January
19
January
14
Odds and Ends
- Rot made it onto a bestseller list again (for the digital version, and lookie! I outsold Wrath James White!)
- Richard White of Writer Beware wrote an excellent post about New, Inexperienced Publishers. A lot of these are popping up lately and I’ve spoken out for caution and allowing a press to prove themselves before submitting on public forums lately. But mostly I seem to only be pissing off the owners of said presses. You know what? I don’t care. I want more presses. I want these projects to be madly successful. But it’s not my job to play nice and supportive and believe in every new name that comes out. It’s not my job to support an author, press or book I don’t love and believe in. I am the only one out here fighting for my unpublished fiction. I am its biggest advocate and I have to be the one to draw the line and say, your project isn’t good enough for my work/career. Or else I’ll never improve or build a growing readership.
- Audiences are getting the Avatar blues, that is, are getting depressed after seeing the movie because Pandora isn’t a real place and we don’t have anything as beautiful and wonderful as the movie did. Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah if you live in a basement the world isn’t as wonderful as Pandora, but how about you get on that there internet that you clearly spend too much time on and Goggle Image search some things like, oh, the Amazon Rainforest, coral reefs, the Bay of Fundy, Angel Falls, the Black Forest, Cliffs of Moher, the Galapagos Islands or any of the millions of natural areas, features, species, wonders and just plain beautiful places here on Earth right now. Or get out of the house and visit your local zoo, botanical garden, or park. Fantasy is great, but this level of fanaticism is re-fucking-diculous.
January
14
Dark Side of the Moon by Barbara Custer
ISBN: 978-1-60168-141-6
I was given this book to review.
An alien species has landed on our planet, but do to a bloody miss understanding instead of trying to befriend us, they’ve built a city under Philadelphia and now they prey on us, their killings surfacing on our streets as a serial killer working in one small area.
Now that the matriarch of a local family has died her secrets are coming to light, the least of which is that one of her children is a half breed (and telekinetic), her father being one of the people eating aliens.
The aliens look like humans, except for having pointed teeth and red eyes. Furthermore, they’re targeting one small area (and have been since 1960) because they’re trying to punish the people who accidentally killed one of their own, and they routinely kidnap people and keep them in a slaughterhouse of sorts, taking a piece of them at a time for food. And yet in almost 50 years no one has found their underground city, and the police haven’t solved the “serial killer” cases in the tiny area (even though a person at the local university later mentions they have samples of the killer’s blood).
If you can embrace this flawed logic, you’ll find Dark Side of the Moon to be readable and nicely paced. However you’ll also find a cast of characters who are strangely stupid (one keeps close track of her periods, but doesn’t realize she’s pregnant until the reanimated corpse of her mother tells her so despite being 3 months late), absolutely trusting (when the blood doesn’t match any know humans the people immediately assume that means it’s alien), and apparently all involved in a who-can-be-the-biggest-asshole contest. Almost everyone in this book is mean to each other, showing no restraint.
The writing is not bad, but the storytelling leaves the reader with no characters to connect with, many moments of confusion because of logic leaps (like the humans and aliens cross breeding with no apparent problems, and the humans assuming “alien” in the first place) and a lack of any conflict other than; blood thirsty aliens kill and eat the humans, humans fear the unknown and kill the aliens (also, the aliens are much more advanced than us and though they can clone organs, they eat humans out of vengeance).
In the end the family is called to work together instead of continuing to fight each other, and after some tragic events there’s a moral-infused ending encouraging others to always give second (or third, or whatever) chances and everything can end for the better. Except this is a horror novel. So tacked onto the happy ending is a horror ending that mirrors the opening of the book, bringing Custer’s world full circle.
If you love B-style monster or alien stories you’ll probably like Dark Side of the Moon. If wishy-washy science and almost universally mean characters both you, best to skip this one.
January
12
Private Lessons
Private Lessons, my contemporary erotic romance novella, is now available on Smashwords. It centers around Deepdale Acres, a rather special stable. If you liked the old Saddle Club or Thoroughbred series you might like this story. It’s similar, but romance/erotic based.
January
8
The House of Gaian by Anne Bishop
Tir Alainn trilogy book 3
ISBN: 0451459423
I bought this book.
There’s a lot to this final book in Anne Bishop’s Tir Alainn series. Previously the Black Coats crept their way through Arkos and Wolfram, into Sylvania, slaughtering the witches and destroying the pieces of the fairy realm, Tir Alainn, linked to those areas. Their quest to eradicate magic faltered as they moved west and began to encounter Fae and witches who were still strong and tied together, still aware of their linked ancestry. Battle lines were drawn between the Inquisitors and the magic users, with the fate of all women and magic at stake.
In this book an army of men marches to Willowsbrook, where the Master Inquisitor hopes to teach a lesson to those who resist his will before attacking the Mother’s Hills, the secretive wellspring of magic where the House of Gaian still lives. Even the area witches are intimidated by those who live in the hills, and not sure when witches and fae begin to fight back against the Inquisitors, if the wiccanfae from the Hills will crush them all in their effort to destroy the Black Coats.
Again, there is a slant toward happy endings, and feminism. The women are who must be saved as they are more naturally attuned to the magic of the land. They’re also who the Master Inquisitor is out to destroy in a crazy revenge-against-the-mommy-who-didn’t-love-him way. Most of the nastiest creatures to creep out of Bishop’s mind, like the nighthunters, soul-eating, flesh-devouring creatures made from twisted magic, are blunted by Bishop’s storytelling stylings. This keeps the story firmly in fantasy without letting it slip under the influence of horror.
As always Bishop is a glorious storyteller, and has created a world rich enough to dive into. Readers will find plenty to love in this trilogy, and all without a nihilistic, or savage tone.