Tuesday, May 31, 2011

What is Steven Sidor reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Steven Sidor, author of Pitch Dark.

His entry begins:
I’m a person who reads multiple books at once, usually four or five. I rotate them throughout the day.

Right now I’m reading Robert Beattie’s Nightmare in Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler. Along with the Zodiac Killer and the Original Night Stalker, BTK was the scariest of the unknown killers out there. Beattie’s book may have spurred BTK to resurface in 2004 and led to his eventual capture.

Karl Taro Greenfeld’s China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century’s First Great Epidemic is a gripping and truly frightening account of the 2003 SARS outbreak in China. The story is as much about an emerging China as it is about a mysterious virus. This one’s my bedtime book.

I’m rereading Tim...[read on]
Among the early praise for Pitch Dark:
Pitch Dark is a propulsive, layered, and brutal read.... A reader can't hope for more than to discover a writer possessed of both true talent and true passion. Discover Steven Sidor."
—Michael Koryta, author of The Cypress House

"Pitch Dark is as relentlessly suspenseful as any crime novel you’ve ever read, but at the same time it’s as scary as the best horror stories ... kept me up half the night—and when I did go to bed, I left the lights on."
—Robert Masello, author of The Medusa Amulet

"Sidor does a fine job at keeping readers in the dark as to who among the good guys might really be bad. And his flair for suspense and intrigue help readers through the book’s violent and sadistic acts, which include animal decapitations, random kills and spilling enough blood of its citizens to coat the town of American Rapids in red. His writing can turn poetic. In describing the face of evil, he writes, “the profile of a pharaoh, olive-skinned and regal, with eyes of pure ebony,” making you take pause to appreciate his prose even during a blood-curdling moment.... Sidor has a clever way of making readers volley back and forth on who they think is among the devil-worshipping team. The book’s end is fast-paced and will have readers racing through the pages to find out what fates awaits the characters and if The Pitch and his followers will be destroyed...."
Denise I. O'Neal, Chicago Sun-Times
Visit Steven Sidor's website and blog.

Sidor is the author of the critically-acclaimed dark thrillers Skin River, Bone Factory, and The Mirror’s Edge. His new novel of terror is Pitch Dark.

The Page 69 Test: Steven Sidor's The Mirror’s Edge.

Writers Read: Steven Sidor.

--Marshal Zeringue