“There’s a crosshair locked on my heart… With no recourse, and there’s no one behind the wheel”
Luca Veste talks about the process of writing a novel. An interesting read for everybody from a beginner to accomplished novelists. Even readers will enjoy taking a peekm behind the curtain.
It starts with an idea.
That’s how it works for me. I’ll have an idea of something “bad” going on. A specific type of threat, which needs to be stopped. For Dead Gone, that was someone who was replicating the most unethical psychological experiments to discover more about death – The Dying Place was a group of people fighting back against young men they perceived as a threat to themselves.
(There are, of course, other things that happened before those ideas came out, but this is a shortened version)
With Bloodstream, the threat was someone who wanted to destroy love. Someone who wanted to lift the veil on what looked like normal relationships and expose the lies which lay within.
That doesn’t really go far when you’re staring at a blank page, with another 400 or so to fill though. So, it needs to be fleshed out, characterised, plot…erised (that must…
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The Grimorium Verum – Table of Contents Revealed
Western Legends is excited to reveal the table of contents for our newest publication and third installment in the Tres Librorum Prohibitum series: The Grimorium Verum. Edited by Dean M Drinkel, the collection of 26 stories will be released soon.
Foreword – John Palisano
Introduction – Dean M. Drinkel
A Is For Annis – Tim Dry
B Is For Balefire – Raven Dane
C Is For Creature – Justin Miles
D Is For Drawing Down The Moon – Jan Edwards
E Is For Eihwaz – Adrian Chamberlin
F Is For Fury – Christine Morgan
G Is For Ghede – Emile-Louis Tomas Jouvet
H Is For Herb Law – Phil Sloman
I Is For Iya and Iktomi – Christopher Beck
J Is For Jimson Jane – Lily Childs
K Is For Krieg – Dan Russell
L Is For Legends – Amberle L. Husbands
M Is For Magic, Madness and Mayhem – Andrew…
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The Walking Dead Spinoff Casts Its First Survivors
TV watchers have The Walking Dead fever, and the only way they can be cured is apparently with a spinoff show. While there may not be any desperate pleads from fans to get more heavy doses of their hit television series, AMC is delivering with it’s new spinoff show.
The Celebrity Cafe confirms that actors Frank Dillane and Debnam Carey will be joining the main cast for the yet untitled Walking Dead spinoff. Dillane is set to play a young man struggling with drug addiction while Debnam will play his sister. There’s still a couple more roles to be cast, which includes the mother of the two and a random divorced man who joins their group. For the time being these fresh faces are what people will think of when it comes to this spinoff.
If you’re a Walking Dead fan who’s hoping that the spinoff will eventually cross over with the…
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The Pariahs by Erik Hofstatter
“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.” – Neil Gaiman.
Reminiscent of Clive Barker’s claustrophobic ‘Dread’, sans the sex and gore, The Pariahs is a sharp horror of Orwellian isolation. Two siblings, 17 year old Demyan and Akilina his 12 year old sister, are genetically deformed children in a post-apocalyptic world. A world suffocating with fear and totalitarian control. Like all the affected children they’re snatched from their beds at night only to wake up alone in a Siberian experimental prison. The story that follows focuses on the absence of touch so tightly you can almost see the whorls in the fingerprints of the unreached hands.
Demyan is aided by Taisiya, a dislocated voice that carries through the pipes and corridors to land on the cold…
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Within Wet Walls by Lily Childs.
“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.” – Neil Gaiman.
Within Wet Walls by Lily Childs is a memoir of mortis that reads like an absinthe soaked book of poetry. A book found in a lost forest with an escape map pencilled on the back. The question is will you follow the directions or use it to ignite a flame of warmth? Well the good news is this book serves both purposes without any need for destruction. Because there are sparks crackling between the sentences and routes to dark yet often beautiful places to be found inside the words.
The creatures that haunt Wealdstone Hall, a medieval manor house in a Sussex forest, are offered in fragments of the grotesque reflected through…
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Drive by Mark West
“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.” – Neil Gaiman.
You’re sitting in your car on a deserted street. The lights change to amber. You put weigh on your foot ready to hit the accelerator pedal but something stops you. You think back to the party, it was a bust. Another lonely night on the hamster wheel that is your life. You look out of your window which is lowered slightly to allow the night air to drift through the interior and help you stay awake, or at least aware. A noise disturbs that air. Vibrations. Steel and alloy shake. You wait for the boom to grow louder, the engine revs to snarl closer. Your eyes widen as you see the other…
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The Brittle Birds, by Anthony Cowin – a review
Astonishing and insightful review from horror author Peter Labrow.
I’ve always felt that inside every really great short story is the makings of an even better novel. Not that the novel should always be written – the short form can be the best way to put the idea across.
Yet short stories shouldn’t have to mean small ideas. I cite as evidence for the defence The Sentinel by Arthur C Clarke. Famously the inspiration for Clarke’s seminal novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, the short story would be no less satisfying if Clarke and Kubrick hadn’t gone on to make one of the best science-fiction films of all time. I also cite as evidence for the defence the superb To Avenge Man by Lester Del Rey. This is possibly one of my favourite short stories, but it’s never been filmed or expanded into a novel – yet it has the capacity, easily, to be either.
All of which leads…
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News 09:07:2014 – The Quarantined City cover reveal
Europe After the Rain II – Max Ernst 1940-42. © 2014 Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, USA
As reported on Monday, Spectral will be publishing another monthly serial in the form of James Everington’s The Quarantined City, and we are delighted to announce that we have received permission to use Max Ernst’s glorious evocation of war-torn Europe, Europe After the Rain, as the cover image. However, rather than use the whole image for each episode, we will be using different sections of it for the individual parts. The serial will run from January 2015 to June 2015.
More details of the story will be presented soon!
anthonycowin1 