The Fifth Horseman Draft Two Complete

Second draft of The Fifth Horseman finished May 31 at 6p.m.
Celebrated with tuna sandwiches, Forty Creek Whisky and Ginger Ale
.

Draft Three due at editor’s on July 1st.
Book Three in The Apocalypse Trilogy will launch Halloween 2011.

The Fifth Horseman countdown continues…

Preparing for the final push. Will finish the second draft of The Fifth Horseman by June 1. Book Three in the Apocalypse Trilogy will launch Halloween 2011.

G. Wells Taylor paperbacks are being shelved.

As we get set for the distribution of my titles through Google eBooks we’re taking the paperback versions offline. Some arcane rules require the change. To be honest, eBooks account for about 97% of sales, so I have a feeling it was just a matter of time anyway. I’ll keep you updated.

The Variant Effect Sequel: GREENMOURNING

The Variant Effect: GreenMourning is on track for a Christmas 2011 release.
Click cover to visit the website and download FREE sample chapters
or download from the links below.

The Variant Effect: GreenMourning FREE samples in multi-format.

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The Word On The Wall Reviews When Graveyards Yawn


The Fifth Horseman First Draft Finished

Completed the first full draft of The Apocalypse Trilogy – Book Three:  The Fifth Horseman about a week ago. Celebrated by taking a couple days off and contracted a severe head cold. (Divine conspiracy? Hmm.)

Second draft started, everything on target for a Halloween 2011 release.

The Apocalypse Trilogy Book One: When Graveyards Yawn – available FREE everywhere.

The Apocalypse Trilogy Book Two: The Forsaken – available everywhere for $3.99.

Bent Steeple Reviewed in Morpheus Tales #12 Supplement

“…a vampire novel ripe for the masses…”

C.M. Saunders Reviews Bent Steeple for Morpheus Tales #12 Supplement

Review by C.M. Saunders

I am a big fan of G. Wells Taylor. He has been around a while now and has a string of novels behind him, but sadly has thus far been largely ignored by mainstream publishers. It’s a shame because he really is a talented writer. Many of his works, including a new amalgamated version of last year’s serialization, The Variant Effect (reviewed in MT9’s review supplement), are available for free download from the website listed above.

This offering, Bent Steeple, has been kicking up a little bit of an underground storm in recent months. Often compared to Stephen King’s classic vampire yarn Salem’s Lot, the subject matter isn’t worlds apart and it has the same kind of feel. This is what happens when terror comes to a secluded small town.

In the case of Bent Steeple, a town struck by a mysterious deadly disease thirty years earlier, the catalyst for a new wave of horror is the discovery of twenty-three horribly mutilated murder victims at a farm. The incident becomes known as the Morelli Massacre and brings together a varied mix of primary characters including a femme fatale with a drinking problem and a secret past, a jaded loose cannon cop on a vendetta, a horribly deformed guy with otherworldly powers, and an amorous washedup TV anchor man. As the story builds towards its bloody climax, Wells-Taylor grabs all the loose story threads and does a manful job of weaving them into a rope and trying to strangle you with it.

Despite its length it is a fast-paced read, and no taboo – corruption, inherent racism, paedophilia, incest – is left untouched. At its core Bent Steeple is a vampire novel ripe for the masses, hence the justified comparisons with Salem’s Lot. But Wells-Taylor doesn’t bother himself (or us) with the modern limp-wristed, sanitized vamps the Twilightgeneration has become accustomed to. His version of bloodsuckers harks back to the original Prince of Darkness in all his disgusting, loathsome glory. This is one creature of the night that you definitely wouldn’t want to start a love affair with!

Click here to download FREE Morpheus Tales #12 Review Supplement

Click Cover to Sample Morpheus Tales #12

They Had Goat Heads by D. Harlan Wilson

Book Review by G. Wells Taylor

D. Harlan Wilson’s collection They Had Goat Heads (© 2010 Atlatl Press) almost explodes in your hands. The author’s deft and rapid-fire writing style reaches critical mass in seconds and a literary event of cosmic magnitude occurs. Then you realize you were standing too close: you’re not in real time or space anymore.

Years ago I was lucky enough to review Wilson’s collection, The Kafka Effekt (© 2001 Eraserhead Press), and that, my first experience with the irreal, was a trial by fire that barely prepared me for exposure to his latest.

The 39 stories in They Had Goat Heads sprint, machine-gun and warp the reader to places where normal rational thinking would never dare go and you begin to wonder, as things progress whether the collection might actually cause brain damage. One thing is certain, you will come away from the experience knowing you have read a cutting-edge piece of literature: the images are stimulating and resonant, in manifold ways unique and strangely familiar.

But I don’t want to hang They Had Goat Heads with the label ‘literature’ because it seems immune to the staid and predictable conventions often associated with the form. Wilson’s collection flies in the face of such simple categorization.

For those unacquainted with Irrealism an expansive explanation can be found at the Irreal Cafe in G. S. Evans’ essay entitled: “What is irrealism?” More succinctly, essayist Dean Swinford has described Irrealism as a “peculiar mode of postmodern allegory” that has emerged from the chaos of a deconstructed medieval system of symbol and allegory.

In other words, preconceptions need not apply. We limbo under Freud’s cigar: realistic expectations, interactions, fetish and symbols go out the window. These are transformed into something that resembles the intimate and often ambiguous realm of dreams and the unconscious—but it is more a reflection than resemblance.

They Had Goat Heads is breathtaking. The reader is swept from genre to genre as a torrent of provocative images either hurtles past or impacts and bonds at the molecular level. There’s no escaping once it starts. The stories dodge in and out of reality, touching on persistent themes of repetition, media and technology, all of it interwoven with human DNA and its evolutionary design.

By using recurring images of family, destruction, death and recreation, Wilson effortlessly plays with cerebral fun as in “Monster Truck” or shifts to the rather touching absurdity found in “The Whale – with a Surprise Alternate (Happy) Ending!!!” One comes away feeling as though the flexible word-play represents an ever-plastic quality of the universe and somehow gauges the limitless potential of sentience.

Perhaps that’s why a nagging feeling persists. The stories feel so familiar. Why are they impossible to resist? In hindsight, the first hint of this déjà vu came in the second story, “The Movie That Wasn’t There,” in which the narrator is drawn into a movie melodrama that is unfolding around him. Wilson’s collection does a similar thing. There is an inclusive and unavoidable identification that thrums throughout and makes the book impossible to simply read, there is complicity in every line.

They Had Goat Heads bombards the reader with exciting ideas and disturbing imagery plucked screaming from life and nightmares. You’re drawn in because you’ve seen it somewhere before: in your subconscious.

They Had Goat Heads is the equivalent of having dream surgery.

FREE SPRING ISSUE OF DARK VALENTINE MAGAZINE IS HERE

My Friends at Dark Valentine have been at it again.

Download the FREE issue here or click the cover.

Dark Valentine Spring 2011

Featuring fifteen stories filled with dark desires, selfish needs and compelling urges, the spring issue of Dark Valentine caps the magazine’s first year of publication with contributors from as far away as Poland.

“It’s been a fantastic year for the magazine,” says publisher Katherine Tomlinson. “We have been thrilled with the quality of the stories coming our way. In fact, a piece of flash fiction from our inaugural issue, Carol Kilgore’s “Blues in the Night,” has been short-listed for a Derringer Award, competing against stories from long-established print magazines like Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.”

Tomlinson praises editor/design director Joy Sillesen for giving the publication its unique look. “Joy does double duty every issue. In addition to being a terrific editor, she has an artist’s eye for layout and is the queen of fonts. From the very first issue, her work made the magazine memorable.”

As always, each of the stories is accompanied by original artwork commissioned just for that piece. “Our art director, Joanne Renaud, has collected a terrific group of artists whose styles vary from the other-worldly richness of Kitamu Latham-Sampier’s illustration for ‘Swamp’ to the noir-ish black and white stylings of Walter Conley,” Tomlinson continues. As with the stories, the art was gathered from all over the world, with artists from the UK, Greece, Poland, and Australia as well as North America.

“Yes,” Tomlinson adds. “We are after total domination of all genres of dark fiction.”

Dark Valentine is a quarterly magazine dedicated to dark fiction from every genre.

Coming in June—Dark Valentine Magazine’s anniversary issue which will be available in pdf, electronic formats, and print.

“If you like what you saw last year,” Tomlinson says, “you’re going to love what you see this year.”

Find the Spring issue of Dark Valentine at: http://darkvalentine.net/index.php/2011/03/rites-of-spring/

Contact: publisher@darkvalentine.net

Busy time with an Irreal review, colds and Apocalypse novel writing…

Currently writing a review of They Had Goat Heads by D. Harlan Wilson. An engaging book (really jumps around in the brain), but a challenge to review and do justice.

Some mutant cold bug kept me out of the game for a week. (I’ve got a conspiracy theory for you.)

Pounding out The Fifth Horseman manuscript. The first draft was written in 1999, so the narrative needs some major upgrades… Similar to the work I did on The Forsaken. The Fifth Horseman should be available no later than Halloween.

Work continues on The Variant Effect sequel: GreenMourning.