Niteblade

Archive for August, 2010

Paradigms of Suffering: Bloody Seconds

Book Review by Sean Chambers

Paradigms of Suffering: Bloody Seconds is a collection of short stories created by Greg Dixon that is definitely not for the squeamish. Dixon seems to take delight in using a pallet of violent language to paint his morbid tales.

Bloody Seconds contains four original stories and one unique vision of Ed Gein’s life. The characters presented in the stories very quickly experience all the raw and unbridled violence Dixon’s mind is capable of creating. An unfaithful wife, a prison inmate, a group of drunken buddies—no one is safe from the macabre that fills each and every story.

In the end, Bloody Seconds is reminiscent of the exploitation films of the sixties and seventies. The stories use ultraviolence and taboo subject matter in place of plot and character development. This double-edged sword makes the stories fun but forgettable. At its short length of only one hundred and fifty pages, though, it’s worth checking out.

I am pleased to announce we have two new book reviewers have joined the Niteblade team. Sarah and Sean will be joining Amber, A.R. and Jonathan in doing reviews and sharing them with readers through our blog. Diversity is a good thing and we’ve increased ours by adding a couple fresh minds into our mix.

If you have a book you’d like considered for review, we continue to accept them as described here, and if you would also like to be a part of the review team you can find out more about that here. In the meantime, welcome aboard Sarah and Sean, and thank you to all our reviewers for the wonderful work you do here.

Blood Orchard by S. D. Hintz

Book Review by A. R. Braun

Blood Orchard, a twisted horror novel by S.D. Hintz, pulls no punches as far as gore, bad language and sex—in my opinion the perfect novel! There’s no limit to the twisted goings-on in Onward, where old-west-type “justice” prevails and mercy is hard to come by.  The tome delivers mayhem in a fresh, thrilling form of originality.

Coren Raines has moved to the small town of Onward just outside Chicago, but is he ready to face the ghosts and the murderous past that wait for him there? A recently divorced man who makes a living by stock trading on the Internet, he’s soon visited by the town’s sadistic sheriff, Paul Pritchard. He soon endeavors to force a false confession from Coren about set of triplets that have recently been kidnapped.

When reporter Jay Donovan comes on the scene to uncover the real truth about the missing triplets, he finds he’s taken on more than he can handle after getting knocked off his motorcycle by the sheriff. When Prichard tells him to move on, Jay refuses to leave until he unearths the mystery of not only the three missing babies, but also the sheriff’s triplets who disappeared when they were seventeen years old. Jay interviews a resident and uncovers the sheriff’s daughters’ infamy. Can Jay finally write the story that will give him the fame and the recognition he deserves?

I was captivated till the end, finally satisfied that there’s a horror author sick enough to be a no-limit soldier on the written page, enjoying the graphic, original bad language and the over-the-top gore. The plot stood strong throughout, weaving the tale of what happened to the sheriff’s triplets piece by piece the further you read on. The book also makes a statement about bad habits and small-town philosophy. Any true horror fan would be a fool not to pick up a copy of Blood Orchard.

The table of contents for our September issue, Rosewinter, has been finalised and I’m very pleased with it. It’s not as big as some of our previous issues, but each story and poem is like a little gem, you’re going to love them.

In no particular order, the pieces included in the September 2010 issue of Niteblade are as follows:

Fiction
Rosewinter by Megan Arkenberg
Incense Sticks by Ajay Vishwanathan
The Conversion by Kevin Gordon
The Little Mermaids by Laura Garrison
More to Me by Christine Dougherty
The Blue-eyed Boy by Ben A. Bell

Poetry
Red Star Line by Jennifer Crow
Dreaming in MSG by Heather R. Peterson
Better Than The Real Thing by Mark Evans
Finicky by Francis W. Alexander
Aitvaras by Lee Clark Zumpe

Just a quick status update on how things are going behind the scenes here at Niteblade 🙂

I sent out my nominations for the Dwarf Star award mere moments ago. Yay! The bulk of my nominations came from 2009 issues of Niteblade, but if you’re  a poet and would like to know how to nominate work that wasn’t published at Niteblade, voila:

Dwarf Stars is the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s yearly edited anthology of short-short poetry. We are trying to find the best speculative short poetry of 10 lines or less published in 2009. We define “speculative” as “science fiction, fantasy, horror, mythic or any combination or variation of the above.” The deadline for nominations for 2009 poems is August 31, 2010.

This is what you can do to help.

1. Send us your 2009 short poems of 10 lines or less.
2. Send us recommendations of 2009 short poems of 10 lines or less that you’ve read and think are deserving along with publication information and the e-mail addresses of the poets, if you have them.
3. There is no limit to the number of poems you can send.
4. You do not need to be a member to send poems/recommendations.

Send these poems to us at dwarfstars@sfpoetry.com. You do not need to be a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association to send poems/recommendations. Please include the words “Dwarf Stars Submission” in the title of the e-mail.

In other, more Niteblade-centric news I have pretty much firmed up the ToC for the September issue and will be sharing that in the next couple days. Getting the September issue ready to go mostly falls now to the work of Marge, BD and Jo, but I still have some paperwork-type things that will keep me busy for a little while and likely slow my progress through submissions, however, I’m not that far behind right now.

The oldest fiction submisson in my inbox is from June 29th, and the oldest poetry one is from July 8th. If you submitted prior to those dates and haven’t heard back, I didn’t get it. Please re-send.