David Niall Wilson's Blog, page 3
December 15, 2022
Human Monsters – Anthology Review
Human Monsters is a BIG collection with a wide range of styles and themes represented. Editors Sadie Harman and Ashley Sawyers have brought together a truly disturbing chorus of dark voices. There are too many stories in this volume to go title by title, but here are my picks for the top. My favorite was Josh Malerman’s “A Sunny Disposition”. There is at least one image from that story I have been unable to shake loose. Creep factor off the scale. My second favorite would be “One and Done,” by Stephen Graham Jones. There are times in his writing that he takes on a voice that just feels comfortable and real – it’s evident in his novel Mongrels, and in The Only Good Indians, and it’s also the voice of this twist on an old theme. I will mention one more story by more than title alone, “Eggshell,” by Gemma Amor. This story is so much more subtle than the others in this volume, concentrating less on the evil, and more on a method – an art – used to unearth it. As in her novel Full Immersion, Amor shows off a flair for detailed research and authentic, complex characterization. I would love to see the story become a novel.
Other notable stories (for me) were:
Monster Misunderstood – By Catherine McCarthy
The Myth of Pasiphae by Andy Davidson
Bodi-Bag by Rebeccah Jones-Howe
Between the Crosses, Row on Row – by Venezia Castro
Grave Bait – Chad Lutzke
Down the Road You Might Change Your Mind – S. P. Miskowski
Overall a solid anthology that runs the gamut from truly disgusting, extreme horror to carefully wrought prose. Well done.
December 14, 2022
The Pall Bearer’s Club – Paul Tremblay – Audio Review
This new memoir (NOVEL!) by Paul Tremblay is a literary experience. The format is unique. I listened to the audiobook, with multiple narrators, and found that this brought the oddly designed book interior to life in ways that work very effectively. The notion of a memoir being read by one of the characters, who insists it’s a novel – the ambiguity of truth from story to story, all against a running list of punk and post-punk bands and titles, introspective moments and supernatural segues that leave the truth of the matter – memoir, or novel – or novel about a memoir… completely and very satisfyingly confusing.
Mercy is looking for proof. Or… Mercy knows or is the truth. Art (Punk Art to his friends) believes some very strange things about his long time, off and on relationship with a girl he met at a funeral. The title is a little bit of a diversion, as the Pall Bearer’s Club (at least its initial iteration) is a plot device… and then is not… and then, maybe, is not again.
If you like novels that leave you thinking, that challenge you and catch you by surprise, this book is for you. Totally engaging and wonderfully presented.
The audio is very well produced and directed, and XE Sands as Mercy is deserving of an award unto herself. Now, I think I’m going to get an old Polaroid camera from eBay and head off to the graveyard, because… I still have questions.
Highly recommended.
November 29, 2022
GHOST EATERS – Clay McLeod Chapman – Review
Clay McLeod Chapman has really nailed the world of obsession and addiction. In this book, Erin, our “heroine,” I suppose, has not lived the life her parents hoped she would. There was always Silas, and their small circle of associates. Trouble, time and again, a relationship that swirled around a drain even as she tried desperately to pull free.
Then Silas died, and things got really weird. Weaving through a life being torn apart, job, family fading into the background, Chapman drives nail after nail into Erin’s psyche until she can barely tell what is real, and what is not, who to trust, and who is not even the person she thought they were.
And there are the dead. The revenants, the ghosts… so many others like her yearning to contact those they’ve lost…
This is a very dark book. The concept, and the images will stick with you like something wet plastered to the surface of your brain that you can’t shake off. One of the best books I’ve read this year. Highly recommended.
I listened to the unabridged audio, and narrator Elisabeth Rodgers brings the characters to life seamlessly, never going overboard on voices, but keeping them distinct. I cannot say how annoying I found Toby… who was annoying, as well, to Erin. It was perfect.
Highly Recommended.
November 14, 2022
Benny Rose, the Cannibal King Audio Review
Benny Rose, the Cannibal King is nearly a perfect slasher. It is founded on some fo the best of the tropes but bears their weight well, spinning and reshaping them into something new. Blackwood Vermont doesn’t have a lot going for it, at least for teenage girls, but it has Halloween. The town is home to the legend(s) of Benny Rose, the Cannibal King. Hundreds of stories have been told about him, but no one seems to know the truth.
When the new girl becomes the target of a Halloween prank by Desiree and her friends, they start the party off with Benny Rose stories. All different. All chilling. Then the new girl, Gabby, tells a story of her own. As the night darkens, and storms rage outside, the stories, and the night take on deeper, more chilling tones. Separated from the main town by a flood, trapped in a retirment community in Gabriel’s grandmother’s house, those tales, as stories often do, shift to real darkness.
Hailey Piper captures the voices of the different girls, their lives, homes, losses and dreams, perfectly and uses those voices to weave a terrifying addition to the world of Halloween slashers. Very well done, and highly recommended.
I listened to the audiobook voiced by Laura Lockwood, who effortlessly slips from girl to girl, changing the voices and giving them character. Well performed and perfect for the story.
November 8, 2022
DNW Comeback Tour Update
Things have been happening this summer. The big push is still on for The Devil’s in the Flaws & Other Dark Truths – and you should pre-order it. It’s been selected for review by Publisher’s Weekly (hopefully they will like it) – it’s being positively reviewed by The Well Read Beard (If you aren’t watching his videos, why aren’t you?) – Ray Garton, Richard Chizmar (who wrote the intro) and Jonathan Janz believe you should read it.
But that’s not all that’s been going on. I’ve been writing and submitting a lot of stories this year. Mixed results at first, but picking up steam. This summer my story “As Long as You Feed,” appeared in the Brigid’s Gate anthology Blood in the Soil, Terror on the Wind

edited by Kenneth Cain. My three part article on the history of independent publishing from the 80s until now was published in the Magazine section of the Short-Wave Publishing website, where there are a ton of great stories like CONELAND by Joe Koch that I have recommended for the Stoker Award. My short story “secretshit.txt” will appear in their OBSOLESCENCE anthology. I have stories in to two more anothlogies currently, and a novella “Closing Time at the Sunny-Side Up” that some of you might remember in an earlier version as “Killer Green,” based on my screenplay of the same name.

I am working through the bugs and nearly ready for the big push to the end of my novel Tattered Remnants – a long term project I’ll be happy to send off to prospective agents (yeah, I’m going back that way for a while with my own work). I have two other novels in progress I’m dying to get to… more on those in latere posts. Also more stories – I have an invite to do a ghost story for pretty cool project. I made Tattered Remnants a project for Nanowrimo. Way behind at the moment, but if I clear the glitches quickly, who knows? My significant other, Patricia Lee Macomber (Wilson) wrote 25,000 words in a single day recently. Anything can happen.

Until next time… I’ll be getting my newsletter going again shortly. Before this site was a sub-site of Crossroad Press, so I was piggy-backing on their system. One more thing there is no time for. In the meantime, let me tell you a story…
Face the Night by Alan Lastufka – Review
In his debut novel, Alan Lastufka introduces us to Addy, a troubled young single mother whose only current employment is doing an occasional tattoo. She’s a gifted artist, but has been haunted by visions and dreams that make it difficult for her to interact with others. She and her son are surviving on charity from her estranged father, mayor of the town and not about to let anyone forget it.
The story launches from a custody battle. Addy’s father is trying to to take her son from her to be raised in his home, where he continually reminds everyone he can provide a stable environment. Not helping at all, really, Addy’s ex husband, her son’s father, is in town to lend moral support in court. He’s a construction worker with a drug and alcohol addiction.
When the court mandates that she find a solid job, or give up custody, Addy falls through a series of coincidental events into a position as a police sketch artist. Her visions crop up again, though, and things get dark.
What follows is a plot that winds through the seedy local political world, good old boy networks, cold cases and crumbling minds. With a couple of newfound allies on her side, Addy has to find the cause of her inner demons and exorcise them, while keeping one step ahead of her fathers machinations. A fast-paced, intriguing thriller.
I listened to the audiobook. The narrator was not optimal, but the story drew me along. Highly recommended.
October 31, 2022
Spite House by Johnny Compton – Review
Spite House, the debut novel from Johnny Compton, is a very complex story. There are a lot of well-developed characters, and each of them has secrets, and stories, things they are keeping to themselves and things they want to share. And, of course, there’s that house.
Eric and his two daughters, Dess and Stacy, are running from something. That something is not shared with readers until far into the book, but it causes issues wherever they go. They are loosely aiming to reach Eric’s childhood home, a place he feels he needs to return to – a placed with unfinished business. Money is a problem, though, and finding work while living out of a car and a string of cheap motels, particularly for a black man traveling with two children, no mother in sight is a bigger problem. Things are not looking good, and they spend most of their time looking over their shoulders, checking to be sure no one is on their trail.
Then Eric finds an advertisement. All they need to do is spend time in The Masson House, a purportedly haunted home with a long and jaded past, write down everything that happens, and report back to the owner. The money is incredibly generous, which makes Eric suspicious, but despite that, he applies, and he gets the job. It’s easy to get lost in the stories as they weave in and out of one another, but the ending is worth the journey.
What follows is a dizzying ride down first one plot line, and then another, as the house, the ruins of a nearby orphanage, the owner, and his own memories spiral and close in on Eric. Everyone has an agenda, and none of them are pleasant. Can Eric survive long enough to satisfy the home’s owner, Eunice? Will either of them find the answers they so desperately seek?
For those answers you’ll have to get a copy and enter The Spite House but be warned. It has a tendency not to let you go…
October 26, 2022
Full Immersion – by Gemma Amor – Reviewed
This novel is deeply complex, and entirely compelling. I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by the author, Gemma Amor, and I can’t imagine a more perfect voice to bring such a deeply personal story to life.
Magpie, this is how we know her, has signed up for an experimental therapeutic program involving virtual reality. She wakes in a strange place and almost immediately discovers her own body, beneath a suspension bridge, clearly having jumped. A man appears shortly after – her friend – and we begin the slow, deeply detailed descent into this new world, where she tries to unravel how she died, and why she is in this strange place, with this strange man. Such a narrative could have been confusing, but the details and the research that clearly went into this render it seamless and easy to follow.
What Magpie doesn’t know is that on the other side of glass panels, a tech and his boss are monitoring progress, tweaking programs, and caring for her physical form as she makes her way through a maze of memories, experiences, and objects culled from her past in search of her solution. Their careers depend on her success.
Magpie’s mind is very dark, and powerful. Despite attempts to guide her, things topple from the rails as she grows more confident and powerful. Stalked by a dark creature from her nightmares, rediscovering memories as she goes, Magpie plunges herself, her new friend, and the program into deeper and deeper darkness, seeking a light at the end.
The narration is spot on. Characters are distinct and have their own agendas. You can feel Magpies pain, and her triumphs. Truly a wonderful book.
October 12, 2022
Fairy Tale by Stephen King – Review
So, this is one hell of a book for a lot of reasons. Some of those reasons are typical of Stephen King’s works, and others are not. There are hints and outright homages to others of his stories and novels throughout. There is the whisper of a Billy Bumbler in odd places, and a taste of Gilead. Then, there are the same hints and homages to classic and modern fairy tales. There is magic, and evil, heroism and darkness, and, to me, there is a message that shines through.
All of the stories are one big story. We’ve seen King draw his universes and worlds together, opening portals and doorways between them, but in Fairy Tale he manages to open new ones, and usher in the characters and stories of others to play in his world, while he manipulates theirs in turn.
On the surface it’s a great coming of age story about a boy who, through strange circumstances, grows up much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case, learns of love and loss, learns to put something more important before his own needs and desires – and learns this more than once.
But in this coming of age, there is magic. I won’t provide any spoilers, but there are two things in this book that you will find mostly absent in other books by Stephen King, and they felt, to me, as if they filled some slight chinksin in the armor of an amazing army of words.
This is the first book in a very long time that I literally thought about when I could not read and tried to find ways around work and life to get back to it.
I listened to the audio edition, and Seth Numrich, combined with King himself playing a part, brough a very diverse set of characters to life. They were distinct, not forced… just beautifully performed.
Could not be more highly recommended.
October 4, 2022
SUNDANCING – by Brian Keene – Review
This may, or may not appeal to a wide variety of readers, but it should. Anyone who believes the lives of writers, screenwriters, actors, or any creatives are simple, easy, or a big party needs to get hold of some of Brian Keene’s non-fiction and (mostly) non-fiction and pay attention. This book is a glimpse inside his trip to the Sundance Film Festival when his movie GHOUL premiered there.
Full Transparency, I already know most of the people who are characters, and there is an added level of fun hearing about their esapades among the rich and famous. The insights on Hollywood, though, and on those who are non-stop yakking movie-speak, going on about themselves, drinking too much coffee and not really creating things – just attached – are precious. The genuine emotion behind the telling of the story, the reactions a variety of brand new experiences, both good and bad, and the underlying hard life that brought them all to that place and time is gold.
I didn’t get to read this firs time around, but I’m glad that I have now. Highly recommended.