splatterpunk

The Fires of Garbagehead by Tim O’Neal

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Homeland is a small town in the center of America, or the middle of nowhere, depending on how one chooses to look at it. Either way, it’s a bad place for one’s car to break down, but that’s precisely what happens to Daniel on his journey to distance himself from the scandal and ignominy on the campus where his lascivious behavior got him into trouble.
What initially seems like a quaint dose of old-fashioned Americana grows increasingly offputting, and Daniel is eager to be on his way, but the residents of Homeland and the mysterious, filth-shrouded figure known only as Garbagehead have other plans.
There is evil simmering beneath the surface, but there’s no need to worry because all sins are purified in the fires of Garbagehead.
Tim O’Neal captures the often eerie sensation of rural small-town dynamics as experienced through those who are only passing through in truly spectacular fashion. He manages to develop such a viscerally tainted and claustrophobic atmosphere within the first few pages that the arrival of Garbagehead and the revelation of the town’s awful secret feels natural when it comes. I would greedily consume more tales of Homeland and those who reside there, under the watchful eyes of Garbagehead.

This title was released as the second Emerging Authors volume brought to us by the partnership of Godless and D&T Publishing. 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:

The Fires of Garbagehead

Platinum Blondes: Love Removal Machine by Todd Love

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Todd Love continues raising the stakes with the third installment of the Platinum Blondes series. Love Removal Machine picks up where INXS left off, treating readers to deliciously deserved punishment and violence enacted against Troy. But something more is going on, faint glimpses of unnatural activity from the chair upon which Troy is bound are blurred with the frantic vengeance unleashed by the women of the Platinum Blondes Agency.
Dark secrets have been kept from most of the women Gwen’s recruited, sinister mysteries that originate in her youth and the hubris of her father. Todd drags us through this sordid history, unveiling surprise after shocking surprise along the way, hitting the reader over and over again with the brutal pacing of a professional fighter. In the world of the Platinum Blondes, no one and nothing is as it seems.
Todd Love adds new questions as quickly as he answers the ones we already had, but there’s no need to worry…the story isn’t over yet.

You can obtain the Platinum Blondes series for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Love Removal Machine (Platinum Blondes – Volume 3) by Todd Love

Your Move by Nat Whiston and Ash Ericmore

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A little competition can be a good thing.
Whether it’s your hobby or occupation, rivalry can be a healthy motivator to push yourself to excel. It’s perhaps a bit less healthy when talking about two serial murderers leapfrogging over one another to produce a more gruesome and intricate tableau, but who are we to judge?
The night can be dangerous, but it’s so much worse if you happen to be a secondary character concocted by the combined imaginations of Whiston and Ericmore. Whether we’re talking about power tools, sex toys, or construction equipment, these two will find a way to utilize it in the most gruesome manner possible.
Am I talking about the characters or the authors?
Is there a line that separates them?
Much as their respective characters seek to outdo one another within the narrative, the authors of this deliciously violent story compete the perpetrate increasingly cruel and vicious acts on the page. It must be said that these two work well together in that respect, as any reader will be delighted to discover.
But is it possible that one of these killers is more than they seem?
Is there a grand design of malevolent intent taking shape before our eyes?
You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out.

You can obtain this title for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Your Move by Nat Whiston and Ash Ericmore

Woom by Duncan Ralston

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Duncan Ralston’s Woom is a masterpiece of an anthology tale with the most seamlessly incorporated framing story I’ve had the pleasure of reading. It’s like Campfire Tales if that movie had been X-rated and situated in a run-down, no-tell motel room. While Woom works as a single, longer-form piece of literature, it’s also a series of vignettes that flows together surprisingly well. As Angel and Shyla share their respective stories, the content becomes progressively more unsettling and vile. That shouldn’t bother you, though. It’s what you checked in for, after all.
When Angel checked in to Room 6 at The Lonely Motel and requested a big girl from the escort service, he expected disappointment. It’s what he’d experienced previously, both in life and in his previous attempts to find the right woman for the objective he has in mind. When Shyla arrives at the door, it seems like Angel might have found just the woman he’s been looking for. As the night progresses, and he opens up to her as she opens up for him, it becomes increasingly likely that Shyla will be uniquely suited to provide Angel with what he needs.
Mental illness, childhood and adult trauma, sexual fetishes, graphic violence, and a desperate need for redemption and rebirth swirl together into a perversely entertaining book. Woom is a story that dares the reader to continue reading, the whole time knowing that things are only going to get worse but that the way out is through.
What follows might be a spoiler, but I’m not sure I’d consider it one. While it’s obvious from the outset that Angel was telling stories from his own life, I don’t think that was meant to be a surprise to the reader, so I feel comfortable commenting on that without worrying that it’s too much of a spoiler. I suspect Shayla might have been the only person taken aback by that revelation. She wasn’t the brightest character, after all.

Valentine by Ash Ericmore

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If you’ve been following my reviews at all, you know how much I adore Ash Ericmore’s writing and especially the sordid tales associated with the Smalls Family. To say I was pleased when Ericmore indicated there would be more to come after he’d concluded the stories of the seven Smalls brothers with Candyboy’s agricultural escapades would be an extreme understatement.
With Valentine, we’re fully introduced to their cousin Marian. Babysitting Backy for Adam (Bliss) becomes quite the adventure when a group of Scottish criminals force their way into the house and leave with Valentine’s charge, hoping to take something of importance to Adam. Unfortunately for them, Valentine is no less prone to violence and impulsive behavior than the other Smalls we’ve met.
Physical torture, superhero antics, excessive violence, a reptile ruckus, and a big rig brouhaha ensues as Valentine tracks down the twice-stolen baby, hoping to return him home before Adam is any the wiser.
As with Ericmore’s other criminal capers, this story is non-stop, full-tilt excitement from the first line to the conclusion. You can’t be disappointed when you’re delving into the world of the Smalls clan, it’s simply not an option.

You can purchase this title as well as the other Smalls Family stories from http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Valentine (The Smalls Family Stories I) by Ash Ericmore

Lushbutcher Volume 3: The Thick Black Line by Lucy Leitner

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Lushbutcher is back, and she’s back with a vengeance. After the slaughter of St. Practice Day, she’s set her sights on Chucky Knight, the man who organized the pub crawl that threatened the innocent victims of those drunks and degenerates.
A sprawling estate patrolled by samurai, ninja, and martial artists of all stripes is all that stands between Lushbutcher and her conquest of the evil force behind so much drunken debauchery. Lesser people might turn away when faced with such seemingly insurmountable odds, but Lushbutcher has God on her side and the brilliant legs he led scientists and engineers to develop on her behalf. As Janey carves and slices her way through dozens of security personnel, leaving a trail of limbs and broken bodies behind her, it’s her confidence and unflinching faith in the righteousness of her cause that blind her to the threat she faces.
Will this finally be Lushbutcher’s mission that ends the scourge of drunken revelers terrorizing her city?
Or will this be the end of Lushbutcher’s vocation, as she finally meets her match?
You’ll have to read it to find out.
Excelsior!

This title and the other Godless League releases can be purchased at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link is below:

Godless League #8 (Lushbutcher – "The Thick Black Line") by Lucy Leitner

Season’s Creepings by Theresa Derwin

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If you’re looking for some new Christmas stories to read aloud in front of the crackling fire while everyone sips at hot chocolate, these might not be the stories you’re looking for. Do people still do things like that with their families? I’m just going to assume that they do. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these are precisely the stories you want to read to children and extended family as everyone gathers for the holidays. I’m not one to judge those things.
Theresa Derwin has assembled a lovely collection of Christmas-themed horror with Seasons Creepings. Perhaps it is a bit unusual that I was reading this in February, but I didn’t judge you about sitting around a fire and reading these stories to your children, so I’d appreciate it if you extend me the same courtesy.
The collection begins with the amusing Fifty Hades of Grey. A group of middle-aged women gathers together to exchange Christmas gifts, but one of those presents isn’t quite the innocent gag gift that it seems. A lady doesn’t reach a certain age without knowing how to handle a surprise or two, though.
‘Twas the Night provides us with a new interpretation of the familiar poem, replete with scathing social commentary.
With The Red Queen, we’re introduced to a new acquaintance and admirer of Charles Dickens, as she nudges him along in the writing of A Christmas Carol. Some stories live on forever, and maybe it’s fitting that the authors do as well…assuming they keep writing.
Night of the Living Dead Turkey shares an epistolic account of the zombie apocalypse brought about by infected turkeys. Unfortunately, this zoonotic virus might be more dangerous than the standard avian flu.
For proof that revenge isn’t necessarily a dish best served cold, Last Christmas is a tale of infidelity, friendship, and the perfect holiday meal.
And finally, A Contemporary Christmas Carol provides us with a glimpse of Mr. Scrooge’s regrets as he witnesses his former life of wealth and comfort eroded thanks to the interference of ghosts and the writing of Dickens himself. Sometimes our characters aren’t quite as enthusiastic about what we put them through as we portray them as being, and this is a fine example of that.
Theresa Derwin has compiled a terrific little Christmas collection that’s sure to be perfect for the dysfunctional family gathering. I only wish I’d read this a couple of months ago instead of waiting until I’m either two months late or ten months early.

This title was released through http://www.godless.com as part of the AntiChristmas event for December of 2021. You can pick it up for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device. The link follows:

Season's Creepings by Theresa Derwin

Outrage Level 10 by Lucy Leitner

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It should have been a better world. Adam Levine was dead. The oligarchy and patriarchy of the old world order were dismantled by revolutionaries. Direct democracy had replaced the corrupt justice system, allowing all citizens to participate as members of the jury of peers. Unfortunately, the future envisioned in Lucy Leitner’s Outrage Level 10 is not the utopia the people believe it to be.
Alex Malone is a throwback, a former enforcer on the ice with a history of drug abuse and brain damage as mementos of the days when hockey was still a sport. As with all violent and destructive forms of competition, hockey is no more. Malone’s former career has become a ridiculed and maligned memory of the brutality and uncivilized nature of the world before the revolution. There aren’t many options available to someone with Malone’s history, so he becomes a cop, a member of another institution with a tainted history of violence and cruelty, extant in this future America as little more than glorified meter maids and health inspectors.
When Malone’s psychiatrist injects him with a potential cure for his brain damage, Alex initially seems happier, and his memories appear to be returning. But are they his memories?
What unfolds from there is a high-intensity mystery, as Alex and his unlikely partners in crime seek to unravel a sinister plot that strikes at the very heart of the nation and threatens to display the utopian society for the savage and superficial dystopia it is.
Leitner does an excellent job of sharing this cautionary tale of a revolution compromised by not only the flawed and dangerous men guiding it but also by a society engrossed in social media and an unwillingness to recognize the lack of justice associated with the court of public opinion as a substitute for legitimate courtrooms. Differences of opinion are escalated to the point of being perceived as assaults, and “cancel culture” truly becomes a thing as citizens sentence one another to death for crimes against their fragile sensibilities.
Reading Outrage Level 10 reminded me of the way Lenin–and later Stalin–essentially took the reigns of the revolution’s government apparatus and steered the force it gifted them toward their political opponents and enemies of the state who did nothing more than offer dissenting opinions. In all respects, it applies here in America just as effectively. There’s a worthwhile message to be found in these pages, that the revolution doesn’t end when the old structures are taken away. A constant state of vigilance is required to keep the new structures honest and focused on the goals of the revolutionaries.

You can obtain a copy of this book by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The links are below:

Outrage Level 10 by Lucy Leitner

Unbortion by Rowland Bercy Jr.

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Unbortion begins with a trigger warning sensitive readers will be remiss to ignore. What follows that warning is a description of a late second-trimester surgical abortion procedure, including vacuum aspiration. Skipping past that scene will not spare the reader much, but it will potentially relieve them from the depiction that might be a specific trigger.
From there, Rowland Bercy Jr. takes the reader on a most peculiar and revolting adventure as the discarded and dismantled fetus, tethered by loose nerve fibers, drags itself through the city in search of the host who rejected it. Initially mistaken for spaghetti by a homeless man digging through a dumpster, our vengeance-seeking fetus attempts to take up residence in the man’s abdominal cavity, only to discover it’s an inhospitable place before forcing its way through his rectum and continuing its journey. It gets weirder from there.
In the end–despite the revolting details and the absurdity of the concept–Unbortion is a tale of rash decisions made out of fear, the unbreakable bond between a mother and her child, and forgiveness.
The anti-abortion sentiments underpinning the narrative made me think that Rowland has missed an opportunity by not pushing this book on the most vocal and ardent members of the anti-abortion crowd. For all of its extreme horror elements, I can’t help but suspect that he could manage to find a ready and willing audience for this book in a subsection of that demographic. I could even imagine a world wherein some of those people would push to have copies of Unbortion sitting in the waiting rooms and lobbies of places where abortions are conducted, in an attempt to change the minds of those intending to undergo such procedures. I’m only half-joking about that because he could be sitting on a virtual gold mine there.
While I’m not in the anti-abortion camp myself, that doesn’t make this any less enjoyable or the underlying message any less poignant.

Zola by D. E. McCluskey

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Anthony Zola was a terrible person. One need only look at the cruel joke of a name he saddled his only son with, Gordon. Gordon Zola, a childish gag and a pointed jab at his wife’s obsessive cheese consumption. Unfortunately for Andrea and Gordon Zola, that horrible appellation is the least of Anthony’s transgressions against his wife and child.
Years of abuse and manipulation from her husband had compressed Andrea’s life to the extent that her world revolved entirely around her monster of a husband and her socially isolated son. Just as she finally began transforming herself into a woman she could recognize when she looked in the mirror, a horrific discovery sent her life spiraling out of control. Anthony’s bonding time with their son has a far more sinister purpose than Andrea could have imagined, and the only solution is a drastic one.
Unhealthy codependence and unspeakable appetites become the crux of mother and son’s relationship, inexorably drawing Andrea and Gordon into further segregation from the world around them. As barbaric solutions become the only way the two of them can survive, Andrea and Gordon devolve into a bestial existence of filth and isolation that escalates until the heartbreakingly inevitable conclusion.
McCluskey provides readers with a poignant tale of family and intense psychological trauma through a medium rife with absurdity and graphic depictions of revolting inhumanity. Zola is a coming-of-age story for the perpetual adolescent; a depiction of acute arrested development in the form of Gordon Zola, a boy who grew into a man without ever having a chance to develop any life for himself under the aberrant safekeeping of his traumatized mother.
As easy as it might be to write this story off as being a steadily intensifying gross-out narrative–and there’s a lot to gross the reader out–there’s a whole lot of sadness and distressing truth to be found in these pages as well. McCluskey tells us the tale of a man who never had a chance to be anything but the monstrosity he became, all because of a father’s cruelty and a mother’s misguided love.

You can find this title at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Zola by D.E. McCluskey