Important: GUD Revives Reviews

After a break of almost a year, GUD is now in a position to resume reviewing books. We're tremendously excited to be restoring this valuable service to our readers, and hope you are too.

Reviews will be published on the site and syndicated across Amazon, BookRabbit, Goodreads, Facebook, and other major book sites. We've had a lot of review requests while our reviews have been in abeyance, and I've spent much of today going through them in order to see what's on offer.

There's an amazing selection of books out there, from GUD contributor Kristine Ong Muslim's poetry collection A Roomful of Machines to Drama Queens With Love Scenes, a tale of unrequited gay love in the afterlife by Kevin Klehr.

In the past, we've tried to review almost everything we're offered, but unfortunately this didn't work out all that well, with our staff suffocating under piles of unread books. So, we've introduced a new system that will come into force this month.

Requests for review should still be sent to reviews@gudmagazine.com. Put the title of your book in the subject line. The decision whether or not to invite you to submit your book for review will be based on the information you provide in this email, so it's vital to consider carefully what you want us to know.

The least you should tell us will be the title of your book, its ISBN (where appropriate), the name of the publisher, and a brief summary of the book's plot and/or contents, and the formats in which it's available. Please note that we will only consider reviewing self-published or vanity books under special circumstances, eg if you are a GUD contributor.

Once we receive your review request, we'll add it to our list of books available for review, and see if anyone on staff grabs it. If, after a month, nobody's chosen the book, then, regrettably, we're not going to be able to review it. If your book is selected for review, you'll be asked to make a copy available to our reviewer in the format of their choosing.

We'll be keeping track of books offered for review using a Goodreads shelf entitled, imaginatively, 'offered_for_review'. Only GUD could have thought of it.

A final note. We've gone through our inbox and added books offered for review from September 2010 to date, but I regret we're not able to go back any further than that. So, if you asked us to review a book before September 1st and/or you sent in your request after September 1st, but your book's not on our 'offered for review' shelf, by all means get in touch again. Meanwhile, watch this space.

GUD Issue 6 On Sale Now

GUD #6 has stories by Aliette de Bodard, Lou Antonelli, Caroline Yoachim, and Lavie Tidhar (and more). GUD #6 has poetry from Jennifer Jerome, Tara Deal, and Jim Pascual Agustin (and more). GUD #6 has Aunia Kahn and Andy B. Clarkson's art (and more). GUD #6 has 200 pages of art, fiction, and poetry. Not to mention that every issue comes with @littlefluffycat.

Order a print copy of GUD Magazine Issue 6 today. It's human-powered, won't break if you drop it, and is guaranteed never to be deleted from your brain.

See the TOC and previews.

$12 for one issue--or save a few bucks and get a two-issue or four-issue subscription!

Subscribe now.

* if you're not a fan of hardcopy or PDF we're also going to be offering epub directly with this issue! Just need a few more tweaks to make the issue instigator happy!

GUD Issue 5--is ALIVE!

What's not to love???

Issue 5

... WRAPS A SCIENTIFIC CORE WITH OUR MOST ECLECTIC SELECTION TO DATE—including two "mini graphic novels", and a script that will have you bubbling over with mirth.

We open with Rose Lemberg's "Imperfect Verse", a tale of poetry, deception, and warring gods; then span the years to Andrew N. Tisbert's "Getting Yourself On", which sees mankind taken to the stars but suffering new forms of wage-slavery.

There's science fiction that stretches to the fantastic, science that once stretched the fantastic and has now become brilliantly pervasive, and dollops of science in otherwise mundane lives (see "The Prettiest Crayon in the Box").

Of course, we've got fantasy, psychological horror, humor and drama; poetry serious, sublime, and satirical; and art that stretches from the real, to the surreal, to the violently semi-abstract.

read some teasers! or just buy it, hey? ;)

GUD is looking for more Other to round out Issue 7. Do you have it? http://is.gd/6I4Op

Preditors + Editors Readers' Poll

We're a little late to the game (still doing everything we can to get Issue 5 spick and span and out to print), but with just another day or less in the readers' poll, we thought we'd give you a nudge you and put our name in the hat.

We'd most appreciate help in the categories of "Best Fiction Magazine" and "Best Poetry Magazine", but anywhere you felt like giving us a nod would be most appreciated! I can personally vouch for the Preditors + Editors folks, as far as filling out the readers' poll--they won't spam you, and won't keep your email address beyond verifying it and limiting you to one vote per category.

Best Fiction Zine (ignore the "e-zine" bit)
* http://ping.fm/zI0Yw

Best Poetry Zine (ditto)
* http://ping.fm/zmagw

Best Zine Art (GUD Magazine -- The Strangers are Tuning, Jesse Lindsay)
* http://ping.fm/45OBQ

Best Zine Editor (Julia Bernd -- GUD Magazine Issue 4)
* http://ping.fm/1SHHY

There's plenty more to vote for, and it's truly a readers' poll--you can just write in anything for any category if that's your mind. Everything on that list has been put there by someone writing it in, to start with.

And no worries if you feel there's another magazine more deserving of your vote, or if you simply don't have the time or interest. We understand. And on that note, we're back to the grindstone to get out the best magazine we can....

Have you been naughty? Scary? Daring? Get your GUD Treats (100 pages of horror!) here: http://tr.im/gudhalloween halloween (LIMITED TIME)

GUD Reviews: Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca

Midnight Picnic
by Nick Antosca
Word Riot Press, 2009
Paperback, 182 pages

ISBN: 0977934330 (Amazon.com)
9780977934331 (Book Depository)

$15.95 / £9.72

Midnight Picnic is GUD contributor Nick Antosca's second novel, but is written with such assurance and skill that it might more easily be his twenty-second. On the first page, Antosca draws the reader in to unwilling protagonist Bram's world, which is about to get uncannily strange.

Bram's living a mundane, drab existence over a bar called Moms until the night he comes home tired and accidentally runs over the bar's dog, Baby. His attempts to succour the injured animal show him to be basically decent, but ineffectual. He wants to do the right thing, yet gives up when it becomes too difficult. This is the issue Bram will have to face up to as the story continues.

The skeleton of a young boy is found, and his spirit makes a connection with Bram that takes him on a nightmare journey into the land of the dead. Here, he learns far more about himself--and the dead and living--than he ever thought possible. However, at heart, Midnight Picnic is not a ghost story. It's a tale of redemption and the healing effects of time.

The central premise is that, given time to reflect, we can all come to a realisation of where we have gone wrong in our lives. No matter how despicable our crimes, redemption is possible, but it comes not from outside, but from the person themselves, from their changed relationship with themselves and the other dead. It's a powerful message in a book that refuses to label anyone as evil.

Only Adam is depicted as incapable of this process, perhaps because he died too young. For him, time to reflect has only bred hatred; he is locked into childish ideas of right, wrong, and punisment.

All Antosca's characters are vividly realised, from Bram's lost soul of an on-off girlfriend to the old man who lives in the woods, and has, in the past, done whatever it took to stay hidden there. Before vengeance comes for him, he seems to have already learnt his lesson, telling another intruder on his solitude, "I wouldn't do anything to you...".

This book is relatively short, but the reader needn't feel short-changed. There's a complete story here, one that compels as well as entertains. It's fascinating to travel with Bram and Adam into the lands of the dead, a place into which the living often stray, unawares, a land that's depicted as chillingly as the dead landscape of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

An excellent book to read on Halloween, with your head under the covers and a heavy flashlight handy.

Nick Antosca's story 'Soon You Will be Gone and Possibly Eaten' appears in GUD Issue 3.

Original review, pics, comments:
http://ping.fm/BpCUa