Recent Reads From Hell Pt. II

I've been toying with the idea of starting a YouTube channel where I talk about books I've read and maybe feature some of the books in my ever-growing collection. But like so many things, it's just a thought that dances through my brain. I actually tried recording a video and it looked terrible. One of the great hindrances for me concerning promoting my books is the fact that I know dick about technology. I can't create promo images, promo art, bookmarks, videos that look decent. So, for now, I'll have to come back to this neglected blog.

Here are a few books I've read over the past several months and a few words on each one. Not reviews, just thoughts.

The Manitou by Graham Masterton

Masterton's debut, and what a debut it is. Reading an author's first book is always a bit of a crap shoot. Even great authors sometimes have mediocre first novels. I won't name any here, but I know my first novel (first few novels!) was pretty shitty. Some authors come out of the gate with a masterpiece, like Melanie Tem's Prodigal or Kathe Koja's The Cipher. I wouldn't call The Manitou a masterpiece, but it sure is a hell of a good time. I imagine it was one of the earliest Native American curse type horror stories (there were a lot of them in the horror boom of the 80s). I know I've seen the movie adaptation, but it was many years ago and I don't really remember it. I have a feeling I liked it, but who knows. I used to watch all the horror I could get my hands on, and clearly it wasn't that memorable. The book, however, has stuck in my mind. I've read a few Masterton books this year, and he's rapidly becoming a favorite.

The Magpie Coffin by Wile E. Young

The first of the breakout series of Splatter Western books from the great Death's Head Press. Full disclosure: I'm a Death's Head author, but that has no reflection on my thoughts about this or any other DHP books I feature on my blog. This was, hands down, a fun, gripping read. Kind of like a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, only much darker. If Blondie, The Man with No Name, from the Fistful of Dollars trilogy were a real bad motherfucker (I mean, he is, but I'm talking sadistic here) you'd have the protagonist of this book. He's a fucking maniac, but that's okay. A worthy beginning of what has proven to be a great series of books. Keep 'em coming!

Spawn by Shaun Hutson

This book was kind of nuts, especially for its time. Imagine the guy who works at the hospital tossing refuse such as aborted babies into the incinerator. He's got some serious trauma from his past that causes him to save these aborted fetuses. If that's not crazy enough, imagine what happens when he buries them around the shack he lives in and then lightning strikes the ground! Look, what happens in this book is absolutely batshit crazy. Seriously. You have to take this stuff with a grain of salt. I took a break halfway through and read another book before returning to finish this one. That was mostly because Hutson was telling two stories that eventually merged in the end. The crazy fetus story was engrossing (emphasis on GROSS!), but the escaped mental patient serial killer story was kind of meh. The way they came together worked, and sort of made it all worth it, but it felt like half the book was all aces and the other half was a sleeper. I believe this was Hutson's second or third book after Slugs, and it shows that he improved his craft. Slugs is fun, but this one is even better, both the writing and the plot.

The Uninvited by John Farris

Of the books I've read recently, this one was by far the best. Farris is a brilliant author, a master at the craft, and a exquisite story teller. Interestingly, of all the books of his I've read the only one I didn't like was The Fury, and that's the one he's probably most known for. Oh well. The Uninvited follows a teenage girl who accidentally hits a guy with her and then becomes invested in his recovery after he comes down with amnesia. He has nowhere to go and her father, who's a famous artist, allows him to stay it their house. As she spends time with the guy trying to get him to remember his past, they develop a relationship, but he's...kinda weird. This is one of those books you find yourself deeply invested in and then shit just goes haywire. The greatest part is that I didn't see it coming, the IT being some of the big reveals. This is one of those books I've had on my shelf for years, but never bothered giving a read. Who am I kidding. My shelves are loaded with vintage paperbacks that, unfortunately, I won't get to. This one in particular has been hanging around for well over a decade. I'm glad I gave it a spin.

I hope to blog more about books I've read, but who knows. In the meantime, my latest anthology Chew on This! has been published by Blood Bound Books and is available in print and digital formats. See the blog post below for details.

The Future of This Blog

I usually do a year in review post at the beginning of the year, but I'm going to skip that, for the most part. Truth is, I hardly used the blog in 2019. This was due to a multitude of factors. Mostly It's kind of a pain in the ass to blog regularly. I only have so much time in the day to write, and I would rather spend that time writing stories.

I tried a Patreon page last year that turned into a flaming bag of dogshit. I had hoped I could replace the blog with the Patreon (because people can follow a Patreon page for free and read public posts), but I just couldn't get any interest. I'm no salesman. I'm not the best at social media. Frankly, the failed Patreon experience filled me with dread and self-loathing. It was a blatant reminder that promotion is the necessary evil, and I'm no goddamned good at it. Bummer. 

On the other hand, I published several books and a few short stories. I'm not going to go into that part here, because that would turn this into a year in review, and I was going to skip that, remember?

What I want to do in the future is start a YouTube channel for vintage horror book reviews, but I'm smart enough to know that isn't going to happen. I'm shit with technology and have no idea how to make a video clip look good. I hardly have the drive for all the set up. It takes so much time just figuring out how you're doing something wrong, that it always feels like a waste of time trying to do much beyond what I already know, and what I know is reading and writing. I can't even make promotional ads or bookmark designs on software everyone says is so easy to use.

So what I think I'll start doing is posting short reviews here on the blog starting with The Fungus by Harry Adam Knight. I'll see how it goes. Hopefully I manage some other fun stuff here, but who knows.

What I'm saying here is that I'm going to try and be more active on the blog. I had good numbers at one time. Whether the blog helped book sales, I really don't know. But I do know that it didn't hurt sales, so why not try to engage a bit more. Are people reading blogs? Everyone says no, but I'll give it another shot.

Hopefully 2020 will be as eventful as 2019. After all, I published a couple of books, short stories, a signed/limited novel with Thunderstorm Books, and moved across the country.

Oh, it's an election year.

We're doomed.

Just sit down with a book and forget about all that shit.

Come back for my review of The Fungus. See you then!

Send . . . More . . . BOOKS!

I've recently read my way through an interesting variety of books from non-fiction to sci-fi to horror to, well, more horror. Here are some quick little mini-reviews of each.

Blister by Jeff Strand

This is a fantastic read. A cartoonist takes a break after pulling a prank on some asshole kid. He goes out to his agent's lake house to cool off and learns of a local town secret called Blister. I won't say anymore about the plot. You don't need to know more. Just go into this story blind and enjoy the hell out of it. Strand gives a gut punch of a, well, a love story of sorts that examines the way people see each other and how terribly bad things can go when you're an outsider in a tightly knit community. Everything is all fun and games until someone finds a reason to hate you. Great little novella. Highly recommended.

Stranglehold by Jack Ketchum

Wow. What a gut punch. I've read most of Ketchum's novels and novellas and this one is right up there with The Girl Next Door and Red as far as the emotional distress factor is concerned. I listened to the audiobook and I wonder had I been reading the paperback if I would have put it down because of how poignant the material is. This is a story that follows a woman and man who eventually become married and have a child. The child begins to show some very startling behaviors and soon his parents divorce when his father becomes abusive. It only gets worse from there (not the book, but the circumstances in which this broken family finds themselves), and there were moments I cried, moments I wanted to stop listening, but I forged ahead. In the end I was emotionally exhausted. I don't do trigger warnings often, but I would warn anyone with young children to tread these waters with care. In the words of Tommy Chong: "It kinda grabs you by the boo-boo..."

The Iceman: Confession of a Mafia Contract Killer by Philip Carlo

I hadn't heard of this guy until picking up this book. Wow. Not just a contract killer, but a straight out serial killer. To know that people like Richard Kuklinski walk the earth is truly terrifying. This one is prime reading for true crime and mafia fans alike. Gives a whole different perspective to mob life than a book like Wise Guy does. Kuklinski didn't just kill for money, he killed because he liked it. That's some scary shit. Also interesting is the guy's background. Makes you wonder whether killers are born or made that way.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

I'm not a fan of Blade Runner. I've watched the entire movie once and fallen asleep watching it maybe another two times. It's dreadfully boring. I was apprehensive going into this book, but it has such a stellar reputation that I figured it was a good jumping off point with PKD's work. Also, I'm not a big sci-fi fan, so I went in blind (outside of watching the adaptation years ago). I tend to prefer sci-fi in the shorter form from authors like Asimov, Bradbury, Matheson, and Ellison. Recently I saw a poster online for Blade Runner and it said: inspired by the Philip K. Dick story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Inspired? Yeah, sounds about right. The source material was way better than the movie, though I feel like I need to give the movie another shot just to see if it makes more sense to me now. It was a weird book, no doubt, but ultimately enjoyable. Perhaps a bit too short. It just kind of ended and I thought there was so much more to explore. In a way it felt like the plot wasn't fully developed, but maybe I'm just dense. Who knows.

Slugs by Shaun Hutson

This one was fun for about a hundred and fifty pages, then it became tedious. In my experience, these novels about masses of animals or insects taking over a town would work better in novella form. I felt the exact same way about James Herbert's Rats (which I didn't think was a very good novel to begin with). This was my first Shaun Hutson read and I enjoyed his pulpy style quite a lot. I am interested in reading something like Spawn or Heathen, but good luck to me in finding one of those vintage paperbacks. I mean, I could buy one of the newer editions, but I just love the feel of a good ol' mass market paperback, and you can't beat the cheesy artwork. I may have to cave though. Spawn sounds like a hell of a ride.

That's all for now. I hope you found something of interest in these little reviews. Maybe one of these is on your bookshelf right now. If not, most of them are available at your favorite online retailer. Grab one, sit back, and read a book.

Up next will be books such as Nursery Tale by T. M. Wright, Technicolor Terrorists by Andre Duza, The Auctioneer by Joan Samson (I feel like I've been reading this one for a while now!), and others.

Until next time...

Books I Read in 2017

Here's the list of books I read over the past year. Not as many as I wanted to read, however I started a metric shit-ton of books that I couldn't get into, sometimes reading as much as fifty or seventy-five pages before shelving them. I'm currently reading Tom Piccirilli's A Choir of Ill Children and Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks From Hell, and enjoying both of them. I read mostly older books this year. I hope to dig into some newer stuff next year, but my bookshelves are filled to the brim with good old mass market paperbacks from the seventies through the Leisure crash, so who knows.

1. The Bottoms by Joe Lansdale
2. Mischief by Douglass Clegg
3. Edge of Dark Water by Joe R, lansdale
4. Road Rage by Stephen King, Joe Hill, and Richard Matheson
5.Ghoul by Brian Keene
6. Wild Blood by Nancy Collins
7. Arboreatum by Evans Light
8. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
9. Once Around the Bloch by Robert Bloch
10. Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow by Robert Bloch
11. Water Rights by Guy N. Smith
12. The Captors by John Farris
13. Breeding Ground by Sarah Pinbourough
14. Odd Man Out by James Newman
15. Dark Gods by TED Klein
16. Prodigal by Melanie Tem
17. Nightingale's Lament by Simon R. Green
18. Spectre by Stephen Laws
19. Mayan Blue by Melissa Lason and Michelle Garza
20. Dark Masques Ed. by J. N. Williamson
21. The Elementals by Michael McDowell
22. Strange Seed by T. M. Wright
23. How I Made A Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime by Roger Corman
24. Flesh by Richard Laymon
25. City of the Dead by Brian Keene
26. Midnight Sun by Ramsey Campbell
27. The Dirt by Motley Crue and Neil Strauss
28. It's So Easy and Other Lies by Duff McKagen
29. The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx and Ian Gittins

Monthly Newsletter #4 June 2017

Thanks for taking a gander at my little newsletter. I will briefly discuss my latest ventures into horror fiction, a book I would like to suggest, some pictures of my recent book and record acquisitions, and more. It will only take you a few minutes, so take the ticket (it's free!) and enjoy the ride.

News

The big news is that my latest Grand Mal Press release, Brothers in Blood, has been released. This is a short novella e-book exclusive. FREE for kindle unlimited subscribers and only $1.99 to buy. I think that's a very fair price for a 26K word story, and I hope you check it out. If you have read it or plan to do so, I would love to hear what you think. Reviews on Amazon can make or break the visibility and success of a book, so do all authors a favor and review their books. It really does help.

Brothers in Blood is a story about a pair of demented twins who murder people for very different reasons. One of them has a caregiver who is finally getting her life together, but it looks like her ex is back, and he wants something from her that she cannot give him.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre with twins!" -- Jack Bantry, author of The Lucky Ones Died First

You can get Brothers in Blood in the US, and in the UK. It is available from Amazon worldwide, so you should have no trouble finding it.

Also in news, I will have a short story in the forthcoming San Diego Horror Professionals Vol. 3. The story was originally published years ago in a little known anthology. I cut a lot of the fat, rewrote some parts, and changed the title to "Brain-Case Soiree." Should be out later this month.

Cool Read

I'm going to highlight a book that was originally published in 1968 called The Captors by John Farris. The copy I have was published in 1987 by Tor and is labeled as a horror novel, but this is really a mystery about a young woman who is kidnapped for ransom and then escapes, only something about
her is a little off when she returns home to her heartbroken mother and step father. As the book rolls along and the search for her kidnappers deepens, the reader begins to suspect just about everyone, and as the plot unfolds and you learn who the kidnappers are and what their motives are, things get very interesting. The book is a bit dated. Some of the themes were more poignant in the sixties than they are today, but I find that kind of charming. The mystery is fantastic, regardless.

Featured Fiction

I am putting the spotlight on my short story "Inflatable War" that was originally published in DarkFuse Magazine and then reprinted in a gorgeous little hardback called DarkFuse #4. I sold the foreign rights after being contacted by DreamPress.com. The French translation is now available in their annual anthology Tenebres 2017. This marks my very first foreign translation. How cool is that?

Book and Record Acquisitions

I haven't had luck with records lately, but I have bought a HUGE amount of used mass market paperbacks since the last newsletter. I'm particularly happy about the Fritz Leiber first editions. Here are a few pics:

Closing Words

For those of you who took the ride, here we are at the end. It was a short ride, as I assured you it would be. I would like to thank everyone for their support, particularly those of you who downloaded a copy of Brothers in Blood. I know who some of you are, and you kick ass! I hate to sound like a broken record, but reviews are greatly appreciated. If you happen to be reading this and you review books on a website, blog, etc., email me HERE and I will provide you with a copy for your preferred e-reader.

That's all for now. Summer is here. If that's your sort of digs, then have fun in the sun. As for me, this is the beginning of the worst part of the year. I hate the sun and heat. I'm already looked forward to Fall.

Until next time...