The Power of Anonymous

Traditional wisdom dictates a writer shouldn't respond to reviews, positive or negative. I agree, however, we now live and work in a world of instant reviews from a wide array of unqualified sources. I'm not suggesting the "reviewer" who left the following "review" of The Bottom Feeders (the free edition, FYI) at Barnes & Nobel was unqualified:

Total BS

Each story was crap, the mere idea this is thought of horror is a joke, and frankly free or not it's a horrid read. The plot of each story is crude and the endings are rushed leaving you feel like you just read a middle schoolers ELA story.

Gee, thanks anonymous. Oh, I'm sorry, Anonymous. It is your proper name.

Remember when I wrote a post about all reviews being equal on the internet? Well, I rescind part of my statement. Anonymous reviews are more equal than others.

(By the way, Anon, you forgot the apostrophe before the second 's' on the possessive "schoolers"; just saying you might want to pay more attention in ELA class. I haven't even mentioned comma use...but that would just be snarky.)

A Delicous Loathsome, Dark and Deep Review

Sometimes, writers need a little boost. This has been "one of those weeks" for me.

I love all of my books, I really do--even those collections I've self-published in e-format. But of them all, Loathsome, Dark and Deep has a special place in my heart. It was my first published novel (thanks to Jodi Lee and Belfire Press). It was so much fun (can something so bleak be fun?) to write.

I love how it reads, even now.

Sylvia Cochran at The Deepening World of Fiction has some lovely things to say about Loathsome in her recent review:

"What deepens the enjoyment of this book is the fact that there is no predictability but that the reader — for better or worse — has to hang on and follow in lock step with the protagonist.

When was the last time you didn’t know the ending by the middle of the book?"

Now that last bit filled me with joy.

"Even if horror is not your genre of choice, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy; the excellent writing — with very well done editing — is a joy to read even if only for its own sake."

Aw, shucks. Thanks for reading, Sylvia.

You can read the rest of the review at The Deepening or pick up a copy of Loathsome, Dark and Deep.

Have a wonderful day/night/morning/whatever.

Tuesday Grab Bag

Here's your free schtuff for Tuesday:

A piece of haunting ambient music, "Gentle Now, Ghosty", from a longer work of love songs for ghosts on which I'm working. (look, I'm no professional musician, okay?)

A lovely Amazon comment about "Former Vocations" (a poem in A.P. Fuch's Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes):

"...'Former Vocations' (Aaron Polson) provides marvelously personal snapshots of the end of it all." - from Anton LeCancre "horror geek"

A recommendation for Rio Youers' Mama Fish over at Skull Salad Reviews (BT's send up of the latest from The New Bedlam Project has been imported over there, too).

Finally, a list of imagery generated by one of my classes (I love me some imagery):

Sight
vibrant, sparkling, gleaming, dull, dirty, filthy, glossy, lustrous

Sound
screech, squeal, ding, rumble, muted, congested, crunching, crackling, gurgle, swoosh, swish

Taste
fruity, bitter, sour, sweet, tart, spicy, foul, bland, savory, tangy, stale, fresh, rotten, rancid

Touch
gritty, grainy, poky, knobby, oily, slimy, smooth, rough, bumpy, prickly, sharp, puffy, fluffy, dry, wet, slick, pocked

Smell
foul, stinky, raunchy, stench, skunky, dusty, musty, floral, pungent, smoky, fishy, musky

We spent about ten minutes generating the list. What other magnificent words could we add to the list?

Two From DarkHart

I picked up two books from DarkHart Press recently...The Gentling Box, a novel by Lisa Mannetti and Martyrs & Monsters, a collection of short fiction by Robert Dunbar.

I picked up The Gentling Box after learning Mannetti had won the Stoker for best first novel. The premise intrigued me, and the first couple of pages grabbed me by the throat. Mannetti has a fantastic way with imagery, pummeling the reader's senses as she paints a vivid world of gypsies, betrayal, and dark magic.

You'd be hard pressed to find any negative reviews of the book, and with good reason. It's well-researched, well-written, and builds just enough tension to keep a reader hooked. But, I found myself skimming some of the more tedious passages of description. After a certain point, I drowned under the imagery and needed a breath. No spoilers here, but the central conflict--involving the device for which the novel is named--just didn't work for me, either. Note I write: for me. The book is fantastic...truly deserving of the Stoker...my frustrations reveal more about my taste than Mannetti's prose. (read on for more)


I grabbed Dunbar's collection, Martyrs & Monsters after starting The Gentling Box. DarkHart seems to have something here...a small press that publishes wonderfully literary horror.

I read the introduction and dove into the first story, put the book down, and scratched my head. Again--there's a theme--the imagery was brilliant, but I didn't care for "Getting Wet". The story felt hazy, unclear. Determined to try another, I read the related, "Are We Dead Yet?". Again, I put the book down. Neither story really hit that special nerve.

I'm glad I picked it up a third time. "Red Soil" is worth the price of admission alone. Originally appearing in Cemetery Dance, the story drives a sharp pike right into the heart of what I like about horror: short enough that I can churn through it quickly, digesting all the juiciest bits with enough time to let the chill settle deep in my imagination. A short story can afford to be a little open to interpretation, and my brain is always ready to play. Since reading "Red Soil", I've found other gems in the collection (I never read them cover to cover...I just can't). "Red Soil" is one of those stories I wish I would have written, and as a fledgling author, I have no higher praise to give.

What did I learn about myself? I like my horror fiction short, for one. I prefer longer works of fantasy or science fiction, but horror...give it to me quick and dirty.

Book Review: The Between

Let me tell you what I thought about The Between by Tananarive Due.

I am a snob when it comes to my reading time. I'll read short stories until the apocalypse, especially those written by real, live People I Know^TM, but novels...I need some pretty strong recommendation. As a wannabe writer, I want to emulate the best of the best, and that starts with my reading selections.

The Between was mentioned on this list, posted at the Horror Writer's Association website. I read the blurbs online, checked out Amazon reviews, and decided that this one was it. But it wasn't. Not for me, anyway.

Hilton James has been having bad dreams...he nearly drown as a boy, his grandmother saved him but died in the process. The trick: she had already died once before. Now it seems Hilton is stuck in "the between"--not alive, not dead. Top that off with a racist terrorist that has threatened Hilton's wife, Dede (the only black judge in Dade County, Florida), and the book has its share of suspense.

The story was fine...spooky enough and a little different...but the prose threw me off. The author has worked in the newspaper industry (a features writer and columnist at the Miami Herald), and I hear a journalistic style in the novel. Every character is given a reporterly description, no matter how minor--"middle-aged white woman in black clothes," "Four boys, two white, two black"--at points the prose commits the ultimate "tell instead of show" sin.

Also, I just didn't connect with Hilton as much as I should have to really care about his lot. I loved his wife and kids (both quite precocious), but Hilton didn't really gel for me. His therapist (Raul) and police buddy (Curt) were more genuine characters. Hilton came off as a man to which bad things happened...and sometimes I wondered why he didn't fight back more when reality slipped away.

I've heard Due's later novel, Soul to Keep, is a better read. I might try it after a while. For now, The Between scores a 3/5 for me: a well-written book that just wasn't quite tight enough.

The more I read, the more book blurbs become meaningless. Case in point from the front cover: "A finely honed work that always engages and frequently surprises." - New York Times Book Review

"Always" is a pretty powerful word and shouldn't be used lightly.

Book Recommendation: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

I've always been a big fan of H.G. Wells. Evidently, so was John Wyndham, and it shows.

The Day of the Triffids is a fantastic post-apocalyptic romp that really leaves one thinking about what would happen after "the end". The book, published in 1951, reads almost like a zombie-apocalypse but with killer plants. If the premise sounds silly, it's not in practice. It's terrifying.

When I finished, I wondered if George Romero hadn't read the novel...perhaps inspiring Night of the Living Dead? Okay, that might be a far-fetched idea, but the comparison works.

The narrator/protagonist, Bill, wakes in a hospital after having bandages on his eyes due to an accident with the eponymous triffids. He was wearing a helmet, which protected him for the most part; the triffids are cultivated for their oil, which has a "variety of uses". But, these killer plants can down a person with one sting of their poison, and they feed on the corpses. Well, Bill's accident proves to be quite fortuitous, because a strange "meteor shower" leaves most of humanity blind while he is in the hospital. (You will, dear reader, discover that the meteor shower was nothing of the sort...)

The only advantage mankind had over the triffids was sight. Now that most people are blind...have you ever really wondered what would happen if 99% of the planet went blind overnight. Terrifying.

Wyndham does a fair bit of philosophizing about the nature of mankind, especially through the kinds of societies that emerge after the apocalypse. In that way, it is easy to offer a Marxist type criticism of the book. But I believe the author strikes at something much more primal, something at the core of human nature beyond simple societal structures. Is humankind, at the heart, self-destructive or hopeful?

As with any book, there are a few stumbles, but it was a tremendous read. I'll give it a solid 4.5/5. Its my blog, so I have the prerogative to distribute half-points as I will.

Now, why do I read so "slow"? To tell the truth, I don't. It takes me forever to read a book because I only spend about five minutes a day reading for pleasure. Between writing, my family, and my job...you have the picture, I'm sure. Once a book picks up at the climax, I'm up all night. (As I was Saturday into Sunday.) I also have to read in a near sensory-vacuum. I know many people who can read anytime/anywhere. Not so with this fellow. I need a nice, quiet, semi-dark space. If I manage a book a month during the school year, I'm doing well. I wish I had more time, really, because books like Triffids are fantastic.

Book Recommendation: The Tenant

I finished The Tenant by Roland Topor. I should mention that I'm not a big fan of existentialism. The novel is often described as existentialist horror. Not my thing, either.

I liked parts of the book--the feeling of paranoia present in the final few chapters is fantastic. Some of the images are haunting: the teeth Trelkovsky finds stashed in a hole under his baseboard...weird. The morning he wakes and realizes he is missing a tooth and knows just where to find it...priceless.

It was the pacing of the novel that disappointed me. Sometimes, pacing issues are due to the translation. This was different. For the first 2/3 of the book, each chapter stands alone, seemingly unconnected. Yes, most elements do come together in the end, but some bits just float.

The same is true for certain images/events. Trelkovsky wakes in the night and sees strange, carnival-show goings on in his courtyard. While strange, I finished the book scratching my head. What was that all about? The old, dark woman sitting on a trash can when he tries to sneak into the building at night...also very weird and scary. But, how does she fit into the overall narrative?

Is it all just to unsettle the reader? Do I feel alienated? Yes...but disappointed, too. A string of disturbing events does not a plot make. Maybe that is the existentialist message--there is no plot in our pathetic, alienated lives. (twirls finger in the air with sufficient sarcasm)

I usually post these reviews on Amazon, and there I will be the odd man out (the current average is 5 stars). The book is important piece of the "horror canon"; I won't deny that. But I can't, in good conscience, rate it higher than 3/5.

A note on Centipede/Millipede Press: This is my third book from them this year (Some of Your Blood, The Other, & The Tenant), and I must say the quality is exquisite for a trade paperback. The layouts are professional, the introductions quite insightful, and the cover art perfect. Each includes additional writings from the author--a nice, added bonus. I'll be checking out more of their catalog soon.

Some of Your Blood

I finished reading Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon yesterday.

Wow.

The book is written in fragments, semi-epistolary. I struggled through the first third because it was a narrative written by a semi-literate man. (the grammar was atrocious)

I'm glad I did. Since I've started writing, I've scared myself with what my mind was able to conceive, but only on rare occasions. Horror fiction doesn't scare me as it did when I was a child--it doesn't make me look around and put the book down and hope everything is going to be okay.

I felt that way again in a couple of places while reading Some of Your Blood. Without setting off too many spoilers, let me just say the end of the book struck me like no other since I Am Legend; it was just that good.

Some of Your Blood isn't for the casual horror fan. I understand why it isn't more widely read. I'm not even sure some would consider it horror in the popular sense of the term. But if you like to think--if you like a book that makes you go back and reread some passages because of their sheer power, go for it. Be patient. This one avoids cheep scares for deeper, longer lasting discomfort. I promise that you'll think about it after you're done reading.