Gregor Xane's Blog, page 16

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Upon finishing this book I knew two things:

1) Its reputation in my mind would grow over time

2) I wanted to revisit it in the near future and give it another read (which is something I rarely even consider)

For me, it didn't have the visceral impact that many people report after reading it. I didn't find the book scary. In fact, some aspects I found rather silly, like the introduction of Mrs. Montague near the end of the book. She was such a broadly drawn caricature of a overbearing wife,...

Martyn V. Halm had some questions for me

The writing process interview questions below are being passed around from writer to writer in a sort of chain-letter fashion (but without the threats of bad luck). A gentleman writer by the name of Martyn V. Halm (The Amsterdam Assassin Series) passed these questions on to me to answer on my blog. (You can read his answers to these same questions here.) And I've tagged author Jason Parent ( What Hides Within ) to continue this cycle of abuse.

The Questions & Answers:

What am I working on?

I'm...

Courtney Wells had some questions for me (and 3 other writers)

Courtney Wells:
Creator of creepy puppet people?Courttney Wells, who I believe has a novel coming out about creepy puppet people(?), has launched a new book blog called Libra Obscura . One of the regular features she'll be running is The four/5/XX ( four different authors/ 5 identical questions/ XX unique answers). And it looks like I got in on its maiden voyage.

I share the five interview questions with authors Mark Phillips (Beneath the Mask of Sanity), Lexi Dare, (The G...

Write a Novel that Spits in Hollywood's Face

Henry Martin, author of Escaping Barcelona (among many others), asked me to write a guest post for his blog. I'm not sure why he asked me back after the last time he had me over to talk about reviewing books on Goodreads. It's not like we have much overlap as far as readership goes. He writes literary fiction, and I live on Grub Street.

So, after much hemming and hawing, I relented and came up with this little editorial.

The Drive-In 3 by Joe R. Lansdale

I'd say that this third and final installment of The Drive-In Trilogy was the best, as the third in any trilogy should be. Although, unlike the first two installments, it did lack a colorful central villain. We are given a baddie named Bjoe, but he's not really in the same category as The Popcorn King and Popalong Cassidy. He's more mundane. But I would argue that the real villain in this final volume is the Drive-In world itself. This is more of a man against an uncaring, insane universe typ...

The Drive-In 2 by Joe R. Lansdale

You know, I'm pretty sure I liked this one a smidgen more than the first one. The scope expanded and the dark humor got even darker and funnier. I was somewhat reluctant to pick this one up right away because the end of the first book seemed to hint that this one might be a The Lost World pastiche. I don't dislike dinosaurs, but they really aren't a selling point for me. Now, there are dinosaurs in The Drive-In 2, but in no way are they the focus. They're not even a huge threat and kind of ke...

Clive Barker's First Tales

This book contains a short story and a short children's fantasy novel written by Clive Barker when he was around seventeen years old. I went into this knowing that I'd be reading juvenilia, knowing that I likely wouldn't like this very much. I was right. I didn't. I read this because it was written by Clive Barker. I'm a Barker completist and I'd recommend this only to other Barker completists.

"The Wood on the Hill" is a simplistic fairy tale. A snotty aristocratic woman is warned that bad t...

Big Trouble in Little Ass by Wol-vriey

Calling for a revision of the MMPI-2-RF!

I think it's possible that one day a psychiatrist will give a name to the peculiar disease of the mind that makes one predisposed to truly enjoy Wol-vriey's books. Until then, I'll just have to live knowing that I'm afflicted with an as-yet-to-be-named mental disorder that, if I had to guess, impacts about 0.001 percent of the human population. But I don't mind, really.

Really, I don't.

And it's not like I'm looking for a cure.

Here's a little test to s...

Hang Wire by Adam Christopher

The first third of this book read like a textbook example of how to get the hooks into your reader. Every scene, from the very first, slides a new hook under the skin and you've just gotta keep reading to find out 'what's really going on.' Unfortunately, for me, once I found out what was really going on, I was less than thrilled about it.

But I want to be clear about this. You see, at about the halfway mark, I found out that supernatural entities that I personally don't enjoy reading about ar...

IT CAME FROM HELL AND SMASHED THE ANGELS

Today is Roger Corman's 88th birthday! For those who don't know, Corman is the mastermind director/producer behind such cult film classics as Suburbia , Deathrace 2000 , Piranha , Attack of the Crab Monsters , Women in Cages , among literally hundreds of others (35 directed, 385 produced).
To honor this giant of B-movie madness, I've decided to offer my short story "IT CAME FROM HELL AND SMASHED THE ANGELS" starting today as a free download. This story originally appeared last year in the anthology...