With Sally French firing a .45 slug through the window of the Harper house, aiming for Kelly Harper, but killing Coop Bainbridge instead, Jay Wilburn’s Seersucker Motherfucker kicks off a bloody feud that makes the Hatfields and McCoys seem quaint by comparison. The unrelenting, stylized violence that unfolds in the pages of this story is the sort of thing that would surely give Tarantino an erection. In fact, it might be a good idea to get this story in his hands, because this is just the sort of thing he could direct without leaving his wheelhouse. All that’s missing is the banter, 60s & 70s nostalgia, and pseudo-witty dialogue, and we’d have a fantastic Tarantino film in the making. Shifting perspectives as we follow one burst of bloodshed to another are handled so expertly by Wilburn that the reader never loses track of what’s happening as the tempo steadily increases. One might expect a sort of “fog of war” to gloss over the fine details, obscuring the brutality unfolding, but the clarity of purpose setting these families against one another is extended to the reader, and we’re blessed–or cursed–with an unflinching vision of the staccato rampage. The old adage, often attributed to Confucius, might have understated things when suggesting one should dig two graves, at least when Wilburn is at the helm.
You can pick up a copy of this story from http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your favorite mobile device. The link is below:
The Ghoul Archipelago takes us on quite the adventure. On the high seas, to the islands of Southeast Asia, we experience a region of the world unfamiliar to many of us. Kozeniewski populates his near-future vision of the exotic environment with smugglers, pirates, island tribes, missionary religious fanatics, a smug computer programmer and inventor, and, of course, zombies. We’ve witnessed zombies all over American and Europe, the cities of Asia, and the islands of the Caribbean. Stephen Kozeniewski takes us to a novel location where we can witness the collapse of civilization and the rise of the undead, somewhere it’s less apparent that the rest of the world is gone. At the core of this story, we see the same sad commentary on human nature fans of the subgenre should be familiar with. No matter where we are in the world, it would appear that we’re always too preoccupied with petty squabbles and power plays to focus on the survival that should be the unifying goal under such dire circumstances. As depressing as it might be, the author probably isn’t far off from the truth of it all. Skirting through a gauntlet of pirates on the payroll of a billionaire still fixated on profit, adherents of a Christian death cult, and a megalomaniacal naval commander are Henk Martigan and his crew of smugglers. Will anyone make it through Kozeniewski’s tale alive, or will monsters, both living and undead, grind all of the survivors into a meaty pulp of blood and viscera until only maggots thrive? It’s not easy to create an original story of the zombie apocalypse, but The Ghoul Archipelago is precisely that. Reliant on three-dimensional, believable, and even sympathetic characters, Kozeniewski propels the reader through scattered viewpoints as the adventure becomes far more than just a zombie story. Jennifer Fournier’s audiobook narration is excellent, especially when capturing shifts in cadence and accent from one character to another.
Hell Week introduces us to Tailor, President of the Sigma House fraternity, just as he’s about to cross a line from which he’ll never come back. Let’s face it, though, Tailor was an irredeemable and monumental piece of shit long before he ever approached the line he’s careening toward. You’re sure to feel just like I do, thinking Hoop can’t show up fast enough. Tailor and his inner circle of fraternity brothers pride themselves on degrading women in every conceivable way, but they appear to especially enjoy drugging and raping impressionable and insecure younger girls from their college. Alone with Nicole/Melanie/Pig Dolphin as she’s rapidly losing consciousness, Tailor discovers that taking everything up a notch might be the only way he’ll be able to get off this time. Already a monster, he doesn’t flinch as he passes the point of no return, in the process, destroying multiple additional lives with casual cruelty and disregard for anything approaching humanity. This kid should have been on Hoop’s radar for a long time before the events of Hell Week. Spoiled, narcissistic, cold-blooded, and lazy, the best that can be said about Tailor is that he’s apparently handsome and that he comes from wealth. Thankfully, with Hoop’s intervention, Tailor manages to do something good, unintentionally taking out the trash as he receives his comeuppance. Lewis Kelly is a new name for me, as I’m sure he is for many of you, but his is a name you’ll want to be watching for. I do not doubt that we’ll be seeing a lot of good material coming from this up-and-coming writer. Hell Week is a worthy addition to the Hoopiverse, and Lewis is a worthy author to have been included.
This title is available September 15th, 2021 on http://www.godless.com or through the Godless app, available on your preferred mobile platform. The link is below:
Ryder Kinlay is back again with the continuing adventures of David Longbottom. Time has passed since the events of Bloodymoon, and David has his 31st birthday on the near horizon. What does one give the man who has virtually everything and who is not shy about taking whatever else he wants? Drugs, drinking, and debauchery have kept him going, but he’s getting bored and the pandemic conditions have hampered his fun. Concerned about his apparent malaise, his mother and a couple of his friends have a surprise in store for David. If you thought the bloody honeymoon was violent and cruel, you’re in store for a real treat with this birthday bash. I’m perhaps a bit biased, as Ryder Kinlay offered to kill friends and fans if they could suggest a suitable way to torture and kill Longbottom’s victims. I was lucky enough to be one of those victims. It’s almost as if the author read my mind with the fate that befalls Nikolas in this story. I used to joke with my children that I was going to include it in my will that anyone who wanted an inheritance from me would have to consume me at the funeral reception. I suggested the exterior could be taxidermied while the meat could be prepared in a variety of ways for those who wanted to join in on the celebration. I worry that Donna, the other victim at the climax of this tale, may have never considered her ultimate outcome as the sort of thing she’d hope to experience. I just got lucky this time. Also, apparently I’m at least sort of hot in the fictional environment of the story, and I’ll take it! If you enjoyed American Psycho, you’ll love the references peppered through this story, and you’ll just love the story anyhow. Check it out!
You can obtain this story for yourself at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your mobile device. For a limited time, you’ll also obtain a free copy of the first Longbottom Misadventure, Bloodymoon. The link is below:
Sawbones introduces the reader to Edward Smalls, one of seven siblings in the Smalls family, and it is one hell of an introduction. A meeting with Alfred Leonard, a drug dealer and the criminal equivalent of middle-management, takes an unexpected turn as Edward is asked if he’d be willing to supply a snuff film for some new European business partners. No stranger to killing, Edward agrees to the strange proposition.. He already makes a living by supplying harvested organs on the black market, earning him the nickname Sawbones. How hard can it be to make a video incorporating sex and death? Locating a suitable victim and getting her back to his dungeon workspace turns out to be the simple part. Everything else seems to be working against him, from the oppressive heat to unwanted visitors. Edward learns the hard way that film sets are a perpetual state of barely organized chaos, and that the people behind-the-scenes bankrolling the production often seem not to share the same creative vision as the director. Edward Smalls is a strangely likeable character, considering how he earns his living. Ericmore successfully fleshes out a human monster who seems uncomfortably relatable and awkwardly amusing. It’ll be interesting to meet the other members of the Smalls family as the series continues. If this first installment is a solid basis of what to expect, there’s no way anyone could come out of this series feeling disappointed. The story reads like the novelization of a film written as a collaboration between Tarantino, Ritchie, and Roth.
You can obtain Sawbones, as well as the subsequent two volumes of the series right now, by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app. The link is below:
Ghost and Dean have been inseparable since Ghost skipped out on graduation and joined Dean in the journey to build a life of comfort for themselves. Dealing drugs isn’t a lifestyle choice for them, but a means to an end. As the two of them, along with Dean’s business partner, Sonny, meet with their supplier for the final time, they have no reason to expect anything out of the ordinary. All is not as expected when they sit down with Rodrigo, as he excitedly tells them about Grinder, the new drug he’s sure will make them all rich. The story descends into a delirious haze of erotic horror from there and the reader is sure to find themselves dizzy and breathless by the end. Blending sex and body horror with a truly Cronenbergesque flair reminiscent of Shivers, Nikki Noir shares a terrifying cautionary tale about experimenting with new and unusual substances.
You can read Grinder for yourself, along with many other fantastic Nikki Noir titles, by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app. The link for this title is below:
Molly Massacre’s HorrorGasm page on FANdom is successfully drawing subscribers with her horror-themed camgirl antics. She’s generating income at a rate most girls on FANdom would probably kill for, but everything is far from perfect. Molly wants out of the life she’s living with her narcissistic, domineering, drug-dealing boyfriend, Chad. With the assistance of her best friend (and business manager), Selena, Molly has a plan to escape from her boyfriend and to start a new life. For her final HorrorGasm performance, with a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired vibrator, Molly raffles off the chance to go on a date with her, and the plan seems to be wildly successful. Unfortunately, Chad’s increasingly erratic behavior and the white knight fantasy of a HorrorGasm subscriber, Dylan, send the plan off the rails. Will Molly Massacre’s HorrorGasm ultimately lead to true horror? You’ll have to read the story to find out. Unlike a lot of Noir’s fiction I’ve read, there is no supernatural/paranormal element to this tale. Horrorgasm is a straightforward thriller with a heavy erotic component. Don’t dismiss this story for the lack of surreal horror. Nikki Noir is no one-trick pony, and she’ll have you speeding through the pages, desperate to see where she leads you.
Horrorgasm is a Godless Exclusive title and you can obtain it for yourself at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your smartphone, tablet, or Kindle device. The link is below:
If like me, of the two major vampire films released in 1987, you prefer the Kathryn Bigelow directed Near Dark over Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys, Knuckle Supper is the vampire novel for you. The Lost Boys may have had the audience and the soundtrack, but Near Dark had the brutality, originality, and grittiness that befitted the monsters at the heart of the story. Knuckle Supper carries that tradition into 21st-century horror literature. Stepek writes vampires the way one might expect from someone who wants to take the monsters back from the L. J. Smiths and Stephenie Meyers of the world, restoring them to the darkness and underground where they belong. It’s difficult for me to describe what he’s put together in these pages that race past the reader at a rapid-fire pace. Knuckle Supper is, in effect, Anne Rice meets Irvine Welsh, Near Dark meets Requiem for a Dream, and a little bit The Warriors meets 30 Days of Night. If that doesn’t intrigue you, I honestly don’t know how else I can try to describe it without just reading the book to you, and we know I’m not going to do that. We meet RJ and Dez as they’re preparing to murder a pimp in the home they’re squatting in, a steadily depreciating house once belonging to a former child star turned heroin addict. RJ, Dez, and the rest of the Knucklers aren’t your typical Hollywood vampires, even though they live in Los Angeles. Blood isn’t their only addiction. They need heroin to survive. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as spiking a needle into their veins to get their fix. They need blood to carry the high into their starving, desiccated internal organs. Enter the pimp they’re about to have for supper. The (almost) 13-year-old prostitute carelessly tossed into the bathroom is all but forgotten as RJ and Dez make a mess of the place in their desperate chase for a fix. Against his better judgment, and displaying more humanity than his peers, RJ decides not to kill the young girl. This act of uncharacteristic decency is how Bait becomes part of his family. It’s also how everything begins to spiral out of control, ultimately bringing RJ face-to-face with The Cloth, an organization he’d dismissed as nothing but a vampire’s boogeyman, and the painful truth at the core of what RJ actually is. Drew Stepek introduces readers to a Los Angeles populated by a different sort of gang, consisting of a wholly different kind of gangster from what we’ve become familiar with from popular culture. The city is divided up between tenuously allied gangs of vampires, each feeding and dealing on their own turf. Brutal, far from immortal, and impulsive, Stepek’s vampires are prone to massive errors in judgment, and it’s only a matter of time before the flimsy alliances fracture and violence ensues. There’s more to this story than drug addiction and graphic violence, though there’s plenty of both. There’s also a depth and character to this story that underscores the superficial, splattery elements of the narrative.
You can obtain a copy of Knuckle Supper as well as the sequel, Knuckle Balled, by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your preferred mobile device: The link to this title on both Godless and Amazon are below:
Brand New Cherry Flavor is a book packed with originality and uniqueness. There’s a potential within this story, a barely suppressed tension and horror seething just below the surface, that sadly never quite reaches fruition. My comment on wasted potential is not to suggest I didn’t enjoy the story because it was surprisingly enjoyable. I feel almost as though the lack of gratification or fulfillment was an intentional stroke by the author. Consider it a page from the Bret Easton Ellis playbook, metafictional and intentionally subverting the expectation of the readers. Lisa Nova is, for the most part, not a likable character. Throughout the narrative, she fluctuates between appearing vapid and slyly witty while perpetually coming across as shallow. Being unlikeable does not, however, make her unsympathetic. Witnessing as her life spins out of control with an increasing cost in collateral damage, it would be challenging to dismiss her plight. We join the tale just as Lisa’s passed over for a promised role as the Assistant Director on a major film project. This position had been promised to her by Lou Burke, the man she’d been having an affair with up until that point. As a concession, her now-former lover sends her to meet with people who will capitalize on her looks by paying her to star in a pornography adjacent film. Lou Burke, or as Lisa repeatedly refers to him, “Lou Greenwood, Lou Adolph, Lou Burke,” is a class act. He deserves to have a fork stabbed into his leg. Incensed, and seeking revenge, Lisa goes to her ex-boyfriend, Code, to inquire about a hitman she’d heard about through him. This leads her to Boro, and the rest of the story evolves in its phantasmagoric way from that interaction. Traveling from Hollywood to Brazil, from Brazil to New York, and from New York back to Hollywood, Lisa discovers that Boro has not only taken the job of destroying Lou Burke–and his family–but is also providing Lisa with the power to shape the world around her in ways many people could only dream of. Psychic tattoos, a mythological white jaguar, zombies (of the voodoo variety), drugs of all flavors and varieties, magical filmmaking, mirrors that show the past, and a garden of human limbs are only some of the more bizarre elements of this story. Though I enjoyed this book a good deal less than I would have liked, I can certainly understand the appeal it has for other readers/listeners. The audiobook narration supplied by Marguerite Gavin made the story more enjoyable than it might have been without such a competent narrator. She certainly managed to fully convey the character of Lisa Nova better than I think many narrators could.
Kevin Sweeny’s The Whorehouse That Jack Built could be best described as what one might arrive at if they attempted to blend Hellraiser with The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, and set the tale in the late 1800s. There’s plenty of humor, though of a darker variety, and there’s a whole lot of focus on the place where pleasure meets pain in a sublime confluence. For the dying and the insane, a choice is given to cross the rubicon, to enter the Half-World in the Undiscovered Country. By giving up everything, the damned are provided with a chance to experience something no living soul, a single night of pleasure beyond anything available in Heaven or on Earth. All it costs is everything. We’re first introduced to this in-between house of carnal delights as Clem approaches the door with his old dog, Lady, by his side. Lady is no stranger to Clem’s sexual predilections, having served as his partner since she was a small pup. Aside from his blood, sweat, seed, and soul, Lady is the final sacrifice Clem makes as he crosses the threshold. Will he regret this decision or will the unearthly pleasures provided in the countless rooms of the whorehouse be sufficient to assuage the loss of his beloved Lady? As a dog lover–of a vastly different definition–I was not fond of Clem. Clem’s part in this narrative also includes language that, while appropriate to the time and the location, might offend some readers. It’s no less enjoyable for these things. Hell, it’s probably more enjoyable for the historical authenticity and the attention to detail Sweeny included. We’re next introduced to the albino preacher who arrives at the Half-World doors for an entirely different purpose, contrary to those of the usual guests. This new arrival comes just as the story comes to its end, leaving us wishing for more. Thankfully, the second installment in this series is already available, and there is more to come.
This title is a Godless exclusive that can be found at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your choice of mobile devices. The link is below:
Domus Necrophagous 