Hint Fiction, and other Good Stuff

I am alive. I thought I'd post more regularly once the new year came in but I've been banging my head a bit trying to get these two reference articles done. Every project I do takes much longer than I think at first it should take. Lana tells me I'm a perfectionist, and maybe I am, though it doesn't often feel that way. Anyway, here are some updates on what I've been reading and listening to. Some of these are well overdue.

1. First, there's a nice review of Hint Fiction up online today, and it even mentions my story. I'm happy about that. It's over at Wilson Knut's blog if you'd care to have a gander.

2. I posted my review of Discount Noir a bit ago, but I'm remiss in not posting my review of Mark Durfee's The Line Between. I gave both works five stars. In a nutshell, here's what I said about The Line Between on Goodreads:

“An excellent collection of poetry from a Detroit poet. Similar in many ways to his previous collection, "Stink." A range of poetry, mostly hard edged, and with a tinge of righteous anger overlying much of it. A good mixture of short and longer poems. I greatly enjoyed.” I’ll only add that Mark is a helluva poet with some important things to say.

3. I can't remember if I reviewed JR's book here, Adopted Behaviors, but I also gave it five stars and here's what I said on Goodreads.

“I don't have a bookshelf for Tomlinson's type of work. I'd consider it to be general literary fiction, but there is also some memoir in this collection. This is a 52 page booklet carrying the subheading of "Flash Memoir, Short Stories, & Flash Fiction."

I don't actually read a lot of literary fiction so I'm not the specific target audience for this work. I enjoyed this collection, however. Tomlinson draws vivid portraits of his characters and puts them into brutal but realistic settings. The characters certainly have the feel of realism about them, which means there aren't any clear cut heroes in Tomlinson's stories, nor many clear cut villains. Tomlinson himself has been a teacher in the prison system in Michigan for many years and the events and experiences he describes in his tales have the unmistakable ring of authenticity.”

4. I've also been remiss in reviewing a great new metal CD that I actually won in a contest over at Jodi MacArthur's blog. It's by a band called A Pale Horse Named Death. I'd call it melodic metal, but don’t take that to mean wimpy. It’s dark and heavy, but with a lot of polish and professionalism in both the licks and the lyrics. The band members have been around. I know a couple of them were in Type O Negative, which I’ve only lately started catching up with. If you check out the website link I’ve provided you can listen to a few songs off the CD to see what you think.



That’s all for now. I suppose that’s enough.
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Update and a Sorcerer

School is in session again, which explains why I haven’t been posting much or even visiting a lot of blogs. I should be back to normal next week. In the meantime, I did have an interesting dream last night. I was a young man, apparently held in thrall by an evil sorcerer. I was joined in that slavery by a young woman (probably Lana although neither of us looked like we do these days). We were “helping” the evil one hunt down another sorcerer who he had injured in a battle. The young woman and I found the injured sorcerer, who was in dog form, and while my friend called out to the bad guy that she’d found blood, I pulled the wounded guy away and hid him, then marked out the tracks I’d left.

The evil sorcerer came up to us and he was in the form of a giant black wolf, but he bought our statement that we’d only found blood. He led us down a hill to the injured sorcerer’s abode, which was a glass cabin in the woods full of all kinds of plants and strange objects. While there, I spotted a set of keys, and when the evil one ordered us to go and hunt the wounded man again, I took the keys, and then locked the evil sorcerer in the cabin, knowing that the spells on the place would keep him imprisoned for a while. Then the young woman and I fled into the woods to escape.

We later wandered into a village that was abandoned, but it turns out the evil sorcerer was waiting for us. When he faced us, it was clear he meant to torture us slowly before killing us, and so in desperation I challenged him to a duel with swords. He laughed but agreed to my condition that if I merely cut him with the blade we would be free to go. At first as we fought it was clear he was toying with me, but then I began to become faster and faster with the blade. I noticed suddenly that on a hill to one side of the village stood the injured sorcerer we’d helped, and he had friends. I realized they were helping me. The fight became desperate, with the blades moving with incredible speeds until they seemed only flashes of light. And then I cut the wizard across the stomach and stepped back. The wound wasn’t serious but it counted toward our bet, and as the young woman and I strode away in freedom, we heard the good sorcerer comment to the evil one about how his time was up. The End.

I’ve also been remiss in reviewing my friends’ works of late. I finished Discount Noir and reviewed it on Goodreads. Here’s what I had to say:
A really fun collection of short flash fictions all involving "MegaMart," which you can probably guess is meant to represent another "Mart." There's a little bit of everything here, serial killers, vampires, losers, drug addicts, sad sacks and more. I couldn't quite decide on my favorite story in the collection and will call it a tie between "House Names" by James Reasoner, and "Thirty-one Hundred" by Loren Eaton. Loved 'em both. I enjoyed the whole work, though, and particularly the fine stories from Sandra Seamans, Kathleen Ryan, Evan Lewis, Ed Gorman, Bill Crider, Patti Abbott, and more.

Probably based on my “Discount Noir” experience, I also had a dream involving searching for something in a Megamart last night, and finding everything but what I wanted.
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Discount Noir, and Bill Crider

Our blog colleague, Patti Abbott, is trying to get the news out about the fabulous collection called Discount Noir, which contains stories by Ed Gorman, Bill Crider, and James Reasoner, along with many other fine writers. In the interest of helping Patti spread the word, I’m hosting Bill Crider on my blog today with a short piece about his story in the collection, entitled “Their Fancies Lightly Turned.” Here’s……Bill.

When Patti Abbott asked me to write a story for Discount Noir, the first thing I thought of was a story I’d done a few years ago for Damn Near Dead. People often ask me if I ever intend to do anything more with the characters in that story, so I thought this would be a good chance to revisit a couple of them named Royce and Burl. They’re fun to write about, and I decided to give a little backstory about their meth dealing or something along those lines. Since the new story was to involve a big discount store, the next thing that occurred to me was that those places really have a problem with characters like Royce and Burl because those kinds of stores are where guys like them try to pick up some of their makings. After that, it was smooth sailing. I just put my characters in motion and let them carry the story through to the end. When I finished and looked it over, I liked the way it worked. It seemed to me to be a story about the kind of thing that could happen, or maybe does happen every now and then. I’d say more, but then this comment would wind up being longer than the story. Better for people to buy the book, read the story, and find out more for themselves.


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