Category: Excerpts

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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Teaser Tuesday 1/14/2014: “Khe”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

This week I’m reading Khe, by Alexes Razevich, which is one of those unusual SF novels which (so far, at least, and I’m 79% of the way through it according to my Kindle) takes place entirely on an alien world, with no human beings present at all. The majority of the characters are doumanas, members of a race which seems to be quite birdlike, only without the wings, the feathers, the beaks, or the claws.  Umm, well, I guess they’re not actually birdlike at all, except that they can “see” the magnetic field of their planet, and they’re migratory, unlike African swallows.  The story concerns one of these doumanas, Khe, who, after undergoing an experimental treatment to sort of help her lay eggs (it’s complicated) develops the ability to accelerate the growth of plants, at the cost of taking years off her own life. Upon realizing that she’s likely to die a very early death due to being continually pushed to improve crop production at her commune (yes, they live in communes … again, it’s complicated), she decides to take her chances in the wilderness.

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Teaser Tuesday 9/10/2013: “Deadland”

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

This week’s free book is Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland, by Mainak Dhar, in which, apparently, Alice follows an undead rabbit (or something like that) down a hole and becomes a zombie-slaying machine. If this reminds you of American McGee’s “Alice”, you’re not alone.

American_McGee_Alice_cover
Alice and the Cheshire Cat would like a word with you.

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Teaser Tuesday 8/27/13: “Black Onyx”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week’s free book is Black Onyx (A Superhero Thriller), by Victor Methos. Evidently this involves a relic from a lost civilization, which appears to be a suit of super-powered armor, but I haven’t yet gotten to the point where the armor has actually been found, so I’m sort of guessing. But given that the book description calls it the “Black Onyx” suit, reveals that there are more than one of it lying around under the Antarctic ice, and gives away quite a bit of the villain’s activities in his attempt to get one of the suits for himself, it seems like a pretty good guess.

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Teaser Tuesday 8/13/13: “Starliner”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week’s book, from the Baen free library, is Starliner, by David Drake. This is about an interstellar passenger ship (the “starliner” of the title, natch) that gets dragged into a war between two planets along its route. At least, I assume it’s going to get dragged into the war. Otherwise there’s not going to be much going on, is there?

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Tuesday Edit: Before And After

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

The first one or two times I make editing passes on a book, scenes tend to get longer. This is because I’ve found that if I keep going back and fleshing out earlier scenes as I think of more stuff, the book never gets finished. Here is an example, from a scene that introduces a character new to the story in part two of Shards:  Brennendah, a scientifically-minded Rittandic whose job is to study the Æther, also known as the void, which is gradually consuming the region where the Rittandics live.  (This loss of territory, known as the Unraveling, is what gives the territory—the Ravels—its name.)  Here is the original paragraph, followed by the revised version:

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Teaser Tuesday 7/30/2013: “Reversion: The Inevitable Horror”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week I’m reading Reversion: The Inevitable Horror, by one J. Thorn, which purports to be for fans of Clive Barker, Stephen King’s story “The Langoliers”, or a previous Teaser Tuesday entry, Hugh Howey’s Wool.  I can sort of see the comparison to “The Langoliers” in that Reversion also takes place in a world (possibly a pocket dimension) that is in the process of disintegrating, but (so far, anyway) it is nothing like Wool or anything I’ve read by Clive Barker.  In fact I wouldn’t even categorize it as horror, despite the presence of hordes of zombies, who mostly stand around in large groups attempting to prevent Our Heroes from moving.  In that, they are not unlike all the drivers who clog the freeways around Southern California.  Hmm, perhaps it’s a horror novel after all …

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Teaser Tuesday 7/16/2013: “The Sirens of Titan”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

Still reading The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut’s classic from 1959, this week. We’ve just gotten to the point of meeting the members of a new religion whose members handicap themselves by carrying heavy weights, dressing in ugly clothes, wearing bad makeup, etc.  Shades of “Harrison Bergeron“!  And by “shades” I do not mean “dark glasses worn to impair your eyesight and eliminate any advantage you may enjoy due to your superior vision.”

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Teaser Tuesday: “The Sirens of Titan”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week’s free Prime book is The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut’s classic from 1959. I haven’t picked up any Vonnegut since Hocus Pocus, but now that I’ve discovered that most of his books appear to be available to be borrowed for free via Prime, I’m sure to pick up more of them.

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Teaser Tuesday 6/18/13: Haunted House

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

This week’s Teaser Tuesday is from Haunted House, by J.A. Konrath and Jack Kilborn (who, despite having different names, are in fact the same person, unlike, say, “Simon & Simon”, who had the same name but were different people). The setup is that a number of characters from previous books by the same author have been brought together in a house where, apparently, everything is trying to kill them. If that sounds a bit “Saw”-ish to you then, well, I’ll have to take your word for it, because I have never seen a “Saw” movie. But it does sort of sound like what I imagine a “Saw” movie might involve.

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