My lack of updates recently cannot be excused, but I’ve been fairly flat-out.
~~~~~~~~~~
Finished, edited and submitted Hammered, my memoirs from the darker days of my youth?
Check.
Write submission for nice-looking anthology?
Check.
Finish exercises for online writing course?
Check.
Organise costume and accommodation for Nightmare Ball at AussieCon?
Check.
Make first post as new manager for AHWA’s Sinister Reads?
Check.
~~~~~~~~~~
I’ll be posting more free fiction soon.
GNB
I sit in this room, the shadowed memories flying behind my eyes like moths darting at the flames of an open fire.
High, vaulted ceilings rise above me like a narcissist’s self-regard.
I remember…
Alone, I feel a tempest of recollection bursting at the seams of my mind, twisting it like taffy in a sideshow arcade and trying to come forth, to break free of the mental constraint that is me.
Books lie scattered everywhere, a field of fallen dominoes waiting for another chance to inspire.
I wish they could.
The memories grow…
Grotesque images plough my senses: the smell of beast after a sudden fall of acid-rain, the colour of viscous viscera fermenting in a vat of vomit.
This appeals to me in ways I cannot begin to define.
I can hear the silence: the echo of my pain, like claws scraping down a fleshless spine as the spider-webs cling to the ceiling, drifting like dandruff from a diseased scalp; that, too, appeals to me.
Was I going insane?
Or am I already there, all this an imaginary friend that’s not very friendly at all?
I can taste the dust settling onto my skin, and it tastes like dry, dead beetles; scarabs scuttling down my throat to infest and ingest me from the inside.
It tastes too good to not be true.
The three windows allow marginal light, seeming as stingy as bankers with God’s own illumination. The carpet under my bare feet is gritty, more a collection of shards, splinters and sand than any man-made fibre.
I feel the same; scattered and broken.
I remember…
As I stare at the tattered pictures of fallen heroes blue-tacked to the walls, I remember the events that happened here, the terrible things that no-one will talk of.
Not to me, anyway.
I remember the things that I wish I could forget.
I mean…it was me that suffered here, wasn’t it?
Was it?
Or was it all just a dream…?
…I remember?
This week I’ll be posting a number of reviews, as I’m way behind.
First up will be THE PLACE IN BETWEEN by The Reverend Steven Rage, out from Legumeman books now.
Makh, lead singer for The Funeral Pyre, looked over at Ziggy, sitting stoned as a maggot and barely able to keep his eyes open.
“Dude…you want some more smack before we start the road trip?”
Ziggy barely stirred as Bonehead from SakAttack stuffed a white rock under his tongue and then pushed him behind the wheel of the van the two bands shared.
Bonehead turned to Makh. “What can go wrong?”
I will, over the next few weeks, fill in the gaps on my tastes and recommendations in reading, music and film/television. At first just in list form, like below, but I shall eventually place links here for some of the authors, publishers, musicians and artists that I review over the coming weeks..
Not that I think you’ll be interested in personal stuff, my tastes in the arts may show you some of my influences, both overt and the ones I am unaware of.
Just the basics today, I’ll go more into detail in future posts, including youtube links to songs I feel are worthy.
Again some (most) of you may just think ‘Great, more shit…just gimme the reviews and the free stories.’ For you guys and gals, I apologise. Call it rambling, call it pointless…fuck…dress it in drag and call it Theodora for all I fucking care.
As you can see, I don’t give a toss if you read it or not.
Here goes with the first list.
Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Richard Laymon, William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Gina Ranalli, James Roy Daley, Michael Slade, Brett McBean, Steve Gerlach, Tim Curran, R. Frederick-Hamilton, Matthew Revert, Matthew Reilly, Jack Ketchum, Simon Clark, Joe Lansdale, Robert R. McCammon, Graham Masterton, Greg Lamberson, James A. Moore, Michael McBride, William Ollie, Brian Keene, Jeff Strand, Andersen Prunty, Brian Knight, R. A. Salvatore, Ed Greenwood, Kylie Chan, Garrett Cook, Jason Wuchenich, Jess Gulbranson, Gregory David Roberts, Wrath James White, Michael Marshall (Smith), Kim Paffenwroth, Terry Pratchett, the Harry Potter series, Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Celestine Prophecy, Kevin Shamel, Robin Hobb, Andy MacNab, Chris Ryan, J.R.R.Tolkien, Robert G. Barrett, Andrew J. McKiernan, Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Raymond Feist, the Reverend Steven Rage, and Chantal Boudreau (unpublished but damn good).
Basic list that I will update and add to as I think of extras.
I recommend any or all if these authors to you all. If you like my stuff, you’ll most likely enjoy some or all of these writers. Check them out if you’ve a mind to, and use your own judgement.
Some are well known, some are barely known and some are unknown. All are damn good.
COMING SOON:
Publishers
Musicians/Bands
Artists (Visual in all mediums)
Cinema, Live Theatre and Television
Thanks for reading,
GNBraun
Grindhouse Press Book 001
Trade Paperback, 264 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9826281-1-9
Release Date: June 15, 2010
Cover Price: US$15.00
“Two men have the carcass.” These words, heard over a crackling telephone line, change writer Karen Lewis’s life for the worse. Months earlier, her brother went missing in the small rural town of Fallen Trees, Washington. And now she finds out he willed his half of a bizarre bed and breakfast to her. “Two men have the carcass.” Is this ominous phrase enough to draw her into the mystery of Fallen Trees? Is the answer to her brother’s disappearance located there? Or is it just a trap, something designed to draw her into a nightmare world and break her sanity? What horror awaits Karen in the House of Fallen Trees?
NOW AVAILABLE!!
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Direct from the Publisher
Attributed to and Copyright 2010 Grindhouse Press
Gina Ranalli’s Official Website
————————————————————
Gina Ranalli is a well-established and inspiring voice in bizarro and horror fiction.
A New Englander by birth, Gina resides in the emerald green heart of Washington State, where she enjoys consuming copious amounts of caffeine, playing with her animals and generally acting like a hyper seven-year-old.
BOOKS
Chemical Gardens – 2006
Suicide Girls in the Afterlife – 2006
13 Thorns (with Gus Fink) – 2007 (Wonderland Award winner for Best Collection)
Wall of Kiss – 2007
Mother Puncher – 2008
Swarm of Flying Eyeballs – 2009
Sky Tongues – 2009
House of Fallen Trees – 2009
Praise the Dead — 2010
Peppermint Twist — TBA
Still Life with Vibrator – TBA
ANTHOLOGIES
The Bizarro Starter Kit (Orange) – 2006
Falling from the Sky – 2007
Bits of the Dead – 2008
Horror Library Vol. 3 – 2008
The Beast Within – 2008
Northern Haunts – 2009
Dead Science – 2009
SHORT STORIES
Skin Flowers – 2008
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:REVIEW: House of Fallen Trees:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I first read this wonderful book around the third draft of the first printing in 2009, the limited edition first published by Cargo Cult Press, now an imprint of Bloodletting Books.
It was a great read, truly one of the best of the year for me.
This new impression by Grindhouse Press, a new but already formidable publisher in the United States, has had a facelift. Beautiful cover art, and a bit of work under the bonnet, too…
I’d heard it was improved, had been added to and re-edited and that it reads even better, which was hard for me to believe until I read the new improved version.
Absolutely fantastic book.
Miss Ranalli is moving from the realms of bizarro into the ‘straight’ horror novel…our gain and their loss, although any who read Gina Ranalli will know that anything she chooses to write will have that same lyrical, clear and emotive style she exhibits throughout her career.
House of Fallen Trees is a tale of love, family, discrimination, loss and redemption, wrapped up in a haunted house tale that manages to explore new realms within that much-worn sub-genre. Gina writes with a unique vision, a rare thing these days, that seems to be mostly confined to the ‘bizarro’ genre, and many thanks to Cargo Cult Press for bringing this group of writers to our attention in the horror/small press genre. Bizarro was an underground movement of authors based around Seattle, but now the genre has grown to the point where it can’t be called underground anymore…maybe it’s moved into avant-garde now?
Whatever bizarro is now, Gina has outgrown it like a pair of old schoolshoes. Making her way in the publishing world by not sticking to a genre, but to her own unique voice, Miss Ginalli will surely be a household name in the near future.
8.5/10
I highly recommend this book.
One of the best reads this year, for sure!
Buy it…buy it NOW!
I have. . .
GNBraun
Geoff Brown -Writer 