Five Unique Dark Fiction Voices Join Forces to Bring One Hellish Nightmare to Life

FIVE UNIQUE DARK FICTION VOICES JOIN FORCES TO
BRING ONE HELLISH NIGHTMARE TO LIFE

New Anthology I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD Offers
Five Horrific Visions of Life, Death and Bad Things In-between

It began with an ominous warning scrawled into a graffiti-scarred wall in the bathroom of a Missouri hotspot, and it ends with the release today of a truly unique collection of dark fiction from five disturbing visionaries. Bram Stoker Award® nominees Josh Malerman and John F.D. Taff; Erik T. Johnson; J. Daniel Stone and Joe Schwartz usher in I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD, the much-anticipated new nightmare from Grey Matter Press.

I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD (ISBN: 978-1-940658-72-8) is a disturbing collection of novellas whose themes could not be any more divergent. From traditional horror to dark fantasy to transgressive fiction to cosmic horror, I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD is edited by John F.D. Taff and Anthony Rivera and contains new fiction from each of the contributors whose inspiration comes from the chilling real-world inscription “I can taste the blood” found in the men’s restroom of the Black Thorn Pub in St. Louis in the summer of 2013.

“It was such a crazy thing to see scrawled on a bathroom wall that it stayed with me,” said Taff who, along with Schwartz, originally conceptualized the project. “Both Joe and I wanted to use it, and then we realized maybe the best way would be for a handful of wildly different authors to each explore it from their own unique perspective. So, that’s what we did.”

I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD consists of five long-format “visions.” In Vision One, Malerman takes readers on a journey across a dusty, sin-drenched desert in search of a mysterious stranger in his tale that reads like a horror parable from the Old Testament. Stone takes us a movie theater of the damned in Vision Two for a screening of a hellishly dark and erotically charged film unlike any other. Schwartz introduces a contract killer and a hit that is not at all what it may seem in his satisfying and pulpy Vision Three. Johnson, renowned for his weird fiction, creates a phantasmagoric universe in Vision Four that recounts the disturbing story of life, death and rebirth for one young boy. In Vision Five, Taff explores the nefarious goings on in rural America that could be causing the death of small towns across the nation.

“As diverse as they are in voice, the individual visions in I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD expertly push the envelope on traditional horror fiction,” said Rivera. “And their unifying theme is a terrifying nightmare that’s going to leave readers startled, squeamish and disconcerted long after the book has been finished.”

I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD is now available at bookstores worldwide in trade paperback and all common digital formats and directly from the publisher at ShopGreyMatterPress.com. Learn more at ICanTasteTheBlood.com.