Several months ago I received an e-mail from a group that I’m a part of saying that an author had been researching people whom were of the same interest as those of us in this group, and that he was offering free copies of the book to people interested in reviewing it. I signed up for the site, sent in my request, and not long after the book arrived in the mail! So here is my promised review of T.L. Hines’ “The Unseen.”

First let me start off by saying that, while I read the flap of the book that said that this was a “Noir Bizarre” book, it never really hit me what that meant until about halfway, if not more, through the book. I had no idea what the book is about, the description on the back is rather vague, and I’m thankful for that, because it makes it so much more exciting when the back of the book doesn’t give away half of the plot! When I first received the book I started reading it immediately and I knew it was going to be good. The book pulled me right in, and kept me in it’s clutches!

The Unseen follows the story of Lucas, a young man whose life as a loner gets more and more complicated with each person he meets, through a strange encounter with an Urban Explorer and the group he’s tied to, The Creep Club. Lucas is an Urban Explorer, he’s in the walls, he’s in the ceiling, he’s all around us, silently watching, silently connecting. You have nothing to fear though, he does it just for him, just because of the curiosity in him that he calls Dark Vibrations. He has his own strict code of ethics, he would never sneak into someone’s home, but offices were okay. As the story progresses his ethics are tested to every extent, his Dark Vibrations sparked in ways he’d never imagined.

After having a chance encounter with Donovan, a Creep Club member, and an Urban Explorer whom unknowingly invaded Lucas’ home in the steam tunnels under a university, Lucas is invited to attend one of the club’s meetings where he discovers that the Creep Club is a group of Urban Explorers that sneak into people’s homes, and set up cameras, watching them, recording them. They call this art… They edit the videos, and show them to the rest of the club durring meetings. But not everything is as it appears, the Creep Club turns out to be more than just a group of Peeping Toms. Lucas and the club doesn’t see eye to eye and he isn’t welcomed into the group as hoped, but as he leaves the club he’s approached by a man who claims to work for the government, and he wants Lucas to infiltrate the club and help to take it down. As the story unfolds things become stranger and stranger and Lucas is faced with many tough choices that puts his and others’ lives in danger.

The story begins at a moderate pace but quickly picks up and grabs hold of you, I started off reading a chapter a night for the first half, and then I lost control, reading the second half in one weekend. At first I didn’t like the dabble of Noir Bizarre in the story, I felt like it was intruding in the story, it truly plays such a small part that the story seems like it could do without it, but the last quarter of the book kicks up the bizarre level, brings it all together and wraps up with an amazing ending.

So the week before the Holidays was pretty fun. We were learning to shoot Interiors with Dave Henderson and after some instruction got to go to some cool places like the renowned Great Bay Restaurant at the hotel Commonwealth and the Commanders’ Mansion in Watertown. When we were at each place we spent the day setting up lighting and composing our shots just right, lighting multiple areas of the scene to Photoshop them together later. We also learned some EDR techniques, Extended Dynamic Range. It’s basically HDR without the ugly.

Just as we were getting ready to leave the Commanders’ Mansion I snapped a few shots with my fisheye and had a ball trying to correct the distortion in Photoshop. Two and a half hours later I had a great looking shot and a lot of practice with the Warp and Distort tools! The photo that I did this on can be seen to the left, the shot of the stairway.

After I got back home from Thanksgiving vacation things just got better and better. Sarcasm… My package that was stolen a few weeks prior was re-shipped and sitting safely on our porch after being there for half a week while I was in New York. So that much was good. The next few days were just crazy. Crazy Crop as the title implies!

All week I’ve been tired as heck and can not figure out a reason why. I’ve been getting to bed usually before 11, and I’ve been sleeping fine… who knows… So this week we’ve been learning how to integrate Photoshop into a studio setting. We spent Monday through Wednesday shooting, and Thursday and Friday were Photoshop days. Wednesday morning I plugged a light into a power pack, not even thinking it might be on, and went to set up the other light, a few minutes later the cap that I had left on the light was melting… Crap… Another group was trying to set up a roll of seamless paper and the whole thing came off the core so they had fun trying to get that back on… What a Wednesday!

On Thursday Keith’s new Laptop was supposed to be delivered, the screen on his old one broke and he’s been waiting for this new one… We got home for lunch and he checked the tracking information… “Delivered – Front Porch”… How could UPS leave a $700 laptop on someone’s porch without requiring a signature? That’s just plain BS! We decided to use our lunch to find out where it is and what could be done about it so we walked over to the UPS store and explained the situation and they gave us a number to call so we went back home and decided to eat lunch first, then we headed over to the police station by the train tracks. We walked in and… no one was around.. After standing around for a bit some one came in, we said we were looking to speak to a police officer and they lead us to an office to talk with someone. After once more explaining our story all we got were directions to the police head-quarters in the county building on Lexington street… We walked back home and hopped in the car and headed there. Once there we… again… explained the situation, this time in excruciating detail, and were then told we had to call UPS and get a bunch of information and then come back… So back home we went. At the point we were about 15 minutes late going back to school from lunch and we both decided that this needed to be sorted out so we hopped in my car and went back to school to retrieve our personal items.

Upon arriving back home Keith called UPS and… you guessed it, explained the situation… They told us to… get this… call the vendor, to have them call UPS… How many times have we been passed off? Okay so I headed on to NewEgg.com and called the customer service line, About a 30 minute wait time… Joy of joys! I popped in my bluetooth headset and settled down from some good ole Call of Duty: World at War sniping! After the long wait the operator picked up and I… explained the situation… After gathering together a bunch of information we got even more information. Keith’s father now has to re-order the laptop and it will be processed through the original payment and re-shipped. Our land-lady told us that we could have packages shipped to her office, right down the road, because someone is always there during the day, so the second laptop will be sent there and hopefully arrive safe… The next problem: Will it arrive before Keith heads home for Christmas vacation? It better!

So… As I previously claimed: What a bunch of Crazy Crop!

UPDATE (Sunday 12/7): Okay you all fail at the race of who will comment first! Anyway: Keith, two of our friends, and I went to see Bolt in Disney Digital 3D and Oh.. My god.. It was amazing! That is how animated movies are meant to be watched, It truly feels like you could just step right into the scene. Starting in 2009 all Disney movies will be shown like this, and I for one can’t wait to see more!

So… On the way to see Bolt, I was following TomTom as usual and it told me to turn down a street, so I faithfully followed, only to see flashing blue lights in my rear-view a few seconds later. I pulled over and the officer came up, apparently you can’t turn left on to that road, and TomTom didn’t know that… SHAME ON YOU TOM TOM!!! I explained about Tom Tom, he asked for my license and registration, which I presented and when I was getting my license out he notied my badge in my wallet and asked what it was so I showed him, I felt special, lol! Either way he let me go and we saw the (amazing) movie.