Dead Eye: Pennies for The Ferryman

Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman
Jim Bernheimer
Gryphonwood Press, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-9795738-8-0
258 pages
eBook/Print
Paranormal/humour

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Meet Mike Ross, who if it wasn’t for bad luck wouldn’t have any luck at all. He’s been forcibly retired from the army thanks to a roadside bomb and some defective parts, namely a mangled leg, the loss of hearing in one ear and a cornea transplant. These days, Mike, 23 years old, still lives with mom and is attending college.

Did I mention that Mike also sees ghosts with his repaired eye? And he can talk to them, befriend them, fight with them, hurt and be hurt by them. Mike can even kill a ghost: it seems he’s what’s known as a ferryman, someone with the ability to assist ghosts (pleasantly or forcibly) to cross over to the other side (of the symbolic river Styx).

And are there ghosts! It would seem that an entire shadow culture exists parasitically on the living and on other ghosts. There are friendly ghosts, murderous ghosts, political ghosts, mobster ghosts, even ghosts with the ability to possess the living.

As a ferryman, both ghosts and people expect Mike to help them with their problems. Mike’s issue with his new powers, and the obligations which seem to go with them, is that he has more problems of his own than he can handle. Why should he also take on the problems of the dead, most of whom can’t pay him for his troubles?

Follow “Dead Eye” Mike in his comical, anti-hero pursuit of a normal life in a world gone completely mad. This is one ghost story that won’t scare you—unless you’re afraid to laugh out loud from whatever corner or niche you find to sit and read about Mike’s antics.

I enjoyed Dead Eye. It’s different: unpretentious, fun and interesting. Jim Bernheimer put a lot of thought and effort into his unique version of the world of ghosts, and I think the novel works well as a whole.

Unfortunately, I believe some people are going to find Mike Ross a little too flippant to be convincing and the book a little too light for the paranormal genre. There were a number of times I felt the scenes would have played better if the danger felt more real. I also became tired of Mike playing down his abilities, then coming through as being unstoppable. Bernheimer’s choice(s) didn’t ring true in these instances. Now, the last few comments may just be my own personal tastes showing through, yet there is one set of problems with the novel the author should think long and hard about: there were countless grammatical errors a good editor or proof reader should have caught, specifically a tendency to mix tenses within paragraphs. There’s way too much of this kind of thing coming out of small publishing houses today. If we (yes, I’m a small publisher) want to be taken seriously, then we better damn well make sure our books are just as well written and error free as the Top 25 novels in any bookstore.

Keep on writing Mr. Bernheimer: you can spin a yarn with the best of them. All you need now is to demand editing of the same calibre.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010

Tuatha and The Seven Sisters Moon

Tuatha and the Seven Sisters Moon
by Dayna Von Thaer
B.A.S.E.D. Press
October 31, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-615-32271-1
407 pgs (ARC), 425 pgs (Salem Edition), 418 pgs (Paperback)
Fantasy/Paranormal/thriller

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The Seven Sisters are a star cluster called the Pleiades and are officially considered part of the constellation of Taurus the Bull. The names of the stars in this famous cluster are derived from Greek mythology and are as follows: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maiai, Taygete, Celaeno and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione (see the inset photograph). Dana Von Thaer’s new book, Tuatha and The Seven Sister’s Moon, begins as the sisters align with Earth’s moon on the eve of the Irish harvest celebration known as Samhain (Our Halloween). This is a portent of incredible importance.

According to legend, on Samhain the border between our world of the living and the Otherworld (the world of the dead) thins, and it becomes possible for the dead to reach back through the veil. With the seven sisters also in play, one knows deep in the bones that things are going to get a lot hairier than on a normal harvest evening. And we aren’t wrong: Von Thaer soon shows us one of the dead crossing over—a being of tremendous importance, for it is none other than The Dagda, once a ruler of a mythic tribe of Ancient Ireland, the Tuatha De Danann. In truth, The Dagda is better known as an ancient Irish god named the “Good God” or the “All-father.” And he’s been temporarily dead for two thousand years.

In Irish Mythology, Dagda was at one time The King of the Tuatha, and had incredible powers. Von Thaer has some fun with this legend, stealing fabled characteristics and life events to make the Dagda real to her readers. Also, rather than holding to the traditional view of the Otherworld, she claims it as the homeland of the Tuatha.

As the much diminished Dagda, known as Aodh, arises, an Irish witch of great power named Dru loses her lover, Ty. Further off, in  Paris, Katerina, a Russian dancer, defects.

Now destiny puts on his racing shoes. You see, Ty is the God of War and Fertility, and he’s gotten himself killed. But as it was foretold he would give Dru a child, something has obviously gone terribly wrong. While grieving, Dru meets and befriends Aodh. But the new friendship isn’t strong enough to erase her grief, so Dru heads off alone and somehow ends up the captive lover of a Daemon named Kas (I believe he, too, exists in the Otherworld, that each of these powerful beings somehow create their own little, self-contained worlds within the larger Otherworld.). Then, through the machinations of a famous singer and, of course, destiny, Katrina and Aodh meet and fall in love. But what finally awakens the power of The Dagda is Dru escaping from Kas by allowing Katrina to take her place. Aodh is enraged. Kas, when threatened by Aodh, responds by immediately torturing and disfiguring the dancer. And so on…

Read Tuatha and The Seven Sisters Moon to find out what’s in store for all of these larger-than-life characters—including the apparently dead Ty.

I believe I could pick up an unmarked manuscript and know if it was written by Dana Von Thaer; she writes with a voice distinctly her own. In a day of carbon copy books (I just finished reading the same story published by two different houses and written by two different contemporary authors) it’s refreshing to dig in to a story and find yourself thinking “I’ve never read anything like this.”

Von Thaer is also an author unafraid to throw herself out there. She unabashedly steals material from several different myths, throws it all into her imagination and comes out with an entertaining romp filled with humour and happy surprises. Yes, there are dark or horrific aspects to Von Thaer’s work… Her Daemon is a brutal, sadistic rapist. People we care about suffer or die. But I can’t call her work horror or even dark fantasy. If I had to be very specific, I would call Tuatha and The Seven Sisters Moon a fantasy thriller or a Modern Irish Myth.

The version of Tuatha I have is 407 pages long. The author’s use of short, easy to read sentences makes the book seem half that length. Her descriptive abilities are also to be lauded: each time I picked up the book I was immediately drawn back into Von Thaer’s world.

A couple of issues do bother me.

First, the book is produced by Von Thaer’s own company B.A.S.E.D. Press. I can’t tell you what the finished product is like, but my version needs either a line edit or a good proof read. The author writes well enough that her errors stand out. I’m hoping someone picked up on them before she went to press.

Second, there are a lot of questions this book leaves unanswered. Either the book needs to be longer, so as to give the author room to address these issues, or it requires a sharp pencil and an editor unafraid of leaving some hefty chunks of story on the floor. Allow me to elaborate…

I couldn’t write this review without doing a couple of hours of research. The author doesn’t explain the mythology she uses. To me, this says she expects the reader to not care (yet, it’s her job to make us care). Or, perhaps, she expects the reader to be curious enough to research the Irish/Celtic and Greek mythology behind her characters and the place they live (the Underworld). The average reader isn’t going to do this. They’re paying to be entertained—not put to work.

Questions about mythology aside, Von Thaer also leaves huge story threads undeveloped or simply snipped off. For example: the whole Daemon situation is weird. The background we are given doesn’t seem to tie into anything else in the book, and this includes the brief history the author gives about the Daemon’s wife. The origins of the setting in this part of the book are barely touched upon (that’s why I make the guess previously  mentioned). And, personally, I’m unable to figure out exactly how and why Dru and Katrina end up in the Daemon’s domain.

Summary? A terrific effort from a new author, I think Tuatha and The Seven Sisters Moon will give you your money’s worth with respect to entertainment. Just be prepared to be left wondering about any number of things: Tuatha and The Seven Sisters Moon gives us an entertaining alternate world, but it also keeps many of that world’s secrets to itself.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009

Truth Decay by William Meikle

I’ve discovered an interesting little publishing house in Weymouth, Dorset, England… “a small acorn of a publishing company specializing in supernatural and pulp fiction…with a little room for other good works.” They claim to embrace new methods of book distribution without forgetting the need for the printed word . Their stated goal is to combine new writers, published writers, new titles and published titles into one genre publishing house. The company is called Ghostwriter Publications, and my contact there is Neil Jackson.

Neil has been kind enough to send me several samples of what his company is up to. Some of you will already have read my review of None So Blind by Ian Faulkner. Over the next few weeks you’ll get to meet more of Ghostwriter’s authors as I review several chapbooks I have in my possession.


Truth Decay
by William Meikle
Ghostwriter Publications
2009
Chapbook
20 pages
Crime/Horror/Paranormal

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Jack Brooks is a drunk and a private detective. When a beautiful blonde throws 500 bucks on his desk and promises more, he decides to put the bottle away for a few days. But, in Jack’s life, things haven’t been going well. This case fits right into that pattern.

The blonde wants him to find a missing NYPD detective, someone Jack knows and never wants to see again. But the money…

So, Jack goes looking. And he’s good at what he does. Too good. Brooks not only winds up the case in record time, he solves the problem that put him at the bottom of a bottle. Read Truth Decay to find out if Jack likes the solution.

Truth Decay is a short story in the vein of old-time crime thrillers like Mike Hammer or Philip Marlowe, with a supernatural twist. The story starts off in exactly the clichéd manner you might expect, but it doesn’t stay that way. “Familiar but ever so different” is how I would describe this reading experience. Nicely Done!

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009

A Rhapsody for the Eternal by Darren Speegle

A Rhapsody for the Eternal
by Darren Speegle
Raw Dog Screaming Press
2009
978-1-933293-78-3 (hardcover)
978-1-933293-77-6 (paperback)
Dark Fantasy

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Official Blurb:

A Rhapsody for the Eternal is a complex gilded clock where gears in the future clank against the cogs of the past. Behind it all lies the mystery of human destiny. This is a new science that smells of dusty books and ancient secrets, things beyond human understanding. Speegle haunts his own stories with delicate insinuations of something more, something deeper. Yet even at the surface these stories breathe with tension. From the Tiptoeing Monk unraveling the riddle of a nursery rhyme to the parents of the first ghost born in centuries, these fantasies feel real and the people, though from a different time, are compelling in a way that our actual neighbors rarely are.


The Stories:

The Lunatic Miss Teak
Handpicked to replace a false and terrible God, a man unknowingly heads toward an unimaginable fate.

Elephant Speak
In the distant future, the science of genetics rules all. Yet human gods cannot prevent the occasional, random recessive gene from bringing back the past. Watch, and wonder at, the first “ghost” to be born in a century.

The Man in Window Three
A plan to escape lives of slave labour turns sour for six men when art thieves show up in the middle of their operation.

Transtexting Prose
When he buys a piece of modern art from the future equivalent of three girl guides, a man finds himself plagued with dreams about the picture, dreams that hint of something deeply disturbing locked within his memories.

Glitzing with the Big Delicious
In a bizarre new world of technology gone mad, some individuals use up their souls for glimpses into the future, while others siphon off these glimmers like today’s addict snorts cocaine. Get ready for a strange trip.

Waltz with the Echoes
Genetically engineered and enhanced beings provide a conduit between Armageddon and a new age now rising out of the darkness. None seem to know who or what they are—archetypes, collective memories of the past or simply tortured souls? You decide.

The Tiptoeing Monk
A father and son use a mythical key to open a door on what is, what was and other than were. Unfortunately, the duo finds that such awesome opportunities come at a similar price.

Disapparency
People are disappearing. When his friend becomes one of them, a man goes looking for answers. What he finds is an example of the old bromide “Be careful what you ask for.”

The Third Stanza
If you hated the world and were given the chance to bring about Armageddon, what would you do?

The Horn on Which the Fruit Blossoms
Is she Eve, Joan of Arc or something even more fundamental? A man is sent to the past to find out. He wanted to know and does: will you?

Night Watch
A couple living on a strange and devastating world, a result of mankind’s  attempt to escape Earth’s final hours, make one last effort to find a reason to hope.

A Last Word
A poetic summary of Speegle’s collection which includes the following tell-tale line: “And vanquished all futures and slaughtered all hope.”


The Review:

Darren Speegle writes stories that are often difficult to understand, and they rarely have a clear or definite ending. But life is not “cut and dried,” he says. Nor are his tales easily placed in a certain genre. Speegle claims to write fantasy; I see aspects of mystery, science fiction, fantasy and horror. Most definitely horror, as A Rhapsody for the Eternal is nothing if it is not disturbing.

With a style leaning heavily toward the literary and a tendency for almost poetic descriptiveness, Speegle regularly obscures his stories from the reader. This is, at times, both irritating and intriguing. On the one hand, you find yourself wondering what is going on; on the other hand, your mental state becomes much like Speegle’s tragic characters: off balance, feeling out of place, questing for meaning and aware of something just under the surface but unable to identify exactly what it is. Quite frankly, I’m not even sure you’ll agree with my short summary of each story.

There is little doubt Darren Speegle is a brilliant author, but I think he is also a little too self-indulgent. What I can say for sure is the stories in A Rhapsody for the Eternal will never bore you, and they’ll be with you long after you’ve finished reading.

What an exotic reading experience!


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009

Dialogue with The Devil

Many readers, writers and editors think of the short story as something with a beginning, middle and end. The story, they understand, must make the very best use of every word. And the main character must be changed in some way, emotionally, mentally or physically. This change may be subtle or not.

All these of these points are true. Yet I have never been one to follow rules. I obey the laws of our land because the alternative is anarchy. But if breaking a rule does not harm, then I see no reason not to challenge it. To hell with the traditions of others.

The following short short story is an example of this. If you haven’t read the other related stories on this blog (They are all chapters in my new novel TechnoMage.), then you may not figure out all of the connections; oh, the necessary information you need exists within the story, but it isn’t going to be spoon fed to you. And the traditional beginning, middle and end just doesn’t exist.

Think of the story as exactly what it is: a few moments of conjoining time-lines in the lives of an antagonist and  a protagonist. These few moments demonstrate both the positive and negative results of arrogance. I shouldn’t have to tell you this but, as I’ve hinted, readers of today are much too used to being spoon fed.

Enjoy the short for what it is meant to be…

Dialogue with The Devil

Satan was in ecstasy. Not since the destruction of mankind’s original planet had he experienced such a feeling of joy. His goal had been achieved! Magic and technology once again worked together to give him the power his siblings had taken away. And humanity’s medicines, when combined with Eden’s magic, worked miracles. Satan was still human, but never had there been a man like he. If his new state of being was what The Creator had been after with the humans, then the fallen angel would never again regret his battle with God. Mankind did not deserve even the possibility of such power.

And now, to crown this marvelous accomplishment, the seer had brought young Lightfoot back as a sacrificial offering. The Devil felt like dancing.

Reveling in the moment, the ancient being poked his captive with a black, sausage-like finger, licked black lips with a scarlet tongue, expressed his contentedness with a deep rumbling in the bellows of his lungs.

The boy’s eyes flickered, then opened. His breath hissed inward between suddenly clenched teeth. The Devil grinned at the sight of Jack’s eyes going flat. You could almost see hope draining from his body into the air.

“Having a bad dream, Jack?”

A fly circled around the boy’s head, landed on his sweat-slicked face. Lucifer set his gaze upon the carrion eater. The fly dropped to the floor, its tiny life snuffed out—just like that.

Jack trembled.

The Devil walked in a circle around his captive. He moved slowly, his ancient skin protesting every footstep with audible cracking and popping and ripping noises. Lucifer knew what his skin looked like: he resembled a giant, overcooked pig, one that had been roasted over open coals until black. His appearance, and the sounds of his breaking skin, seemed to horrify humans more than anything else about him. One used the tools one had.

“Speak to me boy,” The Devil commanded. “Ask me your questions, and tell me what you will trade for your life.”

That got the boy’s attention.

“Yes,” he said. “Your kind always wants to bargain.”

Jack didn’t answer right away. He forced his eyes away from the horrible creature who stood before him, checked out his surroundings.

He knew this place!

The Devil had taken over Morgan’s home. Jack was back on Eden! What did this mean?

“What’s going on?” Jack asked.

“You didn’t think your actions were going to go unanswered, did you?” replied The Devil. “I had a lot invested in Morgan. And what you did to Richard… That was noteworthy, boy. Such potential.”

“How can that thing be Richard?” Jack queried. “He’s dead. He must be dead.”

“You haven’t figured it out, Jack? Not as bright as you think you are?”

The Devil chuckled. It was a terrible sound.

“All things are possible when you combine magic and technology. The beginning and end of all of man’s atrocities lie in that marriage bed.”

He paused, looked into Jack’s eyes.

“Pandora’s Box,” said The Devil, his voice filled with undisguised glee.

A sudden hollowness appeared in Jack’s gut. He couldn’t breathe.

“My family,” he whispered.

Now Lucifer truly shone. His voice took on a silky tone as he spoke.

“We are sorry to announce the tragic passing of the entire Lightfoot family. John Lightfoot, son of Patrick; Rosalee Lightfoot (nee Marsalis) and Jack Lightfoot, son of John. Also mourned is Katy Lightfoot (nee Watterson), wife of Jack. All were respected members of their community. They will be missed. God have mercy on their souls.”

Lucifer tilted back his head and laughed.

Rage blossomed in Jack’s chest. Red and white butterflies pulsed behind his eyes. He fought back tears. Then, for the first time since regaining consciousness, Jack noticed his restraints. He noticed because he was straining against numerous leather straps that bound him to a table top.

“Bastard,” he screamed. Then he jumped. First, to the world he called Hell, to see for himself that Richard wasn’t at the bottom of the pit where Jack had left him to burn. The seer wasn’t there, but The Devil was, a grinning visage of evil. Jack jumped again. This time to his father’s home. A blackened ruin was all that remained. The Devil stood beside Jack and shook his head sorrowfully.

“You’re mine Jack. There’ll be no escape for you. How could I allow that?”

And they were back in Morgan’s office.

Lucifer commanded that Jack look him in the eyes. Jack did. The Devil began to grow in size. He continued to expand until he was ten feet tall, becoming more muscular, growing heavier, skin taking on a golden hue, smooth, younger. Hair sprouted on The Beast’s head. And in the end, transformed, Lucifer stood before Jack as an Adonis. He’d become a blond, gorgeous giant, whose beauty put your heart into your mouth and sent your eyes to the floor in subdued awe.

“I rule here. How did you come to think otherwise?” The Devil said. “Your choice is to live and serve me or die and serve me. There is nothing else available to you.”

But Lucifer, arrogant by nature, failed to understand Jack Lightfoot’s own arrogance. Oh, to be sure, Jack knew he was in serious trouble, understood that he had been defeated, recognized his terrible loss. But Jack didn’t know how to give up. He believed with everything he was—and this was his arrogance—that  humans are unlimited beings, that they are young gods. Jack wasn’t capable of joining The Beast, nor could he roll over and die. Instead, the talented sorcerer, in a moment of absolute genius, saw a way out.

The Devil, through Morgan and Richard, had opened Pandora’s Box. Jack would use that. He would embrace Lucifer’s desire to bring magic and technology together. He would go into the box itself.

The boy made one more jump. This time it was to a place he suspected The Devil wouldn’t follow.

What did our young hero do? The unimaginable, of course. Jack Lightfoot jumped out of his physical body, across the void and into the largest, most complicated computer he knew of—the newly completed Google complex on the shores of the Columbia river, in the northwestern US. He did this by riding a wave of all the power he could summon, combining magic, spirit and technology to create his version of what The Devil appeared to have done to Richard the seer.

Lucifer stared at the lifeless body before him and howled his fury.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009

Speculative fiction author, C. June Wolf

Finding Creatures & Other Stories
by C. June Wolf
Wattle and Daub Books, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9810658-0-9
240 pages
Fiction

Buy at my Amazon.com store

Buy at my Amazon.ca store


Casey Wolf submitted her book Finding Creatures & Other Stories to be reviewed on The Deepening World of Fiction’s horror blog. We both knew, in advance, the collection probably wouldn’t fit the horror genre. Yet Wolf’s stories dig at the soul in a sometimes dark and subtle way. Much of the fiction is also speculative, a type which lends itself well to horror.

There’s Aggie’s Game, a disturbing look at a child’s battle with the grim reality of her life. This is a fine horror story. It contains a few computer generated formatting problems that messed up some words, but the piece is an otherwise superb example of what good horror writing is. Truth be told, Wolf makes me wish I was a better writer than I am. Her work touched me in deep places.

Dana’s Hand is another of Wolf’s stories which resonates with a quiet horror. A mother lost in dementia is guarded during the day by her offspring, Dana, and calmed of her night-time terrors by the strange healing powers of Dana’s left hand. But it is not the subtle horror of the situation which captures us. No, it is Dana’s capacity for joy and her appetite for life that reaches us, that lifts our spirits to a sweet sadness too many of us already know.

Mr. Cowmeadow’s Sky is at once disturbing and uplifting. A story about a dying man on a dying world who yet finds joy in the continued existence of his son, the only thing in his life he ever considered worthwhile.

The rest of the stories in this wonderful collection? I think the talented and accomplished author who introduces the book sums it up perfectly: “Wolf uses different genres, different voices, different cultures—in short whatever she needs to make the story work. What ties it all together is her sure-handed prose and a depth she brings to her writing, that indefinable element that rises up from between the lines and gives a good story its resonance… —Charles de Lint—

Finding Creatures & Other Stories is excellent fiction—period. I heartily recommend it.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2009