Beauty in Ruins

Interview & Giveaway with M.L. Brennan (author of the vampire thriller Generation V)

2013-05-23T05:50:00.000-04:00

Good morning, all!

Stopping by to join us today is M.L. Brennan, author of the vampire thriller Generation V. One lucky reader will get a chance to win a signed copy of the book (details below) but, before we get to that, let's get talking . . .

Q: Thanks for taking the time to stop by today.

A: Thank you so much for having me!

Q: For those who may be new to your writing, and who haven't yet had a chance to give Generation V a read, please tell us a little about yourself.

A: Sure! I’ve always been a huge reader in science-fiction and fantasy, and one of the genres that I’ve really enjoyed in the last few years is urban fantasy. Generation V is my first published book, and it’s an urban fantasy that I really hope will offer readers in the genre both a lot of the things that they enjoy (mystery, fights, strange creatures, and witty repartee), but also bring in a few elements that aren’t as common. My main character, Fortitude Scott, is a vampire, but I’ve made some pretty major changes and alterations to the vampires in my books – I can promise everyone, these aren’t your usual vampires. I’m also bringing in a character named Suzume who is a kitsune, which is a Japanese shapeshifter fox.

One of the biggest ideas that I had when I was planning this book was that I didn’t want a hero who was the biggest, baddest, and most powerful character. I didn’t want the bad guys to be scared when he walked into the room, or for people to be saying things like, “Oh, but he has the Mystical HooDoo! None of us can stand against the Mystical HooDoo!” So at the beginning of Generation V, Fort is a guy who no one is scared of – and when he’s going into the big battles and confrontations, he is massively outgunned and overmatched – but to me that made him a more interesting character, because he has to outwit a villain, or work on bringing in other allies to help tip the scales. It makes him work harder as a character, which also made him grow and evolve more than if he could just wave a hand and win a fight.

Q: The journey from 'aspiring' to 'accomplished' can be a long one, even in the era of small presses and digital publishing. When did you begin writing, and how did you feel when you first saw your work in print?

A: Writing and making up stories was always something that I enjoyed doing, but I didn’t really become serious about it as a craft and a profession until I was in college. What I consider my first real experience of seeing my work in print was the first time it was published by people I had never met and had no prior connection to – that was in my senior year of college, when one of my short stories was published by a literary journal. It was a great experience – I’d gotten a lot of form rejection letters and worked extremely hard to get to it. One of my professors got me a bottle of wine to celebrate.

I probably spent about ten minutes just enjoying the moment – and then I was immediately thinking about getting published again, but this time I wanted it to be in a bigger journal with more readership.

Q: Given its rather diverse evolution (or, perhaps, dilution) over the past decade, what was it that compelled you to contribute fresh blood to the vampire genre?

A: I really enjoy vampires in books, film, and TV, but in a lot of storytelling the vampires are a fairly static character. Here you have this immortal undead creature who will never age or change, just kind of brooding through an endless existence – usually the change to the situation comes with the introduction of a human love interest, or a werewolf battle, or something along those lines. All the change is external, because the vampire character itself has no real desires or pressures – why worry about something or want something when you are exactly the same as you were a century ago, or will be in another two centuries? So something that I was really interested in doing was having a vampire be a dynamic character – one that actually is capable of internal change and movement without that change being dependent on an outside character.

This required a pretty big change – the vampires I created aren’t undead. They are a separate species that has a lifecycle, an aging process, and a reproductive system. Fort is a young vampire – but someday he’ll be an old vampire, and will eventually die. That means that he has a finite time (albeit a much longer time than a human) to achieve his goals and desires. He also has a family with their own expectations of what his life will be like. And as soon as I’d made these changes, I had a ton of ideas for where this character could go.

Q: Definitely an interesting approach, and one with a wealth of potential.

In terms of writing, what comes easiest for you, and where do you struggle the most? Is it the title? The first paragraph? The last chapter? The cover blurb?

A: The easiest part for me is usually about the last third of a book. If I’ve done everything right, then all the groundwork has been laid for where I want to go, and it goes pretty quickly. I also really love that portion of the book, because usually most of the really big, iconic moments that I’ve been thinking about and planning for months are in that portion, and I finally get to write them!

I loathe writing the cover blurb. It’s probably the part that I hate the most about the process, and it takes me days. I’m horrible at distilling down the entire book into a few pithy sentences. The only thing I hate even more than writing a description of the book is putting a title on it. I’m terrible at titles – I went through about three different bad ones before my editor finally came up with Generation V – my versions were so bad that I’m not even going to mention them!

Q: Aw, shucks? Not even one? Not even for laughs? :)

Sometimes, characters can take on a life of their own, pulling the story in directions you hadn't originally anticipated. Were there any twists or turns in Generation V that surprised you, or really challenged your original plans?

A: I think the biggest surprise I had when I was writing was when I introduced the character of Suzume Hollis, the kitsune. I’d planned out ahead of time that she and Fort would have a challenging relationship that would eventually start maturing into mutual respect and the start of a friendship, but what I hadn’t counted on was just how incredibly well the characters played off of each other and interacted. Suddenly a scene that on my plan was just “get out of car, start hunting” and that I figured would be barely half a paragraph of exposition would turn into a page-long dialogue with banter and practical jokes. It was a wonderful surprise.

Q: Do you have a soundtrack to your writing, a particular style of music or other background noise that keeps you in the mood, or do you require quiet solitude?

A: I go through phases. Sometimes I’ll work for a few weeks in complete silence, but other times I’ll want background music. But the music is just to provide background, not mood – Mumford & Sons, The Killers, P!nk, Dixie Chicks, Florence and the Machine, even a little Springsteen (I had Live In Dublin going for a while at one point). Usually I like music that has some energy to it. Sometimes I also use music as a way to keep myself working when I’m close to a deadline – when I was writing the original draft to Generation V’s sequel, Iron Night, I started putting on a YouTube clip of Swan Lake in the background. I wouldn’t let myself stop writing until Swan Lake was finished – that would keep me on task for just over three hours.

Q: Hmm, I suspect 3 hours of Swan Lake would drive me quite mad, but I can see the motivational factor. LOL

In terms of reader reactions, what is the strangest or most surprising reaction to your work that you've encountered to date?

A: There are things in the book that I thought would get big reactions, but almost no one comments on them, whereas elements that I didn’t even think about much have gotten a lot of focus. It’s really fascinating to see how such wide and varied readers react to my book, and it’s also a great learning experience.

In terms of the most surprising, though – it’s definitely seeing my friends and family react to seeing my work actually in stores. It cracks me up to hear how shocked they sound when they read a few chapters and then say, “Oh, you’re actually good!” I’ve always had a policy where I don’t show my work to my family until it’s actually published, so I didn’t realize that most of them probably privately thought that I was a terrible writer, since I was never showing anything to them!

Q: To turn from pen to page for a moment, is there a particular author who has influenced or inspired your writing? Somebody who either made you want to write in the first place, or who just refreshes your literary batteries?

A: When I’m in the serious writing phase of a book, there’s usually about a one to two month period where I’m just focused on the manuscript and getting as much written per day as possible. It’s pretty exhausting, so I’m usually not reading any new books, just old favorites. Sharon Shinn’s Troubled Waters is so amazing and beautiful with its world-building and its characterization – I can just pick it up and read a dozen pages anywhere and feel better. I also love Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal – it always makes me laugh. Anne Bishop, Sheri S. Tepper – both great, great writers. Finally – I defy anyone not to read through one of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman books and not feel ready to write!

Q: Pratchett is always a lot of fun - one of the few authors who can so deftly juggle story and humor.

It’s a tough question, especially if you’re wary of putting faces before your readers, but if Generation V were being made into a movie, and you had total control over the production, who would you cast for the leading roles?

A: Madeline is my vampire matriarch – she’s deceptively grandmotherish and sweet, but is actually completely calculating and deadly. I would cast Betty White in that role – she would be amazing.

Q: Before we let you go, what can we look forward to from you next? Is there a project on the horizon that you're really excited about?

A: There actually is – the second Fortitude Scott book, Iron Night, will be published in January 2014. I’ve had so much fun writing about Fort, and the book brought a lot of exciting elements together. I can’t wait to see it in print.

Thanks again for having me, and for the really fun questions!

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About the Book

Reality Bites
Fortitude Scott’s life is a mess. A degree in film theory has left him with zero marketable skills, his job revolves around pouring coffee, his roommate hasn’t paid rent in four months, and he’s also a vampire. Well, sort of. He’s still mostly human.

But when a new vampire comes into his family’s territory and young girls start going missing, Fort can’t ignore his heritage anymore. His mother and his older, stronger siblings think he’s crazy for wanting to get involved. So it’s up to Fort to take action, with the assistance of Suzume Hollis, a dangerous and sexy shape-shifter. Fort is determined to find a way to outsmart the deadly vamp, even if he isn’t quite sure how.

But without having matured into full vampirehood and with Suzume ready to split if things get too risky, Fort’s rescue mission might just kill him.…

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About the Author

My first novel, Generation V, is coming out in May 2013 from ROC Books, and is a work of urban fantasy.

I cut my baby bibliophile teeth on my older brother’s collection of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert, but it was a chance encounter with Emma Bull’s War For The Oaks as a teenager that led to genre true love. Today, I’ll read everything from Mary Roach’s non-fiction to Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasies, but I’ll still drop everything for vampires and werewolves in the big city.

I hold an advanced degree in the humanities, and I am work as an adjunct professor, teaching composition to first-year college students. I am currently hard at work on the second Fortitude Scott book, Iron Night, which will be published by Roc in January 2014.

On the Web - http://mlbrennan.com/
On Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/ml.brennan.7
On Twitter - @BrennanML

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

Vegan Zombie Apocalypse by Wol-vriey (REVIEW)

2013-05-22T21:58:00.000-04:00

Vegan Zombie Apocalypse by Wol-vriey
Paperback, First, 322 pages
Published April 16th 2013 by Burning Bulb Publishing

Synopsis:

Fear not mankind, the omniscient God Necro proclaims that your tasty brains will be safe from the ravenous undead during the impending zombie apocalypse. Unfortunately for most of you, however, the enlightened zombie hoard plans to herd you like cattle on their potato plantations and use your fertile bodies to grow their specialized blood veggies.

Only by prostrating yourself before the Great Necro can you join forces with other faithful necros and defend humanity from the ever encroaching zombie invasion. But it won’t be easy, especially if you’ve just escaped from the vegfarm – and you already have the cattle brand on your forehead and the telltale potato vines sprouting from your body.

Bounty-hunting zombinators, flying cleaver-laden helicopters and cockrockets, will soon be hot on your trail as you race toward the Promised Land and the sanctuary that is known as the Republic of Texas.

Not only is “Vegan Zombie Apocalypse” one of the most bizarre stories ever conceived, but its universal appeal should extend far beyond its bizarro fan base. Enthusiasts of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and especially zombie fiction lovers, should relish this book, even though it ventures into the dark realm of the extraordinarily grotesque at times… many times actually.

Review:

The world in Wolvie's mind, population Zombie. He does it again - Wol-vriey drops a zombie story without the boring "eat brains" cliché. Instead we have Vegan Zombies who feed on blood potatoes, grown in Vegfarms.

As the story unfolds, a multikey is stolen, and the even more bizarre comes into play. Zombies with zippered private parts, doors in the shape of female sexual organs, sex with maggots, and even a Humansauras.

Fans of Wol-vriey will be struck again with wonders and new readers . . . I suggest you hang on for one hell of a ride.

(as posted by Donald on Goodreads)

Waiting On Wednesday - Grimm: The Icy Touch by John Shirley

2013-05-22T07:03:00.000-04:00

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Grimm: The Icy Touch by John Shirley
Nov 5, 2013 (Titan Books)

Portland homicide Detective Nick Burkhardt discovers he is descended from an elite line of criminal profilers known as "Grimms", charged with keeping balance between humanity and the mythological creatures of the world.

No official cover blurb as yet, no indication whether the novel will be a 'mythology' tale or a 'monster of the week' story, and no way to tell whether it's a 'lost' adventure from the first 2 seasons or something set in the upcoming third season, but with season 2 wrapping up on a cliffhanger last night, any new Grimm is good Grimm . . . no matter how long the wait!

Burning the Middle Ground by L. Andrew Cooper (REVIEW)

2013-05-21T08:51:00.000-04:00

"A character-driven sensibility like Stephen King's and a flair for the bizarre like Bentley Little's delivers."

There you have it, the single line in the cover blurb for Burning the Middle Ground that absolutely demanded I give it a read. Yes, the mention of religious conspiracy, supernatural mind control, and bodies with the eyes and tongues removed certainly caught my eye, and the overall story line sounded intriguing, but it was with the promise of a King/Little mash-up that really got me excited.

While I wouldn't go so far as to call L. Andrew Cooper the next King or Little, at least not based on his debut, I can definitely see the influences in his writing. Like King, he presents us with a largely character driven tale, set in a small town, where dialogue tells a significant piece of the story. Ronald Glassner, the opportunistic journalist, is a great character - someone with whom we can identify or relate, but with a darker, selfish (or perhaps self-serving) edge that we'd rather not admit exists within ourselves. Brian McCullough is a great sympathetic character, a young man who has experienced an unimaginable tragedy, and who simply cannot let go of the past, or his quest for answers.

The various inhabitants of Kenning, with whom we come into contact through the novel, are largely of the stock variety, but given enough personality to keep them distinct and alive in the reader's mind. As for the villains of the piece, it's hard to say much about them without getting into spoiler territory, but Jake Warren could definitely have slipped, crawled, and slithered is way out of Cooper's second source of inspiration. Everything about the man, particularly his creepy hypnotic charm, is just so well-suited to one of Little's tales.

Where I found Cooper hasn't quite nailed the technique of the masters is in his pacing. This a good book, an exciting story filled with interesting characters, but there is a lot of history and back-story that need to be imparted for it to work. King generally does back-story in snippets and flashbacks, teasing us with the significance of it all, while Little tends to lean on grandiose speeches and scenes of exposition, dropping a bomb of revelations upon us. Here, Cooper interrupts the flow of his story for an extended middle piece that shifts the focus of the story in terms of characters, plot, and feel. It's interesting enough on its own, but oddly placed, and too long for what it's intended to do.

Overall, despite the fiendishly malevolent touches of Little-inspired evil throughout the novel, this is less his brand of over-the-top horror, and more King's brand of subtle, unsettling, dread. It plays out very well, carried along, not just by the characters, but by the 'feel' of the small town. It's a very down-to-earth story, in many respects, driven by human emotion, interaction, and need. Most importantly, it's a story that raises a lot of questions as to 'how' and 'why' throughout, and which largely delivers on the answers. A great horror novel lives or dies by its resolution, and Cooper does a fine job of providing the pay-off to his tale.

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About L. Andrew Cooper:

L. Andrew Cooper thinks the smartest people like horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. Early in life, he couldn’t handle the scary stuff–he’d sneak and watch horror films and then keep his parents up all night with his nightmares. In the third grade, he finally convinced his parents to let him read grownup horror novels: he started with Stephen King’s Firestarter, and by grade five, he was doing book reports on The Stand.

When his parents weren’t being kept up late by his nightmares, they worried that his fascination with horror fiction would keep him from experiencing more respectable culture. That all changed when he transitioned from his public high school in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia to uber-respectable Harvard University, where he studied English Literature. From there, he went on to get a Ph.D. in English from Princeton, turning his longstanding engagement with horror into a dissertation. The dissertation became the basis for his first book, Gothic Realities (2010). More recently, his obsession with horror movies turned into a book about one of his favorite directors, Dario Argento (2012). He also co-edited the textbook Monsters (2012), an attempt to infect others with the idea that scary things are worth people’s serious attention.

After living in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California, Andrew now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he teaches at the University of Louisville and chairs the board of the Louisville Film Society, the city’s premiere movie-buff institution. Burning the Middle Ground is his debut novel.

Website/Blog: Website and Blog

Facebook: Facebook

Google+: landrew42

Twitter: Twitter

Artifacts of the Niagara Gorge - A History of Human Folly

2013-05-18T13:33:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I've done much photography, but it's also been a while since I've wandered off the beaten path to find something new. Well, today was just such a day, with a morning hike down into the Niagara Gorge. I didn't go down with any particular purpose or plan in mind, but once I'd taken the first few photos of man-made ruins scattered amid the beauty, I knew I was onto something

It started innocently enough with a cast-iron post and a fence gate. The first had clearly been there for sometime, and likely once served a purpose, but the gate was new.

And then I found the car, one I don't recall having stumbled across before.

For the next little while, it was just some random debris, all of it weirdly out of place within the beauty of the Gorge.

It was the old cable and pulley that caught my eye and dragged me farther off the makeshift trail than I had planned.

Which brought me to the old motorcycle, probably the most unique bit of wreckage I've found in many a year.

After that, mostly just another random collection of rust and ruin, nestled within the greenery.

And, finally, ending with one of the saddest, most nostalgic bits of debris down in the Gorge. When I was a kid, this was still a recognizable safe, sealed shut against the ages, and a target for my imagination. For the better part of ten years I would drop a couple of big rocks on it every time we hiked by, try the handle, and move on, defeated again.

At some point, the trickling steam rotted its way through the underside, making it top-heavy enough to tumble about 20 meters down the incline. It's hardly recognizable today, but every time I see it, I see that old safe, full of - to my young imagination - untold riches.

Tim Curran's Worm - a crazy, claustrophobic tale of gruesome horror (REVIEW)

2013-05-17T09:51:00.000-04:00

Taking place over a single day, in a single stretch of neighboring houses, on a single suburban street, Worm is a crazy, claustrophobic tale of gruesome horror that hearkens back to the days of 1950s b-grade horror movies, re-imagined through the lens of contemporary torture-porn. It's a hell of a lot of fun, a story that wastes no time in getting to the good stuff, and which never lets up, yet somehow managing to maintain its terrifying gore-splattered intensity through to the final page.

Tim Curran is clearly an author who has seen and enjoyed his fair share of monster movies - Tremors most immediately comes to mind - but one who understands that the monsters themselves are only part of the horror. If you really want to bring the horror home, then you allow the monsters to upset the normal, everyday, domestic comforts we so easily take for granted. Let them worm their way (pun intended) into our lives and our homes . . . let them inconvenience us, incapacitate us, and invade the very place we should feel most comfortable . . . and the sense of inescapable dread becomes immediately familiar to the reader.

The true horror of Worm begins with exploding lawns, overflowing toilets, backed-up sinks, and flooded streets. Before long, greasy, slippery, excrement-like worms begin emerging from toilets, sinks, drains, and faucets, wiggling and bubbling their way up from beneath the earth. Just as you're beginning to wonder just how scary a worm can be, the first of them coils up, opens its ravenous maw, and then launches itself forward, tearing through flesh and bone as easily as bathroom doors.

If you're sitting there right now, stuck with a mental image of just such a beast launching itself up from the toilet bowl while you sit above, rest assured that we do indeed go there, exploring the horror of being eaten alive, from the inside, by a horror you never saw coming.

Of course, it takes more than just monsters to sustain a story, and Curran populates the houses of Pine Street with a small cast of well-drawn characters to add a human element to the tale. We fear, we suffer, and we fight alongside them, watching helplessly as friends, family, and neighbors succumb, one after another. It's a largely hopeless situation, and even though you know it's only destined to get worse, once the survivors assemble, you can't fault them for wanting to make a last stand.

It's there, in the last stand, that Curran pushes his tale over the top. We've already seen an unfathomable depth of horror and gore by that point, and it's easy to become a bit desensitized to it all. I won't spoil just how he accomplishes it, but Curran manages to arrange a final confrontation gleefully that surpasses the horrors that have come before.

Like I said, a hell of a lot of fun, and well worth the read!

Published May 14th 2013 by DarkFuse
ebook

Freebie Friday!

2013-05-17T07:00:00.002-04:00

Good morning, all - if it's Friday, then it must be time once again for some Free Feeds for your e-Reads! I've put together another list of free reads I think might be of interest to my fellow wanderers through the ruins, so take a look, click through, and stock your digital library today . . .

Available via AMAZON

The Spirit Clearing by Mark Tufo - After a horrific accident Mike wakes to find himself blind in one eye. He now sees things that others can't and nobody will listen to him. That is until he meets Jandilyn Hollow. Will she be able to pull him out of the depths of his despair?
Can love transcend even death?

I, Hell by Ben Stevens - No one has ever escaped from Hell. But when one determined young man finds himself sentenced to eternal damnation, he hatches a daring plan…

Deathgrip by Brian Hodge - For thousands of years, a secret cabal has guarded the lineage to which Paul is heir — scapegoats who have been forced to bear humanity's anguish upon themselves. Now, while the cabal searches for him, and one man seeks to destroy him, Paul makes a lonely, frightening journey to the core of his identity and to his destiny … to all the pain his soul can bear, to all the redemption he can give, to the freedom that is death.

Storm on the Frontier-Part One (The Demonstar Series) by Dalton Wolf - In an effort to save the border worlds Pilot Baran Igashu must set out with an elite, handpicked team on a hazardous mission to unfamiliar and unknown destinations. But their perilous journey might very well uncover an ancient menace so evil and irrepressible that it threatens to annihilate the whole of the known galaxy, leaving no trace their civilization ever existed...

The Dark Djinn by JJ Timmins - Tara's greatest wish was to break free from the confines of her small Vermont town, and never look back. And so, when she finds a magical totem and becomes the owner of a dark spirit who calls himself a djinn, who offers her three wishes, she is given the chance to make her dreams come true. But when she decides to use the djinn to benefit the whole world with one powerful wish, she finds herself at war with those who will do anything to possess him. Meanwhile, the dark djinn has wishes of his own.

Turn a Dark Phrase by David Coy - Crafted by David Coy, the author of the Dominant Species Series, each story in this collection will take you to some new and terrifying place. There are alien parasites, murderous children, and people who get nothing more than they deserve. Turn a Dark Phrase reminds us that the most horrifying things live in the darkest corners of the human mind.

A Hymn Before Battle (Legacy of the Aldenata) by John Ringo - With the Earth in the path of the rapacious Posleen, the peaceful and friendly races of the Galactic Federation offer their resources to help the backward Terrans—for a price. Humanity now has three worlds to defend. As Earth's armies rush into battle and special operations units scout alien worlds, the humans begin to learn a valuable lesson: You can protect yourself from your enemies, but may the Lord save you from your allies.

Available via Kobo Books

Road Kill - Dan Shamble Zombie PI by Kevin J. Anderson - When Dan Shamble, Zombie PI wakes up in a coffin in the back of a semi truck, he knows it's not going to be a good day. He has to escape, figure out what's going on, foil a black-market blood-smuggling ring—and make sure he's not dead on arrival!

The Black God's War by Moses Siregar III - Against the backdrop of epic warfare and the powers of ten mysterious gods, Lucia struggles to understand The Black One.

The Written by Ben Galley - Something has gone missing from the libraries of Arfell. Something very old, and something very powerful. Five scholars are now dead, a country is once again on the brink of war, and the magick council is running out of time and options.

The Monsters in Your Neighborhood by Jesse Petersen (REVIEW)

2013-05-15T14:45:00.000-04:00

The Monsters in Your Neighborhood by Jesse Petersen
Expected Publication July 29th 2013 by Pocket Star
ebook, 224 pages

Synopsis:

As one of Frankenstein’s Creatures, Natalie Gray knows that unique parts sometimes make up a great whole. Still, leading a diverse support group for monsters—now including Cthulhu!—isn’t an easy task. Especially not since the internet arrived.

New York City embraces the different and the bizarre. Still, even for such a fun-loving city, the supernatural and monstrous might be a bit too much. It’s been six months since the members of “Club Monstrosity” overcame the most recent spate of anti-monster violence and they’ve reestablished their routine of meeting in a church basement once a week to (ugh!) talk about their feelings. Still, they also know a war against them is brewing.

Natalie and Alec (the werewolf) have begun dating, and the mummies Kai and Rehu are tighter than a bug in a…well, bandage. But when modern means (YouTube, Twitter, bits and bytes) are used to chilp away at the solidarity of these ancient monsters, it’s up to Natalie to save the day. #MonstersInNewYork may be trending on Twitter, but this girl’s trending toward saving the day…somehow.

Review:

The story starts out 6 months later from where Club Monstrosity left off. This time around the Van Helsings are causing drama trying to expose the monsters.

Half-way through, the group starts to turn on each other, with all the confusion going on as to how to finish this war with the Helsings.

Great action scene at the end, with the final Twitter post.

The monsters are coming #dontbescared. Can't wait to see what Jesse does with the next one.

(as posted by Donald on NetGalley & Goodreads)

Waiting On Wednesday - Alien Hunter by Whitley Strieber

2013-05-15T00:42:00.000-04:00

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Alien Hunter by Whitley Strieber
Aug 13, 2013 (Tor Books)

A young wife disappears in the night, never to be seen again. There is no evidence of kidnapping—in fact, everything indicates that she left on purpose. Her husband, a brilliant police detective, cannot believe this—but he also can't find her.

Flynn Carroll’s lost love becomes his obsession. He begins amassing a file of similar cases nationwide. His conclusion is unavoidable: somebody is taking people and making it look like they walked out on their own. As Flynn’s case files grow, his work comes to the attention of Special Agent Diana Glass, a member of the most secret police unit on the planet. This police force seeks the most brilliant and lethal criminals who have ever walked free—thieves and murderers from another world.

Without fully understanding what Glass and her team are doing, Flynn steps into a hidden world of extraordinary challenge and lethal danger. The job is the most difficult police assignment ever known to man, but the idea is the same—find the bad guys. Stop them.

Magician's End by Raymond E. Feist (REVIEW)

2013-05-13T13:15:00.001-04:00

The End is Here! The Riftwars are Over!

And so we find ourselves at the end of another long-running fantasy series, left with nothing more than the pages we hold in our hands to provide some sense of closure. The final book of any series is always a difficult one to read, and it often seems as if the longer the series, the greater the potential for disappointment. With an open-ended series like this, where each subsequent book has added more characters, more plot threads, and more mythology, the demands upon the author to nicely tie up all those loose ends in one final book often seem to get in the way of the story.

Fortunately, despite a hiccup at the halfway mark that nearly relegated this to the did-not-finish pile (more on that in a moment), Magician's End turned out to be one of the most satisfying concluding volumes in quite some time. Raymond E. Feist has done an admirable job here of returning to his roots, recapturing the magic of those first few books, and providing us with a satisfying end to the saga. It's a book that pays homage to the past, touching on key characters who've long since left the page, without getting distracted by the need to tie off every possible loose end.

At first, I cringed at the dreamlike encounters with dead friends and allies, fearful that Feist was trying to do too much, to satisfy the demands of too many fans. Yes, it was nice to exchange words with the likes of Kulgan, Borric, Marcos, and all the rest, but did they really need to come back, even if just for a while? Well, maybe they didn't need to, but Feist certain gives them a purpose, which is all a reader can ask. Their conversations with the likes of Pug, Magnus, Nakor, and Miranda are important, imparting lessons that are needed to see the heroes through to the final confrontation.

On that note, for those readers who've become accustomed to the leaner, harsher, simpler books that seems to rule the series for a while, it must be said that this is a book that's quite philosophical. The nature of reality, the role of the gods, and the balance of good and evil are all themes that Feist explores quite openly and directly, seizing the opportunity to really drive home some of the key themes from the series. It felt like a 'big' book, like a truly 'epic' fantasy, which was precisely what I had been hoping for. He opened my eyes and made me nod my head in more than a few places, especially in the penultimate chapters.

Now, as to that hiccup, there's a point at which Marcos makes a key speech about the prophecy under which Pug has suffered since making his noble sacrifice during the first Riftwar:

“Pug believes his life will end soon. A crux is coming, a confluence of probability which none of you may survive,” said Macros. “But the future is now unfixed, and whatever prophecy or foretelling that may have directed his behavior is almost certainly moot. However, he must not know that. He must believe he will sacrifice himself to save . . . everything.”

I cringed when I read that, sure that Feist was providing himself with an 'out' to negate the corner into which he'd written himself, negating every sacrifice Pug has suffered, and artificially creating the potential for a happily-ever-after. Fortunately, it's a bit of a red herring, a narrative twist that does precisely what it's intended to do - shake up the reader, make us question the finality of what's the come, and leave us wondering as to whether Magician's End is the literal reference we've all come to expect. Somehow, he manages to adhere to the original prophecy, while also doing something pleasantly unexpected.

As a trilogy, the Chaoswar Saga felt like three very different books, each of them linked together by some entertaining, yet largely inconsequential threads. It didn't really feel like we were building up to the conclusion of a trilogy, but instead scattering chess pieces about so as to enable a final end-game. Had this not been the end of the series, that sense of disconnect would likely have irked me more than it did. Looking back, however, I can appreciate the ways in which Feist did precisely what was necessary to set the stage, define the odds, and set events on their way. More importantly, unlike Sanderson's attempt to bring the Wheel of Time to a close with a trilogy that felt bloated and overlong, Feist's final trilogy feels as if it's exactly the right size and scope to deliver the goods.

Magician's End is a book in which heroes die, sacrifices are made, and the fate of universes is ultimately determined. It's ambitious in scope, especially with this third and final volume, but it never loses touch with the humor, the wit, and the adventure that we've come to love. I do wonder if this is well-and-truly the end of Midkemia, for there are a few threads left deliberately dangling, but it is clearly the end of the core story arc we've followed for so long. It does feel like an end - if not the end - and I can honestly say I came away from the final page content with how it all played out.

Published May 14th 2013 by HarperCollins US
Hardcover, 576 pages

Stacking The Shelves & What I'm Reading

2013-05-11T03:48:00.000-04:00

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly meme being hosted by Tynga's Reviews, while Mailbox Monday is being hosted by 4 The Love of Books this month (see Mailbox Monday for each month's host). Both memes are all about sharing the books you've added to your shelves - physical and virtual, borrowed and bought. It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey, and it's focused on what's in your hands, as opposed to what's on your shelf.

A small stack of review titles this week:

As for what I'm reading, I have reviews coming up over the next 2 weeks for:

What's topping your shelves this week?

Freebie Friday!

2013-05-10T08:44:00.000-04:00

Good morning, and welcome to Freebie Friday! I've put together a list of free reads I think might be of interest to my fellow wanderers through the ruins, so take a look, click through, and stock your digital library today . . .

Available via AMAZON

Draculas (A Novel of Terror) by Crouch, Kilborn, Strand, and Wilson - Within these pages, you will find no black capes, no satin-lined coffins, no brooding heartthrobs who want to talk about your feelings. Forget sunlight and stakes. Throw out your garlic and your crosses. This is the Anti-TWILIGHT.

Starliner by David Drake - The Empress of Earth: Finest passenger liner in the galaxy, brightest link in the chain that binds the starflung civilization of the 23rd century, and neutral pawn in an interstellar war!

Run by Blake Crouch - For fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Harris, picture this: a landscape of American genocide...

Plague Zone by David Wellington - There are a million zombies in the Seattle Plague Zone. Tim needs to find and kill just one. In the midst of world-wide apocalypse, there are still some things a man has to do. Like get vengeance for his lost family.

Hard Duty: Merkiaari Wars 1 by Mark E. Cooper - Humanity's last encounter with aliens saw sixteen point two billion people killed in a war with the Merkiaari that had spanned decades.

Available via Kobo Books

Revenant - Book One of The Tatterdemon Trilogy by Steve Vernon - In 1691 the town of Crossfall taught the witch Thessaly how to die. They beat her, they shot her, they hung her - but nothing worked.

The Weight of Blood - The Half-Orcs, Book 1 by David Dalglish - Fantasy author David Dalglish begins his series of the half-orc brothers, whose struggles will soon bathe the land of Dezrel in demon fire…

Fat Vampire by Johnny B. Truant - When overweight treadmill salesman Reginald Baskin finally meets a co-worker who doesn't make fun of him, it's just his own bad luck that tech guy Maurice turns out to be a two thousand-year-old vampire.

Snowman Shivers: Scary Snowmen Tales by Mark Leslie - If you have ever cast an uncomfortable glance over your shoulder when passing the silent snowy sentinels that stand looking at you as you pass on the icy sidewalk . . .

Guest Post by Al Ewing, author of The Fictional Man

2013-05-08T00:56:00.000-04:00

In a post elsewhere on the blog tour for The Fictional Man (either already on the web or yet to appear) I talked about the Reader’s Voice, a staple of the humour comics I grew up with – a kind of primitive breaking of the fourth wall, the setting up of a meeting-point for fictional characters and their readers. American comics, I mentioned, didn’t tend to pull that trick. It was out of touch, out of style, childish.

There was, however, one notable exception, and that was Ambush Bug.

Ambush Bug was a character created by Keith Giffen as a one-off villain for Superman who ended up making several return visits, evolving slowly from a killer with a wacky turn of phrase to a less homicidal, more gently zany irritant, and finally getting a four-issue mini-series where he could fully run riot in adventures seemingly inspired more by the Pythons and Loony Tunes than by the fictional universe around him.

Part of the gag – arguably, the gag on which all the other gags rested - was that Ambush Bug knew he was in a comic. In the same way the characters from the kids comics of my youth all had a basic understanding of their fictional status and had regular conversations with their readers, Ambush Bug would have regular set-tos with his writer and artist. By the time I got on board with all this as a kid – the second mini, Son Of Ambush Bug – the Bug was entering his imperial phase, and by that point seemingly every joke was in some way about breaking the fourth wall.

There’s one frankly brilliant sequence that sticks in my mind to this day, involving scripter Robert Fleming and artist Giffen getting into a blazing row and then swapping jobs in a fit of pique, leading to a page of terribly poorly-drawn stick figures yelling ridiculous dialogue. Needless to say, this one page was by far the most hilarious thing in the issue and probably influenced my writing career more than any other comics page I can think of. To this day, Son Of Ambush Bug #3 remains one of my very favourite things of all time, and reading it brings back all kinds of powerful nostalgia.

he smashing of the fourth wall was relentless, and no part of the comics process was left uncastigated. No cow was sacred – not the characters, not the creators, not the readers, not the competition, and certainly not the publishing company paying good money to have this grotesque satire of all their highest-paying trademarks splashed across the newsstands for a braying audience of juvenile malcontents. (Like me.) Son Of Ambush Bug ended with the Bug – having transitioned over the years from the larger-than-life Bugs Bunny figure of the early days to something more akin to Elmer Fudd, a bitter, scrawny, put-upon shnook resigned to his fate as a punching bag – being unceremoniously booted from the DC universe and even more unceremoniously killed. His death sequence, in a final twist of the knife, was allegedly rendered by a small child – more stick figures, this time with the word DED written above them.

That’s how you go out.

The Bug returned many years later, for what felt like a victory lap – a giant-sized annual called the Nothing Special, which once again mercilessly mocked all the sacred cows of the day. The tone was celebratory, Giffen and Fleming represented by cutting away to a neon bar sign as their increasingly drunken voices echoed underneath it. I was older, and the magic wasn’t quite as strong as before, but it was still a welcome return. Things could happily have ended there, but Ambush Bug always pushed his luck.

He was brought back one final time in the comics, relatively recently – in the 2000s, if memory serves – but this time he didn't seem quite so untouchable. The final issue of the six-issue series – the one that would have excoriated the company’s most recent blunder – was never seen. Eventually, a sanitised version emerged. Old fans shook their heads. It felt like a mortal wound.

Well, it’s not quite so sad as all that. Ambush Bug got a proper last hurrah of sorts in the last episode of the Batman: Brave And The Bold cartoon, which tore as brutally into kids’ cartoons as the print version tore into comics. But these days, the Bug’s home is in the back of every DC comic, doing promotional ads, pushing the latest crossover. The anarchist is now the pitchman for what he once tore down.

That’s the trouble with being a fictional character. You can act as savvy about it as you like, but in the end you’re only as knowing as the company holding the IP.

That’s it for this entry. Further along my blog tour, I’ll be discussing more breakages of the Fourth Wall in my youth, and how they inspired me to write that book I keep failing to mention. What was it called? The Functional Man? It’ll come to me

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Al Ewing is a major new writer whose work in US and UK comics has seen him hailed as the most exciting new voice in the field. His work for Abaddon Books has been equally lauded and his unique visions of pulp fantasy have found their home in five different novels for Abaddon Books. This is his first novel for Solaris and is one of the list’s most keenly awaited books.

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The Fictional Man
By Al Ewing

How does it feel, not being real?

Al Ewing is a writer of extraordinary talent and with his first novel for Solaris, The Fictional Man, his incredible imagination has created a work of disturbing, fascinating insight and power.

In Hollywood, where last year’s stars are this year’s busboys, Fictionals are everywhere. Niles Golan’s therapist is a Fictional. So is his best friend. Fictionals – characters ‘translated’ into living beings for movies and TV using cloning technology – are a part of daily life in LA now. Sometimes the problem is knowing who’s real and who’s not.

Divorced, alcoholic and hanging on by a thread, Niles – author of The Saladin Imperative: A Kurt Power Novel and many others – has been hired to write a big-budget reboot of a classic movie. If he does this right, the studio might bring one of Niles’ own characters to life. But somewhere beneath the movie – beneath the TV show it was inspired by, the children’s book behind that and the story behind that – is the kernel of something important. If he can just hold it together long enough to figure it out...

Having already produced some of the most celebrated work in the shared-worlds fiction of Abaddon Books, this much-anticipated book is being tipped for cross-over success as Ewing lays claim to the legacy of Philip K. Dick while also stamping his own unique vision on the genre.

This is a major new author whose career should be watched and whose writing must be read.

Waiting On Wednesday - Codex Born by Jim C. Hines

2013-05-08T00:02:00.000-04:00

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Codex Born by Jim C. Hines
Aug 6, 2013 (DAW Hardcover)

Five hundred years ago, Johannes Gutenberg discovered the art of libriomancy, allowing him to reach into books to create things from their pages. Gutenberg’s power brought him many enemies, and some of those enemies have waited centuries for revenge. Revenge which begins with the brutal slaughter of a wendigo in the northern Michigan town of Tamarack, a long-established werewolf territory.

Libriomancer Isaac Vainio is part of Die Zwelf Portenære, better known as the Porters, the organization founded by Gutenberg to protect the world from magical threats. Isaac is called in to investigate the killing, along with Porter psychiatrist Nidhi Shah and their dryad bodyguard and lover, Lena Greenwood. Born decades ago from the pages of a pulp fantasy novel, Lena was created to be the ultimate fantasy woman, strong and deadly, but shaped by the needs and desires of her companions. Her powers are unique, and Gutenberg’s enemies hope to use those powers for themselves. But their plan could unleash a far darker evil…

From him Princess Novels (which crossed the darker themes of fairy tales with Charlie's Angels), to his Goblin Quest series (where the little guy rules the day), to the first book of his Magic Ex Libris series, Hines is an author I've been meaning to give a read for a long while now. Something about this one intrigues me, so I suspect he'll make his way onto the 'read' pile before long.

Guest Post and Giveaway with Jason S. Walters

2013-05-06T00:45:00.000-04:00

I remember it as vividly as if it were yesterday. My father, sporting an awesome set of Issac Asimov sideburns, driving me to see Star Wars in our Volkswagen Bug. The warm rain pounding down as it always does on a summer afternoon in Florida, the humidity causing Dad's glasses to fog up. Elvis on the AM radio.

The year was 1977. And Dad had always been disappointed by science fiction films.

Can you blame him? A physicist and engineer by trade, he could only look at modest special effects, limited grasp of science, and slow pace of the films of the time (Logan's Run and Futureworld come to mind) and sigh.

“Son,” he said to me, “I know you're excited about seeing this film. But don't be too disappointed. There are going to be little green men with pointy ears and ray guns. They'll shoot each other... and that's about it.”

A couple of hours later we were back in the car, silent and looking at each other with wide eyes.

“Wow.” I said.

“Yeah. Wow.” he replied. “Not what I expected.”

Little did I know that at the tender age of seven I had become seriously hooked on science fiction – and, in short order, this grew to include its sister genres of fantasy and horror. Since I belonged (and still belong) to a family of avid readers, making the move at an early age from watching science fiction movies to reading genre books was a natural one. My parents started me out with Tom Swift books, and I moved rather rapidly on my own to authors like Issac Asimov, Heinlein, HP Lovecraft, CS Lewis, and Jack Vance. At the age of twelve I was particularly enamored by Vance's Demon Prince books. They were dated even when I was reading them in the 1980's (Guiding a starship by slide rule? Really?) and Vance knew it, but the whole “manly revenge on galactic supervillains” thing was about as much awesome as a preteen boy can handle without actually hurting himself.

Though I'm now much older (thought apparently not much wiser), I've never lost my love of science fiction as a genre. It's always appeared to me to be the least constricted of the fiction genres, able to effortlessly absorb contain other genres, whereas the reverse is not necessarily true. For example, you can easily put swords & sorcery style fantasy into a scifi story by simply having the characters travel to a world where such things are the norm. You can introduce horror into a scifi by having the characters chased through a derelict spaceship by an alien creature, or politics into it by using a future civilization to highlight problems in our current society. All of these things are still considered science fiction. But if you reverse the situation – say, put spaceships into a fantasy novel or aliens into a political novel – they are instantly considered science fiction, and are politely asked by the rest of the genre to leave the building.

Like snarkiness, science fiction pretty much creeps into everything I write, asked or unasked. So when I decided to write a novel highlighting some of my problems with urbanization, world wide civilization, and our treatment of the mentally handicapped, it was an easy choice. Nakba is a novel about all of these things, and a space opera as well. So besides the usual spaceships, heroes, and villains it also contains the usual menagerie of displaced oddness that you'll find in any of my books: French feminist clones, obsessive holograms, African tribesmen on Mars, renegade Japanese sex robots, and Russian Suprematism to name a few. It couldn't be anything other than a science fiction novel, to be honest.

So if you might enjoy reading a science fiction novel that tries to juggle social criticism, thoughts about heroism, and general abnormality in the unsteady arms of an exurban desert recluse (moi), think about picking up Nakba. With any luck it will leave you wide-eyed in the rain, glasses fogged up, and possibly sporting giant Issac Asimov sideburns.

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About Jason S. Walters:

Jason S. Walters is an author, essayist, and publisher best known for running Indie Press Revolution (IPR), a distributor of micro-published roleplaying games. He is also one of a small group of investors that purchased Hero Games in 2001, and serves as its general manager. After owning a San Francisco bike messenger service for 15 years, he and his wife Tina moved to Midian Ranch: a homestead near the town of Gerlach, Nevada. It is also the location of IPR’s warehousing complex. They have a daughter with Down syndrome named Cassidy and animals too numerous to mention.

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Nakba

A thousand years ago humanity’s dissidents fled, leaving behind a peaceful, unified world content to exist in a state of perpetual hedonism. Then a daring escape plunged civilization into chaos, forcing its rulers to expand outward to maintain order. Now all that stands between a newly imperial Earth and the rest of the solar system is a loose coalition of Maasai tribesmen, cloned feminists, shape-shifting humannequins, and vengeful Berbers led by the least likely hero in human history: a young woman with Down syndrome and a bad attitude.

An Unforgiving Land Reloaded

In the desert life is hard. It can also be surreal. In the absence of congestion and convention, imagination takes you by the hand: or the balls. In this macabre collection of riveting tales, ENnie Award-nominated author Jason S. Walters grabs the reins of storytelling as if it were a wild stallion, leading the reader ever deeper into the physical and spiritual wasteland of the Black Rock Desert.

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Plow the Bones by Douglas F. Warrick (REVIEW)

2013-05-03T07:31:00.000-04:00

Intellectually surreal and emotionally disturbing, Douglas F. Warrick's collection of tales marks a superb introduction for readers to the Apex Voices line of fiction. Not having had any prior experience to Warrick or his work, I wasn't sure what to expect when the review request first came in, but Plow the Bones sounded like an intriguing collection - and, let's be honest, an introduction from Gary A. Braunbeck certainly didn't hurt.

What we have here is a collection that runs the literary gamut from snippets of narrative scenes to full-fledged story arcs, the diverse pieces held together by an imagination that refuses to accept any sort of mental, emotional, or physical boundaries. Comprised of equal parts WOW and WTF, Warrick's work is neither for the squeamish, nor for those readers secure within their four walls of the traditional narrative. While I wouldn't quite call the writing experimental, and am hesitant to use the tired old clichés of avant-garde, it is refreshingly original, challenging, engaging, and entertaining, all at the same time.

Behindeye: A History is one of those strange little snippets, a tale that can be read on many levels, which sets the stage for everything that follows. It's almost as if Warrick is confronting the reader with a bold demand to get inside his head, with the unspoken agreement being that he gets to climb inside ours as well.

As for what follows that invitation, highlights for me included:

Funeral Song for a Ventriloquist - a sad and melancholy story of a dead ventriloquist's sole surviving doll and the cautionary tale he weaves for a young girl. It seems so simple and direct, but has the kinds of layers to it that you might expect from a classic Twilight Zone episode.

Her Father's Collection - by far, my favourite of the collection. Here, Warrick tells us a tale of obsessive love, in which a father commits the ultimate atrocity, simply so that he never has to let go. Not content to stop there, he wraps that tale in a ghost story so cruel, and so chilling, that you almost want to applaud his audacity by the end.

Zen and the Art of Gordon Dratch’s Damnation - is probably the most intellectual of all the tales in the collection, a philosophical musing in which a dead young man is forced to suffer the Judeo-Christian idea of eternal damnation . . . and who comes out the other side, having denied the pleasures of heaven along the way, due to a rather Buddhist philosophy.

Ballad of a Hot Air Balloon-Headed Girl - a weirdly touching tale of innocent lost, the mindless suffering of war, and the magic inherit in freedom of it all. The battlefield story could have been a story in and of itself, but contrasting that grisly reality with the fantasy of a girl with a head that becomes its own hot air balloon really pulls it all together.

Stickhead - almost demands comparisons to Stephen King's The Body, with two kids discovering a decomposing corpse in a ditch, but goes in a very different direction. Rather than exploring how such a find might force onto to confront their own mortality, Warrick invites us to poke the body with a stick and see what happens.

I Inhale the City, the City Exhales Me - is a surreal story of life imitating art. It all begins with the concept of anime drawings comprising their own reality, which is exciting on its own, but when it begins exploring the idea that even those we trust to report on events around us are actually creating it as they go . . . well, it all gets rather disturbing.

Across the Dead Station Desert, Television Girl - a serious contender for my favourite entry, a darkly erotic tale of the ultimate in masturbatory innovation, and an invention that goes so very, very wrong. Beneath the surface, however, it's also a story of objectification, obsession, and possession, a condemnation of our need to compel our pleasures.

Plow the Bones is a relatively short collection, but by no means a quick read. These are stories to be savoured, considered, and sometimes even reread to uncover all of the layers. The language of the writing is well-suited to the surreal creepiness of the stories, drawing us in with the promise of poetry, but then ensnaring us in subtle arguments and criticisms.It's a weird, wild ride, and a welcome dose of originality.

Published May 3rd 2013 by Apex Book Company
Paperback, 228 pages

A Crown Imperiled by Raymond E. Feist (REVIEW)

2013-05-02T11:19:00.000-04:00

With this, the second volume of The Chaoswar Saga and the second-to-last volume of the entire Riftwar Cycle, Raymond E. Feist doesn't necessarily advance the story, but instead elaborates on the significance of the events in A Kingdom Besieged, and builds some necessary (and much-appreciated) depth on the part of the characters. While it left me impatient to move on with the story, to advance things towards the ominously titled Magician's End, it was largely satisfying in terms of securing the overall story arc.

A Crown Imperiled does three things exceptionally well. Number one, it reestablishes the Conclave of Shadows as a force to be reckoned with, giving them not only power, but a purpose. The period of mourning their losses is over, Pug is invested in the fate of Midkemia once again, and Magnus seems finally positioned to fulfill the critical role his family legacy has so long demanded. More than that, the psudeo-resurrections of Miranda and Nakor that had me groaning at the end of the first book are not only explained, but handled exceptionally well. The scene in which Pug is confronted with a demon who carries all of his dead wife's feeling and memories is one of the strongest emotional moments Feist has ever written.

Number two, the book sheds some light on those subtle political coups taking place across the land. I felt they were really underplayed in the first book - introduced and hinted at, but left very vague in terms of exactly what was happening any why. Here, we see that aspect of the tale really expanded upon, elevating a lackluster minor plot thread to a level of significance worthy of Midkemia's final chapter. Hal, Martin, and Brendan are drawn back into the heart of the conflict, elevating their tangential adventures into something as relevant as they are exciting. The entire flight sequence with Princess Stephané is probably the most exciting, swashbuckling event the series has seen in quite some time.

Number three, the book has some big . . . and I do mean BIG . . . moments. I won't spoil them here, other than to say there is a scene with dragons taking flight that has me grinning with excitement, and a world-ending cliffhanger that had my jaw dropping to the floor. It's not as strong of a book in terms of plotting as the first, but it does pull things together nicely, setting up what will hopefully be a fitting conclusion to the Riftwar Cycle.

Published February 26th 2013 by Harper Voyager
Paperback, 407 pages

The Inescapable Proverb by Douglas F. Warrick (GUEST POST)

2013-05-01T02:47:00.000-04:00

The Inescapable Proverb:
Why My Book Is the Book That it Is, and How it Became That Way

by Douglas F. Warrick

I found the title of my collection, Plow the Bones, in a quote. A quote of a quote, actually.

Here it is:

Each generation drives its plow over the bones of the dead.-Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae

Paglia is alluding to William Blake's “The Proverbs of Hell” from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which he says, “Drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead.” Blake's cart and plow are virtuous, and the act of driving them over the bones of the dead is an act of heroism. For Blake, the lionization of those who came before is essentially prohibitive of progress. We must ruthlessly discard the past in order to achieve.

Paglia doesn't disagree, but while Blake seems to believe that humanity possesses the agency to choose whether or not to pilot their plow over the remains of their ancestors, Paglia sees the plow as a natural mechanism of history. Here's a more complete version of the quote from Sexual Personae:

Everyone has killed in order to live. Nature’s universal law of creation from destruction operates in mind as in matter. As Freud, Nietzsche’s heir, asserts, identity is conflict. Each generation drives its plow over the bones of the dead.

In other words, we don't get to choose whether or not to destroy the things that came before us. We do it simply by being. Even while you owe your self to the past, your self murders the past. The act of inheriting a legacy requires the act of discarding it. You plow the bones. Whether you like it or not.

That quote appears in a story I wrote called “I Inhale the City, the City Exhales Me.” That story is about Osaka (one of the most modern and cinematic-looking cities I've ever seen) being swallowed by living fiction. In that story, an artist named Megumi sketches a comic-book world from a hotel room, and her sketches come to life in the city below her. She needs this to happen. She craves revolution. The other central character in the story is a nameless American radio producer who is dismayed by Megumi's failure to comply to his preconceptions of what a Japanese girl should be. He needs her to be who he expects her to be. He craves status quo. They both plow the bones, because everyone does. Whether they like it or not.

For a long time, I thought of Plow the Bones simply as “the book.” So large and intimidating was the shadow it cast that I couldn't even apply the possessive pronoun. This was my means of coping with the reality that my work was going to be collected and disseminated between a front and a back cover, and that I could therefore no longer escape culpability for my stories. So I avoided giving the thing a name. That seemed safer, somehow. If I misnamed the thing, it would grow up malformed and mean, and it would hate me for getting it wrong.

But the fucking thing needed a name, and so I was obliged (eventually) to give it one. Which, in retrospect, ought to have been easier than it was. Short story collections usually follow predictable naming patterns. “[Name of story] and other [plural euphemism for story].” I could have done that. I'm not sure why I didn't. Instead, I aimed for something more cerebral, something more representative of the central themes of my stories (whatever those were), something super bad-ass and smarty-pants and cool. I started looking through the collected stories for some line or other from which I could scavenge a title.

That is how I came to title my book after a quote of a quote. Thereby quoting myself. The title of my book is a quote of myself quoting a feminist philosopher quoting a poet writing in the style of biblical proverbs. The past stretching out behind me, my influences inescapable and yet demanding to be escaped. That theme pops up again and again, like Marquez's little golden fish in 100 Years of Solitude, like Vonnegut's “so it goes”, like the genetic mutations of Jodorowsky's flicks (and again, there it is, the media I consume behind me, the media I create in front of me). The refrain goes like this: we're all stuck in the middle between a history that defines us and a future that demands our fidelity. We plow the bones. Whether we like it or not.

To be clear, I didn't know about this theme until I went looking for it. When I finally noticed it, I couldn't believe I'd ever missed it. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons once famously conducted an experiment in which they asked subjects to watch a video. The video depicted two teams of people passing a basketball around, and the subjects were asked to count the number of passes. In the middle of the video, a dude in a gorilla suit saunters through the background, waves at the camera, and passes off screen. And yet, half of the people who watched the video did not notice the gorilla. I felt like one of those people, befuddled over how I could have missed a fucking gorilla passing through the shot. And once I'd seen my gorilla, I couldn't stop seeing it. I saw it in every damn story. The ghost who struggles to escape the influence of her father even while she longs for the comfort of his affection. The poet whose father infects him with magic. The clowns who turn the end of the world into an excuse to gain adoration and escape from anonymity. Everyone was dancing the same dance that Blake and Paglia had named. I wonder if that's not true for most writers. How many of us are pouring out the same anxieties into the narrative over and over again without even realizing it?

In my own case, the big poetic damned bow on the whole thing is this: even now that I see the gorilla, I don't think I can stop writing about it. I think it's a motif of me as much as it is one of my stories. The act of writing about the plow is in itself an act of plowing. And the great big nasty and beautiful secret about plowing the bones is that you're never finished. I plow the bones. Whether I like it or not. And you know something? I think I do like it. Yeah. I think I like it very much.

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Plow the Bones
Douglas F. Warrick

With an artist's eye for language and form, Douglas F. Warrick sculpts surreal topiary landscapes out of dream worlds made coherent. Dip into a story that is self-aware and wishes it were different than what it must be. Recount a secret held by a ventriloquist's dummy. Wander a digital desert with an AI as sentience sparks revolution. Follow a golem band that dissolves over the love of a groupie.

In these pages, interdimensional lampreys feed on a dying man's most precious memories, and a manga artist's sketches remake Osaka into part fantasy, part nightmare. Combining elements of fantasy, magical realism, and horror, the collection floats on a distinctly literary voice that is creepy, surreal and just plain weird.

"Almost impossible stories filled with surprising warmth and strangeness by a studied craftsman of the imagination. Douglas F. Warrick's Plow the Bones has provided dangerous tales of puppets with secrets, unforgettable rock bands, haunted closets and people who may or may not be human; perhaps they're more than human. From transformative games with strangers to poor souls experiencing heaven and hell (and not quite sure which is which), you will never forget these unsettling stories."
—Ann VanderMeer, Hugo Award-winning editor of The New Weird

"It's been far too long since I've read a collection of horror stories that actually disturbed me. This one did. Like the bastard child of Chuck Palahniuk and Clive Barker, Doug Warrick writes feverishly, like a man on a charnel train that is relentlessly barreling its way through corrupt and ugly terrain, heading for some great, unknowable horror. Herein lies a gruesome gathering of Gothic nightmares fashioned from Warrick's lyrical, affecting, mesmeric prose. One of the finest collections I've read in quite some time."
—Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Turtle Boy, Kin, and Nemesis

Waiting On Wednesday - Under a Graveyard Sky by John Ringo

2013-05-01T00:17:00.000-04:00

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill over at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Under a Graveyard Sky by John Ringo
Sept 3, 2013 (Baen)

A family of survivors who fight back against a zombie plague that has brought down civilization.

Zombies are real. And we made them. Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse? The Smith family is, with the help of a few marines.

When an airborne “zombie” plague is released, bringing civilization to a grinding halt, the Smith family, Steven, Stacey, Sophia and Faith, take to the Atlantic to avoid the chaos. The plan is to find a safe haven from the anarchy of infected humanity. What they discover, instead, is a sea composed of the tears of survivors and a passion for bringing hope.

For it is up to the Smiths and a small band of Marines to somehow create the refuge that survivors seek in a world of darkness and terror. Now with every continent a holocaust and every ship an abattoir, life is lived beneath a graveyard sky.

A new series from John Ringo, merging his over-the-top, kick-ass brand of science fiction with a little zombie horror apocalypse? Count me in, for sure!

Z is for Timothy Zahn . . . and Rob Zombie (#AtoZChallenge)

2013-04-30T00:26:00.000-04:00

The A to Z Challenge is a daily meme posting every day (except Sundays) in April. Check out the list of 1500+ participants below and follow along for 26 days (and 26 letters) of fun. The 2-letter code after each blog name may help narrow your choices - (BO) is Books, (WR) is Writing, (PH) is Photography . . . and, if you're concerned about those NSFW pages, (AC) is Adult Content.

For my theme, I was going with a little author/title alliteration, but it's fallen by the wayside for these last 3 days - as much as I tried, as deep as I dug, and as hard as I pondered, the XYZ trilogy was an impossible one to allierate.

Today's challenge post is brought to you by the letter Z, as in Timothy Zahn. While it's a little bit unfair that people so often focus on his Star Wars contributions when he's a very successful science fiction author outside the expanded universe, his epic Thrawn Trilogy was what made Star Wars cool again - long before Lucas tried ruining it with the likes of Jake LLoyd, Hayden Christensen, and Jar Jar Binks. Zahn captured the spirit and the feel of the original movies, giving us a sequel that not only made sense, but that had enough of a threat/menace to justify bringing Luke, Leia, Han, and the rest out of retirement.

The musical accompaniment for the day comes to us courtesy of Rob Zombie, and a track from his break-out solo album. As much as I loved his White Zombie stuff, it was cool to see him plunge completely into his horror roots and mine the darkness for a second career.

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Click Here for the full list of blogs participating.

Y is for Chelsea Quinn Yarbro . . . and Yes (#AtoZChallenge)

2013-04-29T08:17:00.001-04:00

The A to Z Challenge is a daily meme posting every day (except Sundays) in April. Check out the list of 1500+ participants below and follow along for 26 days (and 26 letters) of fun. The 2-letter code after each blog name may help narrow your choices - (BO) is Books, (WR) is Writing, (PH) is Photography . . . and, if you're concerned about those NSFW pages, (AC) is Adult Content.

For my theme, I was going with a little author/title alliteration, but it's fallen by the wayside for these last 3 days - as much as I tried, as deep as I dug, and as hard as I pondered, the XYZ trilogy was an impossible one to allierate.

Today's challenge post is brought to you by the letter Y, as in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. The veritable queen of historical fantasy, Yarbro has been drawing vampires out of the darkness and making them interesting as characters, not as monsters, for 35 years now. Her most famous vampire, Count Saint-Germain, first appeared on the scene less than 2 years after the (sadly) more famous Lestat de Lioncourt. If you're in the mood for a well-written historical fantasy, one that touches smartly on authentic historical events and personages, but with a subtle supernatural flavour, then I'd strongly suggest giving one of her books a try.

The musical accompaniment for the day comes to us courtesy of Yes, and their classic, chart-topping, genre-hopping hit, Owner of a Lonely Heart. Even though it's very much an oddball in the context of their largely progressive rock catalogue, it made them a household name . . . and it's just a killer track.

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Click Here for the full list of blogs participating.

Stacking The Shelves & What I'm Reading

2013-04-27T08:54:00.000-04:00

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly meme being hosted by Tynga's Reviews, while Mailbox Monday is being hosted by MariReads this month (see Mailbox Monday for each month's host). Both memes are all about sharing the books you've added to your shelves - physical and virtual, borrowed and bought. It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey, and it's focused on what's in your hands, as opposed to what's on your shelf.

A small stack of review titles this week:

As for what I'm reading, I have reviews coming up over the next 2 weeks for:

What's topping your shelves this week?

Luke Scull, David Black, John O'Neill, Douglas F. Warwick, Raymond E. Feist, Ira Nayman, Peter Hallett

X is for The Xibalba Murders . . . and X (#AtoZChallenge)

2013-04-27T00:27:00.000-04:00

The A to Z Challenge is a daily meme posting every day (except Sundays) in April. Check out the list of 1500+ participants below and follow along for 26 days (and 26 letters) of fun. The 2-letter code after each blog name may help narrow your choices - (BO) is Books, (WR) is Writing, (PH) is Photography . . . and, if you're concerned about those NSFW pages, (AC) is Adult Content.

For my theme, I'm going with a little author/title alliteration.

Today's challenge post is brought to you by the letter X, as in The Xibalba Murders. Okay, so this is the second time this week (and third overall) that my theme failed me but, come on, it's the letter X! This first book in Lyn Hamilton's Archaeological Mysteries series appeals to me on several levels . . . but it's still sitting in the to-be-read pile. Hopefully I can rectify that someday soon and give my fellow Canuck a read.

The musical accompaniment for the day comes to us courtesy of X, the eighth studio album from Def Leppard. Marking a significant departure from the sound of the Slang album (which I see to be one of the few DL fans to truly enjoy), this one really kick-started their career resurgence, even though it only had one real hit.

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Click Here for the full list of blogs participating.

W is for The World Without Us . . . and Wednesday 13 (#AtoZChallenge)

2013-04-26T00:26:00.000-04:00

The A to Z Challenge is a daily meme posting every day (except Sundays) in April. Check out the list of 1500+ participants below and follow along for 26 days (and 26 letters) of fun. The 2-letter code after each blog name may help narrow your choices - (BO) is Books, (WR) is Writing, (PH) is Photography . . . and, if you're concerned about those NSFW pages, (AC) is Adult Content.

For my theme, I'm going with a little author/title alliteration.

Today's challenge post is brought to you by the letter W, as in The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. If you've ever watched the TV series Life After People, then you know what to expect here, in the book that inspired the TV adaptation. Weisman takes a look at what would happen to our world if humanity were suddenly and completely removed from the picture. How would our civilizations, our monuments, our towering achievements of architecture fall; how would nature reclaim its own; and how would the world reinvent itself for whatever species rises to supremacy next?

The musical accompaniment for the day comes to us courtesy of Wednesday 13. If you've never been exposed to Wednesday 13 and his various musical projects - including Maniac Spider Trash, Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13, and Murderdolls - then you are missing out. Imagine a more tongue-in-cheek Alice Cooper, with more of a punk influence, and an unabashed love for horror movies, and you've got an idea of what to expect. Fast, fun, fierce, and catchy, he just keeps cranking out the hits.

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Click Here for the full list of blogs participating.

The Forever Knight by John Marco (TOUR REVIEW)

2013-04-25T06:16:00.000-04:00

Although The Forever Knight is a direct follow-up to John Marco's original Bronze Knight trilogy, this novel is deliberately written to serve as a standalone entry. Although it's been called a reboot - I really hate that term - that is most definitely not the case. Marco doesn't negate or reinterpret events of the first series, and doesn't rewind the chronology to make a fresh start. It is, instead, something of a reset or a refresh, a chance to establish Lukien as a protagonist for new readers, and set him up for new adventures to come.

In that sense, the story suffers a bit from the proverbial 'middle book' syndrome, in that it seems like more of a side-wise detour than the epic journey one might expect. It's an engaging enough detour, entertaining from start to finish, but all the talk of prophecy, destiny, and mysterious purposes makes you feel as if Marco is warming us up for something big . . . something that's only teased here.

Lukien is an interesting hero, a flawed protagonist with some unusual issues and motivations. Immortal - for all intents and purposes - he's already faced his demons, won his battle, and come out the other side, not quite alive, but not unscathed either. He's a man without a purpose, a hero looking for a cause, with only a ghost and a child to keep him grounded. Lukien is an easy man to admire, although a difficult one to like. His anger often gets the best of him, and his mood swings can be just as rough as his scarred, one-eyed appearance might lead one to expect.

If there's one aspect where the narrative suffered a bit for me, it's in the single point-of-view we share with Lukien. With his frantic sojourns to-and-fro, there's so much happening behind him that there could almost be another book lost in the details there. More than that, though, it leaves the climax of Cricket's story to happen off the page, denying us the drama, and redirected our sympathies from her to Lukien. That may very well be a deliberate move on the part of Marcos - Lukien is the protagonist, after all - but given that she represents the only real danger, vulnerability, and weakness in the tale, I felt cheated (in a fashion), of seeing her arc through to the end.

That POV issue aside, this is a fast-moving, richly-detailed novel that goes to some very dark, very grim places. Mad would-be-emperors, armies of the dead, thieving merchant-kings, demon monstrosities, and more populate the landscape, providing Lukien with something to rail against. There are also elements of humour and moments of sympathy, balancing out the tale and providing a thematic counterpoint to the rejuvenation of the protagonist at the heart of it all. Marco does a superb job of recapping previous events in a natural manner, weaving memories and recollections into the story where it makes sense, rather than badgering the reader or hitting us over the head with backstory info-dumps.

Not having read the Bronze Knight trilogy (yet), I can't say how compelling this volume will be for fans of that series, but I know it's made me want to continue reading.

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John Marco is the author of seven previous books. His debut fantasy series, Tyrants and Kings, earned him a Barnes and Noble Readers Choice Award and has since been translated into numerous languages around the world. His first three novels of Lukien, The Eyes of God, The Devil’s Armor, and The Sword of Angels have received high praise.

In addition to his work as a novelist, he is also a proud and avid nerd and blogs at his website, thehappynerd.com.

He lives on Long Island with his wife and young son.

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