Butterfly Potion
by Trent Zelazny
Trade Paperback June 2012
Nightscape Press, LLP
ISBN: 978-1938644016
Perry is trying to remember what happened last night–he blacked out again, and all he can remember is bits and pieces. Senseless tragedy in his past has left him a broken man who drinks to forget, who welcomes the oblivion that alcohol can bring, who has become dependent on the good will of others to see him safely home when he is blind-drunk.
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Working Retail
by B.J. Keeton
I felt a tap on my shoulder and heard a grunt. I stood up from straightening the endcap of blank DVDs, and put on my best smile. If I had learned nothing else from nearly four years of working at MediaTown, it was that I never sold a single laptop, flat-screen TV, or Elton John boxed-set if I didn’t greet everyone who wanted my attention with a smile.
Sometimes it was all I could do to make the smile touch my eyes, but it still counted as a smile. That day, I was in a pretty good mood. I was getting paid at the end of my shift, and for the first time in my life, I was going to be able to pay something off. Two somethings, actually. I had made some stupid decisions since I had graduated college, the worst of which involved living off a high-interest credit card and buying a new car a month after graduating. In my defense, I had been promised a cushy programming job at a tech firm in the fall, and I thought as long as I could live through the summer, I’d be okay. But that was the summer of the outbreak, and while I-and my accrued debt-lived through the summer, the firm didn’t. On top of regular living expenses-rent, utilities, gas, and so on-those decisions made money a little tight in my neck of the woods. Read More→
Odd Jobs
by Matthew S. Rotundo
As he stood at the kitchen stove, stirring the spaghetti and keeping an eye on the simmering marinara sauce, Steve Jacobs finally admitted to himself that he was in over his head. He couldn’t hide the disturbances-if that was the right word-any longer.
Ginny stood behind him, still dressed for work in a red business suit, her dark hair swept up, her arms crossed, her eyebrows raised. "All right, talk. What’s going on?"
He had no idea how to respond. He was caught.
Alvin, their tan and white tomcat, strode into the kitchen and began twining between Steve’s legs, expecting to be fed. Steve shooed the cat away. "What do you mean?"
"I think you know what I mean."
"No, I-"
"I’m talking about this. Look, Steve."
He turned from the stove, shoulders slumped.
Ginny stood next to the dinner table, on which lay the day’s newspaper, still rolled and rubber-banded. She had brought in the paper when she arrived home, then had turned on the ceiling fan to relieve some of the kitchen’s late afternoon stuffiness. And she had noticed.
The ceiling fan had rattled since they’d bought the house five years ago. At the lowest setting, the noise was barely tolerable. At higher speeds, the racket was audible even from the upstairs bedroom.
Dark City
by Frank Luria
Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks
ISBN: 0-312-96343-2
Rating: 6/10
Novel adaptations of films are hardly literary. Most of them tend to be somewhat silly and contrived and except for a few good books written by talented writers, hardly worth the print they are written on. Despite its intriguing subject matter, Dark City-a novelization of the 90s cult classic of the same name-continues in the same vein, featuring almost scene by scene duplications of the events of the film. The result is an empty shell of a book that fails to engage the reader’s mind, leaving them wanting something more.
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Monster Nation
A Zombie Novel
by David Wellington
Publisher: Running Press
ISBN-10: 1560258667
ISBN-13: 978-1560258667
Alexis de Tocqueville once said that the only thing worse than a tyranny of the minority is a tyranny of the majority. In other words, mob rule. But what does one call a horde of undead descending on the American Heartland, devouring men, women and children and rendering entire governments obsolete? What if the dead aren’t really…dead? Those are just a few of the questions David Wellington poses in his doomsday thriller “Monster Nation”, and while it doesn’t rise to the level of a Steven King novel, the bizarre, surreal wasteland America that Wellington paints is more than a cure for narcolepsy.
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