Saturday Spotlight: “Plastic” by J.L. Bryan

J.L. Bryan’s short story, “Plastic” is the first story in the newly released anthology The Gate 2: 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair. “Plastic” started the book off with a great post-apocalyptic story. The Cough has wiped out most of humanity, and our protagonist wanders into an abandoned mall for shelter and supplies. The ensuing period of isolation from humanity, manikins creating a mirage of company, and an active imagination desperate to find company leads to a tale of progressive insanity that feels so real you wonder if you wouldn’t do the same. Minor sexual content warning, but other than that, 5 stars.

I’m only 60% through reading The Gate 2, but I can share my thoughts on it so far. The subtitle “13 Tales of Isolation and Despair” is accurate; I leave each story feeling unsettled. This anthology is showing me the type of stories I like, and don’t like. It is a mixture of happy and sad endings, though more heavily on the sad so far. I prefer stories that show someone in despair but ending in their overcoming their sadness. Some of these stories end with the characters hitting bottom. I guess that’s good for promoting unpredictability, but still hard to swallow. If this is your kind of read, I think they have done a great job. The writing is excellent and the stories are unique and exceptionally creepy.

Now, back to J.L. Bryan. His webpage bio reads:
J.L. Bryan studied English literature at the University of Georgia and at Oxford, with a focus on the English Renaissance and the Romantic period. He also studied screenwriting at UCLA. He is the author of five novels and one short-story collection. He enjoys remixing elements of paranormal, supernatural, fantasy, horror and science fiction into new kinds of stories. His goal is to provide highly original fiction like you won’t find anywhere else. His new novel is The Haunted E-book. The sequel to his novel Jenny Pox will be available by summer 2011. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Christina, as well as some dogs, cats, and domestic plants.

Some of J.L. Bryan’s books:
This YA paranormal anthology is currently free on Kindle, and includes: Fisher Amelie (author of The Leaving series), J.L. Bryan (author of the Paranormals series), Courtney Cole (author of The Bloodstone Saga), Wren Emerson (author of the Witches of Desire series), Amy Maurer-Jones (author of The Soul Quest trilogy), Tiffany King (author of the Saving Angels series) and Nicole Williams (author of the Eden Trilogy) come together in this captivating anthology to each write a short story about a character from their already existing novels. Worth noting: The authors of The Glassheart Chronicles will be donating their profits from this anthology to Save The Children, an amazing organization that strives every day to help impoverished children in over 120 countries, including the United States.

Also free, this is the first book in his The Paranormals series. The product description from Amazon reads: “Jenny’s touch spreads a deadly supernatural plague. She can’t control her power, so she devotes her life to avoiding contact with other people in her small Southern town. Her senior year of high school, she meets the one boy she can touch…but if she’s going to be with him, Jenny must learn to use the “Jenny pox” inside her to survive his devious, manipulative girlfriend, who secretly wields the most dangerous power of all.” This kind of reminds me of the conflict Rogue from X Men had when she liked that boy but couldn’t touch him. Sounds like a cool story and for free, why not check it out?

I’m writing a book about genetic manipulation, so this book especially caught my eye. J.L. has background work, as he describes on his About page: “I used to have a job writing abstracts of genetics and genomics research for medical newsletters. So I got very interested in genetics and evolution. David Bloom has some wild but probably accurate theories about culture and evolutionary psychology, and those were a strong influence on the book.”

This book is currently enrolled in the Amazon KDP program, but if you’re not part of that you can still get it for $.99 on Kindle. This is the first book in the A Songs of Magic series. Amazon’s description is: “Jason plays guitar in a teenage garage band called the Assorted Zebras, but they have no fans and no gigs, and they’re going nowhere. Even worse, Jason has a crush on the lead singer, but she already has a near-perfect boyfriend.

One night, Jason steals enchanted instruments from the fairy world. Suddenly (with a little help from YouTube) every kid in the Midwest is crazy about the Assorted Zebras.

The fairy instruments drive the crowds wild, but the new gear is brimming with dangerous and destructive magic. The band struggles to gain control of their instruments and avoid the supernatural bounty hunters sent by Queen Mab of Faerie to track them down, all while trying to finally land their first gig.”

Thanks for stopping by. You can follow J.L. Bryan at his website, Facebook page, Twitter, Goodreads, or RSS.