Amanda M. Lyons's Blog: Inner Voices

A Jodie Update: Progress is Progressing

I should probably update where I am as far as Jodie.

Right now Jodie's 32,164 words. I wanna say this one should be around 80k by the time I get done but nothing's set in stone per se.

Jodie started life as a sort of Carrie narrative (but with possessed dolls and a final sequence in a corn field instead of a doomed prom) I wrote as a very new teenage writer who was still pretty influenced by all the things I was in love with from media back then- so basically a tad more emotionally involved b flick of a short story that I loved but instantly knew would need to be rewritten and drawn out into something much bigger when I had finished writing it.

Now Jodie speaks about the nature of small town life, people who fall outside of the mainstream, trauma, loss, and coming to grips with changing identity and sexuality when you grew up in a small town, particularly a rural Ohio town haunted by some of the same things my own hometown and county were affected by like natural disasters, dark history, societal expectations, intergenerational trauma, and the wicked nature of weaponized hate in an alternate reality version of 1975. Mom's era.

A ton of writing Jodie is knowing how things end and having to write more about where everything went and where it started before we hit that point. I definitely have a much better idea of how to write what I was trying to say with Jodie now but its also important to make sure I have sensitivity and awareness thoroughly in mind for all of the different people and experiences in this thing. I'd like to think I'm doing pretty good there but I'm gonna wanna consider having someone I trust read through the draft to be sure maybe.

Here, have some visual representations of Jodie, Ben, and Earlie to get an idea of who my primary characters are.

Jodie: MC who is a sort of lost child/wild child who has certain witchy powers.

Ben: Jodie's half brother who resents her because he was raised to by his mother as much as because he has his own issues with her based on his perspectives about their shared father's death and her part in it.

Earlie: the guy who is stuck in between these two because he's kind of got a crush/ entanglement with Jodie and a complex friendship with Ben who has been his best friend for most of their lives.

It's a lot more complicated than all of this but I kept it simple here.

​I feel like I shouldn't have to say this by now because a lot of my books have queer narratives, but yes this one has queer narratives involved. 

Book Review: The Cherished by Patricia Ward

​Jo expects to walk into an escape from the complexities and struggle of her life with her mother and stepfather when she opens the letter from her adoptive grandmother Maur and learns she has inherited a farm and all it entails, especially since it comes just as her mother is nearing the end of her pregnancy and Jo is approaching adulthood now that she's 16 and about to gain access to the farm at the age of 18. She blindly hopes that the good memories of the past will offer her a fresh start on her own terms and she can blithely abandon all of the things that have held her down since losing her father at a young age. Now that none of the members of his family are here to remind her of all the things that had gone wrong when she was small and hugely affected by her father's mental illness and the complexities of her parents' falling out, maybe she can put it all behind her and throw herself into something new.

Except that's not how it is at all. Her stepfather Robert insists the farm needs to be sold and her mother, like always, capitulates to his lead and decides to make the trip to Vermont a journey to clean everything up and toss everything away before they sell-even the responsibilities and the very vulnerable man and child Maur left in her care along with the farm. Over and over again her mother insists that everything must go- there is no other choice- its almost like she's trying to convince herself right along with her daughter. Once they arrive on the property, however, nothing goes to plan and all of her mother's ideals fall to the wayside as she grows ill, Jo is consumed with memories about her past she thought she had forgotten, and both the workings of the farm itself and Tom and Hattie, who have full knowledge of what it is she must do and all it entails, demand that Jo face the truth about herself and the past that dictates her future whether she likes it or not.

This isn't the kind of book you pick up because you're hoping to read about lighthearted narratives of self-discovery, change, and acceptance or happily ever after endings. The Cherished is a book about loss, grief, conflict, and the complexity of interpersonal relationships-particularly those that are tangled with false narratives, trauma, and codependency. Jo's grandparents are racist and entitled, her mother grew up being controlled and manipulated by her parents and therefore her view of the world and the way it works are shaped by that manipulation and her own experiences with a partner who struggled with mental illness and who was raised by an adoptive mother who was herself quite complex and possibly mentally ill. Jo then, is a 16 year old who is better than her parents and the stepfather and grandparents she grew up with, but her own understanding of the world is still colored by the people with whom she grew up and the very complex trauma she underwent herself at a young age because of these combined families' issues. We're not going to get an ideal protagonist here, we're going to get an honest one for her circumstances and what little she knows about the circumstances of her childhood and the events that played out during her parents' lifetimes and those of the people who live in and around the farm she inherits from her adoptive grandmother, Maur. 

Trauma and pain are not convenient and so neither are the views and understandings of those victimized by them, particularly not when those victims are faced with narratives that fall outside of the norm and include some very dark revelations. Here it is clearly underlined that healing and confronting the past is by no means an easy business but it must be done to go forward into what is rather than what we had hoped could be. The ways that plays out will vary, but so will the things you gain by pursuing what is possible over what is unattainable. I appreciated this book precisely because it wasn't just another dark fantasy/ horror thriller with all the usual tropes and easy resolutions. There's no romance, no poor girl given a sword to wield in an epic battle, and no easy abandonment of doubt and unquestioning trust from the side characters, even the unflattering views of our MC are called into question as she grows as a person and I think there's plenty to be gained from a book that feels like it understands what it intends to say is valid and worthy in spite of expectations. Is this truly horror per se? I'd say this is a bit more literary fiction with strong dark fantasy themes blended into the structure of the book.

Book Review: All the Tiny Bird-Hearts a Book that Gets Autism and Motherhood Right

Sunday Forrester isn't like the other people in her lakeside community, she stays to herself, she does things simply, and she tries very hard to observe the rules she's set out for herself. For a long time now life hasn't always worked out for the best but turned out the best way it possibly could under the circumstances. Sunday has no intention of making any changes, she's divorced, single, and doing just fine working at her former in-laws farm and sharing the raising of her 16 year old daughter with them. She almost doesn't say anything when she notices something in the backyard of her neighbor Tom's yard, only what if the woman she sees lying there is hurt and no one else is there to notice? She was just in the middle of going to investigate when the woman leapt to her feet and came to introduce herself-

Vita is nothing like the people in her community and Sunday doesn't know what to think when this brash woman enters her house and quickly begins a dialogue as if she's known her for ages. Even stranger, she doesn't question any of Sunday's quirks. If anything, she seems to welcome them and respond with her own.

This is how All the Little Bird-Hearts and the relationship between Sunday and Vita begins and we can't help but be pulled into both the narrative and their lives much the way Sunday and her daughter Dolly are. Charm and spontaneity are strong elements in Vita's life, particularly where it regards things that she wants, up to and including the attention and focus of others. She swoops into Sunday's life at random for some time and then pulls Sunday and Dolly into her and her husband' Rollo's life shortly thereafter, an act that pleases both of them and quickly consumes Dolly when she is invited to 'work' for them. As this progresses we learn more and more about Sunday and Vita herself, bit by bit discovering the depths of Sunday's past and the reasons for Rollo and Vita's flight from London into the English countryside. Is there more going on between Rollo and Vita than it seems? Are their intentions healthy in regard to Dolly and Sunday? Is Sunday's interpretation of her friends right or are they just one more group of people taking advantage of her differences for their own benefit?

​ Not only does Lloyd-Barlow get autism right she portrays the complex relationship between a nuerodivergent mother and her socially typical and affluent child quite nicely as well. We don't only see Sunday from an outer lens colored by our interpretations of her experience in All the Tiny Bird-Hearts, we find ourselves looking at things through her eyes and understanding both her own perspective and that of the people around her in layers, giving the book much more nuance. This is a book set in the 80s and has a feel that matches the era but also makes me think of novels and films set in the 60s, that sort of closed and small outlook that feels welcoming and mysterious in a quiet way and engages with you differently than a lot of literary books do. The characters are all very real here, we see them the way Sunday does and we gauge them with our own eyes and end up with a broader idea of them as people. I really liked how Sunday expresses the elements of her past in small stories that connect to the conversations and we get a feel for why she connects them together, whether through tangential ideas or through her affection for her beloved etiquette and Northern Italian myths books. Sunday is a very real person with her own understanding and we don't end up feeling like she's a luridly stereotype of an autistic person, we have sympathy for her views and empathy with her inability to fit with the world she grew up in. No, she doesn't always get it right but we also don't end up blaming her for her mistakes either. As a neurodivergent mother, it was nice to read a book that  seemed to understand the ways that a mother with these complexities could both work with and not always grasp the things their child was dealing with.

I was pleased to be offered the opportunity to read and review All the Tiny Bird-Hearts by Algonquin Books and Netgalley, this was absolutely a good experience and I'll be keeping an eye out for other books from Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow in the future!
More info on All the Little Bird-Hearts:

I lived for and loved a bird-heart that summer; I only knew it afterwards.
 
Sunday Forrester does things more carefully than most people. On certain days, she must eat only white food; she drinks only carbonated beverages; she avoids clocks. It's 1988, before autism was widely diagnosed. Sunday has an old etiquette handbook that guides her through confusing social situations, and to escape, she turns to her treasury of Sicilian folklore. The one thing very much out of her control is Dolly, her clever, headstrong teenage daughter, now on the cusp of leaving their home in the Lake District of England.

When the glamourous Vita and Rollo move in next door, the couple disarm Sunday with their charm, and proceed to deliciously break just about every rule in Sunday's book. Soon they are spending loads of time together, and Sunday feels acknowledged like never before. But underneath Vita and Rollo's allure lies something else, something darker. For Sunday has precisely what Vita has always wanted for herself: a daughter of her own.

A page-turning psychological drama, All the Little Bird-Hearts is an extraordinary, often witty glimpse into the mind of an autistic woman─and a remarkable debut by an author who is herself autistic. It is also an astute portrait of a woman coming to terms with the meaning of love, of motherhood, and of authenticity, and a poignant reminder about why accepting ourselves can be so freeing. 

​
​









​Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kent. Like her protagonist, Sunday, in ALL THE LITTLE BIRD-HEARTS, Viktoria is autistic. She has presented her doctoral research internationally, most recently speaking at Harvard University on autism and literary narrative. Viktoria lives with her husband and children on the Kent coast.

Author Event: Pan Yan's Horror Spooktacular Oct 14th 1-4pm

It's officially spooky season and if you're interested in meeting me, checking out my books, and are going to be in the area of Tiffin, Ohio October 14th you can stop in and see me at the multi-author event at Pan Yan Bookstore from 1-4pm. I hope to see some of you there!


Attention horror lovers! This next author event is one you will not want to miss!

Clear you calendars on October 14th from 1p - 4p so you won't miss Pan Yan's Horror Spooktacular.
Horror and thriller authors are taking over our store, and we're powerless to stop it. Not that we'd want to... 
From mild horror to ones you won't want to read alone, we'll have it all for you just in time for the spooky season. We'll also have a craft vendor and tarot card reader.
Leading up to the event, we'll do an author spotlight on each author attending and some of their books.
This is the event that our resident horror lover, Bevin, has been looking forward to, so make sure you stop by and talk creepy books with her.

#panyanbooks #senecacounty #authorevent #tiffinohio #halloween #spookyseason #indiebookstore #hororbookstagram #thrillerbooks #ohiohorror #ohiobookstore #authorevent #agatheringofauthors ​The first box of books for the October 14th event at @panyanbooks has arrived! This time it's Night is Falling, my horror novel about one man's struggle to find out what is quietly taking over his small woodland community. I'm expecting the second box of books (A Scorpion's Labyrinth, my short horror collection) any day now and will update everyone when it gets here.

These are for the event but you can order them on Amazon in hardback, paperback, Audible, and Kindle formats or reach out to order a signed copy from me ($15 for Night is Falling and $20 for A Scorpion's Labyrinth) at nightshade44637@gmail.com.

Please feel free to inquire about ordering any of my other books directly from me as well. 

Night is Falling can be found on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Night-Is.../dp/B0B67B17KN

#horrorbookstagram #authorevent #halloween #spookyreads #queerbookstagram #ohiohorror #serpentmound #mythological #bodyhorror

A Scorpion's Labyrinth: The Collected Short Horror of Amanda M. Lyons

Alright, folks, sorry for the long absence. Things were complex for a while and I wasn't keeping up here as often as I should have been. You have my apologies. I have been writing though, and continued to do reviews on Netgalley, Amazon, and Goodreads as well. For now I wanted to point out that I've put together a omnibus of my short horror stories and you can find it on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardback formats. I sincerely hope that you'll appreciate having them all in one convenient package and getting to read a few shorts that weren't included in past collections as well. The cover art is from an old picture I took one day years ago while hiking on the local trail. I just may be the only one that sees a sad and somewhat sinister woman there in the form of the tree but I've always loved it, particularly with the small bit of altering I did to the image to bring her out.  



Here are the details for A Scorpion's Labyrinth:

Visceral, dark, gothic, horrific, surreal, and character-driven horror shorts for all kinds of horror fans. This book collects the short works of Amanda M. Lyons previously published in the collections The Lesser Apocrypha, In Ventre Tuo, Sacrum Umbra, and The Hungry Season and includes other shorts.

Review of Brom's Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery

Abitha hadn't planned to be married to Edward, she hadn't planned to be betrothed to him either, or to travel here to the new world and all the restrictions of Puritan life, but she was doing her best to live her life all the same, She hadn't chosen Edward, she hadn't been raised to be married into Puritan life, nor was she suited to all of these rules and hardships, but she felt like she might be happy here if she could make do just a little longer. Except every time she thinks she has things figured out, that she's made just a little more room in the world for someone like herself, that she's gotten Edward to stand for them and their needs despite his meekness, everything seems to fall back into the harsher places they always do- particularly just when she needs it least and especially when the choices they make carry them out of the control of Edward's controlling and spoiled elder brother Wallace. Especially now that Edward, a good man she was just beginning to love a little bit more, is dead and she's all alone. 
​

Or is she?

Someone in the dark of the cavern where  Edward died there is a new voice and the whisper of something new, something that picks at her past, the mother she lost, and the hope she has to finally live her life for herself and no one else. Soon she'll find herself discovering so much about herself, the woods, the animals, the men all around her, and the religion that binds them all-if she lets it. 

There is a lot to enjoy about this book and I hope that you'll agree it's more than worth the time invested to let it unravel word by word, revealing more and more about it's characters, the setting, the people, fate, and destiny. This could've been a book that followed all the same paths, told the same old stories about women who choose freedom, men who bend others to their will, the nature of religion and power, and all the old myths about what it is to be human and all too imperfect., instead we have so much to understand, fresh perspective, interesting connections, self-exploration, and a very well crafted narrative that is anything but what you're expecting as it plays out. Highly recommended for fans of myth, magic, mystery, and the nature of good versus evil. 

Review of Lee Mandelo's Summer Sons

Andrew thought he knew all there was to know about his friend Eddie- until he turned up dead of an apparent suicide just days before he was supposed to meet him and reconnect. Now the heir to everything Eddie owned, he's looking for answers for all the questions Eddie's sudden and inexplicable death have left for him including an explanation for the Haunt that's been riding him ever since Eddie died and answers for why Eddie had been digging up information about the shared past he swore they'd both been running from. Lost in his grief, torn by their past, and furious with his current circumstances but adamant that he'll discover what happened to Eddie, Andrew's in over his head in more ways than he can imagine. 

Set in the area of Nashville Tennessee and featuring both the academic world of Vanderbilt and the rough and ragged rural party life of many young men and women of Appalachia this book is an absolutely intense blend of Southern Gothic, fast cars, wild youth, and the darker aspects of the supernatural, particularly those created by the very real ghosts of our personal pasts and those of our ancestors. It also has plenty to say about the high cost of being consumed by our inner darkness, the need to avoid confronting trauma, and becoming consumed by the world around us. This book absolutely grips the reader from the very beginning pulling us along on Andrew's journey as he tries to make sense of what Eddie's left for him in a life so perfectly planned in which he is both terribly absent and inexplicably present in all things. Yearning, grief, control, desire, agony, depression, angst, and trials all  come off the page and make the reader want to devour the book whole from beginning to end. I absolutely can't exaggerate how compelling this read was and how very satisfied I was by the end of it. I'm really hoping to find many more novels forthcoming from this author and highly recommend this one to readers looking for a great gothic ghost story with depth, compulsion, and mystery. 

Review of Chris Coppel's Legacy

In Legacy, we're introduced to a sheriff's deputy and his family who've received an unexpected package in the middle of the night and soon face equally unexpected consequences for accepting it. On the face of things, this is a novel about the supernatural but I'd actually say this ends up being more of an adventure or thriller novel with supernatural elements mixed in for good measure. One might be able to call it a blend of the classic House horror film from the eighties and the equally campy Trancers series of the nineties featuring Jack Death only with the intent to tackle supernatural intruders from other worlds via time jumps. Fans of either of these film series may find a nice little b movie read in this book. Personally, I felt like there was still some work to do.

  This story and its presentation have some solid points and a validly unique premise to work with but I think this one, the first in an intended series of books about our hero, really needed more time to percolate before it went into the cup. There are some grammar issues off and on and the narrative isn't always smooth, but I think the larger problems lie with the story. It's a bit all over between discussions of trauma that are in turns either very stark or very detached and often feel unused for character development or establishing. Not only are these trauma points suddenly dropped in our laps, but we're also just as suddenly jerked back to the main narrative without the two being fully connected. There are some really loose characterizations for everyone besides Craig, leaving most of the characters two-dimensional at best particularly because there is so much telling going on for parts of the story when we should be shown instead. Several points occur where gender stereotypes or cultural depictions interrupt our connection to these other characters too,  up to an I including both Ahote, a magical Indian, and Craig's wife, Jenny. I have to be honest and say that these things detracted enough from the story that I wasn't able to fully enjoy it. I hope the author is able to work out some improvements with his novel and later installments of the series before he goes forward, there is some real promise and unique ideas here.

Book Review: Stephen Graham Jones' My Heart is a Chainsaw

Jade is a girl who loves her slasher movies, not just any old horror, not werewolves and vampires, not ghost stories without structure and rules, just slashers. Slashers act with purpose, they're silent, deadly, and relentless. They can be relied on to arrive just when they're needed and provide more than enough chaos, and Jade knows that her little town, a little run-down lake town called Proofrock, is just dying to have one. See, Jade pays attention, she studies the rules, she knows her Slasher movies, and there are plenty of reasons her town has already got the makings of a slasher story all ready to go if she can just arrange the workings of her life to allow her to pay attention enough. Be ready enough to witness it. All she needs is a final girl and the ability to figure out which of the old stories of her town will pay off-ok, and also finishing out this whole high school thing, and getting her dad to leave her alone. If she can just do that, if she can just make it through long enough to have everything in her life somewhat in order no matter how much everyone else doesn't get it, Jade will have it made- Or so she thinks.

My Heart is a Chainsaw is easily one of my favorite books of the last five years. There's everything here, the joy of a lead character who's genuinely engaging and complex, equally complex and interesting secondary characters with their own narratives, a town with lots of detail and intrigue which we feel like we can slip right into, all the bloody gore slasher fans have been in love with since the seventies, and plot twists and turns that have the reader gleefully following Jade's narrative one minute and emotionally engaged and moved the next. I love nothing better than a book that pulls me in with its narrative and gives me an idea that I know where we're going, then surprises me by taking on a whole new direction or doing a 180 and going somewhere completely counter to my expectations. This book absolutely does everything it set out to do. I really hope people enjoy it as much as I did, especially my fellow horror nerd girls!

Review: Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Certain Dark Things

Certain Dark Things is the story of Atl, a member of an ancient vampire clan born out of the Aztec empire and its ancient religious practices. The youngest of her mother's two daughters, she has just survived the brutal drug war centered slaying of the majority ( and possibly all) of her proud and storied clan.  She lives in a modern world where vampires were outed in 1967 and cities like Mexico City have declared themselves vampire-free zones despite the very high population of vampires in Mexico and South America as a whole, many of these ten clans having handily centered themselves at the top of crime and drug syndicates who wield power over human and vampire lives alike. 

Despite the ban, Atl finds herself hiding in a Mexico City occupied by so many differences- among them sanitation squads who hunt and destroy vampires, brutal poverty, and complex threats from police officers, a crime group called Deep Crimson, and other vampires. Atl is surviving by the skin of her teeth with no other company than her dog Cuilli until she meets Domingo by chance and things begin to happen which drag both Domingo and herself into a major conflict with the Necros clan which murdered her family, an old enemy of Domingo's named Jackal,  Deep Crimson itself, and a police officer pulled into the fray by both her need to protect her daughter from this violent modern world and a past that included slaying vampires.

 This is a richly detailed noir laced with urban fantasy elements, a strong clan-centered vampire crime world, new and interesting vampire lore and diversity, and so much of Mexico's own cultural heritage. If I could compare it to any other vampire fiction I would say think of Nancy A. Collins' Sonja Blue and Nancy Baker's Creed duo which began with The Night Inside, possibly also elements of Vampire: The Masquerade which was also heavily centered on the interplay between differing vampire clan and types (All three of these were also major standouts in the genre and well worth your time. ). Vampire fans and fans of the noir are very likely to enjoy this original take on the old tropes and find themselves a new favorite in Certain Dark Things. I certainly appreciated it's characters, complexities, and layers after many years of having been a reader and writer of vampire fiction.