This is where you can locate an increasing assortment of details for my presently available material as well as links to where you can check them out for yourself.
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One of my favorite things about Scooby-Doo was that the monsters, ghosts, and ghouls were never real. It was always just some creep in a costume, usually undertaking some ridiculously convoluted plot to fulfill their capitalist desires. When the more recent Scooby-Doo cartoons and movies came out, I was disappointed to see that there were real monsters involved. The creators seemed to lose track of the whole purpose behind the originals. That being said, if the monsters have to be real for the purpose of the story, Edgar Cantero gets it right.
Meddling Kids takes those teen mystery stories we loved as children–at least I did–and pays homage to them while also playing tongue-in-cheek with the tropes. The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Scooby-Doo are blended together in this story, with a healthy dose of H. P. Lovecraft thrown into the mix.
Thirteen years after the Blyton Summer Detective Club solved their final mystery, the awful truth behind that caper rears its ugly head, forcing the surviving members to question whether they’d gotten it right after all. Sure, they’d apprehended a crazy old man in an absurd costume, and they’d gone on with their lives. But what if there was something more lurking beneath the surface? What if there was some unspeakable horror operating behind the scenes at Sleepy Lake? And did their proximity to something truly not-of-this-world leave a mark on the children that haunts them into adulthood?
This is where the story begins. From there it’s a humorous and heartfelt tribute to characters that bear a strong–and entirely intentional–resemblance to the ones Cantero created for the book. The mystery behind the mystery provides ample opportunity for (often calamitous) investigations, red herrings, and the emergence of a new bad guy who makes all their previously tackled foes seem like child’s play. It’s a good thing the young detectives are now young adults because what they’re forced to face is something no child is prepared to confront.
Kyla Garcia’s narration is excellent and conveys the humor and horror of the story as well as one could hope.
Liminal spaces get under our skin in a way that’s difficult to explain–both captivating and unsettling. Those are perhaps the best ways to describe T. Kingfisher’s The Hollow Places as well…the book is both captivating and unsettling–but in the best ways.
Kara’s life didn’t turn out quite the way she expected. Freshly divorced from a husband who left more than a little bit to be desired, she finds herself moving into the apartment owned by her eccentric and doting uncle, in the same building as his museum of curiosities–mostly containing items of questionable authenticity and taxidermy specimens of equally questionable taste and quality. When she discovers a hole in the wall, Kara has no way of preparing for what she discovers on the other side.
With the assistance of her friend and trusty barista, Kara explores the concrete bunker that exists in a space that can’t exist within the walls of her building, only to find a whole new world awaiting her. But this new world is a dangerous place filled with threats–both seen and unseen. Navigating the treacherous–and seemingly endless–series of small islands rising from a shallow river, Kara and Simon soon fear they may be lost. Lost, but not alone.
Will they find their way home?
If they find their way home, will something else pass through into our world?
You’ll have to read it to find out.
The Hollow Places is a stirring adventure into the unknown, leaving us with so many questions for which there are sure to be no answers…but satisfying our curiosity just the same.
The narration from Hillary Huber is spot-on, capturing the exasperated and sarcastic nature of Kara’s character, the kindly qualities of her loving uncle, and the peculiarly out-of-his-depth Simon about as perfectly as one could hope.
Anthony Graham is a successful real estate agent. That success is due–in no small part–to a deal he made with the devil, in the form of an agreement made with a mob boss who wants to use vacant properties for a variety of purposes, no questions asked. When Anthony stumbles upon one of his properties being used in an entirely predictable way–though one he never expected–it all comes crashing down around him in a barrage of sudden violence. On the run with his family, knowing he’s only postponing the inevitable, Anthony heads for a former campground he’s been unable to sell–hoping it’ll buy him some time to figure out what to do next. Unfortunately, for Anthony and his family, this campground holds dark secrets far worse–and more dangerous–than the men hunting them down.
John Durgin paints us a portrait of a family struggling to hold it together despite years of acrimony, strain, and secrets…and then he thrusts that family into a situation sure to unravel the worn threads that hold them together. Before they arrive at the campground the family is already falling apart, and it only gets worse from there. Good intentions spectacularly pave the way to Hell as two broken families with secrets buried deep come together, and Anthony learns first-hand why he’s never been able to sell the property.
We’re forced to witness as six people find themselves caught between two evils that mean nothing but harm, and we’re left wondering which of those two evils will exact their toll first as we descend toward a conclusion that can be nothing but violent and cruel. We may want to look away, but there’s some part of us that keeps us watching as everything approaches perhaps the only ending there could be.
Joe Hempel’s narration of the tale brings it to terrifying life and gives each character their own place in the listener’s imagination while we join them on their journey to the depths.
One part Cube, one part Saw, one part The Ninth Gate, and a dash of House On Haunted Hill, Duncan Ralston’s Puzzle House is an excellent book for fans of those movies. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys escape rooms, puzzles, and character studies–you’re in for one hell of a treat. When a mysterious puzzle master dies, his will brings together an assortment of strangers (all but his ex-wife, unfamiliar with the deceased as well)…but that is only the beginning of the mystery.
These people find themselves called to a house that has become something far more sinister, a series of escape rooms with a hefty toll to be paid and life-or-death consequences riding on the solutions. As they struggle to survive the sadistic gauntlet from which the only way out is through, secrets are revealed that connect these apparent strangers in ways that can’t be a coincidence. Somewhere at the core of it all is a mysterious organization with occult origins, and the rats in this maze are battling not only the clock but their own preconceived notions of what is–or can be–real. But will they be able to solve the puzzles that await them, and who will survive the journey into the Puzzle House? And is everyone who they seem to be? You’ll have to dare entry on your own to find out.
This one has one hell of an ending, and it leaves you wishing that you could stay with the story just a little bit longer–to find out what happens next. Ralston does a great job of leaving you hanging but feeling satisfied just the same–forced to decide how you, as the reader, might proceed.
Joe Hempel’s narration of the audiobook is spectacular as always…which should go without saying. He successfully brings the characters to life and pulls the story from the page, leaving the listener immersed in the nightmare environment.
Monochrome Noir: Book 1 (A Gathering Storm) introduces us to a world just like our own, but where everything is black and white, and color is of such priceless rarity that people will kill to own items that have been imbued by those who have the gift to bring color to life in the monochromatic items of everyday life.
When a strange and grisly series of killings begins, private detective Henry Hardcastle is hired by a mysterious woman with secrets to keep, and a deeply personal stake in the resolution of these terrible murders. As Henry struggles to navigate a world that isn’t quite what he believed it to be, a young woman, Charlie Grant is struggling with her own nightmare. As their independent journeys for understanding spiral around the central crux of the deranged killer stalking Angel City, we’re forced to wonder if they can fill in pieces of the puzzle for one another if they’re able to come together before one or both of them winds up dead.
Jack Wells does a fantastic job of building a world that’s as captivating as it is unreal, populating this world with characters sure to appeal to readers from a wide variety of tastes, and breathing new life into the hardboiled detective genre many of us adored when we were younger–and some of us never stopped adoring.
This is only Part 1 of the four book series, so there’s much more to come if you manage to weather the gathering storm.
Imagine living in a world where the dead remain side-by-side with the living–whether it’s animals or people, the dead remain tethered to the world and free to interact with it. This is the only world you’ve ever known–the way it’s always been. Imagine you find a house without any spectral presence–a place ghosts fear to tread–where any ghost unfortunate enough to cross a certain boundary is snuffed out. Would that place be as terrifying to you as a “haunted” location is to those of us in the more familiar world?
That is where this story begins, the discovery of a place that is not only devoid of spiritual entities but fatally harmful to them. Where it ends is far worse.
Kozeniewski and Young created a fantastic vision of a world in which things are quite different from our own, a society that is familiar enough to feel real yet so wildly different as to provide the reader with a sense of adventurous thrill as they learn how things work when the dead don’t leave us. We’re provided adequate time to explore this world before we’re forced to fear that it’s all going away, as whatever unknown force transformed the un-haunted house into a place of certain death for spirits begins to spread.
It’s a story of family, unanticipated romance, and the five stages of grief played out on a global scale…as humanity is forced to learn–for the first time–how to mourn the loss of those they loved in life. It’s a story of the sudden fear of mortality striking home everywhere, all at once…with devastating consequences. It’s all of those things, and so much more. There’s humor, there’s heart, and there is ample horror too.
I’d like to say something right away. I’ve been consuming audiobooks a great deal for the last few years. I listen to them when I’m driving, I listen to them when I’m at the gym, and I occasionally even listen to them when I’m relaxing at home. Normally, I’m a fan. In this case, I think I would have been better off reading the book in either physical or digital format. If you’re familiar with my reviews, I typically focus on the story first and mention the audiobook narrator at the very end. I’m deviating from that here. In most instances, an audiobook narrator should be virtually invisible–like the word “said”–in that they neither add nor subtract from the quality of the narrative they’re reciting. In the best cases, they elevate the narrative with the caliber of their performance. This is neither of those scenarios. I was not impressed with Louise Cooksey’s narration. Most of the performance was great, but her attempts to capture the individual voices of the male characters within the story left a lot to be desired. They universally sounded like whining, nasal, teenage boys who had recently been dumped. This was suitable for the character of SLAVEMASTER, but it made the audiobook harder to listen to than if she’d simply used her general narrative voice instead. None of this is meant to suggest she’s a bad audiobook narrator–she definitely was not–just that her voices for a couple of characters made it a bit of a challenge to stay in the story.
As far as the story is concerned, it was almost a cautionary tale about the online fetish websites of the 1990s and early 2000s…much of it focusing on the worst elements within that world. Naturally, that makes sense, when you’re familiar with the case of John Edward Robinson…the inspiration behind the story’s antagonist.
Rufty and White introduce readers to a world of depravity and torture–only some of it consensual. Readers familiar with bondage, domination, and sadism aren’t likely to be squeamish…and much of the content will be less shocking than one might expect from the authors. I don’t think the purpose was to be shocking…but rather to guide readers into a world they may not be familiar with–or may only have a 50 Shades of Grey introductory-level understanding of–before taking them beyond their comfort levels and urging them to shout out a safe word that will only fall on deaf ears.
It’s the hellish conclusion of the story where White and Rufty come out to play, no longer satisfied to play tour guides in the well-trod ground of S&M and B&D…desperate instead to take you somewhere you only accidentally discovered. If you’d only stayed somewhere safe, somewhere comfortable, somewhere you knew the rules…you would have been fine. But you let them take the reins.
Killer RV is not the first book to tackle the subject matter at the core of this story, but it’s also not the worst. What would you do if you were diagnosed with terminal cancer and had only months to live? If you have at least a momentary urge to suggest that you might hunt down and torture and/or kill sex offenders–first of all, you’re not alone, but secondly, this book is for you. I suppose you’ve guessed what this one’s about.
Delilah is a bored housewife/music producer who happens to notice a new RV parked in her neighborhood, and she decides she wants to be a friendly neighbor. This is how she meets Peggy and also how her life takes a turn she couldn’t have anticipated. Peggy is dying, and she has a bucket list she wants to fulfill before the cancer takes her down…but we don’t learn what the items on that list happen to be until a little further into the story. Initially, it’s mostly focused on Delilah–her marriage and her burgeoning friendship with the mercurial Peggy. It isn’t until after Chekhov’s epilepsy makes an appearance, that Delilah becomes an integral component in Peggy’s mission. You’ll understand why I say that if you read the book.
Once things start going down the violent path, they never really stop until the book concludes. We’re introduced to a world where sexual predators of all stripes lurk wherever one chooses to look…and it’s a veritable buffet of monsters just waiting to be tossed into the bucket.
I have a certain sentimental connection with this story, in that a significant portion of it takes place in South Dakota, where I spent most of my life…and most of that portion of the narrative is in the Black Hills and Badlands region that I called home for most of my 45 years. The seemingly neverending path that I-90 carves across the state, through Wyoming, and into Montana is one I’m intimately familiar with–so I could visualize a lot of the surroundings into which the characters were placed.
It’s a short read and well-paced…so you don’t have much excuse to avoid it.
I had the pleasure of reading this novella before the official release date to provide the author with a blurb. When I say it was a pleasure, I am absolutely sincere. The title is by no means misleading…everything does come to a horrible end, but that should be no surprise once you’ve made your way even a quarter of the way through the hellishly phantasmagoric tale Mike Salt has shared with us.
Coming home from vacation can often feel like returning to Hell. I think, upon reading this story, you might have a different perspective on that matter. A group of old friends spend a drunken and debauched vacation at a Disney theme park, sans children–only to return home, exhausted and thoroughly unprepared for the gift that awaits them. As they struggle to contend with forces they neither understand nor invited into their lives, they quickly learn that there are things in the darkness that are far worse than anything they might have imagined.
Salt holds little back in his depictions of torture, both physical and psychological–and he packs a whole lot of both into this slim volume. The characters come to life before your eyes only for you to witness as those lives are devastated and ripped apart with the same confusion and uncertainty the people on the page experience for themselves. Each step of the way, you find yourself wondering what comes next…and how much worse it can get. I assure you, it does get worse.
When you frequent literary circles you find yourself asked questions like, “What is the best opening line you’ve ever read?”
For many years now, my answer to that question has invariably been The Pig by Edward Lee. I won’t include the quote here, because it’s sure to force one algorithm or another to reject my review of this single-volume trilogy. Suffice it to say, it’s irreverent, humorous, captivating, and vile…all things that virtually insist that the reader keep on going. The discerning reader will be satisfied to discover that the rest of the tale is similarly irreverent, humorous, captivating, and vile. I had the pleasure of reading The Pig and The House in a single volume quite some time ago, but this new edition from Evil Cookie Press is a trifecta, in that it includes an additional installment, picking up the loose threads left behind and running with it until anything sane is unraveled. If there’s a trigger warning out there, this volume contains the associated trigger.
The meta commentaries from the perspective of the author are an excellent touch in this new installment, providing an amusing insight into the creative mind behind this perverse and sordid tale of an isolated house on an isolated tract of land where truly awful things have taken place over a handful of decades. If you had the pleasure of experiencing this unlikely vacation spot in the previous glimpses of the 1970s and the early 2000s, you won’t be disappointed. There’s a sense of coming home as Lee invites us to revisit the haunted house in the modern day–when everything comes full circle and we are truly introduced to the monstrous forces at work. If this is your first visit–well, then–I truly envy you the opportunity that awaits.
Domus Necrophagous 