When I was a little girl of five or six I went travelling with my family in our travel trailer all around the southwest, including an Indian reservation in Taos. It was in a trailer park where my younger sister and I met a slightly older boy whom we made friends with at the playground.
The boy’s name evades me now, but he ended up inviting us to his trailer to “see something neat.” We followed him to his trailer, which was empty. I don’t know where his parents were, but I remember wondering why a boy his age was alone.
We sat in his living area for a bit when he told us to come look at his bathroom. We followed him in, and saw a regular, small trailer bathroom with a roll of toilet paper on the back of the toilet and a bathtub, along with a sink. Everything looked pretty normal. Then he told us to go back in the other room, which we did.
Then he told us to come back and look in the bathroom again. We did as he said, following him back into the bathroom, wondering why in the world he wanted to show it to us again. Well, the truth of the matter became clear as soon a I turned the corner and peeked into the bathroom once more.
Where there had once been a plain old roll of toilet paper on the back of the toilet was now the disembodied head of a real live ghost! I could see the face and also right through it. And in the bathtub was a full-bodied ghost! They looked just like the ghostly apparitions you see at the Haunted House at Disneyland. I don’t remember if they moved or not, but I sure did. I and my sister ran back out to the living area of the boy’s trailer as fast as we could. I looked back to see if the boy was coming out, too. That’s when I heard a strange moaning sound. I was terrified. But I couldn’t leave when the boy was still in there.
Moments later he came running out with what looked like white cream of some kind all over his face, and finger trail marks in it. He ran screaming out of the bathroom and straight out of the trailer, never to be seen or heard of by me again. My sister and I ran out, too, all the way back to our own trailer.
I remember trying to tell my mother about what had happened. I was very young, so she didn’t take me seriously, just telling me there was no such thing as ghosts. This story has stayed with me throughout my life. Sometimes I think there really were ghosts in that boy’s trailer; other times I think maybe his parents worked for Disney and had this trick set up in their trailer. I guess I’ll never know.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Jaym Gates
Horror and erotica. Zombies and romance. Rigor Amortis.
Maybe a tender love story is your thing, a husband doting on his rotting wife’s corpse. Or perhaps a forbidden encounter in a secret cafe, serving up the latest in delectable zombie cuisine, or some dirt-y, dirty dancing in the old-time honky-tonk. Voodoo sex-slavs and vending machine body-parts?
You’ll find those here, too.
Whatever your flavor, these short tales of undead Romance, Revenge, Risk, and Raunch will leave you shambling, moaning, and clawing for more.
And come he slow, or come he fast, It is but Death who comes at last.
--Sir Walter Scott, “Marmion”, 1808
AUTHORS:
Pete “Patch” Alberti
Damon B
Renée Bennett
Xander Briggs
Jennifer Brozek
J. R. Campbell
Johann Carlisle
Nathan Crowder
Carrie Cuinn
R. Schuyler Devin
Annette Dupree
Michael Ellsworth
Jay Faulkner
Kaolin Imago Fire
M. G. Gillett
Sarah Goslee
Kay T. Holt
Calvin D. Jim
Alex Masterson
Edward Morris
Don Pizarro
Michael Phillips
John Nakamura Remy
V. R. Roadifer
Andrew Penn Romine
Armand Rosamilia
Jacob Ruby
Steven James Scearce
Lance Schonberg
Lucia Starkey
R. E. VanNewkirk
Wendy N. Wagner.
EDITORS:
Jaym Gates & Erika Holt
ARTISTS:
Robert “Nix” Nixon
Galen Dara
Miranda Jean.
PUBLISHER: Brian Hades, Absolute XPress
Maybe a tender love story is your thing, a husband doting on his rotting wife’s corpse. Or perhaps a forbidden encounter in a secret cafe, serving up the latest in delectable zombie cuisine, or some dirt-y, dirty dancing in the old-time honky-tonk. Voodoo sex-slavs and vending machine body-parts?
You’ll find those here, too.
Whatever your flavor, these short tales of undead Romance, Revenge, Risk, and Raunch will leave you shambling, moaning, and clawing for more.
And come he slow, or come he fast, It is but Death who comes at last.
--Sir Walter Scott, “Marmion”, 1808
AUTHORS:
Pete “Patch” Alberti
Damon B
Renée Bennett
Xander Briggs
Jennifer Brozek
J. R. Campbell
Johann Carlisle
Nathan Crowder
Carrie Cuinn
R. Schuyler Devin
Annette Dupree
Michael Ellsworth
Jay Faulkner
Kaolin Imago Fire
M. G. Gillett
Sarah Goslee
Kay T. Holt
Calvin D. Jim
Alex Masterson
Edward Morris
Don Pizarro
Michael Phillips
John Nakamura Remy
V. R. Roadifer
Andrew Penn Romine
Armand Rosamilia
Jacob Ruby
Steven James Scearce
Lance Schonberg
Lucia Starkey
R. E. VanNewkirk
Wendy N. Wagner.
EDITORS:
Jaym Gates & Erika Holt
ARTISTS:
Robert “Nix” Nixon
Galen Dara
Miranda Jean.
PUBLISHER: Brian Hades, Absolute XPress
Brandon H Bell
- Keep an eye on M-Brane SF for the pending release of their first quarterly print edition. In promotion of the M-Brane Double, featuring novellas by Alex Jeffers and me, the quarterly features stories from each of us. Mine is a reprint first published in the now defunct Nossa Morte, and is my one straight zombie story. Well, a zombie-apocalypse extrapolation of King Lear featuring masks of flesh, dead birds, and Crick pamphlets. It's called Found Objects and I think it's a nice, creepy little tale.
- Along the right side of my blog, you will find a small audio player with a picture of snowmen. Click play, turn up your sound, lean back with something warm to drink, and venture out into a cold night where hearts eclipsed with the greatest loss imaginable risk the unknown so that one more tiny life might survive. Animate snowmen and darker things.
And for all the vampire lovers out there... and I don't mean these shiny-skinned eternal teenagers that come (a long way) after Anne Rice. No, I mean the readers who longs for a big, bad, mean vampire tale... Forget The Fall, Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan's follow-up to by-the-numbers but fun enough The Strain.
Whereas The Strain presented readers with a pretty nice setup in its first third, the remainder of the book fell back on some fairly standard Vamp genre cliches. Its biggest virtue proved the story that might follow in the remaining entries is this trilogy. The Strain arrived before Justin Cronin's The Passage, and hinted at a vampire apocalypse to follow in the subsequent volumes. Not original by any means, but a possibly a nice change of pace.
Too bad we get The Fall instead.
The Fall reads like an alternate history Blade 3: just not as good. I'm a big Del Toro fan... that is to say, I'm a big fan of his movies. I suspect the imaginings that led to this story will eventually make a decent vampire movie saga. It probably should have remained in that realm. One of my biggest criticisms is that the first fifty pages telegraphs all the important events of the first book and the character relationships. If a writer is going to do this, just info-dump it in a short 'here's what's happened so far' at the start ( I think King takes this approach in the later Dark Tower books), and then get to telling the tale. The story improves a bit once that first fifty pages is done, but just barely.
I don't do a lot of negative reviews, and it's pretty safe to bag on such a large property: The Fall will sell like hotcakes whatever I have to say. I love genre fiction, and a good vampire adventure tale like McCammon's They Thirst is like few other pleasures. I can't decide if The Fall is simply too cynical in its best-seller-ism delivery, or if it is the case of too much vision and not enough heart. Ohhh, wouldn't it be cool if we have a Luchador vampire hunter? What about a bunch of blind kid vampires?!
Oooooo, and lets have all the gang-bangers form an alliance to fight the vampires... because killing shit and being bad-ass is their blood, right? Writing this, it really should be cooler than it is.
In all fairness, I am over half-way through, and other books have won me over past this point. The Scar is one that didn't really click for me until Mieville's characters arrived at the island with the mosquito people. Now that was some bad-assery.
Justin Cronin, though doing quite well with The Passage has also received some slights to the effect of 'oh, a literary dude has decided to out-genre the genre guys and gals'. I have no clue how true that is and it doesn't matter to me either way. The Passage is a fine entry into the vampire/apocalyptic horror subgenres exemplified by I Am Legend, They Thirst/ Swan Song, Salem's Lot/ The Stand, and even Mieville's The Tain.
My next read is Stephen Chapman's The Troika. I can't take any more vampires. :)
BB
- Along the right side of my blog, you will find a small audio player with a picture of snowmen. Click play, turn up your sound, lean back with something warm to drink, and venture out into a cold night where hearts eclipsed with the greatest loss imaginable risk the unknown so that one more tiny life might survive. Animate snowmen and darker things.
And for all the vampire lovers out there... and I don't mean these shiny-skinned eternal teenagers that come (a long way) after Anne Rice. No, I mean the readers who longs for a big, bad, mean vampire tale... Forget The Fall, Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan's follow-up to by-the-numbers but fun enough The Strain.
Whereas The Strain presented readers with a pretty nice setup in its first third, the remainder of the book fell back on some fairly standard Vamp genre cliches. Its biggest virtue proved the story that might follow in the remaining entries is this trilogy. The Strain arrived before Justin Cronin's The Passage, and hinted at a vampire apocalypse to follow in the subsequent volumes. Not original by any means, but a possibly a nice change of pace.
Too bad we get The Fall instead.
The Fall reads like an alternate history Blade 3: just not as good. I'm a big Del Toro fan... that is to say, I'm a big fan of his movies. I suspect the imaginings that led to this story will eventually make a decent vampire movie saga. It probably should have remained in that realm. One of my biggest criticisms is that the first fifty pages telegraphs all the important events of the first book and the character relationships. If a writer is going to do this, just info-dump it in a short 'here's what's happened so far' at the start ( I think King takes this approach in the later Dark Tower books), and then get to telling the tale. The story improves a bit once that first fifty pages is done, but just barely.
I don't do a lot of negative reviews, and it's pretty safe to bag on such a large property: The Fall will sell like hotcakes whatever I have to say. I love genre fiction, and a good vampire adventure tale like McCammon's They Thirst is like few other pleasures. I can't decide if The Fall is simply too cynical in its best-seller-ism delivery, or if it is the case of too much vision and not enough heart. Ohhh, wouldn't it be cool if we have a Luchador vampire hunter? What about a bunch of blind kid vampires?!
Oooooo, and lets have all the gang-bangers form an alliance to fight the vampires... because killing shit and being bad-ass is their blood, right? Writing this, it really should be cooler than it is.
In all fairness, I am over half-way through, and other books have won me over past this point. The Scar is one that didn't really click for me until Mieville's characters arrived at the island with the mosquito people. Now that was some bad-assery.
Justin Cronin, though doing quite well with The Passage has also received some slights to the effect of 'oh, a literary dude has decided to out-genre the genre guys and gals'. I have no clue how true that is and it doesn't matter to me either way. The Passage is a fine entry into the vampire/apocalyptic horror subgenres exemplified by I Am Legend, They Thirst/ Swan Song, Salem's Lot/ The Stand, and even Mieville's The Tain.
My next read is Stephen Chapman's The Troika. I can't take any more vampires. :)
BB
Meredith
Please take a moment to check out Meredith Holmes's contribution to the Halloween Reading Blog Tour:
It's not really Halloween without dressing up, pretend-time and a healthy dose of fantasy. This book isn't due out till January but it is available for pre-order in late October around Halloween! (See, another way this is related! ) and some of the authors have snippets available for reading on their own sites and blogs.
Steampowered is an anthology of lesbian stories from a variety of fantasyand sci-fi authors, including myself, that is being published by Torquere Press. The stories are not all erotica but several do have strong sexual themes and/or elements and they are all written featuring Lesbian characters.
One of my own stories, Love in the Time of Airships, is featured in this anthology and I'm thrilled to be part of such a great group of authors. Love is set during the Franco-Prussian War and features, well,
airships. It's a love story (gee, obviously!) but also an alternate history, like many of the stories in the anthology. In the spirit of the holidays, I'm posting a snippet of it at my website.
More information can be found at the editor's personal blog.
It's not really Halloween without dressing up, pretend-time and a healthy dose of fantasy. This book isn't due out till January but it is available for pre-order in late October around Halloween! (See, another way this is related! ) and some of the authors have snippets available for reading on their own sites and blogs.
Steampowered is an anthology of lesbian stories from a variety of fantasyand sci-fi authors, including myself, that is being published by Torquere Press. The stories are not all erotica but several do have strong sexual themes and/or elements and they are all written featuring Lesbian characters.
One of my own stories, Love in the Time of Airships, is featured in this anthology and I'm thrilled to be part of such a great group of authors. Love is set during the Franco-Prussian War and features, well,
airships. It's a love story (gee, obviously!) but also an alternate history, like many of the stories in the anthology. In the spirit of the holidays, I'm posting a snippet of it at my website.
More information can be found at the editor's personal blog.
Colin
A number of active and emerging editors have started to cross-post in an interesting collaborative project called Blog Tours. One of their themes for October is -unsurprisingly- Hallowe'en. :)
So for the next few days, I'll be handing the reins to them, one after the other.
We've got a short Hallowe'en piece from Zanna Dobbs, editor Brandon H Bell talking about his new project The Aether Age, Jaym Gates on vampires, and more to come as well.
Meanwhile, my anthology Dark Spires is nearing readiness, just a fraction too late for Hallowe'en...but hey, let's stretch the point, shall we?
Dark Spires is subtitled Speculative Fiction From Hardy Country and contains short stories from Liz Williams, author of the Inspector Chen novels, award winning author Sarah Singleton, Jo Hall, author of the Hierath saga, Gareth L Powell, Eugene Byrne and many more.
We've got multi-dimensional predators that only one man can see, a dragon made of corpses, sea wolves invading a seaside town, mysterious appartions plaguing a town near Glastonbury, and bride locked in a magical power battle with her husband's mother near Avalon.
It's available as a paperback to order from the publishers's website, or you can buy as an e-book from Saturday November 6th. I'll be running extracts all next week on my website, so feel free to stop by and rifle through the pages!
We look forward to seeing you soon...
So for the next few days, I'll be handing the reins to them, one after the other.
We've got a short Hallowe'en piece from Zanna Dobbs, editor Brandon H Bell talking about his new project The Aether Age, Jaym Gates on vampires, and more to come as well.
Meanwhile, my anthology Dark Spires is nearing readiness, just a fraction too late for Hallowe'en...but hey, let's stretch the point, shall we?
Dark Spires is subtitled Speculative Fiction From Hardy Country and contains short stories from Liz Williams, author of the Inspector Chen novels, award winning author Sarah Singleton, Jo Hall, author of the Hierath saga, Gareth L Powell, Eugene Byrne and many more.
We've got multi-dimensional predators that only one man can see, a dragon made of corpses, sea wolves invading a seaside town, mysterious appartions plaguing a town near Glastonbury, and bride locked in a magical power battle with her husband's mother near Avalon.
It's available as a paperback to order from the publishers's website, or you can buy as an e-book from Saturday November 6th. I'll be running extracts all next week on my website, so feel free to stop by and rifle through the pages!
We look forward to seeing you soon...
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Halloween Blog tour1
A Haunting Ride
By
Zanna G. Dobbs
The night was dark and dreary. The moon hiding behind the clouds that completely covering the sky. Afternoon was slowly changing into evening when my car choked its last gasp of gas. At least I hoped it was only out of gas. Not being mechanicly inclined I could not be sure. The rain began shortly after my car broke down. At first it was a slow steady drizzle. I thought I could wait it out and still have time to walk into the nearest town before full dark. According to the last sign the town couldn't be more than 5 miles away. Although I could see no lights indicating a dwelling anywhere in sight. After hours waiting for the rain to let up it began falling harder and soon I could not even see the tree that I had tried to pull off the road under. I had missed by about 50 feet. A dark as deep as any I had ever seen before surrounded me. Leaving me wondering if there was anyone left alive.
Suddenly the darkness behind me was lessened. There were two spots of light coming towards me. I thought it might be a car but it was moving way too slow. The slight rise I was sitting on seemed to slow it down even more. Chills ran down my back as every ghost story I had ever heard ran through my mind. The lights crept closer and closer. Then as they were nearly on me I could see that it was a car inching along. I stained to see the driver. The car was empty. No one was driving. How could this be? I had just a moment to think about what I should do stay here or take a ride in the only car I had seen since I had pulled over. I opened my door and jumped into the haunted car. My breath sounded loud in my ears as I searched the car. It was only going as fast as I could walk but it I would be dry. If only I could keep my mind off of the fact that there was no one driving. I kept looking around inside the car and there really did not seem to be anyone there.
Just then the car topped the rise and the faint lights of the promised town came into view. The downhill slope began pulling the car towards the lights I hoped spelled safety and a way to get my own car back. Soon we were doing a nice clip and I spotted an all-night store off on the right. I counted down and jumped from the moving vehicle just as we almost passed the store. I ran inside then looked back to see if the car had disappeared like in all the ghost car stories I had heard over the years. There running after the car were four teenage boys. The mystery of the locomotive power of the car was solved. Before they saw me I ran into the bathroom where I used the hand blower to dry off. After hiding for a good 30 minutes I emerged to an empty store. Dry and safe I laughed at my imagination and the night somehow seemed not so dark and dreary after all.
By
Zanna G. Dobbs
The night was dark and dreary. The moon hiding behind the clouds that completely covering the sky. Afternoon was slowly changing into evening when my car choked its last gasp of gas. At least I hoped it was only out of gas. Not being mechanicly inclined I could not be sure. The rain began shortly after my car broke down. At first it was a slow steady drizzle. I thought I could wait it out and still have time to walk into the nearest town before full dark. According to the last sign the town couldn't be more than 5 miles away. Although I could see no lights indicating a dwelling anywhere in sight. After hours waiting for the rain to let up it began falling harder and soon I could not even see the tree that I had tried to pull off the road under. I had missed by about 50 feet. A dark as deep as any I had ever seen before surrounded me. Leaving me wondering if there was anyone left alive.
Suddenly the darkness behind me was lessened. There were two spots of light coming towards me. I thought it might be a car but it was moving way too slow. The slight rise I was sitting on seemed to slow it down even more. Chills ran down my back as every ghost story I had ever heard ran through my mind. The lights crept closer and closer. Then as they were nearly on me I could see that it was a car inching along. I stained to see the driver. The car was empty. No one was driving. How could this be? I had just a moment to think about what I should do stay here or take a ride in the only car I had seen since I had pulled over. I opened my door and jumped into the haunted car. My breath sounded loud in my ears as I searched the car. It was only going as fast as I could walk but it I would be dry. If only I could keep my mind off of the fact that there was no one driving. I kept looking around inside the car and there really did not seem to be anyone there.
Just then the car topped the rise and the faint lights of the promised town came into view. The downhill slope began pulling the car towards the lights I hoped spelled safety and a way to get my own car back. Soon we were doing a nice clip and I spotted an all-night store off on the right. I counted down and jumped from the moving vehicle just as we almost passed the store. I ran inside then looked back to see if the car had disappeared like in all the ghost car stories I had heard over the years. There running after the car were four teenage boys. The mystery of the locomotive power of the car was solved. Before they saw me I ran into the bathroom where I used the hand blower to dry off. After hiding for a good 30 minutes I emerged to an empty store. Dry and safe I laughed at my imagination and the night somehow seemed not so dark and dreary after all.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
We visited this book last week but this week we also get a little incite into one of the authors. Enjoy.
AETHER AGE ANTHOLOGY
A past remade…
Millennia ago, Greece, Egypt, and other civilizations experienced industrial revolutions beneath a sky that, in a blink of history, burgeoned into life and mystery…
With one intervention to human progress, technological civilizations arose. With one more fantastic change in Nature, humanity broke the bonds of Earth and ventured out into the aether…
Take flight on airships, balloons, and wooden rockets. Soar with winged hoplites, exiled princesses, explorers and philosophers. Witness the struggle for equality, freedom, and power like you never have before.
Aether Age Anthology: Interview with author Jaym Gates
I have to admit, when I first heard about the Aether Age project, I kind of wrote it off. Like so many other things, I’d heard about it on Twitter, when a couple of guys asked me if I would be involved. At the time, I was in California for a week, on vacation, and heading for some major deadlines.
I said I’d try. I wrote four different starts. My computer crashed, I was trying to put out a wildfire in the writing community I was administrating, I was running too tight on the deadlines as it was. On top of that, it’s been established that I don’t play well in other people’s worlds. I’m an unrepentant devotee of massive, detailed worlds, and had several failed collaborative attempts behind me.
A week before the deadline, I took my retired dinosaur of a computer and hammered out a first draft, a second draft, polished, sent it in 2 days before deadline…before the deadline was extended. The editors asked me if I’d be interested in writing another story. Ok, well, if you insist.
The world of Aether Age is difficult to write in, the first time through. Anything dealing with ancient Egypt or Greece is going to be problematic. The sheer level of detail is boggling, and the confusion. Was this ruler male, female, 1st Dynasty or 20th? Add a complex alternate history, and there are thousands of possibilities. It’s like trying to find the one special blueberry in a 5 pound box.
But, it does get a writer thinking. How would technologies change religion? How would airships change economy? How much horror would you get from mixing an unstable, unknown eternity of space with an endless pantheon of gods?
My stories explored the horror. What happens when criminals and monsters are abandoned on a rock, thousands of miles from anything they know, reliant on an atmosphere that goes away every now and then? What are those shadows in the dark? Where did the legends of Hades come from? What new gods would form in the endless depths of space, and how would they be worshiped?
Join me in the Aether, in the Age of Helios, this fall. It will be the adventure of a lifetime.
-Jaym Gates
Explore a history transformed and travel into the heavens to discover what awaits the civilizations of Humanity in…
The Aether Age: Helios
Book One of the Aether Age Codex
See the book at: http://www.Aether-Age.com
Watch the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdoYnhCqtp0&feature=player_embedded
AETHER AGE ANTHOLOGY
A past remade…
Millennia ago, Greece, Egypt, and other civilizations experienced industrial revolutions beneath a sky that, in a blink of history, burgeoned into life and mystery…
With one intervention to human progress, technological civilizations arose. With one more fantastic change in Nature, humanity broke the bonds of Earth and ventured out into the aether…
Take flight on airships, balloons, and wooden rockets. Soar with winged hoplites, exiled princesses, explorers and philosophers. Witness the struggle for equality, freedom, and power like you never have before.
Aether Age Anthology: Interview with author Jaym Gates
I have to admit, when I first heard about the Aether Age project, I kind of wrote it off. Like so many other things, I’d heard about it on Twitter, when a couple of guys asked me if I would be involved. At the time, I was in California for a week, on vacation, and heading for some major deadlines.
I said I’d try. I wrote four different starts. My computer crashed, I was trying to put out a wildfire in the writing community I was administrating, I was running too tight on the deadlines as it was. On top of that, it’s been established that I don’t play well in other people’s worlds. I’m an unrepentant devotee of massive, detailed worlds, and had several failed collaborative attempts behind me.
A week before the deadline, I took my retired dinosaur of a computer and hammered out a first draft, a second draft, polished, sent it in 2 days before deadline…before the deadline was extended. The editors asked me if I’d be interested in writing another story. Ok, well, if you insist.
The world of Aether Age is difficult to write in, the first time through. Anything dealing with ancient Egypt or Greece is going to be problematic. The sheer level of detail is boggling, and the confusion. Was this ruler male, female, 1st Dynasty or 20th? Add a complex alternate history, and there are thousands of possibilities. It’s like trying to find the one special blueberry in a 5 pound box.
But, it does get a writer thinking. How would technologies change religion? How would airships change economy? How much horror would you get from mixing an unstable, unknown eternity of space with an endless pantheon of gods?
My stories explored the horror. What happens when criminals and monsters are abandoned on a rock, thousands of miles from anything they know, reliant on an atmosphere that goes away every now and then? What are those shadows in the dark? Where did the legends of Hades come from? What new gods would form in the endless depths of space, and how would they be worshiped?
Join me in the Aether, in the Age of Helios, this fall. It will be the adventure of a lifetime.
-Jaym Gates
Explore a history transformed and travel into the heavens to discover what awaits the civilizations of Humanity in…
The Aether Age: Helios
Book One of the Aether Age Codex
See the book at: http://www.Aether-Age.com
Watch the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdoYnhCqtp0&feature=player_embedded
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