Night Warriors – Graham Masterton

“Night Warriors” was Graham Masterton’s first novel where he used elements of fantasy and science- fiction. It was also my first book that introduced me to slightly different type of action and opened some new worlds for me down the road.
In the book there’s no one main character. Instead we have a small group of people who meet at a beach, where there’s been a body of young girl found. The trio seems to be completely not belonging to one another as Harry is an ex philosophy professor who is going through some alcohol problems phase. Susan who was adopted by her grandparents after a tragic death of her parents and Gil, teenager whose father owns a supermarket.
There is deep connection between the trio as they are all descendants of Night Warriors- an army of powerful warriors fighting in dreams against the evil.
And the evil is getting reborn, the devil’s returning and soon the dreams of all Americans will be in danger as he’ll try to spread his descendants to rule the world.
Our protagonists become a completely different personalities during their sleep. They turn into Warriors of the night, each of them having a power or a gift that allows them fighting the forces of evil.
As the action develops they are joined by Lloyd and eventually, all of them guided by Springer, asexual equivalent of an angel will have to face the devil Yaomautila.
It’s a carefully created own world by Masterton who filled it with his own rules, his own gods and forces fighting against them in the never ending theme of the good against the evil. “Night Warriors” and few other titles that continue the series are the only ones that reach out in the sci-fi area of Masterton’s writing but they still have loads of common points of Graham classic horror titles. The series is a great way to try something slightly new and see where it’ll take us. You never know.

What if? The Madden Way – Onto 2016 season.

After one retirement announcement following another one, matters settled. We knew we had lost Peyton Manning, Witten, Woodson, Vinateri, Andre Johnson and Frank Gore amongst many others it was time to prepare for free agency.
Liam Magician was a hot cross bun topic of the opening week but his agent did whatever he could (at least it looked like that) not to find him a new home but finally after some sweaty negotiations, we had the news that Washington Redskins was going to make Liam their franchise quarterback offering him over 30 million dollars contract with nearly third of it guaranteed. Not bad for a firmer undrafted quarterback.
Matters looked much dimmer where Marcin sat as despite some initial interest in him, no one decided to take Marcin on board and the young lad was considering career in accountancy. For our luck though he stuck out and later on he got his chance.
Griswald landed in hospital as he needed few new organs due to killing his own ones with heavy booze celebrating but he was back in driving seat for end of free agency and he spent some Buck on reshuffling o-line, finding new kicker and few other pieces with the most important at the linebacker by striking a multi year deal with Brandon Spikes. The secondary looked a bit shakey not to mention running back position.
When the draft came the Colts invested in some lesser know rough diamonds and scored a talented running back T. Jackson who after some evaluation looks really like the Deal and they added a nose tackle T. Burton who is said to be a hard working creep. Rest of the crop was pretty lousy but two possible studs out of seven picks, sounds like a smashing weekend!
While Liam was learning in and outs of new system, Marcin kept on drowning in depression until the 49ers decided to give him a chance and he made through the training camp. The season 2016 looked to be so exciting with Packers defending the title, our brothers trying to conquer the NFC and Griswald trying not to damage his kidneys again. It was a beautiful time to be alive!!!!

What if? The Madden Way – Prologue 2

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The second half of the season was fairly uneventful for Liam right up to last week when he was awarded Player of the Week award for passing 347 yards with 3 td and 1 pick with astonishing amount of 55 attempts. Unfortunately the Browns struggled and finished the season with disappointing 4-12 record and Liams person was linked with being kicked out during the off-season as Magician wasn’t picking words when ripping the franchise to bits and pieces. Yet with 4114 passing yards 19-17 td-int, completing 55% of his passes for 6.4 yards Liam hoped there’d be coaches there willing to train him and turn him into a star.
In Buffalo, Marcin had a disappointing end to the season, missing few games out. He finished the year with 44 catches for 615 yards and three scores. He knew the team would let him walk as all the glory was a on Sammy Watkins who he didn’t agree with at all. His Bills cracked into play offs with 9-6-1 record where they’d face the Colts.
Grumplet put a solid coaching year behind him and led the team to 11-5 record to face Bills in wild card round. They blasted through the Bills with 52-28 dominant win just to crash in divisional round against San Diego in close game decided by last minute touchdown to give the Chargers the win 45-38.
AFC Championship was won by the Chargers who soundly beat the Pats 32-21. NFC Championship went to Green Bay who came away with victory at Seattle 27-23.
The Super Bowl 50 seemed to lack atmosphere and the whole week leading up to was flat. But before that happened, there was time to announce yearly awards across the league during NFL honours night.
That’s where things got really bizarre as the Head Coach of the Year award went to Griswald Grumplet and everyone was just shocked since he did have some success with Indy but every one knew it was mainly down to players doing their thing. Anyways, when they were announcing the MVP the place went nuts and after people realised they heard Russell Wilson’s name things gone quiet and everyone was just confused as hell. The Seahawks had a top scoring offence but it was riding on backs of two running backs, Marshall Lynch who ended up leading the league in rushing yards with 1639 and Rawls who led the NFL in rushing touchdowns with 17 (jointly with Williams from the Steelers). No one could understand how handing off and looking cool earns you an MVP but hey. Life!
Marcus Mariota and Jamie Winston became Offensive Rookies of the Year in their respective conferences with D. Perryman of San Diego and E. Kendrich of Minnesota earned the defensive honours amongst the rookies.
Big Ben led the league in passing yards with 5027 of them and he also snatched the passing touchdown crown with 36 scores through the air. Can Newton was the most accurate with 71% passes completed and he also had the highest passer rating at 108.7 whilst Eli Manning got sacked the record 78 times and he was still alive.
Other achievements worth mentioning were those of: A. Brown leading in receiving yards (1721 yards and 111 catches), Jordy Nelson (1590-105) and Larry Fitzgerald (1393-81) split the leadership in receiving touchdowns with 14 each.
Kelvin Sheppard of Miami was the league leading tackler with 152 while his angry teammate Such led the NFL with 17 tackles for loss. Justin Houston grabbed himself 19.5 sacks and Darrelle Revis was the top interceptor with 8 picks.
Thomas Davis (Carolina) blocked to field goals during the season and K. J. Wright was the only one recording a safety….
And finally, night after the award ceremony Packers squared off with Chargers and had a solid and sound victory 44-33 to take Lombardi Trophy to Lambeau Field.
And Aaron Rodgers was named the Super Bowl 50 MVP. Then the lights were off and the world was already preparing for another crazy season.

What if? The Madden Way – Prologue.

They attended Winston Salem college and the brothers Magicians were really popular out there but not much anywhere else. Liam who was shaping to be a huge quarterback at 6’5″ and 250 angry pounds of flesh just threw a tad wobbly fade to his slightly younger brother who at 6’4″ and 225 pounds wasn’t so much smaller. He reached out, grabbed the ball and the team’s cheerleaders exploded with joy.
Many miles down south, Griswald Grumplet was downing another bottle of vodka.
At the age of 31 his career was finished. It never really took off. He was unaware that over the last months he has been observed and his life was about to change.
Then there was draft and nothing happened, changes within offices and team personnel stuff but our trio still was lost out there in between now and then.
The long awaited summer of 2015 had come and our three characters got finally some good news. Marcin got an invite from Buffalo Bills to the camp, while Liam was chosen by the Browns to hopefully replace the Jimmy “Trouble” Manziel. In most bizzare move coach Pagano quit and Jim Irsay hired Griswald Grumplet as he saw some desperation in the letters that Griswald kept sending to every NFL team.
Preseason came along and our trio has made some impact at the start of the season, Liam was named the starting quarterback for the Browns, Marcin was the second wide receiver choice in Buffalo and Griswald was trying to make Colts’ players to like him a bit. It was all odd.
For Liam the season took off slowly as in his first game, against the Jets he only passed for 152 yards with no touchdowns or picks in losing effort as the team fell 10-27. Next game also brought a taste of losing as Liam, despite managing 332 yards with 2td and one pick run out of steam against the Tennessee.
His first win came in game four against San Diego where Magician was truly magic throwing 2 TD with no picks and driving the ball through the air for 286 yards.
But the fortunes were in Brown’s favours as at the half point there were miserable 2-6 and wiling to die.
Marcin had to wait one game less for his first victory as his Bills squeezed sneaky win out of the Dolphins with late 4tg quarter touchdown reception by Magician. It was his first, and hopefully not last. At half point the Bills were 4-3 and Marcin dropped on depth chart to number 3 after failing to record a hundred yarder.
In Indianapolis matters were peculiarly solid and sound as the Colts were 6-2 at half point and Andrew Luck seemed to have learned how to protect the ball by recording only two interceptions to 12 TD passes.
It looked like the world finally gave our guys a break and there was plenty of looking forward to.