Guest Blog/Blog Tour! Lawrence Santoro (Editor of 'Tales to Terrify')

What better way to do Halloween here than to be a part of a blog tour for a book that features a number of my favourite horror writers? I also got to find out what happened to one time blogger Harry Markov (look, there's his name on the cover). Enough of me though, editor Lawrence Santoro has very kindly written a piece about how childhood terrors never really remain in your childhood; they stay with you for a long time to come... Check it out,

THE DRAGON I KNOW by Lawrence Santoro

Every school year at 5th and Spring Elementary ended with a neighborhood celebration held on the school’s playground and called the “Strawberry Festival.”

For us, Hebhardt, Mahler, Davy Brown, Missie and Trissie, the Talking Magpies, that that was THAT for the school year. No more Feinerfrock, no more dreaming out the windows while John Levy did long division at the blackboard, no more Patty Bullock baton-twirling, no more Hazel Gensler cooties. The Festival was it, over and out, summer’s kickoff.

We spent weeks in advance going around the neighborhood selling Festival Ticket Books—four strips of heavy paper stapled together, each strip with 5 stubs, each stub worth 5 cents. This was Festival currency used to buy baked goods, things from the “White Elephant” table (one year the table yielded a large red book from the 1880s, “Wood’s Natural History.” This told of the Reverend J.G. Wood’s wanderings among African and Pacific Island tribes. Pictures galore, graphic steel engravings of native women doing native women things, wondrous images of cannibal tribes doing cannibal things. Reverend Wood became our favorite man of God; his illustrations causing us to reassess the twin Magpies, Missie and Trissie Fritz. Reverend Wood’s life work was, of course, snatched away when the parents actually opened the book. Pardon the digression.) There were pony rides for the kiddies, merry-go-round rides for bigger tots, really good, finger-scalding French fries, music—if you liked that stuff—and there were steaming dry-ice frozen bricks of ice cream with a runny dollop of strawberries ladled over it.

And cartoons in the gym. A full hour. The three-story cavern still smelled of sweat, socks, and disgrace. A million wooden folding chairs clattered, the projector ratcheted away in half-light and tossed an image barely bright enough to see. The sound track bounced around backstage and on the tile walls and up among the steel rafters, it played around the stowed rings and up-cranked basketball nets, and got to your ears with so many echoes of itself that the lips on the screen had forgotten what they’d said.

Still, it was an HOUR of cartoons, watched, assessed with chums, made loud fun of as they played out; like Saturday matinees at the Strand except we knew these, we knew what was coming, when to respond, when to warn, when to chorus-with. Of course we did. We’d been there every year. They never changed, most were scratchy black and white from the 1930s. Still, we cheered when Heckle and Jeckle’s smart-aleky faces appeared. We loved Droopy Dog. And everyone, bar none, even Principal Ash—ticket-taker, projectionist and monitor—loved the anarchist, Woody Woodpecker.
But.

The reason I came to the show every Festival evening, was “The Brave Little Tailor.”

I had seen it at my first Festival. I was six, new in the neighborhood, a kindergarten dropout from my old place across town. I hadn’t yet started at Fifth and Spring, so that first time I was most likely alone among strangers or, if not alone, then with a parent. Parents, though, never reckoned the difference between what they saw and what I did.

“The Brave Little Tailor” came at the end of the show. Woody and Droopy, Heckle and Jeckle, Farmer Alfalfa, and Andy Panda had come and gone. Then, in black and white stop-motion animation. “The Brave Little Tailor” begin: It is Fairy Tale time. The land is threatened by a dragon. Nightly, the beast waddles from its cave in the hills and eats local sheep. The usual rewards are offered. Brave huntsmen, knights go forth. They are eaten. Yes, eaten.
Finally, the smallest person in the film, a tailor’s apprentice not much bigger than I, says he’ll try it. Instead of armor and shield, he wears his tailoring clothes. Instead of arrows, sword, and spear, he stuffs poison into a sheep’s skin and stitches it up quick as that. When night falls he carries the stuffed sheep into the dark and scary woods, up the hill, and to the mouth of the dragon’s cave where he leaves the skin. He hides behind rocks, waits and waits. The night gets darker, scarier, the moon goes behind clouds. Finally, the little guy grabs a stone, goes to the cave mouth, and tosses the rock into the dark.

Out roars the dragon. It bellows, rears up, its wings spread—big pointy bat-wings flap and blow a gale that nearly knocks our hero down—the dragon snorts fire and steam at the little tailor who retreats. The dragon turns, leaps, rages. He is terror itself. I nearly faint. Then it sees the poison pelt, sniffs it, picks it up, plays with it, teases us… Sniffs it again, then eats it in a gobble.

Like/that, the creature knows something’s wrong. He goes funny. He turns round and round, staggers. His movements become even jerkier. He staggers past the little hero. He’s forgotten him. All the dragon now wants is water, something to cool the poison fire in his belly. He buries his snout in the nearby stream and drinks. He drinks and drinks. The little tailor can’t believe how much he drinks. The dragon stomach swells and swells. The tailor is amazed. Amazed. The dragon’s gut is so large, round, and tight, his stubby feet can’t reach the ground. He is a scaly balloon of a dragon, now. Finally…

Here I must stop. My factual memory is that the dragon died. That was all. Dragon dead. Tailor returns to village, claims his reward. Happy. End of film.

The fact is, I never found out what happened to the critter until maybe fourth grade. I hid my eyes. Yearly. I was not only afraid of dragons but of balloons. An about-to-burst-dragon balloon was really more than I could take. So, hide the eyes, stuff the ears. End of story. Dragon dead.

That’s was a beginning, see? The reason I tell this is because the dragon became a companion.

Through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, to this day he was expected, a constant, and a presence in the narrow space between the wall and my bed. Wherever that was.

I knew—I know—he’s there. He waits. Tonight I will sleep with my back to that narrow darkness between bed and wall. I know if I see him… Well.

But, if you don’t see him; he can rear up, his spiky ears can touch the ceiling, he can spread his wings and roar silent at the night, but he can never, ever harm me. That much I know of the rules of terror. He knows them too. An agreement. I am his to take but he is mine, and will feed and nourish me with life and shivers for as long as we both shall be.

Thanks for reading. Sometimes, you see, sometimes our fears, our little terrors born in childhood do become the things on which you build your life. That’s all. That’s all.

Award-winning writer and narrator, Lawrence Santoro began writing dark tales at age five.

In 2001 his novella “God Screamed and Screamed, Then I Ate Him” was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. In 2002, his adaptation and audio production of Gene Wolfe’s “The Tree Is My Hat,” was also Stoker nominated. In 2003, his Stoker-recommended “Catching” received Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s 17th Annual “Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror” anthology. In 2004, “So Many Tiny Mouths” was cited in the anthology’s 18th edition. In the 20th, his novella, “At Angels Sixteen,” from the anthology A DARK AND DEADLY VALLEY, was similarly honored.

Larry’s first novel, “Just North of Nowhere,” was published in 2007. A collection of his short fiction, DRINK FOR THE THIRST TO COME, was published in 2011. He lives in Chicago and is working on two new novels, “Griffon and the Sky Warriors,” and “A Mississippi Traveler, or Sam Clemens Tries the Water”.
 
If you've missed the rest of the tour, and want to catch up, here's where the tour stopped over the last week...

October, 22nd: Innsmouth Free Press
October, 23rd: Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews (http://darkwolfsfantasyreviews.blogspot.com/)
October, 24th: Kaaron Warren (http://kaaronwarren.wordpress.com/)
October, 25th: Sci fi & Fantasy Lovin' News and Reviews (http://sqt-fantasy-sci-fi-girl.blogspot.com/)
October, 26th: Fantasy Book Critic (http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/)
October, 29th: Wag the Fox (http://waggingthefox.blogspot.com/)
October, 30th: Angela Slatter (http://www.angelaslatter.com/)

 There's also a competition going on where you can win a PDF of 'Tales to Terrify'. Find 'Tales to Terrify' on Facebook or Twitter and tell em' what scares you the most. It's that simple. The competition does end today though (not sure exactly what time) so I'd get a move on if you want to enter...

Blog Tour - Steve Bein's 'Daughter of the Sword'

Today I'm pleased to be a brief stopover on Steve Bein's 'Daughter of the Sword' blog tour (a book that I'm into pretty much as we speak, review next week I reckon). Here's the blurb if you haven't come across this book already...

Mariko Oshiro is not your average Tokyo cop. As the only female detective in the city’s most elite police unit, she has to fight for every ounce of respect, especially from her new boss. While she wants to track down a rumored cocaine shipment, he gives her the least promising case possible. But the case—the attempted theft of an old samurai sword—proves more dangerous than anyone on the force could have imagined.

The owner of the sword, Professor Yasuo Yamada, says it was crafted by the legendary Master Inazuma, a sword smith whose blades are rumored to have magical qualities. The man trying to steal it already owns another Inazuma—one whose deadly power eventually comes to control all who wield it. Or so says Yamada, and though he has studied swords and swordsmanship all his life, Mariko isn’t convinced.

But Mariko’s skepticism hardly matters. Her investigation has put her on a collision course with a curse centuries old and as bloodthirsty as ever. She is only the latest in a long line of warriors and soldiers to confront this power, and even the sword she learns to wield could turn against her. 

Like I said, look out for my review next week but here's Steve now with 'The Fighter in the Writer (Part One)'...

They say you should write what you know, and I guess it’s fair to say I know fighting.  I’ve been in the martial arts for about twenty years, earning black belts in a couple of arts and dabbling in about two dozen others.  So with all of that under my belt—white, at the moment; I’ve returned to Brazilian Jiujitsu after many years off the mat—I want say a bit about what all the training has done for me as a writer. 

There are some obvious benefits.  Daughter of the Sword is about—duh—swords, and since I spent a little time studying kendō, iaidō, and Florentine sword fighting, I also have a sword rack in my basement.  It’s handy to have a katana or two in your house when you need to know just how much space your samurai character has to swing in an average bedroom. 

More important is the experience itself: not just the techniques but the feel of the sword’s weight in your hands.  Writers can try to fake it, or else they can go out and do some research—as I needed to do, for example, when it came to my police detective’s pistol work.  I think readers can tell when you’re faking it, so I made sure I got to spend some time with cops shooting pistols.  (It really helps when one of your martial arts buddies is also a range officer.)

But that stuff only helps when writing about the weapons themselves.  Martial arts have helped me write plenty of pages without fight scenes, because it turns out earning a black belt and getting published have a lot more in common than you might think (and certainly more than I’d ever expected).

First and foremost is simple pain tolerance.  Everyone knows writing demands a certain degree of stick-to-it-iveness, but before I started this game I didn’t really understand how much of that was discipline and how much of it was the sheer refusal to acknowledge you’ve been hurt. 

I got a very strange piece of luck right out of the gate: the first story I ever submitted was a winner in the Writers of the Future contest.  Because of that, I got the idea that getting stories accepted was normal.  It was only afterward that I discovered just how many rejection letters I would collect before publishing my next short story.  I’ve got enough of them now to wallpaper my office.

A natural inclination for a lot of writers is to take each one of those rejections like a kick in the crotch.  Fortunately for me, my best friends used to kick me in the crotch on a weekly basis.  For years.  I even paid money for the privilege.  It’s not the sort of thing most guys are thankful for, but I’ll tell you this: rejection letters ain’t so bad after that.

Editors will beat you up in this game.  Critics will too.  The trick, to quote Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, is not minding that it hurts.  And full-contact fighting will teach you that trick lickety-split.

Cheers Steve :o)

If you're following Steve's tour (or want to catch up), here is where he has been and where he will be over the next few days,

Oct 2: http://underthecoversbookblog.blogspot.com/

Oct 3: http://www.graspingforthewind.com/

Oct 5: http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/

Oct 8: http://www.abookobsession.com/

Oct 9: http://qwillery.blogspot.com/

Oct 10: http://www.nightowlreviews.com/nor/

Oct 11: http://allthingsuf.com/

Oct 12: http://goldiloxandthethreeweres.blogspot.com/

Evie Manieri Blog Tour - Favourite Characters.

I'm really pleased to be the first stop on Eve Manieri's blog tour this week; even more so as I'm getting deeper into 'Blood's Pride' and enjoying it immensely. Before I let Evie take over, here's the cover art and blurb for those who haven't already seen it...

A generation has passed since the Norlanders' great ships bore down on Shadar, and the Dead Ones slashed and burned the city into submission, enslaving the Shadari people. Now the Norlander governor is dying and, as his three alienated children struggle against the crushing isolation of their lives, the Shadari rebels spot their opening and summon the Mongrel, a mysterious mercenary warrior who has never yet lost a battle. But her terms are unsettling: she will name her price only after the Norlanders have been defeated. A single question is left for the Shadari: is there any price too high for freedom?

I'll let you know what I think just as soon as I've finished the book. In the meantime, here's Evie and some of the fictional characters that have had the greatest impact on her...

Not Pretty Women.

As readers, we all crave the discovery of the characters that instantly become a part of us. When I decided to pull together a list of the ones that have had the greatest impact on me, I was a bit surprised to find that all of them are female, and that none of them are pretty.

Sara Crewe, from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A LITTLE PRINCESS – Sara Crewe is a clever and caring child, but not a beautiful one. That such a person could be the subject of a story was startling to me, an equally not–beautiful child in a world where princesses sang with sparkly eyes and seemed to have a lot of time on their hands. Sara lived not in a castle but in a severe London school, and I always picture her alone in her freezing garret, naming the rats that come to share her meager crumbs. Her unshakeable integrity in the face of cruelty and injustice never ceases to inspire me.

Meg Murry, from Madeleine L’Engle’s A WRINKLE IN TIME – Meg is angry, sullen and awkward, yet she’s the one who saves her little brother. She succeeds by coming to accept that she’s lovable just as she is, with all of her flaws. She also gets the cute boy in the end. I would love to liquefy this and vaccinate every fourteen–year–old girl with it.

Harriet D. Vane, first introduced in the Dorothy L. Sayers STRONG POISON – We meet Harriet in 1930, on trial for the murder of her former live-in lover. She broke off the relationship when he eventually asked her to marry him, something the public seizes on as evidence of her depravity. Few except urbane sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey see it as a sign of integrity and courage; Harriet could love a man who genuinely didn’t believe in marriage, but could only despise one who pretended to do so in order to test her devotion. When rich and fascinating Lord Peter throws himself at her feet after saving her from the gallows, she rejects him. She sees the very fact that she owes him her life as an insurmountable obstacle to an equitable relationship. Oh, Harriet – I adore you.

Thank you for allowing me to share these amazing characters with you. If you’ve missed out on any of these wonderful books, I can’t recommend them enough.

Thank you Evie :o) If you want to stick around for the rest of the tour (I will be) then here are the places you need to visit over the rest of this week...

Tuesday ("Blueberries") http://civilian-reader.blogspot.co.uk/

Wednesday ("Monomania") http://www.curiositykilledthebookworm.net/

Thursday ("The Other Shoe") http://steve-emmett.com/

Friday ("Midlife") http://bookmonkeyscribbles.wordpress.com/

Blog Tour! Joseph Nassise & 'By the Blood of Heroes'

This time last week I asked if there was anything that zombies couldn't do. If you didn't click on the link the answer was, not if Joseph Nassise has anything to say on the matter. One week on and I'm proud to be a brief stop on Joseph's 'The Great Undead War' blog tour. Not a lot else to say than that really other than to hand the reins over to the man himself, take it away Joe!


Welcome to The Great Undead War Blog Tour! My thanks to Graeme for having me on today.

As I mentioned in my last installment at John Scalzi’s 'Whatever', my name’s  Joseph Nassise and I’m celebrating the release of my new novel from HarperVoyager, 'By the Blood of Heroes', which is the first book in the Great Undead War series combining an alternate World War One with steampunk and zombies. I’ll be touring all month talking a bit about the book and the writing process I went through to create it.  Since we’ve already talked about the villain of the story, the Baron Manfred von Richthofen, today I want to focus on his opposite, our hero, Captain Michael “Madman” Burke.

The very first thing we discover about Burke is the fact that he has a mechanical hand.

“Burke set aside the trench knife he’d been using to clean the mud out of the clockwork mechanism that powered his left hand and closed the access panel with a firm push.”

The stage is immediately set – this is no ordinary individual and the war in which he is engaged is no ordinary war.  Burke lost his hand during the Battle of Passchendaele (which you can read about in the prequel story, The Sharp End, if you’re interested), an event that normally would have gotten him invalidated out and sent home.  In the aftermath  of the battle, however, he has a chance meeting with Nicolai Tesla and winds up testing one of the great scientist’s latest inventions – a mechanical hand.  This keeps him in the trenches and therefore available for selection when those in charge need someone to lead the rescue squad in their efforts to bring Major Freeman back out from behind enemy lines.

The next thing we learn is that Burke volunteered – and that he did so for an unusual reason.

“In the end he’d enlisted, not out of some misguided sense of duty or vain quest for glory, but simply to try and feel something again.”

In other words, like so many of the rest of us, Burke’s carrying some baggage from events earlier in his life.  Baggage that will impact the choices and decisions he’s about to make as leader of the rescue squad.  Baggage that can have some serious consequences for the man he’s assigned to rescue as well.

After all, there’s a reason he’s earned the nickname “Madman Burke”, even if it’s one he’s not particularly comfortable with.

I had a great time walking with Burke on his road of discovery during the writing of this novel and I hope you all enjoy him as a character as much as I have.

Check out By the Blood of Heroes to see Madman Burke and his Marauders in action against the Kaiser's zombie hordes!