. He will find some form of satisfaction when all of creation is at his mercy (although we all know he is not one to show any form of mercy).
Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it? Prophecy’s End is the title of the final book. But you can read about Jamiesonn in the other 3 novels; Rise Of The Darkness, Bloodline Of Darkness; and She’s Not So Ordinary. (BTW: If you want to see some film snippets, a production company in QLD, Australia has released a trailer for Rise of The Darkness, which they hope will be filming the feature film in 2015/2016).
When can we expect the book to be published? The first three books are available now in Print and Ebook. (Rise Of The Darkness is also available in Audiobook. Prophecy’s End is still in the works.
The Chosen – Film Adaptation
For something a little different, I am posting a topic of what I think of my novel becoming a movie.
For some time now I have wondered who would star in the line-up of characters.
Mind you, this is just for fun so feel free to comment on this and leave your thoughts
- Alex Manning – Vasily Stepanov
- Jamiesonn – Zachary Quinto
- Drake Winters – Ray Liotta
- Usher – Graham Greene
- Karen – Simone Buchanan
- Wang – Colin Chou
As for director? I think M. Night Shyamalan would make a wonderful adaptation of the book
These would be the main characters. Of course, I do like the performance of some other actors, but I think the above mentioned actors would fit the film adaptation quite nicely.
C.A.Milson
About The Chosen…
Welcome to the Darkness… This was the first line in the first ever story I wrote.
Apart from the fleeting attempt in high school, the first ever story I actually gave time to writing was titled Shack of Evil. That was back in 1989. In 1989 I was living in a small town called Winchelsea Victoria, when my days and nights were spent writing, writing and writing some more.
I can remember the first ever draft I wrote of Shack of Evil. It was based on a hobbytex picture my mother had hanging on the wall of her dining room. I remember vividly I was sat at the dining table staring blankly at this picture – red velvet canvas and drawn on it was a rustic shack and a painted yellow full moon in the background. The image of that picture is burned into my mind, like a master blueprint of darkness, or insanity… Or maybe I just like the picture.
Of course the story wasn’t written in it’s entirity there. But the foundation of what was to become The Chosen was birthed from that picture.
Soon after I had moved to small-town Winch, I found that the passion for writing began to kick in, and so started this journey that would take me down a long road to being published.
Wincheslea was a town like you would expect to see in The Chosen. A town that had 1 bank, 1 bakery, a newsagency which doubled as a post-offiice, 1 police officer and 2 pubs. Winch had a population of less than a thousand people. A town where you couldn’t sneeze without the whole town knowing about it, and ideallic enough for a horror setting.
I lived about 5 miles out of town, on a piggery, own by the Sorenson’s. (Nothing like the fresh smell of pig-crap in the morning). So you can imagine what mischief and scenarios would pop into my mind back then. There is alot that can be said about a town like Winch. It certainly can give one alot of inspitation for any writer who wants to write a scene about a small town 🙂
Getting back to the theme: Not far out of town, but far enough from where I lived, was a canyon of sorts, which looked more like the beginning of a quarry which actually never got started. To describe this area would be like calling this area dunes of hardened clay, set amongst the backdrop of the bush. Okay, maybe not entirely eerie, but try going there at night, when the sky is clear and the moon is full…
That area, which I called “The Dunes” became the setting place of The Clearing, where Lutancix made his first appearence to the occultist, Jeff, in The Chosen.
Okay, so I had the setting. The rustic shack and the dunes. Perfect combo for a horror story. Shack of Evil was developed.
The original story was about Jamiesonn and his life. A supernatural being trapped in his own hell, and who wanted to reap revenge on the decendants who murdered him. Of course, the ghost hunter who had the fun of confronting Jamiesonn seemed more like an immature teenager rather than a professional parapsychologist.
So began Shack of Evil. A 9 page epic which I thought was absolute brilliance. But it wasn’t perfect. I knew that, and SOE needed alot of work to get it to the level I wanted it to be. The entire story was set in the first person POV.
It was around that time when I first started to read Stephen King novels. The first one I read was Misery. After reading that, I knew that I wanted to write full length novels rather than short stories which one could read in 30 minutes.
SOE was set in the first person POV, and so to develop it to the level I expected, I had to write in the third person. For someone who had never mastered literature in high school, that was going to be a challenge in itself, which meant alot of reading to see how other writers did it.
I read afew other novels by King and some Lovecraft, to learn how they wrote. I knew I could do better than what I had wrote, and even today I still consider Lovecraft the grand-master of horror.
SOE was put on the back-burner for some time… Well, 5 years to be exact. It took me 5 years to pick up the story, read it and then begin to rewrite it.
In 1994 I wrote a 300 page, two-part novel. This time around, I kept the original character of Jamiesonn, as well as the ghost hunter, but changed it to the scenario where the fate of the world was left up to one man, and his struggle to fight against supernatural beings. Jamiesonn had evolved with this new draft. His shack had a new setting, in the backdrop of Gympie, a small town that was once the boom of the gold mining rush.
The new draft was handwritten, and I managed to write this draft in 9 months. Day in, Day out. Everyday I sat at the dining table at my father’s house and wrote while I listened to TripleM belt out the hits of rock. (I’m a rocker boy at heart).
That novel was the first real novel I wrote, and a step up from what I had previously written. I had managed to switch from first-person POC to third-person POV. I had written the character of Jamiesonn so well that one guy whom I worked with once, read it (I think his name was Trevor) and actually believed that Jamiesonn was real. (I kid you not, one time I heard him whisper before he went into a sales meeting “Give me power Jamiesonn!”)
I seemed to have done well, but I knew in my heart it still was not perfect. I knew it could be developed alot more. Of course, I had no idea that what was yet to come would be a trilogy. In 1996, I began to write the sequel.
In 1996 I was living in Indooroopilly, which is a suburb of Brisbane. I was sharing a house with these college kids. Nikki and her boyfriend Craig (who was a Doom addict), and not to forget Julianne, (who looked alot like actress Teresa Russell when she was younger), and not to forget Julianne’s cat, Max, who followed her everywhere (even to the store).
What can I say about the crew I shared a house with? Good people. Always the life of any party. Craig was a teacher at a Uni, Nikki was a student who always got around in a summer dress (tease), and Julianne was… well, I will just say Julianne was a free-spirit.
I only knew Julianne for about 18 days until she went to go live with her mom, but those 18 days seemed to span years. Her and I shared a kinship, a soul connection if you will. For the first time in a while I had found a reason to write again, full on. She gave me inspiration and ideas for my new story and a new character. Back then, in 1996, she was more than someone I shared a house with and more than a friend. She was the first woman that I loved. That love lasted a long time. I never saw again after December 1996, but in my heart I loved her for many years after. She knew that I loved her, and I am sure she felt the same… Especially since that last night we spent together.
The above paragraph is important part of this, as Julianne’s persona is what I based the new character of Alison on.
A new character had been spawned, and also a new love interest for one of the characters. But even then in 1996, when I started the second book, I knew that the whole thing needed a major rewrite. It was good, but it was not what I wanted. I wanted to take the characters into a new direction and add more terror.
Enter Tanzac… In the original version of The Chosen, Lutancix was one of the major players in the story, while Tanzac took a back-seat. So I had to rework that, and give them a history, and why they were like they were.
I heard a preacher once say in a sermon, I think it was Kenneth Copeland, “A person doesn’t wake up one day and decide that they are going to be a hitman for the mafia“. And neither would supernatural beings. In life, death plays a natural part, and there are ghost stories of tormented souls in limbo who walk the earth. Ghosts are not naturally evil, it is how they lived that caused them to be like that…. Or so it is believed. So Tanzac needed a history, as I will explain another time…
More to come….
C.A. Milson 