Personal – Page 53 – Michele Lee

Free Fiction: Paul Jessup’s Open Your Eyes

Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup is being made available as a free PDF download for the remainder of May.

Her lover was a supernova who took worlds with him when he died, and
as a new world grows within Ekhi, savage lives rage and love on a
small ship in the outer reaches of space. A ship with an agenda of its
own.

“Open Your Eyes is surrealistic space opera in the tradition of New
Wave experimentalism, echoing the fantastic imagery of Samuel R.
Delany and the angst-ridden identity paranoia of Philip K. Dick, all
bound together in a distinctly modern vision of a post-technological
future bereft of a human core. Jessup’s bone spaceships and
resurrecting crews tumble into the core of a mystery which is
consuming the very hearts of suns. Go along for the ride, and open
your eyes.
–Jay Lake, author of Escapement and Green

“With unique imagination at work, Open Your Eyes bombards the reader
with stunning imagery, from living spaceships to mechanical
butterflies.”
–Ekaterina Sedia, author of Alchemy of Stone

Evocative, moving, elegiac, and sometimes surreal, Jessup’s Open Your
Eyes is a space opera novella that lives and breathes in the 21st
century. It blends together the best of fast-paced adventure and
intriguing characters. Open Your Eyes is truly a nova in the science
fiction universe.
–Alan DeNiro, author of Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead

Category: Personal | Comments Off

May 8

Trying to resume normal functioning

I’m here. I’m okay. I have a few things to say:

1) Thank you so much to those of you who messaged, called, showed up on my doorstep or email me. I really appreciate it, and yes, I really needed it. Sometimes you just have to hear that people care. Even if those people don’t know what’s going on it helps you feel like you aren’t alone. If anyone out there is wondering if they should reach out to a friend (or coworker or relative) who is trouble or having a hard time don’t hesitate, tell them they aren’t alone. Sometimes that does more than a knight (of any color) rushing in to rescue you.

2) At this point I’m moving past my crisis and trying to deal with the major schedule change. Like how I should be in bed right now, but instead just got off the phone with someone who is one of the huge sighs in my life that I’m doing something right.

3) To those of you who worried that my hiatus was from writing, the good news is apparently that’s not allowed, seeing as during this crisis I’ve gotten a partial request from another Writers House agent, an edit and resubmit request, an invite to submit to an anthology that’s Right Up My Alley ™ and first edits on Rot. So even if I was inclined to need a break from writing it’s not allowing me to have one. Am I complaining? Hell no. I’m revelling.

Category: Business, Personal | Comments Off

May 1

Vampires & Zombies: A Zombie Book by Rose Lee

Rose Lee is a precocious five year old who likes playing Monster Rancher almost as much as she likes her Mom. She thinks ghosts and vampires and zombies are scary, “but only a little bit”. Vampires & Zombies is her first sale. (Editor’s Note: Yes, in the spirit of publishing I paid her for it.)

* * *

A zombie came into the room, but he was a good zombie. Then a scary bad zombie came in.

“Jackass!” he said.

The scary zombie went over to AnneMarie and started poking her in the head with a pencil.

AnneMarie got poked in the head by a pencil and a bad zombie. She screamed.

The vampire was in his blood bath and heard her scream. He jumped out of the bath and went and rescued her.

He had a real sharp pencil and poked the bad zombie into the ear, and it came out the other ear and it hurt real bad. The bad scary zombie fell to the ground and was dead. And they covered him to the death.

AnneMarie was so glad that she said, “Thank you!”

He said, ” You’re welcome.”

AnneMarie gave the vampire a hug.

Then AnneMarie went over to the vampire’s house and they took a blood bath together. They blew lots of blood bubbles. A really big one popped over them and it was like raining blood.

The End

Category: Business, Family, Not My Work, Publishing | 6 Comments

April 30

Afraid by Jack Kilborn

Click to buy Paperback: 9780446535939, $6.99

Governmental experimentation on U.S. citizens is nothing new (in the fictional world). In Afraid, the debut from Jack Kilborn (alias of JA Konrath, author of the excellent “Jack” Daniels mystery series) the products of these experimentation, an elite, psychotic team tagged “Red-ops” have crash landed in the small U.S. town of safe haven. Worse than the thought of deranged, programed killers carrying out orders on a town of innocent people is the thought that they might not have landed on accident.

Compared to his other work, Afraid is just as brutal, but the tension is less over the top and nail biting and more of a complex reveal, not slow, but building on itself in levels until the full depth of the situation (and the plot) is realized. There is less humor involved, almost because there isn’t time for the characters to begin to adjust to facing their own, painful, deaths and get cynical.

Kilborn makes a solid showing in the horror/thriller genre with a tale that’s genuine and engaging enough to keep people reading, but neither over the top, or stodgy with attempts to build up the characters to make the audience sympathize with their plight.

Fans of David Morrell and Michael Crichton should take note, Kilborn is capable of holding his own against thriller veterans, delivering a solid, tension filled book that rates high on the readibility scale.

Category: Personal | Comments Off

April 26

Bestial by William D. Carl

Click to Buy Trade Paperback: 9781934861042, $19.95


Bestial is a Permuted Press title which means zombie apocalypse–or not. Bestial begins with a bank robbery in Cincinnati which goes terribly wrong when the people on the street and a few of the people in the bank suddenly turn into horrible monsters.

Present is a disease outbreak that turns most of the city into flesh-craving, near-mindless dangers, and a plucky bunch of mismatched almost-heroes who must battle through the ruins of a city, maybe find a cure and (hopefully) find salvation in the military blockade set up to quarantine the city. But this nasty end-of-Ohio tale spawns ravenous bands of pseudo-werewolves, the results of man’s screwing around with nature.

Carl writes with both devotion to the end of the world outbreak tale and a mastery of it that allows for tongue-in-cheek word and character play with familiar (very familiar to citizens of Southern Ohio and Northeastern Kentucky) themes. There’s something that’s pure fun about watching an area you know fall to the zombie werewolf apocalypse, but even non residents can enjoy this one with some truly clever writing. Lines like: “Then there were the bodies. They were scattered, dotting the landscape like punctuation, commas of ruined flesh.” make Bestial a surprisingly well written romp through the Apocalypse.

Category: Personal | Comments Off