Tag: horror

New (To Me) “Night Watchman” Review

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

As I mentioned a while back, I periodically Google myself to see if there are any new reviews or other mentions of my stuff.  Evidently I don’t do it often enough, though, because I’ve only just now become aware of this review (published last August by Sharon of A Bookworm’s Journey; Sharon’s dog Rusty is good friends with Dennis the Vizsla, and the two can often be found conspiring together against the squirrels) of Night Watchman. A brief excerpt:

Once I started it it was hard to put down. The characters and places Viscosi created were engaging, interesting. I would have loved for Yolanda, a psychic, to have had a bigger part.

I can’t argue with that — by the time I was done writing this book, Yolanda had become my favorite character as well.  Perhaps she’ll get her own story some day …

Sharon gives Night Watchman 4 out of 5 stars.   Thanks, Sharon!

Random Rejection: E-scape, “Pinch Bobby ‘Til He Bleeds”

~ James Viscosi ~ 8 Comments

This week’s random rejection happens to be another one from E-scape, which you may remember from such other random rejections as “Comfort“.  Once again the editor has nice things to say about the story, but once again, she doesn’t like it enough to publish it, thus continuing my long tradition of entertaining editors for free.

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Random Rejection: Design Image Group, “Night Watchman”

~ James Viscosi ~ 7 Comments

So one of the things you hear when you are submitting fiction, especially long-form fiction, is that lengthy response times are good. It means that the publisher is seriously considering your manuscript, that it has probably passed from the slush pile through the first readers and is perhaps, even right now as we speak, sitting on an editor’s desk awaiting the final stamp of approval before it is accepted.

Or it could just mean that your rejection letter was lost in the mail.

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Oops

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

A while back I mentioned that Dragon Stones was now available on Amazon.com and BN.com, but Long Before Dawn hadn’t arrived there yet.  I recently took another look and LBD still wasn’t out in the big stores.  So I went back to Lulu and took a closer look at the project and noticed that, way down under the “price” section, it said something to the effect of “To be set when your book is approved”.  So evidently I forgot to click the “Approve” button after getting my last proof of LBD way back in, oh, April was it?  Just think of all the millions of dollars in sales I’ve lost because of that!  😐

Anyway, I have now clicked the “Approve” button, so Long Before Dawn should be showing up on Amazon.com and the other outlets soon.

A Portrait of the Artist as a (Very) Young Man

~ James Viscosi ~ 6 Comments

So my parents like to find old examples of things I wrote when I was a kid and send them to me, just to remind me that I, too, was once a child.  I thought it might be interesting to post one or two of them.  With that in mind, I present my classic tale of horror and suspense, “The Great Beast Invasion”.  If we assume that the date in the story is about when the story was written (which it probably is, given that kids are pretty much creatures of the “now” — just like dogs!), then I would’ve been six when I scribbled down this masterpiece.

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Random Acceptance: “Suicide Corners”

~ James Viscosi ~ 6 Comments

It had to happen eventually … I reached into my nine-inch-thick folder of responses and pulled out an acceptance letter.  But this one has a twist.

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Review: “The Orphanage”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

So this week we watched The Orphanage, which can perhaps best be described as a casserole of The Devil’s Backbone and The Others, with a pinch of The Sixth Sense and a little Poltergeist garnish.  Sadly, though, this casserole was only baked about three-quarters of the way, so it’s still a little runny on the inside.

The Orphanage wasn’t quite as good as most of those other films I just named as ingredients, and it was nowhere near as good as The Devil’s Backbone.  But it was much better than The Others, which my wife and I both found to be a great big predictable snoozefest.  (Even I almost fell asleep watching The Others.)

Anyway, The Orphanage involves, yes, an orphanage, and some orphans, and some treasure hunting, and some weird noises, and a tall, skinny, less funny version of Zelda Rubinstein’s medium, and some ghosts, and the usual crowd of people who don’t believe in ghosts vs. the one person who does.  It has a few jolty moments and an ending that I half saw coming and that half surprised the heck out of me.  I like to be surprised by movies, so I was half satisfied.

My wife had really been wanting to see The Orphanage, mostly on the strength of its good reviews and its association with Guillermo Del Toro, a director she worships, but only when the people in his movies are speaking Spanish.  Unfortunately, The Orphanage put her to sleep in about 30 minutes, and when she woke up, she didn’t bother to ask how it ended.  Not a good sign.

“Dragon Stones” Now Available

~ James Viscosi ~ 3 Comments

Dragon Stones is now available direct from Lulu.com!  I’m still putting the finishing touches on the formatting before submitting it for distribution via the usual channels, but at this point I think that further changes are unlikely.  (And if I do change something after you buy it, then you will have a rare limited edition copy!)

As I’ve mentioned, Dragon Stones is a fantasy novel, so anyone who’s been a little squeamish about reading A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder or Long Before Dawn or (especially) Night Watchman needn’t fear — the goriest thing in Dragon Stones is a swordfight between a couple of the characters (but I won’t spoil anything by saying which).  If you enjoy fantasy novels, check it out — I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

In other news, I’m still editing and formatting my ghost story Father’s Books as my next release.  Although it’s a horror novel (again), it’s not nearly as, um, intense (*COUGH* gory *COUGH*) as Night Watchman or Long Before Dawn, so even the squeamish might be able to read that one.  I’ll have my wife look at it and report back; nobody’s as squeamish as she is!

“Long Before Dawn” Available From Lulu.com!

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

Long Before Dawn is now available from Lulu.com in both print and electronic versions. Huzzah! It will eventually be available from Amazon.com and other booksellers, but that is still a week or two away as I have yet to receive my ISBN. I will post a follow-up when this is ready. In the meantime, if you’re interested in purchasing a copy of Long Before Dawn directly from my Lulu storefront, you can do so here (check the link in the sidebar) or here.

In the past, I’ve made a habit of giving free, signed copies of my books to anybody who asks for one. This is partly because I’m more interested in having readers than in making money (although I wouldn’t turn down big bucks for the movie rights), partly because hardly anybody asks for one, and partly because I’m not really comfortable exhorting people to buy my stuff. (This is why I need an agent.) However, it’s been pointed out that giving away books online could get prohibitively expensive, so I’m going to have to forgo the “free” part, and exhort people to buy my stuff*. I will still be more than happy to sign copies, though. If you’re interested, drop me a line.

Thanks, and happy reading!

*Please buy my stuff. (Maybe if I keep saying it, I’ll get used to it.)

Underground with the Mouthless Girl

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

Back when I wrote mostly horror, I accumulated quite a collection of reference books of ghosts, spirits, and various and sundry monsters. (This was before we could just hop on the Internets and pull information out of the worldwide series of tubes.) One of my favorite reference books was The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, which listed literally hundreds of ghouls and beasties from around the world. “Underground with the Mouthless Girl” is about a rather nasty ghost from India called a churel, which is the restless spirit of a woman who died in childbirth. “Underground with the Mouthless Girl” appeared in “The Earwig Flesh Factory” from Eraserhead Press in the summer of 2000.

This story is not particularly gory, but I’ve always considered it one of the most creepy and unsettling things I ever wrote. You have been warned.

The girl catches Michael Osborne’s eye as he comes out of the men’s room. She’s sitting on a tall stool at the end of the bar, with one long, impossibly shapely leg extended toward the floor, like a dancer doing a pirouette. Silky black hair flows over her shapely neck and shoulders with the grace of a waterfall, concealing what her scanty red summer dress would otherwise reveal.

Osborne slides onto the stool next to her; it is inexplicably unoccupied on this noisy, crowded night. She looks at him and smiles. Her skin has a lustrous walnut sheen that goes perfectly with her jet hair. Her eyes are wide and dark and shaped like some exotic nut. For a moment Osborne finds himself speechless.

“Hello,” she says.

Osborne finds his voice before he begins to stutter or babble. “Hi. I’m Michael. You can call me Mike.”

“I’m Madhur.” She has a slight Indian accent. Aren’t they the ones who do all that kinky Kama Sutra stuff? “You can call me …” She looks him up and down. “… anytime.”

Just who is picking up who, anyway?

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