Templeton Gate Reviews Burning Sky

I was chuffed as they say in the UK about this review. I love these guys and constantly want to impress them because if I can do that, it means I've done something. Looks like I did. 5 stars. Wow.

Here's an excerpt:

This is highly recommended. I'm willing to follow wherever Ochse leads, and I need to track down some of his earlier work. Yesterday I rated this 5 stars at Amazon and Goodreads, and also mentioned that the author might be surprised about other books I thought of while reading. One of them was still very much fresh in my mind, since I had read Joe Haldeman's Hugo and Nebula winner Forever Peace for the first time last week. What I'm referencing is only the part about the Jupiter Project and the speculation as to what might happen if it was completed. Another book I thought of is Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, still one of the best books I've ever read. It is all about the vastness of the cosmos, the wide range of species that dwell on various planets of the far-flung galaxies, and the possible discovery of the ultimate creator of it all. I've typed several other sentences, edited them, then decided to delete them as too spoilery. I'll leave it as an exercise for other readers to figure out why those books came to mind. Is there an ultimate beginning point to the universe, or an ultimate end point, or is it a perpetual motion machine, destined to repeat forever? Is everything Boy Scout experiences part of the fugue? Will he ever escape it? I don't know yet, but I'm anxious to find out. If you're not into such musings, if you only want military action (there is plenty of that here) this might not be the book for you. If you're game for things beyond the material world, even as a mere thought experiment, there is much here to satisfy. It has prompted me to do more research into Zoroastrianism and other spiritual disciplines, which I hope to do before the announced sequel, Dead Sky, is released.

You can read the entire very lengthy review here.

Radioactive Reviews Burning Sky

I was very psyched to see that Radioactive Book Reviews decided to review Burning Sky. They are known to be a no shit hard-assed review site that can be trusted. 

Here's an excerpt.

Overall this book was good, but not my new favourite. I really think there’s a huge difference between what the book looks like on the outside, what the description describes it to be, and what it actually is. I think if you like books about army guys and girls killing things and battling their own problems as well as supernatural ones, you’re going to like this. If you like books that change their entire being in the middle, you’re going to like this. And if you like books that confuse you a little but in a good way, then this is the book for you. 

To read the entire review, you can find it here. 

New Burning Sky Review - Runalong The Shelves

I almost missed this. Thanks to Joe for letting me know about it.

Overall, this is a very positive review, but the reviewer brings up a great point. I'll get to that later. Here's an excerpt from the review over at Runalong The Shelves.

The character dynamic was appealing.  This is a military team with two skilled and respected women operating alongside the men and the men themselves are a diverse group of backgrounds including former criminals and a gay man who again the team have no issues with.  It feels a refreshingly 21st century set-up.  Ultimately the TST enjoy what they do and while they all have their reasons for fighting and it is clear they complement and need each other on a very deep level.

My only reservation was the final reveal is a historical character who really set the ball rolling on the confrontation the team need to address.  That character is shown in a less than positive light and as far as I’ve been able to see he had no ulterior motives and instead is a respected literary figure to Persian culture.  Artistic licence must be expected in the genre but to base a story in Afghanistan and use a famous Muslim character as a potential antagonist (and to be fair their motives are still unclear, so this may be revealed in future stories as a red herring) I felt made this a little out of step with the rest of the book.

So, this is an excellent point. Having just finished the second book, I'm going to include a disclaimer in the acknowledgements. Basically, I had to have a foil for the team. I had to have someone be the bad guys. I chose to make the ultimate bad guy someone who everyone sees as good, because that's just good plotting. To the reviewer's question about it being a red herring, I can convincingly say that it was not and that the next book, Dead Sky, will provide much more reasons for his presence and desire to do what he did. I know this is sort of cryptic, but I don't want to ruin the reading experience for you, but I did want to mention that the reviewers criticism here is valid.

Here is the full review.

Adventures in Kindling - My Year In Books 2018

Turns out I read about forty books this year. A lot of the reason the number is so high was because I spent half the year in Afghanistan, so no TV to compete with my time. I can't write about all forty, but I did want to highlight some of them because talking about books is one of my favorite topics of all time. 

My favorite of the year was The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky by John Hornor Jacobs. I fell immediately in love and posted about it here. While TSDIITS is definitely my favorite read of the year, every other book on this list is a close second. TSDIITS provided me with the greatest enjoyment I think because it gave me everything I want out of Cosmic Horror. You see, I heart cosmic horror. I heart conspiracies larger than ourselves. So, when I began reading, I was hooked.

A young teacher named Isabel meets a gnarly old one-eyed poet simply named Avendano. They've both fled their homeland in South America and now make their home in Spain. The cafe and literati scenes reminded me in all the best ways of Roberto Bolano's works, such as The Savage Detectives. The way Jacobs slides us into the setting is so gentle I feel as if I've been there all the time.Then Avendano, like a cosmic lure, propels Isabel into such an otherworldy mystery that I actually found I couldn't breath in many places.

I've read a ton of books this year and two stand out as incredible. Victor LaValle's The Changeling which won the American Book Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the British Fantasy Award, among others. The other is John Hornor Jacobs The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky, which hasn't won any awards so far. I'm thinking that will change. At least it should. At the very least, I encourage you to read this lovely dark cosmic novella and ask yourself, what is the price of home?

The Changeling by Victor LaValle. As I mentioned above, I read and loved The Changeling. 

From Google Books - "When Apollo Kagwa was just a child, his father disappeared, leaving him with recurring nightmares and a box labelled 'Improbabilia'. Now a successful book dealer, Kagwa has a family of his own after meeting and falling in love with Emma, a librarian. The two marry and have a baby: so far so happy-ever-after.However, as the pair settle into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Emma's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, until one day she commits an unthinkable act, setting Apollo on a wild and fantastical quest through a suddenly otherworldly New York, in search of a wife and child he no longer recognizes. An epic novel for our anxiety-ridden times, The Changeling is a tale of parenthood, love - in its most raw and brutal form - and, ultimately, humanity."

I think The Changeling could be called cosmic horror as well. There were several WTF moments where I couldn't breath. I actually exclaimed aloud at one point. If you haven't read this one, you're seriously missing leveling up in life.

The Croning by Laird Barron is definitely cosmic horror. 

From Google Books -"Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us... Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly eighty years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret... ...of The Croning. From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror."

Up until now, I'd only read Laird's short fiction and novellas. When I saw this novel and the description, I knew it was something I'd dig into. And I did. I absolutely loved the way Laird crafted and delivered the mystery and I love the way he took us through several decades of a man's life and brought us to an ending that had to be. So perfect.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge is a book I thought was cosmic horror but wasn't. What it is is a book within a book within a book. 

From Google Books - "Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the The Night Ocean follows the lives of some extraordinary people: Lovecraft, the most influential American horror writer of the 20th century, whose stories continue to win new acolytes, even as his racist views provoke new critics; Barlow, a seminal scholar of Mexican culture who killed himself after being blackmailed for his homosexuality (and who collaborated with Lovecraft on the beautiful story "The Night Ocean"); his student, future Beat writer William S. Burroughs; and L.C. Spinks, a kindly Canadian appliance salesman and science-fiction fan -- the only person who knows the origins of The Erotonomicon, purported to be the intimate diary of Lovecraft himself. In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends--or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it's suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn't believe them."

La Farge's narrative style and choices in this weren't something I would have done but I think they work wonderfully. What I'm saying is that in the end I found his choice to be much better than how I would have done it. I finished The Night Ocean and wanted to read it again. Something that doesn't often happen. Plus, I love found document fiction. La Farge is now on my list.

The Twilight Pariah by Jeffery Ford. Jeffery Ford was an author who I thought I'd read. It turns out that I hadn't, so I eagerly picked this one up. 

From Amazon - "All Maggie, Russell, and Henry wanted out of their last college vacation was to get drunk and play archaeologist in an old house in the woods outside of town. When they excavate the mansion's outhouse they find way more than they bargained for: a sealed bottle filled with a red liquid, along with the bizarre skeleton of a horned child. Disturbing the skeleton throws each of their lives into a living hell. They feel followed wherever they go, their homes are ransacked by unknown intruders, and people they care about are brutally, horribly dismembered. The three friends awakened something, a creature that will stop at nothing to retrieve its child."

What appears to be a haunted house story is far more than that. This is a haunted cosmic horror story with characters that reminded me of those in Brett Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero. The research conducted in the book - the found fiction - is also one of my favorite things. Here I'm introduced to Kind Nepenthe for the first time and note that there's now a book with that title from Matthew V. Brockmeyer that is on my list of things to read. Thank you Jefferey Ford for not pulling punches with this one. I've already downloaded The Shadow Year and can't wait to dive in.

The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler is not a cosmic horror novel. It's not even a genre novel. It's a book I read right before I went to Afghanistan--literally buying it at the airport as I left. You can read the full post here but I'm providing an excerpt.

From Google Books - "Camp Chippewa, 1962. Nelson Doughty, age thirteen, social outcast and overachiever, is the Bugler, sounding the reveille proudly each morning. Yet this particular summer marks the beginning of an uncertain and tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan. Over the years, Nelson, irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War, becomes Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa, while Jonathan marries, divorces, and turns his father’s business into a highly profitable company. And when something unthinkable happens at a camp get-together with Nelson as Scoutmaster and Jonathan’s teenage grandson and daughter-in-law as campers, the aftermath demonstrates the depths—and the limits—of Nelson’s selflessness and bravery.

 "The Hearts of Men is a sweeping, panoramic novel about the slippery definitions of good and evil, family and fidelity, the challenges and rewards of lifelong friendships, the bounds of morality—and redemption.

"The Hearts of Men is a grand novel, well-chosen for its purpose. It's a story about a changing time, when the idea of being a Boy Scout is becoming less and less significant. It's about ethics and what to do in bad situations. It sometimes painfully puts its characters in too real places that make you want to stop reading, but just as the characters are performing for you, out of respect, you have to stay through their performance.

"It's a book about the complexity of always trying to do the right thing."

I cherished this book and it indeed prepared me for Afghanistan. I feel it in my chest. I feel it in my head. I was once a Boy Scout. I made it to Life. My father was an Eagle Scout and was a scoutmaster. Both of these things prepared us in our lives. A little reminder helped rekindle those memories and reminded my that being Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent were things to which we should all attain, despite those around us who would devalue these traits.

Finally, its about being your own man and accepting yourself for who you are.

The End of the World Running Club by Adrian J. Walker was a book I read in Afghanistan. I immediately face palmed because the title and the idea was so damn obvious. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it myself.

From Amazon - "When the world ends and you find yourself stranded on the wrong side of the country, every second counts. No one knows this more than Edgar Hill: over five hundred miles of devastated wasteland stretch between him and his family. To get back to them, he must push himself to the very limit―or risk losing them forever. His best option is to run. But what if his best isn't good enough? End of the World Running Club is an otherworldly yet extremely human story of hope, love, and the endurance of both body and spirit."

I really bought into the desperation of the main character and as a person who runs, and sometimes doesn't, understands how hard it would have to be to do what he did. Superior effort by the author. Well done. 

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai. My editor at Rebellion Books was the one who turned me onto this book and I'm glad he did. I'm not so much a fan of time travel books because of all the plot holes one can find, but Mastai plugged those holes. 

From Amazon - "It's 2016, and in Tom Barren's world, technology has solved all of humanity's problems—there's no war, no poverty, no under-ripe avocadoes. Unfortunately, Tom isn't happy. He's lost the girl of his dreams. And what do you do when you're heartbroken and have a time machine? Something stupid. Finding himself stranded in a terrible alternate reality—which we immediately recognize as our 2016—Tom is desperate to fix his mistake and go home. Right up until the moment he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and the woman who may just be the love of his life. Now Tom faces an impossible choice. Go back to his perfect but loveless life. Or stay in our messy reality with a soulmate by his side. His search for the answer takes him across continents and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be. Filled with humor and heart and packed with insight, intelligence, and mind-bending invention, All Our Wrong Todays is a powerful and moving story of life, loss, and love."

I also read this one in Afghanistan and I remember looking forward to getting off work so I could return to my hooch and read this. With plenty of surprises, Mastai didn't mess around. If there was an opportunity to fuck with his main character, he took it-- in fact he took them all. 

The Cabin At the End of the World by Paul Tremblay is just another one of Paul's fabulous books. I love that he keeps hitting it out of the park and can trust that when I see one of his books that I will love it.

From Amazon - "Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road. One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, "None of what’s going to happen is your fault". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: "Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world." Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined."

I also read this in Afghanistan. When the description above used the words 'incredibly tense,' it meant it. Twice I remember calling Paul a Fucker for what he did. This is not an easy book to read because of it, but its a tremendous book that makes you question your own faith. 

Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessle is similar in plot device to The Cabin At the End of the World because the protagonists are forced to choose who dies. 

From Amazon: "Once upon a time, back at Darrow-Harker School, Beatrice Hartley and her five best friends were the cool kids, the beautiful ones. Then the shocking death of Jim--their creative genius and Beatrice's boyfriend--changed everything. One year after graduation, Beatrice is returning to Wincroft--the seaside estate where they spent so many nights sharing secrets, crushes, plans to change the world--hoping she'll get to the bottom of the dark questions gnawing at her about Jim's death. But as the night plays out in a haze of stilted jokes and unfathomable silence, Beatrice senses she's never going to know what really happened. Then a mysterious man knocks on the door. Blithely, he announces the impossible: time for them has become stuck, snagged on a splinter that can only be removed if the former friends make the harshest of decisions. Now Beatrice has one last shot at answers . . . and at life."

I almost didn't buy this because it's being sold as a YA book. Not that I don't read YA books, it's just that they are not my first choice. This despite me being a huge fan of Night Film, which I wrote about recently in an essay published by Locus Magazine in their Author's Roundtable called Found Footage Fiction. I don't think this is a YA novel and probably a marketing technique to draw in other fans. Not that Marisha needs it. She's fabulous on her own. What I found most interesting during the middle of the book were the choices her protagonists made and how reliving a day over and over changed them. Then came act three. Just wonderful. I also read this while in Afghanistan.

The Sighting by Christopher Coleman is the only self published book on this list. I enjoyed it because it's cosmic horror. Although there are some minor pacing issues and the main character is sort of a dick, I still appreciated the author's invention. A sign of the author's skill is that even though the main character is sort of a self-centered prick, I still cared for him and was stressed when bad things began happening to him.

From Amazon - "One morning during his daily run to the beach, Danny Lynch witnesses the strangest and most incredible thing he's ever seen. A dark, man-like figure emerges from the ocean, stands for just a few moments on the beach, and then retreats back to the surf. Danny's perspective on the world changes, and as the only eyewitness to this event, his mission now is to convince anyone who will listen that what he saw was real. But with only a vague photo and a dubious story, that task is proving almost impossible. His only hope may be in finding a mysterious woman who was at the beach earlier that morning, and who may hold the terrifying secret that could cost Danny his life."

This is not a novel but a novella. Note that I'm currently reading the follow up to this called The Origin and am so far enjoying it.

So, there you have it, folks. I just wanted to share some of the highlights of my reading this year. Feel free to comment or hit me up with what you think I should be reading. And if you feel like it, try one of my books. I'm told they aren't bad.

(Adventures in Kindling TM is Trademarked by Weston Ochse) 

Burning Sky Represents the Pinnacle of the Military Horror Genre

...so says Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviewer in the first review of Burning Sky, my 30th published book and the start of a new military horror trilogy.

Wow. What a humbling and inspiring review. The reviewer went into incredible detail, laying the foundation for his approach to the novel and then how it affected him as he read it.

"When I started to read Burning Sky I assumed that I would be looking at a fairly ‘conventional’ horror novel with a military theme – perhaps some kind of ‘creature feature’ that saw the TST members hunt down some occult or extra-terrestrial threat in the deserts of Afghanistan. But as I read on, it rapidly became clear that although there were elements of this, it was actually so much more than the sort of pot-boiler that often litters the genres. Instead, what Mr Ochse offers up is an open and starkly honest portrayal of the mental and physical costs of fighting in a modern conflict, which in turn becomes subtly integrated with elements of cosmic and body horror as time goes on."

When an author sits alone for months writing a novel in the squishy silence of his own brain, he never knows if what he's trying to do will actually translate to the page. Even as I sat in Afghanistan and began working with Rebellion's publicist, laying our scheme for sending out review copies of the book, I doubted myself and the idea that I might have captured the right electric pain in the bottle.

"Burning Sky is a fantastic novel that I enjoyed every minute of reading – engagingly written, sharply plotted and laced with both cosmic horrors and the entirely human-made horrors of modern war. I firmly believe that it represents the pinnacle of the military horror genre, and will be difficult, if not impossible, to surpass."

I urge you to read the review. I don't know who the reviewer was, but as an author who has had hundreds if not thousands of reviews, I can count on one hand the sorts of reviews that read like the best of creative non-fiction. This was one of them and should be a tutorial on how reviews should be written.

Burning Sky will be available September 25th. Please pre-order so we can sell out the print run before publication. That will help guarantee more books in the series. You can click on one of the book links on the left, or go to the following links for your favorite stores.

Indie Bookstore Link

Barnes and Nobles

Amazon Link

Kobo

Kindle

iTunes

Thank you!

Book Review - Safe Houses

Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman is a gripping suspense novel where a young woman discovers a nefarious truth at the heart of the CIA’s operations in postwar Berlin and goes on the run for her life until, years later, she’s gruesomely murdered along with her husband, and her daughter begins to chase down the startling secrets from her past.

Dan Fesperman is no stranger to thrill and intrigue. A longtime war correspondent with tours in Baghdad, Sarajevo, Berlin, and Kabul, his work is layered with the particular hues of darkness that can only be found in the shadowy gray line between good and evil. He came late to fiction but is no stranger to success, having won the John Creasy Memorial Dagger Award for Best First Novel, The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller, and The Hammett Prize. Safe Houses showcases a lean, muscular prose that is able to deliver plot points as cleanly and quickly as a switchblade’s twist.

The success of Fesperman’s novel depends on our understanding of what a safe house is both in real life and in metaphor. A safe house can be found being operated by a friendly government in an unfriendly place and is often, as its namesake indicates, a safe place to hole up or do business. These are usually places that blend into the neighborhood and could easily be the home of a model neighbor who doesn’t make noise or cause any problems. A safe house remains safe as long as the enemy doesn’t know where it is.

Helen Abell is a young agent working for the CIA in the 1970s. The Cold War is on, and nowhere is the dark spotlight of intrigue brighter than in Berlin. But young women in the 1970s were supposed to know their place in the world’s intelligence community hierarchy. You could be a secretary or an archivist or even a safe-house keeper, but you could never be an actual agent who deals with the supposed masculine business of intrigue. Unless, of course, the intrigue is thrust upon you during your boring job of maintaining a safe house when you have two unplanned encounters: one that clues you into a global mystery and another that makes you an accessory to the murder of a young woman. For Helen Abell, both of these are true, and she soon finds herself at odds with an agency who would rather her sit behind a desk than solve one mystery, much less two.

Fesperman’s safe house is also a rural home in Maryland where a family of four grew up, with the mother, father, and son still living there. It’s not merely a house; it’s a home. And it’s a place where violence should only be visited by television or movie stars. But when the mother and father are brutally murdered and it’s believed that the son committed the crimes, the house no longer can be categorized as safe.

This is where Safe Houses gathers steam as the two stories, interwoven through time, begin to collide. As Helen unravels her own clues to become the agent for which she was trained while dodging those who would bureaucratically stop her, her daughter must find the true murderer of the couple in the rural Maryland home, gaining the attention of the same people who had been after Helen all of these years...

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To check out the rest of the review, please pop on over to Criminal Element.  Bottom line is that it's a great book. If you do go over to Criminal Element, they also have a great sweepstakes going on if you want to get a free book. The sweepstakes ends July 17th and it's free to participate. 

Book Review - The Darkest Time of Night

The Darkest Time of Night by Jeremy Finley is a fast-paced debut thriller full of suspense and government cover-ups, which explores what happens to people’s lives when our world intersects with the unexplainable.

We had an event called the Pinewood Derby back when I was in Boy Scouts. We were encouraged to build a car from balsa wood to an exact form, add weights, wheels, and paint it to our liking. Then, we’d race our creation to see how well it could do against the other balsa creations. I’d watch each race and become more and more excited as my turn came closer. Then, when it was finally the moment to place my car at the top of the track and let it go, my heart would beat so furiously that I couldn’t imagine it beating any harder. My car started slowly, then picked up speed until it was seriously booking down the decline, moving faster than I could have imagined it would.

So does the plot of Jeremy Finley’s debut novel, The Darkest Time of Night. It starts slow at the top of the run, giving you enough time to observe the characters and see them in real time doing real things, which is how all great thrillers set things up. Then, it picks up speed until it’s finally hurtling down the track. This metaphor wasn’t chosen at random. At the heart of the matter are people who disappear from places all around the globe, many of whom are children. And it is this idea of childhood lost that gave me a moment of childhood remembered, not only with the Pinewood Derby of my own childhood but of the setting of Finley’s plot. The lushness of the Tennessee woods, the otherworldliness of fireflies blinking in the night like earthbound stars, and the idea that the woods behind the house are safe are all things I grew up with. But Finley changes all that and makes the familiar not only suspect but deadly.

Lynn is not your normal heroine. She’s a mother of more secrets than children. She’s the grandmother of a grandson who won’t speak because of what he’s seen and another grandson who’s disappeared, which thrusts them all into the middle of a media blitz—because she’s also the wife of a Senator with presidential aspirations. Her best friend is the sort of friend we all need: someone who won’t take any guff, who might be the sort to sell some pot to a neighbor in need of pain relief, and who will be there when you need her most. Lynn has a green thumb. She runs a greenhouse and raises plants. All in all, she’s a normal woman thrust into an abnormal situation...

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To check out the rest of the review, please pop on over to Criminal Element.  Bottom line is that it's a great book. If you do go over to Criminal Element, they also have a great sweepstakes going on if you want to get a free book. The sweepstakes ends July 17th and it's free to participate. 

Some Current Readings: Paul Tremblay, Paul Pen, John Boden, and Rachel Autmn Deering

I've read a few books the last few weeks as I was traveling and wanted to share some of the best I've read.

I've known Paul Tremblay since he started writing and I got to say, I am so pleased to see him getting better and better. "Wait," you say. "Head Full of Ghosts was awesome." Yes. And Disappearance at Devils' Rock is better. Not just the story, but the narrative structure. It takes major talent to do what Paul has done-- the way he reveals story. I found myself admiring the style all the way through as well as reveling in the story. This is a must read for anyone who wants suspense... Devil's Rock abounds with suspense. Way to go Paul!

When I finished The Light of Fireflies and realized that it had been translated from Spanish to English, I was blown away. I couldn't tell. The translation was so perfect, the narrative never seemed ESL. It also explains why I'd never heard of the author. All the way through the Fireflies, I was wondering how come I've never read anything by this guy. And that's why. I don't speak Spanish... yet. What's it about? I considered comparing it to VC Andrews Flowers in the Attic, but that would be a disservice to this novel. On the surface the book is about a mostly disfigured family who lives underground, but the narrative runs far deeper than that. This is probably the best book I've read all year and I've read some amazing books thusfar (Experimental Film, Disappearance at Devil's Rock, and Mongrels being three of my highlights).

While at Scares that Care Weekend in Williamsburg, I picked up a copy of John Boden's Jedi Summer with the Magnetic Kid. A narrow chapbook with a terrific cover, it drew me as a fellow child of the 80s. What the book contained were first person narrative slices of a long summer, culminating with the viewing of Return of the Jedi. I liked the story a lot and I loved the little brother feeding invisible dogs. I would have liked to see it be more than vignettes and more of a cohesive narrative. It has the potential to be incredible, sort of a High Fidelity Love Story to the Star Wars 80s. That said, what I read was wonderful.

Husk was a surprise. I hadn't planned on reading it. In fact, it was foisted on handed to me just as I was leaving Scares That Care Weekend. Husk is written by Rachel Autumn Deering. She, I, and a bunch of others had spent some time together during the convention, especially the night before when she and the Irish tattoo princess Melissa Hayward produced the unscripted and unrecorded impromptu party podcast called Midnight Hamburger. Rather than review this, I'll share the IM I sent her. Now, I don't often IM authors, but because this was her first work of prose (that I know about), and as an old-timer, I wanted to share some literary advice/criticism/love... whichever is generally appropriate.

"This morning, sitting in the sun room of a 200 year old home that rests on a prominence of the Potomac River, still basking in the glow of a super-mega-cool-fucking convention and drinking coffee, I read Husk. I had no expectations, no thoughts to what it was going to be about, nor do I really know you except for Midnight Hamburger (we'll always have Midnight Hamburger), so it was with exceptional delight that I found the novella eminently engaging. Your writing is a glowing example of Kentucky Hollows Gothic and your treatment of PTSD is near on perfect. There were sentences I re-read because of your capacity to sew the perfect words together. I'm not sure if you know it, but the Sci Fi series I'm currently writing for Solaris is all about PTSD. Other than having a bit of it myself, I've been a student of the vicious beast for several years now. You did well in showing and not telling on how it can grip a man and not let go. And then the end... so damned Shakepearian... so damned O'Henryian. The impact was there. If you ever decide to turn this into a novel-length piece, which I think it should be, the impact would be even more as you shore the beach of their relationship, just as he's simultaneously trying to bestill the beast that's on him, be it real, or imaginary. Yes. Husk is great. I can't wait to read what else slithers out of your keen and cool imagination. Be well."

Have you read these? What are your thoughts? If you haven't read these, please do! They are awesome and I wasn't even paid to say so.

Sci Fi Gazette Looking Forward to Grunt Hero

Nice to be on someone's wish list. Internet icon Sci Fi Gazette posted their 2016 preview. Among such look forwards as the return of the X-Files, Stephen King's 11.22.63 being broadcast on Hulu, The Expanse TV series on Syfy Channel, lies Grunt Hero, my third book in the PTSD alien invasion series started with bestseller Grunt Life.

You should go to the complete list and check out the books, movies, tv shows and comics that Sci Fi Gazette is most anticipating in 2016. You can find that here.

What's the Grunt Life Series About? I talk about it here on my webpage and how I pitched it to Solaris Books.

But don't trust me. See what two of my literary idols have to say about it.

"Grunt Life was a major achievement in military SF! A real page- turner! This new David Gerrold, Hugo and Nebula Award Winner of The Martain Child
chapter in the series is even better!" -

“Add Grunt Life to your list of must-have books.  This is action adventure at its best.” - William C. Dietz, New York Times bestselling author of Legion of the Damned

Grunt Traitor Makes Another Best of List While Grunt Hero Makes Another Most Anticipated List

Love love love the fact that so many people are loving Grunt Traitor -- the second book of my PTSD alien invasion series which began with Grunt Life. Add to the fan base, Elitest Book Reviews who listed it as one of their Best of 2015.

Here's part of their original review:

EXCERPT: Weston Ochse’s GRUNT LIFE was one of my favorite novels released in 2014. It was also one of the finest Military SF novels I’d read, and I’ve been anticipating the sequel ever since. After the follow-up novel, GRUNT TRAITOR, arrived I took it with me on a plane trip…and ended up reading the whole novel that day. To put it mildly, GRUNT TRAITOR was a page-turner. GRUNT TRAITOR delivered on it all, making it the best Military SF I’ve read in years, and a huge step up (somehow) from the first book in the series. -Elitest Book Reviews

Elitest Book Reviews also has a most anticipated list where they list Grunt Hero (the third forthcoming book in the series) along with many other books, including ones by Joe Abercrombie, James S.A. Corey (an Expanse novel), Lois McMaster Bujold, Patricia Briggs, Daniel Abraham and Kevin Hearn. I'm in very good company. If I had a single wish this year it would be to sit down around a dinner table and just chat, drink wine, and eat a magnificent dinner with these fine people, many whom I know (Kevin, Daniel, Corey) and one whom I've publicly and rather pathetically crooned a love poem too (Briggs) while I was toastmaster at TusCon and she was Guest of Honor. Yeah. I do shit like that, but what the hell. You only live once, right?

You can see their whole list here.

Living Dangerously's Favorite Books of 2015

I read a lot. I read so much, it's a wonder I'm able to write anything. But I started out as a reader, not a writer, and I continue to be a reader first and a writer second. I think if there ever comes a day when those are reversed, by life will be less interesting, because no matter how much I enjoy living in my own imagination, it can't compare to living in the imaginations of many exceptional writers. I read a lot of terrific books in 2015. In fact, this year marked the first year I read more books on Kindle rather than in print, largely necessitated by my travel schedule. Let's face it. It's far easier for me to carry a single iPad instead of a box of books. It's pure logistics. So here's my list. Not all of them were published in 2015, but I read all of them in 2015 and it's my list and I can do what I want with it.

So which ones were standouts for me?

 Let me first begin with what I'm calling the Ghost Quartet. These are Little Sister Death, Head full of

Ghosts, The Boy Who Drew Monsters, and The House of Small Shadows. 

Little Sister Death by William Gay was published posthumously in 2015, but was probably written twenty years ago. It's the story of a writer who moves his family to Tennessee to chase a ghost story and then, you know what happens, gets in over his head. But its so beautifully written you don't even care if its sort of Amityville-esque. I probably never would have read this had the author's name not come up in a conversation I was having with David Schow over drinks this summer. I'm hugely glad I read it.

Everyone's been electronically shouting about A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay. It's a novel about a possession and how a young teens possession was made into a TV show and how that experience effected the entire family. It's a story within a story, which I love. The tension is ratcheted throughout and Paul really nails the POV of the young girl protagonist. Just nails it.

The Boy Who Drew Monsters could be the American cousin to the next book- The House of Small Shadows. Keith Donohue ingeniously plots a novel wherein a child seemingly can't stop drawing monsters which makes his parents think he might be crazy. Reviewed by none other than Peter Straub for The Washington Post, the atmosphere of the novel is compared to Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, and The Haunting of Hill House. I have to agree with Peter and wait until you find out why he's drawing. I mean, that's what you want to know when you read the title, right?

The fourth of our Ghost Quartet is Adam Nevill's The House of Small Shadows. It's a very crafty pastoral novel that brings to mind Shirley Jackson. And there is a haunting, but its such a clever and complex haunting I never say what happened next coming. It's another story within a story, and the pay off is wondrous. I'm a huge Adam Nevill Fan and read everything he writes. If you liked this also consider reading The Ritual and Last Days.

The Death House by Sarah Pinborough felt a lot like these other novels, but it lacked a ghost. Instead, it had this ethereal claustrophobic quality similar to  Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The book is a romance at its heart-- a first love romance -- and the ending is probably the most powerful ending of any book Sarah has written. Terrific job, Sarah!

I was eager to include The Lost Level by Brian Keene. This thin tome couldn't be more different that the previous five books, but it brought me back to old Edgar Rice Burroughs novels with the feeling of around the corner expectation I experienced in Arthur C. Clark's Rendezvous With Rama. This first foray into The Labyrinth makes me eager for future novels. Takes me back to my boyhood.

 

And now for a non-fiction interlude. Yes, I read non-fiction as well. The Telling Room by Michael Paternti, or its full title -- The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese -- is the tale of the author's relationship with a larger than life cheese maker named Ambrosio. It's about perception, how events change perception, the loss of innocence, a Castillian blood feud, and the futility of harboring grudges. The book is both entrancing and extravagant in its descriptions leaving me feeling as if it was I who traveled to Spain. Plus, there's wine and cheese galore. What's not to like about that?

Now back to fiction where I can talk about a first novel published by a small press that probably no one read, which is really too bad, because The Whisper King by Wil Radcliff should be on everyone's best of list. You know those shadows in your room that scared you when you were a kid. Well, what if those shadows were real and what if they were coming for you and what if when they got you they took you to another dimension for a reason you won't ever see coming. Yeah. That's this book.

Talk about claustrophobic, then read Nictophobia by Christopher Fowler. It's a haunted house novel but its not. It's more than that. Sure, the Shirley Jackson comparisons can be made for sheer atmosphere, but this is such an inventive treatment on the idea of light and dark that this novel will stand out for quite some time. Let me ask you this: to what extent would you change your life to ensure that those you loved remained alive?

Andersonville by Ed Erderlac is about the horrible conditions of the real life Civil War prison camp where Union Soldiers were lucky to survive each night. Add to this real life horror a secret mission, voodoo, magic, and the supernatural. Erderlac has woven this rich and complex tapestry into a masterful quilt of violence, spit, and rage. I actually blurbed this novel and said: “Andersonville is a raw, groundbreaking supernatural knuckle-punch. Erdelac absolutely owns Civil War and Wild West horror fiction.”

The best Military Sci Fi I read in 2015 definitely goes to William C. Dietz's Andromeda's Fall. I first read Legion of the Damned when I was stationed at Fort Bragg a lifetime ago. This is a return to that world with a strong broken female protagonist. With all out balls to the wall warfare, a suitable amount of intrigue, and The Legion of the Damned (imagine the French Foreign Legion a thousand years in the future whose brains and souls are now embedded in robotic machines), this is the first book of a slamming trilogy.

 

I've bad a secret bromance with Ernest Cline ever since he wrote Ready Player One. The guy must spend many secret hours in my head because everything he writes seems as if he's thinking to himself, what am I going to write for Weston next. Armada is The Last Starfighter meets Dungeons and Dragons meeets Star Wars with a little Enders Game thrown in. Alex Rogan--I mean Zach Lightman-- begins the novel seeing a space ship out his high school window, something all of us wished we'd done, especially me sitting in Ms. Hardaway's geometry class. It's really an incredible ride. Probably the best thing I read this year. I rarely go back and read novels, but I'm looking forward to going back and reading this one if only to sooth and satisfy my inner geek. Or I might just get this as an audio book. I hear Wil Wheaton did the reading for this--yeah!

So that's my Best of List of the books I read. If you haven't read any of these, give them a try. If this old kid from a trailer park on the edge of the universe likes them, chances are you will too.

 
Probably the best book I haven't read was Neil Gaiman's Trigger Warning. I've heard him read two of the stories from that book and they are incredible, especially the story called July (is that right?). I think I want this as an audio book if he's reading it. If not, I'll settle for the hardback. I just checked! Yes! He narrated it. Okay, so I'll probably get both and talk about it on next year's list.

Speaking of next years list, I already know that John Irving's Avenue of Mysteries will be on it. Such a spectacular novel, I'm actually holding back finishing it so I can savor the ending. This could possibly be the best book he's ever written, which is saying a lot considering A Prayer for Owen Meany, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, and Dark Night at Twisted River are such amazing tomes.

 Now get out there and read something. 

Maybe even something of mine.

I Made Tangent Online 2015 Recommended Readling List with American Golem

So it looks like I made Tangent Online 2015 Recommended reading list. This is super important to me because when I first started writing in the late 1990s Tangent Online was one of my GO TO places to get inspiration, look for markets, and learn the craft of writing. So to be mentioned there is seriously very special.

There were 416 stories on this year's list: 353 short stories, 47 novelettes, and 16 novellas.

Here's how they were graded:

"As is our custom, there are four sections to each length category. Those making the list in the short story, novelette, and novella lengths but having no stars, and those with either one, two, or three stars, according to how well the reviewer or reviewers valued a particular story."

My short story American Golem received three stars. Very cool. I was so pleased to be in John Joseph Adam's anthology Operation Arcana with so many talented authors. This was one of those rare times I was asked to be in the anthology and was terrified that I'd mess it up. Fans of the story will be pleased to know it will be available in Audio soon. More on that later.

I also wanted to give a shout out to fellow Operation Arcana author Genevieve Valentine for her story "Blood, Ash, Braids." Very well done!

You can view the full list here.

Grunt Life Chosen As Top 5 Books for 2015

The end of the year tends to be a time for reviewers and readers to reflect on what they

thought was he best things they read the previous year. I'm sure you've seen a lot of things posted about it. You might have written your own list. I know I still plan on doing it, but I'm a little behind.

On the heels of Sci Fi Gazette choosing Grunt Traitor as one of their Top 3 Sci Fi novels of 2015, comes this. The review site Shattered Ravings just listed Grunt Life as one of the Top 5 Books they read in 2015. This is very timely and apropos since I've just finished the third book in the series that Grunt Life began. And to think that the publisher and I were worried that Grunt Life and the ensuing books which dealt in great detail about PTSD and its deleterious effects wouldn't be read and would be panned. I'm honestly glad I was able to pull it off.

Thank you Matthew Scott Baker and thanks Shattered Ravings. And congrats to the others who were on the list.

For the full review, go to Shattered Ravings.

Sci Fi Gazette Selected Grunt Traitor as One of Their Best Novels of 2015

In this season of awards and recognition, it's super nice that such a hallowed site as Sci Fi Gazette would take the time to not only read Grunt Traitor but select it as one of their Top 3 Science Fiction Novels of 2015. Mentioned along with Fallout 4 and The Expanse, this is truly a top honor!

Both Grunt Life and Grunt Traitor have received rave reviews from fans, but it's another thing to get a critical reception by reviewers whose job it is to not necessarily enjoy a book, but to break it down and look at its components for concrete and existential value and THEN enjoy it. It's also difficult sometimes for Military Sci Books to get reviews because well... they're military focused and have guns and blood and guts and stuff that not every sci fi fan wants. But I've always thought that the best Military Sci Fi has a lot of heart as well. With my characters suffering from PTSD in an end of the world alien invasion scenario, I took care to try and pull this off. It seems that it worked.  Whew!

Here's a snappy of the page.

For the full article about Sci Fi Gazette's Best of 2015, you can find it here.

Thank you, Sci Fi Gazette!

Elitest Book Review Selects Grunt Life One of 2014s Best

Grunt Life was reviewed by Elitist Book Reviews (Steve Diamond) back in August. Here's a link to that review. Bottom line is that they liked it--liked it so much that in a recent interview they chose it as one of the best books of 2014 according to an interview with Stuart Charles Flynn at scflynn.com!

'Ochse has an excellent narrative voice. Line to line, paragraph to paragraph, page to page. It’s all extremely smooth. I never had to go back and reread a section for clarity—though I did reread sections because of how much I enjoyed a turn of phrase, or a character moment. The action—and there is a TON of it—is super clear and effortless to follow.' -Elitist Book Review of Grunt Life

'Weston Ochse is an awesome author. I put his stuff next to Correia and Maberry without hesitation. While I was curious about Ochse’s work before, now I’m excited to read it. All of it. It's pretty easy to see that Ochse is one of the better authors for action SF out there, and GRUNT LIFE was an absolute blast to read.' - Elitist Book Review of Grunt Life

They also selected Grunt Traitor - sequel to Grunt Life - as one of their most anticipated books of 2015. This is the first mention of Grunt Traitor in the wild and most welcome. 

You can read all about Steve Diamond, Elitest Book Reviews, and their other picks at this link. Looks like I'm in terrific company with Joe Lansdale, Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher, Larry Correia, Sarah Pinborough, Robert McCammon and others.

Very humble. Thank you Elitist Book Reviews. Solaris Books is going to be extremely happy about this.

BOOKLIST REVIEW of REIGN OF EVIL

Reign of Evil.
Ochse, Weston (Author)
Oct 2014. 336 p. St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, hardcover, $26.99. (9781250056009). St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, e-book, (9781466859586).

"The latest in the SEAL Team 666 series, which craftily blends horror with elite military action, opens with an absolute shocker. A reenactment at Stonehenge turns into murder when the “fake” sacrifice becomes all too real. For one of the team, the death is personal, and he is willing to sacrifice the mission and his life for revenge. Will his loyalty keep him from going rogue? Will his colleagues be able to trust him to do the right thing? Throw in creepy beasts and King Arthur, and the end result is another winner from Ochse. The military action is first rate, and the horror is tight and scary. Readers who enjoy Brad Taylor's and Brad Thor's military thrillers, but who don’t mind stories that add to the military mix some over-the-top terror in the manner of Jonathan Maberry, will find this the perfect diversion. The ending screams for a sequel, which would be most welcome. - Jeff Ayers"