Book Reviews

FADE TO BLACK By: Jeffrey Wilson JournalStone publications 254 Pages Jack is your typical, ordinary man. A loving husband and father, an admired school teacher with a seemingly perfect life, one day a harrowing vision creeps into his life. From a first person point of view he experiences the very real terror of a Marine Sergeant Casey Stillman in midst …

Fish Bites Cop! Stories to Bash Authorities – by David James Keaton Remember that cop who wrote you a ticket for having a turn-signal out and went on to condescend you and imply that he could get you for a whole lot more but wouldn’t because he “decided to be nice?” Remember seeing the video of the off-duty Chicago police …

In case you missed the memo, or maybe the e-mail ended up in your spam folder alongside messages from Nigerian princes and the girls next door, bizarro fiction is officially a force to be reckoned with. It has invaded your horror, your science fiction, your writer’s workshops, and it is an unrelenting force with wider reach than the Wu-Tang Killa …

“He’d been waiting for the chance to cut somebody, to chop somebody up, to move up from steak and veal and pork ribs. Killer for morality, murderer for God, vicious for middle class America. Everybody just wanted the self-righteous excuse to maul somebody else, to threaten, to scare somebody the way they’d been scared their entire lives.” I remember a …

STEEL BREEZE By: Douglas Wynne Journalstone Publishing 256 Pages Desmond Carmichael is an ordinary everyday single father struggling to make ends meet and bring up his young son in a happy, healthy, safe environment. Tortured by the pain of his wife Sandy’s untimely demise, it seems as though her memory exudes through everything. Now a very real, and undeniable threat …

“Look around you. You’re on a military vehicle. They said it themselves- they fight people. That seems to run counter to keeping you safe and my blood inside of my body.” I’m not a good cook. It took me far too long to learn that, no matter how awesome chorizo, oregano, cabbage and mangos are, they shouldn’t go in my …

This book includes the entire screenplay for the film version of World War Z as well as a look at how the zombies were designed and brought to life (or I guess that should be brought to unlife) for the big screen.   REVIEW: I have to be honest and say that I don’t care anything about World War Z. …

By and large, fantasy bores me. The biggest issue I have is that there so rarely appears to be any actual fantasizing involved anymore. For every shinning jewel of Abarat, there is some trite tales of elves, dwarves, dragons and wizards. Plus, I could not give the slightest fart in the wind about the maneuverings and machinations of the great. …

Gutmouth – by Gabino Iglesias Eraserhead Press – 2012 Published in 2012 as part of the New Bizarro Author Series by Eraserhead Press, Gutmouth is author Gabino Iglesias’ first book. The New Bizarro Author Series has become known for birthing a number of sick and twisted new voices into the world, including Steve Lowe (Muscle Memory), Kirsten Alene (Love in …

The Girlfriend Game – by Nick Antosca Word Riot Inc – 2013 (Publication Date: June 30, 2013) Nick Antosca has been all over the place lately. He was the writer of the 2012 horror film The Cottage, starring David Arquette and Kristen Dalton. His name can be found among the writing credits of ABC’s Last Resort as well as MTV’s …

My Mother had never turned her back on anyone in the family for a minute. I swallowed down a surge of hatred for her parents. I wanted to meet these people. Along with that came a vague anger toward my father for falling in love with her and stealing her away.My Mother had never turned her back on anyone in …

“The last kind words ever spoken to Jesus were spoken by a thief.” Normally, I’d start off with some kind of hook, a generalized statement that ties into my feelings about the book being reviewed. Summary. A well reasoned list of pro’s and con’s. Professional and clean, if a bit self-conscious at times. That’s not what you’re getting today, because …

A common complaint in the genre is that Weird Fiction is no longer weird. That Speculative Fiction no longer speculates. Instead of the bright, dimensional boundary shattering work that started the genres, we’re getting stale, staid and bland rehashes that stick to the established formulas. Nearly every fantasy is a copy of either Tolkein or Howard. Far too much Sci-fi …

The Simon and Kirby Library: Science Fiction spans more than 20 years, beginning with the first stories Joe Simon and Jack Kirby ever produced together (beginning in June 1940)–their ten-issue run of Blue Bolt adventures. Then the Cold War years will be represented by Race For the Moon, featuring pencils by Kirby and inked artwork by comic book legends Reed …

I first encountered the writing of D. Harlan Wilson in the pages of The Bizarro Starter Kit –Orange (Bizarro Books, 2006), which opens up with a handful of his short stories. In those pages, I visited the worlds of home-invading bodybuilders, mysterious characters battling for the rights to a piece of used chewing gum, and an entrepreneur who starts his …