Author: James Viscosi

Random Rejection: Weird Tales, “The Short Route”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

It’s been a while since I reached into my giant stack of rejection (and a few acceptance) letters, so I figured it was time to totter off to random.org and ask them what letter I should choose. They told me “V”, but I already did the only V in my pile, so I asked them for a different letter and they told me “W”. As it turns out, nearly all my “W” rejections are from Weird Tales, or, as indicated in the scan below, “Worlds of Fantasy and Horror”, which is, uh, not quite as catchy a title as Weird Tales. (The astute reader will not be surprised to learn that this temporary title change involved the legal system.)

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Teaser Tuesday 8/1/2017: “Rebecca”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week I’m reading Rebecca, the classic novel by Daphne du Maurier, in which a very young (and apparently nameless) narrator is swept off her feet by the dashing Maxim de Winter, quickly marries him, and goes off to live with him in his vast estate, Manderley, where it seems that―much like in the American South―the past is never really dead, and isn’t even past.

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Teaser Tuesday 7/25/17: “Harbinger of Doom”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

So lately I’ve been reading Harbinger of Doom, a bundle of three fantasy novels by Glenn Thater:

harbinger
I never was the type to hang with the harbingers of doom

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Not A Review Of “X-Men: Apocalypse”

~ James Viscosi ~ 3 Comments

So last week we (meaning I) watched “X-Men: Apocalypse“, the latest of the X-Men movies, at least until “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” comes out. Hmm, I wonder what “Dark Phoenix” will be about …

x-men-apocalypse
Talk to the hand.

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Teaser Tuesday 7/11/2017: “Plot it Yourself”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

These days, I do nearly all my reading on an e-reader, currently an InkBook Obsidian, but I do on occasion return to the dead tree books of yore. Typically this will be because someone gave or loaned me said dead tree edition. Such was the case with Dune, which, being a door-stopper of a book, I eventually bought in e-form so I wouldn’t have to fight with it when reading at lunch; and such is the case with the Nero Wolfe books, which my father sent to me in a box a while back. I’ve read them all before, but now I’m reading them again, because who doesn’t like to spend some time visiting old friends? The one I’m currently into is Plot it Yourself, in which Wolfe goes up against a con artist with a fondness for pretending that popular novels are plagiarisms of his or her own work, and also for knives.

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Teaser Tuesday 7/4/2017: “MaddAddam”

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This week I’m (still) reading MaddAddam, the final installment in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian/post-apocalyptic series that began with Oryx & Crake. Dystopian fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction are not the same thing, of course, but all three books in the MaddAddam trilogy qualify as both because their present-day scenes take place after the destruction of (most of) humanity, while their flashback scenes take place in the dystopian burbclaves that preceded the apocalypse. Hence you get to eat your dystopia and have it too. Or something like that.

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“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” Board Game Scenario: “Dracula”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

A while back I posted an Angelus scenario for the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” board game from Hasbro, which eventually drew a comment from a fellow Buffy show and board game fan who praised the scenario for being so in tune with the spirit of the show. I replied to this reader that I had a number of other “Buffy” scenarios that I had created, and said that I would post them over the course of the last few months. So far I’ve posted my scenarios for the episodes “Halloween” and “Hush“, but I’m still not done! Here is my scenario for the episode in which Buffy went up against the most notorious vampire of all. And no, it’s not this one:

 

 

It’s this one:

 

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Teaser Tuesday 6/20/17: “MaddAddam”

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This week I’m reading MaddAddam, the third part of Margaret Atwood‘s post-dystopian/post-apocalyptic trilogy that began with Oryx & Crake and continued with The Year of the Flood — although because Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood ran more or less concurrently, perhaps “continued” isn’t quite the right word. Let’s say “was expanded” instead.

MaddAddam
Madam, I’m Adam.

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Teaser Tuesday 6/13/2017: “Husk”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week I’m reading Husk, by D.P. Prior, in which a bounty hunter “Maresman” arrives in the Old West alien town of Portis on the trail of an outlaw “husk”, or demon, who is apparently responsible for the deaths of at least five people. Hilarity does not ensue.

husk
It’s right behind me, isn’t it?

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Random Rejection: Zoetrope Magazine, “Silkscreen”

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It’s been a while since I reached into my giant stack of rejection (and a few acceptance) letters, so I decided it was about time to visit random.org and have it pick me a character to represent the name of the agent, magazine, or publisher who had rejected (or maybe accepted) a submission. When it came back with a Z, I pretty much knew that it was going to have to be a rejection from Francis Ford Coppola’s magazine Zoetrope, as I couldn’t think of any other venue starting with that letter to which I had ever submitted. Although I did find a letter in the “Z” section from one of my cousins, who had read my story “The Short Route” and sent me back a note that it should be expanded into a novel, a movie, or both. (Maybe someday, Susan!) But of course I couldn’t use a letter from a cousin for a Random Rejection, and so, Zoetrope it is!

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