Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

Review Make sure to read to the end for buy links and contests. I love pulpy, trope-filled horror novels that are tinged with a bit of humor. And you get that right from the beginning with Jersey Ghouls . It starts with a blonde in a pith helmet in the jungle. And it all stacks up from there. You've got a small town and the trope of returning to that small town after many years absence. Tandem threats to the well being of the town, the centipedes and a big storm. A past-his-prime ex-cop protagonist. Power outages. Blocked highways... There were some twists and turns, and some inventive characters that made this a really fun read. I unexpectedly loved the character of Mason the most. A self-aware titular "ghoul," he adds a sort of perspective stories like this are often missing. I was also fairly impressed with the editing. A lot of indie and self-published stories lately have been so full of errors they were unreadable. This, however, only had a few...

I've joined a lot of homesteading and pioneering groups on Facebook recently in an effort to get motivated to work my 1.1 acres here in Hawaii. A recent post had a comment which started, "Take your favorite sour cream and raisin pie recipe..." I laughed aloud because, who has a favorite sour cream and raisin pie recipe? I have a favorite peanut butter pie recipe, and a favorite key lime pie recipe. I also have a favorite apple pie recipe. But sour cream and raisin? Now, this sour cream and rains pie is a pie with which I am not familiar. I assumed, correctly, that it had to be some regional favorite. I also assumed that it would have to have booze in it. I was wrong about the latter. Which made me wonder, why would anyone eat a raisin pie without booze in it? It feels like a pie that is made to punish you rather than be enjoyed. Like, oh, you want pie? Fine, but it's going to have raisins in it. I viewed several slices online, and I thought to myself, now if those...

I love stories which are reminiscent of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz ,   where a hero or heroine is whisked off to another land and you're not entirely sure whether what's happening is a hallucination, coma dream, or reality. While not a children's book, Jason R. Barden's The Spitting Post  is firmly rooted in that tradition. Our main character (or so we are led to believe) is in a car accident and wakes up in another world. He then embarks on a quest to find the love of his life, The Green Maiden, at a location she has specified. Somehow our main character has inhabited this world before, though he has no memory of it. The strength in this story lays with the gruesome details and imaginative antagonists the author developed to inhabit his imaginary world. The protagonist is propelled along on a series of quests, and this is a plot definitely driven by events, not by character development. My three biggest complaints are ...

JERSEY GHOULS A.L. Sirois Genre: Horror Publisher: Azure Spider Publications Publication Date: June 15, 2018 A disabled cop and his ex battle giant centipedes and ghouls in a small riverside community that's about to be flooded out. The rain-drenched riverside town of Sherwood's Landing, NJ is invaded by a species of centipede from Central America armed with psychedelic venom. Former cop Lafferty "Hoff" Hoffman and his ex-girlfriend Beatrice St. John are swept into terror as their neighbors are enslaved by a centipede-generated group mind. Those remaining free must band together to survive the onslaught of ravenous ghouls. Add to Goodreads Purchase Links Get the eBook copy of Jersey Ghouls for only 99 cents! Offer ends June 15, 2018. Available on Amazon.com Excerpt Terry Haggerty was no pushover. She had gone to work at sixteen to save money for college, which is where she met Rook. Before the kids came, they'd often spent weeke...

I was really exited when I saw this Elizabeth Crowens'  Silent Meridian posted as a possibility to review with Books Unleashed. I love steam punk and gaslight fiction. I love stories that incorporate historic figures in fun, imaginative ways, as Seth Grahame-Smith did with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter or in another story I reviewed, Tim Symonds's  Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of Einstein's Daughter.   In my mind these stories work best when one or two historic characters are thrown into the path of our protagonist. I also love alternative methods of time travel stories, as I am a huge Doctor Who  fan. So I gave this story a couple of thumbs-up before I even read it. There are a lot of really interesting elements going on it. For the most part the protagonist is likable and I sympathized with him. I enjoyed the various settings and the mysticism built in. Ultimately, however, it left me feeling as if it could have used another good edit before it went out...

Mike Klaassen has written a book, Scenes and Sequels, that is fairly easy to understand and pretty useful for an aspiring writer. In it, he explains how to use scene and sequel to help craft a better novel. This information could be utilized before drafting or as an analysis tool once a first draft is complete. In addition to the exploration of the concepts of scene and sequel, Mr. Klaassen provides several concrete examples from novels with which most readers will be familiar. He also uses a fairy tale and passages from his own writing. These help effectively illustrate the structures he is discussing. As a writer myself, I can't over stress the need for writers to first be avid readers, and his analysis helps drive home that point. While reading this book, I was also reading Raymond Chandler’s The High Window. I found myself thinking of the novel's structure in terms of scene and sequel, and being able to see the structure in action gave me some insight into my own...