Review - Banquet For The Damned by Adam Nevill

Synopsis - Heavy metal musician Dante Shaw chases his dreams to Scotland after receiving a request from his idol. On arriving in Scotland, he becomes victim to events beyond his comprehension.

The opening pages are dark, creepy and tense. It's a slower, more intelligent read than some of the fast paced action gore fests out there. Every location is written to capture and mimic the mood of the scene. When the main character first came on the scene, I thought I am going to hate this guy, but I warmed to him, Dante was well rounded, he had his flaws and passions, he has history, he was alive. I love coastal locations and I love towns that drip with history. Overall, I couldn't put the bloody book down. 

Rating: 5/5

ROW80 - Round 2 - Check in 1

My Goal - Write between 100-500 words on my novella in progress "Shroud Of Death" on Tuesday Nights.

What really happened? I wrote 1000 words on Shroud Of Death last night. My baby now stands at a total of 11424 words and I'm sitting on Chapter 13 and at the middle point in the story.

Click here to cheer on the rest of the crew

Recent posts you may have missed:

Website updates
ROW80 and a new outlook
Book Review - Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub

Website updates

Happy National Poetry month all. My website celebrates its 1st birthday today, I hope in year 2 I can make it more successful.

The following sections have been updated

Dark Metre current issue
Horror Poets page
My review of We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson add to book reviews.
I have removed my review of The Rising by Brian Keene in support of the boycott Dorchester campaign. More can be read here.
Writing Prompts updated

I've also changed the look slightly on some of the pages.

Some recent blog posts you may have missed:
ROW80 and a new outlook
Book Review - Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub
Last ROW80 check in including a bonus poem "Hope"

ROW80 and a new outlook

Towards the end of round 1 I started doing a lot of thinking. I realised my blog is my public platform and while it's great having support from other writers I need to think about "general reader." General reader will be deterred from my ups and downs of a wip, general reader doesn't need to know my private life, everything I do on this blog affects how my writing and my newsletter are perceived. It is also a representation of the end product whether that's my novellas or my poetry collections. It's high time I become more professional.

It's too easy to post my poetry on the blog so as of now my poetry stays offline and I will be back to actually submitting to markets and building a writing career. I'll be reverting back to the old notebook and pen method to chart my ups and downs and problem solving with writing.

Now for my ROW80 round 2 goals. As I'm still studying, I'll be aiming to write between 100-500 words on Tuesday nights on my novella Shroud of Death and will check in on Wednesday's only.

Best of luck to everyone with their goals and look forward to catching up with you all.

Review - Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub

This short story collection by Peter Straub deals with themes of child corruption, secrets and those events rooted in the past that forever remain with us. It takes the door off peoples houses and shows the reader what really goes on inside 4 brick walls.

Both Blue Rose and The Juniper Tree are uncomfortable stories to read. Blue Rose looks at the dysfunctional family, in-family bullying and the exercise of power of an older brother over a younger brother, a particularly lengthy scene between these two brothers had me squirming. In The Juniper Tree an adult looks back on his child self who fell into the clutches of a pedophile during a trip to the movie theater.

A Short Guide To The City takes the reader on tour of a nameless city showing them the sites and dark spots. While an interesting idea this one was a little thin for my liking.

The Buffalo Hunter looks at a man who lies to his colleagues about his life. He begins losing himself in the world of books and develops an obsession with baby bottles. It's the weirdest story I've ever read and I loved it.

Something About A Death, Something About A Fire is a story about a clown and a mysterious black cab. I didn't get on with this one it was a bit vague.

Mrs God is an interesting story of an American man who goes to an english manor house to study the poetry and writing of a distant relative. On arriving at the house it is clear that no-one and nothing is what it appears to be. It's a good story but I felt like there was too many things being thrown into the pot.

The main stories are broken up with short interludes which I felt didn't serve any real purpose than to pad the book out

Overall its a decent collection with some great stuff in it and its worth reading just for The Buffalo Hunter.

Rating 3/5

Last ROW80 check in and bonus poem

Seeing as I've spent most of the day thinking it's Thursday anyway and awhile ago I designated Thursday night as my do nothing night I'm doing the last check in tonight.

Thinking back over row80 as always when I first start something I got off to a pretty good start even though the word count was low and I was reacquainting myself with writing fiction again and was starting from 1st base despite the years I'd written short fiction for.

Things started to go wrong when I started changing my goals, each new attempt kept me going for a few days then I'd hit a bump that would flip me high in the air and drop me back but way off course.

I'm still bemused by March being so unproductive, there are two months in the year where I expect that I won't get anything done and they are generally February and November.

Learning wise, I've kept going in a roundabout manner. I've lost that fear of putting work aside and knowing that I'll never come back to. I can come back to it and the words will always be there. I'm losing that fear of never being able to finish something I've started and a ton of other stuff I can't think of right now.

Over the last couple of days I finished Assignment 2 and finished the replacement prologue for Shroud Of Death.

I'm going to say goodbye and special thanks to all the row80 writers for the community.

Hope

The photographer studied the graffiti
through his viewfinder, he paced back and forth
left and right until the alignment was just right.
He peered over the top of the camera getting one last look
at the word painted on the red brick wall.

He assumed from the crudeness that a child
had stood on tips toes outlining the word
with a brush dipped in black paint, then coloured
in the H O P and E white. The child had then painted
a thick purple border around its masterpiece.

Hope one word that says it all
in a rundown part of London
where children play in the streets
in filthy trainers and clothes too big
for their small frames hemmed in
by council estates and rubbish bags
piled on street corners.

One word Hope is all the photographer
needs as he takes the shot.

Copyright Infringement On A Sunday Morning

The first thing I discovered when I logged onto twitter this morning is that someone had taken it upon themselves to post my poem Forgotten Victim to their blog in its entirety without my permission.

I've left a comment asking for it to be removed. I no longer submit my work to non-paying markets and I am not actively submitting my work at the moment. Certain words in the poem are also linking to 3rd party advertisers and this use of my work would certainly not constitute fair use.

The offending website is here and I would urge everyone to check that their work is also not being posted without their permission and for a fellow writer to be so slap dash with another authors work is just unbelievable and unprofessional.

You can only use 10% of an authors work before permission is needed. I respect an authors work which is why I also pay contributors to Dark Metre and offer a contract.

I've taken all necessary screen shots in case I need to take this matter further which I am prepared to do.

A Round Of Words - Check-in 20

Going to keep it short as I've pretty much done bugger all since Friday. I'm still trying to coax my what sometimes feels like a 60 year old woman's brain into its new routine and generally feeling run down this week. All in all March has been pretty poor where productivity's concerned. Maybe I lost my motivation somewhere between the changing seasons or the muse forgot to tell me she was off to somewhere exotic to gather more material.

I did finally back my system up so I'm going to call that productive.

Hope everyones well.