Modern Halloween Classic: Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge (horror novella)

This is an expanded version of the review that was originally published in the now-sadly-defunct Down in the Cellar magazine. Copyright 2006. Reprinted with permission.

"He's the October Boy ... the reaper that grows in the field, the merciless trick with a heart made of treats, the butchering nightmare with the hacksaw face ... and he's gonna getcha! That's what they always told you ... he's gonna getcha so you know you've been got!!!!!" — from Dark Harvest

Every year around Halloween, I choose an old favorite set around the holiday to reread and get into the literary mood. Sometimes it's an entry in the Orangefield series by Al Sarrantonio, sometimes the anthology October Dreams, but this year it was Norman Partridge's high-octane horror novella Dark Harvest.

From the jack-o'-lantern on the cover, it's easy to tell that this novella is Halloween-related. But where most pumpkin-heads are fairly innocuous-looking, this one is positively threatening, which gives you some idea of the book's contents: intense effects in a short amount of time.

In fact, Dark Harvest is so much better than the early fiction that came out in the rerelease of his short-story collection Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales that it is hard to believe they were written by the same person.

You know this kind of story: it's the legend every small midwestern town has, and Partridge has managed to keep things familiar and yet fill this novella with surprises. It's got the nostalgia of Ray Bradbury's classic Something Wicked This Way Comes with a touch of The Twilight Zone and the kind of dark suspense that Partridge specializes in, but the author has also included a melancholy thread that adds depth.

It's that time again: Halloween night, the night when all teenage boys are released, after being locked in their rooms for five days, and set off to find "The October Boy," a midwestern nightmare with a jack-o'-lantern for a head and one thing on its mind: getting to the church on time (no, really). The boy who kills this awful creature (also known as "Sawtooth Jack") gets to leave town, or "jump the Line," something that has become increasingly more difficult, especially with Officer Jerry Ricks enforcing the border. But Pete McCormick thinks this is his year. He has stolen Officer Ricks's .45 and he is determined to get out of the town that has been holding him and his family, and everyone else in it, down for generations.

Dark Harvest is by turns frightening and sad, scary and tragic. It is a pure Halloween horror story, but one whose ripples extend past the time it takes to read it (only a few hours). The characters are people you know, only in a situation you couldn't have imagined that nevertheless feels entirely plausible given the right set of circumstances. I believe that Partridge has crafted a new Halloween classic, one that should find a permanent place on the shelf of every fan of the holiday who appreciates solid writing with no spare parts.

Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber (Star Wars zombie horror)

Trig Longo is a barely teenaged Cimarosan grifter imprisoned along with the rest of his family aboard the Imperial prison ship Purge, which is also home to five hundred other murderers, thieves, and rebel insurgents. En route to the detention moon, the Purge breaks down, its engines coming to a standstill.

The discovery of a seemingly abandoned Star Destroyer results in a scouting party being enlisted to search for salvageable repair parts. Only half return, and by the time they realize what they've brought back with them, it is too late: death is aboard the Purge — and it's contagious.

Before long, Dr. Zahara Cody and her 21B droid are dealing with over a dozen dead and a nearly 100 percent infection rate. Before long, only six of the living remain, surrounded by innumerable rank corpses.

But of course, these aren't your average dead bodies. These are the kind who make like Lazarus and get up and walk. And they're really, really hungry.

When I saw Death Troopers, my first thought was, "Wow, not even Star Wars can avoid jumping on the zombie bandwagon." And then I knew I had to read it. The cover image of a decapitated stormtrooper's bloody head hanging on a hook was simply too gruesome to resist.

I've always thought of Star Wars as relatively "clean" entertainment, so this addition of undead horror to the franchise was intriguing and exciting in its opening of a new world of potential storylines. Death Troopers is eerie from the beginning, and author Joe Schreiber (Chasing the Dead) uses his experience in the thriller genre to craft some genuinely scary scenes. The book doesn't really get moving for a while, but the surprise appearance of a pair of familiar faces one-third of the way in is a pleasing distraction.

Audiobook reader Sean Kenin adds to the gruesome nature of the disease by kindly providing appropriately wet coughs for the infected. Some poor choices, however, make the audiobook less than it could be. One is having Kenin describe a character's action (sighs, deep breaths, etc.) and then redundantly perform them. Another is just nit-picking, but I found it difficult to believe that a lab described in the text as "dead" and "abandoned" would require the use of mad scientist bubbling chemical sound effects.

The conceit of having the chapter titles screamed in a kind of electronic filtered echo starts out as a nicely disturbing counterpoint to the text but becomes laughable after only a few occurrences. (There are around forty chapters.) Death Troopers is in fact only the second time that I've felt an audio version detracted in some ways from the story. (See my review of Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven.) The crunching, slushy sound effects of a body being torn apart are quite nice, however, and the experience as a whole was altogether entertaining.

A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson (occult horror)

In memory of author Richard Matheson, I recommend this, one of my favorite books of his. This is another terrific thriller from Richard Matheson. When the film version of A Stir of Echoes came out years ago, it was instantly dismissed as a rip-off of The Sixth Sense — a difficult feat considering that the novel that was the source of the film was written over forty years prior.

As a fan of the film (it is highly underrated and will definitely provide entertainment for fans of the genre) and of Matheson's work, I felt I owed it to myself to check out the original. (For some reason, a definite article is good enough for The Sixth Sense, but an indefinite article not good enough for Stir of Echoes. I'm sure someone was paid well for making that decision.)

When Tom Wallace is hypnotized at a party by his brother-in-law, he turns out to be a surprisingly good subject. Afterward, he is told how malleable he was, and a good laugh is had at his expense when he unwittingly performs a post-hypnotic suggestion.

But then things aren't the same for Tom: he begins having dreams that a woman in black is in his house, and then realizes that he is able to read people's minds. This comes in handy on more than one occasion, but generally appears to be a nuisance, especially to Tom's wife, Anne, who wants him to see a doctor.

Given what I had read of Matheson's, I wasn't surprised by the level of quality presented in the story. What did surprise me, however, was that A Stir of Echoes, although first published in 1958, is not at all dated; it could have just as easily been written today, Matheson's story and characters are so "modern" and timeless. This is particularly true given the modern atmosphere of being more accepting to the idea of spirits "crossing over" from another plane.

As the story progresses, the tension ratchets higher and higher. Matheson hardly lets up, steadily adding more complications to the plot until the surprise revelation. This is one of the reasons that I like Matheson's work so much: the knowledge that I am always in for a ride.

(Fans of the movie please note: the plot of A Stir of Echoes differs from the film in many details. The base story is, of course, the same, but the identities of the participants — the alleged ghost, the alleged killer — are different, which allows for a new experience in reading a book you think you're already familiar with.)

Re-Kindling Interest: Via Dolorosa by Ronald Malfi (literary psychological horror)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

"Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, he knew. But he also knew that whatever doesn't kill you sometimes only maims you and weakens you and makes you angrier and colder than you ever thought possible. Not for the first time, he acknowledged that, sometimes, it was probably better just to have it kill you." —from Via Dolorosa

Nick D'Nofrio was a lieutenant in the Iraq war, where he saved the life of one of his men. Now he's a newly married man, paying for his honeymoon at a resort hotel on Hilton Head Island by painting a mural on their wall.

But Nick can't get away from his past, especially not with the father of the man whose life Nick saved working as the hotel's bell captain — he got him the painting gig — and his injured right hand acting up whenever he tries to do any painting.

Nick is on a downward spiral, and he won't let his wife be a support. He chooses instead to spend inordinate amounts of time in the company of a Spanish photographer who only wants details on his war experiences and any photos he has or knows about. This shakes up Nick's marriage at a time when what he most needs is stability.

I'm quite pleased to see that author Ronald Malfi has allowed Via Dolorosa to be rereleased as an e-book. I read it when it first came out in hardcover in 2007, and I was very impressed by Malfi's examination of humanity's darkness, the horrors that we inflict upon each other, most often without intending to.

Malfi's first novel, the gothic horror tale The Fall of Never, was about the negative effects of family. Its followup, The Nature of Monsters, was a departure from the genre, a sort of modernized Great Gatsby that focused on how much we'll take from the people we believe are our friends. Via Dolorosa combines elements of both styles, with Malfi turning his keen eye on marriage and how one person's emotional baggage (specifically the horrors of war) can sour the experience for both parties.

This is a dark, sad, and depressing novel but a very rewarding one. The often dreamlike quality of the prose suits this novel told from the perspective of a troubled protagonist who spends the majority of his time deep inside his own head.

But Via Dolorosa retains a modicum of hope through Nick's constant struggle for escape, in whatever form it avails itself. Whether through the guise of a Spanish photographer or in the shadows of the pointedly named Club Potemkin, or even just at the bottom of a bottle of Red Truck, Nick's continual pursuit of a way out rescues his story from utter bleakness.

New on My Shelves

You've got to love used book stores and all the treasures they offer.

And a happy Ides of March, everyone.

Re-Kindling Interest: Serpent Girl by Ray Garton (horror novella)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

Newly retired from his well-paying job, Steven Benedetti decides to celebrate with a visit to the carnival. There he meets Elise, the Serpent Girl (she dances with snakes), herself newly unemployed due to a fight with her boss/lover. Elise (whose real name is Carmen Mattox) and Benedetti subsequently hit the road together, spending the night in a roadside motel where they share their bodies and their histories — but not their secrets. That comes later; pieces slowly reveal themselves as the couple have a lot of sex and begin to think they're perfect for each other.

Author Ray Garton is probably best known as a writer of horror fiction (The New Neighbor, Live Girls), but Serpent Girl, originally one of his long line of books from Cemetery Dance Publications, seems to display the influence of the hardboiled crime novels and films of the 1940s and '50s: to wit, the beautiful woman whom trouble seems to follow and the world-weary man who is so attracted to her that he doesn't realize what he's gotten into until very late in the game. Steven and Elise fit their roles well, but each has a little secret in store for the other.

This blend of sex, horror, and crime fiction (I like to call it "erotic noirror," but your mileage may vary) plays to Garton's strengths: creative plots and the rare ability to know when to paint with broad strokes and when to be more detailed. Serpent Girl certainly has its flaws (conversations that border on the tedious, two-dimensional characters, and an abrupt ending), but they don't keep this novella from pulling the reader through to the somewhat unexpected conclusion. Its menacing foreshadowing alone would guarantee that, even if Garton didn't have a couple of surprises up his sleeve.

Garton's longtime fans will definitely be satisfied by Serpent Girl, and those concerned that he might be devoting himself to crime fiction entirely can be assuaged by his recent werewolf novel Ravenous (and its sequel, Bestial). Those, however, wanting more of this direction of the author's work should seek out his two books originally published under the pseudonym Arthur Darknell and now out under his own: Loveless and Murder Was My Alibi.

This review is an updated and revised version of the one that originally appeared in The Green Man Review in 2008. Reprinted with permission.

Torture Garden directed by Freddie Francis (starring Peter Cushing, Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance)

Torture Garden (1967). Screenplay by Robert Bloch, based on his short stories "Enoch," "Terror Over Hollywood," "Mr. Steinway," and "The Man Who Collected Poe."

Horror and carnivals: how long have these two been connected?  In any case, Torture Garden — a horror anthology film based on short stories written by Robert Bloch (who also wrote the screenplay, adding the wraparound story that ties them all together) — begins with a barker inviting us into the show.  

"You'll shriek, you'll shudder, you'll shiver," he promises.  "But it's all in fun and no harm done."

We pay our half-crown and enter the realm of Dr. Diabolo (Burgess Meredith, looking reminiscent of his turn as the Penguin on TV's Batman).  His private exhibit offers patrons a look at their potential future, and the possible manner of their death if they give in to their inner evil.

The first story, loosely based on Bloch's 1946 Weird Tales story "Enoch," involves a man's search for his uncle's gold stash.  What he uncovers instead is a devil cat with a hunger for human heads.  Michael Bryant is somehow believable as a man under feline mind control, and the closeups of the cat's eyes help it along.

Next comes an adaptation of "Terror Over Hollywood" from Fantastic Universe in 1957, centering on an actress (Beverly Adams) who sabotages her roommate's date with a Hollywood bigwig to take advantage of it herself ... and gets in way over her head when she sticks her nose where it doesn't belong.  Adams is good as an overly ambitious starlet, but the story derails when it veers off into science-fiction territory.

The starlet's best friend (Barbara Ewing) is up next as a reporter who interviews a concert pianist (John Standing) then falls in love with him — much to the consternation of his piano, a jealous embodiment of the musical goddess Euterpe.  This silly conceit (originated in "Mr. Steinway," Bloch's feature in the April 1954 issue of Fantastic) is not helped by the predictable narrative, though the piano is suitably menacing.  ("She" also gives the best performance in this section.)

Finally, after standing around with a pipe in his teeth for over an hour, Jack Palance utters his first words as Ronald Wyatt, an Edgar Allan Poe fanatic who gets very excited when he finds that the collection of fellow Poe aficionado Lancelot Canning (Peter Cushing) also includes the famous author himself. 

Author Bloch was a huge Poe fan in his own right — he was the first to complete the one known incomplete work, "The Lighthouse" — and this knowledge adds to the verisimilitude of the story, based on "The Man Who Collected Poe" from Famous Fantastic Mysteries in 1951.  Also a plus is Palance, who is cast against type as an anxious, bookish type.

Much like Bloch's novels from the era, the stories in Torture Garden combine his talent for eerieness with a tongue-in-cheek approach that is not afraid to court the ridiculous in the name of a well-told story.  Those not familiar with Bloch's work may use Tales from the Crypt as a comparison (also directed by Freddie Francis and featuring Peter Cushing), though it came out five years later.

In addition to the stories mentioned above, the movie also features the goddess Atropos and her shears.  She (Clytie Jessop) appears in a different manifestation in each tale (really the only thing other than the wraparound that ties them together), and even the wraparound has a twist.  Torture Garden is by no means a classic, but it is definitely a good, fun time for those who enjoy horror anthology films.

Re-Kindling Interest: Horrorween by Al Sarrantonio (Halloween horror, Orangefield series)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

Orangefield is a strange little town. As Detective Bill Grant said in The Baby, a lot of "weird shit" happens around Halloween, in one way or another involving the participation of Samhain, the lord of the dead. A children's-horror author, a five-year-old boy, an older girl named Wizard, a Halloween historian, and a pumpkin tender are all connected by visits from Samhain. Horrorween chronicles a series of events that comes to a head on Halloween, when people will die, others will redeem themselves, and Samhain with either succeed or fail.

Horrorween is primarily composed of three early Orangefield stories -- the short story "Hornets," the novella The Pumpkin Boy, and the short novel Orangefield -- tied together with narrative glue to form a novel that is a surprisingly cohesive read.

Sarrantonio combines the horror and innocence of Halloween in a way no one has since Ray Bradbury. Horrorween, unlike the vast majority of modern horror novels, is subtle, not beating the reader senseless with shock after shock but developing a sustained level of tension. When Sarrantonio delivers the final blow, it's almost a relief.

And his horrors are truly shocking events that anyone can relate to -- not based on what Stephen King called "the gross-out." Don't get me wrong: some of my favorite horror authors are gross-out artists, but it's refreshing to encounter horror of the old school that seeks to truly terrify, yet is otherwise basically PG-rated.

Though Sarrantonio has a very accessible style, his storylines manage to be unpredictable and not easily summarized because to describe the action would either be unhelpfully vague or would give something away. And that would be a shame because Horrorween offers such a terrific ride for lovers of Halloween and light horror fiction.

For more Halloween recommendations, check out my 2009 Halloween feature.

Flesh Worn Stone by John A. Burks, Jr.

Chalk one up for free e-books. It's unlikely I would ever have heard of Flesh Worn Stone had it not come up in a list of books available free for the Kindle. But the name of the author, John A. Burks, Jr., also rang a bell from my time at a message board years ago. Said message board inspired a horror anthology, Damned Nation, which was co-edited by David T. Wilbanks, with whom I would later form Acid Grave Press. And Burks's story was one of the highlights within.

Flesh Worn Stone, despite its inscrutable title (which is mentioned near the end of the story), is a gripping novel that held me in its thrall for an entire weekend. A handful of people wake up to find themselves caged on a beach.

When they are taken out, these folks are introduced into an unfamiliar society overseen by an faceless individual who judges them on how well they perform in the Game — and who decides if they will eat or if one of them will be eaten.

The Game is an occasional event where two numbers are displayed and the people whose arms are tattooed with those numbers are expected to perform the requested action or pay the consequences. The consequences to breaking just about any rule involves being that night's dinner.

Burks has taken the post-apocalyptic-society scenario and taken out the apocalypse, and it still works.  This makes Flesh Worn Stone all the more interesting as the question, "Why are these people in this situation?" remains unanswered for quite some time. 

The answers are eventually forthcoming, but Burks skillfully holds them back and dishes them out carefully one by one when they'll yield the most dramatic punch.  I even gasped a couple of times — actually, physically gasped out loud — from the shock of some of the revelations in Flesh Worn Stone. And you know how rare that kind of physical reaction is with fiction, however much blurbers would like you to believe otherwise.

Stressed by Taxes? Vinewood's Got it Worse!

SINKHOLE SHAKES UP VINEWOOD RESIDENTS Vinewood, GA — A sinkhole that appeared without warning in the middle of Main Street has the residents of Vinewood up in arms. It has already claimed one life, that of local man Calvin Hull, when it opened up under his car while he was driving. Local pharmacist George “Doc” Taggert attributes Hull’s to pure bad luck — simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “It could’ve been any one of us,” Taggert said. “But it just happened to be Calvin on that very spot when the earth fell out from under him. Can you imagine what that must’ve been like? Tooling along Main Street in your new car, then boom. The street falls away and the earth swallows you up.” The sinkhole is currently roped off with yellow “Caution!” tape, and through-traffic is blocked by yellow-and-black saw horses affixed with battery-operated flashers. But one man thinks that is not enough to protect the town....

Read the rest of “Sinkhole Shakes Up Vinewood Residents” over at the Acid Grave Press blog.

Re-Kindling Interest: The Words by Douglas Clegg (novella)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

The new ebook explosion has been great for the novella. Previously only to be found in limited editions in the small press or in anthologies, this former bastard of the literary world has finally found a form in which it can thrive.

This is not only good for the authors but also for readers who may have missed out on hidden gems like this one (originally published in Four Dark Nights).

Douglas Clegg's The Words is a real stunner. In fewer than a hundred pages, Clegg creates a mythology, ages it, and sets its destiny in motion via two teenage boys, Dash and Mark, and their poorly chosen selections of reading materials.

Once Dash initiates the events, only Mark can stop them, but he can't for the life of him remember the words Dash begged him not to forget. Oh, he can remember the names that started it all, but those foreign-sounding words continue to escape him.

Clegg creates real tension, even during the flashback scenes used to explain the history and lead up to the present. Using the novella form to its utmost, The Words could have been told no other way, and I'm glad to see that it may finally find the audience that missed it the first time around.

Creative Spirit by Scott Nicholson now an e-book (revised edition of The Manor)

Creative Spirit is Scott Nicholson’s revised edition of the 2004 U.S. paperback The Manor. Scott is the Kindle-bestselling author of 12 novels, including The Red Church, Disintegration, Liquid Fear, and Speed Dating with the Dead. Connect with Scott on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Twitter — or via his blog, website, or Amazon page.

Creative Spirit: A paranormal thriller by Scott Nicholson

After parapsychologist Anna Galloway is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she has a recurring dream in which she sees her own ghost at Korban Manor. She’s compelled to visit the historic estate to face her destiny and the fate of her soul.

Sculptor Mason Jackson has come to the manor to make a final, all-or-nothing attempt at success before giving up his dreams. When he becomes obsessed with carving Ephram Korban's form out of wood, he is swept into a destructive frenzy that even Anna can’t pull him from.

The manor itself has secrets, with fires that blaze constantly in the hearths, portraits of Korban in every room, and deceptive mirrors on the walls. With an October blue moon looming, both the living and the dead learn the true power of their dreams.

"Scott Nicholson explores the dark legends of the southern end of the Appalachian mountain chain, a nightmare country that ends in Stephen King's yard."-- Sharyn McCrumb, author of The Ballad novels

View or sample Creative Spirit at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Kobo, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads. Look for Liquid Fear and Chronic Fear from Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint.

Fear Me by Tim Curran (horror novella)

Danny Palmquist is the new fish at Shaddock Valley maximum security prison. He tells his cellmate, Romero, that he's innocent, that Danny's brother committed the murder Danny was convicted of, and that if anyone bothers Danny while he's in stir, his brother will take care of it.

Romero is incredulous at first. But soon, Danny is targeted, and then the attackers die gruesomely, at night, after lockdown. And it can't be Danny because Romero, sleeping on the bottom bunk, knows Danny never left their cell.

But something else did. Something that frightens Romero like nothing ever has before. So much that he couldn't even bear to look at it.

Fear Me is the first Tim Curran book I've read after last year's The Corpse King, and I really must not leave such a gap in the future. Curran really has the chops.

He manages to seamlessly combine a darkly realistic prison setting with Lovecraftian horror, people it with believable and interesting characters, and tell it in short chapters with speedy prose. Even when I knew what was happening, Curran's skill at suspense made sure I wanted to know what would happen next. Fear Me pulled me along with its narrative force and left me satisfied but wanting to read more of this amazing author's work.

Re-Kindling Interest: Sineater by Elizabeth Massie

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print novels that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

Author Elizabeth Massie's debut novel is like nothing I've ever read, and yet it is familiar enough to not be too challenging to the average genre reader. Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for first novel, Sineater utilizes the popular Southern gothic style to expound on a little-known legend in a highly imaginative manner.

When residents of the small town of Ellison die, their friends and family place small meals on the chests of the deceased. Joel Barker's father, Avery, then comes out of the woods -- where he has been relegated to live during the day -- and eats the food, symbolically devouring the sins of the deceased and allowing their souls to ascend to heaven.

Legend has it that peering into the eyes of the "sineater" -- even via a photograph -- will cause the looker to view all of the sin that has been eaten, and subsequently either go crazy or simply die from the shock. Therefore, due to their connection with one who is perceived unclean, all of the Barkers are ostracized from the rest of the town, especially by Ellison's resident spiritual mother: Missy Campbell.

But all this is merely background to understand the core story of Sineater: Joel's coming of age. Joel is an outcast trying to fight his way in, while everyone else, including the other members of his family, are doing their best to keep him out. And someone is invested enough in the Barkers' outcast status to begin a regimen of "punishments."

Luckily for Joel, there are a few townspeople who are brave and caring enough to ignore the rules, but when the punishments become personal, Joel's support system crumbles and causes him to take action. Along the way, he gains insight into some previously unanswered questions and learns a lot about his family and himself in the process. (It is a coming-of-age novel, after all.)

At least a hundred pages too long for the story to support, Sineater keeps the reader involved through the use of present tense. Most often utilized for its sense of immediacy, writing in the present tense is difficult to execute successfully. However, Massie pulls off its use in this novel beautifully and invisibly. I was halfway through the book before I even realized it, which just goes to show how well-suited it is to this author and story.

That, in addition to the fact that the climax is a pulse-pounder that could even make me forget that I was riding the commuter train on my way to work, makes sure that all is forgiven and that Sineater comes highly recommended.

Blood Born by Matthew Warner (reproductive horror)

Daniella Connolly was on a date with boyfriend Eric Gensler when he tried to go too far with her. She ran away. Soon after, she was knocked unconscious and brutally raped. Gensler was immediately suspected, especially since his filed-to-a-point canine tooth seemed to be the source of nasty bites on Daniella's neck and shoulder.

Daniella's mother, Dr. Margaret Connolly, is a fertility specialist at the CalPark Fertility Clinic. Her supervisor's work in the experimental wing is so top secret that Margaret's supposedly all-access key card won't let her in.

When Detective Christina Randall gets involved with Daniella's case, she gets a big surprise. Daniella is only the latest woman to have been raped in a series of assaults. These have all resulted in pregnancies that are progressing at over 30 times the normal rate.

In just one week, during which the new mothers emaciate to astonishing proportions, the "baby" is born: a pseudo-primate whose first meal is the meatiest parts of Mommy. After another week, the new addition is fully grown and ready to start its own horrific procreation spree.

(Author Matthew Warner's regular readers may recognize Detective Randall from his first novel, The Organ Donor. And CalPark was featured in his second novel, Eyes Everywhere. I haven't read the former, but the latter is a truly excellent psychological thriller.)

Warner manages something all-too rare in modern horror: he writes about extremes without any trace of his tongue in his cheek. Every horrible event in Blood Born is told completely straight, even the ones that in other hands would be ridiculous. All disbelief is suspended as Warner takes his readers on a ride unlike any they've been on before. His combination of intelligence and confidence lets you know you're in solid hands, so you can just let him do his thing.

This results in a 500-page horror festival that flies by as Warner takes the reader into new territory. I sometimes wanted to stop and look around at all the details -- Warner is especially deft with all the medical information required for the plot to make sense -- but the narrative drive of Blood Born is such that it quickly became clear who was at the wheel, and it wasn't me.

Small press horror novels are numerous, and it can be hard to know which ones are worth your time, but my experience with the work of Matthew Warner -- with Eyes Everywhere and Blood Born in particular -- shows that he he delivers intelligent, visceral, and psychological horror of dependable high quality.

He seems to be always testing himself, not content with delivering another version of his last book. His book of essays, Horror Is Not a 4-Letter Word, displays his knowledge of the genre, inside and out. It sounds like a product endorsement, and I guess it is: Matthew Warner is a brand you can trust.

For more on Blood Born, read Matthew Warner's guest blog here on Somebody Dies.

The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Dave Zeltserman (quiet horror)

Jack Durkin's family has been taking care of the menace in Lorne Field for three hundred years. Every day, he spends twelve hours extracting the plantlike Aukowies that continuously sprout from the ground. To the untrained eye, they look like simple weeds, but Jack knows that if allowed to grow, they become uncontrollable, ambulatory, and a threat to every living thing on the planet.

For a long time, the caretaker of Lorne Field was given a great deal of respect from the local residents. But this generation seems to have not been told of the importance of the position, because everyone below retirement age thinks Durkin's job is at best "a quaint tradition" and at worst a waste of the $8,000 annual stipend paid for by their taxes.

Durkin's first-born son, Lester, who is contracted to take over the job when he turns 21, is tired of being mocked (and called "Weedpuller") by his friends. And Durkin's wife, Lydia, is tired of barely scraping by on $8,000 a year — which was a lot of money when it was contracted for in 1869 but is half what Lester says he could make at McDonald's.

Lydia wants her husband to quit the ridiculousness and get a real job. And Jack wants to prove to the town that the blood-thirsty beasts he kills for twelve hours a day, six months a year, aren't just weeds.

The premise of The Caretaker of Lorne Field is a highly original one that grabs the reader from the first page. Author Dave Zeltserman also grounds his admittedly fantastic novel with fully human and relatable characters, especially Jack, whom you can't help but sympathize with as he meets persecution from almost everyone.

Belief in the Triffid-like Aukowies isn't necessary to the enjoyment of The Caretaker of Lorne Field, as Zeltserman leaves the truth open to interpretation. The appeal of the novel is in its ease of delivery, its confident voice, and its perfect length: relatively short for a modern novel.

Zeltserman has made quite a name for himself in the crime-fiction genre with his novels Outsourced, Killer, and Pariah among others. He shows an equally skillful hand at quiet horror with The Caretaker of Lorne Field.

Guest Blogger: Matthew Warner, author of Blood Born (horror novel)

Today I have the honor of welcoming author Matthew Warner to the pages of Somebody Dies. Warner is the author of a short story collection (Death Sentences), two previous novels (The Organ Donor and Eyes Everywhere), and a collection of essays (Horror Is Not a 4-Letter Word).

I am currently halfway through his latest, Blood Born, and it is easily his best work yet, gripping, intelligent, and horrific.

"Where Ideas are Born"

by Matthew Warner

My story ideas are born any damn place possible. I’m not picky about those I raise to adulthood as long as I remain fertile. But you deserve a better explanation than that.

I conceived my most recent story while playing with my toddler son at the local tot lot. As I tried to keep him from picking up trash on his way to the playground’s slides, I noticed this hulking dude with tattoos beside a van. He was smoking a cigarette and watching my boy from behind mirrored sunglasses. Little warning prickles kept walking up my neck until Tattooed Dude turned to his child-snatcher van and hauled out . . .

Yep, you guessed it. A child. Probably his. They entered the playground and proceeded to have a grand old time on the swings.

When my shock wore off, I came home and wrote a short story that contains that scene.

So yeah, I’m a father. My life is Elmo, poopy diapers, and ultra-tight baby hugs around my windpipe. I therefore spend a lot of time thinking about children and parenting and all the stuff that can go horribly wrong. If Owen’s hand ever slips out of mine in a parking lot, I immediately flash to that scene in Pet Sematary where little Gage Creed runs into traffic to be creamed by a tractor trailer.

Is it any wonder, then, that my latest novel, Blood Born, deals with babies? Bad babies, of course. Babies conceived of brutal rapes and who come to term in just one week. Then eat their mothers. And grow to adulthood in just a few days to continue the cycle of rapes themselves.

Blood Born falls into a body of stories I’ve written about parenting. “Cat’s Cradle,” published last year at Horror Drive-In, deals with the consequences of letting your cat sleep next to your pregnant wife’s belly. (If your baby is born without a soul, don’t say I didn’t warn ya, okay?) “Maybe Monitored,” published in January at The Dark Fiction Spotlight, started when I thought I heard strange voices in Owen’s room through the baby monitor.

So that’s Matthew Warner’s Idea-Trolling Suggestion #1. It’s a variation on the old “write about what you know” chestnut: write about what’s occupying your thoughts.

There’s more to it than that, of course. I mixed some marketing considerations into Blood Born’s genesis. Such as, I wanted to reward readers of my previous novels by recycling a couple characters, namely Detective Christina Randall from The Organ Donor and the CalPark corporation from Eyes Everywhere.

I also wanted to write a horror story that appeals to women. That meant strong, female protagonists dealing with a situation that targets women. (And what could be more terrifying to a woman than rape?)

Sprinkled into that was my fascination with the Gaia theory -- the idea of the Earth as an organism -- and the paradigm of how a virus spreads. I learned in high school biology that when a virus invades a cell, it hijacks the cellular machinery to replicate itself, eventually causing the cell to explode and spread copies of the virus far and wide. I wondered how to represent such a thing if we took it up a frame of scale so that humans were the host “cells.” I concluded that a contagion spread by serial rapes and pregnancies was the logical choice.

Blood Born is also a monster story, and like most Americans, I grapple with the existence of our bona fide monsters: the Osama bin Ladens of the world. I learned while living in the Washington, DC, area during and immediately after 9/11 that when the shit hits the fan in the nation’s capital, the federal government doesn’t just respond by cleaning the shit off the fan blades. It stuffs a cork up the ass of every life form within 500 miles, declares a moratorium on farts and other airborne pollutants, and borrows $14 trillion from China to invade places suspected of harboring chemical toilets.

So, when a wave of strange animals starts impregnating every fertile woman in the DC area with creatures whom -- for lack of a better moniker -- the media label the Beltway Bigfoots, you can bet your bowel movements the government’s cure will indeed be worse than the disease, and, oh yeah, the baby will get thrown out with the bath water.

Man, I’m glad to be living in the Shenandoah Valley now. Here, a subway is just a sandwich shop. But I still get stressed out being a father to babies and stories alike.

Take a chance on my novel, will you? If you’re still hesitant, the first chapter and some awesome book trailers can be viewed at BloodBorn.info. And if that still doesn’t convince you, just lay your eyes on that sweet little boy pictured here with his daddy. You want him to eat, don’t you? I thought so.

Shaken by J.A. Konrath (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels mystery series)

Author J.A. Konrath has become quite well known of late as a vocal proponent of self-publishing in the electronic age, having sold multi-thousands of e-books for the Amazon Kindle (among other formats) with what seems like very little effort. His most famous works are his series of novels starring Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels, of which Shaken is the seventh.

Many opinions have been posed of the reasons for his terrific success, but reading this novel has given me the truth: Konrath writes a damned good mainstream thriller. Shaken covers four periods in the life of Daniels, all landmark events presented concurrently in alternating chapters.

This method makes things a little messy at first as each period gels in the mind. But once that happens, it's quite easy and effective to hop back and forth as the suspense builds in different eras.

The present period finds Jack bound and gagged in a self-storage facility as she realizes she's the latest captive of the infamous Mr. K., a serial killer she's been tracking for over 20 years. Konrath skillfully keeps his time periods connected with some overlapping events and keeps the pages turning — literally this time, as Shaken is being released in a print edition by AmazonEncore — with cliffhanger endings.

He combines mystery, horror, suspense, and humor in an engagingly dark carnival ride that can be enjoyed piece by piece or all at once. The ending of Shaken opens the door for the proposed sequel (Stirred, co-authored with Blake Crouch) while tying up all its own loose ends. Sometimes it seems like people become popular from little merit, but Konrath's success is one bandwagon it's safe to jump on.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Terrible Thrills by C. Dennis Moore (horror short stories)

For more of Friday's Forgotten Books, this week visit Sweet Freedom.

The best thing about electronic publishing is the opportunity for authors to get their out-of-print work available once again to readers in a way that gets royalties flowing in their direction. I am very happy to see that C. Dennis Moore's short-story collection Terrible Thrills is available as an ebook. Here's the review I wrote back when the print version came out in 2005....

Author C. Dennis Moore definitely knows his way around a short story. His mastery of the form is especially evident in the two dozen examples comprising his debut collection, Terrible Thrills (as in "...'When worlds collide,' said George Pal to his bride, 'I'm going to give you some....'").

Conciseness is key in Terrible Thrills. Moore has selected only his shortest stores for inclusion: most are around eight pages, with a handful of flash pieces covering only half a page. It is difficult to decide which is more effective.

The flash fiction works like a sucker punch to the eye, but the longer stories — given Moore's economy with words — allow him to drag us through quite a range of terrors. For example, the title story is really two in one, connected by the premise of a Halloween CD with two troublemaking tracks entitled "Murder" and "Mayhem." It feels much longer, but only because so much happens.

Despite this choice of shorter fiction for Terrible Thrills, Moore does offer a glimpse of his facility with longer works. Two presumably unconnected stories, "The Strange Thing that Happened at the SpinCycle Laundry" and "The Salvation of Victor," come together within a third, "The Flesh-Method and Myriad." The ending of the latter makes me eager to read the expansion of these stories, Revelations.

As good as this whole collection is, some stories stand out about all the rest. "The Legend of Mr. Cairo" is one. It's not the most original selection in Terrible Thrills, but that's part of its charm. Its familiarity makes it memorable, the way Moore fulfills our expectations, instead of subverting them, and feels comfortable doing it. I like surprises, but in "Cairo"'s case, predictability works best.

A few more highlights include the personification of the seasons is "Winter's Reign." "Luck of the Draw" combines Shirley Jackson, the Grimm Brothers, and M. Night Shyamalan in a creatively derivative tale with a few surprises. "The Son of Man" dramatically illustrates a New Testament prophecy of the Second Coming (Luke 21:27, to be precise): "And they shall see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with great power and glory." For three friends (who just happen to share their names with saints), it is doubtful whether their "redemption is near," or they're just in deep trouble of the worst kind.

Bodies that cannot be depended upon are the subjects of "Plaything" and "Parliament of Jim." While neither has a truly satisfactory ending, they were both thrilling reads and I especially enjoyed Moore's use of different fonts to represent different points of view. The aftermath of Mr. Seagle's wife Astrid's death from lung cancer also plays out in two very different ways in "Preparations" and "Astrid Like a Candle" — one darkly humorous, the other disturbingly scary.

But if there is a perfect story in Terrible Thrills, it is "Working for the Fat Man," which takes a universally familiar concept and gives it a hard twist while remaining faithful to the original feeling of the source. It combines the best parts of "unpredictable" and "not surprising," resulting in a feeling of inevitability, an utter "rightness" to all the events. Look for it to be anthologized for years to come.

The one thread that ties all the stories together is Moore's wonderfully skewed imagination. From the first paragraph, I was drawn in. Moore writes with a voice I know, his phrasings feel similar to my own, and this put me instantly at ease. The more he shocked me, the more I wanted to be shocked. I was ready to go wherever he wanted to take me — even to Enlil (and "Bob's Leg" will tell you all you need to know about that place). In short, reading Terrible Thrills is like being tortured by a good friend.

Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories, edited by David T. Wilbanks and Craig Clarke (hard rock and heavy metal inspired anthology of dark fantasy and horror stories)

I am very proud to say that my first book is now available — a project nearly two years in the making! See more below, beginning with Carrie Gowran's utterly awesome cover art, which perfectly encompasses the anthology's hard-rock and dark-fiction aspects.



Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories
Edited by David T. Wilbanks and Craig Clarke
—A Hard-Rockin' Horror and Dark-Fantasy Anthology—

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HEAVY MUSIC INSPIRES DARK FICTION?

Living After Midnight: Hard and Heavy Stories consists of six horror and dark-fantasy stories inspired by some of the greatest hard-rock and heavy-metal bands in that music’s long and influential history. Each author was invited to submit a short story or novella inspired by the band of his choice.

You're sure to be impressed by the half-dozen diverse tales they came up with. The set list is as follows:

“Spooky Tooth” by Randy Chandler
“Iron Maiden” by Matthew Fryer
“Black Sabbath” by Steven L. Shrewsbury
“Judas Priest” by David T. Wilbanks
“Motorhead” by Kent Gowran
“Slayer” by L.L. Soares

An original lineup indeed. Grab a copy now for only $2.99 because you’ll not want to pass up the chance to read six of the sharpest, savviest, hardest, and heaviest stories published this year.

Reviews:

"One of the things that make having an e-reader worthwhile." — Dead in the South

"Heavy metal horror heaven." — Ginger Nuts of Horror

"A good variety pack of scary stories ... an easy read, and a satisfying one." — Patrick D'Orazio

Now available on:
Amazon
Diesel
Sony
Smashwords.