Edward Lorn's Blog, page 63
July 9, 2015
Randomized Randomocity #164
I read an article this morning about a two-ton lobster. I was like, “Holy shit! Real life Lobstrosities!” I almost shared it everywhere. Almost.
The article was actually about a two-toned lobster. You know, a lobster having more than one color.
Sigh…
The moral of this story is:
Coffee before internet.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1198423/randomized-randomocity-164
July 8, 2015
Ghost Story Review
Review: 
First and foremost, I would like to thank Jessica (Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile) for this awesome addition to my collection.
Back in 1995, my family and my fifteen-year-old self moved from California to Alabama. The week we arrived in Alabama (Mobile area) Hurricane Opal decided to make landfall. Most of our stuff was still on the back of my brother-in-law’s flatbed trailer. The most important items lost (for me, at least) was my mother’s book collection. Whilst in California, Mom called her master bedroom’s walk-in The Great Book Closet. This grand space was stocked with more than 450 first editions of some of the best horror literature ever written. These books were gifts from friends, family, and co-workers, but mostly they came from one person in particular—my mother’s best friend Andrita. Sadly, all the books Andrita ever bought my mother were lost to water damage. Not only was my mother 2,000 miles away from her lifelong friend but she’d also lost most of the collection Andrita helped her build. 22 books survived, but Ghost Story was not one of them. Freakishly enough, I would lose those final 22 books another 9 years later when Hurricane Ivan came through Montgomery, Alabama and flooded my storage shed. To date, I have replaced all 450 books (my mother kept record of all her gifts and purchases, and I’ve been working off the contents in her ledger for the past ten years) aside from three. With Jessica’s gift, I only need to replace two more. Thank you so much, Jessica.
So there’s your E. History Lesson of the Day. After receiving Jessica’s gift, I decided to reread Ghost Story so that I might give it a proper review. Here is that review:
For this reread I chose the audiobook narrated by Buck Schirner. All too often, literary horror is read in a cheesy, over-the-top fashion. These narrators seemingly want to be Vincent Price, but only Price could pull of Price without sounding like a bit of rejected B-movie voiceover. Buck Schirner is damn good at what he does. His performance is highly recommended. If you dig earhole stimuli, stimulate your earholes with this audiobook.
Now for the book itself. Ghost Story is one of the greatest literary horror novels ever written. The prose is gorgeous and the writing flows. The characters are varied and exquisitely drawn, believable and nearly tangible. The horror is achieved through mounting dread and rarely relies on gore to disturb, leaning more toward creatures with twinkling yellow eyes slowly climbing the stairs toward their victims, or a creepy child staring through a window. I’ve always found subtle horror far scarier than violence and gore. Moreover, it’s what I don’t see that truly frightens me, as my imagination is more terrifying than anything another author could imagine. This is the essence of Ghost Story. This is where the novel succeeds the most. The subject matter is insidious. It burrows. Digs. Nests.
I will admit, however, that Ghost Story is a chore to get into. It’s the epitome of a slow burn. You will be tempted to put the book down, but I beg of you, push through the tedious opening chapters. Everything makes pays off by the end, and every word is needed. I don’t know many horror novels of this length of which the same can be said.
In summation: Ghost Story is a novel better read if you know nothing about it. It’s a bit of terror that worms into you and takes roots. One of the truly nightmare-inducing additions to horror literature. If you’re a fan of the genre, do yourself a favor and read this book. Tell Gregory Bates that E. sent ya.
Final Judgment: Best read while snowed in.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1197952/ghost-story-review
A little Queens of the Stone Age for your earholes this m...
A little Queens of the Stone Age for your earholes this morning.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1197925/post
I really hate to do this… But I need your help…
Reblogged from: Big Beardy Bloke Buried By Books
Last Thursday Lissa (my better half) and I adopted a new cat.
She is gorgeous, the sweetest little thing ever. She loves cuddles and is so squee she made my heart melt… And I’m not swayed easily.
But when we got her home we noticed something was wrong, see she sneezed on Lissa and the discharge was streaked with blood and one of her hind legs didn’t move properly… We took her to the vet. They ran blood tests and determined she had a cold like infection. They did X-rays and then we got some bad news.
This sweet, adorable little one year old cat had been living wild in the middle of nowhere in Australia. She has scarred little ears. She’s skinny and small… And she was hit by a car. Her pelvis and leg had been broken and her hip had been dislocated. The fractures healed quite well, if not perfectly, but the dislocation didn’t. The ball at the top of the femur is out of place and needs surgery to fix it.
The diagnosis cost us nearly $600. The surgery could cost us another 1500. We need help.
We have set up a GOfundme account to help raise $2000 to cover all the vets bills.
We want to make her life as happy and comfortable as we can. And we want her to be healthy…
Please help us.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1197914/i-really-hate-to-do-this-but-i-need-your-help
CRAWL is FREE!
It’s been a long time since I did a promotion for my own work, so I’ve decided to giveaway one of my novellas. Crawl will be free to download on Amazon for the next couple of days. Click on the cover for Amazon US, or scroll down for international links. Feel free to share around social media or reblog anywhere you choose.
Thanks for your support, and I hope you enjoy your read.
If I missed anyone, my apologies, but I’m sure it’s free wherever you are.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1197857/crawl-is-free
July 6, 2015
“The Roaming Greenery” (Free Flash Fiction)
UPDATE: If anyone wants this in ebook form, drop me an email at edwardlorn@gmail.com. Thanks for reading.
“The Roaming Greenery”
by Edward Lorn
They said I used to see things, things that weren’t there, things that made me, Bob Bernard, anxious. But I’m all better now. That’s why they let me out. Well that, and I snore loudly.
They set me up in a one bedroom apartment in a really good part of Bay’s End, gave me a prepaid cell phone with a built in camera and 250 minutes, and set me free.
Back when I got sick, sick in the head, I burned down my parents’ house because I saw roaches. Pest control people came out every day that week and told my parents there was no sign of the vile creatures. But I saw the roaches all over the place. Sunbathing on windowsills, floating belly up in my bath water, lounging on the kitchen table using bananas as Barca-Loungers. There were hundreds… no, millions of them. I caught the curtains aflame chasing one cockroach through the living room with a lighter and a can of bug spray. The rest of the house went up shortly after.
No one got hurt those fourteen years ago, but my parents lost everything. Even their son, as I was whisked away to Pointvilla County Institute for the Insane.
My plant collecting started during my time at the institute.
My new landlord’s son Danny helped me carry my plants in on moving day. He seemed cool enough. Said he enjoyed pranks and practical jokes. A real get-over-on-you kind of kid. I could see the twinkle in his eye as he described how he’d put a bag of dog poop in front of 12B’s door, lit fire to it, and knocked before running around the corner of the hall, where he played audience to what happened next. When the resident—guy named Carter—opened his door, dude mashed that bag of dung until he was ankle deep in scorched canine leavings. Danny laughed constantly while telling his tale, and I chuckled to hear it.
I gave Danny ten bucks for the help and he thanked me. Good kid.
Danny’s father Kyle is caretaker of this place and collects rent the first Tuesday of every month. Cheapest place in town, only eighty dollars a week because management had something worked out with the State.
Everything was going to be just fine.
I made quick work of arranging my plants—Phineas the Fern, Carlita Cactus, and Peter Poinsettia—about the apartment. Phineas went on the dining room table, Peter sat in my bedroom window, and Carlita slept on the nightstand next to my bed. After I was done, I went grocery shopping, spending little time and even less money gathering my necessities.
I was quite shocked when I came home and all three plants were sitting on the sofa in the living room, watching Oprah. Shaking my head, running over everything the doctors at the institute had taught me, I calmed myself down with little effort. Obviously, I had not put my plants where I thought I had and, in a fugue state, had set them up to watch a bit of television. I took all of my prescribed meds and put everyone in their rightful place. An hour later the pills took hold and I drifted.
I dreamed of roaming greenery.
Imagine my surprise when I awoke and found Phineas and Peter watching me from the foot of the bed.
It was, shall I say, disconcerting.
Everyone back in their original positions, I used the cell phone the State had given me to take pictures of every plant in their place. To test my theory, I locked every window, stepped outside, and used my key to throw the deadbolt on the front door. All entry points secured, I went for a walk around town. I was gone an hour.
When I got back, Carlita was floating in the commode, Phineas was under the bed, and Peter was laying atop my pillow. His leaves were extra red, as if I’d caught him in the middle of lewd acts.
Hurriedly, I checked my cell and found the pics I had taken. I wasn’t crazy. My plants were alive.
This went on for three more days and I began to grow…anxious. Like with the roaches those fourteen years ago. I stayed up for two more days, fighting sleep, wanting to catch my plants while wandering my apartment, but I saw nothing.
I developed a twitch in my right eye and my hands would not stop shaking.
I took my meds that evening and sat on the sofa, watching cable until I drifted off.
When I awoke, all three plants were setup in a pretty little row on the coffee table like birds on a wire. They were glaring at me.
That was it.
I’d finally had enough of their games.
Peter went in the oven, which I set to broil. He screamed and popped and hissed as he cooked.
Carlita, needles and all, went headlong into the garbage disposal. She wailed in protest, but was green soup in seconds. My arms and shirt were painted with her gore.
I drowned Phineas in the bathtub. On principal, I plugged in the toaster and tossed it into the water with him. The fuse blew and darkness enveloped me.
I hadn’t realized I was laughing until I heard the pounding on my door.
I answered it, looking a distraught mess, soaked in Carlita’s green blood and smelling of Peter’s charred corpse. My landlord Kyle stood in the hallway outside my door with Danny in tow.
“Sorry to bother you, Bob. I know the power’s out. I’ll look into shortly. Anyway, we were on our way over when everything went dark and I didn’t think this could wait.” Kyle’s voice grew stern. “Danny has something to tell you.”
“I’ve been sneaking in while you’ve been asleep or gone and moving your plants around.” Danny rolled his eyes, seemingly exasperated. “I used my dad’s keys to get in.”
“Wha—Ow?” I said. I can only imagine this was a mixture of “what” and “how”.
“He’d sneak in after hearing your door close or seeing you leave. We can always hear you snoring through the floor, because we’re right above you. That’s how he knew whenever you were asleep. He has a problem with taking pranks too—Are you alright, Bob?”
“Fine,” I said. Smoke from the oven floated over my shoulder. My right eye twitched. “Just feeling a bit… anxious.”
Original post: edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1196887/the-roaming-greenery-free-flash-fiction
Reading progress update: I’ve read 345 out of 567 pages.
Audiobook horror fans, the Audible edition of Ghost Story, as read by Buck Schirner, is one of the best performances I’ve heard. His characters are subtly different in tone. He’s never over the top or cheesy. I highly recommend this version of the novel.
Original post:
edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1196823/reading-progress-update-i-ve-read-345-out-of-567-pages
July 5, 2015
July 4, 2015
Lisey’s Story Review
Review: 
I have such a love/hate relationship with this book. For one, it’s full of twice-used ideas. Everything you find inside Lisey’s Story is taken part and parcel from other King novels. The idea of being haunted by a spouse and one half of the marriage being an author is Bag of Bones to a Tee. You have the lush other world just beyond ours that is wonderful during the day, and horrible after dark, via Rose Madder. Then you have the character of “Zack McCool” who is John Shooter from “Secret Window, Secret Garden” mixed with shadows of Annie Wilkes of Misery. It’s one of the only novels wherein King steals heavily from himself. He’s borrowed from numerous authors over his four-plus-decade career, but this time he’s riding the Dean Koontz train into Repeatsville. If it’s possible to plagiarize yourself, King does so in this novel. This and this alone is why I couldn’t see rating the book five stars.
With that being said, you’re unlikely to find a better written King novel. I understand why it’s King’s personal favorite. But that doesn’t mean I can ignore the blatant repetition. So what is a reviewer to do? This time around, I’m going with style over content.
King’s prose is gorgeous here, even moreso than in Bag of Bones, and that’s saying something. There are entire chapters worth quoting, and King himself will tell you that’s unlike him. He’s been honest in the past about how he sometimes awkwardly stumbles and powers through scenes with sheer dumb will, and that’s putting it nicely. Lisey’s Story, while being your typical King novel content wise, is a beautiful product conceived by a man who has spent almost half a century publicly honing his craft. It has all the staples of a terrific King novel: the horror, the unfailing heart, and the uncanny ability the author possesses of writing believable and flawed women.
My favorite part of this novel is early on, it is, truth be told, the only reason I finished the book the first time around, back when it came out in 2006. I will admit that the book is never quite as good, story wise, as it is during the scene wherein Scott is shot. Yes, the story is a struggle after that, mainly because it hops around through time like Bugs Bunny and Doctor Who’s hyperactive love child. You must pay close attention in the later chapters or risk being left in King’s dust. Still, these flashbacks and flash forwards and returns to present are touching and, at times, utterly heart rending. Scott’s death (it’s in the synopsis that he’s dead, so I don’t consider that information a spoiler) is probably the strongest-written section in the entire book.
For this reread, I decided on the audiobook narrated by Mare Winningham. If you dig audiobooks, I highly recommend you do the same. She especially excels at performing Young Scott.
In summation: Other than the final Dark Tower novels, Lisey’s Story was the best thing to come out of post-accident King. There have been other terrific novels since this one, but for a while after that van creamed him, I was concerned. I think we all were. Lisey’s Story renewed my faith in King.
Final Judgment: Rehashed hash can still get you high.
(Only three more books to go before I’m done with my rereads!)
Original post: edwardlorn.booklikes.com/post/1195736/lisey-s-story-review
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