Finally available again! Even if you've never tried an e-book before, you'll like this collection of stories -- there's something for everyone (except paper and ink!)! Read Shadowplays and see how evil humans can be... Fourteen horror, dark fantasy, SF, and noir suspense/crime stories and one essay help explore the dark side of human experience! Introduction by noted author Elaine Bergstrom (aka Marie Kiraly). Author's notes and acknowledgments. Plus, the story "Lead Me into Temptation," featured in SHADOWPLAYS, was named an Honorable Mention in the newest edition of The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror (14th ed.), Datlow & Windling, editors. The story "Icewall" had been named an Honorable Mention in THE YEAR'S BEST 11th edition (when it appeared in the anthology ROBERT BLOCH'S PSYCHOS). Give it a try! Available in 4 formats including HTML and PDF, so you won't need a special device!
SHADOWPLAYS (ISBN 1-931207-01-1) features “Icewall,” “Ghosts of the IRA,” "Deep Tunnel," and 11 other tales of horror, SF, fantasy, and hard-boiled noir. Includes story notes. Currently available from Ebooksonthe.net in PDF, RB, PDB, and HTML formats. Price is $6.50 and orders may be placed on a secure server.
“I wanted my first collection to represent my development as a writer,” Gagliani says, “so it’s a retrospective covering both early work and more recent fiction. I chose to publish it electronically because suddenly, with the advent of the Web, the whole world can spot your book, unlike what might happen to the few copies that would make it into traditional bookstores. With the ever-growing numbers of people searching for e-books, the chances to be found increase exponentially, and the book is available much longer than the one or two month shelf-life of most paperbacks.” Gagliani notes that he sold his e-book just as Stephen King announced his Riding the Bullet experiment. “A wonderful coincidence. He brought a lot of attention to the format.” It’s not his first involving Mr. King: Gagliani’s story “Icewall” shared a spot in the 1998 anthology Robert Bloch’s Psychos (Pocket, ISBN 0 671-88598-7) with King’s own “Autopsy Room 4.”
Excerpt
I have concentrated mostly on dark themes because I believe we all have darkness inside, and I recognize and acknowledge the dark corner within me. Who can define the light if there is no darkness for comparison? I have always resisted the all or nothing moral paintbrush -- both in what I like to read and in what I've written. In my stories, most of the protagonists are not nice people, or even slightly likeable once you get to know them. They are all deeply flawed, even if they are heroic in some other
fashion. Very few of my protagonists are clear-cut heroes, or good guys. That doesn't mean they are necessarily evil through and through, though they're often touched by evil and claimed by their own darkness despite themselves, much as I feel all humans are, to some extent.
For instance, the protagonist of "Icewall has become a psychopathic killer, though he's mostly unaware of just when. The protagonist of "Only Spectres Still Have Pity" is a self-haunted IRA sniper who comes to see his own chilling darkness but can't escape it. The protagonist of "Kneel at the Shrine" is a pacifist driven by the ghost of his terrorist brother to follow in his footsteps. The protagonist of "A Trip to Game Center" has accepted and helped implement a system in which mass murder *is* population control. In "Throne" the protagonist cannot see that he is on death row for crimes committed. And so on. They are con artists, misogynists, terrorists, serial murderers, and worse. They are nearly irredeemable, and that's precisely what makes them interesting to me. Evil from those who look just like you is the most horrifying. We harbor a suspicion that only a fine line separates us from our nightmare selves. It's all the more disturbing that we may see ourselves in such characters.
What is evil, if not a tiny little tuck and fold in all of us?
(From the Preface to SHADOWPLAYS, by William D. Gagliani)
Professional Reviews
From LOCUS #444, January 1998
"William D. Gagliani's 'Icewall' gives us two winter-bound techies
inhabiting a research project not terribly far from the South Pole. The
atmosphere's right out of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s 'Who Goes There?',
and the author acknowledges that. But the message seems clear
that the real monsters are from within our own souls -- not from outer
space." -Edward Bryant
From FeoAmante.com -- reviewed by Garrett Peck
See www.feoamante.com for the full review text
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