As a favor to my old pal, Cussedness, I'm going to reprint her reviews of Tabloid Purposes before I start posting my own stuff. So bear with me if you've read them before.

In Defiance of the Witch
by Gary Morton
photosc.msspro.com/witch.htm

This story is disgusting, especially the description of the protagonist having an increasingly bad case of blue balls in response to seeing his girlfriend in a bikini. The writing itself is trite and awkward. I had to steal myself to finished reading it. It reads like a bad first draft.

In Death’s Face
By Macey Baggett Wuesthoff
www.authorsden.com/visit/...2&id=13121

All that was posted on this one was a sample, the first part of the story. I found that the author was, at least, literate. However, the character’s motivations for suicide are not given and the character behaves in a shallow and uninteresting manner, none of the angst that most people experience when driven to attempt suicide.

STORY QUOTE:

“I wasn't buying it, though. I figured my family and friends were on to me and staging this to teach me a lesson. "Yeah, right. Good one," I laughed, punching the shoulder of the figure, and ignoring how it felt hard and thin, as if it were mere bone. "Great costume, just like the Grim Reaper. I love the voice. But I locked the door. How did you get in? And the lamps-did you remove the bulbs or something?" I tilted my head and looked underneath the lampshades. "Nope, still there." I waited for a reaction but got none. "Alright, I get it already. Ha-ha, very funny, good joke on me." When I still got no response, I half-laughed and called out, almost in desperation, "I'm smiling because I'm on 'Candid Camera'! Everybody can come out now!"

That doesn’t come across as someone who is suicidally depressed and depression is part and parcel to what drives people to attempt it. I should know, I tried it in 1988. I find this story to be exceptionally offensive and doubt there is anyway for the author to recover from that.

Me, Myself, and INSANITY
By Hasan Abood

The story was trite, the character was unsympathetic and it went on far longer than it should have. There were no profound revelations, no surprises, and nothing to make it worth reading. At least he is somewhat literate. There were no glaring grammatical errors.


The Blood Letter
By Derrick Edgar James
The description is choppy and lacks ambience. It is boringly repetitious. The idea that the final ‘victim’ would turn out to be a vampire has been done to death. The use of weak adjectives and adverbs over strong verbs and nouns further weakens the narrative. Characterization is non-existent.

Screaming Walls
By Casey Gordon
http://www.fictionpress.com/read.php?storyid=1662988

A trite tale of a haunted house. One of the largest problems this writer has is an attention to trivial details such as "she waves." "He waves back" Ad nauseum. The sentences are very plain and full of commonplace overused descriptions. The writing has no verve, no glow. The characters are unsympathetic and don't really communicate. They're very wooden.

Incarnation
By Ceara Jaen Baxter
I couldn’t find the story, Incarnation on her site, so instead, I’m going to review Reflections, which is on there instead. The prose is uneven with too much joe explainer text and info dumps to make me happy. Her word choices frequently grate and the characters are not clearly enough defined. At this point I would say she’s the most readable in the collection. For a solid horror story, it lacks one of the most important things: Ambience. I did manage to find a few good lines in it. She needs to rethink many of her metaphors and similes and smooth it out more. However, she shows promise and I have to scratch my head to as to why she would want to tie herself to someone like Pacione.

A Dry Drowning
Andrew Ian Dodge
www.templeofdagon.com/wri...wdodge.htm
The problem here is the story. Not the writing. I didn’t find it horrifying or dark. A band of people committed to fighting the minions of Cthulu investigate a drowning. The flavor is more that of the old Fu Manchu novels, than of H. P. Lovecraft, with a twist of the supernatural investigator genre. It is fairly clear, straight forward in its prose tyle. The subject matter is old hat. I believe that if Dodge tried for something truly original he could achieve something. So far he’s the most accomplished writer here.

Lake Fossil
Nickolaus A. Pacione
www.house-of-pain.com/
www.fictionpress.com/~nickolauspacione
Nessie is in the Great Lakes. The meandering, unfocused prose, glaring grammatical errors, endless repetition of things already said, make this one extremely hard to read and so far is the worst story in the anthology. Even when a sentence works, it is so blaise as to invite skimming over. It fails to hook the reader. The characterization is non-existent.


The Third Rule
By Nicholas S. Stember
www.authorsden.com/nsstember
parvee.ho8.com/nicholasstember.html

El Diablo visits a sorority house in Massachusetts. This one ignores the principal tenets of strong writing: don’t use excessive adverbs, they weaken the verbs. A lot of his metaphors don’t work:

“Juanita gently pushed out of his arms, fighting the tears that tried to come now as the utter revulsion of his touch swarmed over her like a rotten burlap sack.”

Burlap sacks don’t swarm.

The Genie in the Bottle twist at the end has been done to death in other genres, like fantasy, and I don’t feel that it really works here.

Nicholaus Mount
Hunted
http://www.fictionpress.com/read.php?storyid=1519298

Taking into account that this author is only sixteen years old, I’m going to go into more detail than normal in the hopes that he will learn from this review.

“The woods had taken on an eerie quality that was both beautiful and nightmarish.” Don’t tell us, show us. This is a major weakness in the writing. It’s the first thing a good editor or critter would point out.

“Inside the cabin was an old dirty bed, a wooden table, a radio that looked extremely old and a hodgepodge of assorted junk strewn about the floor.” The word ‘old’ is used twice in the same sentence. This is considered lazy writing. There are also stronger adjectives that could have been used here. Get a thesaurus. I recommend Roget’s International Thesaurus, fifth edition, edited by Robert L. Chapman. It’s a huge hard cover from Harper Collins.

“James’s fingered tightened around his gun as he eyeballed a wooden cabinet which was held shut by a frayed dry rotted piece of rope.”

Strunk and White would point out the rule about the use of ‘that’ versus ‘which’. In this case, the word used should have been ‘that’ or else a comma should have been inserted between ‘cabinet’ and ‘which.’ A good editor would have caught that. Also, the story needs to have the typos taken out like ‘fingered’ should be ‘finger.’ That’s minor.

Another problem, but one I’m not going into is the tense shifts. Pick one and stick with it.

There are other comma problems. Otherwise, it’s a very promising story.

The Shadow in the Crimson Light
by Mikk Pärnits
http://www.lit.org/view/15071

Another Cthulu variant. I don’t know whether this one is by another of Pacione’s underage writers, but I hope so. Because it’s dreadful. Why would I hope so? Because then he’d have lots of time to learn to write better. First off, the pacing is frantic and doesn’t work. Secondly, there are numerous grammatical errors. Third, the type of story has been done to death. There is nothing at all original here. One of the hardest things to get perfect is a story written in first person. This one fails utterly.

Southern Exposure
By Robert A. Montesino
/www.authorsden.com/visit...91&id=9566

There is only a sampling of the story posted. However, judging from what I read, I do not wish to read more. The style is choppy and fails to hook the reader. It is all tell, but no show. It should be smoothed out. The adjectives should be stronger. There is too much repetition in the word choices. In other words, it’s boring.

When I’m finished, I will rank what I thought were the most promising stories. If only they had had a real editor!!!!

The Ferryman's Wheelchair
By Nickolaus A. Pacione
www.fictionpress.com/read...id=1690319

Woman is in an accident and is haunted by Charon. The story never explains why she calls him The Ferryman. There’s no ferry in sight, ever. Charon is pushing a wheelchair. Doesn’t call him Charon either. But it’s clear that is Nicky’s intentions here—amazing he’s clear about something.

Let’s start with the general things and then go to some quotes. Tense shifts, poor word usage, verbose, massive grammatical errors, wooden characterization.

“She could not describe all that was there of her mind and the premonitions living within them.”

“Ms. Ott, I’m afraid I have some horrid news to share with you about the results of your diagnosis,” Dr. Ronald Lawrence responded. He had a stern look to his face.
“What is the diagnosis?” She asked with a terrified look on her face.
“I don’t know if I can tell you point blank,” the doctor said to her, “you will never be able to walk again.”

Lousey dialog. Clumsey at best. Real people don’t talk that way, especially doctors.
Another example of lousey dialog:

The nurse stepped back a few feet, a bit alarmed, “Don’t spin your head around at me. You almost sound possessed when you bit my head off. I don’t even know what it is like losing my ability to walk or begin to imagine what it is like – especially with the loss of your brother’s girlfriend.”

“Back in her bed, she was awake. The nurse shook Hellen lightly because she wanted to have her take her prescription given.” Bad English! Bad, Bad, Bad English!

“She didn’t want to sleep even if the meds were forcing her to sleep.” Cardinal rule. Don’t use the same word twice in a sentence. Lazy Writer!

The conclusion was stupid.

“But the dream about the wheelchair became the horror of reality, that reality that haunts Hellen Christine Ott for the rest of her life – her brother was a beheaded vegetable who might never be able to speak again or walk. For that he was alive, though might as well be deceased. Her legs were dead.”


Madame Guillotine
By Shaun Wintrow
www.fictionpress.com/read...id=1565538

A period piece in which lots of people lose their heads: literally.

“And bold May was taken to that which was the guillotine, and the yells they did rise.”
ACK! Poor understanding of period writing and poor sentence structure. Poor dialog. Poor knowledge of how they spoke, use of ‘thy’ and ‘thine’. Where are the ‘thous’ and the ‘thees’? This writer should, at the very least, read Dicken’s “A Tale of Two Cities” or the Scarlet Pimpernel novels, or even the Pre-Raphaelites if he wishes to cover this period.

People were not casually beheaded for stealing. They were sentenced to serve on the French ships, convict labor. The first time a person was caught stealing, they were whipped and then branded with a fleur de lis.

Isolated
by Casey Gordon
www.fictionpress.com/read...id=1575521

The old, first person “let’s go sneak into the haunted mansion” story. The first thing that comes to mind is that the dialog is full of commonplaces, which means that it is going nowhere. Limit dialog to what is necessary and forget the rest. It detracts from the story. Much of it is also Joe Explainer. Furthermore it repeats what has already been said in the narrative.

"Where's Rick?" John shrugged as he layed down next to Chelsea and fell fast asleep. Well now, isn't this great?”

It’s ‘laid’ not ‘layed’, a good editor would have found this type of stuff. The story is rife with it.

The narrative is too unfocused and meandering. It needs to be tightened up before it willl work.

The ending did not work for me. The story did not add anything new to the sub-genre of haunted house stories.

Locker 13
By Sheldon S. Higdon
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp

Abused teen locked in a locker story.

The opening is clumsey, the wording awkward. Start with the locker.

Tommy comes his “blond mane”…. Tommy runs his hands through his hair….. Body language is important, but it doesn’t need to be repeated like this. Plus this isn’t at all original. I suggest the writer, who I’m guessing is young, should try some better stage direction for his characters. Stand up and move through the steps as they would. Imagine being them.

Also, Tommy is the only one we are seeing body language from. What are the rest of them doing?

Sammy held up his fists to his eyes and made fun of Charlie.
Tommy stood back.
Tommy walked away and Sammy and Billy followed like puppies.

This doesn’t work. Get more visual, find some stronger verbs and nouns and adjectives.

In an instant, Charles leaped through the air, his wings spread. He tackled Billy to the floor and with military precision wrapped his wings around the robust man. Billy tried to escape, but the strength of Charles was too much, and he was pulled into the darkness screaming.

The ending didn’t work for me. There was too much dialog and not enough solid description. Also, the morph into demon at the end didn’t come off as convincing. How did Charles do this? The pov switch in the middle of the story is not carried off well. Furthermore, while a novel using third person omniscent has a hope of pulling off pov switches (Jane Austin comes to mind, as does Frank Herbert), a short story can’t because of its shorter length. So the story feels violated.

The Flamer
Kyle Kucek
www.fictionpress.com/~infamouswriter
64.233.167.104/search?q=c...k%22&hl=en
kh-2.net/?x=fanfic
www.geocities.com/ominous63/

This one is reminiscent of another poorly written tale by the editor of this anthology, Piggy’s The Fandom Writer, and I admit that the quality of the writing is similar enough to Piggy’s that I thought he had written it under a pseudonym. But no, this is by a thirteen year old boy apparently.

It confused me at first because the protagonist, who is very unsympathetic and irredeemable, resembled Mr. Pacione so strongly that I wondered what it was doing in here.

The internal logic of the story is off.

“Few times I have ever been bashed because I do not have an email account nor any other program of communication with others. I only own a cell phone, and the number I keep safely hidden away from the Internet and any other media or computer.”

Then how is he managing to flame anyone?

“It’s only because writers despise us flamers just because we given them false opinions on their work.” Bad editing, missing words.

Taking into consideration the writer’s age, I will not go into the juvenile language aspect.

However, I found the ending trite. Evil flamer steals story (plagerism…. Why does Piggy and his acolytes think this is a hilarious accusation to make in a story?) and burns himself up.

It needed a real editor to bring the writer up to speed.

The Card
by Mary E. Rose
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewShortStory.asp?AuthorID=10260&id=8615
This one may be the only winner in the book. With a very tiny bit of editing to get out a few minor glitches, it’s perfect. This makes me wonder why she allowed it to be published by Piggy. She needs to stop posting her stuff online, which makes it a reprint, and start submitting it to genuine publishers.

A Question of Faith
By Macey Baggett Wuesthoff
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewwork.asp?AuthorID=6532&id=12436
Since like the other bit by Wuesthoff, only a partial was made available. Therefore the examination of it has to be one of style and hook and dynamics. I hope it’s better than her last effort.

This one is too preachy for me. I believe that theme should underline the story, not slam the reader in the face. This appears to be an undisguised attack on the pagan community. I have no problems with faith, I have problems with people who use their writings in attacks upon others. That is one of my most serious dislikes about “evangelical” Christian horror. There are many fine Christian horror writers out there whose work I enjoy. This one I did not like one bit.

The writing is, overall, okay. I found only a few glitches in it. Again, it needed a professional editor.