Reviews: 'Zombie' by Johnny Smith & 'Darkness Stalks the Night' by Bruce Blake

Mr Upstream recently experienced what some might call a 'heavy flow' and so he went out and bought an iPad2. Having no money left after this purchase, he was forced to load up on all the free downloads available from the iTunes iBookstore (Mr Upstream not being a huge fan of the first person singular pronoun, you can only imagine what pain it causes him to write iTunes iBookstore. Or perhaps not).

In any case, Mr Upstream decided to dip one grimy, withered toe into the water by sampling a couple of free short stories. Here are the results:

'Zombie' by Johnny Smith

At roughly 20 tiny little electronic pages, 'Zombie' doesn't have much meat on its bones. It's a sparse story, told in a sparse style that reminded Mr Upstream, favorably, of a Hemingway short story.

Unfortunately, Johnny Smith decided to get a little too artistic with the chronological order of the events of the book, leaving Mr Upstream rather confused as to who did what to who and when. Now that might just have been the gin talking, but Mr Upstream rather doubts it.

Also, no zombies. WTF? If you call your artistic endeavor 'Zombie' and then proceed not to make with the zombies, unless your name is 'The Cranberries' you can rightfully expect some shit to be slung your way.

The Upstream Independent Fiction Meter rates this one a 5 out of 10 possible middle fingers.*

The next short story Mr Upstream Sampled was 'Darkness Stalks the Night' by Bruce Blake:

There are oh, so many vampire stories out there, and this is one of them. On the plus side, no sparkly vampires, or vampires that feel the need to dress in black leather. More plusses: lots and lots of foul language. Mr Upstream is a big proponent of foul language. Also boobies. Viscera not so much, which this story features, but Mr Upstream is willing to let that slide.

What Mr Upstream is not willing to let slide is sloppy logic. Gather round, ye aspiring indie writers, and listen to the wisdom Mr Upstream is about to impart: Traditional publishers are fond of saying 'Don't write in first person point of view'. Now Mr Upstream favors third person in all things, but even he would say to those traditional publishers 'Go fuck yourself'. First person is perfectly fine - EXCEPT if your point of view character dies at the end. If he or she dies, then who the hell is telling the story?

Mr Upstream doesn't want to shock you, but in 'Darkness Stalks the Night' the first person point of view character dies at the end, which is why this story gets seven middle fingers out of a possible ten.

* Middle fingers no good. You no want middle fingers. Middle fingers bad. You no want see Mr Upstream's ten middle fingers (yes, Mr Upstream's hands are solely populated by middle fingers. Yes, his parents lived very near a nuclear facility during his gestation). Ten middle fingers means you suck ass.