This story begins with what appears to be a charming little family gathered together near the tree to open presents on Christmas morning. Of course, knowing that this is a story from Matt Henshaw should give you pause, and provide some indication that things will not remain so tame and prosaic. It isn’t until grandma and uncle arrive with three presents left near the front door that things begin to change for the worse. Driven by compulsion, the trio of Daniel, Sally, and Billy start unwrapping the presents with disastrous consequences. A lump of coal is just fine with me if that’s an alternative to what happens to this family when they find themselves on Santa’s naughty list. Thankfully, Henshaw isn’t in R&D at Santa’s workshop, because Christmas would be a rather different experience for a lot of people.
This story was released as part of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Pickles, raw meat, even toilet paper, I’ve heard of some peculiar cravings experienced by pregnant women. For Sarah, her impulsive craving for a burger on the way home from an ultrasound was only the beginning. She doesn’t discover the true meaning of craving until she rushes to the bathroom after devouring that meal. McCluskey hits us with a barrage of revolting set pieces devoted to Sarah fulfilling her new and increasingly disgusting cravings from that point on. We’re unable to turn away as we witness the vile, superbly detailed filth unfolding before us until everything in the first-time mother’s life spirals out of control as she desperately seeks to provide her unborn child with what it needs. The best part is that none of this feels like shock and revulsion simply for the sake of creating something gross. There’s something more behind the mischievous and perverse imagination on display here. McCluskey manages to make us question things along the way. How far will a parent go to provide what they believe their child needs from them? How much willpower and control does one have in reserve when faced with an overwhelming, all-consuming impulse like a pregnancy craving? How hard is it to clean certain substances out of one’s clothing after ravenously digging into a truly messy meal? I hope I never have the answers to any of these questions, and I dearly hope that McCluskey’s answer to the first two questions is not what we discover in these pages.
You can obtain Cravings for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. This title is also available from Amazon. The links are below:
Shane is a fighter, and he might be a big deal in his home of Australia, but he just experienced a humiliating defeat in Thailand. Bitter about his loss yet emboldened by a sense of entitlement, he discovers the perfect tattoo to commemorate his twenty-first birthday. From the wall of the tattoo parlor, Shane selects an image of the beautiful deity, Nang Tani. He demands that the artist perform the work against the old monk’s reservations, and ultimately gets more than he asked for. Unfortunately for Shane, one does not select her; she selects them. Shane and his best friend, Paul, are terrible young men. Racist, homophobic, womanizing, and prone to violence, the curse couldn’t have befallen a more suitable victim than Shane. Lee Franklin doesn’t skimp on the violence, brutality, and gore in Nang Tani. Nor does she refrain from bringing the characters to life by pulling no punches concerning their attitudes toward–and treatment of–the Thai locals and everyone else around them. This refusal to self-censor certainly helps Franklin to impart a great deal more authenticity to the interactions than might otherwise have been possible. There’s something deeply satisfying about seeing these two Australians suffering, but that’s only the beginning because Nang Tani has plans for Shane, and he’ll fulfill them whether he likes it or not.
You can obtain this for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
To suggest that Rayne Havok’s Lost Soul is shocking would come as no surprise to fans of her spectacular output. What might be surprising is the lack of violence, blood, and gore found within these pages. The things that should astonish absolutely no one are the exquisite quality of the writing and the commanding emotional depth exhibited within this story. I’m going to resist the urge to tell readers much about this story because I want them to go in fresh, but I’ll set the stage just a bit. May is at the end of a lifelong battle with depression, going through the motions on what she intends to be her final day of life. A surprise encounter on a bridge leads May to revelations about the nature of the soul and forces her to make an almost impossible choice in light of everything she’s discovered. Rayne Havok captures the insidious and numbing nature of depression–and long-term depression in particular–with the in-depth characterizations of both May and Zachary. She breathes tragically beautiful life into her characters on the page and reopens wounds for those who’ve experienced similar traumas and responses. I’d be surprised if this were not the most deeply personal thing the author’s written as it induces such sympathetic aches in the reader. But don’t shy away from it. Sometimes pain can be therapeutic, and besides, this is a love story. It’s a love story as only Rayne Havok could have written it because it’s awash with her voice and teeming with life experiences and somber yet hopeful spirituality.
Lost Soul was the final release of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021 in addition to being a birthday release for the author. You can obtain a copy by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
John Stabberger is back, and of course, he’s back with a vengeance. That’s pretty much his thing. After thoroughly laying waste to a former punk bar turned neo-Nazi cesspool, Stabberger patiently waits for the police to arrive on the scene. Sure, he could break into prison just as effectively as he could break out of one, but when there’s a chance to slaughter a bar full of neo-Nazis along the way, why wouldn’t he choose that path? Why does he want to get into a prison, you might ask? I’ll answer your question with a question. Why haven’t you been paying attention or reading the previous Godless League titles? If you’d read Antiva, the second volume in the Stabberger saga, you’d know that his next big target is presumably safe and sound behind bars where Stabberger can’t reach him, or so he thinks. The Aryan Nation better watch out when John Stabberger joins them on the cell block because he means business, and he has no pity. Baltisberger fills the pages with so much satisfying Nazi-killing action that it’s a veritable joyride for the reader. Vicarious satisfaction through fiction is probably safer and less legally problematic than going out to slaughter Nazis and alt-right scumbags for ourselves, but damn it if John Baltisberger doesn’t cause a bit of an itch for a bit of the old ultraviolence in his readers. We have the pleasure of learning a bit more about Stabberger’s history in this installment and Baltisberger sets the stage for the subsequent volume in such a way that it’ll have readers chomping at the bit and wishing it was available now.
The third volume in the saga of John Stabberger was released as the first drop of the new year through http://www.godless.com and you can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
INXS picks up right where the first Platinum Blondes concluded, though we’re first introduced to Tony and provided with awful glimpses into a childhood from which no one would walk away undamaged. As much sympathy as we might have for the young boy, he quickly erodes that goodwill as we get to know him further, and especially the man he’s become. It similarly doesn’t take long to discover that Tony is no stranger to Tina, the protagonist we became achingly familiar with during the first installment. The tangled web of connections and intrigue doesn’t end there, and the reader’s exposed to new revelations that paint everything we’ve read before in a different light. Previous sentiments have to be adjusted as new facts become available and more details become clear. We also learn more about Gwen and Patricia Tobin, the Platinum Blondes orchestrating everything and manipulating the protagonists to achieve their sinister goals. Unfortunately, the more we learn about the two women operating The Platinum Blondes Agency, the more questionable everything becomes, including their judgment. Todd Love answers questions we had from the first story in this series while providing us with all new questions to be answered in future installments. He leaves us wanting for more but satisfied for the time being. Violence batters the reader from almost every page, and the story is positively soaked with blood, semen, and other fluids. Monsters elicit sympathy as we witness their development, and those who initially seemed like victims begin to appear more like monsters themselves. In all of this, Love reminds us to leave our preconceptions at the door when we enter The Platinum Blonde Agency.
You can obtain a copy of this story for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your preferred mobile device. The link is below:
Tina lost everything in one careless, stupid action of a drunk driver. Her husband, her two children, and their chocolate lab all lost their lives in a spectacularly awful fashion. As if she didn’t have enough indignity to suffer through with all of that, she also has a fat, leering pastor to deal with when setting up the funeral arrangements. When the stranger with platinum blonde hair approaches Tina at the funeral, offering closure and peace, she takes the nondescript business card and forgets about it for a little while. Closure, in the world of Todd Love’s Platinum Blondes, has a way of hammering its way into one’s imagination and searing itself in the reader’s memory. Love dedicates a significant portion of this narrative to the cruel task of ripping the reader’s heart out and stomping on it as if it were an offending cockroach scurrying across his kitchen floor. He also spends a fair amount of time shoring up our disgust for the drunk driver who stole everything from Tina with his carelessness and disgusting behavior. Then, when we think he’s done screwing with us, Todd Love delivers a twist that Holmes wouldn’t have seen coming. This first installment of Love’s Platinum Blondes series of shorts is at turns gripping, heart-wrenching, perversely satisfying, and shocking. Platinum Blondes is a short story the reader wishes to continue reading beyond the final sentence, and thankfully there’s more.
This short story is available through http://www.godless.com and you can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Because my blog receives traffic that doesn’t necessarily overlap with my other social media accounts, I would be remiss if I didn’t share this here. Because I’m an absurd human being, I’ve decided that I want to reward readers/reviewers of my December 2021 short story, When You’re Here, You’re Fatalities, available exclusively through http://www.godless.com You’ll want to pay attention to this!
Sadly, this is only valid for individuals located in the United States. If I could extend this to other countries, I would gladly do so, but the logistics involved are just too much of an issue.
Initially, the plan was that if I could sell 250,000 copies of the story, I would randomly select five winners from those who have reviewed the title at Godless. Those five individuals would need to provide me with their contact information–including the physical address–as well as a time frame that would work best for them. I would then plan a road trip with my girlfriend (and possibly my teenage daughter) to travel to that reviewer’s location. We could spend the day hanging out, doing touristy things, or whatever. To conclude the evening, I would take the winner and their immediate family (or significant other and whatnot) to dinner at the nearest Olive Garden location. I have modified the plan slightly since the original goal is altogether ludicrous. Of course, the adjusted step goals are also ridiculous, but you shouldn’t expect anything different from me. Upon selling 100,000 copies of the story through Godless, I will select two winners who have posted reviews of the story, to Godless and/or Goodreads. After another 100,000 sales, I will select another two winners from the remaining reviewers who had not won. And, if I happen to sell another 50,000 copies of When You’re Here, You’re Fatalities after that, I will select one more lucky winner from those who have not already won. Assuming every buyer leaves a review, that’s a 1 in 50,000 chance of winning a family dinner at Olive Garden with a horror author who wrote a short story that takes place in a fictionalized version of an Olive Garden restaurant. For only fifty cents to get your name in the drawing, it’s probably a better deal than many raffles and drawings in which one might participate. But there’s always the fact that many people still won’t leave reviews, and that improves the odds in your favor.
The title can be obtained by going to the following link at Godless:
For “Snowflake,” there’s perhaps no greater torture than performing as a Christmas elf at the mall. Understandably, she’d feel that way, from the pedophile Santa to the grimy, screaming children. It doesn’t get much worse than that. Except for maybe being subjected to a hot box apartment with no air conditioning, a bare trickle of water pressure, and an elderly neighbor who listens to her television far too loud for anyone not hard of hearing. She’s got problems, but it’s about to get more interesting. She’s about to make them your problems instead. With irreverence and humor, Lindsay Crook assaults the hyper-commercialized Christmas holiday. She also sets her sights on inconsiderate neighbors, annoying coworkers, perverts, and Karens through the proxy of her protagonist, exhibiting knee-jerk reactions of violence that every reader is sure to relate to. How much chaos can one Christmas elf cause in the week before Christmas? You might be surprised. As with the previous Manic story, Crook manages to hit on topics from misogyny to miserable workplace conditions, while also attacking the seeming ubiquitousness of perverse male behavior, from the security guard to the mall Santa. Sure, it’s a fun romp as well, but there’s a whole lot of uncomfortable truth in this story as well.
This story was released as part of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device. The link is below:
Is there a more horrible occupational combination of thankless and stressful than working in fast food? Probably not. For the protagonist of Lindsay Crook’s Manic, life at Bill’s Burger Barn is one endless flow of disrespectful customers, sleazy bosses, and revolting working conditions. It’s enough to drive anyone mad. But maybe, if her personal life weren’t also in shambles, she could hold herself together past Wednesday. That’s a big maybe, though. It’s going to be a long week, but she’s going to make it everyone else’s problem if she has her way. One can hardly blame her when the universe seems to set things up just right. Crook is making poverty and impulse control issues sexy again. Wait, were those things ever sexy in the first place? I’m sure they were. I’m going to let it ride. Crook is bringing sexy back in a big way! Lindsay Crook fills these few pages with plenty of violence, biological warfare in the form of toxic food treatment, and even more violence. There’s more than that, though. At the core, this is a story that showcases how unutterably awful life can be for women because, as much a caricature as Manic might be, it’s probably not far off from the average week for altogether too many women. The world might be a better place if those women finally had enough, just like this protagonist did. Of course, it would be a better place if people just behaved better in the first place, but that might be asking a bit too much. Crook also manages to capture the stress and hopelessness that goes hand-in-hand with poverty-level existence and working demeaning, demoralizing jobs, only to barely make ends meet.
You can pick up a copy of Manic by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:
Domus Necrophagous 