Have You Read This? Doorways to the Deadeye by Eric J. Guignard

One of the reasons I love to read fiction is because I know that fiction is more than words on paper, more than the descriptions attributed to a character or a scene. Stories, whether they're novels, novellas, short stories, or heck, even limericks, become more than the words that compose them. They grow from mere words into people, worlds, universes when they are read, pondered, absorbed, and especially shared. I happen to be a particular fan of this particular brand of metafiction (shout out, of course, to Clive Barker's story "The Forbidden," which in turn birthed Candyman). Eric J. Guignard takes this idea of fiction becoming real and creates a fantastic and exciting universe in his novel Doorways to the Deadeye. 

Guignard focuses not on literature, per se, but on uniquely American legends. These aren't tales of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan, however. These are tales of gangsters, lawmen, heroes, and Luke Thatcher, riding the rails in Depression-era America discovers through the Hobo Code that these legends gain flesh-and-blood reality in a world of Anathasia, also called the Deadeye. Luke Thacker is no Pecos Bill but he becomes one as he unlocks the secrets of this other world, using it to help the love of his life and to protect it from those legends who seek to do it harm. In Anathasia, the more the living remember you, the more powerful you become, and there are those who seek to expand their legend to the point where it supersedes all other folklore. 

This is a great book for people who love their worlds fun and fantastical. Guignard has also avoided pigeonholing the various legends Luke encounters into the tropes their legends happen to fit. In other words, nefarious gangsters can become your allies, stalwart lawmen might be hunting you, and the greatest enemy of all is one of our nation's founding fathers. Apart from creating a consistent yet entertaining universe in the Deadeye, Guignard fills his tale with characters brimming with personalities, especially the legends who have tics and quirks they might not have been initially known for. One of the joys of reading this book was to wait and see what legend Guignard reinterprets next. While this book definitely falls more on the fantastical than horror, there is a scene involving a very unassuming yet infamous axe murderer that would make any gorehound salivate. Overall, this is a book for fans of horror and fantasy as well as for people who believe fervently in the power of imagination. 

Have You Read This? Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren

Many people describe the overall purpose of the horror story as creating emotions like fear, dread, and terror in the reader. There are also readers like Paul Tremblay who create disquiet, the feeling taht something is not quite right, and that whatever is "not quite right" could lead to something truly awful. Rather than relying on jump scares or moments that grab the reader by the throat, these authors of disquiet create scenes that settle like a miasma over readers, causing them discomfort while pulling them deeper into the universe the writer has created. Kaaron Warren goes all into creating atmosphere with her novella Into Bones Like Oil.
The premise of the book sets it apart from the average ghost story. Protagonist Dora is the latest resident of the Angelsea rooming house, which is located near an old shipwreck. Broken people come to the Angelsea, including Dora, who has recently lost her daughters, but the Angelsea is also home to a unique brand of ghosts, ones that speak through the living while they sleep. You can probably get a good night's sleep at the Angelsea, but expect a ghost to use you as its mouthpiece and whisper its secrets to anyone willing to watch and listen to you sleep.
The book goes all in on atmosphere. The characters are profoundly miserable, with even their social gatherings full of a kind of sickly tension that remains throughout the encounter. Day and night also have very little difference between them; everything being a dreary overcast of the soul. Even he ghosts themselves aren't the most frightening thing in this book; rather, they are treated like a morbid feature of the hotel, but still a feature as mundane as the view from the balcony or the continental breakfast, which lies one of the more fascinating aspects of the book. Much like Micah Dean Hicks's Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones, the spirits are fully ingrained into this shadow universe full of magical realism. Angelsea owner Roy is more disturbing than the ghosts that speak through the emotionally dead yet living people who rent his rooms. Not only does Roy pump the spirits for information about the shipwreck, he is willing to cut deals with his living tenants to get the ghosts to speak through them. Basically, Roy has no problems exploiting the living and the dead and the living all cater to Roy's need to hear the dead speak.
The book is not a plot-driven piece; there is no grand climax or eureka moments for these characters. Nobody really learns anything and the denouement is truly minimal. I actually listened to this book on audio during a long drive. It was raining and the sky was a dismal gray that makes a story like this feel appropriate. Finally finishing the book was more like coming up for air rather than the satisfaction of unraveling a story. This book is not for readers whose reason for reading is opening up a story like it's a puzzle box. This novella,which makes Into Bones Like Oil only the briefest dive into sadness, is for readers who like their stories to take them to other places, if only for a little while.

New Arrival: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Who doesn't love a good ghost story? That may depend on the individual and what stories they've witnessed. For every The Haunting of Hill House or The Turn of the Screw, there are a thousand examples of poorly-written, doomed-to-be-direct-to-video dreck. A good ghost story is more than just creaking staircases and jump scares. A good ghost story has real emotion, a well-laden atmosphere, and a spirit with a clear motivation, whether its malice or revenge, or even both. Adding to the list of great ghost stories is Stephen Graham Jones, whose latest The Only Good Indians shows a unique ghost story that is miles ahead of the multitude of mundane bump-in-the-night tales.
I classify this tale as a ghost story, but the antagonist isn't wearing a white flowing gown nor do they rattle any chains. The spirit that follows four Native American best friends is just as much of a character as the four men who transgressed by hunting on the wrong land. The book doesn't seem to have a first-person or third person narrator, but weaves its way through the narratives and lives (or unlives) of the four men and one vengeful spirit in such as way as to not be jarring at all. Rather, the reader becomes like a spirit that travels behind the eyes and into the minds of the various people that are tied together in this story.
The book unveils many issues, ranging from cultural identity to the strength, for better or worse, of tradition, but it also showcases Stephen Graham Jones as a top-notch storyteller. Somehow offering sumptuous description without flowery words, Jones's words maintain that tricky balance of moving the reader through the story at a quick pace while also immersing them in life on the Reservation and beyond. No character in this story feels underdeveloped or one-dimensional and when tragedy befalls them, the reader might audibly gasp in shock at the brutality and the emotion of their passing. Rare is the author who can balance between brutality and beauty, of storycraft and carnage, but Stephen Graham Jones, called the Jordan Peele of horror fiction, looks at modern issues in a way that makes everyone want to look as well.

Have You Read This? Kin by Kealan Patrick Burke

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ends with the heroine Sally escaping by diving into the bed of a pickup truck. She's laughing maniacally, victoriously, as the truck drives away from the site of the massacre while Leatherface, the man responsible for most of the movie's bloodshed, can only swing his buzzing chainsaw in the air impotently, defeated. The movie ends on that note of triumph, but what if there was more to the story? Would the movie still have its impact if it followed Leatherface having to tell his family his prey escaped? Or followed Sally through her attempts to process what happened to her friends, the ones murdered by Leatherface's sadistic clan? Kealan Patrick Burke explores these questions, as well as the overall effect of trauma, in his ode to cannibal backwoods killers Kin.
Unlike Chainsaw, Kin begins with heroine Claire Lambert's harrowing escape from the diabolical Merrill family. She is naked, missing extremities, including her eye, and her body is running completely on instinct after escaping her captivity. Make no mistake that Burke does not shy away from the gory details, from describing the family's preparation of victims to the effects that horrors, like the ones the Merrills perpetrate on everyone, affect everyone in their orbit. Burke adds multiple stories, from the family that rescued Claire when they drove by, to a brother whose come home from a war only to start a new one when he discovers his brother, Claire's boyfriend, was one of those killed in the massacre. Now outside forces wanting retribution are bearing down on the Merrill clan, which is ruled with an iron fist and a Bible by Papa-In-Gray. Papa-in-Gray has trained his boys to hunt and to fight, to protect what is theirs and take what they want. It is truly unknown, as you read, who will walk away from the book's final showdown
One of the hardest balancing acts to maintain with books that don't shy away from violence is balancing it with some empathy. The advent of the movie genre "torture porn" shows the results of violence without empathy. Luckily, Burke knows how to make characters the reader can sympathize with. Even the mostly despicable members of the Merrill family show themselves to be more than cardboard monsters, particularly Luke, the son who is starting to question Papa-In-Gray's authority. If this were merely another book full of violent deaths and depictions of brutality that would make a med school student nauseous, I couldn't recommend this book, but Burke does know the craft of writing, making beautiful sentences, and showing us characters whose need for vengeance is as strong as their need to heal. While this book is not everyone's cup of bloody tea, Kin goes well beyond violence for violence's sake.

Screen to Scream: In the Tall Grass

I sometimes feel a little self-conscious about admitting my fandom of Stephen King and Joe Hill, the maligned and allegedly aggrandized master of the macabre and his boy Joe, a regular chip off the old tombstone, who's getting as much name recognition as his father through a similar amount of media saturation. Yes, there are many indie authors out there breaking boundaries and tearing down walls (and Stephen didn't help his case with THAT tweet!) and many might think that Stephen's horror belongs in the past, but I do owe something to Uncle Stephen for turning me onto horror. I also owe Joe Hill, a storyteller who in many respects has surpassed his father, for showing me how magic and awe can still be woven into a story, almost a throwback to Ray Bradbury and . . . well, his dad. I usually turn to a Gabino Iglesias or Nick Cutter for stories that hit like a sucker punch to the gut whereas a Stephen King/Joe Hill tale might be like a trip through a neighbor's haunted house on Halloween, a neighbor that's maybe a dentist when it's not Halloween. I enjoy their fiction but their stories don't necessarily shock me. Then I read "In the Tall Grass" (from Hill's Full Throttle collection) and I saw the Netflix movie based on the story.
The story begins like a typical Stephen King or Joe Hill story: normal-seeming Cal and Becky Demuth are driving along, their deep yet placid brother/sister relationship explained in the introduction. Becky is pregnant and Cal, the dutiful brother, is driving his sister to San Diego to stay with relatives while she has the baby. Then they hear a young boy's cry for help emanating from a sea of tall grass. Stopping to offer assistance, Cal gives a "Captain Cal to the rescue" before he runs headlong into it, followed by Becky who loses her signal and soon her way. The siblings, separated, are lead not only away from each other, but toward a dark fate thanks to whatever lurks in the grass and the power it has over those who enter its domain. The Netflix movie manages to add onto this premise by including the baby's father as well as a time travel narrative that's difficult to follow at times, but both stories become very dark very quick. What starts off as a fun spooky tale becomes darker and more disturbing as the violence is taken to unexpected places. "In the Tall Grass" is about isolation, madness, and even a little folk horror, but both movie and book both show a major strength of both father and son, creating fleshed-out and empathetic characters that the readers' hearts will break for once the horror closes in on them. What makes this story different is the sheer level of savagery the characters endure, not in a gratuitous way but one that shows just how unrelenting, ancient, and barbaric the thing in the grass is. It's a story that shows that father and son can break out the buckets of blood when they need to, but you should experience both for yourself. Just be sure to have a Ray Bradbury or Neil Gaiman palate cleanser story on standby.

Have You Read This? The Bone Weaver's Orchard by Sarah Read

Fans of Harry Potter, as well as many young adult and juvenile books, may be familiar with the trope dealing with the transformative power of a new school/new environment. After living with his aunt and uncle who treat him like an afterthought at best and like a whipped dog at worst, Harry is whisked off to Hogwarts where he finds fame, friendship, and perhaps more importantly, acceptance. But Charley Wilson finds something altogether different in Sarah Read's The Bone Weaver's Orchard when he is sent off to school.
With his mother dead and his father serving in the military, Charley is sent to the Old Cross School for Boys. While Harry Potter enters Hogwarts a celebrity thanks to being "The Boy Who Lived," Charley enters the school as a boy struggling to find a place away from his family. He is able to confide in people like gardener Sam Forster and and motherly Matron Grace, but Charly is still regarded as a troublemaker by many of his teachers and fellow classmates. What purpose he does find begins when a potential friend winds up missing, leading Charley on a mystery involving dark, crumbling corridors, Gothic ruins, and ghastly secrets.
As I read this book, after I tried to stop comparing it to Harry Potter, it reminded me of Disney movies during the 70's and 80's that, before the animated era of talking crabs and blue genies, made live-action movies that terrified a generation. The book started out as something that could have been in the juvenile section of the library, particularly with the child protagonist struggling to solve a mystery that many of his peers and authority figures tell him to ignore. It soon became something genuinely frightening as the school does have some very dark and disturbing secrets, as violent and terrifying as anything dreamed up by Mary Shelley or Clive Barker. Once again going back to the Harry Potter analogy, Sarah Read offers up some real literary magic to combine so many influences from both children's and adult literature to create the story of a plucky, young hero who, while dealing with his own traumas, tries to survive what is waiting out in the burned, dilapidated halls of Old Cross, thus creating a book that serves as the perfect bridge for young adult horror readers who are looking for a genuinely terrifying and disturbing experience.

Fearsome Five: Five Books Coming Out in April

Hey, everyone. It's been a while. I've been hunkered down amidst the dark stacks, trying to stay safe, get some work done, and avoid any Wiki holes that will make me an expert on, say, Thundercats trivia and little else. It's the old paradox about having too much time, finding the best way to be the most productive. After stockpiling toilet paper and watching the entirety of Tiger King on Netflix, I figured it was high time to get back to talking about the genre that is near and dear to my pumping, gore-soaked heart. And what better way to reconnect (while maintaining social distancing, of course) is to look around and see five scary books that are coming out this April.
Eden by Tim Lebbon Horror with an ecological message is rare, but this entry offers up an interesting sci-fi premise. The world has gotten so polluted that humanity has literally given back to nature areas known as the Virgin Zones, which are allowed to flourish with exotic fauna and wildlife, essentially a replacement for the rainforest and other lands we've destroyed. These areas are typically untouched, until a group explores one of these zones, Eden, and discovers that what humanity gave up, nature will fiercely preserve with the weapons at its disposal.
The Wise Friend by Ramsey Campbell Fans of a more subtle brand of horror tend to gravitate toward Ramsey Campbell, and this title is sure not to disappoint. An English professor knows his beloved Aunt Thelma is a famous artist whose work had grown darker before she finally committed suicide. What he learns is that the occult and her visits to sites of magical power may have had a hand in her death. When his teenage son begins to follow in his aunt's footsteps, will the father be able to save the son? And himself?
Velocities: Stories by Kathe Koja How do you feel about short story collections? How about creepy dolls? Artists and their dark inspirations? Short story collections are like the buffets of fiction; gives you the ability to sample bite-sized examples of an artist's talent. This collection features 13 never before published stories that are all distinctly Kathe Koja, and you know you've made it when your own name becomes an adjective.
The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni A Gothic sci-fi tale that starts out like a dream come true, until it becomes a nightmare, of course. Alberta "Bert" Monroe discovers that she's inherited a noble title, a lot of cash, and a castle in Italy, she discovers a branch of her family tree that she never knew existed. But after indulging in the sudden fortune and fame, she discovers that belonging to the Montebianco family exerts a very high price that, despite her newfound wealth, she may be unable to pay.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix Fans of Steel Magnolias and Fright Night will love this uniquely horrific mashup that is unquestionably Grady Hendrix (see what I did there?). Patricia Campbell is a harried housewife and mother whose idea of unwinding is talking true crime with her true crime book club. When a stranger moves into her neighborhood and children turn up missing, Patricia discovers something far more sinister that what Agatha Raisin deals with.