Books

The first thing I noticed about The Old One by P. A. Douglas is the cover, an eye-catching, nightmare inducing painting by Alan Clark. His artwork may be familiar to the horror and bizarre reader, having graced the covers of books by Edward Lee, Cameron Pierce, and Stephen King, among others. It is a fascinating picture of a truly fear-inducing …

DEAD HUNGER V: THE ROAD TO CALIFORNIA By: Eric A. Shelman Dolphin Moon Publishing 450 Pages While Zombie Apocalypse survivors Flex, Gem, Hemp and Charlie continue to restore civilization and co-exist in a world gone mad, Dave and Serena become restless and cannot shake the undeniable feeling of venturing off into the open road. As tribute to his late sister …

SPECIAL DEAD By: Patrick Freivald JournalStone Publishing 260 Pages As the dust settles from the ill-fated high school prom Ani Romero and seven additional survivors have been held in a quarantine type environment to resume their studies. Far from the conventional curriculum the students have to cope with trigger itchy soldiers wielding flame throwers, outside radical protestors and continuous poking …

Although the horror anthology is not a new thing, the concept horror anthology (at least partially) is, at least for me. Michael Bray has come up with a fairly interesting collection of twelve assorted tales that, although none of the stories require you to read the others to understand them as none of them are connected directly nor linearly, the …

FADE TO BLACK By: Jeffrey Wilson JournalStone publications 254 Pages Jack is your typical, ordinary man. A loving husband and father, an admired school teacher with a seemingly perfect life, one day a harrowing vision creeps into his life. From a first person point of view he experiences the very real terror of a Marine Sergeant Casey Stillman in midst …

Fish Bites Cop! Stories to Bash Authorities – by David James Keaton Remember that cop who wrote you a ticket for having a turn-signal out and went on to condescend you and imply that he could get you for a whole lot more but wouldn’t because he “decided to be nice?” Remember seeing the video of the off-duty Chicago police …

In case you missed the memo, or maybe the e-mail ended up in your spam folder alongside messages from Nigerian princes and the girls next door, bizarro fiction is officially a force to be reckoned with. It has invaded your horror, your science fiction, your writer’s workshops, and it is an unrelenting force with wider reach than the Wu-Tang Killa …

“He’d been waiting for the chance to cut somebody, to chop somebody up, to move up from steak and veal and pork ribs. Killer for morality, murderer for God, vicious for middle class America. Everybody just wanted the self-righteous excuse to maul somebody else, to threaten, to scare somebody the way they’d been scared their entire lives.” I remember a …

STEEL BREEZE By: Douglas Wynne Journalstone Publishing 256 Pages Desmond Carmichael is an ordinary everyday single father struggling to make ends meet and bring up his young son in a happy, healthy, safe environment. Tortured by the pain of his wife Sandy’s untimely demise, it seems as though her memory exudes through everything. Now a very real, and undeniable threat …

“Look around you. You’re on a military vehicle. They said it themselves- they fight people. That seems to run counter to keeping you safe and my blood inside of my body.” I’m not a good cook. It took me far too long to learn that, no matter how awesome chorizo, oregano, cabbage and mangos are, they shouldn’t go in my …

The Dark Side Issue 154 Ghoulish Publishing Editor: Allan Bryce The Dark Side continues to provide excellent value for money, and while it’s a UK magazine, it’s worth tracking down a copy no matter where you are on the world. The magazine has a definite skew towards the classic and retro end of the horror genre, but their coverage of …

This book includes the entire screenplay for the film version of World War Z as well as a look at how the zombies were designed and brought to life (or I guess that should be brought to unlife) for the big screen.   REVIEW: I have to be honest and say that I don’t care anything about World War Z. …

By and large, fantasy bores me. The biggest issue I have is that there so rarely appears to be any actual fantasizing involved anymore. For every shinning jewel of Abarat, there is some trite tales of elves, dwarves, dragons and wizards. Plus, I could not give the slightest fart in the wind about the maneuverings and machinations of the great. …

Gutmouth – by Gabino Iglesias Eraserhead Press – 2012 Published in 2012 as part of the New Bizarro Author Series by Eraserhead Press, Gutmouth is author Gabino Iglesias’ first book. The New Bizarro Author Series has become known for birthing a number of sick and twisted new voices into the world, including Steve Lowe (Muscle Memory), Kirsten Alene (Love in …

The Girlfriend Game – by Nick Antosca Word Riot Inc – 2013 (Publication Date: June 30, 2013) Nick Antosca has been all over the place lately. He was the writer of the 2012 horror film The Cottage, starring David Arquette and Kristen Dalton. His name can be found among the writing credits of ABC’s Last Resort as well as MTV’s …