Teaser Tuesday 12/31/2013: “Beginning of a Hero (Legends of Windemere)”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

Still reading Beginning of a Hero, by Charles E. Yallowitz, this week.  Our hero, one Luke Callindor, is not having much luck yet dealing with the Lich, but has assembled an actual D&D party at this point, consisting of Luke, the “forest tracker”, which appears to correspond to a D&D Ranger; Nimby, the halfling thief; Fritz Warrenberg, the gnome illusionist from, apparently, Germany; and Aedyn the half-elven cleric. They are also being assisted by a “drite”, which seems to amount to a faerie dragon, right down to its use of a confusion-inducing breath weapon. (There is a very slight possibility that I still have most of the old Monster Manual memorized.)

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 12/31/2013: “Beginning of a Hero (Legends of Windemere)”” →

Teaser Tuesday 12/24/2013: “Beginning of a Hero (Legends of Windemere)”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

This week, I’m reading a book called Beginning of a Hero, by Charles E. Yallowitz, in which a half-elf “forest tracker” and his, apparently, German Shepherd dog battle the forces of evil.

This dog is not to be confused with Dennis’s friend Spicoli, who battles the forces of not having Doritos and not getting enough sleep.

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 12/24/2013: “Beginning of a Hero (Legends of Windemere)”” →

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

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

Not A Review Of “Flight”

~ James Viscosi ~ 3 Comments

So a few weeks ago we were between Netflix discs (“The Heat” had gone back, “Pacific Rim” had not yet arrived), and while looking through the list of streaming movies one evening, I noticed that “Flight” was there.  I’d been interested in seeing that for a while, and my wife is a fan of Denzel Washington, so I decided to start watching it, which led to a conversation that went something like the one described below:

Continue reading “Not A Review Of “Flight”” →

Teaser Tuesday 11/26/2013: “Subpoena Colada”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

Still reading Subpoena Colada this week, in which our hero, a frequently-drunken lawyer (is there any other kind in fiction?), is trying to salvage the wreckage of his career and that of his highest-profile client, the apparently washed-up rock star Brian Fey (or as I keep thinking of him, Bryan Ferry — who I am NOT calling washed-up, so don’t start hating), who is being taken to the cleaners by a lawsuit from his former band-mates and who is, apparently, about to become a suspect in the murder of his replacement. Sort of like if Peter Gabriel had been suspected of killing Phil Collins, I guess.

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 11/26/2013: “Subpoena Colada”” →

Teaser Tuesday 11/12/2013: “Subpoena Colada”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

Lately I’ve been treating the free books I’ve accumulated from the BookBub mailing list sort of like streaming Netflix movies — that is, as disposable. After a chapter or two, if they haven’t grabbed me, I’m deleting them and moving on. Actually, that’s not really what I do with Netflix movies; I’ll pretty much watch any movie through to the end, even August Rush, which I infamously panned a few years back, earning me the ire of all six people who thought it was a good film. Although we did recently press “Eject” on Across the Universe after one too many mangled Beatles songs. Fiona Apple covering “Across the Universe” for the Pleasantville soundtrack, this was not.


Watch this instead of the movie “Across the Universe”.
It’s two hours shorter and has better music.

But I digress.

Anyway, I just started reading a new free book, a crime/mystery/comic thriller called Subpoena Colada, by Mark Dawson, which sort of sounds like a title that Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard might have come up with. Hmm, am I setting my expectations too high again? Uh oh.

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 11/12/2013: “Subpoena Colada”” →

Teaser Tuesday 10/29/2013: “Desolate: The Complete Trilogy”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

So this week I’m reading a book called Desolate: The Complete Trilogy, by Robert Brumm, in which Earth is terrorized by the double whammy of a highly contagious hemorrhagic flu-like illness and giant carnivorous bad-tempered crawdads. Or something like that. Every time the space-lobsters show up I think of the Prawns from “District 9”.

Christopher Johnson would like to know if you have any spare cat food.
Christopher Johnson would like to know if you have any spare cat food.

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/29/2013: “Desolate: The Complete Trilogy”” →

Teaser Tuesday 10/22/2013: “Sunglasses After Dark”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

This week I’m reading the vampire genre classic Sunglasses After Dark by Nancy Collins, which has been edited, reformatted and quasi-updated in a Kindle edition. Why “quasi-updated”? Well there are sporadic references to modern trifles like cell phones (and even an iPhone reference was dropped in), but nobody has a computer and I don’t remember anyone doing a Google search so far in their efforts to locate missing heiress Denise Thorne (who is now the vampiric vampire hunter Sonja Blue), which betrays the book’s late 1980s/early 1990s roots. I’m not complaining (though a number of Amazon reviewers are), since I did something similar with my vampire novel Long Before Dawn, updating it just enough to hand-wave away the fact that if everyone just had their cell phones turned on, the whole vampire hunting thing would have gone a lot more smoothly. But then, if vampire-hunting goes smoothly, what fun is that?

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/22/2013: “Sunglasses After Dark”” →

Teaser Tuesday 10/15/2013: “Where the Dead Talk”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

While still plodding along with finishing up part two of Shards, AKA The War of the Ravels Or Whatever I’m Going To Call It, I’m still managing to get in a little bit of reading done, mostly on free books I’ve accumulated from BookBub. This week I’m reading one called Where the Dead Talk, by Ken Davis, a horror novel set at the beginning of the American Revolution, in which an attempt to resurrect a young man recently killed in an accident by dumping him into a cursed lake goes badly, badly wrong. Call it Pet Sematary meets Last of the Mohicans meets … A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder.

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/15/2013: “Where the Dead Talk”” →

Teaser Tuesday 10/1/2013: “The Shadow of Black Wings”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week I’m still reading The Shadow of Black Wings by James Calbraith, from the BookBub mailing list.  I’m going to bend the rules a little bit this time in that this teaser quote from the book is not from the page I’m actually on, but it was simply too good not to use.  Here goes:

Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/1/2013: “The Shadow of Black Wings”” →