_______________ / /| \ /| SoulZ at Zer0 | / /| \ \ /-| / | | 02-95 SaZ Pak | \ /-| / // | \ | +---------------+ // | \ |/_______________/ -----THE-DEATH-CERTIFICATE------VOLUME-1-ISSUE-4---------FEBUARY--1995----- Staff: The Stranger, Jack Flack - Editors, Writers. Black Sunshine - Writer. Deranged - Writer. (*) If you are interested in contributing to The Death Certificate please let one of the editors know. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- She reached out for the blanket covering the boy, keeping him warm during the cold and windy night in this drafty house. She grabbed at the satiny fringe and pulled it back, slowly, so slowly.... She felt something tugging on the thin blue blanket...as if it was stuck. Mari saw her hand shaking. But she kept pulling the blanket back, tugging a bit now, until she saw the boy's head, Bobby's head. Little Bobby. There was a hole in his forehead. A hole that I could stick my finger into, she thought. Dried streams of blood flowed away from it.. Bobby's eyes were open, staring into the distance, looking at a wall, looking into forever. Looking for Mommy. "See How She Runs" by Matthew Costello --------------------------------------------------------------------------- + Table of Contents + Words from the Editors Letters to the Editors SAZ News Horror News Reviews The Writers Block Final Words ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Words from the Editors: Jack Flack: ... Slow time in modem land, as usual. No warez, no new good messages, so you would think there would be lots of time to write (grin). I have been busy, and with the stepping up of the release date, we were all a little stressed for this issue ... enjoy it, enjoy the new lits, welcome Deranged as our newest member, and enjoy the viewer, which still sucks but is better than nothing. We are excepting any offers for viewers, so let us know ... bribes aren't out of the question. -Jack Flack/SAZ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Stranger: Wow, we must be nuts. We have moved up our release date from the 13th to the first.. And our January pack was real late and we apologize to everyone for that. We now have access to the Internet so you might noticed Jack Flack offering the pack on there. It's a slow time right now in the BBS world here in Oklahoma and not much is happening. I hope that where ever you are things are going better. We didn't receive much feedback on the January pack but I hope many of you got the chance to look through it. Please send your comments to us.. Don't make us beg anymore! I've seen something happening out in the computer world that I'm really excited about... More LIT groups. I've been looking for LIT groups for a while now and I'm finally seeing a few really good ones pop up here and there. And something else I've noticed is many groups who have LIT departments are starting to write in a SAZ style, if you will. I'm seeing a lot of groups who have been filled with poems that end by saying "For My Girlfriend Jill" suddenly writing poems with vampires and dead people. And thats great, I think. Though I would hope that other LIT groups remember what there group is about and not move too close to what our group is about. We don't need the competition. :) I hope everyone has a great month and that you enjoy the pack. Talk to you next time. The Stranger... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- But first, on earth as vampire sent, Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race. Lord Byron ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Letter's to the Editors We got two comments recently which we would like to share. Here we go. From Shadowolfe: "Hey, me and a friend were looking through the packs and we have a question. Isn't someone suppose to be proofreading these or are the mistakes intentional?" Um. Yes the spelling mistakes are intentional. They are part of poetry. Actually each member of SAZ is suppose to proofread their own stuff but we do miss a few things here and there. Sorry, we will work on itt. :) From Deranged: "I just got through reading the Death Certificate and it was good, but it was mostly Black Sunshine." Yes, good point. The reason for that is because she is trying to take over SAZ so she can have her way with it. I'm kidding. I'm in charge of The Death Certificate so that was really my fault. I was just too lazy to write much last month and really this month too. But I really thought last month's DC was really good, mainly because of Black Sunshine. I don't know where we would be without her. But D, now that your a member of SAZ feel free to write something for the Death Certificate. Thanks for the comments. If you have a comment for us just leave us mail on any board that we call or any distro site that we are on. Or call my board, Where Shadows Wait, and you can write to me or any member of SAZ personally. The Stranger... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Soulz At Zero News Not much news this month because we just released our january pack a few days ago. We are moving our release date to the first of every month. Before we tried to release the packs between the 13th and 16th but now we will shoot for the first week of the month. We welcome a new member to the group, Deranged, who was a guest writer in our last pack and is now a full time writer. Welcome aboard D. And just as a reminder I want to mention a few things we mentioned last month. We are doing a new thing where if you don't have the time to be a member of SAZ you can be a guest writer by sending us some poems or a story. Also, if you would like your board to be a distro site let us know. We are also looking for a Western HQ so if your in the west and would like SAZ brought to your board every month leave us mail. If you would like to be a member of SAZ, just zip up some of your poems and send them to Where Shadows Wait. That's all for now.. Hope you enjoy this months pack. Till next time. The Stranger... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- No one commands me. No man. No God. No elder. No Prince. What is a claim of age for ones who are immortal? What is a claim of power for ones who defy death? Call your damnable hunt. We shall see whom I drag screaming to Hell with me. Gunter Dorn -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Horror News by The Stranger: New in Bookstores: I went to a few bookstores recently and there are just tons of new books out. None of which I can remember. Lesser known authors like S.P. Sotow, and Fred Saberhagen have new ones out. Thomas Liggoti has had a few of his older books re-released. The writer who inspired the Gun's And Roses video "November Rain" has had his work re-released in order to make his surviving family members some money.. I think his name is Del James, but I can't remember. It's the newest Abyss book out. Part three of the Borderlands series is out. A few new Charles Grant titles should be out soon. Well there are a lot of new books out there, many in paperback, I can't think of any others. So go check out your local bookstore and pick something up. Then write me a note on what you thought of the book. I'd love to hear from you. Sorry but this moving up to the first of the month is making me rush through this. I'll be back next month with a much bigger list. Promise. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Reviews: Books: House of Doors by Brian Lumley, published 1990. Brian Lumley is one of those writers you love or hate. He has a huge following and is probably one of the top 5 British writers writing today. And very much like other big authors, he has a ton of books to choose from. His most famous books are part of a series called the Necroscpoke books which I take it are about Vampires. Like most writers from England he is orginal. His books take pieces of many generes and mix them together. And his books are thick, yet not too wordy. He will probably never be on the bestseller lists but he has found success after over 20 years of writing. I have to first start off by saying I'm somewhat bias against Mr. Lumley. I just don't like his writing. But that comes from only reading his short stories, so I dove into one of his novels. And I come out feeling a little better about him, but certainly not a fanatic. The House of Doors is about a castle in England that just one day appeared on a hill side. The house has no windows looking in, only doors. The problem occurs when a group of strangers get too close to the house and are pulled inside to an alien world. Or is it? We don't really know what is going on and neither do the characters. Inside the castle the characters don't find rooms, they find other dimensions, other worlds, in which they find creatures we've never imagined before. And at the end of every world is another House of Doors and the key is each door leads to a different place. Are characters not only have to survive the surroundings and try to find a way back home, but they also have to deal with each other, one of whom may not be as nice as he seems. All right, so what did I think of the book? This book was an epic very much in the way King's The Stand or McCammon's Swan Song are but Lumley can't write as well as either of them. For the first half of the book the writing is fine but its the story that makes you want to read every page. The reason for this is because the story is so orginal and so out there that you just want to see what happens next.. But then that completly changes. Because half way through the book it just becomes a cliche horror book where instead of the doors leading to some strange unknow world, they begin to lead to the characters worse nightmares. Well maybe if we cared about the characters this would be scary but for the most part the only characters Lumley builds up are the bad ones and so we care very little about the good characters. And these people have just strange fears, like a man who is afraid of a mechanical world or a women who is afraid of her perverted husband who gets chased around by naked clones of her husband.. So I was with the book at first but lost interest half way through. The fact that he stayed away from writing a "british" book make me feel better about him as a writer but still I was bored. And I know a ton of people who LOVE Lumley and they'll hate that I didn't like the book. Sorry. No matter what I think about Lumley, his books do sell, some people out there understand and want this type of writing. I'm just not one of them. The Stranger... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Listeners" by Christopher Pike, TOR 1995 Excuse me while I stop bowing down to Pike's master storytelling long enough to write this article. (Okay, I'm exaggerating.. but just a bit. *grin*). Perhaps I'm not the best person to write this article. I've been with Pike from the very beginning (over a decade ago) and I have everything he's ever written. I always try to be objective when I start a new novel of his, especially if I have to review it, but he has not failed yet to totally astound me with the cleverness and tangibility of his writing. Every time I read one of Pike's novels, I always feel as if I'm getting a science or a history lesson. This book is no exception. He manages to combine dinosaur extinction theories, the workings of the human brain, the possibilities of extra sensory perception and past lives, the genetic "mysteries" concerning identical twins, and the astronomical significance of the star Sirius and the mystery surrounding how the Egyptians knew things about this star and others without our technology or anything even like it. He ties all of this together into a brilliant and workable plot that would take me years to dredge up. Let's see. How to explain this plot. David Conner is an FBI agent who's preparing to quit his profession, due a recent failure at rescuing a beautiful, kidnapped teenager from a madman. On his last assignment, he's sent undercover as a reporter to a retreat in Idaho to study a group of "psychics," because they are aware of top secret government information and projects that they should have no access to. The leader of the group, Dr. Spear, claims the group came about the knowledge due to psychic sessions they hold in which they hypnotize themselves and are able to get in touch with the "thinking" part of the universe that is in everything. Spear had spent several months studying the Dogon tribe in Africa and how they came about their astronomy knowledge. He returned to the United States after his wife died and her sister was driven insane. And no one is quite sure what happened, or wants to talk about it. Spear begins work with a new theory: genetic regression-- the idea that all of the memories of our ancestors are contained within our own genes, we just have to figure out how to tap into them. (I'm wondering if indeed this theory really exists and is being studied, or if it's another product of Pike's mind). The group that David is sent to watch is practicing this genetic theory technique. Two of the people involved are a set of identical twins, one of whom David finds himself reluctantly attracted to. Whew. Even with all this description, I still have not touched upon what the novel is REALLY about. As is the case with his other books, he leads you in one direction, then abruptly turns a corner that you never even saw. To go into much more detail here would be giving away too much and I don't want to do that. The book is brilliant. It deserves to be the first to let you in on the "secrets." Us normal people would never figure it out, much less come up with the idea in the first place. I don't know where Pike gets his ideas. I think he's an alien. (No, that wasn't a subtle hint into what the book's about *grin*). I had only two problems with the novel. First, David's character is developed beautifully, with an exceptionally detailed chronology of his FBI career. We learn he is not always "the good guy" when we are told of the underground mafia lord in Las Vegas whom David tortured by burning off his penis after he pushes David's girlfriend out a window on the top floor of a hotel. David is extremely closed off and doesn't know how to deal with his attraction to Lucy, one of the twins. Here's where the problem lies. While David is a choice example of a well- developed main character, the characters of the twins are skimped on. They are not, by any means, one-dimensional, however, not as much time and description was invested into them. I would have liked to have seen more background and details, especially on Lucy, not only because she is the woman David desires, but because she plays an integral role in the unfolding plot and its conclusion. The novel wasn't exceptionally long, and I can't figure out why Pike didn't delve into her character more. He had time and room to do so. The second problem lies (once more) with the genre-typing of the book. TOR calls it horror. It is. In some aspects. As with all of his other novels, it's also mystery, science fiction and fantasy. I love how he blends genres, however, I don't like that the publishing company is trying to shove his work into one stereotypical genre. I guess this is just me being picky. Don't get me wrong. The novel had it's scary places. Though most of the novel is devoted to setting up the mystery and letting it unfold, there were scenes when my adrenaline was flowing, most notably when FBI agent Ned Calendar goes to an insane asylum to visit the deranged sister-in-law Dr. Spear brought back from Africa. She's not really crazy, but she has to be contained.. and I think I should stop now before I give away too much. *grin* Believe me when I say this book has it's monsters. In conclusion, I would suggest this novel to anyone who wants a satisfying and brilliant book, as well as one that reads fast and realistically. Pike has always maintained the talent of doing both of these simultaneously. His books are only getting better and better. Enough babbling on my part. I'm stopping now so I can go read "The Cold One," one of his other January releases. @1995 by Black Sunshine --------------------------------------------------------------- Movies Review: "Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight" I went into this movie thinking it was going to be a series of "short" stories like the ones on HBO, maybe a trilogy or something, and I was wondering what was going to be different about it, besides the fact that I was paying for a box office ticket. But that was me, once again, being uninformed. This fact threw me off because for the longest time while watching, I kept expecting the story to end and another to begin. I won't mention the other reason for my giddiness when I went to see this (believe me it has nothing to do with the movie *grin*). Of course, the movie started out with the typical campy cryptkeeper humor, a little scene in which we get to see a naked woman, a lot of blood and the cryptkeeper himself. I was anxious for the actual plot to get underway (or "plots" as I still thought at that time). The actual Demon Knight script starts out right in the middle of the action with a chase scene that ends in the total demolition of both cars involved, and all the right questions are set up. Why is one man chasing another? Which one is the "bad guy" and which is the "good guy?" Something is amiss... but of course, it is several scenes later before it is revealed to us exactly what it is. Both men escape the car wrecks unharmed and the "chase-ee" (as it would be) makes it to a creepy looking lodging out in the middle of nowhere, where he finds a veritable plethora of odd and differing characters waiting for him. We still don't know who this guy is or what's so damn important about him for quite some time. Most of the rest of the movie takes place inside this "motel." The movie has its Biblical undertones (it seems that's a popular market gimmick now-a-days). On a very basic level, the main character has something that the devil wants. One of seven "keys," if you will, to controlling the universe. Once the devil tracks down this man to the motel, he unleashes several demons both to destroy and to cajole the occupants inside to giving the devil what he want, which is their bodies, their souls and, especially, above all else, the "key." "All we have to do is make it through the night," was the determinant phrase in the movie, although I was never actually sure WHY (meaning, why just that one night). As the movie progresses we learn more and more about this ancient quest for the "keys," and how this man came about having one of them, and why they are so important. The characters themselves (except for the main ones) are somewhat typecast. We have the asshole, a blonde, arrogant, womanizing surfer-type named Roach; we have the slut, an attractive, little-girl-lost type named Cordelia who's searching for love through sex; we have the maid, Jade, who happens to be black and gets trampled on by nearly everyone; and we have Deputy Martel who has an IQ about as high as the gun he keeps whipping out. All of these stereotypical characters make for some humorous, if somewhat predictable scenes. Yes, I said humorous. Although it's a horror movie, there are several scenes which play out extremely funny and are meant to be so. Some are corny, yet still managed to coax laughter out of the tense audience. The brand of humor reminded me of those in Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series. In fact, the movie was a lot like Army of Darkness, except with a much larger budget. The script was extremely original, and could have stood alone, without the "Tales from the Crypt" banner. However, without it, it might not have gotten as much publicity or drawn such a large audience. The acting was excellent. Billy Zane plays a terrific "satan." William Sadler plays an excellent "good guy," starting out at the beginning looking scruffy and unappealing and becoming more and more handsome and confident as we learn of his plight. Again, to draw a comparison between Raimi's trilogy, he is much like the Ash character played by Bruce Campbell. It took several years for this movie to be made, mainly because of the somewhat non-existant horror market a couple of years back. The title was even changed to "Judgment Night" at one time, as the writers of the script were told that nothing with the word "demon" in the title would get made in Hollywood. So much for that piece of advice. With the recent resurgence of horror, we get this film, a wonderful addition to the growing number of horror releases over the past few months. It's nice to see something this original, this scary, and this publicized come out at the theaters. I'm glad this movie wasn't a collection of short tales, for we never would have had this one if that were the case. There would not have been time to develop characters and background. All in all, this was a terrific first effort at Tales From the Crypt's big-time debut. It's well worth seeing at least once, not only because of it's terrific effort and quality alone, but as a sort of mockery to those who said horror was "dead." I'm now anxiously awaiting the next theatrical Tales From the Cyypt release. @ 1995 by Black Sunshine ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Why do your locks and rumpled clothes show 'Tis more than usual sleep has made them so? Why are the kisses which he gave betrayed By the impression which his teeth have made? Ovid ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Writer's Block by The Stranger... I was trying to decide if I was going to write anything this month and I decided that yes I would write something. Last month Black Sunshine was nice enough to write us an article about "how to sell a novel" and I took off the month before that too so I thought I'd better write something.. So this month we will talk about... poetry!! Poetry has become popular recently with MTV's Spoken Word shows and suddenly poetry is cool once again. Here in Oklahoma we have about 3 to 4 places that have poetry nights where people come in and read their own work. If you haven't gone yet, go, because it is an expeirence. But this is "The Writer's Block" so lets talk about writing poetry. In the computer world today we have a lot of LIT groups and a lot of ANSI groups that are including some lit. And I think that is great. Hell I'm in one, and your reading our newsletter right now! So because many LIT groups deal only with (gasp) rhyming poetry we will talk about that first. Rhyming poetry can be great if done right but if done wrong it can be really horrible. There is really two keys (that I can come up with) that are important in rhyming poetry. The first are your words that rhyme and the second thing is your rythem or meter to your poem. The biggest problem with rhyming poems is when a writer thinks of a great line and then has to think of another line that will rhyme with the first line. A bad rhyming poem has forced rhymes, meaning a line that doesn't sound right but it fits. If your forcing your rhymes, it doesn't matter how moving your first line was people will only think (and laugh at) about your bad line. So a key is to try and find another line that will fit that sounds better. And something I would recommend is to stay away from "simple rhymes". If I can read your first line and know what rhyming word your going to use, then thats a problem. "Simple rhymes" are words like right, light, night, sight, do, to, you, would, could, should. Stuff like that. Good rhyming poems not only give a message but they sound orginal. And speaking of sound, lets talk about the second thing in rhyming poems, the meter. This is not how to write good meter : "I saw my dog as he went to the woods in a run, he had a gun." That's bad. Read your poems out loud and they should have a rythem to them. If you are having to stutter through lines or read one line faster than another then your poems are off. To put your lines together, try using the same amount of sylables or atleast as close as you can get. And remember that rhyming poems usually need to stay consistent in their rhythem throughout the poem. Rhyming poems that use unforced rhymes and have rythems to them can be great. These are the types of poems that are memorized such as Shakespeare. Ryhming poems with forced rhymes and no rythem are the types that are laughed at and never remembered. I've read a lot of poetry, and I've read alot of LIT packs and for the most part the rhyming poetry is done really badly. But in some cases thats on purpose because the poems are suppose to be funny. I've read many where there were great lines but other poorly written lines made me feel a discomfort with the poem. But I have read some really well written rhyming poetry. It's just harder to find because its hard to write. That's it for this month.. We will talk about non-rhyming poetry next month. Remember these are my opinions and are not to be taken as anything more than just that, opinions. Keep writing and I'll see ya next month. The Stranger... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Final Words: Well I apologize to anyone who looks forward to reading the Death Certificate every month. This wasn't such a great issue but we will get better in the future, I promise. Black Sunshine has a lot of great things planned for us in the future and hopefully I'll get down to writing. Please keep your comments coming, whether there nice or not we don't care. Just keep'em coming. If you would like to be a member of SAZ, call Where Shadow's Wait and let us know. You can either apply as your own name or if you just want to send your stuff you can log on as SAZ with the password SAZ and then upload your stuff. But be sure to let us know where (what board) we can find you on. Have a great month a we will be back next time with something really scary.. Soulz At Zero ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your fingers black from ink as your shaking hands glide down the page, trying to see if your name is on the death certificate. The wind screaming against the window, begging to get in, to get to you. And at last you find the dotted line, written in blood the letters that form your name. A sudden gasp caught in your throat, a flicker of the lights until they fade off completely. The cold touch of fingers as a hand reaches across the bare skin of your neck. Goosebumps rise from your neck just as the lights shine on once more. And once again you are alone. Before you lies the death certificate, your name is no longer written. You have escaped death, for now. The Stranger... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (C) Copyright SAZ 1994.