Monday, July 12, 2010

Review Status Update

Happy Monday morning to everyone. I had a nice weekend enjoying the sunny weather and cool nights we've been having lately. I've been gardening, floating a nearby river, hiking, starting up running again, and designing a book cover with AngryinIllinois - all of which makes me a little tardy with some reviews. Here's the update:

1. I posted a review of QUAKES AND STORMS at Authorsden. This version is expanded from the one that is also posted at Lulu, because Lulu limits the amount of text you can post. Authorsden does not.

2. I have an anonymous review of THE ETHEREAL GAZETTE 10 to post. It's long, so I need to figure out the best way to post it. It may as a separate downloadable PDF with some of the best excerpts posted directly on my blog.

3. I have my own review of THE ETHEREAL GAZETTE 10 in progress. I just need to review my notes and finish writing it. It will be posted on Authorsden, with excerpts here.

4. I have started reading the July issue of THE DARK FICTION SPOTLIGHT. Review to come.

5. I took Christopher Jacobsmeyer up on the offer he posted on Rusty's blog the other night and requested a copy of DEATH ROLL by Kevin Brown. This is a short chapbook of about 80 pages, which I look forward to reading and reviewing.

I'm going to try to get to all these within the next week, but no promises.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm looking forward to it all

Lewis said...

Woohoo! Will you be paying extra attention to "Lloyd's" Suicide Man story? Especially since his wife/girlfriend/pet moose had to meet Nicky in an undisclosed location to hand deliver it on CD-R!

Mistress Rowan said...

Jenny, I know you and I and a range of other snarks on here haven't spoken very nice words, but I would be interested to know what you think of House of Horror, and I am talking constructive words not bashing. As Stephen said, we all strive to work better and harder and it's always good to have someone with a impartial view to look things over and give an opinion. It woud be interesting if you would consider also joining my forum to warn others of Pacione. I know of many of House of Horror writers who have fallen for his crap and I do work hard to help other writers who submit to HOH whether they are established or new. I would also love to send you a pdf of one or two of our anthologies if you'd like for a review. And just for the record, I am not ass kissing, I just recognise that you do some good work here, albeit you're very blunt but you have certainly opened my eyes to a few things from reading this blog.

Mistress Rowan said...

I couldn't help but have a little nicky fun of my own..... enjoy!

u do realise that whatever you do wherever go go, you will be hunted down and blogged, parodied for the rest of your life. You should totally give up dude. You're wasting your time man

01:19Me
i think its time to just give in and maybe concentrate on how to write better if thats what you want to do

Nickolaus
Fuck you -- I am not going to up the magazine or the publishing company you cunt.

Nickolaus
I should have your facebook pulled for that one.

Me
lol

whatever freak!

Nickolaus
Telling me to give up -- you might as well tell me to go kill myself.

Telling me to give up -- you might as well tell me to go kill myself.

There is a special place in hell for you.

Me
i know ive been there its a wonderful plce

Nickolaus
I hope you get beheaded for that remark

Nickolaus
I fucking hate you.

Me
feelings mutual babes :*

Nickolaus
Why must you support that faceless terrorist.

I should report you for harassment and will.

Nickolaus
Kiss your facebook good bye you fucking cunt.

Nickolaus
Don't fuck with my company.

Me
have u seen thewriters cafe?

thats funny as hell

Nickolaus
I am not about to let some faggot turn it into a faggot mag.

It's bullshit.

Me
its funny

Nickolaus
GET AIDS BITCH

Me
love you too honey :*

Nickolaus
I am going to kill that son of a bitch for costing me a publication. I will close your forum down too.

Don't FUCK wtth me.

Just die bitc.

bitch

I don't find what that faggot did funny at all.

What if that was your publication he raped.

If you ever fuck with my imprint -- I will destroy your career.

Jenny said...

Sam, I'd definitely be up for reading one of your anthologies and writing up a review. It won't be snark (I reserve that for Nicky); I can't promise there will be *no* humor in it, but the review will be honest...and probably blunt. That's me.

I'll look around on your site tomorrow and find something that's in my range of likes - meaning rather less blood and gore and more psychological/intellectual horror, if you have something like that. Or feel free to suggest something.

Anonymous said...

These are my comments about Suicide man

Suicide man by Nickolaus Pacione, sorry, Lloyd Phillip Campbell

I’ll try to keep this short and succinct, but when you try to describe what’s wrong with a Pacione story, it’s easy to get carried away. This is the story he bigs up on the back cover, claiming it will be as controversial as Antichrist Superstar. Now we know why he does it. Just another example of his ego, his story must be the one we turn to first. It’s also the only story with illustrations – and they’re functional at best, which is more than can be said for the story.

In the opening paragraphs we learn that

“Back in 1990, no one really spoke of suicide in the open but it was a topic the church tried to avoid because a former pastor’s wife hung herself after a service.”

This has no relevance to anything as the story takes place entirely in 1987 as we then jump back 3 years and stay there. Also, we learn that she hung herself during the sermon… Maybe she found out she was going to be in this story and decided the corpse was the most dignified role.

As we’re told more detail of the suicide we find that –

“Rope strangled every bit of her neck.”

Did she have a particularly small neck? Was it a very thick rope? Maybe she’d wound it round a few times?

A few lines later we see the phrase “…while her now lifeless corpse…” Did she have a living corpse at one point? Come on Nicky, your guidelines said no zombies!

“Four days had passed after Donna Jacobson’s self-murder, was the wake.”

??? Am I the only person who thinks that makes less sense than usual?

The reverend makes a new friend at the wake.

“ ‘Reverend Jacobson, I would like to… blah blah boring blah for 4 lines of bad speech’ the stranger introduced himself.
‘What’s your name son?’ Rev Jacobson asked.
‘Randall Philbin, I run a small magazine …blah blah boring blah for another 4 lines of bad speech’ the stranger said, introducing himself.”

He’s already introduced himself once you fool!

In the middle of this rather tedious conversation we get this…

“She watched her father get beheaded in the middle of the living room with an ax.”

There’s no grammatical thing wrong with that, it’s just the funniest piece of dialogue I’ve ever seen. I rofl-ed at that one, never mind lol-ed.

When Nick himself, aka Justin appears, he’s described like this.

“Justin appeared young, somewhere between the age of twenty two to twenty four.”

So that’ll be 23 then?

And even my grammar check is screaming at me to stick an S on the end of age as there’s more than one mentioned so it’s a plural… but Nick, sorry Lloyd, knows best.

Discussing the Pastor’s wife’s death we hear

“ “If she was sleeping, would she be dreaming?” one of them discussed among themselves.”

No comment needed.

I could go on like this forever but I promised to try to keep it short. So lets summarise some bits.

We are told three times on one page (twice in the same paragraph) that Justin’s brother decorated the wall with his brain matter. This phrase appears twice more in the rest of the story, despite the fact that the first reference to his brother’s suicide is Justin thinking “Is this because my brother hanged himself?”

There are 16 separate references to the fact that Donna will burn in hell for committing suicide. The phrase “black, charred skin/flesh” appears 15 times in the story, despite its first appearance being on the page 4. The word fuck is referred to twice as the F-bomb.

Unknown said...

Are you only reviewing anthologies?

Jenny said...

No, that's just what has come my way so far. I would review other formats, too.