small press

Son Of the Right Hand: Book of Ze’ev 2 by John Baltisberger

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

John Baltisberger takes everything great from Treif Magic and amplifies it with this sequel. As a result, Son of the Right Hand feels simultaneously more intimate and far more epic than the earlier installment in the story of Ze’ev.
Months after the intense conclusion of Treif Magic, Son of the Right Hand picks up after Ze’ev has had time to recuperate. With remnants of the cult scattered into the wind at the end of Treif Magic, Ze’ev has been hunting them down and bringing them to justice. As we follow Ze’ev into what he believes to be the hideout of the final members of the cult, he discovers something far more hideous and terrible than simply a couple of cultists.
Just when Ze’ev thinks he’s earned a well-deserved break from the darkness, an old friend reaches out with terrible news of a gruesome tragedy. Time is running out as another girl has gone missing, and Ze’ev doesn’t know if he can bear the weight of another failure. His struggle to do the right thing and bring his friend some closure brings him face-to-face with a monster from deep in the history of serial killer lore.
If that’s not enough, the past isn’t through with Ze’ev, as his superiors present him with what might be the greatest challenge he’s faced so far. Sandy, the young woman he saved in the previous book–kicking off the events that nearly ended his life–is to be taken into his care. Her brief encounter with the darkness coexisting within our world has tainted her in the same way Ze’ev was tainted as a young man. Now, it’s up to him to teach her how to navigate the world as she now recognizes it.
As everything collides in a tumultuous–and possibly fatal–climax, Ze’ev makes a deal that has consequences he may not be able to live with.
Fans of John’s religious horror masterpiece, War of Dictates, will be pleased to see some crossover from characters in that epic poem as Ze’ev crosses the boundaries that separate our world from the worlds of the things that live in the shadows. That scene alone is worth the price of admission. If you haven’t already read the Splatterpunk Award-nominated War of Dictates, then you need to address that shortcoming post haste.
Notable, within the narrative, we get to act as stand-in students as Ze’ev ruminates on what and how he will teach Sandy. This is brought to greater fruition as we experience her first lesson. The expositionary dialogue is fascinating and internally justified within the story, at no point detracting from the flow of the story.
It’s a damn shame that the next book isn’t already out because this one absolutely leaves the reader wanting more, and impatient too.

This title is also available through http://www.godless.com or via the Godless app on your favorite Apple and Android platforms. I recommend checking Godless out at the earliest convenience. It’s the new home for indie horror. The link is below:

Son of the Right Hand (The Book of Ze'ev 2) by John Baltisberger

Flushed by Chris Miller, narrated by S. W. Salzman

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Chris Miller’s Flushed is short. I’d go so far as to suggest the value of giving this story a listen is inversely proportional to the size of the tale.
What we have here is an uncomfortably–horrifyingly–relatable story of one of those times when we absolutely know our bowels are going to fail us in the worst possible way, at the most calamitous conceivable location, when the timing couldn’t be worse. While we all may not be able to relate to a drunken workplace hook-up with someone we’d sooner have avoided, I think we can all imagine how such a thing might happen.
Miller tells an entertaining tale, increasingly implausible as Murphy’s Law takes a cruel toll on Marty.
The narration provided by S. W. Salzman brings the extreme discomfort and humiliation to life.

The Bleed: Rupture by Mark Tufo, Chris Philbrook, and David Moody, Narrated by Scott Aiello

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

The Bleed: Rupture is the beginning of something great, for sure. If the combined efforts of Mark Tufo, Chris Philbrook, and the always fantastic David Moody maintain this same sort of quality moving forward, this series will be spectacular.
The three authors involved in this project successfully combine body horror, fantasy, and science fiction into something greater than the sum of the individual components. The individual stories meld together, creating a sweeping, epic tale of a multiverse in jeopardy as a race of gods and their halfbreed offspring fight a battle of attrition on one world after another against an unstoppable, all-consuming enemy, The Bleed.
We get to experience the disastrous consequences of two gods with conflicting goals in modern-day London as Jenny struggles to come to terms with her heritage.
We join the members of a lunar colony as their settlement faces catastrophic collapse. The small handful of survivors learn that there are secrets on the moon no one could have expected.
And finally, we follow Arridon and Thistle, two half-gods, as their world approaches a horrifying end at the hands of a monstrous force that seeks to devour everything living and dead in absolute domination.
As the stories tie together at the end in the most unexpected ways, I couldn’t help but want to move immediately on to the second volume in the series.
The narration provided by Scott Aiello for the audiobook edition is fantastic. He tackles the cast of characters and their various accents better than many audiobook narrators I’ve heard.

Fucking Scumbags Burn In Hell: Book 6 by John Shupeck, Jr.

/ MeltdownMessiah / 4 Comments

Pink introduces us to Theo as she attends SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous) for the first time. Theo has a problem–and it’s far worse than what the reader might first imagine–but it soon becomes clear she’s uninterested in finding a solution. She’s not there for help. She’s there on the prowl.
The usual therapist who hosts these meetings isn’t available, but Dr. Hooper is there to help everyone through the session. As Theo’s initial meeting of SAA becomes progressively more bizarre and surreal, it’s difficult not to feel a sense of unease, knowing that there’s more to the story and that we’re probably not going to like what awaits us.
It’s only after Theo brings one of the other sex addicts home to her apartment that we get the first glimpse of just how dark and perverse Theo’s hunger happens to be. With a brief glimpse of a jar and bloody chains, we join Casey in feeling a sense of disorientation and panic as we realize there’s something far worse than sex addiction going on.
By the time it’s all over–and the story comes to a close–we’re forced to examine the definition of murder and what it means to kill someone. Shupeck paints us an excruciatingly real portrait of someone who doesn’t care who she hurts, as long as she gets what she wants. What she wants is to live the adage, “misery loves company.”
Anyone who has read the previous five installments in the FSBIH series will recognize that Hooper tends to give people a choice, and it’s the very choice they make that leads them into his power. This is no different. Theo is given a choice, more clearly than most of Hooper’s “victims” have gotten…and Theo does indeed make her choice with wide-open eyes.
This one might be the worst of the installments to read so far, for reasons that will be clear to anyone upon arriving at the end. The graphic, grotesque imagery is only half of the problem. It’s the depravity and monstrous nature of Theo herself that hits the hardest.

This title is exclusively available through http://www.godless.com or via the Godless app for your Apple and Android devices. You can obtain it at the following link:

Pink (Fucking Scumbags Burn in Hell: Book 6) by John Shupeck, Jr.

Die, You Fucking Cunt! by Sean Hawker

/ MeltdownMessiah / 6 Comments

As the story begins, we almost feel sorry for Les as we catch glimpses of just how mentally unstable his wife, Marjory, happens to be. Something still tugs at the back of your mind, suggesting that Les can’t be all that well either, judging by how casually he seems to react to Marjory’s antics.
Unable to have a child together, the couple has tried everything, including pets. Les is desperate to do something to assuage his wife’s malfunctioning nesting instinct.
Enter Gary, a dwarf who thinks he’s on his way to a movie set where he’ll be portraying a child much younger than his thirty years. He’s about to enter a nightmare even the reader doesn’t suspect by walking through the door of Les and Marjory’s residence.
If you think it’s awful after Gary gets tucked in the first night, wait until you meet Spencer.
Hawker makes you question what might be going on behind the closed doors of residential neighborhoods everywhere. If we peek through enough windows, will we find something like this story playing out? I sure hope not, but I suspect Hawker might be onto something here, and he’s showing us the unclean, horrifying truth buried beneath the banality of everyday life.

Swing by http://www.godless.com to pick up your own copy of this short story, or download the Godless app for Apple or Android devices. The link to this title is below:

Die, You Fucking Cunt! by Sean Hawker

Gob & Nob by Simon McHardy

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Step right up! Come on, folks. Step right up and see Gob the Blob and Nob the Purple Avenger as they pummel and penetrate their way through all comers! You’ll never see anything like this anywhere else!
Simon McHardy has a knack for taking a ludicrous juvenile concept and hammering it out into something both literate and entertaining. Gob is a morbidly obese imbecile with a 16-inch penile conjoined twin named Nob–complete with eyes, ears, a toothy mouth, and a mind of his own–he’s the one who does most of the thinking. These two are not relatable heroes. They’re not heroes at all, come to think of it. But they’re what we get, and it’s hard to turn away from the ultraviolent, absurd mess they leave in their wake, splattered lovingly upon these pages by McHardy.
From underground deathmatch fights to a burgeoning career in snuff films, Gob & Nob almost dare us to tear our eyes away from the pages as the story insists on continuing. And then, as we reach the end, we wonder why there isn’t more while simultaneously wanting to slap ourselves for asking for that very thing.

You can pick this one up for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app on your preferred mobile device. The link is below:

Gob & Nob by Simon McHardy

Magick Brew by Nikki Noir

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

I went into Magick Brew with high expectations. I’d previously read–and reviewed–the Black Planet collection compiling the first four novellas/novelettes in that series. She set the bar high with that one.
Magick Brew did not let me down. A morality tale reminding the reader to be careful what they wish for, this short story tells the tale of an incel who determines magic might be the only way he’ll get the girl he wants. Repeatedly striking out in his attempts to research a love spell, he almost gives up. Thankfully, for the readers, he does not. It would be a much shorter and far less interesting story if that happened.
Settle in, drink your watermelon margarita, and wait for the party to get going. You’re sure to enjoy the meal.

You can obtain your own copy of Magick Brew at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app for your Android or Apple devices. The link to this story is below:

Magick Brew (Uncensored Version) by Nikki Noir

Lushbutcher (Saturday Night’s Alright for Butchering) by Lucy Leitner

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Lushbutcher expands on The Godless League in a wildly different direction from the first installment. Where John Stabberger seemed like a sane, albeit homicidal, character, Jane Lushbutcher–not her real name–seems far more indiscriminate in her targeting of drunks, and her state of mental health is questionable, to put it nicely.
With a motivation born from the combination of childhood tragedy and a mission bestowed on her by God–who speaks to her through various inanimate objects and discarded food items–she seems initially sympathetic. The execution of her single-minded objective to stop drunk drivers wherever she can find them seems to be a bit more flexible in Lushbutcher’s interpretation–as well as the perspective of her God.
There’s no denying that this is a fun, violent joyride through the seedy streets and rooftops of Pittsburgh. But with victims less cut and dried as bad guys, Lushbutcher doesn’t come across as quite as focused and relatable as Stabberger. Don’t let that turn you away from the story, though. It’s still an exciting, delirious adventure.

You can check this one out for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app for Android and Apple. The link for this title is below:

Godless League #2 (Lushbutcher – "Saturday Night’s Alright for Butchering") by Lucy Leitner

Fucking Scumbags Burn In Hell: Book 5 by Lucas Milliron

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Skin Deep feels like the answer to the unanswered question, “What if Nip/Tuck had included an absolute sociopath as a protagonist?”
Lucas Milliron expertly answers that question by crafting a narrative that showcases both the depravity and evil of Mike’s character but also the vulnerability and fear that serves as the substrate of who he’s become. The random glimpses into a horrifying childhood make it almost impossible to write Mike off as a two-dimensional piece of shit caricature. However, no amount of childhood trauma and abuse can make his actions throughout the story palatable or justified, and a reader can’t help but wish for Hooper to come along.
Milliron brings a different style to the Hoopiverse. He provides the reader with a frenetic, hallucinatory barrage of set pieces that manage to be simultaneously jarring and free-flowing. At no point does the reader see around the corner to what the next scene brings to the table, and that adds to the bewildering nature of this installment of the series.
As someone who can’t bear to have objects in/near my eyes, there was something viscerally unsettling about different aspects of this story.

As with the other installments of Fucking Scumbags Burn In Hell, you can obtain your own copy of this story at http://www.godless.com or on the Godless app, available for both Apple and Android users. The link to the story is below:

Skin Deep (Fucking Scumbags Burn in Hell: Book 5) by Lucas Milliron

Fucking Scumbags Burn In Hell: Book 4 by Lucy Leitner

/ MeltdownMessiah / Leave a comment

Karen is the fourth installment of the Fucking Scumbags Burn In Hell series, initiated by Drew Stepek. This volume was thrust upon us by Lucy Leitner. She was perhaps the perfect writer for him to next incorporate into his Hoopiverse. It’s plain to see that, as soon as Stepek allowed Leitner to take the wheel, she proceeded to plow her BMW through no less than half a dozen overweight men, women, and children in a rampage from which the reader can’t turn away.
Karen is…well…a Karen in every conceivable sense. If you don’t know what that means, I’m curious about how you’re reading this review from your space beneath the rock under which you’ve clearly been residing. Karen’s not someone you’d want to follow on Instagram, for sure, unless you’re looking for tone-deaf comparisons with concentration camps. That particular gag reminded me a great deal of Marjorie Taylor Greene, and I subsequently pictured Greene in the role of Karen for the rest of the story.
By the time Hooper comes along, you’re practically begging to see this monster receive the comeuppance you know she’s got coming. Leitner does not disappoint!

You can find this title, as well as the other amazing contributions to the Hoopiverse, by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your Android or Apple device of choice. I’ve included the link to the Hoopiverse titles below:

Fucking Scumbags Burn in Hell