Malasz

Forged in Death , the first of six books in Jim Melvin's Death Wizard Chronicles, starts out with a scene from a claustrophobic's nightmare – Torg, the Death-Knower and king of the Tugars, is imprisoned by the evil wizard Invictus at the bottom of a cold, dark pit bored hundreds of feet into a mountain. He can't stretch out because the pit is too small, and he can't lean against the walls, because they're enchanted with flesh-burning magic. He either has to stand or curl into an uncomfortably tight fetal position. We're only in the prologue, and the book is already giving me the willies. And that's a good thing. Torg eventually escapes the pit and embarks on an Odyssey-like journey back to his desert home to stop Invictus from enslaving the world of Triken. Jim Melvin's world-building was at once fantastic and logical, from the unique human cultures to the strange twists on traditional monsters. It's obvious Melvin put a lot of thought into the...

This Jealous Earth by Scott Dominic Carpenter. Midwestern Gothic Press. It is interesting that one of these sharply written short stories, “The Spirit of the Dog,” takes place in a uranium mine. Instead of looking for sparkly bits of gold, the miners run around with Geiger counters after a preliminary blast, looking for little bursts of radiation. Most of these stories involve connections: their breaking, their forming, their resilience, their failure. Just as the forces binding particles in the atomic nucleus are enormously strong, many of the characters in these pieces are drawn, despite themselves, to their imperfect families, to their treasured pets. The opposite occurs in “The Spirit of the Dog”; the various miners pit themselves against the new, pretty engineer. Their individual stubborn egos form a sort of misogynist hive mind whose evil ideas drive everyone apart. The egos of squabbling or drunk parents get in the way, but their kids band together for mischief or otherwise st...

A young woman is haunted by a past she can't remember. She feels threatened by her father and his lascivious friend. In her efforts to elude the pair and track down her brother, a third man hunts her for his own depredations. Set in England in 1875, the story has a definite Gothic feel to it. Richards is adept at illustrating the scene. The "Blackened Cottage" where Lisbeth, our protagonist, lives evokes fear with every creaking floorboard. The air she breathes threatens to smother her in gloom. Richards doesn't hold back with her descriptive narrative. Every adversity that Lisbeth faces is given its due in highly detailed prose. She gets credit for her inventive metaphors. Here are three brief selections that jumped out at me: There is no response but the wind’s drunken slur. I whisper with the breath of a mosquito's wings... His nails scrape my skull like a wolf scraping soil for bones. The story is primarily told from Lisbeth's point of view. Not only does ...

One thing that an indie author has to be is resourceful. Book covers can be expensive and sometimes you just don't have the money to splurge, especially when you're publishing a short story for 99¢. Libby Cone explains how public domain artwork and graphic design shareware can be an indie author's best friends. I have designed the covers (if you can call them that) for all my Kindle books and short stories. I hired a designer I found on LinkedIn to execute my idea for the self-published paperback edition of War on the Margins . She did a very good job. When I published the Kindle edition of Flesh and Grass I used a Dutch painting that I thought was in the public domain. When I found out it wasn't, I obtained a public domain painting. I did the "cover" for "Quantum Fashionistas" using GimP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), but had to redo it when I realized its definition wasn't high enough. GimP is somewhat daunting, but I eventually figured ou...

When hunting for an illustrator, the Web is often the best option for an indie author. Online galleries are the most convenient place to check out an artist's work. Adam Copeland realized that freelance artists are in the same boat as indie authors. They're unknowns looking to make their mark. Working together is a win-win for both parties. When it came time to choose a cover for my book I perused DeviantArt.com , looking for artwork that was similar to what I had in mind. I found it, and made sure the artist was someone who was good, but not a professional (i.e., didn't make his living from his art). I emailed him and asked if he would be willing to be paid to make cover art for me. He was thrilled that someone wanted to offer money for his hobby and agreed. My original concept, however, was still very complex, time consuming, and expensive, so we compromised on a simpler version. The result is the art I have now, which I've had nothing but compliments on. I've had...

Once they were friends. Now two scientists race-one to save mankind, one to destroy it. Nanotechnology made Eva Rozen the world's wealthiest woman. Rage made her the deadliest. Marta Cruz alone can stand between Eva and the death of millions. But will a crippling illness stop Marta first? That's a great blurb. Unfortunately Steinman takes far too long to get to it. Except for the intriguing first chapter, he spends the first half of the book on back story. The plot is ignored in favor of character development, which might not have been bad had anything interesting happened. It isn't until two-thirds of the way through the book that we get a hint that the plot blurb is happening. The three main characters (and their specialties) are Eva (chemistry and computers), Marta (biology), and Jim (good with dogs). After the first chapter, Steinman takes us back to their youth where we see how they handled childhood adversity. Steinman does a great job developing the characters, but I...

Demonworld by Kyle B. Stiff is a highly imagined Lovecraftian tale that combines science fiction, fantasy, and horror in a way I've never seen. It's dark and dystopian, but with elements of humanity that hint at a hopeful future in the books to come. The world is dominated by monsters called “flesh demons." Most human tribes appease the flesh demon “gods” by offering them human sacrifices. But a small hope for humanity exists in a technologically advanced city called Haven. It has survived and thrived by staying isolated on a small, bleak island in the middle of a vast ocean, hidden for hundreds of years from the flesh demons and aggressive human city-states. Wodan, a gifted teenage boy from Haven, finds himself mysteriously exiled from his home for no reason he can comprehend. Wodan has to battle flesh demons, their twisted minions, and humans just as warped and evil as the demons, to return home to Haven and discover who kidnapped him and dropped him into the mi...