30
Apr
-
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.
26
Apr
-
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.
24
Apr
Click to Buy
Review by Lincoln Crisler
2006 Leisure Paperback Reprint, 9780843956962, $6.99
I picked up the Leisure reprint of Jack Ketchum’s debut novel, Off Season, last week and it returned my faith in dead Mr. Ketchum. My first foray into the feral world of Jack’s intensely descriptive violence was The Girl Next Door, a book I still sing the praises of a year after reading it. My second was last year’s Old Flames, which I found rather lukewarm in comparison. I’d been hearing about Off Season’s reputation for the last couple years, though, and with good reason; it put Ketchum on the map when it was first published in 1981 and garnered him a good amount of fandom even as Ballentine pulled the book from the shelves after being blasted for publishing torture porn.
Off Season tells the story of three men and three women shacking up for a week of fun in a cabin in the woods rented by Carla, a book editor on assignment. Their vacation is shattered the first night in when the local family of cave-dwelling cannibals attacks, slaying one of the cabin-mates instantly and eviscerating and eating another shortly after. Finally, reduced to an injured man and two women (one catatonic), the survivors stage an escape only to have the women dragged off and the man in hot (if somewhat slow) pursuit. The final showdown between the survivors and the cannibals is swift and bloody, the local law intervenes after finally making sense of a pattern of disappearances and when the smoke clears, only one of the original six is left standing… er… laying on an ambulance stretcher.
Click to buy
Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com
ISBN: 9781934692585
One hundred percent rage and violence Hollow-Eyed Mary is a brutal, vivid tale of a woman wronged, killed and back for revenge. But raised by a twisted doomsday cult, Mary is after more than revenge. She wants to use the end of the world to seize control of what people remain.
Part Preacher and part The Crow it’s a wicked concoction of horror story, art and emotion. The story is dark and twisted and the art is clear and evocative, working much like camera work to add to the drama of the story. It might be too graphic for public collections, but could be a vital inclusion to private collectors who enjoy horror graphic novels.
Originally appeared at Monster Librarian.com
Nancy A. Collins is the author of several novels and numerous short stories. She is a recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award and The British Fantasy Society’s Icarus Award. Her latest work is a young adult vampires series titled Vamps is reviewed here.
ML: You started your novel writing life with Sunglasses After Dark, the first Sonja Blue novel. How have you gone from rather adult horror novels to YA vampire princesses?
NC: It’s been a long road, but not a terribly surprising turn, at least for me. I have always had a good number of young/teen readers with the Sonja Blue series, and with my work in the comics industry. It wasn’t that huge a leap, personally, to start looking at the YA market. The biggest changes I’ve had to face are the differences in length (the average adult novel is 90 thousand words, while the average YA novel is half that) and some of the subject matter. Young Adult themes nowadays are far more ‘mature’ than when I was in junior high & high school. I do have a tendency to be dark, though, and I have to remember that the audience reading my books has yet to enroll in the School of Hard Knocks most adults attend after they graduate from college, so I have to remind myself to dial it back a few notches.
ML: You’ve been a rare, strong female voice in horror for a while. Do you think that being a woman has affected your career, either positively or negatively?
NC: I’ve never run into sexism in the publishing industry per se, whether from the editors or fellow writers. However, I become well aware that it exists whenever I deal with Hollywood, especially in regard to Sonja Blue. If she had been a male character named ‘Jason Blue’, there would be three movies out by now. But I think my being a woman does affect the characters a great deal. They tend to share a sense of responsibility (or a resentment thereof) to their family. But then again, I was raised in the South.
ML: The YA world has a lot of big dog vampire books, such as Twilight and The Vampire Diaries. How does VAMPS compare?
NC: I think VAMPS is for those readers who are looking for a storyline driven by something besides boyfriend/girlfriend drama. There is plenty of who-really-likes/loves-who or who’s-messing-around-behind-who’s-back going on in the VAMPS series, but that’s just a part of what’s going on. If you’re looking for a rehash of TWILIGHT, you’re probably not going to like VAMPS that much. However, if you like the Anne Rice vampires series or Harry Potter, you will probably enjoy VAMPS a great deal.
ML: Sonja Blue and Cally Monture are both half-blooded. What do you think the draw is to characters who aren’t of one world, or another, but are somewhere between?
NC: I feel that most women, on some level, view themselves as being caught between two worlds, whether it’s mother-wife, daughter-girlfriend, student-employee, or however you want to mix-and-match it. It’s also an excellent allegory for coming of age, whether you’re sixteen or fifty-two. In the Sonja Blue series the underlying theme is her constant inner struggle to remain human in the face of monstrosity. In the VAMPS series Cally is being tempted to forsake her human heritage in order to fit in with her new peer group. People are in too big a hurry to throw away their humanity, whether in exchange for ‘cool’ or ‘money’ or ‘fame’, if you ask me.
ML: In VAMPS, I have to admit I abhorred Lilith, the reigning social queen of Bathory Academy. But by the end you’d managed to soften her snottish personality and make her sympathetic. Does muddying the good guy/bad guy trope make for a better stray, in your opinion?
NC: When writing a character like Lilith you have to remember that no one ever thinks they’re a villain. Hitler, Bin Laden, and Jeffrey Dahmer all had a perfectly good reason (to them) for the evil they committed. With Lilith, I just took your basic self-absorbed, insecure, high- maintenance high school rich-biyatch and added the fact she’s a, you know, shape-shifting, blood-drinking MONSTER to the mix. Part of why Lilith is the psycho-sister that she is has to do with how she was raised–or not raised–by her parents, and the society she lives in, which is VERY Darwinian and favors the strong over the “weak”, and where ruthlessness is viewed as a virtue. It doesn’t make her any less evil, at the end of the day, but at least you can understand where she’s coming from.
ML: You’ve written novels, short stories, comics, nonfiction and novelizations, and edited anthologies. Do you have a favorite medium?
NC: They all have their different strong and weak suits. Comics are probably the easiest/most fun to write. I’m always excited to see how an artist interprets what I’ve described. I love writing short stories because you can experiment with style and format far better in short form. Novels allow you a great deal of freedom in regard to character development. Novelizations are definitely the least fun, because you’re working with other people’s characters, and while that can be fun if you’re a fan of a particular series or character, you have and have to abide by a fairly rigid ‘bible’ supplied by the producers, so there isn’t a lot of room to be creative and explore your own vision.
ML: Unlike a lot of authors these days you have very little web presence. Do you think this is a boon to your career or draws away from reaching potential readers?
NC: Actually, I have had a My Space page for several years now. It’s at
http://www.myspace.com/golgotham I’ve recently created a profile with Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=1501539605&ref=profile
and Blogspot
http://arkansylvania.blogspot.com
Also, HarperTeen.com has an author page for me at
http://www.harperteen.com/authors/32665/Nancy_A_Collins/index.aspx
that features some Q&A and other fun stuff.
I used to have a LiveJournal blog for several years, but I closed it out when I changed my ISP. It was too much hassle to change all the jpegs I’d posted from my account over the years to Photobucket.
ML: What’s the draw to vampires?
NC: Since they look like us, and, in fact, used to BE us, they are a perfect allegory for the human condition. Depending on what you want to focus on, they can be a symbol of man’s darker drives (cruelty, ruthlessness, predatory behavior), or they can symbolize passion and romance (the love that lasts forever, the all-consuming passion that never ends). They also make excellent Byronic heroes, flawed heroes that battle with their inner demons in the name of love or beauty. They can also be painfully accurate portrayals of the perils of modern dating (the handsome charmer who seemed perfect at first, only to later reveal himself to be an inhuman monster).
ML: Do you think the vampire story will ever die?
NC: No. No more than the detective story, the love story or the ghost story will die. Indeed, the vampire story combines elements of all three. In the last 30+ I have seen several vampire-based books and movies become huge pop
culture successes: SALEM’S LOT, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, FRIGHT NIGHT, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, BLADE, FRANCIS FORD COPPOLLA’S DRACULA, UNDERWORLD, and now TWILIGHT. And then there’s the upcoming sequel to TWILIGHT and the DARK SHADOWS movie starring Johnny Depp. So, no, I don’t think vampires are in any danger of disappearing any time soon.
ML: What do you have in store for Cally and Lilith and the true bloods of Bathory Academy? According to your blog on Amazon.com there’s a movie in the works?
NC: Actually, the producers are working on trying to turn it into a TV series. But I would be just as thrilled if they can turn it into a feature film. As for Cally, in AFTER DARK, the 3rd book in the series, her relationship with Peter is going to undergo a huge shake-up, due to circumstances beyond their control. The same goes for Lilith and Jules. Both sisters also suffer deep personal losses that change their lives forever, and are given a chance at living a dream come true. Of course, how they react to these nearly identical parallel situations is completely different from one another. Lucky Maledetto, the twins’ older brother, will be playing a larger role in the third book, as will Exo. We also discover a great deal more about how Old Blood society works, and just how dangerous the Shadow Hand can be. Oh, and there’s an all-vampire fashion show.
Click to Buy
The Black Act is a lush, sensory tale of a pair of twins, Anna and Claire, who are the last of a cursed bloodline of wise women. Anna, hard at work as a scribe for their clan, begins having visions of the origins of the curse. Combining these with the knowledge of her elder, Rosalind, Anna must untangle the mystery of the curse in an attempt to prevent her twin, Claire, from falling into its embrace…
Full review at DarkScribe.
12
Apr
*Cross posted from my personal blog*
It came through the pileline today that Amazon.com is removing the rankings for erotic GLBT books.
Case and point? Zane’s lesbian anthology Purple Panties has no genre ranking. Neither does the Best Lesbian Erotica 2009. But Laurell K Hamilton’s Mistral’s Kiss, with it’s infamous 100 page sex scene, is still listed in not one but three different rankings.
Mark Probst sent an email to Amazon asking for an explanation and received in reply:
In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage
Oh Amazon, do you mean books containing adult materials like:
Personal Demons by Stacia Kane
Kink by Kathe Koja (which proves that Amazon actually has a category for Erotic works, yet is excluding GLBT erotica from it)
Or even Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland, a book that cumulates with a (in book) two week long violent rape scene.
So multiple rape scenes and heterosexual sex scenes aren’t “adult material”, and neither is Fighting Dogs or fighting cocks(no puns)?
Perhaps they will use Poppy Z. Brite’s Drawing Blood to prove they aren’t keeping GLBT books from being discovered (You know, just like they weren’t making the sales of books self published through businesses other than CreateSpace difficult. Or cutting off Hachett UK’s buy buttons in an attempt to strong arm the publisher into giving Amazon deeper discounts.)
GLBT books that don’t include erotica (such as Brian Keene’s Dead Sea, and the Unspeakable Horror and QueerWolf anthologies) don’t seem to have been striken from Amazon’s good list.
Honestly, I don’t have a problem with an “Explicit content warning” on Amazon’s pages, but it should be consistent practice, not used as a tool to appease a minority anti-GLBT customer base.
Yes, Amazon, the anti-GLBT can be a very vocal, very volitile minority. But so can those of us who are in the GLBT community.
I encourage others who are outraged by this to let Amazon know how you feel. And of course you’ll notice that Amazon doesn’t make it easy to contact them. Of course not! They want to sell you things, not have to actually deal with you.
So here:
Amazon. com Customer Service
PO Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226
206-266-1000
Toll free: 1-800-201-7575
Fax: 206-266-2335
*ETA Again: Heather Has Two Mommies, among other GLBT parenting and lifestyle books have now also been stripped of their Amazon.com Rankings.
SUCKERS + 3 Andrew Mayhem short stories + 3 Harry McGlade short stories + FREE= Awesome. (Pssst, click on the awesome to see how to actually get the awesome.)