Angela Spencer

Review of Rigor Amortis, edited by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt

(Originally published at Rise Reviews. You can read it here or there.)

When I first mention to people Rigor Amortis, the anthology of flash zombie erotica edited by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt, it elicits laughter and looks of disbelief. Until they realize I’m serious. As I understand it, the concept was born as a joke but grew as people realized there was material to be mined. And rest assured that this anthology is not one done for laughs.

There are humorous pieces among the 30+ shorts: black humor, slapstick and grossfests can be found in these pages. But more often the tales are more serious, questioning what remains of love and sex once a body dies but the flesh continues to move?

The stories cover a broad range of undead options that could fall under the mantle of “zombie.” George Romero’s mindless flesh-eating risen dead are a common approach but not the only one. Thrown into the mix are animated corpses, bodies that have come back to fulfill a task and even technological creations. Some are more mindless than others. Above all else, the stories are often macabre in their tone. There are few stories that don’t touch upon the grotesque nature of death.

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Review of Sins and Shadows by Lyn Benedict

(Originally published at Associated Content. You can read it here or there.)

Lyn Benedict’s Sins and Shadows is a tense romp full of unexpected twists and turns. She also approaches the subject matter in ways that I didn’t expect, which can be both good and bad depending on your point of view. Her protagonist, Sylvie Lightner, is not the sort of person who would be universally liked. There is also a lot of background to Sylvie that could warrant multiple prequel books,to the point where I felt at times like I was entering the story in the middle of the series instead of at the beginning. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, Benedict manages to write a gripping tale that manages to take seeming disparate elements and weave them into a magnificent reveal.

Sylvie Lightner, owner of Shadows Inquiries, deals with threats from the magical world. But when one of her employees is murdered in front of her, she decides to hang up her hat and close the shop. A man claiming to be the God of Justice pressgangs her into working for him to find his missing lover. She leaves her native city of Miami to visit Chicago to begin the search. Along the way, she runs afoul of Greek gods, Lilith, her ex-lover (who runs the government agency that handles the occult) and an occult catastrophe that threatens to destroy Chicago.

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Boy Howdy

So many things going on!

I sent in my entry to the PNWA Literary Contest last night for the Romance  category. It’s the novel length version of what I wrote for All Romance eBooks last fall. I’m also working on a rewrite of a short story I’m shopping around. A publisher asked for revisions, so I’m hoping this will be a winner.

Coming up, I will be a guest editor for the Wily Writers Podcast. Wily Writers is an online zine that also provides audio versions of the stories in addition to the text. Submissions are due at the end of this month, I’ll be reading them  in March, and two stories will be chosen for publication in May. AND you get a fat $50. It’s not exactly pro rates, but Ulysses S. Grant has a certain charm.

I commissioned the lovely and talented Wendi Strang-Frost to make a picture of me for me. Why use my real face when I can have an idealized version? Seriously. I’ve got it up on Facebook and Twitter, but haven’t had a chance to get it onto here yet.

In other news, I’ve utterly spaced on linking to reviews I’ve had published on Rise Reviews. Since the first, I’ve posted two reviews:

• Innsmouth Free Press, Issue #5
• Beauty Has Her Way, edited by Jennifer Brozek

I have another review coming out on the 21st and I’m trying to beat my way through another book to review it for March. The madness just doesn’t end. I’ve also started another review for Associated Content, which I will hopefully publish… soon…

Alright, now back to running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

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Rise Reviews goes live!

Bart Leib emailed today to announce the launch of his new site, Rise Reviews, for which I am a contributor. He has a blog post linking to all 13 reviews that have gone live today. Or you can click straight through to my review of Rigor Amortis.

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Emma Bull Delivers a Tightly Crafted Narrative with Deeply Layered Meaning in War for the Oaks

(Originally published at Associated Content. You can read it here or there.)

In War for the Oaks, Emma Bull takes a simple premise to draft a tale that unfolds the deeper you get into it. The protagonist, Eddi McCandry, is a singer and guitar player in a rock band that gets sucked into an ancient war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. By binding a mortal to the conflict, it makes both sides as mortal as a human. The stakes become much higher and the risks each side will take much steeper.
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Review of Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

(Originally published at Associated Content. You can read it here or there.)

After loving the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, I had to delve deeper into Charlaine Harris’s marvelous vampire novels. The second installment in the series, Living Dead in Dallas, explores the secret world of the supernatural in greater detail. But while the writing is still engaging and the new revelations are compelling, the plot itself is not as tightly woven as the Dead Until Dark.

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Scarecrow Video: This Local Video Store is an Excellent Resource for Those Looking for the Obscure

(Originally published at Associated Content. You can read it here or there.)

Scarecrow Video is a shining beacon in the gloomy Seattle weather.

One of the largest video stores in the country and a landmark in north Seattle, Scarecrow Video specializes in carrying movies and formats you can’t find other places. Though their primary business is video and machine rental, they also have great selection of new and used movies for sale in the same range of formats.
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As Far from Home as I Can Get

(Originally published on Associated Content. You can view it here or there.)

There are few things more frustrating than missing a flight and trying to figure out what you can do to try and fix things. The first time this happened to me, it was a flight home from Detroit to Seattle, with a layover in Salt Lake City. My husband at the time had misremembered the time of the flight and only realized his mistake at the last minute. We caught a ride from a friend who drove like a crazywoman through Detroit traffic, but due to new post-9/11 regulations, we had to be checked in 30 minutes before our flight. And we arrived 25 minutes before departure.

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Lordy, lordy, where does the time go?

I’ve been focused most of November on NaNoWriMo and a convention I was attending, so the blog has been neglected. Toss into this the fact that I had a delightful medical emergency has not helped.Now I’m running a malware killer on my laptop, and so I’m taking some time to update here. (Note to self: back up your novel!)

I got a good chunk of writing done on the way up from Portland, but I’m still behind the curve for NaNo progress. My main hope had been to squeeze out the full novel in 30 days, some 60-80K instead of 50K. I’m feeling less optimistic about that. Hopefully I can get more cranked out tonight and have a good stretch tomorrow.

I am doing much better with my outline this year than last year. Many props go to Kij Johnson, whose novel workshoppers this last summer were kind enough to give me the 411 on her advice.

My other quasi news is that I may be writing reviews for another site besides AC. This new site, called Rise Reviews, will focus on books put out by companies that do not pay pro rates. Those publications get short shrift in other review sites, so this site hopes to provide more support for the smaller markets. I’ll post links when there are links to post.

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Steampunk and Vampires and Werewolves, Oh My!

(Originally published at Associated Content. You can read it here or there.)

With steampunk and vampires at the forefront of hip, I imagine it was only a matter of time before I read a novel featuring both. Gail Carriger’s Soulless is the first book in her Parasol Protectorate series, which details an alternate Victorian world where the supernatural has been known to exist for several centuries and many historical events, particularly Henry VIII’s split from the Catholic Church, are now based around this knowledge (and acceptance) of vampires and werewolves in their midst.
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