TALL TALES WITH SHORT COCKS – Vol. 3 also include stories from Tom Bordonaro, Lance Carbuncle, Ran Cartwright, Etienne DeForest, Patrick D’Orazio, Arthur Graham, Matt Hlinak, Alex S. Johnson, Kirk Jones, Jon Konrath, Adam Millard, D.F. Noble, Vincent Sakowski, Ben John Smith, Kevin Strange, Nathaniel Tower, and D. Harlan Wilson.

Vive la short cock!

]]> http://varietyreviews.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/comes-the-dark-by-patrick-dorazio/ Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:58:32 +0000 varietyreviews http://varietyreviews.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/comes-the-dark-by-patrick-dorazio/

Comes the Dark by Patrick D’Orazio

Comes The Dark by Patrick D’Orazio
ISBN: 9781453701287
Publisher: Library Of The Living Dead
Age Group: Adult

It’s been a good month for new releases! “Read the End First” with my short story “Elemental Bonds” has been published. It is currently only available in trade-size paperback (e-copy information is currently unavailable).

-DAC

To be released: March 23, 2012.

On the right is the original artwork done for the movie cover. On the left is the brand new artwork done for the cover of the anthology. When placed side by side- this is what you see. A full picture poster

-DAC

Over the weekend, the cover was revealed- so I’m a little late getting the unveiling up, but here it is:

Looks pretty awesome, doesn’t it? It reminds me of the old movie posters  It will be released in March. I hope you’ll enjoy not only my story within it, but the entire book full of entertaining tales. I’m excited to read what my fellow contributors have added as well.

-DAC

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
-Plan Zero from the Mesozoic Era by Tony Schaab
-Plan 1 from the Lesser-Heralded Parts of The Odyssey by Patrick D’Orazio
-Plan 2 from Ancient Egypt by D.A. Chaney
-Plan 3 from the Middle Ages of Hamelin by Greg Carter
-Plan 4 from the Clockwork Country by Tonia Brown
-Plan 5 from the Depressing Depression by David Dunwoody
-Plan 6 from the Nazi Regime by Rob Silvera
-Plan 7 from Sin City by Jonathan Maberry
-Plan 8 from the Fantastic Fifties, Phase 1 by Craig DiLouie
-Plan 8 from the Fantastic Fifties, Phase 2 by Joe McKinney and Michael McCarty

http://twinstaronline.com/2012/01/06/table-of-contents-for-before-plan-9-anthology-announced/

There is an amazing group of writers involved – and I’m thrilled to be a part of the book I’ll update you guys when it releases in March

A 3D Version by Henry Snider:
Cover artwork: Gary McCluskey

WARNING – spoilers ahead

4 out of 5 stars

Quite a few post apocalyptic novels have attempted to inject love and romance into their pages. Some do it by cramming it into a high action, gore splattered story, while others let it flow more gradually into the mix, letting it germinate based on circumstances surrounding the characters-people pushed together and sharing the horrors that surround one another, so they come together to push back the nightmares. Meghan Ciana Doidge is one of the few storytellers who pushes the love story up front and center with After The Virus. There are a couple of other books I have read that have the relationship between two main characters stand as the key element, but this is the first that I would categorize as a true romance tale.

This story surrounds the two main characters, Rhiannon and Will, as they live their separate lives after the apocalypse…if you can call it living-especially for Rhiannon, who begins the story captured and put into what amounts to a baby mill. Over 99% of the world’s population has died, and the barbaric pockets of survivors are lead by men who need as many healthy women to breed as possible. But Rhiannon is special. She is an actress and a world class beauty that has caught the eye of the local boss, who wants her all to himself. She escapes, but throughout the rest of the story is pursued by the boss’s men, who are intent on bringing her back to him. Will, on the other hand, is a man who has chosen to live his life alone, in a small, remote town where he dutifully takes to the task of cleaning out the dead bodies and restocking the stores and and maintaining the hotel. But Will just wants to be left alone, which creates friction when other survivors come across his little Shangri La who are looking for a place to stay. He eludes danger with them, and on one of his trips to find more supplies, comes across a mute nine year old girl he dubs Snickers (that was what she was eating when he finds her) and though she is skittish, brings her back to his place to live with him. Rhiannon, who manages to escape her captors, stumbles across Will’s town and finds herself reluctantly feeling that this new place could be home. Of course, due to the character’s actions and the other desperate survivors that surround them, things do not go at all well for them. Will and Rhiannon are thrust into the wider world, with other survivors, desperate for heroes, latching on to Will. Rhiannon gets captured again, and Will realizes that he has a greater responsibility in the world than he had hoped or wanted, but will accept, if it will allow him to save the woman he is falling in love with.

The story flows very well and I liked the characters the author developed. Snickers and the dog B.B. allow Will and Rhiannon to focus their efforts on something more than their awkward, fumbling steps toward the realization that they belong together, and draw them closer throughout the story. Some would call this a zombie story, but more to the point, it is an apocalyptic love tale with a smattering of infected creatures that perhaps resemble zombies, though they are a side point altogether. As the author states clearly, this is a story that pays homage to other author’s tales, including one of my favorite books of all time, The Stand. It is about people living, loving, and struggling after the world has crumbled; trying to put the pieces back together and start again, which requires reluctant heroes and leaders, and symbols of hope that can stand against the devastation that not only a virus can do, but what men can do to one another.

The areas of concern I had with this story were a couple of main distractions that I think took away slightly from the tale. First and foremost, the use of pronouns when it came to stating who was speaking and thinking were confusing. One character would be speaking or would be in action one paragraph, and the next would start out with “he” or “she” and would be referring to an entirely different character. This was consistent throughout the story, and while it is something I got used to and started to expect, it disrupted the story when I had to figure things out more than once. The other issue I had was with the nicknames given to various characters. I totally understand and appreciate them for characters that pass by in a story and become nothing more than minor details, but when they become key characters, and when their real names are learned, those nicknames need to evaporate, or at least used less liberally-it caused confusion, and in some cases didn’t make much sense. Especially when it is really only one person who creates the nickname and doesn’t necessarily speak it out loud, but just as a device to remember them, but in no time, everyone else is using it as well. This works when a few characters call Will “Tex”, but not so much when a character is dubbed “Stupid” early on in the tale, but even when his real name is provided that dismissive moniker is used up until the very end of the story.

Rest assured, these issues were not deterrence for me in reading or completing this book. It is a solid tale, with well fleshed out characters and a story that has a place in the PA pantheon as unique because it is a true love story. I know this is the author’s first book, and my gripes are minor issues that are a sideline to her ability to tell a tale. I look forward to checking out more of her work as it is released.

___________________

As always, links to buy and/or  sample After The Virus can be found on the right hand side bar.

Thanks for reading and reviewing, Patrick!

My list is made up entirely of books released during 2010. That meant that some of the 108 books I read this year weren’t eligible, even if they would have otherwise earned a spot here. Jeffrey Eugenides’ serio-comic epic novel Middlesex and John M. Barry’s haunting history of the 1927 Mississippi flood, Rising Tide, are just two examples of books not included for that reason. But beyond date of release, I was fairly open-ended on format, length and genre. Novellas released as a single work, such as Norman Prentiss’ Invisible Fences and Brian James Freeman’s The Painted Darkness got equal consideration with huge epic-sized novels, multi-author anthologies, short story collections, histories and biographies. Some of the books on this list I read in PDF as advance reader’s copies, or listened to on CD, or enjoyed as just plain old dead tree editions, and in most cases I explain that in each entry.

So, here they are, in no certain order…my favorite reads for 2010. Enjoy the list!

Horns by Joe Hill

Both a very funny book and at the same time a well-crafted one, Horns is far better than Hill’s first novel, Heart-Shaped Box. Heart-Shaped Box was a good book, mind you, and his debut collection, Twentieth Century Ghosts, was a great book, but Horns is a cut above either of those. Part Kafka, part Kurt Cobain, part Gallagher, Joe Hill is rapidly becoming one of America’s best novelists, and Horns will show you why. I listened to this one on CD, which helped the humor a lot, I think.

The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Dave Zeltserman

Like Horns, an extremely funny book. Zeltserman has made a name for himself as a writer of intense psychologically-driven crime fiction, making this rural horror story a bit of a departure…but I’m so glad he made it. I hadn’t gone twenty pages into this book before I knew it was going to make this list. Good old fashioned hardcover for this one, and worth every penny.

Pariah by Bob Fingerman

Zombies are big business, so it takes a lot of talent to rise above the crowd. Between James Roy Daley’s Best New Zombie Tales #1 and 2, Peter Clines’ Ex-Heroes, John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead, Ben Tripp’s Rise Again, Greg Lamberson’s Desperate Souls, Patrick D’Orazio’s Comes the Dark, Craig DiLouie’s Tooth and Nail, Stephen Jones’ The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse, Chris Golden’s The New Dead and John Joseph Adams’ The Living Dead 2, 2010 brought out some of the best zombie stuff I’ve ever read. So the competition was extra tough. But my favorite zombie release of the year was Bob Fingerman’s novel Pariah. In addition to being a great zombie book, it was also a beautiful meditation on isolation and the stark, horrifying beauty of post-apocalyptic landscapes. Another good old fashioned dead tree read here, which helped a lot. I generally listen to audio books while driving to and from work, which makes it impossible to give a narrative your full and undivided attention. Inevitably, the idiot cutting you off is going to usurp some of your mental energy, regardless of how good the book is. Bob Fingerman’s description of his characters’ complex emotional states is so finely developed though it really merits the extra attention you have to give a printed book. Listening on CD would have frustrated me here.

Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett

Mr. Shivers is one of three debut novels on this year’s list. I was on a panel with the author at ArmadilloCon in Austin earlier this year, and I was so impressed with his comments on researching that I stopped off at the Barnes & Noble on the way home and bought his book. His story of hobos looking for revenge during the Great Depression was a delicious mix of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Stephen King’s first Gunslinger novel. I flew through the mass market paperback in a single afternoon, and I can’t wait for his next novel, The Company Man.

Invisible Fences by Norman Prentiss

Besides being a genuinely classy guy, Norman Prentiss can write horror stories of such subtlety that you will find yourself going over the work three and four times just to see how he managed to do so much with so few words. He’s made a name for himself as a short story writer whose work more closely resembles the fiction found in the New Yorker than in the bulk of horror’s blood-soaked anthologies, but with his debut novel, Invisible Fences, Prentiss has written a short, but moving story that, to be honest, transcends any sort of attempt to pigeonhole it in a genre. I read this one in a limited edition trade paperback, and getting your own copy may prove difficult. Just don’t come looking for mine. You’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

In the Mean Time by Paul Tremblay

This was a great year for single author short story collections. I loved Michael Louis Calvillo’s Blood and Gristle, Jeremy Shipp’s Fungus of the Heart, John Little’s Little Things, Laird Barron’s Occultation, Scott Edelman’s What Will Come After, Harry Shannon’s A Host of Shadows and Lisa Mannetti’s Deathwatch, but Tremblay’s In the Mean Time just left me breathless. Calvillo’s work had more energy than Tremblay’s. Shannon’s collection had far better action and variety. Edelman’s had zombies. Mannetti’s had beautifully handled historical fiction. Each of those collections did something better than Tremblay did in his book, but the overall feel of In the Mean Time sold me on this work. It reminded me of a Pink Floyd album, the way it just fit together. I read this one as an ebook and found his apocalyptic visions to be so gut-wrenching that at times I had to go hug my kids just to remind myself that things were going to be okay. A tough read, but ultimately, one you’ll be glad you made.

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes

This is one of three non-horror books to make this year’s list. Marlantes’ debut was thirty years in the making, but it was worth the wait. I listened to this book on CD, and was simply blown away. I have a feeling Matterhorn will go up on the shelf next to O’Brien’s The Things They Carried as one of the best war novels ever written. Just be prepared for a very gritty, true to life description of war and all its horrors.

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff

Like Bob Fingerman, I found out about Brenna Yovanoff through the table of contents of John Joseph Adams’ The Living Dead 2. Jonathan Maberry’s Rot and Ruin would have made this a good year for YA all by itself, but Yovanoff’s modern day tale of changelings told the age old teenage drama of fitting in with such originality and beauty that The Replacement transcended its YA field. Perhaps even more impressive is that this is a debut novel. There were some great debuts this year, such as Benjamin Kane Ethridge’s Black and Orange, Lisa Morton’s Castle of Los Angeles, Gregory Hall’s At the End of Church Street, and Lucy Snyder’s Spellbent, but Yovanoff’s book connected with me personally because I have two daughters about to enter that age where they will be trying to define their place in this world. Your mileage may differ, but this one is still highly recommended for anybody in the middle teens and older.

Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields by Charles Bowdon

I’ve been reading an awful lot about the Texas-Mexico border recently as research for an upcoming novel, and Bowdon’s book is one of the best on the subject. He doesn’t go into a great deal of depth about the political reasons behind Mexico’s drug war, but focuses instead on the personal stories of those caught up in the violence and tragedy that defines life in today’s Northern Mexico. After reading this book, I suspect that you, like me, will be furious with the U.S. government and the American media for directing so much attention on the other side of the globe, while one of the most immediate and verifiable threats to U.S. security is at a full boil right next door.

Selected Stories by William Trevor

William Trevor’s stories have been growing discernibly darker in tone over the years, and this volume, which brings together the Irish author’s last four short story collections, goes a long ways toward demonstrating that trend. But Trevor is also capable of writing intensely funny stuff, and you can still find that trademark humor here. William Trevor may very well be the best writer in English working today. His stories, which are always so full of sharp insights into love and ambition and power of major events, such as weddings or the end of an affair, to change many lives, never disappoint. This list isn’t in any sort of order, but if it was, this book would own the top rung. Well worth investing in the hardcover.

And finally, because I’m such a fan of Spinal Tap, I’m turning this list up to eleven and giving you one that almost made it.

Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue

Remember Plato’s Parable of the Cave? In the story, Socrates (pronounced So-Crates, according to Bill and Ted) relates the tale of a group of people who spend their entire lives chained to posts, facing a blank wall. There is a fire behind them that projects shadows on the wall. Because these people lack any other frame of reference, the shadows become their entire world, and their only idea of reality. If you’re familiar with the story, you must have wondered what would happen if those people suddenly got loose and joined the rest of us. Imagine the horror of that much reality crashing in on their minds at once. Well, Emma Donoghue did just that. She tells her story from the point of view of five year old Jack, who lives with his Ma in a single room, with the routine broken only by nighttime visits from a man named Old Nick. The prose is tricky, as it is meant to be that of a five year old, but nonetheless effective, and very frightening.