Book Impressions - The Engineer Reconditioned by Neal Asher

I'm a big fan of the author's novels but these are the first of his short stories that I've read and I'm pleased to report that they're a fine read. The opening story was the highlight for me and for me is one of those stories that illustrates what I love about science fiction. It tells the story of first contact with an alien that has been dormant for millions of years. What I enjoyed was the attention to detail and the unraveling of the mystery of the Jain (the alien race if you're not familiar with the books).

There's stories in this collection that touch on all of the major book series he's written and provide some interesting insights and  connections. While I'm a big fan of the Owner series the short stories didn't grab me as much as the novels did. They're an interesting hint as to the Owner's future and it also reminded me of the adage of sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.

Overall I enjoyed these stories, not quite as much as the author's novels but they were a fine read.

Click on image to buy book from Amazon

Mysterious aliens, ruthless terrorists, androids with attitude, genetic manipulation, punch-ups with lasers and giant spaceships! What more do you want?

Reprint of The Engineer with three additional stories.

The Engineer
Spatterjay
The Owner
The Tor-beast's Prison
Tiger Tiger


Buy The Engineer Reconditioned from Amazon US UK (and it's an excellent sci-fi read)

ABC Drabbles of Death - N is for Necrophobia

Our macabre journey through the alphabet continues and this week we reach the letter 'N'. Choosing the word for this week's drabble proved tricky as there are so many suitable choices, in the end I chose something a little bit humorous :-)

If you've not read the previous drabbles in this series then you will find them all here:

http://thecultofme.blogspot.co.uk/p/welcome-to-first-drabble-in-my-new.html

N is for Necrophobia

I first discovered my fear of dead bodies at a young age. My nan had died and when my parents took me to view the body I freaked. Not so strange you might think, but it wasn’t grief which scared me.

The same happened at the death of my parents and then at the sight of a car crash. Whenever I saw a dead body fear overwhelmed me.

It’s not been that big a deal except for those few occasions. Of course things are different now and a paralysing terror of dead bodies isn’t that helpful during the zombie apocalypse.

Blog Shout Out - Tales of Terror Blog

For this week's blog shout out we visit Paula Cappa's Tales of Terror blog. Discover more about her blog in her own words below:

Reading Fiction, Tales of Terror Blog
by Paula Cappa

I'm a reader and a writer of supernatural fiction, quiet horror, and paranormal mysteries. I began Tales of Terror because I wanted to read a wide variety of classicauthors in this genre and what better way to explore the masters of this art than in short stories? The blog was born so I could share my findings with other readers.

I feature one author every week with a free link to the short story. The blog content is a brief invitation to read the story, not a review or summary but a 'taste' of what the story is about, and has images. I post every Tuesday, authors like Ambrose Bierce, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, A.C. Doyle, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, H.G. Wells, Edith Wharton and many more. I also include an audio version of the story and sometimes a film from YOUTUBE. All links are free.

One of my most popular posts was The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions. Also The Ensouled Violin by Helena Blavatsky. I happened to love ghost stories so I feature them a lot.

I recently reached my 100th post, with nearly 17,000 views and well over l00 followers and building more every day. This is a good short story blog to follow for not only supernatural and horror readers, but also for writers in this genre to read a short story a week by the master writers. I have some followers who are English literature teachers: I feature many literary authors: Blazac, Chekhov, Dumas, O Henry, Marryat, Stevenson, Twain. Just this past week, I featured W.B. Yeats, his mystical short story, "The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows."

I will continue to explore these authors and their art as this not only assists me with my own writing in this genre, but also is a joy to read a short story every single week and share it with my fellow readers.

http://paulacappa.wordpress.com/

Tuesday Tease - The Atholl Expedition by Alex Roddie

Not only is Alex Roddie a talented editor (he recently edited the second edition of The Cult of Me for me) he writes mountaineering fiction. Now I'll admit that as a genre it's not one that interested me, however I took the plunge with one of Alex's earlier books The Only Genuine Jones and discovered a fascinating adventure with some excellent characters. This later release is on my TBR list and I'm looking forward to reading it - take a look and see if it tickles your fancy:

Click on image to buy book from Amazon

The Atholl Expedition by Alex Roddie

The favourable weather lasted no longer than half a day.

Duncan sweated at the rear of the hunting party as they struggled up the southern flanks of yet another mountain. He had no clear idea where they were. For a few hours after dawn the sun had blazed down on them as it climbed into the heavens, and Duncan had tramped upwards, tormented by the heat, swatting midges out of his eyes and following the pony as she picked the most efficient path through the rocks. They had not lingered at the waterlogged bealach between the two mountains, for such places were blighted by a miasma of bad air that was known to cause disease.

The wind began to pick up after an hour, and by noon a veil of high cloud had completely obscured the sun. The humidity of their ascent soon turned to a dangerous chill. Every man in the party wore clothing dampened by the sweat of his exertion, and now the north wind stole body heat from them with every step.

Albert plodded grimly at his side. He hadn’t spoken for an hour or more. Duncan wondered what thoughts might be passing through the mind of the Prince in this wild and remote place. Did he miss his wife and family? Was he bent purely on his single-minded pursuit of the prize, or did his thoughts return to weighty matters of politics and state?

Suddenly they emerged at the most savage and breathtaking location Duncan had ever seen in these mountains.

They had been following a burn uphill for a while now. The waters were often hidden beneath masses of old snow as they flowed down a furrow in the mountain. The hunters trod cautiously over this sugary carapace, and Duncan followed his father’s footsteps, wary of concealed voids. Sometimes he could hear the water gurgling and foaming below his feet. The surface was so dirty and blown-over with grass and dust that it hardly looked like snow at all, but resembled the rocks to each side: a desolate expanse of grey, pock-marked and rippled like sand on a beach.

McAdie led their party to the source of this burn: a bealach between two mountain peaks. The wind blasted shreds of freezing mist through the notch, and in the gale Duncan could smell an imminent blizzard. An ache of foreboding settled in his bones as he approached that fearful place.

A boiling confusion of cloud hid the landscape here and there, first obscuring it completely then revealing it for a dazzling moment before covering it up once again. Duncan had never climbed this high before. To his mind this notch in the mountains was the very gateway into the hell belonging to the Bodach: a world forbidden to men, a kingdom of monsters and savage forces, of avalanches and death.

He raised a hand before his eyes to shield them from the terrible wind. Ahead, he could see no distinction between the snow on which he stood and the churning white of the sky. The ground trembled and groaned beneath his shoes. He raised his eyes to the mountain peak on the right: a vertical cliff, monstrous to his eyes, fringed by dripping icicles that reached down like claws into the abyss beneath.

His father stood on a rock, leaning over the edge, trying to penetrate the veil of cloud which filled the amphitheatre below. Duncan flailed through the snow in his direction.

‘Where are we?’

‘Stay back!’ McAdie warned. ‘There’s a barraman here. I cannae see the edge.’

Barraman: an overhanging ledge of snow, poised to fall into the depths and kill any who stand upon it. Such evil traps were constructed by the Bodach and had claimed many a victim over the years.

Duncan felt the first flakes of snow whipping past his face, carried on the strengthening northerly. August snow was common in the high mountains, but today, after such a fine sunrise, it was an evil omen.

‘We must climb down there.’ McAdie pointed into the whirling darkness beneath them.

Albert struggled to his feet. ‘Down there? Are you mad?’

‘If the hart wasnae in Glen Geusachan he’ll be in Garbh-coire for sure. This is our route down.’

McAdie took a step forward, sinking up to his ankles in the snow; then another step, and another, probing the ground ahead with the stock of his rifle. The fury of cloud blasting over the ridge obscured his outline so that he became little more than a wraith in a matter of seconds.

The landscape devoured him. Duncan turned to Albert, quaking inside but determined to make an outward show of confidence.

‘You heard my father. No time for resting until we’re in the corrie below.’

Albert nodded. The snow was beginning to stick to his moustache and he shivered in the cold. For a moment Duncan thought he detected fear in the great man’s expression, but with a stoic smile Albert banished his doubts.

‘I trust you. Lead the way.’

Duncan followed his father’s footsteps to the edge of the abyss.

The wind increased with every step he took, grasping at his sleeves, tearing at his face with pellets of ice, striving to push him back into the mortal world. The snow sapped the warmth from his feet and made it harder to ignore the fatigue which had built up over days of hard work and poor rest. Such conditions killed men regularly, and in truth Duncan was mortally afraid, for they were entering the realm of the mountain spirits where the boundary between life and death was as narrow as a thread.

A man is an atom here. We do not belong, and we survive only by the grace of fate.

A rotten fissure gaped in the snow at his feet. Clogged with debris blown in from the corrie beneath, natural forces had sculpted it into the most fantastic shapes imaginable: a frozen morass of twisted crests and sinkholes, cracks and waves. He stepped over this barrier with care.

Beyond it, his father had kicked a trench in the overhanging lip of snow. Snowflakes blasted through this gap into Duncan’s face, momentarily blinding him. Footsteps led down a slope of unremitting steepness on the other side: a clean sweep of a hundred yards, perhaps more, although much of the descent was hidden in the murk. He could see his father descending on all fours some way beneath, facing into the slope.

He turned back to address Albert. The Prince was coated in driven snow from his boots to the crown of his head, and he shielded his eyes with a hand as he staggered in the relentless wind.

‘Mind how ye go, sir,’ Duncan shouted at him. ‘It’s awful steep.’

‘The pony will never make it down here! This is madness!’

‘Trust her! She’s a better climber than any of us.’

The mountain roared as Duncan began his descent, and in that roar he heard the unearthly cry of the Bodach.

Click here to buy The Atholl Expedition from Amazon

About the author

Alex Roddie is a writer of historical fiction set in the mountains. He’s spent a great deal of his life up various hills, and his time living in Scotland from 2008 to 2011 has proved an endless source of inspiration. His novels The Only Genuine Jones and The Atholl Expedition are tales of adventure based on the emerging mountaineering culture of Britain in the 19th century.

His author website is www.alexroddie.com.

Alex is also a freelance editor providing affordable services for indie authors. When wearing his editing hat he hangs out at www.pinnacleeditorial.co.uk.

Guest Author Interview - C. Robert Cales

C. Robert Cales joins me in this week's guest author interview to discuss his latest release 'The Bookseller'. Discover more about him and his writing below:

Click on image to buy book from Amazon

Please introduce yourself, who are you and what do you do?
My friends call me ScaryBob. C. Robert Cales is the name on my novels. I write paranormal thrillers and I’ll define that because some of my scenes taken out of context might be grounds to question my assertion that I do not write horror.

Horror has a tendency to be plot driven with only enough character development to allow the reader to know who the zombies are about to eat. My version of horror, if you insist on calling it that, is character driven. I create a soft spot in the reader’s heart by giving them characters full of life. My intent is to engage the reader on an emotional level. Love and hate become tools, but before any of that happens I plant the seed of horror, although almost subliminal. It’s a whisper in the darkness.

I leave tidbits for the reader to discover, like sharks teeth among shell debris at the edge of the water. If the reader takes the time for a walk along the beach they will find them. Looking for them from a speedboat is not very productive. If a reader is willing to walk the beach and make friends along the way they will likely be terrified by my stories. Readers who want zombies in the surf as soon as the walk starts will probably not get me as an author. An author can’t make every reader happy. My primary goal is to make myself happy and expand my circle of readers as I do so.

What first inspired you to start writing?
The short answer is that my imagination had a gun to my head and it was either my fingers or my brains on the keyboard. The long answer is that I was born with a triple dose of imagination. At the tender age of ten I became addicted to the horror genre at the hands of Christopher Lee as Dracula. When I was about sixteen my imagination started demanding an outlet. I thought about making movies, but even to my teenage mind the startup costs were prohibitive. Pencil and paper, on the other hand, were dirt cheap.

I was born with the imagination, but writing skills are acquired through hard work and practice. I dabbled in science fiction and political intrigue, but nothing was satisfying me. When I wasn’t pursuing the writing craft I was feeding my addiction to horror. Addiction to horror means I watched anything with the slightest promise of delivering the next big scare. When it comes to scary movies there is a great deal of very lame crap. I was leaving one such movie, grumbling to myself that I could do that good. It was at that instant that I witnessed a three-way collision between my imagination, my love of horror and my need to write.

And what attracted you to writing horror, sorry paranormal thrillers?
Hahahaha! Yes, paranormal thrillers. Horror is what clicks with me, but I see the problems with it, namely the usual lack of character development, of course that’s not something I learned right away.

Whenever someone sets out to teach themselves to write they need unwitting mentors. They need to study the works of the masters of their chosen genre. The mentors I selected were Stephen King and Anne Rice, who seemed to represent polar opposites of the spectrum. Each of them taught me very significant things. Stephen taught me the value of character development in The Stand. Stu Redman and Larry Underwood had been traveling together. I loved both of these guys. It came time for them to part and go on their own task. Five simple words absolutely crushed me. “Stu never saw Larry again.” Oh my God, what Stephen did to me. One of my friends was going to buy the farm and worse yet I didn’t know which one. Oh, the agony! Oh, the lesson! Anne further defined that lesson by taking the vampire Lestat, a bloodthirsty killer, and turning him into a beloved character. Stephen, Anne, if you happen to read this interview, thank you.

Which author do you most admire and why?
Honest, I’m not looking at the questions before I write the answers, but it seems that I’m ahead of you since I’ve already answered the question, for the most part, anyway. Stephen King and Anne Rice were my selected mentors and they drove me to become the writer I am. Everything I wrote was compared to their best works and I was not inclined to accept anything less from myself.

The Shining scared the bejesus out of me, but the mechanism was very subliminal. Night shift, scary story, mirror, a volatile combination. Yeah, you see it coming. Story details fresh in my mind, making night rounds, catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror, come out of my skin. Yeah, I want to be the writer who serves up that kind of brew.

The Mayfair Witches of The Witching Hour, the vampire Lestat of Interview With A Vampire, when I think of the worlds Anne Rice has taken me into I get goosebumps. That’s the kind of writer I want to be.

Yes, I know. You asked for which author I admire most. I’m sorry, I can’t choose.

Where do your best ideas come from?
I have an imagination that runs 24/7, but the answer isn’t quite that simple. I develop the concepts and the main characters and then I turn it over to my imagination. I watch as the story develops. In the beginning I only know how the novel ends in the most general terms only, the bad guy gets it. I don’t know how, where or by whom until it’s revealed to me. Now here’s the kicker. I’m sure the entire story is already written and stored somewhere in my subconscious mind. Occasionally I take a misstep in the story and when I do I’m introduced to a good case of writer’s block. When I go back and correct whatever sin I’ve committed against the master plan the creative flow returns.

One possible answer to your original question about the source of my ideas is a little creepy. It’s an invisible alien intelligence. Maybe I’m not the one dreaming up the ideas. Maybe it is. Maybe I’m forced to write. Oh, God, I’ve been enslaved by an alien ghost with a deep desire to scare readers.

What is the best piece of writing advice you have received?
Early in my pursuit of the writing craft someone told me that my characters were like cardboard cutouts moving around in the story. I don’t remember who it was, but it was my first lesson on character development.

Regardless of how dynamic the plot might be, if it doesn’t have an impact on characters with depth, the story will be flat and lifeless. There is also a counterpoint. All character development and no plot is boring. The author’s job is to reach a reasonable balance.

The lesson on character development really came home when I was working on my first story, Devil Glass. It was originally a short story and after three or four rewrites it still didn’t have the impact I wanted. That’s when the whole thing about character development really came home to me. When I finally identified the missing element I knew I had to write a novel.

What is your favorite word?
Wow, talk about a low blow. That’s a little like asking me to identify the most beautiful woman in the world. That’s a nearly impossible feat. Every time I focus on one ten more line up next to her.

If I had to pick one, you know, gun to my head kind of thing, I would want a word that connects with all things, focuses on the innermost being, the first prime number, the beginning of all things. That word would be I. I is the root of the human experience and there is where you find the heart of good writing. I think. I feel. I love.

What are you working on at the moment?
It’s my third novel. In coming up with a title I had to use the powers granted to me by my poetic license. I had to coin the word reincarnology or the technology of reincarnation. Reincarnology describes an alien technology discovered circa 1625. In twenty-four hours the technology produces a twenty-something clone of the donor complete with all memories. Throughout the centuries they have been inducting gifted people into endless life. They have managed to keep the secret for four hundred years, but their secret has been slowly transforming them into psychopaths. Someone recognized the truth and has defected. The secret is in the hands of a journalist and is about to be exposed. Plugging the leak has become their sole focus. If they fail there is a plan to eliminate the need to keep the secret. They are going to kill the population chained to the wheel of life and death. They are going to kill all of us.

Tell us about your latest release and how we can find out more.
My latest release is The Bookseller. The Bookseller is a bookstore across Tremont St. from Boston Common, owned and operated by George Saunders, a lovable rare book dealer. The bookstore and residence above was a wedding present from his father-in-law thirty years before the story begins. George is married to his college sweetheart who runs a coffee parlor in a corner of the bookstore. The coffee parlor is the morning meeting place for other business owners on the cobblestone mall. Their lives are about to be turned upside down.

Carlos Ramirez, drug lord, child molester, murderer.....that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Nonhuman spirit, hundreds of past lives, billions in treasure, bloody footprints across history, memories of everything. His best men have developed a process for infusing liquid cocaine into the pages of books and withdrawing it at the destination point. Carlos is looking for a bookstore in the perfect location for acquisition to complete the next step of his plan.

My Goodreads link is https://www.goodreads.com/scarybob

On my blog you can read an interview with Carlos Ramirez. Much to my surprise the journalist from my third novel volunteered for the assignment. Who am I to deny that kind of initiative? He’s not sure he will ever be the same. Chilling.

Click here to buy The Bookseller from Amazon