Category: horror

Random Contract: Vampire Dan’s Story Emporium, “The Short Route”

~ James Viscosi ~ 6 Comments

So this week I reached into my big folder full of rejections (and the occasional acceptance) and pulled out something new: A contract! Arriving as it did in November of 1997, this was, if I remember correctly, my first-ever contract, for a story called “The Short Route” (AKA “My Cousin Susan’s Favorite Story Of Mine Ever”), in which a tenderfoot from Back East discovers that there’s more than just cattle on his first cattle drive. The story appeared in “Vampire Dan’s Story Emporium” a tiny regional magazine published in Syracuse that ran from 1997 to 2001.

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Teaser Tuesday: “Arisen, Book One: Fortress Britain”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

So this week I’m reading Fortress Britain, by Glynn James and Michael Stephen Fuchs, which mostly follows the activities of an elite military strike force in Britain as they attempt to deal with the aftermath of a (you guessed it) zombie apocalypse.

"Fortress Britain" Cover Art
“Send more Special Forces.”

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Four Questions And A Few Coincidences

~ James Viscosi ~ 6 Comments

So this week we interrupt our usual parade of “Teaser Tuesday”, “Random Rejection”, and “Let’s Try To Figure Out If My Wife Is Actually Paying Attention To Battlestar Galactica Or Not”* posts to answer a few quick questions posed to me by Donna over at Donna and the Dogs. Like me, Donna is a writer, but the parallels do not stop there!

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Teaser Tuesday 6/3/2014: Infected (Click Your Poison)

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week’s “Teaser Tuesday” comes from a book that’s a little bit different from most! Readers of “a certain age” may remember the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” such as The Cave of Time, the first in the series. Rather than being linearly structured, these books presented a series of scenes, at the end of which the protagonist (you) had to make a decision, then turn to the indicated page to see how things worked out for you. Pretty often that would be like this:

But then every once in a while it be like this:

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Teaser Tuesday 5/20/2014: “Jazz Funeral”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

So this week I’m reading Jazz Funeral, by Julie Smith, a murder mystery set in New Orleans. This is book #3 in a series featuring detective Skip Langdon. Since I got it for free off the BookBub mailing list, I didn’t have the luxury of going back and starting at book #1, but so far that doesn’t seem like a big deal.

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Teaser Tuesday 4/22/2014: “Bad Radio”

~ James Viscosi ~ Leave a comment

So this week I’m reading Bad Radio by Michael Langlois, in which an eternally-youthful former Army Ranger and the granddaughter of one of his old World War II army buddies have to stop a necromancer who is apparently plotting to set up a transmitter, call in an Eldritch Abomination, and destroy the world. Or something like that. At this point all I know is that the “bad radio” in question seems to be a metal ring with eight spikes on it, and it is apparently powered by sticking the spikes into the eye sockets of four people. Ouch.

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Broken Bad: The Search for Another Show

~ James Viscosi ~ 8 Comments

So I previously mentioned that, having finished “Breaking Bad“, I have now been charged with finding a new show that can catch and hold my wife’s attention. Although there’s been no shortage of suggestions on shows that might fit the bill, those who are familiar with my movie rating system (“This movie put my wife to sleep in X minutes”) will not be surprised to hear that the search is not going well. WARNING: Minor spoilers below!

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Teaser Tuesday 2/11/2014: “Death’s Hand”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week I’m reading Death’s Hand, by S.M. Reine, in which Buffy and her watcher Giles try to stop Glorificus the hell-goddess from destroying the … oh, wait, sorry, that was Season 5 of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer“. No, in Death’s Hand, the kopis (AKA sword) Elise and her aspis (AKA shield) James are trying to stop a hell-goddess from destroying the world by letting her Armageddon Clock get to midnight. This naturally involves fighting hordes of zombies, demons, ghosts, and at least one necromancer. Apparently no one told them they could just pay 4 mana to remove counters from the Armageddon Clock during anyone’s upkeep.

armageddon_clock

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Title Drop Tuesday: The Lonesome Death of Chicken Verrill

~ James Viscosi ~ Leave a comment
chicken1
“Chicken Verrill’s luck …”
chicken2
“… always in, always bad.”

Teaser Tuesday 12/10/2013: “Diary of the Displaced”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

So this week I’m reading a free Kindle book called Diary of the Displaced (Omnibus Edition), by Glynn James, in which an unfortunate fellow visits a gas station bathroom and then wakes up in a nightmarish alternate dimension populated by zombies, dog-things, giant snails, and a deranged dual-knife-wielding maniac who I suspect may be Jack the Ripper. I’m pretty sure he’s not Moonglum of Elwher; he’s much too tall. Anyway, if you needed another reason to avoid gas station bathrooms, there you go.

DiaryOfTheDisplaced

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