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.
Category: Writing
Teaser Tuesday 4/8/2014: “Legon Awakening: Book One in the Legon Series”
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
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!
Do You Have A Partially Completed Manuscript?
It’s been a while since I did a Random Rejection, so this week I thought I would reach into my giant file folder of writing correspondence and pull something out of it. But instead of either a rejection or an acceptance letter, I drew this instead:
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Teaser Tuesday 2/18/2014: “The Fall of the Empire”
No, not this empire:
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Teaser Tuesday 2/11/2014: “Death’s Hand”
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.
Teaser Tuesday 1/14/2014: “Khe”
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.
Teaser Tuesday 9/10/2013: “Deadland”
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.
Teaser Tuesday 8/27/13: “Black Onyx”
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.
Random Acceptance: Mindmares, “Rush Hour”
Well it’s been a while since I reached into my vast trove of ancient publisher response letters, so I figured it was about time to do so again. And what did I find this time? An acceptance letter from the old ‘zine “Mindmares”, for my old story “Rush Hour”. (See, it’s not ALL rejection letters in there.) Nothing to do with Jackie Chan or Chris Tucker, this is the story of a man who is stuck in traffic, reading the paper, and failing to notice that there’s a Very Bad Thing heading his way. Whoops.
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Viscosity 