Eden Royce's Blog, page 8

Dracula Arisen: A Review

I’m going to call Perry Lake a scholar of Dracula. While there are many who could, say give you details of a myriad of movies involving the blood-imbibing character, Lake is able to give you a deep draught of history with it.

Dracula Arisen is that draught.

This book is compilation of thirteen short stories, which make the connection between Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, one of the first Gothic stories to feature blood drinkers and Bram Stoker’s classic novel, Dracula. Lake has most certainly read and loved and been inspired by both pieces of literature.

But it doesn’t end there. He has researched the available information on Vlad the Impaler and several other characters to create a strong and vivid sense of place for this tale. One of Lake’s strengths lies in being able to capture the epic journey of an immortal creature and keep the sense of the mores of the time, which can be markedly different to our own. Inviting a vampire hunter and his son to a party where all of the other guests are vamps, for example.

Arisen is meticulously researched and it is evident Lake has a love for the iconic character and his origins. The book chronicles Vlad’s parents dancing with the devil, to the dark shadow surrounding his birth, to his rise to power via his violent battles and the subsequent torture of prisoners. (Yes, how he got the moniker “The Impaler” is described in detail.) After his death, Vlad is revived by a mad doctor whose intent is to keep him as a servant. But soon, Vlad frees himself to journey toward the image of Dracula most of have today.

In many places, I didn’t know what was fact and what was fiction. Which is a credit to Lake. Since the book is so flush with history, it got a bit too informative for me in places, at times reading almost like a textbook. As such, it was a good idea to have the book presented in short story format to allow for large passages of time and the inclusion of a rather sturdy number of supporting characters.

Arisen is a strong—extremely strong—work of historical fiction. There were times I felt engrossed in the story. Occasionally, however, I got a bit bogged down in what felt like information transfer as opposed to storytelling, which can happen if you aren’t as “into” a historical figure or a time period as the author.

Even so, I would recommend reading Dracula Arisen as Lake is able to create a sense of place and time for the reader that many authors struggle to craft. This book is a mastery of the epic form, which many writers shy away from due to the massive amounts of time, research, and the events that must be covered. The book is meticulously and cleverly written, powered by fact and events and doesn’t linger too long on emoting.

I rarely read what I consider to be plot-driven novels, so I had to approach this read differently, taking it in smaller bites instead of devouring it in a few sittings. But I’m glad I did as I found myself appreciating the scope of the book and Lake’s pinpoint accuracy in delivering it.

Book Release: The Reaping

Today Richard Schiver’s The Reaping will be available in both print and e-book format. To celebrate the release, the first book in his DREADLAND CHRONICLES series,  All Roads Lead to Terror will be free from Friday June 24 until midnight Sunday June 26.

Anyone who downloads a free copy of All roads lead to terror and leaves a review on Amazon.com before midnight on August 20, 2016, will be entered into a drawing for a one of a kind candy jar to take place on August 21, 2016. Full details about the giveaway can be found here.

The Reaping Synopsis:

Man is no longer alone at the top of the food chain.

From the East a new threat to a struggling civilization emerges, spreading across the land like a cancerous stain, leaving in its wake the shattered remnants of a species teetering on the brink of extinction.

After the dead walked and society crumbled, mankind struggled back from the brink of extinction. Having fled the cities, the survivors lead a more pastoral lifestyle, while the cities to the east stand as silent monuments to the former progress of man.

But they are not empty.

Not only did mankind leave behind the trappings of his progress, but the creatures of the night that once fed along the shadowy edges of a well lit world. Inhabiting that twilight space between day and night, between what is real and imagined, between dreams and nightmares. 

In Bryn Mawr, Window is infected when he is bitten by a Reaper. As he struggles against the rising bloodlust, viewing his friends as a potential meal, they set out to the East in the search of a cure.

Along the way they learn more about the nature of the world they inhabit, their own past, and the part they each play in a potential future. Crossing paths with a shadowy figure who leaves small tokens from each of their own history. Little objects that carry powerful emotions linked to major changes in their past lives.

In the nation’s former capitol they are confronted by the master who reveals the cold truth about the cosmos as he prepares his own army of the undead to enslave what remains of mankind.

Links:

 

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DYDG2XI

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01DYDG2XI

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01DYDG2XI

Author Bio: 

Unlike other writers who knew they wanted to write the moment they became self aware, Richard’s path to taking up the pen followed a more leisurely route.

As a child he wanted to be a fighter pilot, later he thought it would be neat to be a rock star. Unfortunately, as an introvert, he was not suited for the stage. Once he gave up the guitar, much to the relief of his parents, he turned his attention to making movies.

Armed with an 8mm movie camera, several rolls of aluminum foil liberated from the kitchen, and the spare bed sheets, he filmed his first masterpiece. The story was about a space ship crash landing in the woods behind his house. His sister starred as the damsel in distress while his little brother, wrapped like a mummy in the spare bed sheets, chased her through the woods.

His career as a famous director ended before it even got off the ground when on opening night his mother recognized the missing bed sheets and  aluminum foil resulting in his grounding for the remainder of that summer.

A voracious reader, he believes writing is the most intimate form of communication possible. The reader permits the writer access to their mind, and the readers reality dissolves as they focus on the narrative of the tale being spun.

His love of the macabre was sparked at an early age when he would sit on his grandmother’s porch listening to her tell ghost stories. During the summer he and his cousins would sleep in his grandmother’s back yard, within sight of the abandoned haunted house next door, and spend the night scaring one another with gruesome tales of shadowy creatures that went bump in the night.

During his life he has played a series of roles, husband, father, son, and lover, but his favorite by far is grandfather. He and his wife of twenty plus years have raised four children, and helped raise eight grandchildren. They provide a secure home to a yellow lab named Max and a cat who will answer to either Flame or Furball. His loving wife, Dena has experienced first hand the exasperation of living with a writer whose mind has a tendency to wander at the most inappropriate times. Yet she manages to keep his feet firmly planted on terra firma.

Richard can be found online on Facebook, Twitter , and Bookbub.

Written in Blood is Richard’s personal blog where he shares his thoughts on writing, and whatever else might strike his fancy. He can be contacted directly at rschiver@gmail.com and would be delighted to hear from you.

Sign up to be notified of new releases when they become available. He promises to never share your contact info, nor will he swamp your inbox with unnecessary crap. http://www.eepurl.com/2bYSf

Author Mark Taylor – The Devil’s Hand Part 1

I love this series from Mark Taylor. Get to know Darin, the Devil’s Hand.

Life With Words

EXCERPT from The Devil’s Hand: Crossing Guard by Mark Taylor:

“Good night, Miss Mitchell,” Peter slid his head around the door of the office. “Is there anything else you need before I go?”

Angela looked away from the rain to Peter and smiled, shaking her head. “I’ll see you in the morning.” Peter left, and she heard him close the door behind himself, latching it so that it was only accessible from the inside. She looked back out the window. Five days running it had been raining. Only on and off, but always in the early evening, and always when she was going home.

She picked up the North African Statesman’s Journals—her morning’s work—and carried them out of the office, starting up the back stairs to the storeroom on the next floor. She had indexed and priced them, even managing to send out a tentative email to a perspective buyer and…

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Gutted: A Review

I was excited to read this upcoming release from Crystal Lake Publishing, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories. I was also fortunate to get an advanced reading copy of the anthology. Crystal Lake is making quite a name for itself in the horror and dark fiction categories since their opening in 2012.

This year Crystal Lake walked away with two Bram Stoker Awards at Stoker Con in Las Vegas, one for Mercedes Murdock Yardley’s Little Dead Red and Alessandro Manzetti’s Eden Underground. One of the authors in Gutted, Paul Tremblay, also won a Bram Stoker Award at the event, and received a shout out from horror giant Stephen King on Twitter.

King isn’t the only giant around these parts. Gutted also features stories by Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, and Ramsey Campbell. Gutted also has its share of stunning interior artwork for each story and a stunning cover that speak directly to what you’ll find between these pages—withered loveliness faced with brutal decay.

Stephanie M. Wytovich’s prose poem “The Morning After Was Filled With Bone” set the tone of beauty in the grotesque, followed by one of the strongest stories in the collection, Picking Splinters from a Sex Slave by Brian Kirk. Kirk’s portrayal of a father desperate to help his daughter is at once alarming and moving, leaving you with a lingering disquiet.

Neil Gaiman’s story presents us with the problem in one of C.S. Lewis’ most well-known book series, leaving me with an image of the lion and the witch that I will never forget.

Mercedes M. Yardley’s “Water Thy Bones” shows the strong connection to the theme of this anthology and to Wytovich’s prose poem with its theme of the beauty, the clean purity of bone, prominent under paper-thin skin. It also echoes true love, acceptance of self and of a becoming that is painful, but essential. The story’s ending felt reverent, enduring and I got a freakish sensation that this was a truly beautiful ending.

The next story is Paul Tremblay’s Choose Your Own Adventure style story, “Arrival”. I loved the CYOA books as a kid and Tremblay’s version doesn’t disappoint. Each decision the reader is presented with takes you to a different part of the house that the protagonist will explore. Once inside each room, hidden among description and a touch of character’s history is a ghost of a puzzle piece. I recommend visiting each room and not trying to opt out and leave the house.

“Changes” by Damien Angelica Walters portrays the tragedy that can befall a relationship when neither party wants to share their pain with the other. In this case, the relationship is between mother and daughter. Each character’s point of view is expressed with empathy and reading it, I knew if one of them had been a bit braver—a bit more open—the story could have ended differently. The real fear here is of rejection by someone you love when all others have already done so. It’s fear of reprimand and the determination to maintain a strong façade in front of everyone. Walters’ story was horrific, and all too probable.

If I had not read the Table of Contents first, I would not have guessed that “Coming to Grief” was a Clive Barker tale. It wasn’t the story you typically see transformed to film, rather upon rereading, it reminded me of “Human Remains”, one of the stories in Barker’s Books of Blood Volume Three.

I was drawn in by Kevin Lucia’s “When We All Meet at the Ofrenda” as it was full of familiar imagery and folklore. What is an ofrenda? It’s the objects put on a ritual altar, typically used in Dia de los Muertos celebrations. The protagonist, I felt for him too, being separated from his love. But not for long…

“Hey, Little Sister” by Maria Alexander caught my attention as well. To make things up to his beloved sister, a man gives into a bout of needful revenge. Afterward, he has to make an afterlife-ending choice.

I reached out to the owner of Crystal Lake Publishing, Joe Mynhardt and asked how he managed to get the likes of Gaiman and Barker in his anthology. He said that it was thanks to the editors of Gutted who had a contact with someone close to Barker. (Lucky!) And well, they reached out to Gaiman’s agent and asked.

All of the stories in this anthology have a beauty, whether it is in language or tone or in finessing a hard-hitting theme to disarm the reader. It’s worth picking up this collection.

You can buy Gutted beginning June 24th from Crystal Lake Publishing.

Graveyard Shift Sister: Miracle Austin

I’ve been swamped with work lately. While that isn’t a bad thing–it’s a great thing, actually–I haven’t been able to do as many book reviews as I’d like to.

While I love reading and reviewing I’m going to allow it to take a back seat for a while to my other projects. Not just a back seat, I’m going to leave it at home while I go off and work on other things. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be back as soon as I can to review more indie authors. And I’ll be coming out with some of my own work as well.

Until then, here’s my last Graveyard Shift Sisters interview for a while. It’s of Doll, the first novel by the lovely Miracle Austin. I reached out to Miracle because I saw her work on a website and she’d included her contact info. (You’d be surprised how many people don’t do that.)

Read about Miracle and her latest release Doll on the Graveyard Shift Sisters page here.

I’ll be seeing you…

 

 

Graveyard Shift Sister: Meosha Bean

To expand my series of interviews with Black women horror writers, I’ve added a few filmmakers to the list.

My first director is Meosha Bean, an award-winning filmmaker who has over a dozen horror projects to her name, including Dark Rises (2103), Too Close to Home (2012), a crime documentary based on true events, and Miss Pepper (2014), which got over 30,000 hits in one week online.

Meosha Bean in Dark Rises

On top of that, Meosha has acting, music videos, and promotional work on her list of credits. She’d one of the even directors for the 7 Magpies project, a horror film anthology that is the first of its kind: written and directed by black women.

She’s also worked with some big names like pro boxer Roy Jones, designer Ron Bass, and music superstar Billy Idol.

Check out my chat with Meosha here.

Heliodor: A Cover Reveal

Helidor is a Steampunk fantasy mystery by Shannon Wendtland coming soon from Mocha Memoirs Press.

COVER:

BLURB:

Malfric sees through the eyes of the dead – literally reliving their last moments as if they were his own. This ability is highly sought and highly priced, which is why the unscrupulous Captain Finch hires him to find the murderer of a nobleman and the whereabouts of a valuable artifact.

Quantex, the able-bodied first mate of Captain Finch, quickly becomes Malfric’s foil as he demonstrates uncommon intelligence during the investigation. Together the two uncover several clues that lead them to the killer, the artifact, and the frayed end of a mysterious plot that begins to unravel the moment Malfric takes it in hand and gives it a good yank.

AUTHOR BIO:

Shannon is a wife, mother, writer, database administrator and general pot-stirrer-turned-mystic. Find her on Facebook and on Twitter.

Heliodor will be released on March 22 from Mocha Memoirs Press.

Eidolon Avenue-The First Feast: A Review

I love short stories. Anyone who’s read this blog has likely heard me say that before. I read a great deal of anthologies. For me, even better is the single author collection. It gives me the voice and style of one author, but typically will get multiple settings and characters to enjoy.

For several years, it has been rare to find a single author collection of stories, as many publishers weren’t accepting them in submissions. Thankfully, that is changing.

Case in point, is Crystal Lake Publishing. They’ve recently released a single author horror collection titled, Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast by Jonathan Winn. Turns out this is the collection that keeps on giving. Eidolon Avenue is where a decrepit apartment building stands. Within those mired walls there are stories. Twenty-five to be exact. Five floors, five rooms per floor. The First Feast tells the first five tales.

From the cover, you’d never know this was a collection of five stories by the same author. Perhaps that is by design, as some readers of horror may not be on my wavelength of loving the short form of horror. In truth, these are five short novellas put together in one. The characters in each story are unrelated; the only thing connecting them is that they all live in that rundown, seen better days apartment building on Eidolon, which holds its own secret evil.

When Crystal Lake asked if I would review this collection, the publisher was careful to tell me as a female reviewer that one of the stories contained descriptions of sexual assault and would I skip it if it made me feel more comfortable. I appreciated the notification of the trigger warning and I did indeed skip one of the stories. However, I was reading this on an eReader, so I couldn’t help but see a few words here and there as I forwarded through the document. From those words, the trigger warning is well founded.

As with many anthologies and collections, the best stories in Eidolon are the bookends—the first and the last. I’ll comment on both of them.

“1A: Lucky” is an incredibly strong story to begin this book. It is an epic tale in and of itself, excluding the rest of the book. Rich in emotion, cultural mores, and soaked in Eastern magic and ghost stories. I loved this story. Lucky, a young girl, is anything but. She lives in squalor, cleaning and scrubbing for Madame. Each servant girl who shoes her any kindness mysteriously disappears after being called to a meeting with Madame.

Soon, it is Lucky’s turn to be called. During a ritual, Lucky chooses to accept a shadowy being into her soul. Surely, being strong and invincible is what a girl who has been a servant all her life would want, isn’t it? And she gets it, with disastrous results. Lucky soon grows into the most feared assassin around. But the shadowy power is growing too, and it wants payment for its services.

The final story “1E: Umbra” is also powerful and poignant. I have a hard time choosing which story is my favorite. Our protagonist is a young orphaned girl sent to live with her Grandmother, a hard-smoking shell of a woman whose only words are chosen to scathe and cut.

Umbra is left to fend for herself, existing on cheese sandwiches as most of the money the Grandmother keeps for her own purposes. In her room, she finds a small brown spot on the wall and she befriends it: talking to it daily, sharing her hurts, her pains, and her hopes.

The spot grows larger, and grows sentient as Umbra’s only confidante. But what is the brown spot? And how does it help Umbra with her problematic Grandmother or is it all her own doing? I loved the final reveal of this story. It was somehow horrific and satisfying as an ending to a visceral, visual collection. This was beautiful horror: an outcast and a creature story in one.

Maybe as a woman, the two female protagonists spoke to me more, but I agreed with whoever decided to place these stories and bookends. This collection is worth it for these two tales alone. I’ll certainly be on the lookout for the remainder of Winn’s collection of stories from Eidolon Avenue.

 

2016 Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize

Today is International Women’s Day and as such, I want to mention a flash fiction contest sponsored by Spider Road Press.

Spider  Road Press is an indie, women-owned publisher based out of Houston, Texas, with a focus on publishing and promoting fiction by and/or about strong women. From their website:

We at Spider Road Press believe that good writers can do good in the world.

5% of the proceeds from all Spider Road Press titles are donated to charities which address the issues of sexual assault, supporting American veterans, empowering youth and fighting hunger at home and abroad.

Spider Road Press is once again celebrating excellent, unpublished flash fiction featuring a female protagonist. Enter your compelling flash fiction about complex women to win the 2016 Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize!

First Prize: $100, publication in the print and e-book editions of an upcoming Spider Road Press book, and a free copy of one book by each of our judges.

Second Prize: $25, publication in the print and e-book editions of an upcoming Spider Road Press book, and a free copy of one book by each of our judges.

Third Prize: $10, publication on the Spider Road Press website, and a free copy of one book by each of our judges.

Honorable Mentions (Two): publication on the Spider Road Press website, a certificate, and a free copy of one book by each of our judges.

2016 Judges: Author Kathryn Kulpa and Author Eden Royce (That’s me!)

The submissions period is from February 15th– April 15th, 2016.

Head over to the Spider Road Press website for submissions criteria. Give the flash fiction contest a try and support writing by and about strong women!

Dem Bones: A Primer on Southern Conjure

I can’t believe I didn’t blog about the first article I wrote for Dirge, the smart, sexy, darkly funny culture magazine. I must have been overwhelmed by the response (and the exhaustion from juggling so many projects).

It was published on February 23, during Women in Horror month. So glad it was too, so that I could share the work of some amazing Black women who write horror.  Some you may have heard of, others maybe not so much, but I’m sure you’ll find something to suit your tastes. If you haven’t  already seen that article, read it here and add something to your bookshelf.

Kneeling bookshelves by Samal DesignBeautiful

But, this week, I have a new article up with Dirge about the origins of Southern conjure magic. What is Southern conjure magic? I’m so glad you asked.

Wander over to Dirge magazine and have a look. There’s a bit of background on the origins of the practice, its evolution, and a few basics on ingredients and techniques. And a surprise or two for the curious.

Thanks to Dirge for picking up these article from me and for welcoming me into the folds of its dark cloak.