#fantasy

I Was a Teenage Weredeer by C.T. Phipps and M. Suttkus

June 26, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

I haven’t posted any reviews for a while. I keep meaning to do it but my good intentions are constantly being battered by my to-do-list. Today, however, I’ll make an exception with I Was a Teenage Weredeer.

Before we get to the book, what’s it about?

Jane Doe is a weredeer, the least-threatening shapechanger species in the world. Blessed with the ability to turn furry at will and psychically read objects, Jane has done her best to live a normal life working as a waitress at the Deerlightful Diner. She has big dreams of escaping life in the supernatural-filled town of Bright Falls, Michigan, and her eighteenth birthday promises the beginning of her teenage dreams coming true.

Unfortunately, her birthday is ruined by the sudden murder of her best friend’s sister in an apparent occult killing. Oh, and her brother is the primary suspect. Allying with an eccentric FBI agent, the local crime lord, and a snarky werecrow, Jane has her work cut out for her in turning her big day around.

Thankfully, she’s game.

My thoughts?

I Was a Teenage Weredeer is a fun read – snarky and sarcastic with a (vaguely) serious undercurrent.

The basic premise is of vampires, shape shifters and other supernatural beings now living in the open along side normal humans. They, as we do, have their own factions, prejudices, hierarchies, infighting and quarrels.

This story is told from the perspective of a young woman/ deer (Check out the title of the book if that confuses you.) as she struggles to resolve one bloody bout of vengeance.

The world within a world is not a new idea but it’s well done here and the authors do a nice job of were-dovetailing them into our world.

(See what I did there? You did. Right. I’ll get my coat…)

The text is chock full of references to popular culture. These occasionally felt forced but should resonate with a broad church of readers. As well as some of those references, I’d have preferred to lose some of the banter and tighten up a few of the scenes. (There were some events that seemed to stretch reality too far, even for a book which is about doing just that.) A smaller cast of characters would also have suited me better as I occasionally found it hard to keep track of who was who. A list of characters at the back would be another option. I have a feeling that if that was done, the descriptions would be ‘creative’, to say the least.

There was one scene (By a lake. With a water spirit.) where the silliness was put on hold for a few pages. That scene was compelling reading and I think the book would have benefitted from more writing like that for the added depth, balance, and darkness.

If you’re looking for a light-hearted read with plenty of cheek, you can’t go wrong. And if you appreciate puns, especially puns about deer, you won’t find many other books on the market that grab that particular genre by the antlers like this one does.

On that appalling dad joke. I’m out.

My rating?

Four stars.

Please note I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon sites.

One Book Interview #55 – Allan Batchelder (Author)

May 17, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

#55 is here.

Actor. Comedian. Teacher. Writer. Author. Curmudgeon.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Seattle – Allan Batchelder

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

Everyone? Huh. Everyone. Okay, I’m just gonna pull something outta my…past: Watership Down. Or The Little Prince. Okay, that’s two books. Hey, I’m a writer, not a mathematician.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

The Complete Works of Shakespeare. You’ve got History, Tragedy, Comedy and Romance (Fantasy, sorta). And sonnets and epic poems. Enough to keep you busy for a looooooong time.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

The Elfin Ship, by James Blaylock. It’s his first book, and I read it when it came out, so I don’t know if it still holds up. But I loved his sense of adventure and humor. Now, he’s a leading figure in Steampunk.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

I often think the second book in my series – the one that gets the least love – is my favorite. As Flies to Wanton Boys (Immortal Treachery Book 2) As one of my colleagues noted, it sort of combines fantasy with a detective mystery.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Conan, by Robert E. Howard. I think I read this when I was 12 or thirteen (filched from my dad’s reading pile).

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Man, that is a tough one. It’s either The Black Company by Glen Cook or Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

That would be Immortal Treachery Book 1: Steel, Blood & Fire

You can find Allan here.

Allan is a professional actor, educator, writer and former stand-up comedian. During his years on stage, he’s gotten to participate in countless battles – some even with other people – involving longswords, rapiers, daggers, staves, pistols, bottles, loaves of French bread and, of course, his grimy little fists. Allan is a lifelong fan of epic fantasy and horror, so you can just imagine how much he loves Grimdark. He’s currently working on the fifth and final book in his series, Immortal Treachery, before he tries his hand at a) steampunk and b) horror. His books are available in paperback and kindle formats on Amazon. Allan lives in Seattle, within a few miles of the two richest men on Earth and can thereby assure you that there’s no such thing as financial osmosis

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One Book Interview #53 – Richard Writhen (Author)

April 26, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

After a short hiatus needed because of the blood-fuelled poetry and prose of the last author to grace these pages, the One Book Interview is back.

This week we have a writer who has been published in various online magazines, has published several novellas and is currently working on his first novel.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Rhode Island – Richard Writhen

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The best book that I’ve read in recent years is Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. It’s a very dark and realistic mystery and deftly manages many plot threads at once. I had seen the film awhile after it came out on video and was really blown away, so when I later saw the novel at The Strand, I picked it up and read it in full at least thrice. The tone, the characterization, but above all the way the characters’ actions ring true to real human behavior all make this book something special for me. Plus, without giving any spoilers, the way it accurately reflects the true human lack of control over chaos makes for the perfect ending.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

I would say The Martian, but I haven’t read it. Maybe Call of the Wild, which is one of my favorite books. It’s about a dog who starts out as a pet but is dognapped and forced to become a hard-working sled dog. But it’s really about surviving at all costs and finding the alpha within yourself. He fights and fights and at one point is on the verge of death but he never surrenders. And eventually, he finds satisfaction, not in a perfect life like he once had, but in the fulfillment of his destiny.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

The Lovely Bones. Every once in a while I will read something from a genre or sub-genre that I have little interest in based on the title alone. I knew I had to check this one out so I picked it up used and was pretty taken with it. A quaint story about a girl who is murdered but winds up in the afterlife a la Beetlejuice or whatever and she tries to communicate with her surviving friends and family and point them towards her killer. It had a grimdark feel to the deaths and the repercussions for the characters. Another thing I would liken it to is What Dreams May Come.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

The Hiss Of The Blade. I think that by my third novella, I had gotten a bit better and the style is a bit more mature than the first two. Plus, it’s a bloodbath, which is optimal for me. I’m a big fan of French extreme cinema like Haute Tension and Inside. It’s also more grimdark, with an evil king and armored guards and castles and gauntlets and all that jazz. And a bunch of blades too, of course.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Well, aside from Call of the Wild, it’d probably be Watership Down. There’s so much happening in that one novel that it’d take a college philosophy course to cover it all, but some of the standout points for me are the accurate portrayal of spirituality, again the survival against all odds motif, the deception between members of the same species, the betrayals, the almost god-like power that humankind and even cats have over the small animals like the rabbits.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

The most influential book that I’ve read in the past few years would have to be A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. Aside from being astonishingly well-written, its grasp of subtext and meta is unparalleled. The only novel that I would really liken it to is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; both of them are basically experiences like real life, and while you are reading them, the point of it all is not immediately evident. It’s entertaining, but the real brilliance in such a book is after it ends, when you are (hopefully) blindsided by the real message as the pieces fall into place like so many puzzle pieces in your mind, as you sort it out. That’s really the approach that I have now; it’s not a thousand pages that you need to throw at the reader, but rather a level of veracity and internal continuity that makes the contents of the book literally live in the reader’s mind. And few authors can really do it.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

It stands to reason that my shortest, simplest novella is my first, A Kicked Cur. It took much longer to write because I worked on it as an amateur, only once or twice a month, before I became more serious about my writing. The process took about two years and four months, but I’m happy with it, though no work wrought by human hands is ever finished. The second and third novellas were much faster, taking about eight months apiece once I had adopted the “nulla dies sine linear” approach. The fourth is at about that same mark now, but is going to take a bit longer to complete, so about a year.

You can find Richard here.

Originally from Rhode Island, Richard Writhen also lived in NYC for about ten years. He has been e-published on several notable sites such as the Dark Mondays Blog, the Mighty Thor JRS Blog, Michael R Fletcher.com, Rob J Hayes.co.uk, Grimdarkmagazine.com and Ragnarokpub.com and is the author of three novellas on Amazon KDP: A Kicked Cur, A Host of Ills and The Hiss Of The Blade. Richard also writes short form stories in the styles of Gothdark, Grimdark, GDSF and Psychological Horror, and will eventually be exploring the weird west.

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One Book Interview #51 – Andy Peloquin (Author)

February 22, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

“Fantasy transcends age, gender, religion, race, or lifestyle.”

As the One Book Interview moves into its second half century, we’re lucky enough to have another award winning writer with us.

“It is our way of believing what cannot be, delving into the unknowable.”

Author 51’s dark fantasy books have hundreds of positive reviews on Amazon US alone.

“It is a way of discovering hidden truths about ourselves and our world in a brand new way.”

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Somewhere in the US – Andy Peloquin

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes.

No one else will ever be as spectacularly clever, and no matter how many times I’ve read this series, I can keep reading it and still find new surprises and discoveries.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

Warlord of Mars.

I know it’s fiction, but it would make me so happy to imagine myself as John Carter of Mars, leaping around the planet, swinging his sword, and being a total bad-ass!

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames.

I’m the sort of person who DOESN’T do something just because everyone tells me I should. My Fantasy Fiends Podcast co-host told me to read the book pretty much every week for three months. When I finally caved and read it, I was very happy I did

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

Thief of the Night Guild (Queen of Thieves Book 2)

It’s one hell of an action-adventure heist story, and a whole lot of fun to write.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Probably The Chronicles of Narnia, specifically The Last Battle.

There’s one scene at the end where Aslan (the Jesus-esque character) tells one of the people, “All the good things you did in the name of the bad god went to my credit, and all the bad things done in my name went to the credit of the bad god.” Basically, it made me realize that the name—God, Yahweh, Allah, the universe, Gaia, and so on—doesn’t really matter. All that matters is the intention, action, and outcome.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.

It set the bar high for me to write amazing characters!

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

Child of the Night Guild (Queen of Thieves Book 1)

It’s the introduction to the Queen of Thieves series, and the beginning of journeys that will span 10 full-length novels.

You can find Andy here.

I am, first and foremost, a storyteller and an artist–words are my palette. Fantasy is my genre of choice, and I love to explore the darker side of human nature through the filter of fantasy heroes, villains, and everything in between. I’m also a freelance writer, a book lover, and a guy who just loves to meet new people and spend hours talking about my fascination for the worlds I encounter in the pages of fantasy novels.

Fantasy provides us with an escape, a way to forget about our mundane problems and step into worlds where anything is possible. It transcends age, gender, religion, race, or lifestyle–it is our way of believing what cannot be, delving into the unknowable, and discovering hidden truths about ourselves and our world in a brand new way. Fiction at its very best!

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One Book Interview #50 – David Hambling (Author)

February 5, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

The One Book Interview hits its half-century this week and we have a great set of answers to celebrate.

(There may be a moderate amount of alcohol consumed sensibly later too.)

Author #50 is an author of both fiction and non-fiction.

His technology journalism has appeared in New Scientist magazine, Aviation Week, Popular Mechanics, WIRED, The Economist, The Guardian newspaper and others.

His novels have their roots in the myths and legends that stalk the streets and fields of South London.

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Norwood, London – David Hambling

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It’s a rip-roaring adventure – and arguably the first superhero story. The protagonist has multiple secret identities and the best technology money can buy, including ultra-accurate pistols and concealed body armor. But there’s more to it than simple adventure; it works on other levels as well, and as a study of the art of vengeance and its effect on the revenger it has never been bettered. It’s a real swashbuckler, but it is also a lot more, with some striking characters rather than just placeholders and truly memorable scenes.

Reading a work like this, you start to appreciate how the standard of popular fiction has declined over the last 170 years, and how much we can learn from earlier writers. Dickens and Shakespeare may not be to everyone’s taste, but Dumas is a joy. The phrase ‘entertainment for all ages’ fits perfectly.

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

You mean as well as the Bible and the complete Shakespeare? (The traditional literary gifts on Desert Island Discs).

If I was marooned on Mars I probably wouldn’t survive long enough to do any reading, and if I did survive I would probably be concentrating on staying alive and getting home rather than poring over literary works…

…but if I had to pick a stunning, long book to re-read, I’d pick Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s an epic trans-European WWII sci-fi adventure with bizarre Nazi goings-on centered around the V-2 rocket attacks on London. It also manages to pack in esoteric lore, Pavlovian psychology, plenty of sex, and a great cast of characters. While the central story features a mission to discover the secret of a mystery device fitted to a V-2, subplots spin off in all directions. It’s a book that bears a lot of re-reading, and Mars – reached by rockets directly descended from the V-2 – might be a good place for it.

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles may not look promising – you’ll find it in the literary fiction section. It’s a surreal horror story which starts with a missing cat and gets steadily darker and weirder as the protagonist’s wife vanishes, and he gradually learns more about the forces working against him. It all centers on an ancient well, now dry, which he descends and starts to dream strange dreams.

The evil is subtler and menacing than in in genre horror (though there is a certain amount of gore), and there’s an amazing flashback as one character recounts his experiences during the Japanese campaign in Manchuria during the 1930s. (Spoiler: it was not a happy time for any of those involved). There is philosophy, but there are also surprising dashes of humour… one character’s impassioned diatribe about microwaved rice pudding reads like a stand-up comedy routine.

Murakami’s work also bears distinct traces of HP Lovecraft and his notion of Cosmic Horror, and for me that it very much a bonus.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

Never ask a parent to choose between their children!

As an author you’re always going to be most excited about the one you’re writing now. I’m just in the final edit stages of Master of Chaos, the fourth of the Harry Stubbs series. This is a sci-fi adventure set in 1920’s London involving Cthulhu-mythos mischief, with the lead character going undercover to work in a mental institution. Madness and mayhem abound…as usual there was a mountain of research to be boiled down and distilled, and some complex plot mechanics going on, plus this time I tried to do something more ambitious with the writing itself. Overall, I feel I’m getting better.

Hence, of the books that are in already in print the one to recommend is the third Harry Stubbs, Alien Stars, in which our hero is searching for what his employer believes to be the Holy Grail – and which turns out to be something far more alien, and far more dangerous to our world.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

“Godel Escher Bach: an eternal golden braid.” by Douglas Hofstader is perhaps the most mind-expanding book I have ever read. It takes some intriguing mathematical ideas, in particular self-reference and paradox and shows how they apply to everything from music to the way that DNA replicates, and of course Escher’s amazing ‘impossible’ images, taking in Zen, human (and artificial) intelligence, meaning and meaninglessness.

It’s a far more whimsical book than this bare summary makes it sound, with the subtitle “a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll,” and it is, to coin a phrase, a book that makes you think.

It even inspired some of the core ideas in my latest work, Master of Chaos.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

Professionally, the most inspiring books are the bad ones. Reading a good book makes me think I should just give up; reading a terrible one makes me think, “dammit, I can writer better than this!” and inspires me to try.

For me, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is a truly great bad book. It’s tautly written and the plot has you on the edge of your seat. It’s a real page turner…but the contrived plotting, cardboard characters and clunky dialogue had me howling with disbelief. (And don’t get me started on his legal but questionable misappropriation of the historical research by Baigent, Leigh and others).

I’m never going to write The Count of Monte Cristo, but I hope that any writer worth their salt who encounters Dan Brown will think “maybe I can do something in this vein, but not quite so terribly.”

To be fair, I have not read any of EL James ‘Fifty Shades’ series, so there may be even more stupendously great bad books out there, and I’m sure every reader will have their own favourite. I have enough inspiration for the meantime though, thanks.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

That would have to be The Elder Ice. It’s short – barely a hundred pages – and introduces Harry Stubbs, a former heavyweight boxer and sometime debt collector in 1920s South London. Now trying to make it working for a legal firm. Harry is tasked with tracking down a legacy left by a polar explorer – real life Antarctic legend Ernest Shackleton, who lived in this area.

Shackleton left behind a pile a of debts and hints that he has discovered something valuable, and much of the story centers on the question of what he could have brought back which was worth more than its weight in gold…which also kills people…

You can find David here.

David Hambling aims to bring authentic 1920s Lovecraftian horror to Norwood, his corner of South London, a little-known and haunted place where taxis dare not go.

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One Book Interview #49 – Jesse Teller (Author)

January 29, 2018 by andygraham Leave a Comment

A lover of dark fantasy. A rule-breaker. A writer.

But who better to introduce Author #49 than Author #49 himself.

“All my work is about hope. There are virtues in this world worth fighting for, things we can’t do without. I hope to inspire honor and vigilance. I hope to raise an awareness of innocence and its worth.”

Good people of the Internet, writing out of Missouri, the US – Jesse Teller.

Name one book:

1 – everyone should read

I’m gonna alter this question. I’m gonna say one book everyone should read if they like fantasy or plan on writing fantasy, and that is The Bloody Crown of Conan by Robert E. Howard. I just, I strongly believe that if you’re writing high fantasy you have to have a working knowledge of this book. Howard was the best. He wrote in the 1920s, and he was the original creator of Conan the Cimmerian. I learned about him in a literature class I took in college where we studied the story The Tower of the Elephant. All people who are thinking about getting into the fantasy genre should start there

2 – you would take with you if you were going to be marooned on Mars

We’ve already displayed that I’m a rulebreaker, so I’m gonna alter this question, too. I’m gonna go with the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe. He was dark and twisted and insane and beautiful. He wrote some of the most horrifying stories that have ever been written by anyone, yet his work is so pristine that it is still studied in public high schools. State school curriculum is willing to say, “Yes, we know he married his 14-year-old cousin. Yes, we know he wrote a story about rats eating a person alive, but look at this prose.”

3 – you took a chance on and were pleasantly surprised by

First I need to extend an apology. I’m sorry if you’re reading this, Mrs. Learmann. Please forgive me. My answer to this would be Wuthering Heights. English classic, dense prose, but it hits all the markers. Revenge, tragic love, innocence and darkness, it hits all the markers. I read it in high school. In doing that, I did just enough to pass, barely seeing the book for what it was. But I came back to it years later, as an adult. And if you haven’t read this book, it crosses genres. Writing does this thing where it likes to classify genres. So, it says, “This book is fantasy. This book is sci-fi. This book is romance.” But the one that pisses me off the most is, “This book is classic literature.” It’s like saying, “This book is good. This book is this kind of trash. This book is this kind of trash. This book is this kind of trash.” High forms of art and low forms of art, classic literature being above everything else, in such a way that it makes us rebel against anything called classic literature. This book Wuthering Heights is a thriller. To call it anything else is to force a top hat on it. If you have not read this book, run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore.

4 – you’ve written that is your favourite

Favorite book that I’ve ever written is called Legends of the Exiles. It’s a complicated book. You have to really want it. It’s the story of four women. It’s a romance, it’s a tragedy, it’s high fantasy and action. Each story of each woman is a novella of its own. Their ages are designated by a timeline that runs through the whole book. Each novella could be read on its own, but when you read them all together, one will answer questions brought up by the others. One will expand the telling of a scene shared by a different novella. It’s a complicated book. It’s a book written for an advanced reader. I have to publish the rest of the trilogy I started in October. Those are my publications for 2018. But, when that trilogy is done I will be publishing Legends of the Exiles. So look for it April 15, 2019.

5 – that has influenced you most as a person

Paradise Lost. It’s not a book, it’s actually an epic poem. For this one, I have to thank Mrs. Learmann. There’s a scene where the angels rebelling against God have lost the war and have been tossed into Hell. They built a castle for themselves called Pandemonium, and in the throne room they have a huge meeting, all the demons and devils. They start planning out their next move. Moloch is a massive warrior and he wants to charge Heaven again, wants to lead all the demons back into war. Belial, another arch devil, wants to go apologize to God and beg and scrape. Satan is whispering in Beelzebub’s ear, and gets him to speak for him. Beelzebub speaks of revenge. He speaks of corrupting God’s favorite child, Adam, destroying the thing God loves most. When I was reading this, I was thinking about destiny. I was thinking about freedom of choice, or whether our lives are handed down by mandate. Here are a collection of demons, damned and imprisoned, and yet they still have freedom of choice to plot out their next move. It gave me an understanding that we can’t blame the choices we make on the people in our lives, or the gods or demons we choose to worship. And at any point, we can turn it all around, or we could burn it all to the ground.

6 – that has influenced you most as a professional

I’m gonna say George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. When I was first learning how to write a book, I was all over the place, swinging wild, one point of view for two or three paragraphs, then switch to another, then yet another, then back to the sixth. It was a disaster. So, my first book had over 15 point of view characters. It was unreadable. Then Martin came in, showed me precision point of view, and showed me that there was no topic too tragic, no scene too horrible to be included in dark fantasy. He anointed me a dark fantasy writer, and gave his blessing for all the most diabolical acts and horrible scenes I could imagine.

7 – of yours that prospective readers should start with if they want to get to know your work and where they can get it.

Start with Legends of Perilisc. It’s short, 170 pages. It’s a short story collection that will acquaint the reader with the creation of the world, the creation of the races, and the rise from the darkest ages. It’ll also show my writing style and ability. It’s a short commitment that will prepare you to read more.

You can find Jesse here.

Jesse Teller fell in love with fantasy when he was five years old and played his first game of Dungeons & Dragons. The game gave him the ability to create stories and characters from a young age. He started consuming fantasy in every form and, by nine, was obsessed with the genre. As a young adult, he knew he wanted to make his life about fantasy. From exploring the relationship between man and woman, to studying the qualities of a leader or a tyrant, Jesse Teller uses his stories and settings to study real-world themes and issues.

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