Teaser Tuesday 3/12/2013: “Bottled Abyss”

Another month, another free book from the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library!  This week it’s Bottled Abyss by Benjamin Kane Ethridge, in which a bottle containing the waters of the River Styx finds its way into mortal hands.  Needless to say, hilarity ensues.

Teaser Tuesday 2/26/2013: “Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum”

This week’s freebie book is Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum, a novel that I would (so far) characterize as “Grave Encounters” meets The Little Stranger meets my own Night Watchman (though without the gore). Two teams of ghost hunters — one of which is led by a man who has his own ghost following him around — investigate a Chicago-area haunted asylum, site of numerous suspicious arson fires and wandering apparitions. What could possibly go wrong?

Teaser Tuesday 11/6/2012: “Apocalypse Z”.

So I’ve been a bit remiss the last couple of weeks with Teaser Tuesday posts. Busy busy busy, you know, plus the stuff I’ve been reading has been mostly freebie Halloween short stories that I downloaded toward the end of October, and not really conducive to teaserification. But this month I have another real, live book, Apocalpyse Z. Hmm, what could a book with a title like that be about?

In some refugee camps in neighboring republics, they’re reporting new cases of what they insist is an especially virulent strain of the West Nile virus. But media sources are calling it Ebola.

Hmm. West Nile, Ebola; potato, rotten tomato that oozes nasty red juice all over everything. But hey, whatever gets you the most clicks, media sources! Interestingly, this book is translated from the Spanish and takes place in Spain, making it the first foreign zombie novel I’ve read. (Although I’ve seen one or two Italian zombie movies, and sort of wish I hadn’t.)

And, of course, here’s today’s teaser from The War of the Ravels. I’m rewriting this part of it pretty much completely, so it’s been rather slow going, but things are shaping up!

She soon realized she was wandering through unfamiliar territory, and moved closer to the buildings on the left—which, she thought, was the direction in which the harbor gate would be found—hoping to spot a building she recognized, or maybe find a sign or a person to tell her which way to go. Not that she had much hope of either; no one was out on this sinister night, and as far as she could tell, Abacar did not believe in “You Are Here” kiosks.

Just imagine how much easier going the mines of Moria would have been with “You Are Here” kiosks scattered around! Or, even better, “You Are Here And The Balrog Is There” …

Teaser Tuesday: “The Bleeding Season”

This week I picked up The Bleeding Season by Greg Gifune. At $2.99 for the Kindle edition (just like a certain other author’s books …) it was definitely the right price after a couple of expensive car repairs.

Some may remember that Greg Gifune was the editor of a magazine called “The Edge” that, way back when, published one of my short stories, “Singletrack“, in which wildlife is disturbed during a biking trip in the Adirondacks, to deleterious effect.

The pizza place downstairs didn’t open for another couple hours, so none of the smells that normally invaded the apartment (no matter what we did to try and cover them) had seeped up through the floor yet. I sat there groggily for a moment, noticed it was still overcast and cloudy but the rain had stopped and the apartment was quiet.

I’m still trying to figure out why one would want to cover up the smells of a pizza place. Meanwhile, here is this week’s supplemental teaser, from “The War of the Ravels”:

After a few moments of silence, Nebandalex said: “Surely whoever is responsible for making sure someone is sitting in the throne would understand if you told them you needed to save the city from ruin, and that their schedule would have to wait.”

“I see you are not familiar with the workings of a court,” Arran Blackhawk said.

Teaser Tuesday: 7/31/2012

It’s time for another Teaser Tuesday! I’m still in the middle of the Merrily Watkins mystery The Secrets of Pain. (I didn’t get a lot of reading done this week). Here, Merrily is visiting a bed and breakfast looking for clues to a mysterious death, as one does when one is the first female exorcist in England …

Liz took Merrily upstairs, where there were five bedrooms off the landing, the doors of all of them hanging open. A scent of fresh linen and a light musk from a dish of potpourri on a window sill.

At least it’s fresh linen rather than a face of crumpled linen this time.

And, of course, here’s todays bonus teaser from The War of the Ravels:

It was about the width of her hand, and taller than she was, with three horizontal openings at various spots along its length. If she could make herself thin enough, she could sidle through it, drop to the courtyard on the other side, and find her way out from there.

Like Wallis Simpson said, you can never be too rich or too thin. Especially when you’re trying to escape though an arrow slit.

Teaser Tuesday 7/24/2012

This week’s Teaser Tuesday is–wonder of wonders!–NOT from 1Q84, which I finally finished. (Huzzah!) It is, instead, from The Secrets of Pain, the 11th book in the Merrily Watkins series of subtly paranormal mysteries from Phil Rickman:

Her face was flushed, but only by the sun through the firework blaze of extreme stained glass. The new Thomas Traherne windows, four of them, were small and ferocious, with individual dominant colours: the almighty white, the crucifixion red, the pagan green.

And as always, this comes with a side helping of a couple of lines from the page I’m currently working on in The War of the Ravels.

When that faded, it grew very dark, then gradually lighter again, the illumination divided into separate pale pools. It took her a moment to spot cobwebbed arrow-slits in the left-hand wall, between the buttresses, high above her head.

Scenes-Of-The-Month: “The Wolf” and “Dragon Stones”

Well, the votes are in and we have another tie this month between The Wolf and Dragon Stones. It’s been a while since that happened, and it’s been so long since The Wolf last put in an appearance that I don’t remember where we left off. I think I said there were werewolf hijinx coming up, didn’t I? Let’s find out.

Random Rejection: Maelstrom, “Pinch Bobby ‘Til He Bleeds”

It’s been a while since I reached into my stack of rejection letters, so today I dove in and pulled this one out, from Maelstrom, for a short story called “Pinch Bobby ‘Til He Bleeds”.

Random Acceptance: The Edge, “Singletrack”

So of course writing isn’t ALL rejection letters. At least, one hopes it isn’t. Case in point: One of my favorite short stories, “Singletrack”, which appeared in Greg Gifune’s magazine “The Edge”. And as a special yummy treat for those who have been knocking around the Internet as long as I have, please note the Geocities URL in the letter.

Scene-Of-The-Month: “Father’s Books”

The results are in and we have a new winner for Scene of the Month: Father’s Books, another of my unpublished horror novels. Although (unlike perennial winner The Wolf) this one is finished, I’ve decided to stick with doing the scenes in order; and because the first scene is so short, I’ve decided to include two of them.