Category: Excerpts

Teaser Tuesday 7/1/2014: “Once Upon A Curse”

~ James Viscosi ~ 3 Comments

So at the moment I’m reading (unusually for me) a couple of books: And Another Thing by Douglas Adams Eoin Colfer, which is book six in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” trilogy, and Once Upon A Curse, a short story collection that contains retellings of various famous fairy tale scenarios, including back to back revisions of “Sleeping Beauty”, from different points of view than the originals (no Maleficent so far though). I picked it up over a year ago because it was on sale for $0.99, plus it has a Peter S. Beagle story in it. You may have heard of him.

last_unicorn
Not to be confused with “My Little Pony”

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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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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 5/13/2014: “The God King”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week’s teaser comes from The God King by James A. West. The God King and The Golden Queen are no relation, despite having similar names.

"Shire? ... Baggins?"
“Shire? … Baggins?”

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Teaser Tuesday 5/6/2014: “The Golden Queen”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

So this week I’m reading The Golden Queen by Dave Wolverton, which starts out looking like a whimsical Irish fantasy novel before turning into a galaxy-spanning science fiction epic in which several adventurers and a talking bear (because why not?) with a name like a vacuum cleaner attempt to drive the conquering alien insectoid race known as the Dronon out of human space.

"This isn't the Hundred Acre Wood."
“This isn’t the Hundred Acre Wood …”

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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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Teaser Tuesday 4/8/2014: “Legon Awakening: Book One in the Legon Series”

~ James Viscosi ~ 3 Comments

This week’s Teaser comes from a book called Legon Awakening by Nicholas Taylor. The first in a series, I started this book and then put it down, for various reasons, most of which were enumerated in a rather amusing fashion by a reviewer named Meg over at Goodreads. (Unlike me, Meg appears to have actually finished the book.) I did enjoy the book’s prologue, sort of, in that I thought the obviously-odious “Iumenta” kind of sounded like the Melniboneans of “Elric” fame.

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See You On The Flip Side

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

Last week, I reached into my huge pile of old correspondence from bygone days when I was looking for an agent and/or publisher instead of putting my books out directly, which led to a re-posting of some ancient (and extremely extensive) correspondence from David H. Morgan, a literary agent and editor who is now, apparently, associated with the University of Richmond. In this correspondence Mr. Morgan explained that, to conserve paper, he was recycling rejected disposable manuscripts by using the clean side for his letter, a fact that generated a bit of interest (Mango Momma: “I want to see what’s on the back of that rejection letter.”) So here we go!

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Teaser Tuesday 2/18/2014: “The Fall of the Empire”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

No, not this empire:

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