The 13th Floor Collection's author gets interviewed & The Tears of Isis review

I'm happy to get a chance to sit down and chat with one of my oldest blog friends, Colette Chmiel at A Buckeye Girl Reads.

She writes excellent reviews and hosts several authors on her site. Today she's interviewing me. Come find out what my favorite comfort read is.

Have you entered this week's giveaway yet?

Night Owl Reviews gave the Collection 4.5 stars!
Check out the fantastic review.

And here is a read for you just in time for Halloween.

Blurb:

What do Medusa and the goddess Isis have in common? Are both creatresses through destruction? And why was Isis oftentimes depicted as weeping? Herewith are some answers as parts of a journey through art and creation, of sculpture and blood-drinking, crafting musical instruments from bone, revisiting legends of Cinderella and the Golden Fleece, of Sleeping Beauty and Dragons and Snow White-some of these, of course, well disguised. For is not art both the recasting of what is, as well as the invention of what is not? The Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney spoke of art as "making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature," so here there be vampires, and ghouls, and insects perhaps from outer space as well as from this Earth, and visions of Saturn and life in the sea, and other wonders "such as never were in nature," but, above all, Isis. The Weeping Isis. Isis with vulture wings, breasts bare and smeared with blood as in the earliest forms of her myth. And of course, as well, Medusa.

My review:

A well written collection of short stories to chill you to your core. Ghouls, insects, vampires, and gods. Tantalizing bits taken from Egyptian mythology and woven into highly original tales.

These stories aren't for the fainthearted. James Dorr knows how to spin a tale of horror. It's not just in the gore or the odd characters, but the way he can twist the plot and shock you with the frightening truth. Dorr has a quirky style that makes this collection unlike any other.

The stories that stood out for me were "Waxworms" and "Moons of Saturn." Two not so earthly tales. "The Bala Worm" was a wonderful modern fantasy piece about dragons with an amusing twist. And the title story, "The Tears of Isis" created dark images in my mind of a disturbed artist whose unconscious is revealed in her work.

This book is for lovers of truly dark fiction.

You can buy THE TEARS OF ISIS on Amazon and Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing.

Author Bio: James Dorr combines the charm of a gentleman born in the US South with the wiles of a near-New York City upbringing, the canniness of a one-time New England resident, and the guile of an outwardly stolid Midwesterner, or so he says. It is known that he was born in Florida, grew up in New Jersey, went to college in Massachusetts, and currently lives in Indiana where he also harbors a cat named Wednesday. He is a short story writer and poet working mainly in dark fantasy and horror with forays into science fiction and mystery, and has previously worked as a technical writer for an academic computing center, associate editor on a city magazine, a nonfiction freelance writer, and a semi-professional Renaissance musician.

You can find James on his blog.

Final day of The Ghost blog tour

It's the final day of the tour!
Thank you so very much to all my marvelous hosts and to all of my awesome readers.

Today I'm giving back to you.
You can enter to win the entire 13th Floor series.
There won't be one winner.
Nor will there be two.
There will be three lucky winners!

Join me at Colette Chmiel's review blog and enter the grand giveaway.
Find out the 13 worst places to haunt and let me know where you'd hate to be stuck as a ghost.

Don't forget to pop over to Clare Dugmore's blog where we'll be talking about ghosts. I love our chats, and we're interested to know what you believe.

Today's tidbit: This past year I've wrapped myself in the 13th Floor series. I was happy to be done, but now, I'm finding that my muse is creating prequels and sequels. I don't think either of us really want to let go, but we need to move on to a new project.

Don't forget to answer the poll question I posted last week on my blog about whose origin story you'd like me to write about for the 13th Floor collection. I'll have the results for you tomorrow!

I'm also going to reveal the surprise Cecilia Robert and I have lined up tomorrow. It will be a fabulous Friday!

The little things

I haven't gone back to writing my dark fantasy short story yet. I've been editing one of my novels this week. I found a few tips from an agent's blog. They have helped a lot in making my dialogue feel more natural. It's amazing how the little things that you think are helping your reader aren't. I'm guilty of having characters use each other's names too often in conversation. I thought I was helping the reader by letting them know who was being addressed, but in real life, we don't often use each other's names in conversation except to get the other person's attention or to be snarky. Pet names we use more frequently, but they're meant to endear. It's demeaning to use a person's name repeatedly while talking. You're treating them like a child. It's common sense now that I think about it.

I was happy to receive an email from Colette at A Buckeye Girl Reads today telling me that I won a giveaway. Yay! I won a copy of Misty Evans' book Witches Anonymous. I can't wait to read it.

To all of you who are going to see the new Harry Potter film this weekend, please know that I'm jealous. I might get a chance to see it next Friday if we can find a babysitter, but I'm sad that I won't be able to go during the big release weekend. Enjoy the movie!