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Review Archive

Author Interview: Robert Batten

Robert Batten is in the top 25 in the Launch Pad contest, which means his work has a shot at being placed in front of some serious eyes in Hollywood. In this interview we chat about his book, Human Resources, zombies, Tasmania, and what’s next for him in the contest. Q: Tell me a little about yourself—how long have you been writing? In some ways, I feel like I’ve been doing it forever, and that it was inevitable.  All my life, I’ve been a story person — whether telling my own or losing myself in someone else’s. I first started writing as a child, and have continued — on and off — ever since. As a child of two outdoor education teachers and mountaineers, my childhood was dominated by exploring  the unrivaled wilderness of Tasmania. Rugged mountain ranges, dense temperate rainforests, high alpine plains; a perfect training ground for any budding adventurer. This was

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An Unattractive Vampire – Jim McDoniel 

Now that the past few (very busy) weeks are behind me, I can focus on reviewing Jim McDoniel’s An Unattractive Vampire, which I finished a few weeks ago. It’s the second of three winners from Inkshares’s Sword and Laser contest—the first being The Life Engineered—and is a pleasure to read. An Unattractive Vampire is a humorous swing of the pendulum, a witty response to a zeitgeist flooded with angsty teenage vampires who are no longer monstrous, no longer the stuff of horror. It is a guffaw in the face of the “sexy vampire” that boldly states, “you think that’s a vampire?! THIS is a vampire!” And yet, there is angst, and kitsch, and a healthy number overly-sexualized teenage vampires in An Unattractive Vampire. And it all serves to move along an active, interesting, quickly-paced plot that rewards the reader greatly. It follows an unlikely trio, orphaned siblings, the older sister—a

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