Blog Archives
Go to Books & Boos in October, Get “A Bone to Pick”
A copy of my limited-edition chapbook, “A Bone to Pick,” is yours with any purchase in October at Books & Boos at 514 Westchester Road in Colchester, CT. Don’t miss your chance to add this to your collection…while supplies last. Better yet, buy your books and get your copy at one of the store’s events this month…and don’t forget to contribute to their Indiegogo Campaign! Read the rest of this entry
Need a Zombie Fix?
Artist Heather Gleason’s “Spring Mourning.” I own several of her pieces, but not this one. However, what’s interesting is that this creature is similar to what I’d envisioned in “A Bone to Pick”—which I wrote way before I ever saw this piece. In fact, Heather had another piece which was exactly how the story’s landscape looked in my head, but it was sold before I even knew it existed and I can’t find a photo of it to put here. Her “Devil Girl,” which I own, I bought because it symbolically told the story of “This Poisoned Ground.” It’s eerie—it’s like I write things and somehow she paints them later. Visit her website at http://www.myeclecticmind.com/index.shtml.
If you’re a fan of The Walking Dead, like I am, then you probably watch all the videos on the AMC website in between episodes to get your fix. This week, if you’re looking for something a little different to satisfy that zombie craving, consider gnoshing on my short story “A Bone to Pick,” which took second place in Toasted Cheese’s 2011 Dead of Winter Contest. The year’s theme was “Skull and Bones,” but the story was inspired by a situation in The Walking Dead’s second season.
The story was published in the magazine’s March issue, but with all the wedding craziness that was going on at the time, I never posted about it. Enjoy!
Review: The Zombie Feed, Vol. 1
The Zombie Feed, Vol. 1 by Jason Sizemore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I enjoyed this collection for two reasons: multi-authored anthologies, just like single-story collections, can be as uneven as chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream: there’s vanilla, vanilla, vanilla and then good stuff, vanilla, good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. Apex Book Company’s Zombie Feed: Volume 1 is no exception to this rule—save for the fact the good stuff is SO good the collection is worth owning just for those. Second, because I always thought there were only so many things you could do with the Zombie trope—sooner or later, I assumed, ideas would be repeated—I was a little apprehensive about purchasing an entire (and my first) collection of Zombie stories for fear I’d be bored. But the writers in this collection proved me wrong—each story does offer a thrilling, interesting, and refreshing twist on the trope. Not one would I consider a “standard” Zombie story.
Exemplary tales of what fine horror fiction should be—edge-of-your-seat suspense combined with solid character/conflict/crisis/change or hero structure and excellent use of literary device—were K. Allen Wood’s “Goddamn Electric” and Kristin Dearborn’s “Rabid Raccoons.” Seriously, if you don’t want to spend the cash on the print edition, go get the Kindle edition just to read these two. If all horror genre stories were written as well as these, horror might have a shot at getting more recognized by the literary community. (I’ll note here I had no idea why these two were shoved at the end—in my opinion, the opening tales were nowhere near their caliber for various reasons). Other stories that made my favorites list were Lee Thompson’s “Final December Day,” because the main character only has so many hours to resolve what we all have at one time or another that normally hangs on for years: regret; Daniel I. Russell’s “Broken Bough,” which is so haunting and disturbing I’m still bothered by it (it really cuts to the core of loss and the ending was a total shock); Ray Wallace’s “Twenty-Three Second Anomaly,” which ratcheted the tension so well I was disappointed when I got to the end; Joe Nazare’s “The Last Generation,” which ended on such an unexpected bang I just went “Wow!” (actually, I said, “f*&^, wow!” which is even rarer for me), and Lucien Soulban’s “The Fare,” which I liked because it was almost a Poe-Trigger-Theory piece.
If I had one criticism of this collection, it would be the typos and grammar errors in a few of the stories; I felt they were obvious and definitely should have been caught. In this case, however, this collection doesn’t deserve to be knocked out of the running because of those errors. Also, remember that just because I had some favorites doesn’t mean everyone will agree with me…one of the great things about multi-authored collections is there’s something for everyone, and some of the stories I didn’t mention were still of merit. If you like Zombie stories or even if you just want something different to read, I highly recommend Zombie Feed: Volume 1. It’ll remain on my shelf as one I’ll re-read a few times for many years to come.
