Kevin Lucia's Blog

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A wonderful review of CARETAKER OF THE DEAD! It’s wonderful when someone dials right in to what you were trying to do. Kevin Lucia

“Caretaker of the Dead is a Clifton Heights novella by Kevin Lucia. This chilling supernatural tale is a quieter horror than other Clifton Heights stories, flowing with dark intrigue, breath-stopping suspense, and the gripping atmosphere of dread that comes with a haunted mortuary.

But it also has evocative characters and depth. The first-person perspective creates and air of mystery surrounding the events and other characters, but it also allows for a very impactful introspective on death and the deceased as the story progresses and the main character evolves. I found it on the whole to be emotionally and intellectually moving as well as incredibly and wonderfully creepy!

On a side note, on of the key characters is the Shopkeeper, who is an enigmatic and fascinating recurring character throughout the Clifton Heights series. Since the books can be read in any order, I have not yet read the one that focuses on the Shopkeeper (Things You Need), but after the part he plays in this one, I promptly acquired it and added it to my TBR list (pile, hill, mountain).

I thoroughly enjoyed Caretaker of the Dead. It’s compelling, entertaining, mentally stimulating, and has the perfect level of supernatural horror creep-factor. It’s an excellent story, a quick and fun read, and I cannot recommend it enough.” - Lisa Lee Tone, Bibliophilia Templum

https://www.amazon.com/Caretaker-Dead-Kevin.../dp/B0FLXMLQSZ

Tubi Tuesdays Are Coming.....

Tubi Tuesdays Are Coming...

The Deceiver, by Melanie Tem

Melanie Tem's The Deceiver is a lush work, poetic and lyrical. In a word, the writing is fantastic. It's a generational story about how a mysterious figure haunts a particular family and all its branches, showing up at just the right times in their lives to dispense much-needed advice. But this is advice is....dark. Thoughtless and cruel. And oftentimes, sinister.

The only downside to this novel is the menacing figure doesn't work as well as it should as a throughline. And this is quiet horror, but the rather vague purposes of this figure could make the story too vague for some readers. Regardless, Tem's characters are three-dimensional; they live and breathe, and the writing is top-notch. Check it out today.

Ewarton Death Trip, by A. R. Morlan

A. R. Morlan’s fictional town of Ewerton reads like a hybrid of Ray Bradbury’s Green Town, Charles L. Grant’s Oxrun Station, Gary A. Braunbeck’s Cedar Hill, and even Stephen King’s Castle Rock. This is especially evident in her massive and impressively diverse collection of short stories set in Ewerton, Ewerton Death Trip.

The collection offers touches of a very Bradbury-esque magical realism (“From the Far Away Nearby,” “The Cat With the Tulip Face,” and “The German Lady”), early Stephen King pulpy horror, (“When the Bad Things Come,” “Street Coffins,” “Hunger”), the working-class despair which throbs in Braunbeck’s Cedar Hill stories (“Garbage Day in Ewerton,” “Osaka’s Children,” “Simon Says”), and the free-floating eeriness of Grant’s Oxrun Station (“Four Days,” “The Holiday House,” “Reedeem My Soul From the Power of the Grave”).

It’s clear that short fiction was A. R. Morlan’s specialty, because Ewerton Death Trip is only her collection of Ewerton short stories. Over the course of her career, she wrote enough short stories to fill eight other short story collections containing tales ranging from horror, folklore, science fiction, humor, and erotica. Check this out today.

Remember....

If I'm remembered at all in the horror community - I hope it will be as a guy who was a "good" writer, and who also really loved the horror genre, and loved studying how it can make us better people. #horrorcommunity #horrorfam

Amulet, by A. R. Morlan

A. R. Morlan’s other novel, The Amulet, is much more of a standard horror novel than Dark Journey, though still featuring the motif of generational evil — both supernatural and purely human. This is a motif which runs strong in her work, and when you’ve looked up the sparse bits of her personal life, it makes sense why.

In any case, in The Amulet, an ancient artifact which bestows eternal life and other abominable powers, wreaks havoc in the town of Ewerton. Though more of a typical (but very well-written) horror novel, The Amulet also offers startlingly vivid portrayals of the social castes which often exist in small towns, and how some people end up living on the margins of life for no other reason than who they are. Again, this powerful characterization seems highly biographical, and I dare say was more than likely culled from Morlan’s personal experiences. Check it out today.

Dark Journey, by A. R. Morlan

Dark Journey is easily A. R. Morlan’s best work, a multi-layered, multi-generational tale of small town horror which evokes shades of Stephen King, Charles Grant, and Gary A. Braunbeck. It’s also a wonderfully non-linear story written in a lush narrative which is reminiscent of some of Peter Straub’s best work. It’s also very much like Straub’s If You Could See Me Now, with its themes of evil echoing down through the generations, especially evil born of cruelty and hatred. Check this out today.

Family Inheritance, by Deborah LeBlanc

Family Inheritance, by Deborah LeBlanc, is an entertaining and fast-paced story about a family’s destiny. Jessica Lejune’s brother Todd has been committed to a mental health facility showing signs of shizophrenia. She leaves work and her family behind to fly to her homestate of Lousianna, because something must be wrong. Todd can’t be schizophrenic, he just can’t be. There has to be something more at play, and she’s right. She and her friend Lisa and Lisa’s mother find themselves plunged into a supernatural mystery, a battle between good and evil, one which can only be won if Jessica accepts her true destinty. Along the way, there’s some serious mediation about growing up in an abusive home, and the scars that leaves. Check this out today.

So, this happpened.....