Gary W. Olson, Author of Brutal Light, talks about stuff!

Gary is a fellow Damnation Books author. Awesome guy. His book, Brutal Light, is available at http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615725380.

 

 

Writing, Rewriting, Impending Apocalypse, and Everything After

Every writer has a particular way of approaching writing and rewriting a story.  Some rely on heavily detailed outlines and character notes, leaving little to chance during the actual writing process, while others favor a more ‘seat-of-the-pants’ approach, embracing spontenaety while dealing with the messiness that it brings.  What follows is the step-by-step approach I took to writing and re-writing my dark fantasy novel Brutal Light.  If you’re a writer, I can’t promise this approach will work for you, but it’s something to consider.

 

1. I started with an outline–but not a detailed one.  I already knew who some of the characters would be, as I was using an unpublished short story of mine as a springboard, but I needed to work through the story in a methodical way, to both see if there was enough there to make a novel and to try to think through any problems that I had not yet foreseen.  For instance–from where do various characters get the energy to go from the real world to the unreality I was calling the Noumenal?  How much did a certain clairvoyant in the book actually foresee?  Would night-gaunts from the dead spaces do all the research they promised me?

 

2. On finishing the outline, I waited for several weeks, until it became apparent that no clever Windows virus would come along and transform it into a novel.  Reluctantly, and only after a pep-talk delivered by Jaranash’ghthk the Indweller of Night (my new Life Coach), I started the actual writing.

 

3. The first quarter of the novel came out fairly briskly in first draft, after a few misfires.  I realized that, no matter how cool it would be, it was unlikely that the secret conspiracy documented by intentional misprints in variant editions of Alice in Wonderland actually had anything to do with the rest of the book.  Also, zombies are terrible at making balloon animals from their own intestines.  No amount of magic realism can cover that!

 

4. Revision time!  I went back over the first seven chapters to find the inconsistent bits.  I then went back over them to see if there were any consistent bits, as those were more likely to stand out.  I then worked them over–not until everything was consistent, but until the consistent parts were definitely consistent, and the inconsistent parts were consistent with one another, though not with the consistent parts.  I also broke some run-on sentences up into sentence fragments by pounding my head against the keyboard in strategic spots.

 

5. I wrote the second quarter of the book a little slower than the first.  Jaranash’ghthk was being a baby about my concussions from the revision round, so I fired him.  I managed to finish despite being plagued by faceless terrors that roam in the night and leave pissy little post-it-notes on computer screens.

 

6. During my post-completion-of-second-quarter revelry, I somehow was drawn down to the scientifically hyperadvanced underground civilization of the Deros.  (They hate being called ‘DEtrimental RObotS,’ by the way, and insist that ‘Deros’ actually means ‘DElightful RodeOS,’ which I was told are a defining characteristic of Lemurians.  That and a love of lutefisk.)  After tough negotiations, the Deros agreed to oversee the continuity of the novel.  I wrote the second half in a hallucinatory daze, then spent the next several months translating what I’d written from the ‘mantong’ of the Deros to English.  This mainly involved excising all the ‘lols’ and ‘moars’ and removing all instances of various characters recommending products endorsed by the Lemurian Chamber of Commerce.

 

7. I returned to the surface world, to find out that everything I knew was wrong.  So, situation normal.  I put my first draft away and did some more reading, while the Deros smoothed out my continuity errors and the night-gaunts did my holiday shopping.

 

8. My reading of books on occult and alchemical matters (including Manly P. Halls’ “The Secret Teachings of All Ages” and Sonia Trotmeyer’s “Oh, Come On, No One Names Their Kid ‘Manly,’ Do They?”) makes me realize that a lot of what I’d put into the first draft and its revisions had additional meanings that could be drawn out to either deepen the mystery or just screw with peoples’ heads.  As I am all in favor of both, I made notes on incorporating these into the next draft.  I also fired the night-gaunts for eating all the ho-hos.

 

9. Second draft!  I wrote, revised, wrote some more, added scenes, deleted large sections, put back more stuff, fixed some issues, broke some others, and on and on.  I’m pretty sure my ‘second draft’ was actually thirty-six drafts.  By then, I was subsisting entirely on clamato and rice cakes, and whenever I showered, some form of mutant creature would rise from the sewage plant the next day, intent on razing the world of the living.  The traffic backups were unbelievable.

 

10. In the middle of heavy editing, I was conscripted by the armies of darkness and forced into their stealth battle against all that was good and true and noble.  My part of the battle was to fix plot points while helping the Deros build their continent-shattering neko-bombs.  (Do you know how many catgirls and catboys you need to achieve critical neko mass?  It is a frightening number!)  But for every item I fixed, more seemed to break.  Sentences fragmented.  Participles dangled.  Tenses grew passive.  Cat-humanoids wailed.  The time of man was at an end!

 

11. THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENED OR SOMETHING.

 

12. I finished the last revision, dabbed a tear from my eye, and saved my files.  The next day, I sent my manuscript on to a publisher, then strode out into the world that was also enjoying its second chance.  I basked in the sun, breathed the fresh air, and sang for joy.

 

13. I woke up in the hospital, recovering from everything that was thrown at me for my singing.  I was mildly distressed to find that Jaranash’ghthk was now my nurse.  But I was still happy, for I had completed my novel.

 

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Blurb for “Brutal Light”:

 

All Kagami Takeda wants is to be left alone, so that no one else can be destroyed by the madness she keeps at bay.  Her connection to the Radiance–a merciless and godlike sea of light–has driven her family insane and given her lover strange abilities and terrible visions.  But the occult forces that covet her access to the Radiance are relentless in their pursuit.  Worse, the Radiance itself has created an enemy who can kill her–a fate that would unleash its ravenous power on a defenseless city…

 

Rhea Cole is also on the run, after murdering her husband with a power she never knew she had–a power given her by a strange girl with a single touch.  Pursued by a grim man unable to dream and a dead soul with a taste for human flesh, she must contend with those who would use her to open the way to the Radiance, and fight a battle that stretches from the streets of Detroit to a forest of terrifying rogue memories.

 

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Excerpt from “Brutal Light”:

 

She swam through his new flesh, tearing him from the mountain and into the searing bright sky. Blood and terror streamed in her wake. As he fell to the sea, he smiled. She had come to him.

 

Kelly Creyts savored his pain. That he could feel pain again made him scream with joy. He was told to be ready to receive her, and thought he had known what to expect. As always, she proved to be more.

 

He let the mountain he had stolen fade, a moment before he struck the roiling waters.

 

“You’ve gotten better,” he called without opening his mouth. “I never felt you until you were in.”

 

He expected a reply from his lover of old. She did nothing, save drink the raw energy her violent entry set free. A day before her assault would’ve killed him but now he had power to spare.

 

Once she called it poison, and craved it more than her life.

 

To see her and taste her again–had they really been apart less than two years? If she knew the things he had done, the compromises he made–

 

You’re in trouble already, girl. Why come to me?

 

The weight of the sea increased as he sank, but Kelly refused to give up the body he had so recently taken the power to recreate.  He knew he had made her angry, maybe angry enough to do lasting damage. If he struggled at this point, he thought he would lose, having ceded so much advantage. He had come so far and done so much. Nothing he had been told had yet failed to happen.

 

“I will come to you,” he said. “As I promised.”

 

Intense light erupted from his wound and trailed his blood in the black waters. She coalesced into a rough human female shape, with fingers that burned his flesh where they dug into him. Her tongue blackened his lips, despite the presence and pressure of the deep sea. He kissed her and she erupted into him, cauterizing his wounds as she passed back through the door she had carved.

 

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Buy links for “Brutal Light”:

 

DamnationBooks.com (.mobi, .epub, .pdf, .pdb): http://www.damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615725380

Amazon.com (Kindle edition): http://www.amazon.com/Brutal-Light-ebook/dp/B006EVZYIC/

Amazon.com (Print edition):

Links for of all other vendors (continually updated): http://BrutalLight.GaryWOlson.com

Print ISBN (for ordering paperback via bookstore): 978-1-61572-539-7

Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-538-0

 

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Bio for Gary W. Olson:

 

Gary W. Olson grew up in Michigan and, despite the weather, stuck around.  In 1991 he graduated from Central Michigan University and went to work as a software engineer.  He loves to read and write stories that transgress the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, while examining ideas of identity and its loss in the many forms it can have.

 

Away from working and writing, Gary enjoys spending time with his wife, their cats, and their mostly reputable family and friends.  His website is at http://www.garywolson.com, and features his blog, A Taste of Strange (http://www.garywolson.com/blog), as well as links to everyplace else he is on the Internet, such as Twitter (http://twitter.com/gwox) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/gary.w.olson.author).

 

 

 

Deadlocked by A. R. Wise

Dave is just an ordinary dude. He has a wife and two kids, a decent sales job, and a friend named Barry. I’ve always wanted a friend named Barry. Or Berry. I know a Beri, but we’re not friends, so that doesn’t count. Anyway, I digress.

Dave is an ordinary guy. On the day he’s supposed to go to the doctor to see if he’s got cancer, the zombie apocalypse happens. Cue the DUM-DUM-DUUUUUM sound effects.

Before I launch into the meat of the review, the good points. It’s very well written, compelling, and a quick, easy read. While I wish Dave actually contemplated his possible death/illness a little more in the beginning of the book, his struggle with his demise became relevant to the story and a great emotional selling point.

Everyman Dave has to struggle to get home to save his wife and kids. The zombies are a’coming, and he’s on foot after his best buddy Barry gets bitten. There’s a lot of climbing stuff in this book. Planters, trees, fire escapes, parkour-ing across roofs. I pondered the actual endurance level of that amount of physical activity from an ordinary guy, and it seemed a little exaggerated. BUt that’s what we writers do in fiction, right? I mean, it’s like the female main characters of popular zombie movies. Who would actually fight zombies in a mini skirt, thigh-high-high-heeled boots, and a tank top? In the event of an actual zombie attack, the majority of the American population would die the first day. We’re all talk. We don’t run. We don’t own an arsenal. We don’t stockpile food. At the vaguest threat of a hurricane or gas shortage, we’re killing each other, much less helping one another survive a zombie attack.

Let’s throw in some injuries–obtained when Dave is attempting his swim across a zombie-filled river. Head injury that bleeds heavily (the dude’s blood loss never factored into this thing. Head wounds bleed a LOT. Sever the temporal artery, and it could cause some issues!). Once he makes it ashore, he gets his arm broken by an oar. Broken bones HURT. Serious hurt. Again, we are spoiled Americans, used to prompt medical care and easily-obtained drugs. The author makes a note he strives for realism with this story, but realistically, an arm that’s as seriously broken as Dave’s would render a human almost helpless for a little while. I can only push the boundaries of my imagination so far, and as someone who has suffered a broken arm or two, this one makes me go, “Yeah, right…”

Later our hero suffers a crushed hip. You can’t walk with an untreated crushed hip. Basic physiology. The hip socket cradles the end of the femur. Without that functioning socket, there’s no support for the bone, and no way this dude could be up and running and fighting off the horde of zombies.

The author attempted something ‘different’. Unfortunately, he took a page out of The Walking Dead (and virtually every other zombie novel written…). All zombie novels are about the survivors, trying to survive. There are a few gore hounds who write about the carnage, but in general, zombie stories are about the fight to survive. There’s a long afterward type essay at the end of the story that almost cheapened the story, because I kept saying, “No. This is pretty much like every other zombie story out there. No, this isn’t really believable. All the injuries Dave recieves are debilitating in their own right. The head wound alone would have either caused a serious enough concussion to warrant unconsciousness, or enough blood loss to inhibit thought processes and physical stamina. Especially if the victim is in water, where the wound can’t clot. The broken arm. Again, painful, possible to work through, but it would slow him down a lot more. The crushed hip…*facepalm/headdesk*.

And the formatting. I completely understand how complicated formatting for Kindle is. It’s a pain in the ass, and I pay other people who know how to do it, to do it for me, because otherwise, my books come out looking like Deadlocked. If you’re determined to do it yourself, take the time to go through every single page to make sure it’s correct. It’s all about professionalism!

Over all, it’s a decent story. If you can suspend your disbelief enough to read through the injuries without some major cynicism (I’m sorry! I tried!), then it’s an interested take on a survivor story. Dave has a lot of motivation to make it home to his family, and it’s nice when he actually does. I enjoyed the emotional offering of his memories of his family, his daughters, and his wife. HIs sacrifice wasn’t in vain, and the author did a wonderful job showing us that.

SPOILER**** Scroll down to read, if you’re okay with reading about the ending.

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My biggest pet peeve in zombie novels in general: first person, past tense narrative. Dave dies at the end of the book. How the heck has he managed to tell his story??? If you are going to write a first-person narrative and the character dies at the end, write it in present tense! If you’re a brainless, mindless zombie, you aren’t sitting around telling your story to folks, or picking up a pen to write it down. Be true to the story!

 

Stricken by Sean A. Lusher

Advance request for forgiveness for any typos or weird words. I’m blogging from my Kindle Fire. It also places periods in bizarre and inappropriate places. Sorry!

STRICKEN

Stricken starts off like pretty much any other sci-fi horror plot. An inconspicuous search and rescue crew on a mission to save/salvage a suspiciously deserted colony/moon/planet/spaceship amid gallons of gore and body parts. There are the prerequisite characters, including the hot chick with the locked-down vadge,  the Reddick-wannabe, the pensive, wounded hero, and red-shirt slackers. How perfectly the story fits into the sci-fi/horror mold is one of the meh factors of Stricken.

But somebody said, if the story’s been told, tell it better. The good news is Lusher is a great writer. He crafts the story well, and weaves in tension, suspicion, and intrigue. While, to some degree, we know how this story will ultimately end, Lusher lets us have fun on the way there. It takes a while to really develop an emotional connection with any of the characters–there are just a lot of them and most have

a backstory that gets hinted at, but never really explored, and sometimes it seemed like characters were supposed to have a larger part later in the story, but Lusher said, “Ah, screw this dude,” and let a monster eat his face off. Granted, it’s a novella, so there isn’t a lot of room to fully flesh out every single character.

Eventually bad things slow down, and the survivors finally open up–surprise, tragic back story about how they ended up where they are–but a good thing happens here. The main character, Trent, goes from angsty flat hero to being human. His fear creates a connection with the reader. he panics, and he doesn’t really act like a scifi-horror hero, he acts human. He wants to run and hide. He drags himself into the fray.

The monster is a little different from the usual supernatural-devourer-of-all. I wasn’t completely impressed by him. I was more chilled by the secondary plight of the survivors: the isolation, the possible threat of a bloodthirsty monster on the loose, and the certainty that one of the other survivors was going to turn on the others. All in all, I think that’s what made this story enjoyable for me. The first part of the story was just people running around, shooting scary things, getting ripped to shreds. The second half of the story was about survival.

Stricken is an easy read, full of creepy atmosphere and lots of gore. Absolutely gets a “READ THIS” rating from me.

Still twitching!

Hey everybody,

 

I’m so sorry for the lack of posts lately! I got a kick-ass promotion, along with tons more responsibilities and overtime at work. Combine that with a busted e-reader, and you get no reviews!

The good news is, I got a new e-reader. I’m reading like a maniac and I hope to start adding new reviews over the next few weeks!

 

Thanks for your patience,

 

Ashley

Look!

It’s almost live! One more day….

http://www.damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615724055

Congrats to all the June release authors!

The Infection by Craig DiLouie

The Infection

By Craig DiLouie

Published by Permuted Press

Available at: www.permutedpress.com

Reviewer: Ash

Rating: 5, RECOMMENDED READ

A scream shatters the silence of a classroom, and within a
few moments, millions are stricken by an unexplainable illness. When they
reawaken, they have one purpose—KILL. As they mutate into horrific things with only the impulse to kill in their minds, a group of survivors band
together in an attempt to find refuge. When they find it, they must make the
decision to run and hide and eventually die, or band together and fight for
their lives.

I absolutely loooove Permuted Press books! One of the great
things about the publisher is they publish great books that refresh tired
genres. The Infection is no
exception. It’s populated with amazing characters that you can’t help but root
for, and an evil that seems almost unbeatable. It’s sort of a mix between the
movies The Plague, War of the Worlds (the
Tom Cruise remake), Carriers, The Crazies
and Mad Max. I normally hate
books that seem to pull a lot of stuff from movies, but I think the themes
worked here! The insurmountable force isn’t the undead, per se, but…well,
something. I am pretty sure I didn’t miss the explanation, but other than it
being called a virus, it’s not really explained in depth. I guess that is part
of the mystery of the book, but I would have liked to know a little more. Definitely
not a full, in-depth, scientific analysis, but something to ground it!

I really enjoyed DiLouie’s writing voice. It was intense and
graphic, with some surprise moments of humor and tragedy. The gory bits were quite original, without gratuity or being overdone.He handled character
death with sensitivity, and gave the readers some comfort that these characters
didn’t die in vain. This is a completely engrossing read. I read it at work in
one day, and kept having to find places to hide from my boss so I could finish
it in peace! I liked the monsters. They weren’t the typical apocalyptic fare.
Like I said, I would have liked a tiny bit more explanation, but not so much that
we’re told they’re aliens, yadda-yadda. That would have ruined the book. I think it was extraterrestrial, but I don’t
want to be told they are! Ruins a story, ya know, sort of like the big reveal
at the end of King’s Under the Dome
absolutely, completely ruined that
book! DiLouie’s bad guys were just a force, a raging, ravenous thing bent on
mindless destruction and victory.

Great book. Definitely recommend it!  It’s worth the read.

The Banishing by Fiona Dowd

The Banishing

By Fiona Dodwell

Published by Damnation Books

Buy Now: http://damnationbooks.com/book.php?isbn=9781615723515

Rating: 2

Melissa lives in torment. Her once-loving husband has
started beating her and garsh-darnit, she loves him, so she doesn’t leave him.
Doesn’t seek help. Through some research, she finds out the house they live in
was once the home of a maniac who killed a bunch of women in order to summon a
demon. DUM DUM DUM…..and the demon is STILL IN THE HOUSE.

Yes, my sarcasm meter is going off the charts.

While Ms. Dodwell is a good writer and manages to fill the
pages with some tension, it’s mostly offset by the fact that Melissa is a
friggin’ idiot and sets a horrible example for women everywhere. Her husband
beats the shit out of her. He rapes her. He insults her and humiliates her.

And she takes it.

Because she loves
him, and she has to help him, because he wasn’t always like that. She lets him rape her (is it rape if she lets
him??) By ‘let’ I mean she doesn’t fight back. She doesn’t tell anyone. She
doesn’t cut his dick off with a rusty knife while he’s sleeping, or dump a pot
of hot grits on his face while he’s out cold after a satanic chit-chat with the
demon. She’s an intelligent woman with a career and friends that care about
her. By the end of the book—*I was asked by the author to remove the spoiler, but it’s part of the book that pissed me off the most, so I’ll just reword this to say THE ONLY FRIEND,
THE ONLY ONE WHO ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT HER, basically gets crapped on in a really bad way. She also leads on the
guy who should have been the hero of this story, and then never thinks of him
again.

I got pissed off halfway through the book. I HAD to finish
it, because if I didn’t, I couldn’t write an accurate review.

While Ms. Dodwell weaves some decent tension and suspense into
the story, it’s hard to just enjoy it as a horror story because Melissa is such
a pussy. There was nothing noble or heroic in her ‘sacrifice’. Nothing to
redeem her, or to make her a stronger person. She was not a sympathetic character at all, in
any way, because she just LET SHIT HAPPEN to her. All in the name of ‘love’. She didn’t even attempt to fight the demon.
She got scared of shadows in the night and bloody specters in the kitchen, and
as soon as she found out she could take the easy way out, she took it.

So, read this book just because Ms. Dodwell is a good writer.
Maybe you’re a better ‘reader’ than I am, and can disconnect from the
characters!

Blog Tour! Jeff Bennington

Swamp Dwellers, Dark Fiction Book Reviews

To begin with, I want to thank Ash for allowing me to be her guest. If Ash hasn’t told you already, I’m giving away a Kindle on May 15th to a lucky follower of the REUNION blog tour. You can get the details about the book, the tour, and the contest at jeffbennington.com. Good Luck.

The Dark in Fiction

My first attempt at fiction came in the form of a political thriller. It had guns and bombs and secret societies and all that, but at the time I didn’t think my writing style was dark. In fact, it probably wasn’t, although looking back, I can see tiny black seeds sprouting my creative roots.

Two novels later, I know that I have a dark side, an evil twin, a sinister spitting image of myself that writes about the things no one like to talk about. My supernatural thriller, REUNION, is a perfect example of what my depraved duplicate is capable of. REUNION touches on several topics that make people cringe. The subject matter is painfully palpable, and equally devastating when it happens in real life. Here are a few of the subjects that are weaved through the plot:

• School Shootings
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Child Sexual Abuse
• Child Physical Abuse
• Domestic Violence
• Satanism
• Lost Love
• Death

These are all very real to many people throughout the world, and sometimes the lifelong pain that follows can be even more devastating than the initial trauma. Although this is not meant to be a comprehensive list of what dark fiction is about, it is meant to demonstrate what dark fiction means to me. Dark fiction, to my way of thinking, is when an author writes about the things that scare us, the things that horrify us, the things that make us cringe, things that are real, things like sexual abuse and the aftermath of a school shooting.

I’m sure there are people who cannot relate to trauma, or abuse, but there are many who can. I know some of them. Their stories are dark, and their stories are real. In fact, I’m very close to several people who have been sexually abused. Their stories would make you cringe.

Another source of life that’s darkened my mind comes from a good friend who used to counsel victims of all kinds of abuse. He often shared some of the gruesome details that he had to deal with on an ongoing basis, details that would cause you to lock up your sons and daughters until they had children of their own. I’m sure his stories have played a part in my overprotective, helicopter parenting style.

Also, my wife worked for a foster agency early in our marriage, and let me tell you; the content I’ve addressed in REUNION only scratches the surface of what is happening everywhere, in your neighborhood, and behind closed doors. And to top it all off, I’ve talked to someone who grew up with Satanic, ritualistic abuse.

I wish this world were different.

I wish life could be cleaner, simpler.
But it’s not.

Life can be dark. Life can be hard. Life can be cruel.

Dark fiction tells the truth about life.
And that’s why dark fiction will continue to engage readers.

I don’t think I tell the story about David Ray and his classmates with an “educational” approach, but with a method that’s fluid, helping you understand the heart of each character and their weaknesses and fears.

Rather than sound preachy, I simply tried to tell the truth. After all, what is there to preach about? Life happens. Life can be wonderful, but it can also be frightening and hopeless. And to avoid those realities for the sake of painting a pretty picture so that everyone is happy seems very wrong to me.

This is what REUNION is all about… the dark side of life… albeit a side that is a touchy subject… it’s about what happens behind closed doors, and what happens after the headlines have faded and the victims continue to suffer. But it’s also about what happens when the survivors break free from the burning pain and manage to find a sliver of hope in a pile of ashes. – Jeff Bennington

Thanks for reading. Be sure to subscribe and follow The Swamp Dwellers Dark Fiction Book Review Blog, and then follow the rest of the REUNION Blog Tour for more unique posts about the book, the characters, etc. Go to jeffbennington.com to learn more and to check out the tour schedule. Be sure to get your copy on April 15th to help thrust REUNION up the rankings by purchasing en masse. Peace.

Zombie, Ohio: A Tale of the Undead by Scott Kenemore

Zombie, Ohio: A Tale of the Undead

Scott Kenemore

Skyhorse Publishing

Novel

Buy Now: http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Ohio-Undead-Scott-Kenemore/dp/1616082062/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1299715364&sr=8-1

Rating: As Charlie Sheen would say, “Winning!”

RECOMMENDED READ

Reviewer: Ash

Professor Peter Mellor is the kind of dude nobody really likes. They put up with him because he’s a member of the good ole’ boys’ club, has tenure, and is one intelligent asshole. He’s recovering from a scandal involving messing around with a colleague’s wife and said colleague’s suicide, and coping with his self-hatred with lots and lots of scotch. After a nasty car accident on a snowy, isolated road, Pete suffers a bout of amnesia. He manages to make it back to town, and to his surprise, is greeted by what is definitely an unofficial security team—professors with shotguns. In bits and pieces his memory returns, enough to help him identify his few friends, among them a man who may or may not have been responsible for his accident. He remembers enough to know who he is—and to relearn all about the invasion of the carnivorous walking dead that have taken over the world. The university is a defensible island in what has become hell.

But the situation only gets weirder when Pete makes a heart-stopping discovery. Well, his heart would have stopped if it had been beating in the first place. The car accident hadn’t been nearly as minor as he thought. In fact, it killed him. Yep. Pete Mellor, professor, is a zombie. A walking, talking, thinking member of the undead. He and Sam haul ass out of town, Pete keeping mum about his condition, in search of Pete’s girlfriend. Once they find his woman taking shelter at her sister’s house, the threat of a roving gang of perverts cause Pete’s undead instincts to kick in, and he flees out of fear of harming those he remembers loving.

I loved the story. It’s not often you get to read a really original zombie story, in this era of everybody-and-their-mamas writing a zombie story. Zombie, Ohio is definitely a fun story, full of dark humor (the guy throwing cats, the conversation with the undead, Pete’s own train of thought). It’s got a few moments of “Well, that seemed forced” events (like Pete’s girlfriend turning into an ass-kickin’ militant leader, the biker-brawl at the college complete with a sentient rotting corpse performing something close to acrobatics), but in all, it’s the coolest zombie story I’ve read in a long time.

Pete has this really interesting continuous thread of introspection through the novel. It’s written in first person, which adds a lot to the story—it wouldn’t be the same story if it was third person. His attitude is nihilistic in the beginning. He’s just wandering. He saves a small child from certain death, and it seems to remind him of his humanity. He remembers he not a regular member of the walking dead. He thinks, therefore he is. In undeath, he finds himself, the true Pete Mellor, and becomes the champion of the undead. He forms a small army of zombies who follow him mindlessly and feeds them, protects them, and begins to take a zombie’s revenge on humans—sparing the innocent, if he can find anyone that fits into his definition of ‘innocent’. Pete has a goal—figure out why the warring militant groups and army groups want “The Kernel.” Along the way, if he can keep his girlfriend safe and restore her faith in him, all the better.

I don’t want to give the whole book away. It’s not the kind of book that has major twists and secrets, but half the fun of the book is exploring Pete’s actions/reactions. And it’s funny. Many times I caught myself chuckling out loud, and in once case, imagining an exchange between Pete and another dude in the book.

“Whatcha doing there?”

“Throwing cats.”

“What for?”

“Dunno. Just throwing cats.”

“’kay then. See ya ‘round.”

Zombie, Ohio tops my list of recommended reads so far. I loved it. Funny, dark, twisted, and compelling, it’s a fun twist on the tired zombie genre.

Bloodfruit by James EM Rasmussen

Title: Bloodfruit

Edited by James EM Rasmussen

Available now at www.queeredfiction.com

Reviewer: ASH

Rating: RECOMMENDED READ

I’m hesitant to read a lot of GBLT fiction, mostly because I always end up with tasteless erotica and badly formed plots about how some poor character is oppressed by a straight relative. There’s generally a werewolf or vampire thrown in, and always a straight guy who doesn’t realize he’s actually gay.

Queeredfiction offering of Bloodfruit, a horror anthology featuring several talented GBLT authors, was a surprisingly awesome read. The book features eleven short stories, the majority of them extremely well-written, well-crafted, and completely gripping . I read the entire collection in less than an hour, and couldn’t stop thinking about some of the stories for a long time afterwards.

The best ones are The Lure of Dangerous Women, For Her Eyes, Just Past Winter, and Hollow. Each of those stories snags you unexpectedly and sucks you in, both with the beautiful writing and intelligent, dark plots. A few of the other stories all share the same expert writing, but they all sort of lacked something. Happy Anniversary is the weakest, redolent of teen-slasher b-movies without the campy fun. The Diarist is well written, but it’s slow and sort of boring. Tombstone just didn’t catch my attention. After All is good, it just lacked impact.

It’s a great collection, and one of the better reads of the year for Swampdweller. I definitely encourage anybody interested in a unique anthology to give this book a try!

As a side note, I would love to see Just Past Winter worked into a full length novel! Finally, a werewolf story I’m actually interested in!