Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Greediness Fulfilled (partially)

My new weights are awesome. Arms are sore just from holding them while doing various leg exercised today.

And! I've been wanting a Motorola Razr. All I've ever had is the crappy phones that come free with cell service. Today I saw an add for a free phone to new Cingular customers and I got fed up. I've been with them for 4 years and a new phone would cost me $80. So I called to tell them I wanted a Razr and didn't want to pay for it. You know what they said? "What color would you like?" A customer-service agent who is helpful and a company who cares about keeping its loyal customers? Get out your Good Books, I think the Apocalypse is a comin'.

Just e-mailed my resume today to a publishing company who is wanting someone to freelance proofread textbooks for them. I know there's no chance in hell they'll respond, but I've got to start trying something.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Coupl'a Reviews

I'll write something substantial and interesting tomorrow. Swear. For now, here are two things written by others about Decimate:

From Euro Reviews:
Decimate: A Horror Anthology provides a new showcase for eight venerable authors working in the genre of horror. The collection includes twenty individual stories by these authors, several of whom are well-known for horror fiction. The eight authors in the collection come from both sides of the Atlantic, and include M. E. Ellis, known for her novels Pervalism and Quits; Phaedra Torres; Daniel I. Russell; Michael Kay; Amanda de Bord; Ian Rochford; Taer; and James M. Harris, given in order of appearance. All except Phaedra Torres have multiple entries included in the Anthology.

The short stories run quite a gamut of horror possibilities, from abused wives and children to the more supernatural horror venues; to the simply scary, spooky, and terrifying. Readers of horror will surely find much to enjoy here, because there is something on offer for nearly everyone. This reviewer’s particular favourites were the multiple stories by Amanda de Bord and Ian Rochford, and Taer’s “Her Master’s Wishes,” in which realistic, true-to-life situations are presented with a horrific spin. Truly, these are stories not to read at night without all the lights in the house blazing! Caution to readers: these stories tend to the graphic as well as the terrifying, so readers of delicate sensibilities, do be warned!

From skullring.org (an awesome horror blog - linked at right):

I don’t know about you, but we at www.skullring.org love the small press. Every time we get a new PDF or printed volume to review there’s that sense of adventure – the opportunity to discover a great new talent, to find the next “big thing” before it’s in every Borders in the world.

Anthologies hold a lot of thrills for us, and I was excited when I received a review copy of “Decimate”, a new anthology from our friends at www.WildChildPublishing.com. Although it took me a little bit to get around to reading it, boy am I glad I did! This book is a great read, a smorgasbord of dark delights that kept my eyes glued to the screen from the moment I booted up the laptop until I finished reading, 168 pages later. That’s right – I read this book from start to finish. My eyes aren’t going to be too happy with me later, but for now I’m riding a horror high.

The book features numerous short stories from eight of the most talented people I’ve seen collected between two book covers in a long time. Let’s see...there’s Amanda DeBord, Daniel I. Russell, Ian Rochford, James M. Harris, M.E. Ellis, Michael Kay, Phaedra Torres and Taer.

I was particularly taken with Amanda DeBord’s “Egg Man and the Serpent”, in which a child escapes the clutches of a predator when a mythic beast comes to life, and the cosmic crocodile horror of Australian author Ian Rochford’s “Lourella’s Kin”, which showed me that sometimes the best in Southern Gothic can come from the southern hemisphere.

All of the stories I read were great, and I didn’t encounter any that I considered a dud. They run the gamut of the genre, too: from tragic tales of ghosts and the people who mourn them to mutants, monsters and aliens, you’re bound to find something you’ll like in this collection, and at only $5.95 for a download you really can’t go wrong.