I know, it’s like I lead a charmed life or something, but I’m reading the sixth book in a five-book series, ISN’T THAT CRAY CRAY?!
Being unsure if I’m allowed to say who and what I’m reading, I won’t, but I am totally here to brag about it. Again. I probably better start coming up with some, like, real blog content.
Sooner or later.
Probably later.
I don’t want to brag, but that might be a lie, since I’m here making a blog post about it. Yeah, since the end of January, I haven’t chronicled a goddamn thing I’ve read, but I’m here now to do so. Maybe I do want to brag, IS THAT SO BAD?!
My good friend and fellow Indie author Jason S. Hornsby has finished his fifth book, Ghost Sickness, and y’all, I had the honor, privilege and pleasure to be one of the first to read it. And as I told him (because I finished it already) I’ve been gagging for this book for years now, and holy shit, did it deliver.
I can’t say too much about it, not until he’s found a home for it of some sort, but if you’re a fan of his previous books (listed below) then you will shit yourself over this one. That may be hyperbole, but you’d best get some Depends, just in case it weren’t.
Yes, I know I said fifth book, but his first one has been disavowed by the author so thoroughly, I’d feel bad bringing it up by name. I also won’t start on the back cover copy. Heh. IYKYK
Anyway, all five of you seeing this, just know that this fucking legendary tome is coming sooner or later, and when you’ve got your copy, you can thank him then. It really is that good.
Be seeing you.
_thom
Not mine, by the way. This time. No, I’ve just finished reading a rough manuscript by a private investigator who’s turned a real-life case into a fictionalized account, and it had a very good story. I mean, something of a tragedy, but that’s life, innit? I think I gave some good feedback. I hope I did, at least.
I don’t want to say the author’s name or the name of the manuscript, not until it’s more tightened up, I guess? On the other hand, since I’m working on a crime thing of my own, I wanted to state that I had read the work, so everybody knows there’s nothing shady going on here. I already promised I wouldn’t steal from him, and I won’t, ha.
(If I’m going to steal from a crime author, it’s going to be Robert B. Parker and his forebears, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Just so’s you knows.)
The second installment of the World of Trouble series (Cult of Personality) is going to be heavily led by a private investigator, so maybe I’ll get to have a real-life PI read that (whenever it’s done) and get some feedback? That would be neat. And while that certainly is one reason I did the reading, I also want to pay forward all the help I got when I was a wee budding author, myself.
People like David Moody, Jonathan Maberry, Tim Curran, and Joe McKinney all took time out of their schedule to help me out, be it in the form of advice or reading a finished manuscript for a cover blurb. And who the hell was I? Nobody, with no real prospects, and they helped anyway.
So now that I’m still nobody with few prospects, I still like to help when I can. It’s not much, but it’s honest work. Heh. -TB
After my startling revelation about Evil Dead 2 and my childhood penchant for thievery, I figured it would be just as well if I shared how I felt about Bruce Campbell’s book, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor. I gave the book four stars on Goodreads, and this is what I said:
“I enjoyed this very much. I’m a fan of the Evil Dead franchise, as well as the various and sundry things Bruce Campbell has been a part of. It has an easy, readable narrative and the stories therein are great windows into the world of movie making from the Indies on up.
I don’t have too much more to say about it. It wasn’t a quick read, but it was worth the time.”
The first thing I saw of his was Army of Darkness, which really blew my mind open. I’d seen zombie stuff before that, and I’d seen kind of Lovecraft-adjacent stuff as well, but Army of Darkness? Man, that thing was everything. And Ash, too, if I’m being honest. I was right at the age where I had finally decided (rightly so) that Han Solo was cooler than Luke Skywalker, and Ash with all his bravado and 85% ability to back it up was both hilarious and inspiring.
Following that, I’ve seen Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, but they haven’t touched me like the first one did. The 2013 reboot that I’ve finally seen was thoroughly enjoyable, even if there was no Ash or even an Ash-like character. I had heard rumors they were going to attempt a crossing-over of the two sides of the franchise, but I understand that’s a dream, now.
The only way I could see it is if the ending of the Ash vs Evil Dead AMC television show led to an Army of Darkness 2 somehow, but that would be completely unexpected. I’m looking forward to Evil Dead Rise, too, even though it doesn’t look like it has any connection to 2013’s Evil Dead.
In any case, I’m glad for what we’ve got, no matter what may come next. If there was any possibility of writing something set in that universe, I’d jump at it. I might do some of that right now, just for me, damn it. -TB
Pale Fallen Angels, Parts 3 & 4 is the title of this one.
This was, to my eyes, a much different read than most of the other VHD books. After we got away from the frontier and into the village proper, with high-tech brothels and mad scientist lairs and vampire fortresses, and you know what? I liked it.
Also, things were different this time around with the dangers presented. Previously, people or things were described as dangerous beyond compare, but they were dealt with relatively easily by the beautiful man in black and his voracious left hand. But in this book, D isn’t only in danger, he is hurt pretty badly more than once.
So I really enjoyed this one. My Vampire Hunter D steam had been flagging, to be honest, but this volume reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the series. I’ll probably start the next one before the first quarter of 2023 is up.
For my first read of the year, this was pretty nice. Next up, If Chins Could Kill, the autobiography of Bruce Campbell. I usually limit myself to one or two non-fiction works per year, as there is enough of this hellscape poking through my daily life to begin with, but I’m an Ashley J. Williams fanboy from way back.
As a matter of fact, the first time I stole anything was from a food market in San Antonio, TX, while my father was away in Georgia, training to be a Customs Agent. This left my mom on her own to wrangle me, an eleven- to twelve-year-old boy, as best she could, and believe you me, she did the job.
I was in the store with her and ran across an unsupervised sticker sheet. Right in the middle of it was a skull with eyeballs which said EVIL DEAD 2, and I had to have it. To be perfectly frank, I had no idea what the hell an Evil Dead was at the time, but the imagery did it for me. I slipped that sticker sheet into my pocket (careful not to fold that one sticker, of course) and we went about our shopping.
Later, after I’d applied the Evil Dead 2 sticker to my skateboard (because where else would it go?) I was so proud of it I showed it off to my mom, rather foolishly, in hindsight. She went ooh and ahh and asked me where I got such a lovely thing, which should have been an enormous red flag, but I was too full of myself to realize it.
I told her I’d gotten it at the store, and she rose up like the angry sea. “When?” she bellowed. “I didn’t buy it for you, so when?!”
With a firm grip on my arm, she marched me back to the market to turn me in. (It was only half a mile, according to Google Maps, but that’s a long freakin’ way to be dragged, I’m here to tell you.) She made me tell the manager what I’d done, and he was very stern and everything and told me I was going to be watched like a hawk every time I went into his store. He took a picture of me and put it on the wall and told me next time, it would be the police.
Then, while I was bawling about it, he told my mother in Spanish they didn’t even sell those stickers there and he didn’t know where they’d come from, so maybe take it easy?
I knew enough Spanish by then to know that the universe had turned on me, but I figured I had gotten away with enough that things probably evened out. But I didn’t let her know that, because that would unveil how much Spanish I really understood by then. Heh.
Anyway. I liked this Vampire Hunter D book. -TB
I’m way behind on the reading and the keeping up thereof, so I’ll just mention a couple of things which really got my attention this year. I can only say for certain about thirty of the books I read this year, because most of those were new reads. Everything I re-read this year, it’s all speculative as to when I read it because I was trying to use Goodreads to track what I was reading, leaving reviews on books I’ve already left a star rating for. Unfortunately, neither the dates on the books nor their position in my books list changed any when I added the reviews, and I don’t have the patience to sift through my entire book list there to find the reviews I left this year. The only re-reads I can say for sure I read were The Lord of the Rings and The Ghost Brigades, because they were the last two.
I started out with Hours of the Dragon, by Robert E. Howard, and that was a pretty good way to kick off the reading for the year. Start on a good foot, yeah? Yeah. I also read Bye, Bye, Baby, Ace Atkins’ goodbye to the Spenser series. That was bittersweet, as his voice is entirely reminiscent of that of Robert B. Parker’s when he was at the height of his powers. But he’s got to move on to focus on his own work, which is also very good. The next book which left an impression was The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy. It was the noirest of noir, and I enjoyed it immensely.
I read my one (1) non-fiction book in Death of the Territories, a story about how Vince McMahon Jr. and the WWF turned the world of professional wrestling on its head. I read Web, by John Wyndham, and that was both creepy and undermined by its own format, as most of the reveal and scary things were given away at the very front of the book, which is fucking baffling to me. Also, the behavior described in the novel was found in nature not too long after the book’s publication, so it’s only a matter of time before we’re living in a real-life Kingdom of the Spider. Whee!
I re-read Left Behind because I’m a masochist, and there’s still more of that to read, but it’s only been five months and I haven’t yet fully recovered. And speaking of underwhelming reads, I also failed to really enjoy Isabel Allende’s rendition of Zorro. I much preferred the graphic novel version as written by Matt Wagner and drawn by Francesco Francavilla for Dynamite Comics. And in that vein, finally, is Slaughterhouse-Five, which I suppose is some kind of heresy. I mean, I enjoyed it, but goddamn. What was the point of that book? Would it have hit the same if it was told in a linear fashion, or was it dependent on the character being unstuck in time to be enjoyable? I don’t think it would have been the hit it was if it weren’t for the gimmick.
The last book I finished before the end of the year was John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades, and it will be an eternal source of irritation to me that he has no interest in taking over John Gardner’s Armor sequel, ha. I asked him about that, once upon a time, and he very firmly denied any interest in that kind of thing. And that’s completely understandable, as any writer worth their salt has projects a-plenty, but still. It’s irksome, because he’s just the right author to do it. Anyway.
That was the reading for 2022, and may 2023 have better accountability, ha. I hope you had a good year in reading, and I hope that continues next year. Especially, you know, if you pick up my new book, World of Trouble: Tribulation of Dax.
(I’ll have you know, I feel dirty now, having typed that last sentence.)
That’s it for me! I’ll see you when I see you.
_thom
Woof! Things picked up pace for a while there, but I’ve been working on things and my reading time has dropped off. Still. Here’s what got read.
April
May
June
See? SLOW. I’ve got to up my input. I wonder if I should start adding the various comics and what-have-you to the list. I mean, it’s still reading. Hmm.
Hmm.
The first three months of this year feel like they were pretty slow for reading, but things are what they are. February was the Texas Snowmageddon, and that threw off the pattern of how I read (usually new read, reread, and so on) but things work out. Anyway. ANYWAY.
January:
February
March
Good start to the year, I think, even if it kind of ground into movement. I’m looking forward to what the rest of the year brings, new-read-wise, and also to the comfort of some quality re-reads. I’m taking suggestions, of course, if you’ve a book you think I just gotta read.
Be seeing you. _tb