Wag The Fox

An interview with David Rotenberg, author of "The Placebo Effect"

2012-02-01T02:00:00.000-05:00

I had theopportunity to read an advance review copy of David Rotenberg's latestnovel, The Placebo Effect, in preparation for this blog tour (thanks to Annaliese at Simon & Schuster Canada for setting it up).My review of the thriller just went up on the blog yesterday, so besure to check that out if you're interested in my opinion on thebook. There are also a number of other reviews and guest spots alongDavid's blog tour I encourage you to check out, too.

For now, here's aquick blurb about what the book is about, followed by interview withDavid. Enjoy!

Decker Roberts has the dangerous gift of detecting the truth(synaesthesia). But when his carefully compartmentalized life startsto fall apart he has to go on the run and figure out why he’s beingtargeted. There’s also a government agency hunting him down whoseems to know everything about him and other people of “his kind.”How will Decker find out which truth was endangering his life? Whobetrayed him and revealed all his secrets? Decker needs to findanswers quickly, before knowing the truth turns from a gift into adeadly curse.

Gef: With your experience as an actingteacher, that facet of Decker Roberts' backstory seems easy enough tosource. But what about the synesthesia? Where did that come from?

David: I’ve always written aboutpeople with special abilities, the five Zhong Fong novels areabout a man with exceptional talent in a world where special talentsare not honored. When I directed the first Canadian play in thePeople’s Republic of China the first thing the Artistic Director ofthat theatre said to me was, “You must remember that you can alwaysbe replace”-a fine hello, how was your flight!

Synesthesia simply gives an access tothe ‘other.’ There is a lot of material on synesthesia; some ofthe most interesting is actually the documentary on Mr. Tammet andhis extraordinary abilities. There is also a gentleman called thehuman camera, you can find YouTube stuff on both, and BBCdocumentaries. As well Mr. Tammet has an interesting book.

Rainman was based loosely on the manwho Mr. Tammet thought of as his spiritual father-he passed away afew years back.

Gef: Considering how the majorityof your previous novels are set in China (the Zhong Fong series), waswriting a novel set--at least in part--in Canada a homecoming ofsorts?

David: Yes. But writing about Torontois difficult. I was born and raised here but I left for 15 years.When I returned it was a much better place than when I left, butstill hard to write about. Over 50% of the people in the GTA weren’tborn in Canada. We, in Toronto, are creating Toronto as it goes. Thatmakes it hard for a writer since in a very real sense there is nothere yet, it’s coming, it’s growing, but it’s not there.That’s both exciting and exasperating. Hence, I have written aboutonly really one small part of Toronto, The Junction, where I havelived for 22 years.

Gef: If you had a form of synesthesiasimilar to Decker's, would you be inclined to think of it as anendowment or an affliction?

David: If you get a gift you'll alwayshave to pay something for it. My Russian grandfather was foreverannouncing "free is the most expensive."

Gef: Personally, I have what I considera healthy distrust of pharmaceutical corporations, especially whenthose American ads reel off the litany of astounding side effects. Inyour research, how was your confidence bolstered or shaken towardssuch companies?

David: I did a ton of investigationinto the pharma industry for a previous idea that never came tofruition. It let me to a healthy skepticism of the entire thing, but,and let’s be honest here, when I have a headache I reach for theibuprofen in a second and am duly grateful for its healing effects.

The plot about placebos is not really ajab at the pharma business; it has more to do with the unrelentingpursuit of cash. I mean, how many cigars can you smoke at one time?What can a bar possibly do to make a martini worth $22? Nothing.

I’ve dealt with a lot of people whohave way more money than brains, and haven’t a clue what to do withit. I have, though, also dealt with people who realize that moneyonly really buys you one thing-freedom…and the ability to helpothers. There are such gracious folks, honest.

Gef: Who is better at takinginstructions: actors or fictional characters? Did you find yourcharacters did what you wanted from them, or did any of them surpriseyou as you wrote the book?

David: Good actors make directors,“dance with them, never on them.” It’s a phrase that comes fromthe dance world. Good actors are independent creatures who have ahealthy disrespect for both text and directors, especially directorswho think they know everything. Characters sit in your brain pan, andtwiddle, sometimes to no end, sometimes to things you’d never thinkof in a thousand year.

I'd like to offer a big thanks to DavidRotenberg and the folks at Simon & Schuster Canada, and encouragereaders to check out David's website (http://www.davidrotenberg.com/) and follow the blog tour on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Placebo-Effect-Book-One-of-The-Junction-Chronicles/260452804000778).

Rabid Reads: 'The Placebo Effect' by David Rotenberg

2012-01-31T07:30:00.000-05:00

The Placebo Effect (JunctionChronicles Book One)

by DavidRotenberg

Touchstone (animprint of Simon & Schuster Canada, 2012)

338 pages

ISBN9781439170113 (trade paperback)

I imagine being a human lie detector would have its perks. It wouldsure help figuring out who left the milk out on the kitchencounter! Sorry. Pet peeve. It'd have its drawbacks, too. I justwouldn't have put money on one of those drawbacks being NSA agentschasing you down. That's one of Decker Roberts' big problems, butit's one of many.

Decker is an acting coach, but his real gift comes from the strangeability to literally see whether people are telling the truth throughvisual cues when his eyes are closed. It's not so much that hisSpidey senses tingle when someone lies, but he just innately knowswhen the guy is being truthful or not. It's not a talent he gets touse at parties, but it's a real hit in the corporate world. So, whenDecker's bank accounts are emptied, his line of credit is tamperedwith, and his house burns down, Decker suspects one of his clientshas decided he knows too much.

Ifthat's not bad enough, an agent from the NSA has hunted him down aspart of a clandestine program to study and exploit synaesthates(where one of the senses like sight gets a few wires crossed withanother) like Decker. Then there's the issue of a shadypharmaceutical executive with a new drug due to hit the market andthe idiot savant who helped him do it is seeking out Decker, too.Just paint a big bulls-eye on the poor guy's back--or brain might bethe more apt body part.

ThePlacebo Effect iscertainly unique in the thriller genre. This whole idea of the humansenses being mish-mashed in a way was intriguing, and this versionRotenberg employs with his character, Decker, is something I havenever heardof before. I had to wonder at times while reading if it was acomplete device of the author's imagination, but I guess there's somelegitimacy to it. And the whole corporate espionage and corruption iscompletely believable and easy to get into.

Some of the suspense was diminished for me though, because thevillain is identified rather quickly, so it's less about solving themystery through Decker's eyes, but just watching him sweat. Where themystery is lost, the dialog is great, and the subplot of Decker'sestranged son was probably the most compelling part of the wholenovel. His son wants nothing to do with him and uses Decker's bestfriend to communicate with him--and hit him up for money.

Decker is a riveting character thrust into a less-than-rivetingstory. The book works as a stand-alone even though it's the first ofa new series, but the pieces didn't feel like they fit as well asthey should, even when the disparate plotlines merge towards the endof the book. It does everything it sets out to do, but the longer itwent the more it felt like a standard cat-and-mouse chase. It was apretty good ride, but I don't know how quickly I'll run out to readthe second book in the series.

Rabid Rewind: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

2012-01-30T07:00:00.000-05:00

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

starring MichaelCaine and Steve Martin

directed byFrank Oz

screenplay byDale Launer, Stanley Shapiro, and Paul Henning

Orion Pictures(1988)

This is one of those comedies that I never get tired ofwatching. Even after twenty-five years, it holds up. Steve Martin andMichael Caine seem like the unlikeliest comedy duo, in retrospect,but when I first saw this as a kid it seemed like a perfect match.And when I saw it again a couple months ago, I noticed the butler wasplayed by the same guy who played the Sith Lord in the Star Warsfranchise. That made me chuckle.

Michael Caine plays Lawrence Jamieson, a debanaire conman who fleeceswealthy women of their riches while luxuriating on the FrenchRiviera. He's got the life any hustler would only dare to have intheir wildest dreams. Enter Cedric Benson (Steve Martin), a two-bitgrifter who realizes he can achieve a whole lot more than a freelunch when he sees what Lawrence has accomplished. In an effort toget rid of Cedric and restore balance to his own life, Lawrenceagrees to train Cedric on the condition he take his businesselsewhere, but when Cedric eventually turns against him they arrangea wager: the first man to con 50,000 Francs from a woman they agreeupon as a target, wins, and loser leaves town.

The chemistry between these two guys is astonishing. Caine'son-screen sophistication is turned up to eleven on the dial, whileMartin taps into his seediest attributes. Both men are ultimatelydeplorable for using women the way they do, but you can't help butlove them. And the antics they get up to as they try to con theirtarget, an American heiress played by Glenne Headley, are hilarious.There's one scene in particular, where Cedric plays a paraplegic warveteran trying get close to the heiress, only to have Lawrence poseat the renowned doctor Cedric actually concocted as part of his owncon. The torture Lawrence puts Cedric through to make him walk againis hilarious. It's a level of slapstick that you just don't see thesedays.

Dirty RottenScoundrels remains one of myabsolute favorite comedies of all time. If you haven't seen it yet,you have to. You just have to.

Rabid Reads: "Borderlands 3" edited by Thomas F. Monteleone

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

Borderlands 3

edited by Thomas F. Monteleone

White Wolf Fiction (1993)

272 pages

ISBN 1565041097

With cover art by none other than Dave McKean, I had the feeling this would be a real treat to read. You can't judge a book by its cover though, which is fine since the table of contents is just as enticing--if not more so.

Borderlands 3 is an anthology of horrific tales (published during the early 90s) that strives to avoid the common tropes of the genre, though its editor, Thomas Monteleone, admits in the preamble to a few of the stories that the quality of writing was too good to resist with certain stories that held familiar pieces.

As I mentioned, the contributing authors are impressive, with familiar names like Bentley Little, Ed Gorman, and Whitley Streiber, as well as names I'm not familiar with, but will now be sure to watch out for in other anthologies, such as Kathe Koja, Andrew Vachss, and J.L. Comeau.

Like any anthology, it's a mixed bag when it comes to personal preference, and not all stories resonated as well as others.

A few of the standouts, however, including Bentley Little's "The Man in the Passenger Seat", about an unsettling stranger who hitches a ride with a dour individual and gives him the ride of his life. There was also Ed Gorman's "The Ugly File", which dealt with a photographer collecting pictures of an unsettling nature for a wealthy couple. As well, I really enjoyed Poppy Z. Brite's "The Sixth Sentinel" and its supernatural romance--one-sided romance though it may be.

There's 21 stories in all, encapsulating the best of what horror had to offer in the nineties. I often hear readers, and even writers, bemoan the glut of bad horror that was floating around in that decade. If it was really a time when horror literature was in decline, you wouldn't know it by reading this anthology. I've got another Borderlands book sitting on my to-be-read pile, published in the early 2000s if I recall correctly, so it will be interesting to see the contrast between this book and that one when I finally get around to reading--not to mention any other Borderlands books I can get my hands on.

Chasing Tale (Digital Edition) for February 15th, 2012: Blake Crouch, J.A. Konrath, Scott Nicholson ...

2012-01-26T03:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, here's thething. Remember that giant effin' pile of e-books I blogged about acouple weeks ago? Well, that was only about half of 'em--lessactually. The entire list of e-books I downloaded, thanks to all theholiday promotions, is just bonkers. The most prominent authors wereScott Nicholson, Blake Crouch, and J.A. Konrath, who seemed to offerup no less than half their backlist during the holidays, absolutelyfree.

And honestly, thiswas overkill, but when you live a life well outside of opulence, youdon't turn your nose up at free books. Especially when a good numberof them are written by authors whose works you've either read andenjoyed or have had even a mild interest in reading. I may not livelong enough to read all these freebies by the time there's anotheronslaught of Kindle swag, but there's no harm in trying.

Here's what I got:

Blake Crouch:Bad Girl, Birds of Prey (with J.A. Konrath), Break You(novella), Famous, Four Live Rounds (collection), FullyLoaded (collection), Hunting Season (with Selena Kitt),Locked Doors, The Meteorologist, The Pain of Others, PerfectLittle Town (novella), Serial Killers: Uncut (with J.A.Konrath)

J.A. Konrath:65 Proof (collection), Crime Stories (collection),Disturb, Endurance, Exposed (with Ann Voss Peterson), HorrorStories (collection), Jack Daniels Stories (collection),Origin, Planter's Punch (with Tom Schreck), ShapeshiftersAnonymous, Shot of Tequila, Suckers (with Jeff Strand), Symbios,Truck Stop, Wild Night Is Calling (short story with Ann VossPeterson)

ScottNicholson: As IDie Lying, Bad Blood (with J.R.Rain & H.T. Night), Creative Spirits, Cursed! (withJ.R. Rain), Disintegration, The Harvest, Head Cases,October Girls, The Skull Ring, The Vampire Club (withJ.R. Rain), Zombie Bits

Dead Mech byJake Bible -Jake offered up this sci-fi/horror novel for free briefly on theKindle Store. I caught one of his tweets advertising it, and scoopedit up. It's got zombies in mech suits, so c'mon. I heard about this ayear or so ago, but one of the many books that falls off the radar.Lucked out by getting it for free.

A Hollow Cube Is a Lonely Placeby S.D. Foster -S.D. hit me up to review this collection of bizarro horror stories.Bizarro is one of those niche genres that I've yet to really diveinto, but I am curious about it and some online acquaintances seem toreally enjoy it, so I'm game.

One Buck Horror Volume 1(anthology) byChristopher and Kris Hawkins -99 cents is a bargain basement price for a horror periodical. Free isa steal. One BuckHorror isabout six volumes in, or thereabouts, and offered up the first onefor free as an enticement. I thought I'd already read it, but I musthave gotten it mixed up with another I got, so I snagged it withouthesitation.

The Fields (novella)by Ty Schwamberger -I've heard enough praise for Ty's novella, and I've been meaning tobuy something of his for a while now. Spending a mere dollar for thisunique-sounding zombie novella seemed like a easy choice.

Before Leonora Wakes byLee Thompson -I've got Lee's NurseryRhymes 4 Dead Children onmy wish list, but I'm holding off until I can ween down my readingpile. But a free story over the holidays is no trouble to downloadand have at the ready.

I told ya, the number of e-books I downloaded is just bonkers.For the sake of expediency, here's a bullet point list of the othere-books I downloaded over the last month:

Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled (anthology) by David Cranmer & Scott D. Parker
Double Tap (collection) and The Ass Is a Poor Receptacle for the Head (nonfiction) by Barry Eisler
Three on a Light (novella) by Victor Gischler
Dead Space and Top Suspense: Favorite Kills (with various authors) by Lee Goldberg
A World Torn Asunder (Vamprie Apocalypse #1) by Derek Gunn
The Nemesis Worm (novella) by Guy Haley
Legacy (Book One of the Resonance Tetralogy) by Hugo Jackson
Vampires by Aiden James
Saying Goodbye to the Sun by David McAfee
Rain Dogs by Gary McMahon
Here Be Monsters (anthology) by M.T. Murphy
Hope Town by Brendan P. Myers
Rock 'n' Rock Is Undead by Rose Pressey
Freeze by Daniel Pyle
Dark Horse (Jim Knighthorse #1) and Elvis Has Not Left the Building (Elvis Mystery Series #1) by J.R. Rain
Burden Kansas (Vampires of the Plains) by Alan Ryker
Monstrocity by Jeffrey Thomas
Abaddon and Grave Instinct by Robert W. Walker
Walking with Zombies (Zombie Armageddon 2) by Ian Woodhead

"The Travelling Theatrical Tour: The Thirsty Man": a guest post by Cate Gardner

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

The incomparable Cate Gardner is on a blog tour this month, promoting her latest books, The Theatre of Curious Acts and Barbed Wire Hearts. I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing Curious Acts and even included it among my year-end list of favorite novellas. And if you haven't managed to read it yet, you just might feel inclined to after reading Cate's guest post. Enjoy.

"The Traveling Theatrical Tour: The Thirsty Man"

by Cate Gardner

Thank you to Gef for allowing me to invade his blog for my Theatre of Curious Acts blog tour, otherwise known as the Traveling Theatrical Tour.

The below is a warning as to why you should remain fully hydrated when reading Theatre of Curious Acts. Sometimes things know you're thirsty.

"Jonathan Jacobsen sat at the theatre bar. He stared at the hands of the woman seated beside him or rather at the glass said hands cupped. He'd heard that people disappeared here. Perhaps, despite his incalculable thirst, that was why he waited.

God, he needed a drink.

Licking his lips, Jonathan leaned towards the woman's hands. She didn't flinch or move away, she didn't need to--the fairies did the work for her. They tugged at his hair and his jacket, pulling him away from the glass.

So, so thirsty.

"Leave me be," he said, hating the whimper that edged his voice.

They wouldn't. The never did. His throat fractured against the weight of his scream. Dry flakes caught in his windpipe. The woman emptied her glass. Jonathan gripped his throat. It hurt to gulp.

Someone approached, shimmering as though made of water--a girl and a mirage in this desert. She held her cupped hands out to him. She held a lake, or so it seemed to his thirst. The fairies didn't bother this girl, nor did they yank or pinch as she placed her cupped hands to Jonathan's lips.

So thirsty…

Jonathan buried his face in her hands. He lapped and lapped and lapped, and no matter how much he drank, he knew he'd never know his fill again.

Instructions on how to avoid Jonathan's fate are hidden in one copy of Theatre of Curious Acts, which is available from all good online bookstores. More details are available at the author's website www.categardner.net

Wish List Wednesday #108: Christa Faust's 'Choke Hold'

2012-01-25T05:30:00.000-05:00

This is a recurring blog segment inwhich I highlight a book on my wish list. Sometimes it's a newrelease, sometimes a beloved classic, and sometimes it's a hiddengem.

She's the firstfemale author in the history of Hard Case Crime. She's the oneQuentin Tarantino described as "a Veronica in a world ofBetties." She's Christa Faustand is responsible for a really cool noir novel called MoneyShot.

Well,Money Shot hasa sequel now. It's called Choke Holdand I want it. I recently read MoneyShot (expect a review in the near future) and immediately putits sequel on the wish list. A book that features a former porn starwithout resorting to the lowest common denominator made for a fun,fast read. Here's a write-up via Goodreads for this sequel:

Angel Dare went into WitnessProtection to escape her past—not as a porn star, but as a killerwho took down the sex slavery ring that destroyed her life. Butsometimes the past just won’t stay buried. When a former co-star ismurdered, it’s up to Angel to get his son, a hotheaded MMA fighter,safely through the unforgiving Arizona desert, shady Mexicanbordertowns, and the seductive neon mirage of Las Vegas.

Gritty, sexy, relentless--but enough about the author. I want to readthis book.

Rabid Reads: "Money Shot" by Christa Faust

2012-01-24T07:00:00.000-05:00

Money Shot

by Christa Faust

Hard Case Crime(2008)

250 pages

ISBN-139780857683465

The porn industry doesn't exactly have a sterling reputation, but hasalways seemed like a wellspring for stories for journalists andauthors who want to shine a spotlight on it, which seems ratherironic considering the abominable storylines in porno flicks. Ohlook, another plumber has arrived to work on her pipes. ChristFaust's novel uses the porn industry as a catalyst for a pulpy thrillride that was about as scorching hot as its leading lady, Angel Dare.

Angel Dare, real name Gina Moretti, is a porn star turned talentagent, running her own small firm that offers representation forwomen that's an alternative to the notoriously male-centric--andlet's face it, misogynistic--industry. When an old acquaintance callsand begs her to come out of retirement, as it were, Angel findsherself unable to resist an easy and sizable payday--as well as thechance to be in a scene with one of the hottest young studs in theindustry today. However, she winds up walking into a setup;interrogated, threatened, beaten, raped, beaten some more, and leftfor dead in the truck of a car in a derelict section of L.A.

And that's only how the novel starts.

What ensues is a taut and relentless quest for answers and revenge.It's been a little while since I read a book I absolutely could notput down. This book? I could not put it down. I picked it up in themood for a sleek thriller and wound up with an even more excitingadventure spanning L.A. to Vegas and back again. I would have beencontent with a simple romp. You know, popcorn fare. Instead, ChristaFaust presents Angel Dare and her world in a way that offers morethan the shiny veneer, but a fully fleshed--pun intended--andremarkably immersive way. When the heat turns up on Angel, it's not acase where she turns into an instant bad-ass and starts gunning forthe bad guys. It takes a lot of time and a lot of help for her gether sh*t together, with plenty of mistakes along the way. This is oneof the very last novels I read in 2011, and had it been a new releaseI'd have likely put it on the top of my faves list for that year.Still, regardless of what year it came out, it was one of my veryfavorite reads from last year.

The back of the book said Christa Faust is the first female author tobe published by Hard Case Crime. If that's the case, considering howdamn good this book is, I gotta wonder: what took so damn long,because if a female author came along with a novel half thisgood, they should've snapped it up in a heartbeat.

Rabid Rewind: Horrible Bosses

2012-01-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

Horrible Bosses

starring JasonBateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, ColinFarrell, and Kevin Spacey

directed by SethGordon

screenplay byMichael Markowitz, John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein

Warner Bros.(2011)

This movie might be my guilty pleasure for the year. For a movielittered with a metric ton of aging frat boy humor, I thought itwound up being much funnier than it had any right to be. The premiseis simple, not to mention instantly relatable to anyone whohas ever had an insufferable boss: what if you decided to murder yourboss?

And let the hilarity ensue. Three friends are each enduring tyranny,harassment, and general misery under the thumbs of their bosses. Itgets so bad that one night they seriously entertain the idea ofkilling their bosses, and even wind up seeking out a hitman. Theirwould-be hitman winds up being a "murder consultant"though, and they wind up agreeing to kill each other's bosses in aHitchcockian farce.

As much as the movie might be a buddy comedy between Bateman,Sudeikis, and Day, it really felt like a playground for Spacey,Aniston, and Farrell to play the scuzziest pieces of human garbage toever gain positions of authority. Colin Farrell had probably thezaniest and most memorable role in the film as Sudeikis' cokeheadnepotist boss. I didn't find the character the least bit believable,Aniston's sociopathic nympho character even less so, but they didprovide a bunch of laughs throughout. Spacey's character, for all thecrazy behavior, did actually have a ring of truth and easily the mostdespicable character in the film.

I read a review when it first hit theaters that blasted it for racistand sexist humor. Well, considering the only black guy in the movie(Jamie Foxx) was a criminal, the racist charge isn't hard to jump to.As for being sexist, maybe that's stemmed from Aniston being the onlyfemale cast member of any prominence, and portraying a sex-starvedseductress at that. Yeah, the sexist charge has legs, too. High brow,this movie is not, but the cheap laughs were effective. I liked TheHangover more, and recently saw Bridesmaids, which blowsboth movies out of the water, but I wasn't expecting HorribleBosses to be anything more than ninety minutes of distraction.That's what I got, so bully for me.

Why I Still Write Short Stories: a guest post by Joe McKinney

2012-01-19T11:19:00.000-05:00

I was recently asked if I'd care to review Joe McKinney's new collection via Redrum Press. While the book sounds promising, my review commitments are still stacked high. But by virtue of hearing plenty of praise for the guy's writing from other authors whom I'm familiar with, I offered Joe a chance to at least get the word out on my blog for his book. So, here's a little about Joe and his work in his own words. Enjoy.

Joe McKinney has been a patrol officer for the San Antonio Police Department, a homicide detective, a disaster mitigation specialist, a patrol commander, and a successful novelist. His books include the four part Dead World series, Quarantined and Dodging Bullets. His short fiction has been collected in The Red Empire and Other Stories and Dating in Dead World and Other Stories.

Why I Still Write Short Stories

by Joe McKinney

When I published my first novel, Dead City, back in 2006, my fellow homicide detectives at the San Antonio Police Department asked how long I was going to stay on the job. There's an assumption, I guess, among folks who don't write for a living that all writers get a regular delivery of cash dumped on their front lawn. Let me clear the air of that now. No such truck full of cash exists...at least for 99% of the writers out there.

That said, if you work hard, and you're lucky as hell, you can do pretty well for yourself as a writer. I won't be so crass as to talk about wages, but I have worked hard at my craft, and I have been luckier than I deserve, and as a result, for the last few years, I've done better as a writer than I have as a cop.

But nearly every penny of that windfall comes from my novels. I've had about a dozen short stories land in premium markets. One in particular, a zombie novella included in an upcoming graphic novel crossover project, brought in almost as much as Dead City did on its initial advance. But, as I said, good paying short stories are about as rare as hen's teeth. Even the premium markets keep a close eye on the purse strings.

So why write them? Why waste time on short stories when novels pay so much better? Furthermore, most writers who have hit their stride and are lucky enough to lock themselves into multi-book contracts have to deal with the pressures of looming deadlines. This has become a nearly constant state of affairs for me. At any one given time I usually have four or five projects due. Trust me, I am grateful for that. I wouldn't have it any other way. But it does lead to an awful lot of hand-wringing and fretting as I wonder how I'm going to get it all done. And then there's the day job to think about. And my family. And time to just sit and read. I wish I could clone myself. I wish I could cram 72 hours worth of activity into every day. But unfortunately, I can't. This, inevitably, leads me to having to turn away great offers to participate in various projects. I hate saying no, but that's just the reality of the business.

Anyway, I still write stories. I love them. They are the reason I got into writing in the first place. I remember, as a kid of twelve or thirteen, spending whole afternoons up in my room, scribbling out some horror or science fiction tale on a yellow legal pad lifted from my Dad's study. I'd finish the story, staple it together, and leave it at the corner of my desk for a few weeks before, inevitably, it'd end up in the trash. There's no telling how many of my stories now occupy landfills around the Houston area. A bunch, I'm sure.

That trend continues to this day, although I don't hand write them as much anymore, and I don't throw them away. But why write them? I haven't answered that question. Loving something is great, but that alone doesn't explain why I keep coming back to them. I mean, I love roller coasters too, but I don't sneak away every chance I get, or loose sleep, just so I can go ride them. There's something else going on here.

For me, short stories are where the real surprises happen. They are the test environments where I can explore any side trail off the main career path that happens to catch my eye. Writing a novel is an intense undertaking. It requires complete absorption within the characters and their world. That kind of absorption comes at a cost. When I finish a novel there is always a sense of ennui and separation anxiety. It's hard to walk away from anything that makes you care that much. Authors who write a series, or, in my case, made their reputations writing in a narrow field, such as zombies, have an added complication. Not only do they risk the ennui and separation anxiety, but also the danger of stagnation. For them, for me, it is difficult to keep their skills sharp when they are constantly revisiting the same world. Short stories do that for me. They keep me sharp by affording me the opportunity to challenge myself. They help writing remain something that I love, rather than a tedious chore I have to slog my way through just to satisfy a deadline.

I really got a sense of that when I was writing the story notes for my recent collection, The Red Empire and Other Stories (Redrum Press, 2012). Describing the stories, and recounting when they written, gave me a unique retrospective on my life as a professional writer. Through those notes, and through the eight stories I chose for the book, I reconnected with what I really love about writing - the thrill of telling a story.

The short story is not dead in modern America. Literary mainstream fiction has done a lot to sap the life out of it, but they haven't killed it. Storytelling is alive and well in genre fiction, and I, for one, am delighted to keep it going through short stories.

Thanks again to Joe for contributing this post. If anyone wants to learn some more about Joe and his new collection, be sure to visit his site, linked at the top of this post, or pay a visit to Redrum Horror. Or maybe just click on this link to browse the book on Amazon.com: The Red Empire and Other Stories.

Getting Graphic: "The Walking Dead Volume 4: The Heart's Desire" by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard

2012-01-19T04:00:00.000-05:00

The Walking Dead Volume 4: The Heart's Desire

written by Robert Kirkman

illustrated by Charlie Adlard

Image Comics (2005)

ISBN 1582405301

If all you know about this series is what you've seen on television, wow, you are missing out.

In this fourth volume of The Walking Dead series, Grimes and the gang are in a prison, which they've converted into a compound and bunker to protect them from the ceaseless zombie hordes outside its walls. Well, it's not totally inundated by zombies outside, since they've been able to make a couple of road trips to get more supplies and more survivors.

The book picks up where Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars left off, as Grime and the gang are about to be kicked out of the prison at gunpoint by the inmates who were there first. But the wing of the prison from where the inmates got the guns was full of zombies and they've broken loose, wreaking havoc on everyone. During the melee, with bullets whizzing by everywhere, Grimes takes a dastardly turn and kills the lead inmate to ensure he's no longer a threat, then covers up the murder as a misfire. And everyone buys it--or most of them do.

Tyreese, Grimes' right-hand man lately, knows what happened, which leads to tension between the two of them. But Tyreese's hands aren't clean either, as he murdered his daughter's boyfriend after a botched suicide pact between the two young lovers left her dead. Plus, when a mysterious young woman arrives, keenly skilled in dispatching zombies--even domesticating apparently as she arrives with two in tow--Tyreese winds up cheating on his pseudo-girlfriend, Carol, with her.

The dynamics between everyone are breaking down. Friendships, romances, familial bonds are all being pushed to the breaking point. And Grimes seems to be suffering the most, taking on a near maniacal approach to protecting the group that borders on tyranny.

It's an intriguing chapter in the saga, but there were a couple of instances that really drew me out of the story this time around. For one thing, the art style is such that I confused a couple of characters (the older white guys tend to all look alike) and had to re-read a couple of pages just to be sure who was saying what. Then, there is a point when the group forms a council and there are no women included--not one. That might be easy enough to accept if not for the off-stage deference the women give by handing over all responsibility to the men, apparently stating they just want to be protected by the men. That threw me right out the story, as there are at least incredibly strong and resourceful women, and the idea they would forfeit all decision making to the men feels ludicrous to me.

Overall, it's still an engaging story, and entirely separate now from that first season of the TV show. I just have to wonder how these characters are going to survive the next couple of volumes, since they seem to be falling apart at the seams. I guess I'll have to wait until I read Volume 5: The Best Defense.

Rabid Reads: "Monsters of L.A." by Lisa Morton

2012-01-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

Monsters of L.A.

by Lisa Morton

Bad Moon Books(2011)

321 pages

ISBN9780983779933

I'm a fan of themed anthologies. An editor has an overarching ideaand assorts the stories from various authors into some semblance thathelps bring the whole thing together. So, it stands to reason I oughtto check out a collection of short stories by a single author, allunder the umbrella of a single theme. In Lisa Morton's case, she'sarranged twenty stories involving two key ingredients: monsters andher hometown of Los Angeles.

Monsters ofL.A. starts off with one of themost iconic monsters of all, Frankenstein's monster. Lisa'sincarnation isn't the one from Mary Shelley's classic tale, or eventhe Boris Karloff shambling giant, but a very frail, very humancharacter named Daniel Moss. He and many of the other monsters thatappear in this collection are reflections of the city in which theylive, while other monsters are definitely of a more fantasticalnature and still offer some glimpse of Los Angeles that Lisa feelsdeserves a brief spotlight.

Afew of the stories are interconnected in various ways, either throughbeing a direct followup like "The Bride" is to"Frankenstein", or through allusions and passing mentionslike "The Phantom." There are also some aspects of the citythat crop up periodically through the book, like Lisa's appreciationfor architecture and fascination with a couple of the city's urbanlegends. There are moments where the book feels like a gruesome typeof Pulp Fiction, withthe focus jumping from place and place and person to person whilestill clinging to a singular ideal.

Like any collection, themed or otherwise, not every story resonatedwith me, and a couple felt like mere interludes before diving intoricher subject matter. A couple of the favorites I'd recommend toanyone reading this collection are "The Phantom," which isa saddening story of a musician's fall from grace and an unexpectedglimmer of solace; "Cat People," which explores one ofthose urban legends that I'd never heard of before called LaJaponesa; and "The Hunchback" with its strikingly topicallook at homophobia and bullying in schools.

Unlikeother collections and anthologies, where I feel free to jump aroundand read stories at whim, I kind of felt like this collection neededto be read from front to back, kind of like how you listen to certainalbums beginning to end. Pink Floyd, anyone? While comparing thisbook to one of those iconic records like The Wallor Dark Side of the Moonmight be a stretch, it's a good book that really shows a love andabiding dedication to a city that is long fabled as a glitzy trainwreck. Monsters of L.A. mightnot be a love letter to the city, but it's definitely a love letterto monsters.

Rabid Rewind: Rainn Wilson is Just 'Super'

2012-01-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Super

starring RainnWilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, andNathan Fillion

written &directed by James Gunn

EntertainmentOne (2011)

I wouldn't have thought Rainn Wilson could convincingly portray asuperhero until I saw this movie. Rainn plays Frank, a short-ordercook married to a gorgeous waitress (Liv Tyler) and living a ratherdull, uneventful life. He's fine with that, though. Then his lifefalls apart when his wife falls back on her old drug addiction andleaves him for the town's drug lord (Kevin Bacon). It's then Frankhas a vision from God--he's been experiencing visions and divinemessages ever since he was a kid--who literally touches his brain andputs him on the path to becoming a superhero.

The best part of Frank's inspiration comes in the form of a low-rentChristian kids show about an evangelical superhero played by NathanFillion. Frank is a neophyte to superheroes though, and winds upseeking advice from the local comic book shop and the hyperactivestore clerk (Ellen Page). Frank creates the alter-ego of The CrimsonBolt, sews together his own costume, thinks up a couple one-liners("Shut up, crime!"), and brandishes a monkey wrench as hisweapon of choice when he starts waylaying and assaulting randomcriminals in town. He gets his ass kicked in the process, but thenear sadistic methods he uses to take down muggers, drug dealers, andpedophiles keep him going. The cartoonishness of bludgeoning someonewith a wrench falls away instantly when he does his work, evendropping a cinder block on one thug that got a cringe out of me.

And if Rainn Wilson has this misguided vigilante streak in him, EllenPage's character can be categorized as a psychopath. The sheerdelight she takes as the Crimson Bolt's sidekick, Boltie, in dolingout punishment to bad guys is frightening--and, honestly, a bit of aturn-on--in that "holy cow, she's insane" kind of way.

As for the bad guys, Kevin Bacon shows once again that he knows howto milk each scene for all its worth with these villainous charactershe's played lately. I just wish there had been more time in the filmto more closely explore Michael Rooker's henchman character, as wellas the detective on the tale of the Crimson Bolt. If there's a fatalflaw to the film, it's that the supporting cast doesn't get quiteenough time to shine.

Superis the kind of movie that Defendorshould have been. It's a movie that looks at the idea of maskedvigilantes, but better balances the comedy and dark elements to thesubject matter. And Rainn Wilson's character is far more relatable,likeable, and less exploited than the one Woody Harrelson played inDefendor.Hell, I might go so far as to say I enjoyed this movie even more thanKick-Ass.It's a great hidden gem of a movie that any comic book fan or revengeflick buff should check out.

Getting Graphic: "Scalped Vol. 1: Indian Country" by Jason Aaron & R.M. Guerra

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

Scalped Volume 1: Indian Country

created &written by Jason Aaron

illustrated byR.M. Guerra

Vertigo Comics(2007)

ISBN9781401213176

I was looking forrecommendations from folks a while back for graphic novels they lovedand that I should read. I believe it was Dustin Ashe who told me Iought to check out this series called Scalped fromVertigo Comics. I checked it out and saw it was a crime series with acast of Native Americans. Now in Canada, it's a far cry from utopiafor the First Nations, but at least their on the map. If televisionand film were true reflections of American society, Native Americanswouldn't exist.

InScalped, Dashiel BadHorse returns to the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation after fifteenyears with little more than a set of nunchucks and a real badattitude. When the corrupt Tribal Leader, Lincoln Red Crow, catchesword that Bad Horse has returned--and has been kicking the holy hellout of his thugs--he offers Bad Horse a job as a deputy for thereservation. It helps focus Bad Horse's energy to more productivematters, and manages to piss off Bad Horse's estranged activistmother who is protesting the brand new casino. But it's unclear justwhy Bad Horse has returned to Prairie Rose. Is he back to reunitewith Red Crow's daughter, settle some old scores, maybe even makeamends for youthful transgressions, or does he simply want a piece ofthe action?

If there is a bright side to the Prairie Rose Reservation, there's nosign of it in this first volume. What few characters who are noteither detestable or pathetic are given only passing glances. Thisstory is about the crooks, thugs, and hustlers--and in classic crimestory fashion, even the cops are crooked or on their way. Jason Aarondoes a helluva job in transposing a story about casino mobsters ontoan under-utilized landscape. As for Guerra's artwork, there's anexplicitness to even the mundane, and the fury of the characterscomes through at palpable levels.

Dashiel, or Dash, was a pretty tough character for me to rallybehind. Hell, at the start of the story I thought he was the villain.Incrementally, his motivations and personality come through, and eventhose aren't exactly heroic, there was enough there to at least rootfor the guy. Or maybe the other characters like Lincoln Red Crow werejust so unlikable, I had an easier time sympathizing with Dash.

Indian Countryis a strong start in thisseries, but it's obvious that there is a whole lot more to readbefore the big picture is revealed. The new casino is the symbol orwhat's threatening the reservation, but there are the more personalstories--Dash's childhood turns out to be inexorably linked to what'sgoing on now--and this first volume has only scratched the surface.I'll be interested to see how things play out in the second volume.

Wish List Wednesday #107: Joe R. Lansdale's 'Sunset and Sawdust'

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

This is a recurring blog segment inwhich I highlight a book on my wish list. Sometimes it's a newrelease, sometimes a beloved classic, and sometimes it's a hiddengem.

I really enjoy reading Joe Lansdale's novels when I get thechance. I checked out a couple books from his Hap and Leonardseries (Savage Season, Devil Red) and I'll definitely bereading the rest of them over time, but Joe does a damned good job atwriting stand-alone novels too, like Freezer Burn.

One stand-alone novel that caught my eye and sounds like the kind ofmystery novel that would be right up my alley is one called Sunsetand Sawdust. Hell, the title alone makes me want to read it.

Now, I'm not big on the mystery genre, particularly anything that's adetective mystery or a police procedural, but this one sounds like itis the kind that would appeal to my grittier tastes in reading.Here's the write-up via Goodreads:

In the middle of a cyclone, beautiful, red-haired Sunset Jonesshoots her husband Pete dead when he tries to beat and rape her. ToCamp Rapture’s general consternation, Sunset’s mother-in-lawarranges for her to take over from Pete as town constable. As if thatweren’t hard enough to swallow in depression era east Texas, Sunsetactually takes the job seriously, and her investigation into a brutaldouble murder pulls her into a maelstrom of greed, corruption, andunspeakable malice. It is a case that will require a well of innerstrength she never knew she had.Spirited and electrifying, Sunsetand Sawdust isa mystery and a tale like nothing you’ve read before.

Sold. So, are you a Lansdale fan? What other books of his should I belooking for?

Rabid Reads: "Dust Devils" by James Reasoner

2012-01-10T08:30:00.000-05:00

DustDevils

byJames Reasoner

TheBook Place (2011)

originallypublished 2007

ASINB004LE7PBS

Idon't know who came up with the term "redneck noir," butit's an apt one when applied to this southern thrillride.

DustDevils starts off with a kind ofstrangers-in-the-night romance, as a young man Toby arrives on thedoorstep of a lonely woman named Grace's farm looking for work. A bitwary at first, she hires him and a friendship begins, which quicklyheats up. Then, the story takes one wild turn after another. I'm kindof hesitant to even discuss plot details beyond the first thirtypages, because a couple of jaw-droppers happen surprisingly early inthis book.

Okay,here's one: After the two of them have sex for the first time, hesnoops through her dresser drawers while she's sleeping and finds agun. It's a bit out of character, but he finds more guns hidden aboutthe house, and when Toby's about to confront her about it two gunmenarrive and reveal that she isn't who she says she is. Her names's noteven Grace. She's really a bank robber, estranged from her cohortswho all believe she's sitting on the last big score they stole anddouble-crossed them to get it.

Thebook could almost be confused for a Harlequin romance in those firstthirty pages or so, but it's all prelude. It's that slow, rattlingride to the top of the roller coaster before you take the first bigplunge into a crazy cross-country journey. It's not alladrenaline-pumping actionthough, and some of what's there felt a bit tinny and form-fitted.Things happened at times a little too smoothly, even though the twoare in constant danger. It felt, I suppose, like the stakes weren'tas high as they should have been given their circumstances. Still,the action builds upon itself, as does the dynamic between the two asthey are dragged deeper and deeper into criminal activity. And theending is a powder keg.

Thereis one moment that irks me in the book, where Toby commits murder. Heat least plays party to it, and given the way he was presented in thebook up to that point, and the almost detached way in which he reactsto it, seemed really out of place. Albeit, the story mends itselfbefore it's all over, so I really shouldn't gripe on that detail.

Iwas impressed with James' turn at the wheel when he wrote TheBlood Mesa for Lee Goldberg'sand William Rabkin's Dead Man series (recently picked up for apublishing deal with Amazon's imprint, if I'm not mistaken), and DustDevils shows why he was soughtout to join the crew of authors on that series. I wasn't blown awayby it, but it was a fun, quick read with as many twists as asidewinder. And it's definitely worth checking out on Kindle rightnow, since it's being sold on the cheap.

Rabid Rewind: The Limey

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

The Limey

starringTerrence Stamp, Luis Guzman, Lesley Ann Warren, and Peter Fonda

directed bySteve Soderbergh

screenplay byLem Dobbs

Artisan (1999)

I had never heard of this movie until a couple months ago, around thetime Soderbergh's latest film hit theaters. I love revenge movies, sothis wound up becoming a bit of a buried treasure for me.

Terrence Stamp plays Wilson, a British ex-con out of prison and onhis way to America, namely Los Angeles, after receiving word hisdaughter died in a horrific car accident. An acquaintance of hisdaughter informs him that the official story isn't true. She wasmurdered. So Wilson, in all his don't-f--k-with-me glory, goes on thewarpath.

Where this movie strays from the standard fare is how the filmworkjumps from moment to moment in Wilson's journey, like his thoughtsare playing out on screen as well. He remembers his daughter, as achild and as a defiant teenager fed up with his criminal lifestyle.He fantasizes what he'll do when he finds the guy responsible for herdeath, Terry Valentine. Snapshots of the movie are replayed, evenpreplayed, to emphasize Wilson's emotional state and forebode what'sto come.

Wilson is tough as nails, but vulnerable. In one of his earlyencounters with Valentine's associates he gets the holy hell kickedout of him and thrown out of the building. It's obviously not hisfirst time on the receiving end of an ass-kicking, because he justdusts himself off, grabs his gun, and goes back in the building tolay waste to all but one thug. As the sole survivor flees, Wilsonshouts, "Tell him I'm coming! TELL HIM I'M F--KING COMING!!!"

Valentine, played by Peter Fonda, isn't some kingpin badass. He's arecord producer with an easy charm that comes from growing up and outof the wildest days of the sixties. The carousing with women half hisage is utterly believable, but to think this guy could so easily getcaught up in the criminal underworld shows a dichotomy to his life.And when the two start to collide, he starts to fall apart. In a way,I found Valentine kind of a sympathetic character when confronted byWilson, because he's not a heartless criminal--only a halfwitmillionaire with no concept of what his choices have wrought.

It's a bit rough around the edges, the pace dips in a couple spots,but Terrence Stamp knocks it out of the park--even Luis Guzman issufferable. If you like revenge flicks too, and you haven't seen thisone yet, you should definitely watch it.

Rabid Reads: "Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead" by Sara Gran

2012-01-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead

by Sara Gran

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2011)

ISBN 0547428499

When it comes to murder mysteries, I'm going to be up front about this: I'm not a fan. After growing up on countless police procedurals and whodunits on TV, I am weary of the formula. So, when a mystery novel comes my way, I'm already opening the book with a clear bias against it. Which makes Sara Gran's new private eye, Claire Dewitt, a genuine stand out for me--because I loved this book.

Actually, I should be a little clearer than that. It's not so much the book that I love, but the character of Claire Dewitt, because she is such an outlier from what I've read of the genre.

I read one review of this book that described Dewitt as "Nancy Drew by way of Hunter S. Thompson." I can kind of see that, since Dewitt is a former child detective now grown up, tatted up, and has no compunction with taking recreational drugs.

Dewitt gets a call to come back to New Orleans, her former stomping grounds with her late mentor, Constance Darling, to investigate the disappearance of a state prosecutor in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The city holds bad memories for her as she hasn't been there since her mentor was murdered. And when she arrives, memories flood back to her of her formative years in Brooklyn, New York, with her two best friends--one now dead and the other estranged--as well as dreams in which Constance Darling and others visit her to give cryptic clues on where she needs to go next in her investigation.

Like I mentioned before, I didn't become engrossed in the mystery of this novel nearly as much as I did with Claire Dewitt, herself. She's brusk, snarky, and surprisingly delicate at times. Her relationships with others are especially intriguing, as no one she knows really seems to like her, and she appears find with that. Her discipline comes from a vague adherence to I Ching philosophy, the memoirs of a master detective from France named Silette--oh yeah, and the drugs. She's incredibly effective at solving mysteries, though the murder of her mentor and her childhood friend still elude her. And while jealousy of her skills may be the source of dislike from those who know her, there's a self-destructive quality to her that rings through, and maybe people just don't want to be around her when she finally detonates--she's already spent time in a mental hospital.

If another character managed to stand out it was Gran's portrayal of New Orleans. Dewitt's journeys through the ravaged streets is a heartbreaking one at times, added with a puzzling subplot concerning an unmarked van Dewitt sees lurking the city time and again.

It's a riveting mystery in a city saturated by tragedy, and Claire Dewitt acts as a beacon of sanity--or incredibly focused insanity--as she tries to do a single bit of good while she's there. It's a wonderful story, and if there are more Claire Dewitt novels in the future, I look forward to reading each of them.

Chasing Tale (Digital Edition) for January 5th, 2012: Is there such a thing as too many?

2012-01-05T06:30:00.000-05:00

One thing wasabundantly clear last month, and that was authors had an innumerableamount of e-books to give away for Christmas--or sell them so cheap,they were practically giving them away. I couldn't check my anysocial media site without seeing a bargain. Now, I have a glut ofgoodies on my Kindle of such enormity that if they were physicalbooks I would require one of those self-storage units. Honestly, it'sno wonder how authors who sell cheap e-books don't see immediateresults in terms of repeat sales. Consumers can't actually consumefast enough after they've gone on a spree. I'm a voracious reader,but not a speed reader.

Anyhow, here is alitany of e-books now waiting on my Kindle to be read:

Winds of Change byJason Brannon - Permuted Press offered quite a few free and cheap e-books over Christmas, and this was one of them that got recommended to me.

Railroad!: Rodger Dodger byTonia Brown -I like steampunk a little more each time I read it. I think asurefire way to win me over even more is to throw in some wild westelements, which is just what Tonia's done here.

Haunted byGlen Cadigan -Glen sent me a review copy of his novella in mid-December. Now, myreview commitments are already insane, but novellas are easy to burnthrough in an evening, plus I'm a sucker for a good ghost story, soI'll keep my fingers crossed on this one.

Run andDesert Places byBlake Crouch - I've had Run on my wish list for months, so I was pleased to see it offered for free just before Christmas, along with another Crouch title.

Sparrowhawk andOne Monster Is Not Enough byPaul Finch -After I read and reviewed Paul's chapbook, KingDeath,he got in touch with me to review a couple more of his books. One wasSparrowhawk, aChristmas themed tale I've already read and reviewed, and a shortstory collection.

Crisis Hospital byBelinda Frisch - After reading Dead Spell last year, I figured I should add another of Belinda's books to my shelf and this free offer caught my eye.

Judgment (The Jury #1) byLee Goldberg -Here's one of the free books I snagged in December. I really enjoyedhis work with the DeadMan series,and while I'm in no hurry to read a Monknovelization,I will however enjoy checking this mystery novel out.

Dead Earth: The Green Dawn byMark Justice and David T. Wilbanks -I can't remember how exactly I discovered the Pod of Horror podcast,but once I listened to Mark's interviews with amazing horror authors,as well as his snappy back-and-forth with Horror World's NancyKalanta, I was a fan. Aside from being a podcast and radio host,Mark's an author too, and this little gem was available for free viaPermuted Press.

Take the Long Way Home byBrian Keene -As readers, we take for granted that when we buy a book, the authoris going to get paid. When I got a couple of Brian's novels lastyear, it turns out Dorchester Publishing didn't send Brian one thindime--and he's not the only one getting shafted apparently. At leastDeadite Press, who published this book, is going to give him his due.

Flee byJack Kilborn and Ann Voss Peterson - I remember reading a couple glowing reviews for this one. And I'm warming up some to the spy thriller, and this one could be really good.

Among the Living byTimothy W. Long - A free novel, and one recommended by Rhiannon Frater to boot.

Speed Dating with the Dead andTransparent Lovers byScott Nicholson -I already have a couple of Scott's novels on my to-be-read pile, butwhen he offered these books for free one day, I couldn't resist. WhatI've read from him has been in the southern gothic vein so far, but Iget the feeling these one strike a different timbre.

Brutal Light byGary W. Olson -Gary sent me a review copy of his independently published novel. It'sgot a good cover and premise, so hopefully the rest of it holds upwhen I finally get around to reading it.

Wildest Dreams byNorman Partridge -It was about a year ago I read and reviewed Norman's Halloweennovella, DarkHarvest,which I loved. So when Cemetery Dance announced via e-mail thisnovella was on sale for 99 cents I didn't hesitate scooping it up.

Slag Attack andMy Fake War byAnderson Prunty - I've heard Prunty's name bandied about, and I believe I've listened to him on Greg Hall's Funky Werepig podcast--I'll have to go back and check--so these two freebies caught my eye.

Arcane byNathan Shumate (editor) -Arcane hasmorphed from a periodical to an anthology, jam-packed with thirtystories from authors such as Gemma Files, Milo James Fowler, andDamien Walters Grintalis. I really enjoyed the first issue of the nowdefunct periodical, so I'm eager to see what this huge collection hasto offer.

Beautiful, Naked, & Dead byJosh Stallings - I forget who tweeted a link to this freebie, but sufficed to say I trusted that person to steer me in the right direction. Hope it's good.

Shotgun Gravy byChuck Wendig -I've been visiting Chuck's blog, Terrible Minds, more and more thelast several months. So, I figured it was time for me to put one ofhis books on my to-be-read pile. This novella with a title I justreally liked was going for 99 cents, so I grabbed it.

Chasing Tale for January 4th, 2012: Jeffrey Ford, Greg Gifune, Dan Simmons ...

2012-01-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

Christmas has comeand gone. I hope everyone had a good one. Now, we slog our waythrough 2012 until we can do it all again. I haven't got a clue whatthis year is going to bring, but I have the temerity to keep myfingers crossed. As the year begins, I can at least say that I willnot be left wanting for something to read. I got a pile of books inDecember, scratching quite a few titles off my wish list. Take a look...

TheShadow Year byJeffrey Ford -I think it was a list of recommendations by Ellen Datlow thatprompted me to put this book on my wish list (WLW#67). A mystery withsupernatural potential set in 1960s Long Island. After reading theplot summary for it, I knew I wanted to read it.

SayingUncleby Greg Gifune -Even if I somehow don't enjoy this book, which I blogged about inDecember (WLW#106), I can say the word "DISCARDED" stampedin red on the inside cover is practically a crime--it's a librarybook I got on sale. Oh well, if they don't want it, I sure do.

Monsters of L.A. byLisa Morton - Lastmonth Lisa had a blog tour, promoting her collection.Well, my review copy arrived in the mail, but not before I could review it as part of the tour. I quite like the idea of taking thoseclassic monsters from the silver screen and putting them incontemporary settings around Los Angeles. It sounds really promising.

Houseof Fear byJonathan Oliver (editor) -I won this new anthology from the fine folks at Spooky Reads. Hauntedhouses are one of my favorite horror tropes, and when I look at thetable of contents for this book, I think I'm going to get a lot ofenjoyment from these authors.

PleasureModel byChristopher Rowley -This sounded like a really interesting collaboration between TorBooks and Heavy Metal to give sci-fi author, Christopher Rowley, apulpy sandbox to play in. I've had it on my wish list since WLW#71,but it's the first of a trilogy which I was not originally aware, soif I like it there's one more series I'm going to have to collect.

Runningwith the Pack byEkaterina Sedia (editor) -Werewolves for Christmas? Neat. I found this anthology under thetree, which was an incredible treat because it's a book I've actuallyheard of--and wanted!

Drood byDan Simmons -I blogged about wanting this book last April (WLW #95) and I finallyfound a paperback copy on the shelf of my local bookstore(still nosign of his acclaimed debut novel, TheSong of Kali(WLW #12)). The whole creative liberties with the relationshipbetween Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins should be reallyinteresting.

DwellerbyJeff Strand -I've only read one novel by Jeff Strand, Benjamin'sParasite,two if you count his collaboration with three others on the goryromp, Draculas.He's got a real knack for blending humor and horror, but at facevalue this novel sounds much more heartfelt. That's why I put it onmy wish list in the first place (WLW#60).

Whatbooks did you get for Christmas this year?

Rabid Reads: "Gun" by Ray Banks

2012-01-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

Gun

by RayBanks

self-published(2011)

originallypublished via Crime Express (2008)

There is something about certain English accents that really makes ithard for Americans (even Canadians) to understand the Englishlanguage. I remember channel surfing one time a couple years back andMTV had some British teen reality show with actualsubtitles. Bollocks! Anyway, if you like crime stories setin the UK but have trouble with the accents, try reading a book. Infact, you should read this one.

Gun isa novella about a guy named Richie. Richie needs a job, but he's notcut out for the nine-to-five routine, so he asks the local crimeboss, Goose. The job: go to Leam Lane, deliver a payment to a hoodnamed Al, pick up a gun for Goose in exchange, and bring it back.Sounds simple, right? Well, it should be, but Richie is a magnet formisfortune. His girlfriend know it too, and despite her warnings andpleas for him to get on the straight and narrow, Richie needsmoney--fast.

Richie gets the gun without too much of a bother--the gay porn onAl's telly he could've done without--but he barely gets to the busstop before a trio of charva thugs beat the hell out of him and mughim, namely stealing the gun Richie needs to get back to Goose. Andthere in lies Richie's problem. He can't go back empty-handed, can'tgo sulking to Goose for help either, so he dusts himself off and goesin search of the gun.

The extent of my experience with British noir is limited to GuyRitchie films, so Gun was like a teaser of what I've beenmissing. To say Gun is a potent, gritty odyssey is like sayinga howitzer has a bit of a kick. Ray Banks has a few novels under hisbelt, but considering the amount of story he packed in this compactnovella, this novels must feel downright epic in scale. Whatever thecase, I wholeheartedly recommend this book, and I believe I'm goingto have to track down more of Ray's work. One of his booksrecommended to me was Saturday's Child. Sounds like as good aplace to start as any.

Rabid Rewind: Rango

2012-01-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

Rango

starring JohnnyDepp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Timothy Olyphant, and Bill Nighy

directed by GoreVerbinski

screenplay byJohn Logan

ParamountPictures (2011)

The only thing more mesmerizing than seeing Johnny Depp on the screenwould have to be seeing Johnny Depp in lizard form on the screen.Well, with Rango, prepare to be mesmerized.

Rango (Johnny Depp) has a pretty luxurious life as far as pet lizardsare concerned, but when he falls out of the family car while drivingacross the desert, poor Rango has to find his way home beforesomething decides to eat him--like that really big bird up in thesky. After averting death's clutches, he winds up lost in the desert,and led to the Old West kind of town by an iguana named Beans (IslaFisher). Beans is trying to find out what's happening to all thewater, which is the currency for the town. Rango through a comicalturn of events that has him killing the same hawk he escaped at thestart of the movie, winds up the town's new sheriff and is put on thetrail to find who is stealing the water.

The whole movie was apparently motion captured with the actors actingout the scenes and then having the animated characters painted overtheir performances. It sounds like a convoluted way to go about it,but the result has each character exuding the characteristics of eachactor, rather than simply having the voice. Johnny Depp, as usual, isat his oddball best. It is really easy to recall his roles as JackSparrow or Hunter S. Thompson when you see him in this one. For a guywho sometimes comes off as taking himself way too seriously ininterviews, the guy has a real knack for the wacky.

The cast is stellar. Not only do you get the names listed at the top,there, but there's also Ned Beatty, Ray Winstone, Harry Dean Stanton,and Alfred Molina. I don't know how much most animated movies cost,but I wouldn't be surprised to find out a hefty chunk of the$135,000,000 budget went to hiring the cast. The rest of that budgethad to have gone to the incredibly work they did with the virtual setdesign. The arid backdrop, set outside a modern day Las Vegas, withsweeping action scenes and brilliant character designs were all someof the best I've seen in the recent glut of animated movies.

I think fans of westerns would really enjoy this, and would probablybe a great way to get little kids caught up in the genre. I mean, ifthey can handle the Wicked Witch of the West they can probably copewith a rattlesnake with a Gatling gun for a rattle.

My New Year's Reading Resolution for 2012

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! ... I'm probably asleep or passed out right now--this is a scheduled post.

When I looked backat the books I read in 2011 to come up with my "fave five"and "top ten" lists, I discovered something a tad shameful.While I read more books (novels, novellas, collections, and graphicnovels combined) this past year than any year previous, only one fifth ofthose books were by written or edited by women.

Yeah, only 20% ofmy reading came from female authors in 2011. Now, I don't go aroundmaking distinctions of whether the author has a Y-chromosome or notwhen I pick up a book to read, any more than I give a damn what colortheir skin is. I'm only interested in the story. But, when I saw thatlittle statistic I knew what my reading resolution would be headinginto 2012.

I do a readingresolution every year for the last five years or so. I've been doingit mainly to challenge myself to read more from genres I wouldn'tnormally bother with or have been neglecting. So here's what I'mgonna do: This year, it's gonna be even-Steven. For every book I readwritten or edited by a man, I will read a book written or edited by awoman.

This shouldn't bedifficult, and frankly I don't think it's going to be. I've gotplenty of books by female authors and editors on my to-be-read pile,plus a ton more on my wish list. The only real difference over thenext year is that I will make a conscious effort to read them. Whichonly spurs the question in mind: why the hell did I read so few booksby women last year?

As best I canfigure, it has to do with the fact that the number of review requestsI received in 2011 were predominantly from guys or peoplerepresenting guys. I didn't do a tally on that one, but I'd guess itwould be a 2:1 ratio.

So there's my 2012reading resolution. What's yours going to be? Do you even makereading resolutions at New Year's? Lemme tell ya, it's a helluva loteasier to follow through with a reading resolution than it is withthose "I'm gonna quit smoking" or "I'm gonna hit thegym" resolutions. If you've got one, leave a comment and sharewhat it is, and if you don't have one, maybe you ought to think upone.

12 Days of Christmas Giveaway: And the winner is ...

2011-12-27T14:00:00.002-05:00

Alright. I threw the entries for the 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway in the proverbial hat and had random.org pick out an entry for me (I gave each one a number as they were received), and the winner of Michael West's Cinema of Shadows is ...

... HEATHER!

Congrats, Heather. I'll be sending that book out to you tomorrow. Incidentally, she has a blog called Cerebral Girl in a Redneck World, so pay her a visit if you feel so inclined.

A big thanks to everyone who entered. I hope you're still enjoying the holidays. Don't get too wasted this New Year's, and I feel your pain if you're the designated driver that night--being sober around that many drunks can be a chore sometimes.

Be on the lookout for more giveaways right here on the blog in 2012.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2011-12-24T12:00:00.000-05:00

The blog is going on a bit of a hiatus for the holidays. I'll announce the winner of the 12 Days of Christmas giveaway soon, but aside from that not much will be going on until the New Year.

I hope everybody has a great time--or at least refrains from homicidal rage when those incessant carolers come round.

To help cheer you up in case you are in the dumps over Christmas, here's some YouTube goodness I found. With the hilarious Eddie Izzard's take on Christmas:

My Favorite Novellas and Short Story Collections of 2011

2011-12-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

I think 2011 wasthe year of the novella for me. I read dozens of them. They're justabout the perfect length of story for an e-reader, and when you canget your hands on a really special one in actual book form, all thebetter. Then there is the short story, which I continue to devour atevery opportunity. So rather than try and squeeze one or two into mylist of My 10 Favorite Novels, I thought I'd create a couple shortlists of my favorite novellas and my favorite short storycollections.

My 5 FavoriteNovellas from 2011:

#5 Theatre ofCurious Acts by Cate Gardner (Hadley Rille Books) - Cate'sbrain is a kaleidoscope of the fantastic, and this book was a primeexample of just that.

#4 Gun byRay Banks (Amazon Kindle) - Ithink it was Anthony Neil Smith who put me on track to discoveringthis gritty story about a young father-to-be looking for quick cashand trying to make it the only way he knows how--and it ain'thonestly.

#3 Deathwatchby Lisa Mannetti (Shadowfall Publications) - Thisis actually a couple of novellas packaged together, but they're bothreally good and deserve a little tip of the hat. Of the two, myfavorite is Sheila NaGig, but you can't gowrong with either one.

#2 The DeadMan by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin (Amazon Kindle) - Thisseries of novellas is on its sixth installment, originallyself-published and now under the huge Amazon umbrella, this seriesstarted off strong with what is still my favorite of all sixnovellas, The Face ofEvil. The eighth installment is due to be released on January 27th.

#1 EveryShallow Cut by Tom Piccirilli (Chizine Publications) - Thisbook may have depressed me more than any other this year, but I wasincredibly thankful to have read it all the same. The story of anauthor's fall from grace, seemingly powerless to stop his own lifefrom falling apart a piece at a time, only to resort to finding hisanswer with a gun and a visit to his estranged brother. A morose andhaunting piece of work.

Honorablementions: Sparrowhawk by Paul Finch; The Neighborhood by Kelli Owen; Temporary Monsters by Ian Rogers

My 5 FavoriteAnthologies and Short Story Collections from 2011:

#5Cthulhurotica editedby Carrie Cuinn (DaganBook)- Tentacleporn it is not. Well, there was one story as I recall--anyway, thiswas an oddly entertaining batch of Lovecraftian erotica. Wouldn'thave figured I'd like it as much as I did, but there you go.

#4The Zombie Feed Vol. 1edited by JasonSizemore (Apex Publications) - Afterbeing entertained by the first volume of stories from TheZombie Feed,I sure hope there's a second volume in 2012.

#3Shock Totem #4 editedby K. Allen Wood (Shock Totem) - Afterbuying the digital edition of ST#1, I won #4 from Lee Thompson andenjoyed it even more. I think #5 is out this month. Should be great.

#2Strange Men inPinstripe Suits byCate Gardner (Strange Publications) - Justtake that snippet of praise I gave Cate for Theatreof Curious Acts andapply it here.

#1Supernatural Noiredited by Ellen Datlow(Dark Horse Books) - I'mnever let down when I see Ellen Datlow's name on the book cover.Throw in two more of my favorite words, SupernaturalandNoir,and this was a recipe for success.

Honorablementions: Arcane: PennyDreadfuls #1 by NathanShumate (editor); Pushof the Sky by CamilleAlexa; and The Red Penny Papers by KV Taylor (editor)

My 10 Favorite Novels of 2011

2011-12-22T07:30:00.000-05:00

It'sthat time of year again. List time. I thought I'd offer up tennovels released in 2011 I consider my favorites. The key word being"novels." I'm putting together a couple of other lists fornovellas and short story collections. This year was a really good onefor quality storytelling if you ask me, and I could have easilycooked up a list of twenty books to recommend, but let's not getcarried away.

#10:King's Justice (Knights of Breton Court Book 2)by Maurice Broaddus (Angry Robot Books) - "Thefantasy element is more understated than I had anticipated, but it isthere and used to great effect. I mean, you can't have a real worldsetting and then have mystical battles waged in the middle a majorAmerican city. People might notice."

#9:Resurrection (Demon Squad Book 2) by TimMarquitz (Damnation Books) - "Thething I liked most about the book is the same as what I liked aboutthe first: Frank Trigg's sardonic and sophomoric wit. The former heirto Hell's throne is as cynical as ever, subject to his own lasciviousmindset even in the most dangerous of circumstances. Half anti-hero,half asshole, Frank is simply a great character to have tell astory."

#8:Zombie, Ohio byScott Kenemore (Skyhorse Publishing) -"With elements of horror, comedy, mystery,and even a pinch of romance, Kenemore does a really good job infinding a balance. The story flows fairly well and feels like agenuine blend of genres, though there is a bit of a speed bump in thepacing about midway through, that's carried by a very likeable andsympathetic character in Peter."

#7:Willy by Robert Dunbar (Uninvited Books) -"Willy is a far cry from Robert's debut novel, ThePines, which was outright horror. This novel is thepersonification of sinister subtlety. A few passages feel laborious,but the work as a whole is masterful."

#6:Claire Dewitt and the City of the Dead by SaraGran (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) - "Iread one review of this book that described Dewitt as "NancyDrew by way of Hunter S. Thompson." I can kind of see that,since Dewitt is a former child detective now grown up, tatted up, andhas no compunction with taking recreational drugs."

#5:The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe (TorBooks) - "Asa whole, the book is as much a modest bit of magic as the Tufa.Strong storytelling, damn near perfect characterization and dialogue,and a wholly satisfying end. I'm even more eager to read more ofAlex's work after reading TheHum and the Shiver,and I bet you will too."

#4:The Woman by Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee(Crossroad Press) - "Thefirst two acts of his novel avoid the more extreme elements of thesubject matter, instead establishing the stakes, the behaviors of thecharacters, and the setup for an inevitable showdown. It's the thirdact, however, that throws the playbook out the window and goesfull-bore."

#3:Devil Red (Hap and Leonard Book 8) by Joe R.Lansdale (Alfred A. Knopf) - "Thewriting is gritty and plain-spoken, which suits the story to a tee.The dialog is fantastic and really funny in spots. The action isgreat and doesn't let up for very long, since it's only a two-hundredpage novel. It's just a damned fun read. It's Lansdale."

#2:Book of Tongues (Hexslinger Book 1) by GemmaFiles (Chizine Publications) - "Heroesare pretty hard to come by in this novel. Just about every majorcharacter we experience this story through has either some seriousemotional baggage or just a mean-spirited streak running throughthem."

#1:Fun and Games (Charlie Hardie Book 1) by DuaneSwierczynski (Mulholland Books) - "Hollywoodhas its own mythology, or maybe it's just really good at revampingthe mythologies of other places with a lot of glitz. In either case,Duane Swierczynski has concocted a novel, the first of a trilogy itturns out, that taps into the kind of conspiracy-laden thrill ridesonly Hollywood could call its own."

Oneof the little bits of trivia I noticed when I put this list togetherwas the absence of any self-published books, though a couple camedamned close. As a matter of fact, I figured I'd throw in a fewhonorable mentions to highlight some more books that I really enjoyedfrom this year.

Honorablementions: R.J. Clark's The Rift; Teresa Frohock'sMiserere; Layton Green's The Summoner; Steve Savile'sand David N. Wilson's Hallowed Ground; Catherynne M. Valente'sDeathless.

Likelycontenders on my TBR pile: Z. Constance Frost's NoShelter; John Adjvide Lindqvist's Harbor; Lisa Mannetti'sThe New Adventure of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn; Barry Napier'sThe Bleeding Room; Kaaron Warren's Mistification.

Feelfree to leave a comment and let me know what books you read and lovedthis year, or if you've got a list of your own posted on your blog,leave a link so I can check it out. These best of lists are alwaysgreat to compare notes and add more books to my watch list.

An interview with Ty Schwamberger: author of "The Fields"

2011-12-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

It'spretty easy to declare the zombie genre dead, pun intended, but itseems there is always an author who will come along and offer somenew perspective, some new twist, on the well-worn walking dead. TySchwamberger is the latest to step up to the plate with TheFields, which promises to be a stand-out in a crowded room.

Here's some info on the book courtesy of The Zombie Feed:

Billy Fletcher learned to farm the family’s tobacco fields–and beat slaves–by the hands of his father. Now, his father is dead, the slaves have long since been freed, and the once-lush fields are dying. Salvation by the name of Abraham knocks on the farmhouse door, bring wild ideas. He can help Billy save the plantation and return the fields to their former glory… by raising his father’s slaves from the dead.

Can the resurrected slaves breathe life back into the Fletcher farm? Having brought the slaves back from graves that his father sent them, can Billy be the kind master his father wasn’t? Is keeping the farm worth denying the men the freedom they earned with death?

Billy’s conscience holds the key to those mysteries, but not the biggest one: what does Abraham really want from the former slave owner’s slon?

Welcome to The Fields.

Now,on to the interview:

Gef:Your new novella, TheFields,takes a rather unique twist on the zombie genre by delving intopost-Civil War era subject matter. What prompted you to go there?

TySchwamberger: I wanted something different. I didn’t want to rehashthe same old “zombies are coming after us, we need to blow theirheads off” type story. I didn’t do much outlining before startingthe story, but did do some character sketching. I’ll usually jotdown a couple things I’d like to see happen, but more often thannot, the story takes on a life of its own and leads me to a differentending. Nine times out of ten, it comes out better than originallyplanned.

Havingsaid that… I think Jonathan Maberry, whom wrote the introductionfor the novella, said it best: “It’s part horror story inthe classic sense – misdeeds from the past coming back to haunt thepresent. It’s part zombie story. It’s part adventure. And it’spart social satire in its darkest sense. The Fields is amorality tale. With zombies.” I wanted something deeper, moremeaningful, but also something at its core would scare theever-living hell outta people. I think it came out pretty damn good,if I do say so myself.

Gef:Do you find in your reading and writing that there is a setting ortime period where zombies just don't seem to work as a storytellingdevice? Or are the undead buggers a one-size-fits-all kind ofmonster?

Ty:Well, I’m sure writers have placed the undead in all different timeperiods, but I think it takes a little extra effort to effectivelypull it off. In the movies, we more or less see zombies in presentday, not in the past. I’ve heard from a few film productioncompanies that have read the manuscript that they love the story, butit would be difficult to adapt it on the screen. I don’t take thisas a negative. No. I take that sort of reply that I hopefully wrotesomething so unique, so special, that putting it on the “bigscreen” just wouldn’t do the story justice. At least I like tothink that way.

Gef:Now that you're working with The Zombie Feed, are you a littlezombied out yet? Or is your appetite for zombie tales an insatiableone?

Ty:Good question. First, I’d like to mention that Jason Sizemore(owner of Apex Publications) actually picked up TheFields almosta year before I took over as managing editor of The Zombie FeedPress. Having said that, TheFields ismy first zombie story. Again, I didn’t want to rehash what othershave already done, so I wanted to wait till I had an original ideabefore pounding out a story. I’ve always loved zombie books andmovies, and I love the business side of publishing just as much asthe creative side, so when Jason asked me to take over TZF it was alogical next step for my writing/editing career. I’m definitelyhaving fun with it all!

Gef:Aside from zombies, TheFieldsalso tackles the whole father/son dynamic as your main characterinherits his family's tobacco fields, and it doesn't sound like hisdad was the best moral influence on him. Is he a character you had inmind before the thought of zombies entered into the fray?

Ty:Below was my thought process behind TheFields:

“Wouldn’t it be cool to write a zombie story?!”
“I need to come up with an interesting setting for the story…ah, the middle 1800s after the slaves were freed.”
“I need to come up with an interesting way to bring them back to life…ah, how about a stranger wanders onto a plantation, where the tobacco fields are dying, and offers up an incantation to bring them back to life to help out in the fields.”
“The son of the former slave owner would probably be dealing with his inner demons on whether to save the land or let the dead slaves remain underground and in peace…”
“What does the stranger want from the farmer?”

Thoseare the questions I asked myself prior to and while writing thestory. I don’t want to say too much else or I might give away thefarm, err, the fields.

A big thanks to Tyfor stopping by the blog and for the interview. You can follow Ty onhis blog tour, as his next tour stop will be at Hunter Shea.

You can purchase The Fields and learn more about it by visiting: Apex Book Company or Amazon.com.

TySchwamberger is a growing force within the horror genre. He is theauthor of a novel, multiple novellas, collections and editor onseveral anthologies. In addition, he’s had many short storiespublished online and in print. Two stories, ‘Cake Batter’(released in 2010) and ‘House Call’ (currently in pre-productionin 2011), have been optioned for film adaptation. You can learn moreat: http://tyschwamberger.com.

Wish List Wednesday #106: Greg Gifune's 'Saying Uncle'

2011-12-21T03:00:00.000-05:00

This is a recurring blog segment inwhich I highlight a book on my wish list. Sometimes it's a newrelease, sometimes a beloved classic, and sometimes it's a hiddengem.

I think I firstheard about Greg Gifune duringan episode of Pod of Horror. That was nearly three years ago though,and I've never seen one of his books on a store shelf. So thank you,Internet. I've got a couple of Greg's novels on my wish list,including one published by Uninvited Books called Gardensof Night. The one thatrecently caught my eye is a novella put out by Delirium Press calledSaying Uncle.

Here'sthe write-up via Goodreads:

Author Greg F. Gifune hascrafted a journey of one man's voyage into the darkness of the pastwith the pace of a thriller but the poetic and thoughtful writing hehas become known and praised for by critics and readers alike. Alyrical, complex and mysteriously enchanting novel that delves deeplyinto the dark side of family, friendship, love, grief, loyalty,revenge, and ultimately, redemption, SayingUncle is a leanbut thought-provoking novel about crimes of the past and the scarsthey leave behind. A study of violence and spirituality, of a familytorn apart by a senseless act of brutality and the equally brutalaftermath that haunts them still, Saying Uncle is at once elegant,horrific, emotionally shattering, and sadly beautiful. A remarkablenovel from the author of Dominion,Blood In Electric Blue,and TheBleeding Season.

It sounds really promising, and if it's good enough for Robert Dunbarand Teresa Frohock, who both praised it heavily, it's good enough forme.

Have you read any of Greg Gifune's work? What would you recommend?

Rabid Reads: "Sparrowhawk" by Paul Finch

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

Sparrowhawk

by Paul Finch

published byBrentwood Press (2011)

originallypublished by Pendragon Press (2010)
ISBN 190686425X

A ChristmasCarol is a perennial favorite ofmine this time of year. The movie that is, and has been since I was alittle kid. Everyone has their favorite Christmas movie; that one'smine, namely the Alistair Sims adaptation. That's how I came to knowthe story, and always will, even after reading Dickens' own words. Asfor a Christmas read, I don't really have one. It's Halloween thatgets my attention when it comes to seasonal books. For Sparrowhawk,however, I may make an exception.

Paul Finch's darkly-tinged novella is set against the sooty backdropof 1840s London. Captain John Sparrowhawk is rotting away in adebtors prison (onga familiar setting in more than one Dickens story)until a mysterious and alluring woman, Miss Evangeline, visits himand offers him a job and a new start. His debts are paid in full andall he has to do is protect an anonymous man from three nefariouspersons out to do him harm. Given Sparrowhawk's harrowing experiencesin Afghanistan, he's well suited to do some muscle work, though hecarries a good deal of emotional baggage given his fall from gracewhen he returned from the war, and that threatens to undermine hissecond chance at life.

In a modest 130-or-so pages, Paul builds a rich and memorable storyof a tormented man whose torment has not nearly reached its end.London is captured expertly, warts and all, in this story, and thedialogue between John Sparrowhawk and Miss Evangeline is magnetic.The back-and-forth between them initially feels a bit familiar withthe dashing rogue and femme fatale vibe, but it quickly develops intosomething all its own, with just enough sinisterness to make youwonder just which side she's on. The struggle doesn't come from MissEvangeline, but from the powers that be out to harm the manSparrowhawk is sworn to protect--and do so without the man everknowing he exists.

Theending packs a punch and the allusions to Dickens' AChristmas Carol are a treat asthe story progresses. It is 19th-century London, after all. I'm a guywho continues to struggle with appreciating historical fiction, atleast the kind that steeps itself in the language of the time. Asmuch as I'm a fan of Dickens for A Christmas Carol andGreat Expectations,his prose is a chore to get through more often than not. Paul Finch,on the other hand, offers a style of writing that harkens to thattime but offers enough of a contemporary feel to make a schlub likeme get immersed in the story with little effort.

You can also read my review of Paul Finch's King Death.

My 10 Favorite Movies of 2011--and my least favorite

2011-12-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

I haven't set footinside a movie theater in years. I just can't justify it. I stilllove movies, but I want to sit in a comfortable chair--maybe stretchout on the sofa if I'm lucky--eat good food, and not have to endurea-holes who talk or text through the whole movie. Since TV isgarbage, at least for me since I don't get HBO, I watch a couple DVDs a week.As such I've seen some great movies and some truly horrendous wastesof plastic.

So have a look at these lists and tell me how far off the mark I am:

The 5 moviesfrom 2010 I watched this year and loved:

#5 Easy A -Emma Stone's wry performance in Super Bad caught my eye, andshe's gotten better with each role she's had. And she's about theonly thing about the new Spider-Man movie that might make mewatch it.

#4 TheAmerican - George Clooney doesn't always knock it out of thepark, but more often than not he does. And this brooding tale of anaging assassin is one of the best ones, and more understatedperformances on his resume.

#3 Black Swan- It was pretty easy to see why Natalie Portman won an Oscarafter I saw this. She really busted her ass to put on the performanceof a lifetime. And this is probably the only time I'll ever care towatch ballet.

#2 True Grit- I still the Dude whenever I see Jeff Bridges on the screen,but when he dives into a role like Rooster in this film, he justdisappears into his role and makes it come to life. And he may havedone an even better job than John Wayne.

#1 Let Me In- Easily the best vampire movie I've seen in ... maybe ever.It's also one of the best coming-of-age stories, not to mentiontragic love stories. The only real way to top it is to go back to theoriginal Swedish adaptation, or just go and read the book.

The 5 moviesfrom 2011 I've seen so far and loved:

#5 X-Men:First Class - I had my doubts about this movie when I firstheard about it, but it really impressed me and wound up one of thebetter superhero movies in the last few years.

#4 CedarRapids - This dark, hidden gem of a movie caught me bysurprise. Ed Helms' rube character is annoying and endearing at thesame time, and the supporting cast only bolsters his performance.

#3 Rango -Johnny Depp is the kind of actor who is hit-or-miss with me.Sometimes he seems to take his role a bit too seriously, then withmovies like this one he really embraces the silliness of it and makesthe whole movie better.

#2 Super -Boy, this movie was dark. The last time Rainn Wilson and Emma Pagewere in a movie together was Juno. Well, Super kicksJuno's snarky, pregnant ass. And it's got Kevin Bacon playingsleazeball at full volume.

#1Trollhunter - A breakout movie if there ever was one. ANorwegian monster movie shot like a documentary. I tend to despiseshaky cameras and mockumentaries, but this one really worked and themonsters were amazing.

The 5 Moviesthat might make it on the list once I see them: Bridesmaids,Hanna, Horrible Bosses, Insidious, Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The 10 MoviesI absolutely hated from the past year:

#10 The A-Team -Purposely campy, yes, but Ididn't buy Liam Neeson for a second in the role of Hannibal. Cuttingin old footage of George Peppard would have been better.

#9 The SocialNetwork - An over-hyped andoverwrought waste of my time. The critics can rave all they want, Ithought it was terrible and Justin Timberlake was a big reason why.

#8 Transformers3 - Sequels tend to be worsethan the originals, but the first two Transformersfilms were so bad Ifigured there was nowhere to go but up--I was wrong.

#7 Children ofthe Corn: Genesis - I'veeffectively wiped the original movie from my memory. Hopefully, intime, I can do the same with this dreck.

#6 Pandorum - Amovie with a lot of potential on paper, but it only ended up a pileof hot garbage. Poor Dennis Quaid. The guy deserves better.

#5 Gulliver'sTravels - I'm officially overJack Black. I was on the bandwagon like everyone else when he hit itbig, but he should probably stick to KungFu Panda for a whileuntil he finds a good script.

#4 Cars 2 -Disney really needs to knock itoff with all the sequels, especially when the lead character isvoiced by Larry the Cable Guy. How did Michael Caine get snookeredinto this?

#3 The LastAirbender - I made it throughforty minutes before I had to turn this flavorless slop off and poursalt in my eyes just to feel alive.

#2 Killers -Whoever it is in Hollywood thatkeeps trying to convince audiences that Katherine Heigl is a bankablestar should be publicly flogged. And Katherine should learn to readthose scripts before she signs on.

#1 I Am NumberFour - I made it through awhole twenty-five minutes before I quit this movie. Had I notborrowed it from the library I would have set fire to it or used itas a substitute for a clay pigeon.

Rabid Reads: Darkness Falling (Forever Twilight, Book 1) by Peter Crowther

2011-12-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

Darkness Falling (ForeverTwilight, Book 1)

by PeterCrowther

AngryRobot Books (2011)

416 pages

ISBN139780857661692

One of my favorite sci-fi movies fromthe mid-20th century is Invasion of the Body Snatchers,so when I checked the back cover of this book I realized I had animmediate want to read it. Whether aliens, zombies, or whatever themonster is, the concept of losing your identity and becoming part ofa collective is frightening.

Darkness Falling startsoff with a flash of light, piercing bright to a painful degree, andin its wake all but a few people disappear. Gone. Like a Rapture.Ronnie in particular, a disgruntled husband, has his world turnedupside when his wife (and everyone else except two others) vanishesin mid-flight as they sit next to each other arguing. Ronnie's twocompanions in the aftermath are a little girl named Angel with anapparent quasi-clairvoyance and a cartographer in the cockpit with atenuous knowledge of how to fly. After they crash land into a Barnes& Noble, something I found especially poetic given today'spublishing climate, they exit the plane and find the world--or atleast Denver--is absent of any human life. Actually, all life seemsto be gone. Birds, bugs, everything.

Other charactersare highlighted in the story, as their paths converge. There's thefoursome holed up at a small radio station who venture out and findvehicles and buildings empty, as if abandoned a la Chernobyl, enginesrunning and appliances humming. As they try to piece things together,they wonder if their proximity to the radio tower may have sparedthem from disappearing too, and worry if another flash of light willoccur.

Thenthere are a couple of, shall we say, eccentric characters: Virgil, aserial killer with an affinity for wrapping his victims in fabriclike a mummy until they suffocate; and Sally, a woman with some formof multiple personality disorder, with a head full of children'svoices representing all the kids she wish she could call her own.These two, along with the sporadic mind-reading of the little girl,really amp of the 'weird' factor in this novel, and give the wholeplot a smorgasbord of Twilight Zone elements.

And when the peoplewho disappeared come back; sporting Bono-style shades and workgloves, and amble around as if they're just learning to walk or likepuppets on strings; all bets are off.

On one level thebook is a really exciting read with a rewarding level of mystery andmenace. The action doesn't let up very often, especially as all ofthe characters near the point at which they all meet. On anotherlevel though, the book is aggravating. 'Book 1' is clearly emblazonedon the cover, so I expected some level of "tune in next time,folks!" but the novel left off feeling unfinished. I basicallyfelt like I'd read the first act of a three-act story. Allusions totensions within the whole group go unresolved and there are no realanswers provided about the nature of the zombie-ish people whoreappeared and started hunting the survivors down. The story wasoriginally published years ago as a series of novellas, so maybe thatexplains it. Another irritant was the blocks of narrative thatappeared more than once, but I'm willing to pass that off to the ideathat I read an ARC copy of the book (I didn't see advance review copyor uncorrected proof printed anywhere on the book, though).

It's a good startto what I suspect will be a very entertaining saga, but even afterfour hundred pages I felt the book needed more, namely Book 2. Iwonder how long readers will have to wait for that to come along.

On My Radar: Seventh Star Press, The Zombie Feed, Shock Totem, and Angry Robot

2011-12-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

Been a while since I threw out a little signal boost for all the authors and publishers that have been cranking out good stories and such, so here we go.

From Seventh Star Press:

Seventh Star Press is proud to introduce Seventh Star Singles, an exciting new eBook series that represents a creative approach to eBook publishing. The debut of the new line kicks off with brand new tales from sword and sorcery/fantasy author Steven L. Shrewsbury, and epic fantasy/urban fantasy author Stephen Zimmer. Best of all, the new eBook short stories are all priced at just 99 cents.

Seventh Star Singles offer more for fans of the authors' novel series, as well as being stand-alone stories. The short stories are set in the worlds that the authors' novels with Seventh Star Press are based. For example, readers who came to know Gorias La Gaul in Steven Shrewsbury's Thrall will now be able to go on more adventures with Gorias in the Blood and Steel: Legends of La Gaul short stories included in the Seventh Star Singles line. Similarly, fans of Stephen Zimmer's Fires in Eden series and Rising Dawn Saga will get to explore more of those worlds in his Chronicles of Ave and Annals of the Rising Dawn short story collections for this new line.

"I was the instigator of the new Seventh Star Singles, as I wanted a way for readers of my series to explore more of my worlds in a way that was also accessible to new readers," Stephen Zimmer commented. "They are entirely stand-alone stories, but provide all kinds of background, further depth, and perhaps even some foreshadowing that all relate to the novel series. They have been a blast to develop, as there are so many stories to be told from these worlds that can't be addressed in the plotlines of the Fires in Eden and Rising Dawn Saga novels. I'm really excited that Steven Shrewsbury stepped forward to develop a Gorias La Gaul collection. Any fan of Robert E. Howard is bound to love Steven's work and this new series opens things wide for him to write all kinds of Gorias adventures! "

Steven Shrewsbury's collection Blood and Steel: Legends of La Gaul starts off with two new Gorias La Gaul tales, Author and Finisher of Our Flesh, and Insurmountable. Stephen Zimmer has three contributions to the Chronicles of Ave collection, Into Glory Ride, Land of Shadow, and Lion Heart. Stephen has one story for the Annals of the Rising Dawn, Temples Rising.

A new page on the Seventh Star Press website gives full synopsis and availability on the various story collections. The page can be found at: http://seventhstarpress.com/documents/seventh_star_singles.html

Many new titles are planned in the series in 2012, to be released on a monthly basis alongside the scheduled novel releases.

Updates and additional information can be obtained at the official site for Seventh Star Press, at www.seventhstarpress.com ,

Short stories are a pretty easy way to sample an author's work, and stories that stick to the established worlds of some authors are nice asides for fans of a particular series. Should be interesting to see what some of these stories are like. I think Michael West may even have a short story or two coming out through Seventh Star, too.

From The Zombie Feed:

Here's the book trailer for Ty Schwamberger's new historical zombie novella, The Fields. I think it looks promising, and it should be interesting to check out a longer work by Ty, as I've read short stories by him thus far.

from Shock Totem:

E-book versions of all Shock Totem Issues are available exclusively on the Kindle Store for 99 cents each. There's even a Christmas issue for all you people in the mood for some holiday horrors. I've read #1 and #4, so this will be a great chance to read the rest. Highly recommended.

from Angry Robot Books:

To celebrate Christmas, Angry Robot has a series of guest posts on their blog, counting down the 12 days of Christmas. Here's a link to the first one by Madeline Ashby, author of vN.

Rabid Reads: "Peter the Wolf" by Zoe E. Whitten

2011-12-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

Peter the Wolf

Zoe E. Whitten

Aphotic ThoughtPress (2011)

ISBN9780982042731

NOTE[SPOILERS AHEAD]: After Zoe read my original review of this novel on Goodreads, she was ... upset. Now, I don't make it a habit ofrewriting reviews, but I felt I could afford to revisit thebook. After going over certain passages again, I see a couple thingsI'll address, but my overall opinion of the book stands. I'm notdiscouraging anyone from reading this novel. In fact, I'd like toread others' opinions, as I've already seen two starkly differentreviews on Goodreads from Michele Lee and Rebecca Sutton.

For those who haven't read the book, it is essentially the story ofPeter Holmes, a fifteen-year-old who tells his own tale. He'sdamaged goods. His parents were the scum of the earth, who sexuallyabused him and his fraternal twin sister. At the age of twelve, afterhis sister was murdered by one of their parents' clients, Peterfinally summons the will to turn them into the police. His father iskilled by inmates, while his mother rots in prison. As for Peter, thesystem sweeps him under the rug. The novel begins with him atfifteen-years-old, living with a compassionate family of four. He'sonly surviving, and then he meets Alice.

Alice is a gymnast and a gifted one at that. Through her, Peter finda passion for gymnastics. While this healthy introduction into hislife takes shape, so does a disturbing one. His sexual urges, thathe's suppressed through his own methods because he has no faith inanyone's ability to help him, focus directly on Alice. That might notsound too terrible, except for the fact that she's only ten when theymeet. Their friendship grows, until Peter crosses that line andmolests her. He tries to stop himself and agonizes over what he knowsis wrong, but ultimately gives in and lies to his family and Alice'sin the process. From then on, I didn't see him just as a victim, butas a predator as well.

Peter's sense of self-worth seems to improve as he trains to become agymnast, he comes out of his shell and makes friends at school, butit's threatened. Not only by his relationship with Alice, but by herfather when he and Peter's foster family discover what they've beendoing. If that's not enough, some jocks at his high school have foundout about the horrid childhood he had to live due to video footagefloating around online, and decide to blackmail him with it.

In my original review, I said I lost all sympathy for Peter when hecrossed the line with Alice. To be more accurate, I lost sympathywhen it became clear he wasn't going to stop crossing that line. Yes,he was a victim through most of his life, and he openly admits whathe's doing is wrong, but he does it anyway. And even though I lostsympathy for the guy, I was still wrapped up in the story. It waswritten very well, and in scenes where Peter wasn't intimate withAlice or lying to others about it, he was a character Iwanted to root for. He even accepts a therapy session at one point, but the relationship continued.

Even though Zoe didn't intend this as a love story between the two, a great deal of Peter's and Alice's interactions felt that way to me. Now, Zoe is a heckuva writer, but this novel just didn't jibe withme. What really lost my emotional investment was the last third of thenovel, which veers wildly into left field as Peter discovers he is awerewolf, just like his mother who has escaped from prison to hunthim down. I'd spent the first two-thirds of the book becomingemotionally invested in Peter's life and turmoil, which were rivetingregardless of any objection I had to Peter's relationship with Alice,but it was all but forgotten as Peter's mother arrived, kidnappedAlice, morphing the story into a damsel-in-distress tale. I mean, thewhole contemporary drama of Peter's life was already engrossing andthat's what I wanted to see focused on. Frankly, the return of hismother felt like a distraction from the important through-line of thenovel. And by the time the story gets back to tackling Peter andAlice, I had already dropped out of the story on an emotional level.

The book is the first of a trilogy, so it's pretty clear the bigger picture is yet to be revealed. Maybe reading all three books together would help better appreciate the story, but with just this one book to go on, I didn't care for it.

12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop: Win a copy of Michael West's "Cinema of Shadows"

2011-12-12T23:30:00.000-05:00

Intoxicated By Books is hosting a giveaway blog hop and I'm taking part with one more book to giveaway to wrap up the year that was 2011.

What's up for grabs? One lucky winner will receive a trade paperback copy of Michael West's gruesome haunted house novel--haunted theater, actually--called Cinema of Shadows. If you'd like to read my review of this book, you can click here.


"Cinema of Shadows" published by Seventh Star Press

What are the rules? This giveaway is open to anyone from Toronto to Timbuktu--worldwide, even. Simply leave a comment on this blog post with a name and way for me to contact you if your name is drawn. Eezy peezy. The giveaway ends December 24th around midnight. Now with Christmas holidays being what they are, I may not be able to announce the winner until December 26th, so fair warning on that little detail.

And be sure to check out the other great giveaways!

Good luck and Merry Christmas!

Rabid Rewind: Dead Snow

2011-12-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

Dead Snow

starring VegarHoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, and a bunch of Nazi zombies

directed byTommy Wirkola

screenplayby Tommy Wirkola & Stig Frode Henriksen

Euforia Film(2009)

Roger Ebert loves every foreign film ever made; it's a fact. But Ibet he had a hard time enjoying this one, assuming he gave up ninetyminutes of his life to watch it. Dead Snow it turns out isNorway's answer to the question: Can Europe make a horror movie ascheesy as Sam Raimi?

The answer is yes.

A quintette of college students decided to spend spring break in acabin in the mountains, but when they arrive their friend whosefamily owns the cabin isn't there yet. No matter, they've got aroaring fire and plenty of booze. Even the creepy old man who happensby while hiking doesn't faze them, though his tales of Nazioccupation in Norway and the villagers who finally chased them intothe mountains to starve to death isn't exactly a cozy bedtime story.

Now, you might be wondering about the language barrier, so let metell you: it's not an issue. If this was some drama with a lotof character development and riveting plot, there would be cause forconcern for those with an aversion to subtitles. Dead Snow,however, doesn't suffer from such distractions. It's a bunch ofzombies dressed as Nazis chasing idiots and ripping them limb fromlimb. That's your plot. I highly doubt this movie wouldbenefit any great deal if the actors were speaking English. In fact,it's kind of nice, as bad acting is more palatable when you can'tunderstand what the hell the actors are saying.

Some of the comedy bits were really effective. When one of thetwenty-somethings hurls a Molotov cocktail at a zombie and winds upburning the cabin down. Moron. The trouble is that while I waslaughing at the characters, I didn't care about them.

As for special effects go, they were good. I was worried the zombiesand the gore was going to look really low-rent, but Wirkola andwhoever his practical effects team was did a really good job in thatregard. There was a point in the movie, however, where I suspectedthere has a half-off sale on intestines.

For zombie fans and folks who love campy horror flicks, this is adecent one to go with. If you want anything remotely cerebral though,sorry about your bad luck.

Rabid Reads: "Hallowed Ground" by Steve Savile and David Niall Wilson

2011-12-08T07:30:00.000-05:00

Hallowed Ground

by Steve Savileand David Niall Wilson

CrossroadsPress and Macabre Ink Digital (2011)

ASINB00534804Q

I don't read a lotof what you could classify as weird westerns, but on the occasions Ihave (i.e., Stephen King's The Gunslinger andGemma Files' Book of Tongues)it's been a thoroughly entertaining experience. And the collaborationof Steve Savile and David Niall Wilson is no exception.

Rightfrom the striking cover art by Robert Sammelin, HallowedGround promises a blood-soaked,bullet-ridden fable. Usually when there's a pretty gal holding a gunon a book cover, it's urban fantasy, but this is a shade grittierthan what I've read from the UF crowd.

The book starts with a band of wayward freaks setting up camp outsidethe dustbowl town of Rockwood, led by an eerily charismatic man knownas the Preacher. In their wake, the crows come, harbingers ofsomething bad on the horizon. As the Preacher sets his pawns inmotion on the board, more players enter the impending fray. ProvenderCreed, one of the few in Rockwood not cowed or culled by the darkforces at work, strives to find out what looms for the small deserttown; Sheriff Brady who fights to save a dying town; Dr. SamuelBalthazar and his Traveling Show; Lilith; and Mariah, theresurrected love of Bejamin Jamieson who sold his soul to bring herback.

There is a huge, robust cast of characters, and many of them all havetheir own personal stakes in what's happening in and around Rockwood.If I'm criticize this book for anything, it's that there were timeswhere I got lost in the narrative and had to double back more thanonce just to remind myself why one character was behaving a certainway or reacting to something in a surprising fashion. The ending iswholly satisfying though, and while it feels like a complete story, Igot this sense that there wasn't just room for a follow-up novel downthe road, but the follow-up could be even leaner and meaner than thisone.

This was my first chance to read a novel by David, and my firstchance to read anything at all by Steve, so I'll be seeking out moreby each author in the future thanks to their collaboration. And ifthey come out with more collaborations, I'm all for it.

Book Lover's Holiday Hop: And the winner is ...

2011-12-07T10:08:00.001-05:00

I threw all of the entries I received for the Book Lover's Holiday Hop--and there were a lot this time around--gave each one a number and threw them in Random.org.

And the winner is ... RYAN!

Congrats, Ryan. You've won a copy of Steve Vernon's The Lunenburg Werewolf.

Thanks again to everyone who entered. Don't feel too bad if you didn't win. There's going to be another book giveaway on this blog very soon to finish off 2011, so keep your eyes peeled.

In the meantime, you can visit Ryan's own blog, Wordsmithsonia.

Chasing Tale (December 7th, 2011) Digital Edition: Gabrielle Faust, Ron Kelly, Ian Rogers ...

2011-12-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

I have officially joined the Dark Side: I've got a Kindle.

I would have loved an e-reader that can read all e-book formats, but that's not going to happen any time soon. And since most of the e-books I have are in Kindle format, thanks to the ease of use with the Kindle for PC app, and the fact it's easier for me to convert EPUB to a Kindle friendly format than the other way around--goddamn DRM--the Kindle just kind of fell into my lap as the easy choice.

And honestly, between Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Amazon wins every time. As for Kobo--please.

Here are the latest e-books I've bought or received:

Dark Faith edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon - During Black Friday, Apex Books knocked 25% off the price of all their e-books, and I've had my eye on this one for a while, waiting for it to become available in a digital format. Score.

Regret by Gabrielle Faust - I've had this book on my wish list for a while (Wish List Wednesday#85), so when I got an e-mail alert from Amazon telling me it was on sale, how could I hold off any longer?

King Death by Paul Finch - Spectral Press has come out with their fourth chapbook, a novelette set in 14th century England during the Black Death. I'm on board for this one, but it's a story that comes with its own glossary. At least I won't need my dictionary.

The Sorrows by Jonathan Janz - After Leisure Books went to hell in a handbasket, editor Don D'Auria found a new home with Samhain Publishing and one of the latest novels he's worked on is this debut novel from Jonathan, who was kind enough to send me a review PDF.

Undertaker's Moon by Ron Kelly - One of the featured titles at Crossroad Press in November was this grizzly looking novel. I tried reading a Ron Kelly novel a couple years back, simply titled Fear I believe, and I didn't much care for it. I figured it was about time I tried his work out again, especially since his work is touted so positively by Dead in the South.

Temporary Monsters, The Ash Angels, and Black-Eyed Kids by Ian Rogers - A fellow Canadian is hard at it with a trio of novellas through Burning Effigy Press. Ian sent me some review copies to check out after I noticed the kudos he received for his work over at The ManEating Bookworm. He also got a mention recently at Dreadful Tales in their spotlight on Canadian horror authors.

The Forgetting Wood by Steve Savile - I recently read Hallowed Ground, which was a collaboration between Steve Savile and David Niall Wilson (you can read my review tomorrow). I thought it was really entertaining, and I figured I ought to read more of these guys. So I found this book on Crossroad Press.

The Light and the End by John Skipp and Craig Spector - This is one of those horror novels I've heard bandied about for years as a quintessential vampire tale. This is also the 25th Anniversary edition of a book from a genre I'm not overly familiar with: splatterpunk. I may need to pop some Rolaids or Tums before I sit down with this one.

All the Young Warriors by Anthony Neil Smith - In mid-November, Anthony offered this thriller for a scant 99 cents. It's a thriller set in Somalia. It's gotten some good reviews, so add that to the enticing price point, and my liking what I've read of Anthony's work so far, it was an easy buy.

Maelstrom by David Niall Wilson - The other book I snagged after reading Hallowed Ground was this novel about a ghost hunting romp in a cemetery goes horribly wrong. The premise sounds deliciously dark, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

What e-books did you get recently?

Rabid Reads: "Fingers and Other Fantastic Stories" by Marian Coman

2011-12-06T07:00:00.000-05:00

Fingers and other FantasticStories

by Marian Coman

translated byCarmen Dumitru and Raluca Chirvase

self-publishedin English (2011)

ISBN9781465712608

Over the last five years or so, my reading habits have opened up toinclude authors from beyond Canada, the U.S., and Britain. The latestinternational offering comes from Romania. Marian Coman's shortfiction has apparently been heralded over there a fair bit, but thisself-published collection marks the first English translation.

Fingers is a collection of four short stories made availableon the cheap via the Kindle Store. The title story "Fingers"has a wonderfully haunting aspect to its look at childhood in aCommunist country, and the young lad's apparent wart on one of hisfingers, which he's named Alfonso. Marian offers up the blandsurroundings of the boy's life, which I thought were beautifully typified by his bombarding local kids from his bedroom window to thesnowy grounds below with oranges. A great scene that is well worthreading.

The next story, "The Bathroom Door," is a bit of a horrorstory. Thankfully, however, it's not the kind of obvious horrorstory some might expect from the title. This one deals with a son'storment in the wake of his father's death and mother's insanity. Somepretty grim stuff, but told in such a way that gave it a poetic feel.

"Unwired" could fit into the sci-fi category, though it toohad its dark elements. A boy on an island who feels separated fromhis peers on account of lacking something the others have. Frankly, Iwouldn't too keen on having an extra "hole", but that'sjust me.

"Between Walls" was probably my least favorite among thefour, but still a good read, which seemed to offer a new twist on anold piece of Romanian folklore. I'm not exactly read up on folkloreoutside my own country, so I'd probably have to hit Google orWikipedia to get a better appreciation for this story.

All in all, it's an impressive sampling that shows Marian Comandeserves to find an English audience. My personal preferences towardeach story diminished as I read each one, but that is something duesimply to story placement. If you're looking to give an internationalvoice a chance, here's one to consider.

Rabid Rewind: Orphan

2011-12-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

Orphan

starring VeraFarmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, and Isabelle Fuhrman

directed byJaume Collet-Serra

screenplay byDavid Leslie Johnson

Warner Bros.(2009)

I had heard different people talk about this movie when it came out,saying it was a lot better than they were expecting, especially theending. But, my god, no one said anything about the gut punch thatkicks off the movie. I'm not a fan of blood, probably less a fan ofhospitals, so when the movies starts with both in the first couple ofminutes, I thought I was watching a Saw movie for a second.

Anyway, Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard play an affluent marriedcouple with two children, but struggling in their marriage followingthe miscarriage of what would have been their third child. Since theycan't have children anymore, they choose to adopt. They visit thelocal orphanage and are instantly charmed by a nine-year-old Russiangirl named Esther, played by Isabelle Fuhrman. It's at this point Iremember the kerfuffle from adaption agencies and special interestgroups about how this movie perpetuated some kind of paranoia aboutadopting foreign kids. Frankly, I don't think anyone washinging their decision to adopt on the subject matter of a Hollywoodhorror film. Then again, people base life-altering decisions on somepretty stupid stuff.

So, Esther gets acquainted with her new home and family. The younger,deaf sister Max loves her. The older, douche-bag brother Daniel hatesher. And I suppose I should tip my hat to the kid who played Daniel(Jimmy Bennett), because I absolutely hated Daniel andcouldn't wait for Esther to murder his face. I can understand wantingto create tension in the new family dynamic, but that characterscored a zero on the sympathy scale.

If you ever saw The Good Son, this movie is kind of like that,but it's a girl and she is vicious.

The manipulation and intimidation Esther uses to worm her way deeperinto the family for her own gains is just insidious. Some of thestunts felt preposterous since Esther gets away quite literally withmurder for the longest time, but the performances are solid enoughthat you can roll with it.

As for the ending, yeah, it's a kicker. I didn't see it coming, andI'm really glad it didn't get spoiled for me before I saw the movie,because if I knew what was coming down the road for this family Iwould have probably tuned out.

Book Lover's Holiday Hop: Enter to win 'The Lunenburg Werewolf' by Steve Vernon

2011-12-02T02:00:00.000-05:00

Christmas is coming, so I decided to take part in at least one more giveaway. This time it's courtesy of Kid Lit Frenzy and I Am A Reader Not A Writer.

This time around I'm offering one lucky winner a copy of Steve Vernon's The Lunenburg Werewolf (Nimbus Publishing). My review for this book just went up the other day, so be sure to check that out if you'd like an idea of what the book is about, in case you don't already know. CLICK HERE TO READ.

The rules for this giveaway are simple: Open worldwide. Just fill out the form below and you're all set. If you follow the blog in some fashion, add that to the form and I'll give you one extra entry. The giveaway ends December 6th and midnight, and I'll announce the winner the following morning.

Good luck!

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Rabid Reads: 'The Lunenburg Werewolf' by Steve Vernon

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

The Lunenburg Werewolf

by Steve Vernon

NimbusPublishing (2011)

148 pages

ISBN9781551098579

I had no clue--none--that Nova Scotia had a werewolf legend.This is why I appreciate Steve Vernon's work: he has an innateability to dig up these folkloric gems and relay them through writtenword as if his audience is sitting round a campfire.

This book isn't just about a werewolf, though a novel about aMaritime lycanthrope would have been welcome. It's a collection ofover twenty legends and local myths that lay scatted across thishumble province's rocky shores. This is actually old hat for Stevewith other collections already under his belt including HauntedHarbours, Wicked Woods, Halifax Haunts, and Maritime Monsters.

The stories stretch from the northern inlets of Cape Breton to thesouthern shores of Yarmouth. And, as a Nova Scotian, it's always atreat to stumble across a tale that reference not only a place youknow, but a place that's walking distance. The stories alsodemonstrate the vibrant imaginations and superstitions that providethe roots for these local legends. Every region has their fair share,especially in history-rich rural sections of the landscape.

Three of my favorites from this collection would have to be: "MurderIsland Massacre," a story of thousands of skeletons beached onMurder Island, with connections to my own hometown and a beguilingwoman who may have played a darker role in the fates of those whodied; "The Quit Devil," a coal miner’s deal with theDevil and a legacy left to his son; and "The Capstick Bigfoot,"about a fabled beast roaming the Cape Breton wilderness and doinggood deeds.

The stories are brief and to the point, at times begging for abroader canvas on which to be painted, allowing readers to whiskthrough a couple tales at a time on coffee breaks, or wading throughthe entire book in a couple of evenings. Any Canadian should read atleast one of Steve's collections, and as far as the rest of the worldis concerned these stories are a fantastic inroad to the culture andkookiness--and sincerity--in my region of the world.

Chasing Tale for November 30th, 2011: Ellen Datlow, Brian Keene, John Adjvide Lindqvist ...

2011-11-30T07:30:00.000-05:00

Oh my god,Christmas is less than a month away. And despite the tinsel-tingedpropaganda urging--practically demanding--I get into theChristmas spirit, it just hasn't hit me yet. I'm in my thirties nowand I find my hokey cheerfulness doesn't really kick in untilDecember 20th. One of my neighbors put up his Christmas lights onNovember 19th. Come on, that's unnecessary. The Christmas caroling isgoing to get a tad grating after so many weeks, too. Yeesh, I'm kindof a humbug, aren't I?

Oh well, just waituntil December 20th, then I'll be a jolly old soul. Until then, hereare some books I count as early Christmas presents:

Bloodand Other Cravings byEllen Datlow (editor) -I can't think of an anthology yet that's disappointed me when Ellen'sname has been on the cover. If she mined gold the way she mined shortstories, she'd be a bazillionaire. This anthology is, you guessed it,about vampires at least in part. I won this from Suzanne Johnson'sblog, Preternatura,and it came with a wonderful signed note from Suzanne, whichincidentally promotes her own impending novel, RoyalStreet,due to be released in April 2012. Just sayin'.

TheCage andTheLast Zombie (Issue #1) byBrian Keene -A slew of horror and dark fiction authors took part in a giveaway hopin October called the Coffin Hop. It was a neat way to check outdifferent authors, some I'm already familiar with and others I'm justdiscovering. As an added bonus, many of the authors offered prizes,and I wound up winning these two book from Kevin Lucia. TheLast Zombie hasto be the first single issue comic book I've held in my hands in--ohgod--fifteenyears. The time warp emotions with that make this prize a real treat.

HarborbyJohn Adjvide Lindqvist -Count me among the ranks of those who absolutely loved Lindqvist'sdebut novel, Letthe Right One In,so it should come as no surprise that I jumped at the chance to readand review his latest offering. I read a review somewhere that calledhim the Swedish Stephen King. I don't know if I'd go that far, buthe's really good.If Harbor doeshalf as much for ghosts as Letthe Right One In didfor vampires, then I'm going to love this book to death.

ThePlacebo Effect byDavid Rotenberg -David Rotenberg will be stopping by the blog on February 1st topromote the first book in his new series, TheJunctionChronicles.Simon& Schuster Canadawas generous enough to send along an advance review copy of the book,too. It's about an acting coach who moonlights anonymously as a humanlie detector for various companies, only to become a target, and hesuspects its because of something he heard during one of hissessions. Plus, a government agent is hunting down him and otherswith his talent. At face value, it sounds like a cross between Lieto Me andTheFugitive.I hope it's good.

LunenbergWerewolf bySteve Vernon -NimbusPublishingsent me a review copy of Steve's latest book. If you enjoy folkloreand local legends and have yet to read Steve's work, you really needto find one of his books. His collected stories revolve around theMaritimes, yes, but the ghost stories and rural legends highlightedin his books are easily accessible to anyone the world over. I have afeeling this book will be no different. I recently blogged about achildren's book his wrote called SinkingDeeper,which was also published by Nimbus. Good stuff.

Whatbooks showed up in your mailbox this month?

Rabid Reads: "A Dark Matter" by Peter Straub

2011-11-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

A Dark Matter

by Peter Straub

Knopf (2010)

512 pages

ISBN 9781400096725

I had purchased this book back in March, shortly after seeing its inclusion as a nominee for a Stoker Award, it had been on my wish list ever since it was published, and I figured it had been long enough. After it won the Stoker Award in June, I sat down to read it, and upon doing so was warned by several horror aficionados and Straub fans that this was a disappointment of a book. Now, I've only read two of his novels prior to this one (Ghost Story and Shadowland), which I found to be simply stellar, so I figured some of the disappointment from readers likely stemmed from this book's divergence from previous works in terms of tone and temper. I think I was right on that count, but did I still manage to avoid being disappointed myself?

Author, Lee Harwell is set to work on his next project, but while his publishers are hankering for him to write a nonfiction book, he takes that idea and decides to turn a piece of his own life into a novel. Well, it's really a piece of his wife's life from their college days, in which she and a small group of friends around a college town fell under the spell of a vagabond guru named Spencer Mallon. While Lee thought the guy to be a charleton, his then girlfriend (also named Lee but nicknamed "The Eel") fell for Mallon hook, line, and sinker. It all built to a occult-like ceremony in a meadow one night that left one dead, another missing, and everyone else irrevocably changed. And Lee is bound and determined so many years later to finally discover what happened in that meadow and how it has affected those close to him.

For a book so subdued in tone, there's a lot of mystery to the event in the meadow and whether there was something supernatural that actually happened or not. What the book lacked was suspense or any sense of urgency for Lee to discover the secrets of Spencer Mallon and his short-lived band of devotees. I mean, the guy spent decades before he finally decided to get off his ass and figure out what his wife and the others had been hiding from him. If the love of life wound up blinded, supposedly by whatever happened in that meadow, I'd like to think I'd be a little quicker looking for answers.

The other problem I found was the spiritual leader of Spencer Mallon didn't come off as all that impressive, intimidating, or intellectual. Even through the recollections of his devotees, he seemed as much the shallow cad as Lee Harwell established at the start of the novel. The whole notion he attracted a flock of youthful followers seemed implausible, though in real life it amazes me the types who are able to charm the public, so maybe I should give that part of the book a pass. As for Lee's wife, also named Lee but nicknamed Eel, was another character that could have been a lot more captivating, but she spent the majority of the novel offstage, both in the present and even the past. A bit of a shame, but her absence was a crux to the story's plot. When she does show up, she's an alluring character, which is why I wish she had more time on the page.

A character I did thoroughly enjoy was Hootie Bly, a mutual friend of the Hartwells who was also a Mallon follower, who went insane after the ritual in the meadow. He winds up unable to speak except through quotations from Hawthorne novels, then more literary works, thanks to the benefit of a photographic memory. The interactions with him, while brief, were a treat.

All in all I did like the book, but it didn't enrapture me the way Ghost Story and Shadowland did. My preconceptions brought me down, as did the silly notion the story might be more like Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show than Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger--both good books, but I've got a clear preference for one over the other. For a novel that essentially entails a character sitting around and reminiscing about events in which he played no part, it's able to provide a satisfying mystery--just not a spellbinding one.

Rabid Rewind: X-Men First Class

2011-11-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

X-Men First Class

starring JamesMcAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, andKevin Bacon

directed byMatthew Vaughn

screenplay byAshley Edward Miller, Zach Stentz, Jane Goldman, and Matthew Vaughn

TwentiethCentury Fox (2011)

After the last couple of X-Men movies, I figured the film franchisewas running on empty. X-Men First Class retrofits a Cold Warera pastiche on the characters, making the old quite literally newagain.

The focus of the story is on Professor X (McAvoy) and Magneto(Fassbender) before they adopted their X-Men personas. Charles Xavieris a young man from a privileged home, looking to become anambassador between humans and the emergence of mutants. Erik Lensherris a Holocaust survivor, out for revenge against the Nazi scientistwho discovered and exploited his magnetic superpower. One driven byhope, the other by revenge, both men find a common enemy and acontentious friendship as the learn their powers and help others likethem. The first class of X-Men.

The movie tries to remain loyal to the continuity of the films,rather than adhering to whatever canon exists in the comic books--nodoubt infuriating fanboys everywhere. And the way the movie giveslittle winks and nods to the preceding movies, replete with cameosand passing mentions of what's to come for certain characters, makesfor a much better experience than if the film had tried to do acomplete reboot of the franchise.

The casting is again a strong suit for the film, as each prominentcharacter is fleshed out to a point that they seem completelybelievable. Kevin Bacon played the especially deviousscientist/mutant villain in the film, closer to a vintage Bondvillain than something I'd expect from the pages of a Marvel comic.McAvoy and Fassbender were unsurprising in how good they were,Jennifer Lawrence as a teenaged Mystique did a bangup job as aconflicted mutant trying to decide which side of the battle she'sreally on. Even January Jones was tolerable on film as Emma Frost,thanks in large part to the character requiring only a cold,emotionless demeanor, which seems to be Jones' range judging by herprevious performances. In fact, the only terrible thing about JanuaryJones in his movie was the CGI associated with her character wheneverher skin turned to diamonds. The effects looked so dated, they lookedlike they belonged in a film from the early 90s.

There were really only two other glaring disappointments for me withthis movie. First, Hollywood's nasty habit of killing off the blackman first rears its head in this movie as Darwin is the first of theX-Men to get killed off. What the hell? It's beyond cliche now.Secondly, and far less annoying, was Mystique's utterance of thephrase "mutant and proud." I'm sorry, but that was soawkward a line, I'm surprised Jennifer Lawrence didn't lose herbalance while saying it. The fact she said it without rolling hereyes and letting out a heavy sigh shows how accomplished she is as anactor.

I find myself grading the movie on a curve. It's definitely one ofthe better superhero movies to come out over the last ten years, adecade that has produced a glut or mediocre to horrendous offeringsin the genre. Outside that category, it's slightly above averagesummer fare. It's a movie that relies heavily on its special effects,yet has the good sense to use a solid story as its framework.

Rabid Reads: "Willy" by Robert Dunbar

2011-11-24T08:00:00.003-05:00

Willy

by Robert Dunbar

Uninvited Books (2011)

257 pages

ISBN 9780983045724

With a title like "Willy," it's really easy to tap into my inner frat boy. And lord knows I blurted out, "can't wait to get my hands on Robert Dunbar's Willy well beyond the joke's expiration date. So, now that I've finally gotten round to reading this novel, it's time to get serious and offer my opinion on Robert's latest work.

Willy is not horror literature in the way most of us consider the genre, but it is most certainly dark fiction--very dark. The book starts in a strange fashion, and as the first few pages progress it becomes clear this is a story told by an adolescent boy as he writes in a journal, in the dark, on his way to his new school. It's a school for boys that winds up feeling like the land of misfit toys. All of the boys either have emotional issues or are downright crazy, and the same goes for some of the teachers, too.

At no point in the novel do I recall seeing the boy's name, which seems fair considering the book is in his own words, and who among us writes down our name in our diaries?

The boy's thoughts drift as he recounts his days, even writing things down as they happen, which gives the pace of the story a harried, through-the-keyhole ambiance, especially through the first half of the book. In a new school, surrounding by students and teachers who either confuse him or irritate him, the boy tries to keep to himself most of the time, but still manages to incur derision from just about everyone--until he meets his roommate Willy.

Willy has an aura about him, inspiring either fear or deference from the other boys in school--sometimes both--and as the boy writes in his journal, it seems Willy takes him under his wing. Then, some aspects of life at the school become easier for him. He has friends, he shows an aptitude in some classes, his latent love of poetry starts to shine through, and the shadows in the woods seem far less imposing. But, other things take a darker turn, as the principal holds a disdain towards Willy and the boy's friendship. This is where subtle hints of homo-eroticism start to seep out from the pages. Nothing is admitted outright, except for the boy's growing devotion to Willy, and a willingness to do whatever he can to remain in the enigmatic boy's life.

The novel was a hard one to get into for me, as the writing style was the antithesis of a hook--more like a bramble bush--and challenged me to read, an unspoken promise that things would become clearer, the deeper into this boy's mind I delved. At times the narrative feels like a tightrope, never knowing which way the boy's psyche might tip and fall, or if he might actually come out at the end unscathed, or at least intact. It's the kind of book that requires more than a day or so upon finishing to really appreciate. Even after you're done, the words will still creep up on you, like the things just out of sight in the woods where the boy wanders.

Willy is a far cry from Robert's debut novel, The Pines, which was outright horror. This novel is the personification of sinister subtlety. A few passages feel laborious, but the work as a whole is masterful.

Wish List Wednesday #105: John Hornor Jacobs' "Southern Gods"

2011-11-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

Wish List Wednesday is a semi-regular spotlight on a book currently on my wish list. It could be a new release, a forgotten classic, or a hidden gem.

It seems everymonth or two there is a novel that the horror blogs really rallybehind. And leading into this fall that book belonged to JohnHornor Jacobs. It seemed hisname popped up on my blog roll every week. I've even got John's blogon my Google Reader, but it's one of many that have slipped under theradar lately. Now that his debut novel is out, and thanks to the manyhorror blogs I love, I've got the book on my wish list.

Thenovel is called Southern Gods, publishedby Night Shade Books, and it looks like a perfect storm of quite afew things I love in my horror. It's got a nostalgic setting, asouthern gothic vibe, some Lovecraftian influence, a bit of noirthrown in for flavor, and the Devil. That's quite a stew.

Here'sthe plot summary (courtesyof Goodreads):

Recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram is working as muscle whena Memphis DJ hires him to find Ramblin' John Hastur. The mysteriousblues man's dark, driving music - broadcast at ever-shiftingfrequencies by a phantom radio station - is said to make living meninsane and dead men rise. Disturbed and enraged by the bootlegrecording the DJ plays for him, Ingram follows Hastur's trail intothe strange, uncivilized backwoods of Arkansas, where he hears rumorsthe musician has sold his soul to the Devil. But as Ingram closes inon Hastur and those who have crossed his path, he'll learn there areforces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings morepainful than Hell...

In amasterful debut of Lovecraftian horror and Southern gothic menace,John Hornor Jacobs reveals the fragility of free will, the dangerouspower of sacrifice, and the insidious strength of blood.

That sounds really enticing, so I shouldn't be surprised that a lotof book blogs have already hopped on the bandwagon. Have you heardabout this book already? If so, have you read it yet? What did youthink of it?

Rabid Reads: "Theatre of Curious Acts" by Cate Gardner

2011-11-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

Theatreof Curious Acts

byCate Gardner

HadleyRille Books (2011)

182pages

ISBN-13978-0-9839531-5-9

The first page ofevery Cate Gardner story is a rabbit hole, through which you findyourself falling into a wonderland of her design, and Theatre ofCurious Acts offers a deeper plunge into the abyss of Cate'simagination than anything of hers I've read yet.

This short noveltells the story of five soldiers cast out of one hell, of coursebeing the Great War, and thrown into an entirely different one--fewerbullets, but more monsters. The spotlight character, Daniel, winds upon a journey with four brothers in arms; Swan, Harvey, George, andKen; as they must navigate their way through a surreal nightmareinside the Theatre of Curious Acts. The theatre has a surrealnature to it, as Daniel is initially there to take in a show, butfinds himself whisked onstage and into a netherworld where he and hisfriends are at risk of becoming trapped, or possibly destroyed.That's because the theatre sits at the end of the world and there arepowers in play that would like very much to see that happen.

The interwovennature of Daniel's traumatic and horrific experiences in war forBritain with the supernaturally haunting aspects of what he findsinside the theatre felt surreal while reading this book. There aremoments where what's happening feels murkier, encased in a shroudthat only lets you see very subtle imagery or emotions, while thereare moments that soon follow that feel epic in scope with a blazingintensity you might expect if the Sun got too close.

As much as therelationships Daniel had with his fellow soldiers were engaging,especially his somewhat contentious relationship with Swan who comesoff as a dashing cad most of the time, it was the interactions he andthe others have with the Four Horsemen--or in this case, the FourHorsewomen--or maybe it's Horsepersons. Each of the four carry suchbrightly contrasted personalities and have their own intentionsbehind what's happening, they tended to steal the show. Olivia was aparticularly striking character, but I must confess to enjoying theRowan character a bit more. Maybe because her tone was a bit moredeliciously caustic.

In any case, it's arich and undeniably bleak tapestry that Cate paints with her prosethroughout this story. I'm definitely going to have to revisit itagain, and hopefully glean a little more the second go round as areader who has walked that path with its characters once before.

If you like fantasywith a dark edge and a romantic, albeit desolate, air throughout,this is a book you ought to consider.