Book Review: Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper by J.L. Bryan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not a big fan of the paranormal genre, but I saw this on a free giveaway and thought I'd give it a try. I'm sure glad I did because it was a cracking read.
A young woman who has had horrible experiences with paranormal entities becomes a ghost trapper, ridding old houses of their spectral inhabitants. Her assistant isn't very useful, and there's a new guy on the team she doesn't trust. Also, it turns out fixing the problem only makes the problem worse. It's all told in a breezy, fun style that only occasionally gets horrific. It sure is atmospheric, though. The author really catches the flavor of the South without getting too much into Southern Noir. This is horror light, although it's never lighthearted.
I could have used some more depth to the characters and detail about all the occult stuff, but since this is the first in a long series I suppose we get more of that later. If you want an enjoyable, easy read that will keep you guessing and flipping pages, try this out.

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Book Review: Dark Matters: Memories by Andrew Leon Hudson

Dark Matters: Memories by Andrew Leon Hudson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: Andrew Leon Hudson is in my writers group and I have been a beta reader on several of his stories, including one that was in this volume. Still, I'll try to be objective.
Speculative fiction author Andrew Leon Hudson continues his collection of short story two-packs with this one on the theme of the Great War. The first story, "The Palimpsest", is my favorite of all his stories and follows a WWI veteran and artist as he sketches ruins in England's remote north. Strange things start to occur reminiscent of M.R. James ghost story. Hudson captures the feel of a James story quite well and the ending is powerful. Very well done.
I was less intrigued with "The Foundation", another tale of memory as it relates to the Great War. I thought the dream sequences were handled well and the overall writing was good but it lacked the punch of the other story. Perhaps I've read too much, "we must not forget" literature for this sort of thing to gut punch me anymore, especially when nothing is added to the premise. Others might find it more moving. Even if they don't, "The Palimpsest" is well worth the low price of admission.
Hudson is a writer to watch, and I hope he'll start writing longer works in the future.

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Horror Book Review: The Last Christmas Gift

The Last Christmas Gift: A Heartwarming Holiday Tale of the Living Dead by Nathan Shumate
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't generally read zombie stories, and I NEVER read Christmas stories, but this novella comes from the host of one of my favorite websites, Lousy Book Covers. When he offered a free copy in exchange for an honest review, I went for it.

I'm glad I did. The book is well written, with a middle-aged narrator talking about his childhood memories in a convincing and evocative manner. When our hero was eight, he received a strange doll from his father, who was recently killed in action in Vietnam. Then, shortly before Christmas, his beloved grandfather dies. The boy has been living at his grandfather's house, which just so happens to be situated across the street from a graveyard. Since this is a zombie story, you don't get bonus points for figuring out what that doll ends up doing!

Shumate is especially strong when dealing with the relationship between the boy and his grandfather, as well as how the zombie attack changes the boy's perceptions, it being his first step to manhood. The attack itself is adequately handled but offers nothing new. We've had enough of these attacks already! I must say that I found the attack a bit overlong and wanted more about the boy's relationship with his grandfather and absent father. Also, the character of the depressed mother, who sleeps through the entire novel thanks to her pills, deserved to be filled out a bit more.

But these are minor criticisms from someone who is not in this book's target audience. If you are at all a fan of zombies or Christmas horror tales, pick this one up. It's a different take on the genre and worth your while.

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Get my ebooks for half off!

Over at Smashwords I'm participating in their great summer/winter sale. Whether you're sweltering in the summer of the Northern Hemisphere, or chilling out somewhere south of the Equator, it's always a good time to read an ebook. Through July 31, all my ebooks at Smashwords are 50% off. You can see an entire list on my Smashwords page.

The books include my Trench Raiders World War One action series, each now $1.50; older works such as the short story collection The Night the Nazis came to Dinner and the historical fantasy The Quintessence of Absence, both $1.50; and my Civil War horror novels A Fine Likeness and The River of Desperation.

Use the coupon code SSW50 at checkout to save 50%!

My latest Civil War horror novel The River of Desperation out now!

I've just released my latest Civil War horror novel, The River of Desperation. It's the sequel to A Fine Likeness. While the first book in the House Divided series stands on its own, The River of Desperation continued the story of the primeval struggle between Order and Chaos. A blurb is below.

In the waning days of the Civil War, a secret conflict still rages. . .
Lieutenant Allen Addison of the USS Essex is looking forward to the South's defeat so he can build the life he's always wanted. Love and a promising business await him in St. Louis, but he is swept up in a primeval war between the forces of Order and Chaos, a struggle he doesn't understand and can barely believe in. Soon he is fighting to keep a grip on his sanity as he tries to save St. Louis from destruction.
The long-awaited sequel to A Fine Likeness continues the story of two opposing forces that threaten to tear the world apart.
Length: 103,000 words (356 pages)

It's available as an ebook on Amazon, all Amazon affiliates, Smashwords, and soon to come to Barnes & Noble, the Apple store, and more.

In order to celebrate the release, I'm discounting A Fine Likeness. It's only 99 cents until April 26, the 150th anniversary of General Joe Johnston surrendering the Army of Tennessee. It will then be $2.99 until May 21, the 150th anniversary of the surrender of Jesse James, who makes an appearance in both of these books. A Fine Likeness is available on Amazon, all Amazon affiliates, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and almost everywhere else ebooks are sold.

Which cover do you like better?

Below are two mockups for the cover of my next novel, which is a sequel to my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness. Which do you think is better? You might want to click on the link to see how the first looked like. I appreciate your input!

Book Review: Z Boat

Z-Boat by Suzanne Robb
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm always up for a good sea tale so I was looking forward to reading this. What I found was a mixed bag.
The plot of this book is basically "zombies on a dystopian submarine". That's not a spoiler because you find that out in the first page. The world is declining rapidly thanks to corporate greed, government corruption, and spreading pollution. While I love a good dystopian tale, I found parts of this hard to swallow. For example, global smog is so thick you can't see the Sun in the middle of the ocean, yet somehow life manages to survive on Earth. Also, even people with relatively decent jobs can't afford clean water. The submarine crew drinks a tainted brown gunk. Even my Boy Scout training taught me two ways to get rid of that--boiling through a retort or filtering. An industrial civilization could no doubt come up with many more techniques.
More curious details emerge within the submarine itself. It's a late 20th century model, now a floating antique, yet it doesn't sound like any known sub. Hallways are five feet wide, doors are large, none of the crew has first-aid training, and the sub's davit (a small crane for lifting cargo or lifeboats) lifts the sub out of drydock, over the other vessels, and into the water. Um, no. Robb needs to research submarines if she's going to write about them.
The lack of editorial oversight is apparent in the text too, with many awkward sentences, misused words, and confusion between "lie" and "lay". The slow middle needs to be tightened up, and Robb has an irritating habit of telling right after showing. I lost track of the number of times a long paragraph would clearly show what a bad situation the characters were in, and end with some banal statement like "It didn't look good."
And yet I kept reading. Robb is a master at bringing characters to life and making you care about them. The crew is a wonderful collection of misfits suitable for the Nostromo or the Serenity and their interactions, loves, and feuds makes this book. The gorefest fight scenes are fun too if you have a high splatter tolerance. The ending is a rollercoaster ride that leaves it way open for a series (which is in fact continuing).
All in all, the most frustrating thing I found about reading this is was watching a bad book smother a good one. Robb has heaps of potential, and with a bit more care for her craft, and a much firmer editorial hand, she could produce some astounding works of fiction.
2.5 stars out of 5.
(I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

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Forgotten Masters of Fantasy and Science Fiction Silent Film

Satan at Play, bu Segundo de Chomón, 1907.

As you may know, I blog every Wednesday over at Black Gate. For the past two weeks I've been delving into my love of silent film. Ever since I was a kid I've been captivated by these early movies and as an adult I've been doing some research into them. Two early directors who have been all but forgotten are the subject of my recent posts.

Segundo de Chomón was a Spanish director who in the first decade of the twentieth century made some two hundred films, mostly fantasy and horror. Walter R. Booth of England was another early pioneer, starting in films in 1899. He created the first science fiction film trilogy with his Airship Destroyer series from 1909-11.

Both directors used techniques such as animation, split screen, jump cuts, superimposition, multiple exposures, and stop motion animation to make their special effects. Even though their films are more than a century old, many of these effects hold up surprisingly well. Check out the links to the articles and you'll find more links to their best films. Most early films were less than six minutes long so they make a perfect break from work. Enjoy!

Back from Worldcon!

As regular readers of this blog know, this week I was at Loncon3, aka the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention. I made lots of friends and ended up on the Iron Throne! It's good to finally get the recognition I'm due.
It was a great five days of panels, parties, readings, and meeting fellow fans. I did a signing of Radio Hope and A Fine Likeness on the 16th (my 45th brirhday) and was on a panel on refugees in fiction. For more on the con, check out the Worldcon report I did for the Black Gate blog.

Thanks for Jerome Finn for the photo!

Reader News for February 25

I'm headed out to Madrid today but before I go I wanted to share some reader news. Roland Yeomans of Writing in the Crosshairs is out of cancer surgery and back to blogging. You can't keep a good writer down!

Tony Laplume has just come out with a vampire novel Pale Moonlight, available in electronic and print editions. Congratulations, Tony! A blurb is below:

Plato Finnegan is a priest and brother. His sister Fiona is trying to escape from a bad relationship with a vampire.

Rather than the springboard for another vampire romance, however, these are the ingredients for an expansive literary epic that explores the large and intimate questions of our time.

Also,I'm over at the Tiki Hut talking about my travels to Iraq and Somaliland, so hop on over and check it out!

Helping out a writer in need

Some of you may be familiar with the blog Writing in the Crosshairs, written by author Roland Yeomans. If you don't read Roland's blog regularly you might have missed the fact that he's going into cancer surgery today.

I was trying to think of a way to cheer him up all the way over here in Spain and hit upon a buy-a-thon for his books. I've been reading Her Bones are in the Badlands and enjoying it immensely since it's set on a silent film set and I'm a fan of early movies. Today I bought French Quarter Nocturne, in which some strange beasts arise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. This one should be interesting because Roland is not only a cancer survivor, but also a Katrina survivor.

So if you'd like to read some interesting speculative fiction and make a writer's day, check out his Amazon page. What could cheer a writer up more than coming out of surgery and finding his Amazon rankings have shot up?

Got my author's copies of Spirits of St. Louis!

A nice little package from Rocking Horse Publishing arrived here in Spain, containing my author's copies of Spirits of St. Louis: Missouri Ghost Stories.

It includes my story "After the Raid", an offshoot of my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness. For those who have read the novel, it follows the story of Helena, the daughter of the German photographer who gets killed by the bushwhacker band, and how she takes a terrible revenge. Of course a terrible revenge comes at a terrible price. . .

The story also stands on its own in case you haven't read the book (ahem).

There are lots of good stories in here. I especially liked "Ghost in Celestial Blue" by Donna Volkenannt, which is set in Bissell Mansion in St. Louis. Since I know you read this blog, Donna, could you tell me if there's really a ghost there? I suppose I could Google it, but where's the fun in that?

My Civil War novel A Fine Likeness on sale for only $2.99. Happy Valentine's Day!

Um. . .isn't Valentine's Day February 14? Yes it is, but I love my readers so much I've decided to celebrate early. From now until the day after Valentine's Day (Feb. 15) I'm discounting my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness to $2.99.

My novel has been out two months now and I've received some wonderful reviews and a modest number of sales. I'd like to increase both by offering this discount. I love getting new readers!

I also love my existing readers, so if you've already purchased A Fine Likeness at full price, here's a deal for you: I'll send you a complimentary copy of my short story collection The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner and other dark tales. Just email me at seansontheweb (at) yahoo (dot) com and answer this question about the book: what Union officer was entrusted to guard Rocheport? (Hint: he did a really crappy job!).

I love my readers!

The Night the Nazis came to Dinner, and other dark tales

My short story collection, The Night the Nazis came to Dinner, and other dark tales, is out now as an ebook.

A spectral dinner party goes horribly wrong. . .
An immortal warrior hopes a final battle will set him free. . .
A big-game hunter preys on endangered species to supply an illicit restaurant. . .
A new technology soothes First World guilt. . .

Here are four dark tales that straddle the boundary between reality and speculation. You better hope they don’t come true. 

These genre-bending tales mix fantasy, science fiction, horror, and a dose of satire. I've priced it at 99 cents in order to entice readers, and hopefully get them to move on and buy my Civil War novel. A special thanks goes to Dale Roberts, author of Irrefutable, for doing the excellent cover art.

The Night the Nazis came to Dinner is available at Amazon, Amazon UK, and all other Amazon outlets. Coming soon to Smashwords too!

Deja-Vu Blogfest: My thoughts on my page 99

Today I'm participating in the Deja-Vu blogfest, where everyone revives one of their favorite old posts. This one is from more than a year ago and concerns my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness, which back then was still unpublished.

Ford Madox Ford suggested that if you want to know how good a book is, you should "open the book to page ninety-nine and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."

A new website plans to let aspiring and published authors upload page 99 of their work for public scrutiny. The Page 99 Test isn't running yet, so I've decided to jump the gun and post page 99 of my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness here to see how it stands up. Regular readers of this blog will know that this novel made it to the finals of Dorchester and ChiZine's Fresh Blood contest before losing. Oddly enough, five months on, the novel's fan page is still attracting hits. The manuscript currently squats malevolently in ChiZine's submissions pile.

So here's page 99. Let me know what you think. I'll post my own thoughts in my next post.

“This the right way?” Hugh asked.

“’Course it’s the right way,” Morgan said. “You think I don’t know where I’m going?”

“Don’t seem the right way,” Hugh said.

“It ain’t,” Elijah replied.

“Shut your mouth,” Morgan said, looking around at the woods uncertainly. “What’s that old devil thinking making us come all the way out here for anyways? Why didn’t we meet back at his cabin?”

“Probably afraid we’d get followed,” the Kid said.

“Damn it, we should have made that road by now. He said head north five miles and we’d hit it,” Morgan grumbled.

“We would have if we’d gone north,” Elijah said.

“Course we’ve been going north!” Morgan shouted. “We’ve been going north the entire time, haven’t we Jimmy?”

Jimmy didn’t reply, looking down at the ground as the Kid led his horse.

“Don’t ask him nothing,” Elijah said. “He’s been told his end and that’s a hard thing to take. And we ain’t been going north the whole time. When we took off from the Schmidt place, remember how we cut along that streambed? That made us move east a ways before we straightened out. We’ve passed the road.”

Morgan frowned at him, not wanting to believe, but he knew as well as the rest of them that Elijah never got lost in the woods.

“Jimmy, what do you think?” Morgan asked, bringing his horse alongside him.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Jimmy said.

My Civil War Novel "A Fine Likeness" released today!

My Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness is finally out! It's available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, and Amazon FR. In the next couple of days it will become available at Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. A print edition will appear in a couple of weeks.

Thank you all for your encouragement! For those of you unfamiliar with my novel, the blurb is below:

A Confederate guerrilla and a Union captain discover there’s something more dangerous in the woods than each other.

Jimmy Rawlins is a teenaged bushwhacker who leads his friends on ambushes of Union patrols. They join infamous guerrilla leader Bloody Bill Anderson on a raid through Missouri, but Jimmy questions his commitment to the Cause when he discovers this madman plans to sacrifice a Union prisoner in a hellish ritual to raise the Confederate dead.

Richard Addison is an aging captain of a lackluster Union militia. Depressed over his son’s death in battle, a glimpse of Jimmy changes his life. Jimmy and his son look so much alike that Addison becomes obsessed with saving him from Bloody Bill. Captain Addison must wreck his reputation to win this war within a war, while Jimmy must decide whether to betray the Confederacy to stop the evil arising in the woods of Missouri.

Starting a new blog

As regular readers of this blog know, I've been shopping around my Missouri Civil War horror novel, A Fine Likeness, for some time now. This was a finalist in ChiZine and Dorchester's Fresh Blood contest but because I was traveling in Ethiopia I wasn't able to garner enough votes to win.

Well, I've decided that with the Civil War sesquicentennial already upon us, now is the time to publish this, so I've going to self-publish with Kindle Direct Publishing, Createspace, and Smashwords. A Fine Likeness will be published in September.

I've started a blog dedicated to the book and its series called, unsurprisingly, Civil War Horror. I posted there today about why a professional author is self-publishing on Amazon. I hope you'll join me on this venture into the uncertain world of modern publishing.

Guest article: researching a Western horror detective novel

Today we have a guest post from fellow midlist author Lincoln Crisler. Crisler’s debut novella, WILD, has just come out from Damnation Books. He has also authored two short story collections, Magick & Misery (2009, Black Bed Sheet) and Despairs & Delights (2008, Arctic Wolf). A United States Army combat veteran and non-commissioned officer, Lincoln lives in Augusta, Georgia, with his wife and two of his three children. You can visit his website at www.lincolncrisler.info.

WILD is my third published book, but my first long-form story. Of course, I couldn’t pick something easy. No, I had to write a Western-style horror/detective novella based on a real missing-persons case from the Old West, and set it in the actual geographic location. While deployed to the Middle East. Granted, this was the easiest I’ve ever had it of my three deployments, but beer is easier to get than a fully-stocked reference library!

Obviously, the Internet was my friend. Wikipedia in particular saved my ass; it was, in fact, how I discovered the story of Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain. When the idea of writing a detective-horror-western popped into my head, that’s all I started with. Only after my friends and readers selected it from a pair of options did I search for historical inspiration. I found the information on Mexican mythology and ritual spellcraft on a couple of other sites. I also had to look for a few Spanish words (such as tesquino, a period-specific form of local beer, and several swear words).

The rest of my research consisted entirely of making sure I had my geography in order. This should have been a little more difficult than it was, but luckily the real-life story I fell in love with just happened to take place in the El Paso, Texas area. I’d been living in El Paso since 2007 and was, in fact, deployed from Fort Bliss when I wrote WILD. I still had to get a feel for Mesilla and Las Cruces, and particularly for that exact time period, but the Internet helped again, and my own knowledge informed my descriptions of the landscape. I had originally envisioned the magician’s lair in El Paso’s Franklin Mountains, but after research and consideration, the Organ Mountains were a better choice, for instance (even though only about ten miles separate the two ranges!).

The only part of my research not to bear fruit was my attempt to procure an intern from a local college; someone interested in writing and/or history, whose professor would be willing to give them extra credit for a couple hours of work. A little fact-checking and fine-tuning of my Spanish, more or less. I tried putting this together when I got home from Qatar (I finished drafting WILD a week before coming home) and I honestly don’t remember why it fell through, but I just don’t have much luck with the academic types. Phooey. Even then, the Force was with me. When the manuscript was accepted, I was able to have the book copy-edited by a fellow author and El Paso resident, Tim Marquitz.

Researching the history and culture behind WILD was easily as enjoyable an experience as writing the book itself, and probably consumed at least as much time by itself. I read a long time ago that more work goes into a book than the reader ever knows, and I’m glad I got a chance to share some of that with you today. Working within a historical framework can definitely be as satisfying as making everything up from scratch!

Author interview: Conda V. Douglas

Today we're talking with Conda V. Douglas, whose short story Changing Woman Ways was recently released by Damnation Books, the same folks who published my horror short story Dannevirke. It's an interesting tale steeped in Navajo lore. Having lived for twelve years in Arizona, I really enjoyed it. I've been to Navajo country, although I've never known any Navajo. During my time in Tucson I worked with lots of Tohono O'odham and Apache but those are very different societies so it was nice to read about a society I don't know much about. The Desert Southwest is one of the last places in North America you can really experience Native American culture. Let's give it up for Conda!

Your story was based on your childhood with the Navajo. Tell us a bit about that.
Now when I look back at old photos, it seems almost odd to see my blue-eyed dad working alongside his good Navajo friend, the Singer, Fred Stevens, Jr. My famous artist dad, Luther A. Douglas, was the first man to preserve Navajo sand paintings. So we spent a lot of time with Fred and his family. It never occurred to me until I was about 12 that not everybody knew what a sand painting ceremony was, much less about the different ones. I now know how fortunate my childhood was--one filled with the fantastical of Navajo gods.

Given your experience, how accurately do you think Native Americans are portrayed in American fiction?
The best I can say about this, is it's quite a bit better than it was. Writers like Tony Hillerman and Sherman Alexie have helped by representing the Native Americans as being...people. Individuals. Complex and complicated and impossible to fit into a clichéd box. Yes, there are cultural differences, but I find cultural differences between different towns where I live in Idaho! Writing with the cliché is a lazy form of shorthand. I believe we all prefer the richer read of writing that is about various individuals who may be different and impacted by their culture--but then show how and why.

Tell us about your writing career. How did you get started, and how did you get to where you are today?
Thanks to a wonderful teacher in fifth grade, Mrs. Loringer, I discovered that writers were not gods. And if they weren't then I could be a writer too. I learned, early on, that there was one path to my writing success: read, write, edit, submit. And repeat, repeat, repeat.

What are you working on now?
My newest w.i.p. is about a young gal who can alter reality with her art. She doesn't know she possesses this ability until she brings the dead back to life. Then she doesn't want the skill. Trouble is, somebody else does.

Where can we find you and your work?
If you visit my blog where you'll find out lots about my various published articles and short stories and links to same. And various odd things about me and my creative life. Plus the occasional recipe.

And thanks Sean, for the opportunity to speak to your readers.

Haunted by Technology and Pop Culture

Meet R.J. Sullivan, another of my fellow Damnation Books authors who's kindly consented to guest blog. Great timing, considering I'm on deadline for my book on the Battle of Adowa! If you missed the previous guest post by Jennifer Cloud, do check it out. So without further ado. . .

Hi, I’m pleased to guest blog on Midlist Writer about my first novel, Haunting Blue, released by Damnation Books. My hero, “Blue” Shaefer, is a high school punk girl moved by her mother to a small town, where she and her new boyfriend promptly get into trouble and release a vengeful ghost. Much excitement ensues.

I started drafting in the mid-90s and found myself plagued with headaches with each consecutive draft. Writing about a teenage punk girl who listens to hard rock music and her computer nerd boyfriend created two issues: 1) the swift changes in technology and 2) constantly needing to swap out the new hotness with my aging relics. It makes me laugh to review my mid-90s draft, and I thought it might make you laugh as well.

1. Better than Who?
In the first scene, Blue originally listens to Better than Ezra through the headphones of her Sony Discman. Today she listens to Linkin Park through the earbuds of her iPod.

2. School “tech”
Who would have thought a chalkboard would ever become quaint? Most school rooms now feature dry-erase boards, and mine does, too.

3. Remember when MTV played videos?
Blue’s poem assignment, originally titled MTV Video Script, became American Idol Finalist. Oddly, the content remains unchanged.

4. Hasta La Vista, Stallone!
Chip and Blue decide to catch a movie. “I think the latest Stallone is playing,” said Chip. In the final, they’re off to see the latest Dwayne Johnson.

5. Mighty Morphin Starship Troopers!
Chip and Blue discuss the movie Starship Troopers—having, of course, seen it in the theater! I managed to keep the conversation by saying Blue’s ex-boyfriend had the BluRay at the house. “I think he just loved the co-ed shower scene.”

6. It’s called a web page. I think it’s the way of the future.
In the mid-90s very few people surfed the web. In draft one I devoted no less than four full pages explaining HOW to surf the web. You’ll be glad to know I cut 99% of it a long time ago.

7. Dungeons and Dragons? That’s so yesterday—no, wait!
Just when I thought I’d have to change my D&D scene, the game turned popular again! I like it when that happens.

8. The curse of the cell phone.
The winner of the biggest headache since I started goes to the cell phone. A daunting game-changer, a working cell phone could have given our heroes an easy out during the climax. Fortunately, cell phones are fragile devices…

9. On a related “note”… Remember when everyone met between classes and passed notes in the hall? Of course not, I’m showing my age. Those moments changed to texting and Facebooking.

I suppose in 2021, these “updates” will appear just as quaint as my rough draft, but until then, I hope you enjoy the 2011 release of Haunting Blue, available now through Damnation Books.

R.J. Sullivan
www.rjsullivanfiction.com
http://rjsullivanfiction.wordpress.com/