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Bringing Some Mania To the Media, Gushing With Gallows Humor

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It’s no surprise to anyone who has worked in Journalism (or had loved ones who have) that people working in the Media either develop a dark sense of humor over time or have one to begin with. Gallows humor isn’t uncommon in people who experience physically or psychologically stressful and challenging situations in their line of work. It’s something that research has consistently shown to be true for Medical Professionals, First Responders, Veterans, Journalists, and others who regularly encounter difficult and unpleasant things in their line of work.

This makes perfect sense, considering the well-established connection between humor and stress reduction, as well as the impact it has on depression and irritation. Dark Humor is, for many people, a Coping Mechanism that helps to stave off depression and distress in response to traumatic experiences, and not exclusively those associated with one’s occupation. It’s been compared to “whistling past the graveyard” by some.

Several studies have been conducted on the correlation between Dark Humor and Trauma, available from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the American Medical Association. The overall effectiveness of this kind of outlook (as far as catharsis is concerned) is debatable, but the prevalence is undeniable.

That being said, my tendency toward Gallows Humor can run a bit darker and deeper than most. Some of that could be related to my secondary career as a horror author and a certain desensitization that goes with intentionally exploring some truly taboo and horrific topics, as well as the worst aspects of my own human nature. It could be a result of Childhood Trauma combined with my career choices. It could be something in the way I’m hardwired. I do know that my greatest enjoyment concerning jokes and comedy has always leaned in that direction, at least as far back as I can recall. My suspicion is that (at least in my case) it’s a combination of all of the above that influences my brand of humor as it stands today.

One of the ways my humor manifests in my career as a Journalist is in a fascination with both alliteration and rhyme, especially in places where it’s thoroughly inappropriate. Some of my colleagues can appreciate my perspective, and even the inherent humor behind my statements and suggestions, while others find it perplexing and in poor taste. I suspect some of the latter individuals would find themselves less shocked by my occasional outbursts and the like if they’d been working in the industry longer than they have.

When I was still working in Western South Dakota, during the late summer of 2022, there was a murder that took place at a mobile home in Box Elder, the town that is butted up against Ellsworth Air Force Base. I typed up a quick Limerick and sent it via text to my News Director so that it would be the first thing she’d see when she woke up for work that morning. I received a one-word response a short while later, “No!”

Naturally, I wasn’t sincerely going to incorporate anything like the following rhyme into my scripts for the Newscast, but that didn’t change how amusing I thought it was to imagine doing so.

There was a middle-aged man in Box Elder.
He hated a woman and felled her.
He’s under arrest.
Despite his protests.
He was caught trying to run from the trailer.

In May of this year, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek declared the month to be Wildfire Awareness Month. When we were covering the story, I suggested a poem for the reporter we were assigning to it. I don’t consider the following poem to be particularly dark, but I understand how and why it was nevertheless unacceptable in practical terms.

Top fire officials share an outlook that’s quite concerning…
Offering tips to keep Oregon’s forests from burning.
Governor Kotek signs a new declaration.
Wildfire Awareness Month is her creation.
The fire cache is stocked up with much-needed supplies.
What you can do to avoid a scorching surprise.

There are several more incidents of me attempting to insert levity where most people would insist it does not belong, and I suppose I should share a few more examples. Some of these may be a bit grim, while others (I insist) are simply funny.

It was May of 2024 when Washington’s former Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, was campaigning for Governor. A Republican activist recruited two men, also named Bob Ferguson, to campaign as Democrats as well, going so far as to pay their filing fees and handle the registration of their campaigns. Those two fraudulent campaigns were ultimately withdrawn from the race because it’s a Class B Felony to intentionally mislead or confuse the election as they were. I put the story together for my Newscast and suggested that I should use a graphic saying, “Two Bobs, One Gov.” The way I looked at it, anyone who picked up on the reference to “Two Girls, One Cup” wasn’t likely to complain about it.

In October of 2024, one of our reporters provided a multi-part explainer on how the new Ranked-Choice voting process works because Portland had implemented Ranked-Choice for the Mayoral Race. When he was delving into how tabulation of the results would be performed, I opted to tease the story with, “What to expect when you’re electing.”

That same month, there was an Officer-Involved Shooting in a Taco Bell drive-thru, and I suggested we should lighten the tone by saying the individual who was shot had been trying to make a run for the border. I wasn’t alone in making bad jokes associated with that particular incident. Things like Glock-o Bell may have been tossed around for our amusement.

In November of last year, I found a story from Alaska about a beached fin whale near Anchorage. Part of the story focused on a mother who homeschools her children, and how she used the carcass as supplemental material for biology lessons. While putting the story together for my Newscast, I added a graphic that said, “A Whale Of a Lesson,” and I’m still pretty proud of that.

In April of this year, we were discussing updates to the police investigation of a mother and her children who were found hanging in their home a couple of weeks earlier. It wasn’t a quiet environment when I muttered (thinking it was only to myself), “I’m just hanging with my family this weekend.” It was, however, quiet enough that one person did hear what I said, and their response seemed to display both appreciation and shock at what I’d just said.

There is a walking trail near where I live in Vancouver, featuring various gnome figures and fairy gardens, because several children use that path to get to school. It provided a little bit of magic as kids made their way to and from school, and the nearby community put a fair amount of time and effort into contributing to those additions to the trail. People being who they are, it’s no surprise that someone came along and started destroying the gnomes, and I proudly wrote a script that said the community intended to fight back against the “gnome wrecker.”

It wasn’t long ago that we learned of a sperm race taking place at the Hollywood Palladium in LA, complete with a tiny racetrack and high-resolution cameras monitoring the speed and motility of the sperm cells facing off head-to-head. We chattered about that on and off for a couple of hours, leading to a deeply unserious environment. One of our photographers said he could fly down to LA to shoot the event, and I asked if we could refer to that as a new form of “skeet shooting.”

From what we were seeing, the main event appeared to be a contest between sperm from a white man and a black man. I asked how long it would take for the racists to start in with accusations of “fast-twitch flagella.”

Some of these are dark, and some are inappropriate, but they’re also emblematic of what it can be like to work in the field that I do. This may go some way toward explaining my attitude at times when I’m discussing politics and other topics as well. Combined with my deeply-rooted cynicism, my tendency to find humor in things that might not be inherently humorous occasionally causes issues for me in my personal life, more often than my professional one. There’s a degree of amusement to be found in my professional environment being where some of my least professional comments are the most acceptable. But, the reality is that we understand one another there, and we understand how some of the things we expose ourselves to would wear us down far more quickly if we didn’t find a way to laugh through the pain and whistle past the graveyard.

Gollitok by Andrew Najberg, Narrated by Joe Hempel

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Andrew Najberg’s Gollitok brings to mind the work of Soviet and Russian post-apocalyptic authors like Dmitry Glukhovsky or Arkady and Boris Srugatsky. It’s refreshing to come across a title today with the same dystopian feel that one otherwise only sees in Cold War or post-Cold War literature. What begins as a bit of a mystery in which none of the characters trust–or can trust–one another while exploring and struggling to survive the isolation and potential contagion of the Gollitok prison colony quickly transforms into a masterpiece of body horror and the dangers associated with being on the wrong side of a fascist government.

As abbreviated as the story actually is, the characters are still well-drawn and the environment feels uncomfortably real. It’s hard to talk about the book without giving too much away. It’s clear that Najberg put a great deal of thought into both the environment and the social dynamics that underlie the narrative he’s crafted…but it’s something you’ll really have to experience for yourself. I suggest you do precisely that.

Joe Hempel’s narration is absolutely spot-on, capturing the nuances of characters, the various accents, and the tension the narrative builds within the reader/listener.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Gollitok-Audiobook/B0CX2LTZDF?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

Alpha: Chaos Awakens by Aleron Kong, Narrated by Pavi Proczko

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While his readers, listeners, and fans await the next installment of his The Land series, Aleron Kong has released another tangentially related title, Alpha. This one takes us back in time to before the opening scenes of God’s Eye: Awakening, and sometime following the events that kicked off the adventure in The Land. With some manipulation from certain Lords of Chaos, the Earth is connected to The Labyrinth, and all hell breaks loose. The changes are immediate, but the extent to which these changes alter the planet (and the life living here) is relatively gradual. Of course, those of us who have made it through God’s Eye: Awakening are aware of how this turns out for Earth and the human species. It is interesting to see how it all starts off, though.

We’re introduced to Fin and Lauren, a couple deeply in love and tragically bearing witness to the force of chaos piercing the planet and opening the bridge to The Labyrinth. Fin served in the military during the Third World War and became an ER doctor in his civilian life afterward, setting him up to be a more capable protagonist than our previous main characters in Kong’s books. The tone of this book shifts accordingly, as Fin (our narrator) is a man inured to violence and capable of cruelty when properly motivated.

I personally found Fin to be a reasonably compelling, three-dimensional character. He’s frequently at odds with his personal history and the way it shaped him, as he struggles to be the man Lauren helped him see he could become. This internal conflict and the dichotomy of the soldier vs. the physician is ever-present throughout the narrative and adds a bit more depth to the whole.

The introduction to the interface system on Earth is interesting, though occasionally a bit on the tedious side…but this is an introductory story, so that’s to be expected. There are definite differences from what we’re acquainted with in The Land and God’s Eye, and the fact that the planet itself is incorporated into the system was a nice touch.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much meat to this story. It largely takes place in a hospital as Fin explores the new features that have changed the world. Though they are satisfying, there’s not much movement as far as the plot is concerned, as the focus remains almost exclusively on character development. The conflict, when it arrives is a pleasant change, but the cliffhanger ending is an issue I have with most of Kong’s work. His books aren’t self-encapsulated and that leaves them feeling incomplete and mildly frustrating as we wait for the next installment that will invariably suffer from the same characteristic abrupt conclusion.

My other issue is with unattributed pop culture references. Notably, a cribbed section from High Fidelity really struck me as off-putting. It’s fine to incorporate pop culture references in fiction. Farscape, a television series from 20 years ago, handled it phenomenally well. The protagonist acknowledged that he was referencing things other characters would not recognize, and it was done with a wink and a nod. In Alpha, that particular reference was treated as if it was some witty thought process of the character. That didn’t sit well with me. There’s also the reality that people now hardly recognize references to High Fidelity, and it seems highly unlikely that a soldier from a good distance into our future would have no reason to have read or seen it.

Pavi Proczko’s narration is excellent. All three of the narrators who signed on to work with Kong have brought his works to life in a way that I consider admirable. Narrating a LitRPG title can’t be the easiest thing. Proczko does a great job of conveying the emotional fluctuations Fin experiences as the story progresses, and that’s definitely something different narrators struggle with.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Alpha-Audiobook/B0D6RYZWFS?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

The Wide, Carnivorous Sky & Other Monstrous Geographies by John Langan, Narrated by Eric Martin

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John Langan proves that he is a master storyteller with the collection of tales included in The Wide, Carnivorous Sky & Other Monstrous Geographies. It’s a diverse selection of tales, with some common threads of meta-commentary and a love of classic horror woven throughout many of them. This is an exceptional example of what’s meant by literary horror when the term gets bandied about. There’s a clear appreciation for the written word and it comes across as what feels like an almost meticulous process of selecting just the right words every step of the way.

We begin with a couple of stories that approach the zombie theme from vastly different directions, the second of which, “How the Day Runs Down,” was one of the most original and entertaining things I’ve had the pleasure of reading. While it isn’t–on the surface–overtly comedic, there’s something about a zombie plague as experienced by Thornton Wilder that manages to amuse the reader/listener to a great extent.

“Technicolor” showcases both Langan’s appreciation of the classics and his knack for metatextual analysis within the stories he tells, this time focused on Poe as he plays with the true story of the man’s life and then blurring the line between fiction and reality.

The titular story, “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky,” is a vampire tale unlike any other I’ve had the pleasure of reading…and that is a damn shame because I would love to read more stories like this one.

“City of the Dog” and “The Revel” tackle other supernatural creatures with the same deft hand Langan used when approaching zombies and vampires.

“The Shallows” presents a cosmic horror tale that’s as eerie and discomforting as anything written by Lovecraft, filled with tension and dread that are palpable to the reader.

“June, 1987. Hitchhiking. Mr. Norris.” is a bit more flippant than the other stories included, but when one discovers that it’s meant to be a sort of cruel and horrifically humorous tribute to the fantastic Laird Barron, that all starts to make sense.

“Mother of Stone” is the perfect tale to cap off the collection. It draws the reader in and fills them with a disquieting sense that the real world may not be quite what we believe it to be. This is one of those stories that makes you happy to know you’re reading fiction, though the investigation at the heart of the tale makes it feel all too real. It felt, much like “The Shallows,” like Langan was delving into the realm of cosmic horror, but in a far more practical and plausible fashion…which made the story delightful.

Eric Martin’s delivery as the narrator is superb, and fully captures the literary qualities of Langan’s work.

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Wide-Carnivorous-Sky-and-Other-Monstrous-Geographies-Audiobook/B07D814PNY?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

Small Town Horror by Ronald Malfi, Narrated by Joe Hempel

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Ronald Malfi excels in telling tales that center around mistakes we make as children coming back to haunt us, whether it’s a manifestation of our own guilt, someone exacting their revenge, a supernatural force, or a combination of those things. One of the most thrilling aspects of Malfi’s storytelling is that we’re often left to wonder which scenario(s) we’ll encounter in the story we’re reading. Small Town Horror is just such a story.

When a successful attorney, Andrew Larimer, receives an unexpected phone call from a childhood friend and agrees to return to the hometown he left in the rearview 20 years earlier, it sets him down a path of deception, mystery, and horror. Reuniting with former friends he hasn’t seen in decades, Andrew quickly learns that he might have been better off staying home than involving himself in the nightmare unfolding in Kingsport. As the shadow of an unspeakable event from the shared past of these five friends looms over their lives, they will find themselves tested and pushed to their limits.

Though it takes a while to discover the dark secret they’ve carried with them all these years, it’s fairly easy to figure out the broad strokes as the story unfolds. And while the revelations may not be a shock or surprise, I don’t think that was the point. It was the journey there that Malfi seemed to be focused on, building the tension as we wondered what would come next and who would suffer. We’re forced to wonder what might have happened if they’d only made different choices. Would honesty and accountability have produced a different outcome? I can only imagine that would be the case. That is, after all, the overarching theme–the danger of deception, and especially self-deception.

Even knowing the likely outcome, the conclusion hits like a punch to the gut. That is, after all, another of Malfi’s skills.

Joe Hempel, as always, brings the story to life as only the hardest-working audiobook narrator in the world (I can only assume) can manage.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Small-Town-Horror-Audiobook/B0D1RKVRJL?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

Have A Blast

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In 2022 I was invited to write a short story to be featured in an anthology focused on Wrath, as part of a series of anthologies centered around the Seven Deadly Sins. I was enthusiastically on board. Revenge and wrath are close to my heart, where fiction is concerned.

Unfortunately, I ran into a couple of issues that led to my inability to submit the story I’d been writing–not the least of which was that, upon rewriting the story, it exploded to almost double the word count expected by the publisher. I felt defeated and like I’d let the publisher in question down by not getting them the story I’d eagerly anticipated sending their way.

When Candace Nola started talking with me about rewriting/revising Innocence Ends, she asked if there was anything new I’d be interested in sending her way. I quickly wrapped up the loose threads I hadn’t tied off in the revenge story and sent it her way.

She wanted it! She had some requests and suggestions for areas she wanted me to expand on, and the story grew to just about the short end of what’s considered a novella.

And so, on August 5th of 2024, Have A Blast explodes onto the scene.

Molded by war and disfigured by a roadside bomb, Oliver Clark doesn’t hold out much hope for the future. Then he meets Jayne, and all of that changes. But when she’s taken from him, Oliver sets his sights on revenge.

No matter who it was, he’s determined that they’ll learn how far someone will go when they have nothing holding them back, and nothing left to lose.

Advance Praise for Have A Blast:

Salt Of My Blood by Jae Mazer

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Jae Mazer’s Salt Of My Blood is a tale of two vastly different characters, revealed through snapshot windows into their respective lives as we wait for what we’re sure will be a tumultuous meeting when the two come together. From childhood through the setbacks and disappointments of adult life, we witness the two characters grow and evolve along separate paths. Living in post-war Denmark, Lærke and Harald are deeply tied to the treacherous North Sea, but their relationships with the water are as distinctly different as their personalities.

Lærke’s lifelong love of the sea transforms into something far more peculiar–equally disturbing and beautiful in the way Mazer tackles a fascinating taboo–when she discovers her only true friend where the sand meets the sea. Harald’s love of the sea is deeply tethered to his cruel and predatory nature, and piracy becomes his sole passion. When their two worlds collide, it is truly captivating; a spectacle sure to feel like a reward to the reader.

Mazer addresses heavy topics in this modern-day fairy tale; sexual assault, mistreatment of women, the antiquated concept of the wife’s role within marriage, and the misogyny that underpins all of those things.

This story can be found on the Godless platform by clicking on the link below:

Salt of My Blood by Jae Mazer

Hollow: Linkville Horror Book 4 by Mike Salt, Narrated by Curtis Michael Holland

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Take one part As Above, So Below, one part The Descent, and one part Jacob’s Ladder (with just a dash of House of Leaves) and you’ll end up with something that adequately sets the stage for Mike Salt’s Hollow, the fourth installment of his Linkville Horror series. There’s much more involved than those three components, but they capture the atmosphere Salt crafts with this claustrophobic tale of terror.

Beneath the sleepy, seductive, and sinister town of Linkville is a tunnel that runs through the whole of downtown. Despite attempts by the city to renovate it and transform it into a tourist attraction, it’s fallen into disrepair. When Tyler and Robin returned to their hometown of Linkville, to visit with their friend Bird, they had no reason to think they’d be venturing into that tunnel. But when Bird frantically leaves his brother’s house upon their arrival, intent on tracking down his family and their friends who have been missing for a few days, Tyler and Robin feel compelled to help their friend out.

But it doesn’t stop with the tunnel. A hole in the tunnel leads into what appears to be a cavern hidden beneath, and that’s where Bird is certain his brother and sister-in-law have disappeared. Cooler heads do not prevail, and the three friends venture into the depths of a place from which there seems to be no escape.

Hollow is filled with labyrinthine mysteries, nightmares that come to life, claustrophobic tension, and the uncertainty of being unable to trust one’s own reality. It’s a bleak and torturous tale of survival from which there might be no such thing as surviving. While it’s a fully encapsulated story, without any need to explore the other Linkville Horror books, I suspect that this experience is more than sufficient to draw readers/listeners back to Linkville, even if they never get to explore the seemingly endless evil that exists just beneath the surface…and that may be a blessing. If Salt ever does invite readers back to the tunnels, it might be best to decline that invitation, as it can only get worse from here. Tyler and Robin would most certainly agree.

The narration provided by Curtis Michael Holland takes a little getting used to, but once you’re comfortably settled in, it’s a fun ride. I will say that he sounds just a bit like H. Jon Benjamin, which isn’t a bad thing, it just brings to mind many of the animated characters he’s voiced over the years while you’re trying to focus on the story.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Hollow-Audiobook/B0CL5K4H5X?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix, Narrated by Tai Sammons & Bronson Pinchot

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It’s not a popular opinion within the horror community, but I have not been a fan of Grady Hendrix. His writing is top-tier, and the concepts behind his work have always been compelling, but there’s something in the execution that’s never worked for me in the past. I’ve seen the rave reviews of books like My Best Friend’s Exorcism and The Final Girl Support Group, and I’ve gone into them hopeful…only to feel disappointed. I wanted to like them. Something about the characters and the pacing always left the stories lacking.

And then I took a chance on Horrorstor.

This was what I was hoping to find. The other Hendrix books didn’t do it for me, but this one contained the perfect blend of wry humor and sincere horror. The characters didn’t irritate me, the pacing felt simultaneously practiced and natural, and the story itself was fascinating.

If you’ve spent any time shopping at IKEA, you’re familiar with the planned layout that’s guaranteed to draw you deeper into the store before you ever have a chance to find an exit. The way out is through, but it’s a long way through. This is precisely the dynamic ORSK has implemented in its shameless attempt to copy the already established IKEA. And that makes it all the more difficult for employees to figure out how or why things are being damaged, defiled, and destroyed overnight. And, what’s worse, sales are down.

Could someone be breaking in? Or is this a case of someone phrogging in the establishment? That’s what the manager hopes to find out when he enlists two of his employees to spend the night there with him, as they prepare for a visit from corporate headquarters.

Unfortunately, the truth is far worse and infinitely more difficult to understand. Will any of the employees survive the night, or will they get lost in the labyrinth?

There’s a lot to unpack, from the scathing indictment of consumerism and the mindless drive to shop and spend that’s promoted and encouraged by the corporations hoping to pad the bottom line to the predatory conditions at-will employees are subject to, simply to keep the lights on. Hendrix imbues this story with plenty of social commentary.

The chapter breaks–with their increasingly sinister product descriptions–were one of the best things Hendrix could have added, making the whole experience that much more entertaining.

Tai Sammons’s narration of the main story was fantastic, and Bronson Pinchot’s delivery of the product advertisements separating the chapters was a masterful stroke of brilliance.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Horrorstoer-Audiobook/B00NLPAZ9W?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

The Walking by Bentley Little, Narrated by John Pirhalla

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If you’re familiar with Bentley Little, you’re probably well aware that he’s an author who excels at tales of small towns with dark secrets, hidden mysteries, and sinister forces beneath the surface. He takes the mundane and everyday aspects of our lives and transforms them into something sublimely creepy with apparent ease. That is, in fact, the man’s bread and butter as far as I’m concerned, and few have come close to doing it half as well.

The Walking includes a fair bit of what you’d expect from Little but with a lot more history involved than is often found in his work. The tale unfolds during two different periods, as the revelations behind what’s happening are deeply tied to events of the distant past, where a town of witches was established in the Southwest. In this place, they could be safe from persecution and the religious intolerance of the rest of American civilization. That is until everything falls apart.

In the modern day, we discover a plague of peculiar variety, in that some recently deceased people are suddenly driven to walk, although they’re clearly quite dead. Family secrets are uncovered, the cruel fate of the once-prosperous town of witches is revealed, and the cast of characters we’ve been following are forced to meet face-to-face with the mysterious force that’s animating the dead and calling them home.

Fans of The Summoning are sure to enjoy the appearance of a certain opportunistic FBI agent.

This was slower than a lot of Little’s work, but it was not disappointing for that fact. It felt different from much of his other work, including the pacing and the wider scale of the overall narrative.

John Pirhalla’s narration was top-notch, leaving no complaints and nothing to be desired.

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Walking-Audiobook/B0919B6SDX?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp