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Post by dem bones on Aug 4, 2012 19:52:37 GMT
Jackie Askew - Sundown ... Sunrise (Nightshade Publications, 1993) Gareth Henry Blurb It seemed the perfect dream the perfect fantasy
To live by night To sleep by day Never to grow old Who could resist such an idea?
But then the dream became reality And from then on No one was safe from
SunDown … SunRise
A wild and chilling Vampire tale - set amongst the Gothic music scene."I've always liked Stephen King and James Herbert, basic pulp fiction. I love the human trivia and quick humour. I tried to inject that kind of readability into my own novel. Other than that, I love the images and characters in Storm Constantine's books" - Jackie Askew, Bats & Red Velvet #9, 1995. Sure, nowadays virtually anything with a pulse is churning out Lulu World Classics, charity e-books, flat-lining Smashworld specials and what have you, but back in 1993, Jackie Askew was a trail-blazer. Impatient with publishers, Jackie went the DIY route, then set about promoting the novel via the vampire and Gothic press. A generous extract here, an interview there, and the advert absolutely everywhere - can even remember being handed a flyer in the queue for a Nosferatu/ Incubus Succubus gig at the Marquee (RIP) one freezing November night. All these years later, it was time to finally land a copy. Damien Diavolo, Stan Skhul, Mike Mizeri and Chas Coffin are The Black NightShades, an impossibly huge Goth-horror band, with sell-out world tours, chart-topping albums, and number one hit singles to their name. They've even fitted in the odd stellar Top Of The Pops appearance. When first we meet them, the band are about to embark on a tour of Transylvania to promote new CD, Crimson Delight. On April 30th, Damien, their front-man and creative talent, being an aficionado of all things macabre, drags his band-mates on a tour of a desolate village cemetery in the Carpathians where, bored to distraction, Chas chants the necromantic lyrics of their crowd-pleaser Arise over the mouldering grave of Otto Czobor, who took his own life in 1777 aged twenty-nine. Damien gets annoyed at his clowning. The sensitive vocalist can't shake the feeling that he's being watched for the rest of the tour. A light cargo plane comes down off the Northern coast of England (at Whitby, by the looks of it). Young Lee Hughes and his pal, Alan, sneak out in the early hours to find five crates washed up on the beach. The boys are unimpressed at the contents of the first four - boring books, seriously old-fashioned clothes, broken glass, and mounted animal heads respectively - but the fifth gives them a fright. A dead body with a dirty great lump of wood driven through it! Eventually Lee comes to his senses, realises it's only a mannequin, removes the stake - cutting his finger in the process - and with it, a jewelled clasp ring from the dummy's cravat .... Damien's back home at his mansion now, every inch the paranoid rock star. Stardom isn't the least like he dreamt it, just a boring, endlessly repetitive, lonely round of interview-rehearsal-recording-tour. And he still senses someone watching him even behind all this security .... Great fun so far (p.45 of 415) but no need to take my word for it as you can still read three extracts and an interview at Dark Tales, and best of all, the book is still available. Contact the author at jackie.askew ATvirgin.net (replacing the AT with @ , obviously) To be very continued....
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Post by dem bones on Aug 6, 2012 9:00:26 GMT
Very favourably impressed so far. Sundown ... Sunrise is so vignette driven it moves at a cracking pace and reads like nothing so much as a Penny Dreadful for the 'nineties. The horrors - to date - have none of the lingering sadism of, say, The Rats, but they're coming thick and fast, and the home invasion in particular is deadly effective.
Jilly Hughes makes an emergency dash to play midwife to Alan's mum. She never arrives. The Daily Tabloid has a juicy murder to salivate over. Troubled teenager Michelle Roberts, whose parents knew nothing of her pregnancy, is next for the bite. The fast-rising body-count suggests the Tabloid's reporters are in for a busy summer.
Constable Harris finds a foul-smelling, seemingly catatonic foreigner in fancy dress asleep on the beach at sunset. Taking him for a drunk, dope-fiend or both, Harris arrests him for vagrancy and cages him for the night. They've yet to build the cell that can hold Otto and he flits out between the bars. But the effort exhausts him and he badly needs his feed. He lucks out when he spots a remote house up ahead.
Larry and Marsha won big on the pools, the cheque handed him by "some page-three girl with enormous tits," and from that day forth they've had not a moments peace. Larry neglected to tick the "no publicity" box, and consequently the couple came under siege from grasping relatives and minor acquaintances, necessitating a move from London to the countryside and this godforsaken village where they know no-one. Otto, in wolf form, perpetuates a seriously violent home invasion, and neither Marsha or her husband have anything to trouble them again.
We've now had first mention of a new youth cult, 'The Commandos', skinheads in camouflage gear and DM's with leanings toward the far right. Scott, tearaway elder brother of the late Michelle Roberts is among their number.
Otto accidentally hitches a ride to Leeds and repays the likable trucker by ripping out his throat.
Trudi, dressed to kill in tight black halter top, spray on leopard-skin leggings and four-inch stilettos hits the local pub to be miserable and get drunk. This tall young guy lurches in, German maybe, doesn't seem to know where his is or what he's about. By his dress sense he's arrived a day early for the Black NightShade gig at The Mare & Grouse on Radleigh Street tomorrow night. Trudi, intrigued despite herself, pats the empty seat opposite.
Michelle wakes up in a morgue drawer at Leeds General Infirmary ....
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