review

Michael Baron Craze at the Rogue Cinema site recently blogged about last fall's Terror Film Festival in Philadelphia and included a review of "By Her Hand, She Draws You Down."

Here's an extract from his review:

"This film comes from author Douglas Smith’s story of the same name and breathes in Anthony Sumner’s screenplay, transforming into a new variation on the vampire genre. Anthony’s creation contains an incredible haunting feeling, [that] escapes the screen like a hypnotic trance, assisted from Gene Hodsdon eerie music and filming in November at the desolate beachside locations in the historic New Jersey shore. … [A] tale of love, commitment and survival."

You can read Michael's full blog post on the film festival and the full review of "By Her Hand..." here.

Blogger and book reviewer Terry Grignon has posted a nice review of my collection, Chimerascope. Here are a few extracts:

"I enjoyed Smith’s characterization the most. These personas fly off the page and into your head and force you to think their thoughts. And that’s just about the best that fiction can aspire to. ... The evidence for Smith’s talent is in abundance through this entire book. There wasn’t one story I didn’t like, even the horror genre pieces which I’m normally not into. They’re all so different, even the ones set in the same universe, that it’s hard to believe they came from the same person. Very highly recommended."

You can read the whole review here. Thanks, Terry!

What can I say? They really seem to like it. Writer Erik Buchanan adds his thoughts about my collection, Impossibilia in his blog. You can find links to all the reviews for Impossibilia here.

Liviu Suciu at Fantasy Book Critic has added a review of Impossibilia, my 2009 Aurora-nominated short fiction collection. Liviu uses Impossibilia to kick off a new series of mini-reviews "in the spirit of showcasing less well known recent sff works that truly impressed me."

Here's what he had to say about the collection:

"'Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by Van Gogh' is the piece of resistance of the collection and one of the best and most moving novellas I have read in a while. Haunting and evocative... Just astounding. 'Going Down to Lucky Town' [is] a very moving story about a part time gambler, part time con-man who seems to have gotten down luck to a measurable skill. ...Another superb story that made this volume such an unforgettable one for me. If you can get hold of this relatively rare collection you will truly enjoy it. Highly, highly recommended."

—Liviu Suciu, Fantasy Book Critic, Apri 2009

Read reviews of Impossibilia here.

I finally came across a review of my story "Doorways," which first appeared in Postscripts 17 in December and is currently nominated for the 2009 Aurora Awards. Here's what Kelly Jensen had to say in her review on SF Crowsnest:

"A couple months ago I was introduced to Douglas Smith by way of his collected short stories (also by PS Publishing), 'PS Showcase #5: Impossibilia'. So I was looking forward to his story 'Doorways' and was not disappointed.

After the death of his superior, Jack is summoned by the powers that be at GenTech to figure out the puzzle of the late Rainer's legacy. His house, which also contains the laboratory for his final and what is rumoured to be his greatest work. The puzzles reveal not only the secrets of Rainer's work, but also some secrets pertinent to Jack's life. This story has a cunningly satisfying conclusion.

I find a good short story falls into two categories: There is the complete story, the novel miniaturised, which is a nearly perfect art form. These are hard to capture but constantly illustrated by such writers as Douglas Smith."