Sunday, January 13, 2013

What is Walter Greatshell reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Walter Greatshell, author of Terminal Island.

His entry begins:
At the moment I’m re-reading a book I loved years ago, called Dino, by Nick Tosches. It’s a wonderfully gonzo (in the true Hunter S. Thompson sense of the word) biography of Dean Martin, a performer I mainly knew of from his sloppy, lascivious TV appearances in the ‘60s and ‘70s. To me, Dino was a prime example of the hideous drunken misogyny that passed for sophistication in the ‘50s, a hipster dinosaur that refused to go extinct.

Dino captures Dean Martin’s rise and fall by going deep, not only into the place and time, but into Martin’s terrifying pit of a soul, which derived fleeting satisfactions from booze and broads, but...[read on]
About the book, from the publisher:
Henry Cadmus grew up on Catalina Island, a scenic vacationland off the Southern California coast. But Henry’s experiences were far from idyllic. Today, even though Henry has seen firsthand the horrors of war, the ghastly images that haunt his dreams are ones he associates with his childhood… and the island: a snarling pig-man holding a cleaver; a jackal-headed woman on a high balcony, dripping blood; strange occult rituals… and worse. If it was up to Henry, he would avoid the island entirely.

But Henry is returning to Catalina Island. At his wife Ruby’s insistence, Henry, Ruby, and their infant daughter are coming to Avalon, so that Henry can face his fears, exorcise his demons, and reconcile with the one he fears most… his mother.

From Walter Greatshell, author of Xombies comes Terminal Island, a novel of cosmic horror.
View the video trailer for Terminal Island, and visit Walter Greatshell's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Xombies: Apocalypse Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Xombies: Apocalypticon.

Writers Read: Walter Greatshell (December 2010).

The Page 69 Test: Mad Skills.

My Book, The Movie: Mad Skills.

The Page 69 Test: Terminal Island.

My Book, The Movie: Terminal Island.

Writers Read: Walter Greatshell.

--Marshal Zeringue