Gregor Xane's Blog, page 21

Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez

This book was kind of cute, kind of funny, kind of clever. It had a lot of good comic-booky, pulpy gags and settings. It had battle mechs controlled by disembodied brains, lizard people from Venus, a lost world-type island with ridiculous dinosaurs, the lost city of Atlantis, etc, etc.. You get the idea.

It moved along at a fast enough clip, but it wasn't a page-turner really. Because it was a farce, and all of the characters were cartoonish, and because you never got the sense that the villa...

TWO: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special (Anthology)

Yes, I do have a story in this anthology. So take this post for whatever you think it's worth. And, incidentally, I don't personally know the editor or any of the contributors. I've not interacted with any of the other authors electronically or otherwise. My reading of their works, and this work as a whole, I would say, is relatively unbiased. I don't know. Maybe not. Either way, it's not going to stop me from typing out my overall impressions and pointing out which stories were, to me, the s...

Two: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special (Anthology)

Yes, I do have a story in this anthology. So take this post for whatever you think it's worth. And, incidentally, I don't personally know the editor or any of the contributors. I've not interacted with any of the other authors electronically or otherwise. My reading of their works, and this work as a whole, I would say, is relatively unbiased. I don't know. Maybe not. Either way, it's not going to stop me from typing out my overall impressions and pointing out which stories were, to me, the s...

Wheel-Mouse vs All The Crazy Robots by Celyn Lawrence

Why are these robots pooing everywhere? GOD, WHY!?

Because...because...they are CRAZY ROBOTS! (Sane robots most certainly do not poo everywhere.)

Who can save the town when these crazy robots retreat to their flying city in the sky and begin dropping poo on picnics and teachers and everything else?

Why, only a magical wheelchair-bound little mouse, of course!

This book is truly great. I'm hoping for a sequel, wherein it is explained in excruciating detail what exactly constitutes robot poo.

Three...

TWO: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special

I am much, much more than pleased to report that  TWO: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special  is now available and that I've got a story contained therein.

Check out this line-up of stories editor Bruce Bethke's put together:
"Second to Last Stop" by Evan Dicken"Cabrón" by Jóse Iriarte"Blood and Water" by Rose Blackthorn"Gris-Gris for a Mal Pris" by Rebecca Roland"Zombie Angst, or How to Pair Human Brains With a Good Chianti" by Stone Showers"Wall" by Yukimi Ogawa"A is for An...

Graham Joyce Wins 2013 British Fantasy Award

Graham Joyce has won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for his novel Some Kind of Fairy Tale. Joyce is a fine author (one of my favorites) and this book is a fine read.

Read this book!

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

This book was like watching someone setting up a chess board very, very slowly and methodically. And for most of its length, that's what it was, getting all the characters where they needed to be so that their journey could begin. It wasn't until late in the narrative, when all of the pieces were in place, when the opening moves finally happened, that it truly became an exciting read. The stakes weren't known early enough to really drive the book forward. A true sense of the mysteries of this...

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory

The stories in this book reminded me of the works of Arnold Lobel (specifically Owl at Home), if Lobel had written for adults. They share the same daydream quality, the same wandering imaginative struggles and circular, fanciful routines that come from spending a great deal of time alone, or even out of just plain old loneliness. I was also reminded of the humor cartoonist Chris Ware manages to find in quiet despair, the charming, absurd moments from small lives lived unseen and eventually cr...

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

I love reading about the daily routines of artists and the like, so it was pretty nice to find this book. What I learned about the work habits of the painters, composers, writers, and philosophers covered in this volume is that many of them:

1. Drank lots of alcoholic and caffeinated beverages
2. Smoked lots of tobacco
3. Took long walks
4. Popped uppers to get going and downers to get to sleep
5. Got up early for a few hours of concentrated work (and then dicked around for the rest of the day)

I a...

The Mist by Stephen King

This was a re-read. I listened to The Mist first when I was 12 years old (on cassette, in glorious 3D SOUND!) and remember liking it quite a bit. Then, I read it later on, in my late teens, as part of King's Skeleton Crew collection. It's funny how memory works. One thing about this story that has always stood out in my mind over the years is what I remembered to be long lists of brand names, paragraphs and paragraphs of listed brand names. When I was re-reading this, I kept waiting for those...