TORMENTOR BY WILLIAM MEIKLE
11/3/2015
 Tormentor by William Meikle The haunted house story is one of the oldest tropes in horror fiction. It is one that nearly every writer falls back on at some point in their career. Many think that this it is an easy option. It's not, personally I think this is the hardest of all sub genres to write.
At the heart of Haunted House story there a couple of things, the sense of loss of control from the protagonist, and the sense of isolation from the normal world. A writer has to get these spot on otherwise their story is just going to feel like a PG-13 version of Rentaghost. Where all sense of atmosphere is lost to cheap shocks and cringe worthy dialogue. FICTION REVIEW - RICOCHET BY TIM DRY
10/3/2015
 RICOCHET BY TIM DRY RICOCHET is Tim Dry's first published novella and is my first taste of the author's work. Before embarking upon a read of the book, I did a little research into the man (also as a precursor to my interview with Tim, which can be found here); I discovered that Tim has pretty much done it all, often twice. He is the quintessential 'Renaissance Man', a Jack-Of-All-Trades, but master of many. He has acted in films, played in numerous music ventures and taken professional photographs of some very famous people. And now, following some short stories published in a few very well received anthologies and two autobiographies/memoirs of his time in the film industry, Tim has turned his hand to this longer work of fiction...
 DEATH'S REALM DEATH’S REALM Editors Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson Grey Matter Press 279 Pages Published January 6, 2015
This is a brilliant anthology; one of the best I have read in a very long time, akin to the Zippered Flesh series in its intelligent writing, well-crafted stories and taut editing.  Whenever I dive into one of Matt Shaw’s black cover books, I mentally prepare myself, and actually look forward to the disturbing, unsettling, and foreboding contents I will no doubt find within its covers. When Matt began talking about writing his most disgusting book to date, in all honestly, I had my doubts. All of his black cover books are cringe-worthy, nightmare-inducing tales, so how could it possibly get any worse? Don’t Read demonstrated just how much worse it could get.
 Sometimes, it just happens; wham! Visceral, ineffable; that shock of engagement when we shake someone's hand, say hello for the first time; at the opening credits of a film or when we read the first page of a book.
For those of us immersed in one media or another, that phenomena comes rarer and rarer the more exposed to material we become. Stories become tried and tested; patterns more familiar; tropes and traditions more overt. When it happens, it is something to treasure; something to effuse about and obsess over.  Either during or after reading this review of C. Jones’s Ascendance, you may be tempted to go to the Amazon link and avail yourself of the “Look Inside” feature.
Don’t. This is a horrible book. There is literally nothing good about it. Every single aspect of Ascendance, from the cover to the formatting to the writing is awful beyond belief. It’s not worth your time, even as a curiosity piece. |
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