Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky

Exactly the sort of SF I like (light on the science, long on the human impact of a changed world). This had so many great and horrible things jammed into it. It was tragic and funny, and the humor grew naturally from the tragic elements. It had a noir feel, too, which I generally am fond of. Excellent writing, unusual structure, brilliant characterizations.

Read this book!

Majestic Freiks by Richard McGowan

This, to me, captures the tone of many of the stories in this fine little collection:

Grimms' fairy tales as told by Carroll's Hatter.

If I had to pick my favorite, it would be "The Chinese Type Cutter," wherein the hero sets out on a journey to find the antidote for a curse that causes his neighbor to uncontrollably laugh at her husband's erection.

Also, it must be noted that the story "Electronika of Covert Garden" has what I believe to be the first example of anti-humor I've seen deployed in a written work. The title character, Electronika, has a speech impediment so complicated and ridiculous that it renders almost all of her dialogue completely unreadable. Thankfully, the other characters in the story translate.

Read this book!

This Crowded Earth by Robert Bloch

I like to read old SF. This was published in 1958. Part of the fun is seeing what predictions about the future the writer got right and which ones he got wrong. The title makes it clear that this book is about overpopulation and vanishing resources. Much of it takes place in our current era and a few decades from now. Overpopulation and vanishing resources are a problem today, of course, just not to the extreme predicted in this book. And the method that the secret masters of this imagined future come up with to address the overpopulation issue is patently ridiculous.

All future generations are scientimagically bred to be midgets! Now, once you stop laughing at this big reveal, the story continues to move along at a pretty brisk pace, skipping years here and there to tell the full story of this changed world and the social upheaval this forced shrinkage causes.

  I found the writing crisp, and Bloch can throw in some surprising twists here and there. But the work was just a bit heavy-handed and preachy for my taste. However, it was good enough for me to look into reading more of Bloch's work.

Read this book!

Six Dead Spots is only $0.99 for the Holidays!

Give the gift of horror this holiday season! Six Dead Spots is on sale for just $0.99 (67% off the normal digital list price) now through Christmas day.

Get it for yourself or a loved one who likes all things creepy and nasty.

Buy the Kindle Edition from Amazon.

Or you can purchase an EPUB, MOBI, or PDF version directly from me by clicking the button below.

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They Had Goat Heads by D. Harlan Wilson

If you're looking for conventional story structure, look elsewhere. But if you can stomach the surreal, the absurd, and you're fine with reading narratives that only follow the logic of dreams and nightmares, then you'll enjoy this book thoroughly. Every story made me laugh or cringe, or both.

Read this book!

Hoard of the Flies by H. Cogito Epsilon

I'd suppose you'd categorize this as a pornographic comedy of manners. It's about a disintegrating "old money" family and what happens to two paired off couples of incestuous grandchildren when their grandmother (who once raised them as her own) dies and leaves behind two huge solid gold dildos for them to discover in her run-down estate.

Naturally, this story contains shenanigans involving an elderly butler banging a sexpot maid, foursomes involving nymphomaniacal siblings, swarms of horse flies, piles of offal, a secret sex dungeon, and a gypsy fortune-teller who can read the future using the ancient art of vulvamancy.

Read this book!

The Diabolical Conspiracy by Bryan Smith

If you like your splatter cheap and nasty, you'll like Bryan Smith. If you want to read a story by an author who has an uncanny ability to continually trick you into thinking that he's just about to take things a bit too far for your comfort, you'll want Mr. Smith. If you like the idea of a book written in an invisible prose style that relentlessly drives every horrible thing humanity has to offer directly into your brain like a railroad spike through the eye, you'll like this book.

Read this book!

Isis Sousa had some questions for me

(C) Isis Sousa

Brazilian artist, illustrator, and writer, Isis Sousa, has posted an interview with me on her Tumblr site. I answer questions about writing and am not particularly forthcoming.

If you'd like to read the interview, you can find it here.

Chuggie and the Desecration of Stagwater by Brent Michael Kelley

A non-Medieval Europe analog secondary world fantasy novel, with some SF sprinkles, and smothered with plenty of bloody horror gravy. If you like some interdimensional energy beings clothed in giant robot armor alongside hordes of undead ghoulies, black magicians, and scarecrow armies, then you're going to really like this.

I'm particularly partial to genre mash-ups like this. The only issue I had with the book was that it could have gone through another round of line edits. The writing itself was very good. It's just that there was a bit of detritus left behind from someone (the author? the editor?) reworking sentences in earlier drafts. I'm talking about the kind of thing that leaves an extra word in a sentence that obviously wasn't meant to be left there, or an errant letter "t" from an omitted word.

Fiddly bits, really. Distracting? Yes. But nothing that stopped me from really enjoying this piece and adding the next in the series to my to-read pile.

Oh, and I must mention that the titular character, Chuggie, is a singular creation. He's sort of a wandering, bumbling, drunken badass. His weapon of choice(?) is a boat anchor chained to his torso. He's ugly as sin, has five horns on his head, and just happens to be the walking embodiment of drought.

Recommended to readers of both New Weird and Horror.

Read this book!

"Read Tuesday" Deal: Six Dead Spots for $0.99

Read Tuesday is an event conceived by author Chris McMullen. He's basically convinced a slew of small presses and authors to discount books on Tuesday, December 10th. In theory, the low prices will help encourage book gift-giving this holiday season.

I've decided to participate, and my horror novella Six Dead Spots will be on sale now through this upcoming Tuesday for 67% off the normal digital list price. 

You can get the Kindle Edition from Amazon. 

You can also buy EPUB, MOBI, or PDF versions directly from me by clicking the button below.

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Henry Martin had some questions for me

Henry Martin, author of Coffee, Cigarettes, and Murderous Thoughts (among many others), is running a series of interviews with book reviewers over on his blog. Today, I'm his interview subject.

You can find the interview here:

http://mad-days-of-me.blogspot.com/2013/12/interview-with-gregor-xane.html

While you're there, you should also check out the interview with Feliks (a Goodreads mystery book reviewer). It's fantastic!

My Top 10 Favorite Books from the Last 12 Months

A Brief Explanation

Here's my top 10 list of favorite books read in the last 12 months. This isn't a Best of 2013 list, really. Only two of the books on this list were published in 2013, and my list covers books read from December 2012 through November 2013. I only tried to rank them because people really seem to enjoy numbered lists.

10. Clown Tear Junkies by Douglas Hackle

Published: September 2013
Read: September 2013

I listened to the never-to-be-produced audiobook version of Clown Tear Junkies (the one read by Smokey Robinson) and I must say it was excellent. These stories have something to satisfy everyone in your family. There are many, many huge cocks and bodies being smashed to a bloody pulp, copious amounts of semen and chyme, gay ice road truckers and polyhedral dice, blank pages, and pages filled with random letters, numbers and symbols. There’s even a story that features an elderly man being pulled down the street in a little red wagon!

Readers who enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and the works of Deepak Chopra need to read this collection right away.

Read this book!

9. Some Kind Of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

Published: July 2012
Read: December 2012

I've yet to be even mildly disappointed by a Graham Joyce book. Fine work.

Note: I must have had a lot going on when I wrote this ridiculously brief "review."

Read this book!

8. Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Olena Bormashenko (Translator)

Published: 1977 (first English edition) 
Read: February 2013

Exactly the sort of SF I like (light on the science, long on the human impact of a changed world). This had so many great and horrible things jammed into it. It was tragic and funny, and the humor grew naturally from the tragic elements. It had a noir feel, too, which I generally am fond of. Excellent writing, unusual structure, brilliant characterizations.

Read this book!

7. Grudge Punk by John McNee

Published: December 2012
Read: November 2013

This is easily one of the best books I've read this year. It's labeled as Bizarro fiction, but I wouldn't categorize it that way. In my mind, this falls more in line with what folks a few years back were calling New Weird. It's the perfect blend of science fiction, fantasy and horror that manages to be none of those things. It's like the film Sin City set in some town in Mieville's Bas-Lag, where the citizens are all comprised of meat, metal, fiberglass, and random junkyard scraps. It's a work of gritty noir fiction. Not the hard-boiled detective variety, but rather the type concerned with the criminals, the scammers, the low-lifes, and the creeps. It's like Pulp Fiction as directed by David Cronenberg. Speaking of Cronenberg, if you like his nastier works (especially Naked Lunch and eXistenZ) and like your noir with some extra grit, then you'll like this book.

Read this book!

6. Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca

Published: December 2008
Read: July 2013

Quite possibly the best ghost story I've ever read. The writing was excellent and engaging from the first page onward. It’s a lengthy novella and I read it pretty much in one sitting. It’s dark, imaginative, very sad, and darkly funny at times. Here’s the basic premise, quoted from the book synopsis:

In the morning, Bram finds the bones of a murdered child. At noon, the murdered child begs for his help. And by nightfall, they have killed a man together…

Great premise, great execution.

Read this book!

5. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami, Donald Last (Translator)

Published: April 2002
Read: November 2013

Murakami's books are very hard for me to review/write about. Before I sat down to write this, I went back to look at my reviews for the other works I've read by him. They weren't helpful in the least. Two of the reviews were extremely brief and for the other book, it appears that I just left a star rating and went on with my life.

So, I guess I'll start by saying that Murakami has moved into my list of favorite authors. His writing style is so smooth, so idiosyncratic, and his subject matter is such an odd mix of the mundane and the otherworldly, that I'm consistently impressed and mystified. I can never figure out how he's achieving any of his effects, and, more importantly, as I'm reading, I simply don't care. I don't know how he makes scenes about getting dressed or making dinner fascinating. I don't know how he makes me care about his oddball characters and their ridiculous, obtuse conversations. I don't know how he keeps me interested in a story about people being possessed by a sheep.


But he does. And I guess that's what's important.

Read this book!

4. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

Published: April 2013
Read: June 2013

It really showed that the author had a hell of a good time writing this book. And the fun was contagious. I had a great time reading it. I thought the villains were hilarious (and somehow that isn't a negative for this horror novel). The set pieces were highly inventive and cinematic. The names for the characters and places were perfect, catchy, the kinds of names that will stick in the memory for years to come. The whole thing was filled with a kind of macabre and gleeful mischievousness that I really enjoyed. Many have cited the length of the book as an issue. I didn't feel that way. The main weakness of the book (which is also tied into one of it's strengths) is the obvious cinematic influence on the storytelling. Many of the action sequences were way over-the-top and pretty unbelievable, and characters survive injuries that no human could possibly withstand. But, really, I could say the same about almost any piece of popular entertainment nowadays.

If you like a little humor, a little nudge-nudge, wink-wink, mixed in with your horror, then you'll like this book. If you loved the nostalgic, creepy playfulness of films like Creepshow or Trick r' Treat, then you'll like this book.

Read this book!

3. The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle

Published: August 2012
Read: February/March 2013

Victor LaValle has a real gift for describing authentic "stage business," character gestures, ticks, and body language. These aspects of his writing seem to be drawn directly, and relayed expertly, from observation. This book is frightening and sad and very funny, too. The humor works so well because it's organic to the story, the characters, the situations. I had a few minor quibbles with this book (but they are things that are like personal pet peeves more than anything), but not enough to detract from the overall impact of what the author has accomplished here. This is an excellent piece of work, something I will be recommending to folks.

Read this book!

2. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Published: 1992
Read: April 2013

This was really quite excellent. The character portrait this novel paints of Bunny (this mystery's murder victim) is particularly extraordinary. His behavior and mannerisms are so real that I kept trying to figure out exactly who it is that I know that the author was describing. This book won't be for everyone. It's populated with less-than-likable characters. For example, (and it won't be spoiling anything to tell you) the narrator is an accessory to murder. You find that out in the first few pages. If you're looking for a story with a hero, read something else. This reminded me of early Ira Levin, but with a more sophisticated writing style. I found the author's technical and storytelling skills quite humbling.

Read this book!

1. The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian

Published: August 2006

Read: August/September 2013

This is a literary novel with science fictional, fantastical, and horrific elements. It’s a novel with overt religious themes that’s filled with black humor, curse words, sexual situations, bleakness, and just a sprinkle of hope. It is dark and funny. The writing is top notch. Some characters are chillingly true-to-life while others are wonderfully over-the-top. The author creates a true microcosm of the world in his children’s hospital afloat on God’s second great flood. He’s smashed a little bit of everything inside and let everything loose to wreak havoc. Is it a bit much? A bit overlong? Perhaps. But the more I think on it, I can’t think of anything that I’d cut. I liked every scene, and especially those featuring Jemma’s big brother, the young psychopath who wants to be undone. This character is so well drawn that his chapters alone are worth the read. Folks seem to be evenly divided on this work. I’m on the side that thinks this is one hell of a literary accomplishment.

Read this book!

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Murakami's books are very hard for me to review/write about. Before I sat down to write this, I went back to look at my reviews for the other works I've read by him. They weren't helpful in the least. Two of the reviews were extremely brief and for the other book, it appears that I just left a star rating and went on with my life.

So, I guess I'll start by saying that Murakami has moved into my list of favorite authors. His writing style is so smooth, so idiosyncratic, and his subject matter is such an odd mix of the mundane and the otherworldly, that I'm consistently impressed and mystified. I can never figure out how he's achieving any of his effects, and, more importantly, as I'm reading, I simply don't care. I don't know how he makes scenes about getting dressed or making dinner fascinating. I don't know how he makes me care about his oddball characters and their ridiculous, obtuse conversations. I don't know how he keeps me interested in a story about people being possessed by a sheep.

But he does. And I guess that's what's important.

Read this book!

Six Dead Spots Released! (Kindle & EPUB Editions)

My horror novella, Six Dead Spots, was just released. It's available in both Kindle and EPUB formats. There's a paperback edition on the way, too.

Here's what it's about:

Frank makes a startling discovery in the shower. He finds six strange circles of skin gone completely numb—three neatly spaced down the center of his chest and abdomen, and three more down his spine. His doctor takes sadistic pleasure in carving out bits of Frank's flesh and a perverse childlike glee flipping through hundreds of pictures of his interior. But when the tests come back, he's unable to make a diagnosis and refers Frank to a psychiatrist. Under guided hypnosis, Frank uncovers clues in a repressed dream, but his sessions on the couch are soon cut short when he loses his job and his health insurance. Now Frank is forced to solve the mystery of his six dead spots on his own. Armed with nicotine patches, pornography, sleeping pills, and a stack of books on lucid dreaming, Frank delves into a world of nightmares to do battle with the monsters lurking inside his head.

Six Dead Spots is currently available at these online bookstores:

Amazon Kindle (US)

Smashwords (EPUB)

Jeffrey Ford Story "Relic" at SchlockMagazine.net

If you've not yet read anything by Jeffrey Ford, here's your risk-free chance to give him a go. "Relic" is a fine entrance point into his short fiction.

Read it now!

Grudge Punk by John McNee

This is easily one of the best books I've read this year. It's labeled as Bizarro fiction, but I wouldn't categorize it that way. In my mind, this falls more in line with what folks a few years back were calling New Weird. It's the perfect blend of science fiction, fantasy and horror that manages to be none of those things. It's like the film Sin City set in some town in Mieville's Bas-Lag, where the citizens are all comprised of meat, metal, fiberglass, and random junkyard scraps. It's a work of gritty noir fiction. Not the hard-boiled detective variety, but rather the type concerned with the criminals, the scammers, the low-lifes, and the creeps. It's like Pulp Fiction as directed by David Cronenberg. Speaking of Cronenberg, if you like his nastier works (especially Naked Lunch and eXistenZ) and like your noir with some extra grit, then you'll like this book.

Highly recommended.

Read this book!

Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez

This book was kind of cute, kind of funny, kind of clever. It had a lot of good comic-booky, pulpy gags and settings. It had battle mechs controlled by disembodied brains, lizard people from Venus, a lost world-type island with ridiculous dinosaurs, the lost city of Atlantis, etc, etc.. You get the idea.

It moved along at a fast enough clip, but it wasn't a page-turner really. Because it was a farce, and all of the characters were cartoonish, and because you never got the sense that the villain/hero would ultimately do anything but triumph, there was little, if any, real suspense or emotional investment to keep you compulsively flipping the pages.

I can certainly respect this writer for the quality of the writing and for what he was trying to do here, but it was pretty clear that he wasn't doing it for me. I'm just not the target audience.

Why did I pick this up, if this isn't my cup of tea?

Well, I've heard a lot of good things about this author and he dedicates the book (in part) to Victor von Doom.

I do love Doctor Doom. 

Read this book!

TWO: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special (Anthology)

Yes, I do have a story in this anthology. So take this post for whatever you think it's worth. And, incidentally, I don't personally know the editor or any of the contributors. I've not interacted with any of the other authors electronically or otherwise. My reading of their works, and this work as a whole, I would say, is relatively unbiased. I don't know. Maybe not. Either way, it's not going to stop me from typing out my overall impressions and pointing out which stories were, to me, the stand-outs.

This is a varied collection of horror stories. There is a fairly wide range of styles and supernatural beasties represented here. It's a digital-only publication and the eBook formatting is clean and professional.

I found every story in this volume entertaining, but the ones I liked the best were (not ranked):

"Second to Last Stop" by Evan Dicken

(This was a perfect story to open this book. It focuses on a character archetype common in horror films, one that rarely gets a chance to take center stage.)

"Gris-Gris for a Mal Pris" by Rebecca Roland

(The handling of folk magic in this story was idiosyncratic and very believable.)

"A is for Android" by Holly A. Cave

(The sense of dread in this one was there on page one and never went away. Plus, robots! Well, androids.)

"Offworld" by Anton Sim

(Short and sinister with lots of really good little creatures.)

"An Incident in Cain's Mark" by L. Joseph Shosty

(Lovecraftian Steampunk! And a robot! Er, automaton?)

"Professor Pandemonium's Train of Terror" by Simon Kewin

(This wry little piece was clever and quick and had all the monsters.)

"The Revenge of Oscar Wilde" by Sean Eads

(I'm not much for zombies. And I really don't care for the "historical figure versus supernatural creature" sub-genre. But these prejudices didn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying this piece. Good writing can make almost anything good, I suppose. And the ending was just fantastic.)

I'm sure others will disagree with my selections above and have their own favorites. And I wouldn't be surprised if they did. As mentioned above, I was entertained by every story here. It's all good stuff.

And, of course, I recommend this anthology to fans of short horror fiction, especially those who like their horror with a bit of a retro feel.

TWO: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special is available now!

Amazon / Barnes & Noble

*For direct links to Amazon product pages outside the US click here.

Wheel-Mouse vs All The Crazy Robots by Celyn Lawrence

Why are these robots pooing everywhere? GOD, WHY!?

Because...because...they are CRAZY ROBOTS! (Sane robots most certainly do not poo everywhere.)

Who can save the town when these crazy robots retreat to their flying city in the sky and begin dropping poo on picnics and teachers and everything else?

Why, only a magical wheelchair-bound little mouse, of course!

This book is truly great. I'm hoping for a sequel, wherein it is explained in excruciating detail what exactly constitutes robot poo.

Three (3) reasons why I'd suggest you grab this book right away:

1. All profits go to the Children's Hospice Charity for terminally ill and life-limited children (chsw.org.uk)

2. CRAZY ROBOTS POO ON EVERYTHING! (I mean, COME ON!)

3. It's only flippin' 99 cents, people!

Read this book!

TWO: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special

I am much, much more than pleased to report that TWO: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special is now available and that I've got a story contained therein.

Check out this line-up of stories editor Bruce Bethke's put together:

"Second to Last Stop" by Evan Dicken

"Cabrón" by Jóse Iriarte

"Blood and Water" by Rose Blackthorn

"Gris-Gris for a Mal Pris" by Rebecca Roland

"Zombie Angst, or How to Pair Human Brains With a Good Chianti" by Stone Showers

"Wall" by Yukimi Ogawa

"A is for Android" by Holly A. Cave

"The Things That Perish Along The Way" by Keith Rosson

"Choice" by Shona Snowden

"Offworld" by Anton Sim

"An Incident in Cain's Mark" by L. Joseph Shosty

"Professor Pandemonium's Train of Terror" by Simon Kewin

"It Came From Hell And Smashed The Angels" by Gregor Xane

"The Waiting Line (Many Elbows)" by Leah Thomas

"The Revenge of Oscar Wilde" by Sean Eads

"Eulogy to be Given by Whoever's Still Sober" by Nicole Cushing

I can't wait to read the stories by the other contributors. I've done a little research, and I'm already humbled to be included in a volume with so many accomplished authors.

Digital editions of TWO: The 2nd Annual Stupefying Stories Horror Special are available now!

Amazon / Barnes & Noble

*For direct links to Amazon product pages outside the US click here.

Graham Joyce Wins 2013 British Fantasy Award

Graham Joyce has won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for his novel Some Kind of Fairy Tale. Joyce is a fine author (one of my favorites) and this book is a fine read.

Read this book!

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

This book was like watching someone setting up a chess board very, very slowly and methodically. And for most of its length, that's what it was, getting all the characters where they needed to be so that their journey could begin. It wasn't until late in the narrative, when all of the pieces were in place, when the opening moves finally happened, that it truly became an exciting read. The stakes weren't known early enough to really drive the book forward. A true sense of the mysteries of this universe didn't emerge until the final third; pretty late to get the hooks in. The characters were all well-drawn and interesting. However, the young aristocrat/swordsman was a bit overdone. I didn't need to be reminded that he was an arrogant, insufferable, naive, and conceited little shit in every single chapter in which he appears (and in many in which he did not). It just made it so much more obvious that this character will be learning the hard way in the next couple of books and will, by the end, have transformed into a truly heroic and sympathetic character. I could be wrong. Perhaps this wasn't a woefully unbalanced approach to character growth and transformation, as I haven't read the next two books in the series. I'd be more than happy to eat crow if this guy gets an arrow through the throat in the first chapter of book two.

Will I read book two? Yes, I will. This really wasn't as bad all of the above seems to indicate. Once the story got going, it really was gripping. And if book two picks up immediately where one left off, and the action and the mysteries continue to be doled out at the rate they were in the final third of this book, then book two should be fucking great.

Read this book!

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory

The stories in this book reminded me of the works of Arnold Lobel (specifically Owl at Home), if Lobel had written for adults. They share the same daydream quality, the same wandering imaginative struggles and circular, fanciful routines that come from spending a great deal of time alone, or even out of just plain old loneliness. I was also reminded of the humor cartoonist Chris Ware manages to find in quiet despair, the charming, absurd moments from small lives lived unseen and eventually crushed by an indifferent universe. This is a collection of fables, lots and lots of tiny stories and tall tales, featuring (as a very small sampling) a love affair between a cliff-bound house and a gravity-bound ocean, a city-dwelling octopus who receives a visit from his nephews from the sea, a tree who unroots itself to see the world, a duck who falls in love with a rock, a television set that writes an opera about Winston Churchill, and a man who invites a moose to go skydiving with him.

There is much enjoyment to be had here. However, I'd recommend that readers drink this in small sips. This is a heady mix of whimsy and unfulfilled desire, of absurdest humor and bleak, utter hopelessness, of charming and bizarre anthropomorphisms and violent urges, of insanity and magic, of worlds within worlds of inescapable cosmic frustrations.

Read this book!

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

I love reading about the daily routines of artists and the like, so it was pretty nice to find this book. What I learned about the work habits of the painters, composers, writers, and philosophers covered in this volume is that many of them:

1. Drank lots of alcoholic and caffeinated beverages
2. Smoked lots of tobacco
3. Took long walks
4. Popped uppers to get going and downers to get to sleep
5. Got up early for a few hours of concentrated work (and then dicked around for the rest of the day)

I also realized, after reading this book, that I've got numbers 1, 2, and the second half of number 5 covered. I figure that means that I'm well on my way to becoming a creative juggernaut.

Note on the Kindle Edition: The photographs in the Kindle version I read were all misplaced. Every single one of them. And, of course, the captions accompanying the photographs were all wrong, too, and sometimes humorously so.

Read this book!

The Mist by Stephen King

This was a re-read. I listened to The Mist first when I was 12 years old (on cassette, in glorious 3D SOUND!) and remember liking it quite a bit. Then, I read it later on, in my late teens, as part of King's Skeleton Crew collection. It's funny how memory works. One thing about this story that has always stood out in my mind over the years is what I remembered to be long lists of brand names, paragraphs and paragraphs of listed brand names. When I was re-reading this, I kept waiting for those long lists to appear. They never did.

 I rarely re-read books (there are just too many good books out there to read) but re-read this one in preparation for watching the film adaptation, which I hear is great.

 None of the above really has anything to do with whether or not I like The Mist after all these years. I do. I think it holds up remarkably well. The only real problem I had with it was the fact that the protagonist's kid all too conveniently (for the plot) sleeps through events (on the floor of a grocery store during a crisis!) that no one would sleep through. This fairly minor quibble aside, this is a great monster story, a good post-apocalyptic story, and a really good horror story with nods to Lovecraft.

Read this book!

Doctor Sleep by Stephen KIng

Is Doctor Sleep as good as The Shining? No. Did I go in expecting it to recreate that experience? No. That would be silly. When you order thin crust pepperoni pizzas from Pizza Hut you expect the same thin crust pepperoni pizza every time. Books ain’t pizza. I would have been majorly disappointed if, in Doctor Sleep, Dan Torrance returned to a newly rebuilt Overlook Hotel with his own family just to find out that he’s his father’s son, then go nuts and try to smash everyone to pieces with a blunt object.

Doctor Sleep ain’t The Shining.

Instead, Doctor Sleep has more in common with Joe Hill’s NOS4A2. Both books have protagonists with special abilities who grow up to be raging alcoholics, who then learn to deal with their addictions, and get their special ability mojos back just in time to face down the bad guys. Both books feature kidnapped children as a central theme. The protagonists both have young relatives who must face the very same evil the protagonists themselves faced as a child. Both books feature cross-country pursuits. Both feature ancient ‘vampires’ of a very similar vein. The vehicles these ‘vampires’ drive are also key bits of characterization in both books. Doctor Sleep’s bad guys are like evil carnie folks, NOS4A2’s bad guy runs an evil carnival. The baddies in both books are over-the-top villains, almost cartoonish (which was a feature, not a defect, in my mind, for both novels).

By drawing the parallels above, am I trying to say something, to point out a King family conspiracy? No. Not really. It’s just interesting to note is all.

But none of this addresses the question of whether or not I liked Doctor Sleep. I did, by the way. I liked it very much. It was an engrossing page-turner, tighter than a lot of King’s later work. It has believable characters that you cared about, lots of action, and an ending that was satisfying (another somewhat rare find in a King novel). I also felt that it was a fine companion piece to The Shining, with enough ties and allusions to the original work to make it relevant, without being too referential or reverential (which would have been much, much worse). It wasn't a rehash, which I liked most of all.

 If I wanted the same pepperoni pizza, I’d call Pizza Hut.

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Clown Tear Junkies by Douglas Hackle

I listened to the never-to-be-produced audiobook version of Clown Tear Junkies (the one read by Smokey Robinson) and I must say it was excellent. These stories have something to satisfy everyone in your family. There are many, many huge cocks and bodies being smashed to a bloody pulp, copious amounts of semen and chyme, gay ice road truckers and polyhedral dice, blank pages, and pages filled with random letters, numbers and symbols. There’s even a story that features an elderly man being pulled down the street in a little red wagon!

Readers who enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and the works of Deepak Chopra need to read this collection right away.

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What Hides Within by Jason Parent

What Hides Within is a solid debut horror novel built on a mystery/suspense engine. The author manages to combine serial bomber, child murderer, and supernatural plotlines effectively. There were a few times where I thought the characters made odd choices that seemed to only serve the plot instead of doing what you’d think any average Joe would do in the given situation. Well, as it turned out, (in almost all instances, I’d say), these “bugs” in the narrative turned out to be “features” later on. The novel starts out with a fair dose of humor mixed in with the darkness. Some bits fell flat, but others made me laugh out loud. (The effectiveness of humor in fiction is largely subjective. So don’t let this deter you from picking this up.) But as the narrative progresses, things get increasingly darker and more tense until the pages really start flying by. I had several theories as to “what’s really going on” and I’m happy to say that all of them were wrong. There are so many things that I’d really like to cite as reasons why I thought this novel was so successful but can’t because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who might pick this up. I’ll just say that the ending is of a sort that you don’t see very often in full-length works of horror fiction.

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The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian

This is a literary novel with science fictional, fantastical, and horrific elements. It’s a novel with overt religious themes that’s filled with black humor, curse words, sexual situations, bleakness, and just a sprinkle of hope. It is dark and funny. The writing is top notch. Some characters are chillingly true-to-life while others are wonderfully over-the-top. The author creates a true microcosm of the world in his children’s hospital afloat on God’s second great flood. He’s smashed a little bit of everything inside and let everything loose to wreak havoc. Is it a bit much? A bit overlong? Perhaps. But the more I think on it, I can’t think of anything that I’d cut. I liked every scene, and especially those featuring Jemma’s big brother, the young psychopath who wants to be undone. This character is so well drawn that his chapters alone are worth the read. Folks seem to be evenly divided on this work. I’m on the side that thinks this is one hell of a literary accomplishment.

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Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee

Did this book live up to my expectations? Yes. I went in expecting a schlocky, over-the-top, gory B-movie experience in book form and that’s exactly what I got. The story moved along quickly. It was filled with raunch and blood and silly occult happenings. The one thing that struck me as quite unbelievable (from a character perspective) was the female psychics/mediums shrugging off sexual assaults by otherworldly entities as merely routine workplace hazards and no big deal. I think most folks would get into another line of work after the first spectral gang rape.

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Meat Suitcase by Wol-vriey

You will battle a horde of horse people who stand on their hind legs and wear the faces of your dead family members. You will lose your legs to a flesh-eating weapon in a never-ending war with these creatures and will find yourself frantically sodomizing the remains of a corpse on the battlefield before your genitals too can disappear. You will engage in completely heterosexual sex with a woman who is also a giant penis--and you will love it! You will fight meatdogs and a giant floating pumpkin head. You will kill thousands because it’s your duty as a Deadline soldier.

If you've not already guessed, this story is told in 2nd person and it’s absolutely insane. You've been cast as the hero in this messed up war against godless monsters and monsters who've rebelled against their gods. If you don’t want to be the hero in a story that contains all of the above-mentioned nuttiness, then you might want to give Meat Suitcase a pass.

Did I like it? Yeah. I’m pretty sure I did.

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The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig

This book is filled with larger-than-life characters, over-the-top action, and massive ‘Hollywood’ set pieces. It’s like reading a comic book in novel format (and sometimes like reading a cartoon). Mookie Pearl is a great character. I pictured an old, grisly Lawrence Tierney crossed with the Incredible Hulk. And it’s rare to see a book cover that so perfectly matches the material inside the book. Man, that cover is so good. I've read several books by Mr. Wendig, and this is by far his best effort.

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The Mariner by Ade Grant

This book is excessive; excessively bleak, excessively gross, excessively violent, excessively sexual, and excessively sexually violent. It is a story about excess and addiction and faith and betrayal and loss and so many other terrible and surreal and glorious things that I don't want to write about because I wouldn't want to spoil anything for, what I’d imagine to be, the small niche audience this book was written for. It’s an excessively ambitious and uncompromising book, too. I only wish that I’d read a slightly more compressed version of it. Yes, there was some excess that could have been trimmed. I didn't expect it to be a fast-paced thriller of a read going in. But there is really only so much time anyone would want to spend in 'Crazy Town.' I think there are readers out there who will like this sort of thing. I did. Just make sure you know going in that your stay in 'Crazy Town' will be an extended one.

Note: This is one of those novels filled with reprehensible characters (especially the titular character). So, if you’re not a reader who can stomach the “horrible people stuck in a horrible world” genre, then it’s best you steer clear.

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Rocket Ship to Hell by Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford has written himself into a number of his short stories. It's a nice technique for establishing a sort of instant verisimilitude, while at the same time keeping the reader guessing. This is another of these stories. It's a bizarre pub story that takes place near a science fiction and fantasy convention he attended twelve years ago.

You can read this story for free at Tor.com.

A Terror by Jeffrey Ford

This is a fine novelette by Jeffrey Ford. It's about Emily Dickinson and a peculiar supernatural journey.

You can read it for free at Tor.com.

Or, you can purchase a copy at Amazon.com.

Evil and the Mask by Fuminori Nakamura

When I read this from the product description, I figured I pretty much had to read the book:

When Fumihiro Kuki is eleven years old, his elderly, enigmatic father calls him into his study for a meeting. "I created you to be a cancer on the world," his father tells him. It is a tradition in their wealthy family: a patriarch, when reaching the end of his life, will beget one last child to dedicate to causing misery in a world that cannot be controlled or saved. From this point on, Fumihiro will be specially educated to learn to create as much destruction and unhappiness in the world around him as a single person can.

Does Nakamura write a novel equal to this premise? Well, he comes pretty darn close. The first chapter of this book is dynamite, a textbook example of how to hook a reader. This book is relentlessly grim throughout, but it doesn't finish on the note I’d been anticipating. Some of the dialog is a bit overdone, especially when the characters are waxing philosophical. But that shouldn't deter the reader who doesn't mind reading noir where almost every character is a sociopath.

Note on the Kindle Edition: I read this in Kindle format, and I must offer here some praise to the publisher, Soho Crime. The eBook formatting on this novel was top-notch. It nearly recreates the admiration one feels for a finely crafted interior design for a physical book.

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Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl by Daniel Pinkwater

I like Daniel Pinkwater and I like this book. Yes, it’s cute. There are puns. Bad puns. It’s whimsical and silly and a little old-fashioned. But it is absurd, insane, and genuinely funny. Pinkwater has good comic timing. That’s hard to pull off on the page. Not everything he throws at you sticks, of course. But when he’s sticky, he’s really sticky.

Purchase this book.

Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca

Quite possibly the best ghost story I've ever read. The writing was excellent and engaging from the first page onward. It’s a lengthy novella and I read it pretty much in one sitting. It’s dark, imaginative, very sad, and darkly funny at times. Here’s the basic premise, quoted from the book synopsis:

In the morning, Bram finds the bones of a murdered child. At noon, the murdered child begs for his help. And by nightfall, they have killed a man together…

Great premise, great execution.

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Rontel by Sam Pink

This is a stream of consciousness, slice-of-life novella about a depressed guy with suicidal tendencies walking around Chicago for a day. Oh, and it has nothing resembling a plot. Nearly all the “action” of the piece takes place in the main character’s head. And, yet, despite all of this, it’s a highly entertaining and funny read. Recommended to those who aren't put off by anything written in the first few sentences of this review.

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