David Niall Wilson's Blog, page 6

Review of DAPHNE by Josh Malerman

Daphne is a very intense, very personal novel wrapped in the the trappings of a slasher story that it wears more like a cloak than a full garment. The horror is there. The death. But the stories of the girls in danger pass like kaleidoscope images. The focus is inward, fears and dreams, tricks and promises. I

The most frightening thing about this book is not that there is a monster, or that young girls are in danger. It’s in the things Josh Malerman is teaching you without letting on. You can do anything with your life. Every parent’s promise. Every teacher’s mantra. Take it a step further. Anyone can stop what they are doing at any time, and do whatever they want with their life, because it’s nothing but a string of choices, bouts of weakness and willpower… a thing with no stability at all. Your parents. Your teachers. Nothing but the smoke and mirrors of the ‘real world’ holding them back.

Forget about the seven foot specter with ham hands and heavy metal patches. Forget about the muscle car and the graffiti. Forget because everyone does, and no one is supposed to be thinking about any of that.

Daphne is a novel that reminds me of a trick Peter Straub plays on readers. You get your story, but there are layers, and the story can be just a slasher tale to amuse those not thinking too hard about it, and something altogether different to another sort of reader. Those two readers might talk about the book, and walk away baffled by the other’s response.

Daphne is also one of the most powerful stories I’ve read in a long time, more evidence that there is no line between genre and literature, except in the minds and conceits of readers. And make no mistake, this will touch you, and make you think, and you should not. You should not think about Daphne… and you should not speak of her. And most importantly, if you ask a question, word it carefully and be ready for the answer, because most questions only have one.

Don’t miss this one.

Writing Update – Words are Happening

I am about 3/4 of the way through the first revision of the not-quite finished thriller Tattered Remnants. This is going to get longer. I reached almost the end of the story before I realized the motivation that was missing in my antagonist. It will be bigger, stronger, and better… I hope to be done with it by mid July in first draft form.

Beta readers and a couple of folks I hope will send blurbs have my upcoming collection The Devil’s in the Flaws & Other Dark Truths, and I’ll tell you this… it never gets easier waiting for reactions. There are a lot of unpublished stories in the book, a few older ones I love… it’s the first serious collection since Ennui & Other Forms of Madness.

I have also got a short story out to an anthology I hope to hear from soon, a contest entry for a VERY short story – same – and two anthologies I hope to be in with stories either in work or in mind. I’ve also been invited to a different anthology I hope to get to soon. Words rolling along.

Along with the collection I just mentioned, I intend to do a second collection (or two) featuring the Old Mills, NC stories and Cletus J. Diggs. There are two VERY short novels. I think I will break them off and add stories to each to create a set of two collections. None of these have reached a wide audience yet, so I intend them to get the bigger, serious book treatment. The same with the last collection planned, which will be the many stories about and featuring Edgar Allan Poe that I’ve written (probably including those I’ve written with Patricia Lee Macomber (Wilson). A busy year indeed. Time to rebuild that readership and move on into the craziness that is 2022.

Last and hopefully not least, I will continue work on my non-fiction book, sort of a memoir and book about writing – what I’ve learned, what I’ve done right, and wrong – a lot of history, and a lot of personal stories. That one is titled Write What Hurts. On my old blog I was posting the chapters, but I think I’ll hold that back, though you can count on snippets from time to time.

Onward.

-DNW

Review of CLICKERS by J. F. Gonzalez & Mark Williams

Let me start by saying, this is far from a new book. The late J. F. Gonzalez was loved by many (myself included) – and CLICKERS is a modern classic. This team-up with co-author Mark Williams is nothing, if not memorable. Who can resist giant scorpion crabs and Lovecraftian beasties? It has it all, a protagonist who is a horror writer, love interests (well, every eligible woman he meets of course) – violence, intrigue, folklore, mayhem…

It’s as pulpy as it gets and there are some cringe-worthy stereotypes. It would make a great movie franchise for SyFy if you guys are listening… or Netflix.

Clickers is exactly what you think it is… fast-paced, gore-heavy monster fun.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Chet Williamson, who did a great job of bringing the good and sadly decimated folk of Phillipsport, Maine to life.

Review of Things Slip Through by Kevin Lucia

After the scene-setting introductory piece, we join Gavin on his quest to “write what he sees.” I have to say, I’ve met authors much like he was before his accident.

This is a tight little collection of stories, urban horror, as promised. There is something here for everyone, with a dash of social commentary tossed in for good measure. The sheriff gets more than he bargained for when he asks what all the strangeness in town is about, and why – despite his inability to stop or catch more of those responsible – no one seems upset.

A highly recommended debut collection.

Review of LURE by Tim McGregor

This was an interesting story on many levels. I almost feel as if the temple with the ancient bones of a sea monster is something I’ve heard, but that might be folklore. The power of this story isn’t in that lore, or in monsters. It is in characters, family, and their interactions.

The protagonist is a young man with a lot of negatives in his life. His family is a mirror of that, nothing good is happening in any of their lives. A clergyman with no real support. A sister betrothed, badly. A brother who babble constantly. And Kaspar, who is tossed into the center stage of the action, while dealing with his abusive father, unhappy sister, damaged brother and lost love.

When a new “monster” appears, everyone in the village shows up with their worst side.

This is a well-told tale with good backstory, well-developed characters and an ending you won’t see coming.

Highly Recommended.

READING PROGRESS

May 25, 2022 – Started Reading

May 25, 2022 – Shelved

May 25, 2022 – 

 4.0%

May 26, 2022 – 

 6.0%

May 29, 2022 – 

 8.0%

May 31, 2022 – 

 10.0%

June 5, 2022 – Finished Reading

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Howls From the Dark Ages Review

This was a pleasant diversion from other books I’ve read recently. It felt like the theme, which all 18 authors took very seriously, fit perfectly with the various styles and themes. No shining armor or damsels saved by princely heroes. These stories are dark, evocative, and well-meshed. One thing I am particularly pleased to see is a book where the editing is immaculate. It’s hard enough to do that when the language is modern.

Standout stories for me include Hailey Piper’s darkly carnal “In Thrall to This Good Earth,” where a haunted cry leads three hunters to a jutting stone and goes in very unexpected directions. “Schizarre,” by Bridget D. Brave – a very symbolic story of two monks, love, lust and loss, “The Fourth Scene,” by Brian Evenson, which is a very Dark Ages style tale that would have fit right into Arthurian legends, and the ending poem, “The Lai of the Danse Macabre,” which is likely the most ambitious work in the book and handled with style, bringing a voice that might well have come from another time and place to modern pages.

Dark relationships, murder, petulant gods, Howls from the Dark Ages has all of that and more. Very highly recommended.

The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey – Review

In the 1960s and 1970s, way before the Internet shrank our world, small towns could be scary places. Local governments, law enforcement, the family down the street, the church, all existed in their own tiny worlds. People looked the other way. Families were no one else’s business… I remember those days, and in The Quarry Girls, Jess Lourey took me back there and made it so much worse.

A small town, built to support a failed factory, where tunnels run under the ground between homes, and the kids party at the end of winding roads at quarries with pools of water so deep you might never reach the bottom. Lives lived on different levels, the surface, the agreed upon reality, the truth, almost never open or public, and even then rarely to be trusted.

Heather is just reaching the end of her high school years. She has friends. She has a band, her drums, a handsome father, and a fragile family dynamic she is forced to maintain, despite her age. She has survived trauma, and has all the issues of a young girl getting ready to face the world.

After a man named Ed rolls into town and starts corrupting her friends, and young women begin to go missing, Heather has to fight for her sanity while unraveling a continually more tangled knot of terror and lies.

This is a frightening story with a lot to say. Highly recommended.

Under The Thumb Review – S. A. Cosby ed.

Under the Thumb gives you the gist of the stories in its subtitle. Stories of Police Oppression. It’s in the news every day. It’s not going away. No matter how many good officers there might be, the type of person who thrives on controlling others, the type of person who likes to bully others… they are attracted to this sort of work, and they are everywhere.

What I found poignant and most meaningful in these stories was not the descriptions of brutality and mistreatment, but the variety of the voices and characters. A young man finds he is dating a girl whose uncle, a police officer, beat him when he was a boy. A musician is thrown in prison for walking down a road. An artist is beaten for a small pieces of graffiti.

Kids, wives, neighbors, and even some messages you might not expect… all of that awaits you in these pages. S. A. Cosby and the others who helped edit and put this together did a commendable job. Some of the stories are told more eloquently than others, but none of them left me untouched. An important book I would recommend to anyone.

The Devil’s in the Flaws & Other Dark Truths

Sometime this fall, my new collection will be released. It’s titled The Devil’s in the Flaws & Other Dark Truths, as you might have guess from the title above. This is my first, I guess you’d call it formal, collection since Ennui & Other States of Madness was released by Dark Regions Press. This is sort of an “essential” collection, one of several to come. It features eight previously unpublished works including the title novella (about 25k words). It also contains several of my stories that have appeared in anthologies previously, but that I think have probably either been lost in the “and others,” or published so long ago they are forgotten. There are also a couple I just think are among my best.

The book is with several beta readers now, but I’ll release the final TOC soon, because as a sort of experiment in how it might work out for future books, Crossroad Press will be offering a signed, limited HC edition of the book. This edition will be printed in at least 25 copies, but the number of copies beyond that will be determined by pre-order. Once the number is reached, that will be the total of the signed copies ever to be printed. The price for the edition will be kept as reasonable as possible. Then the book will be out for review, copies to awards committees, out for blurbs until fall when released in trade hardcover, trade paperback, eBook and audiobook editions. Updates will be posted as things change, but this is the official announcement. Hope you’ll all buy and enjoy it.

-DNW

Review of QUEEN OF TEETH by Hailey Piper

Writing a believable novel, with characters that make sense in our reality, but clearly and firmly planted in another, is a difficult task. Not only does Hailey Piper pull this off, but her protagonist, Ya Ya, is someone you care about and root for from page one, though (as are most of us) Ya Ya is bent, though not broken, by the circumstances of her existence.

In a society where a futuristic and horrifyingly powerful big pharma company has created chimeras, changing certain people in a way that has given them part ownership, there are far too many close parallels to our own world for comfort, and the author uses these deftly to take horrors we already face and drive them to extremes, while still managing to create close, warm moments for the characters, and even some scattered humor.

As things whirl further and further out of control, the characters drawn in, mostly against their will, it is nearly impossible to pull away from the story until the climax. One thing is certain, I will never think of peanut butter in the same way again.

Highly recommended.