Nikolas P. Robinson's Blog, page 19

Time by Todd Love

It can be difficult living in the shadow of one’s father, especially if that father is particularly successful and celebrated in certain circles…or maybe pentagrams.
Time is a quick and brutal story of a son determined to show his father that he’s not only ready to take over the family operation but that he can be both inventive and innovative in doing so. By the time the story reaches its satisfyingly grotesque conclusion, it feels like we’ve been there for a while, but that’s the nature of forever, I suppose. Time loses all meaning when there’s no end to it.
Choosing a pedophile as a victim is an excellent choice, as it makes it impossible for the reader to sympathize with his plight. It guarantees that we’ll be in it for the long haul, regardless of how vile and cruel the punishment becomes. We’ll be cheering at the sidelines, hoping to see more suffering.
By the time all is said and done, I’d certainly say this son has met or exceeded his father’s lofty expectations. It’s not every day a father and son celebrate by spit roasting a pedophile on their cocks, but in a Todd Love story, one really shouldn’t be surprised.

This title is to be released through http://www.godless.com on January 31st, 2022. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Time by Todd Love – JANUARY 31st

Splatterpunk Awards and More

After attending my first two KillerCon Austin events virtually, I’m looking forward to participating in my first in-person event in August. Unlike 2020 and 2021, this time I’ll be there as a Splatterpunk Award nominee for my single-author collection, May Cause Unexplained Ocular Bleeding. First and foremost, of course, I’ll be there as a fan of the splatterpunk and extreme horror genres, but just as in 2021, I’m also there to represent Madness Heart Press, Godless, and myself. I’m proud to be a part of the constantly growing community of transgressive horror writers, publishers, and distributors. There’s more warmth and acceptance in this community than in the maggot-filled bloated stomach of a week-old corpse left in the sun.
The imposter syndrome kicked in almost immediately, forcing me to wonder how or why I’d even be on the same shortlist with authors like Chris Miller, Aron Beauregard, Jasper Bark, and others far more deserving. I’ve read and reviewed multiple titles in various categories for the upcoming Splatterpunk Awards, so I’m well aware of just how good these other writers are. While I don’t expect to win against such steep competition, I’m satisfied to be included.
It’s been an amazing year for me since this time in 2021. First, I signed with Madness Heart Press to publish my novella, You Will Be Consumed, becoming part of the small family John Baltisberger has assembled there. A few months later, I took the plunge and joined the Godless community, discovering another family of perverse, depraved, and intensely supportive individuals. In August of 2021, I released my new collection of short fiction, May Cause Unexplained Ocular Bleeding, for which I am now a Splatterpunk Award-nominated author. As the end of the year approached, I had the pleasure of seeing one of my stories published by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing for the 45th issue of Dark Moon Digest. And now, I’m a nominee for a Splatterpunk Award.
The coming year has some great things in store too, and I’m not even sure if there’s a way to top what I already have behind me, but I’m damn sure going to try.
I’m looking forward to being more intimately involved in the Godless community in the relatively near future, with new releases that I hope will shock and surprise, not only because of the content but for the range that I’m hoping to put on display. I’ve also got my next novel, Beneath the Unspoiled Wilderness, coming from Madness Heart Press later this year. The rest is more vague and nebulous, but there’s more coming, and I hope I manage to find new readers and make new friends along the way.
It’s strange, but I don’t know if any of this would have happened if I hadn’t opted to attend the virtual KillerCon Austin in 2020. The people I met during that virtual convention have been some of the most supportive and encouraging folks I’ve had the pleasure of knowing, and they’ve been instrumental in helping me get to where I am today, whether they know it or not.

https://www.briankeene.com/home/2022-splatterpunk-award-nominees

The Night Parade by Ronald Malfi, Narrated By Tom Taylorson

At its heart, The Night Parade is a story about a father’s love for his daughter and the risks a parent will take to keep their child safe from what they perceive as harmful. It’s also a story about mortality; it’s about coming to terms with it and recognizing that we won’t always be there for those we love. All of this heavy emotional content Malfi explores within the story is played out against the backdrop of a society in the process of collapsing, as madness consumes both those infected by “Wanderer’s Folly” and those forced to react to something so devastating.
Given no time to mourn the loss of his wife, David has no choice but to pack up their eight-year-old daughter, Ellie, and hopefully keep her away from the doctors and scientists he blames for his wife’s death. Immune to the disease ravaging the world, both Ellie and her mother were of great interest to the authorities who hoped to find a cure in their blood. But Ellie is special in a way her mother was not; she has a gift that might make her even more valuable to those who seek to exploit her.
Unfortunately, David is not immune. As he races across the steadily decaying husk of the United States in search of somewhere he can shelter Ellie, he’s also racing against time as his mental state declines. The reader’s forced to wonder how much of what he’s experiencing is real. How much is the result of hallucinatory nightmares that will ultimately consume what’s left of his mind?
The Night Parade is a horror story, but it’s also a tragically poignant tale. Malfi digs into the reader’s heart and begins systematically tearing away at it piece by piece as the narrative continues.
Tom Taylorson’s narration is largely excellent, though his performance of Ellie’s voice falls a bit flat. As a whole, where female voices are concerned, there’s a little left to be desired, but that’s a problem that plagues many male narrators. I certainly couldn’t have done any better.

Twisted: Tainted Tales by Janine Pipe

Janine Pipe delivers a diverse assortment of stories with Twisted: Tainted Tales, the only theme being that the bulk of the action takes place in the 1980s. This collection, framed as being stories from a missing author, as discovered by a woman tasked with sifting through the missing person’s household for anything of value, is packed full of nostalgia for those of us who recall the era. Unlike some nostalgia-heavy writing I’ve read recently, Pipe doesn’t lean on the nostalgia to do the heavy lifting and instead keeps the focus on her largely spectacular storytelling and captivating set pieces.
Each of the stories contained within Twisted: Tainted Tales has been titled (or retitled) with that of a song from the music released in the 1980s. This is done with the explanation that there’s a mixtape accompanying the discovered manuscripts.
The collection starts strong with Footsteps, a story of three women venturing into a section of wilderness where something sinister and bloodthirsty might be waiting for anyone unfortunate enough to stumble upon its hunting grounds.
When Doves Cry is a period piece about a woman accepting the kindness of a stranger on a cold night from a man seeking the right woman to fulfill his peculiar needs.
The third inclusion, I Want To Break Free, subverts our expectations as we experience the same event from a captured victim and her captor. But which one is the monster?
Maneater introduces us to two detectives investigating a series of exsanguinated victims. The nature of the crimes themselves is perhaps less startling than the perpetrator when one of the detectives discovers the monster behind the killings.
A night at the club turns into a bloody, violent act of intimacy in Addicted To Love.
Sweet Child Of Mine delves into the topic of imaginary friends and the potential consequences if those friends aren’t as fanciful as we suppose.
Tainted Love recounts a narrative of obsession, as an infatuation transforms into something far more unsettling, culminating in brutal violence and skilled craftsmanship.
With Lost In the Shadows, we’re introduced to a town plagued by a rash of missing children, and a sinister discovery at the local drive-in theater.
It’s a Sin is a ghost story about friendship, child abuse, and overprotective parents that ends unhappily.
The post-apocalyptic tale, Love Is a Battlefield, acquaints us with a society where the rich and powerful have been stripped of their privilege. We follow one of the former upper crust as she believes she’ll be forced to face death as entertainment for those now in control.
Running With the Devil is a story of urban legends and ghost stories, and the profoundly negative impact those things might have if we discover them to be true.
Boys being gross, led by adolescent hormones, and burgeoning sexual discovery is the topic of Paradise City. Of course, things take an awful turn that is sure to make every man cringe.
School’s Out Forever resonated well with me as someone who routinely ventured into condemned and abandoned buildings. A couple of friends decide to trespass in a haunted school where atrocities once took place, hoping to find the place haunted but ultimately terrified by what they discover.
Two brothers on a camping trip with their father discover that a mother’s love transcends death, in Living On a Prayer, especially when there’s an ancient burial ground nearby and revenge to be taken.
The fifteenth track, Thriller, delves into the fact that the topic of urban legends and ghost stories again, exploring the haunted houses we’re all sure exist within our hometowns as we’re growing up.
Nobody’s Fool explores the possibility that one young boy’s night terrors might be rooted in something other than an overactive imagination and that there might be an important message embedded in the unconscious horror that he experiences.
Stephen King’s not the only one who can tell a tale about the convergence of coming of age and sewer drains. Janine Pipe concludes her collection by introducing us to a different sort of monster that might be lurking in the storm drains the most daring children explore when there’s pride and a kiss on the line.
The closest thing I have to a complaint is that I’d have preferred the author’s notes compiled at the end of the book rather than at the end of each story. It was more jarring, having those notes breaking up the framing story of discovered manuscripts rather than placing them at the end of the collection. I’m a fan of the author’s notes being included, so I’m pleased that Pipe included them, but I feel like they could’ve been in a better location.

Welcome to Scud Lake by Matthew A. Clarke

Scud Lake is not the sort of town you want to find yourself stumbling upon in your ventures, and Welcome To Scud Lake provides readers with ample evidence supporting that.
When a cross-country bicyclist goes missing, the GPS from her bike leads her significant other, Eric, to the front door of the Lurcher brothers’ home. Interrupting their dinner turns out to be a grievous error on his part, though I suspect it wouldn’t have turned out any better for him if he’d arrived at any other time of day. The Lurchers seem like the type who would take exception to the intrusion no matter when it happened.
Imagine The Texas Chainsaw Massacre if Leatherface had a twin brother, and you’ll have an idea of Huel and Jed’s dispositions. They’re just a whole lot more chatty than the aforementioned chainsaw-wielding maniac. Go a step further and imagine that Leatherface was the runt of the family because Huel and Jed have a younger brother, Trapp, who makes them both look like children. This is the environment where Eric finds himself, and there’s little chance he’ll find his way out of the trouble he’s gotten himself into. At least he’ll see his fiance again.
Clarke’s story is a fantastic introduction to the world of Scud Lake, a place of horror and depravity, where none of the residents are likely to be what one might consider decent folks. Though we only catch a brief glimpse of what life is like in this backwoods horrorshow of a town, it’s a tantalizing glimpse that makes the reader want to experience a return visit. It’s certainly better to visit on the page than it would be in person.

A second Scud Lake story can be found in Best of Indie Horror: Extreme Edition from KJK publishing.

This title can be procured by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Welcome to Scud Lake by Matthew A. Clarke

The New Girls’ Patient by Ruthann Jagge

After the unexpected loss of her mother, Jamie gets a fresh start in a different home and a new job. Things are going well for her. She’s studied and worked hard, moving up and working in an elderly care facility where she’s hoping to build a career for herself in nursing, daydreaming of leaving town someday. Until then, things seem good. She’s made new friends with a couple of her coworkers, and Jamie built a rapport with some of the people she provides care for at the facility. One patient, in particular, means a lot to her, and it’s a sad reality of her occupation when Elizabeth passes away. It’s a gift her patient leaves behind for Jamie that could be the cause of the misfortune about to befall her and her two girlfriends, but that same gift might be her salvation as well.
Jagge’s writing draws the reader in as she first spins the tale of Jamie’s childhood and her life before the loss of the final member of her family before introducing us to the new life she’s found in the nursing field. A protagonist who seems like a genuinely sweet and kind young woman, it’s almost heartbreaking to know that this story will take a dark turn at any moment. In that, Jagge does not disappoint.
Jamie’s almost tranquil life takes a sudden turn as one night as she’s leaving work, she’s swept up in a nightmare of drugs, greed, brutality, and murder. Only by coming to terms with a different sort of nightmare will Jamie make it through the night, and she has the tools available to her in the strangest form one might imagine.

You can find this title for yourself by going to http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

The New Girls' Patient by Ruthann Jagge

The Handyman by Bentley Little, Narrated by Chris Andrew Ciulla

Daniel is a real estate agent leading a couple through a cabin when the husband suggests, “It’s like a Frank house.” From there, everything changes in Daniel’s life. When Daniel was a child, his family had purchased land in Randall, AZ from a man named Frank Watkins, and they’d hired Frank to assemble the prefabricated A-frame they’d be using as a vacation home. He knew, first-hand, what it meant to live in a Frank House, but he’d still only glimpsed a fragment of what that meant.
As the memories of his surreal childhood experiences with Frank come rushing back to him, along with the tragedies that followed, Daniel finds himself driven by a compulsion to find the strange and sinister man who ruined his life. As he’ll soon discover, Daniel’s was not the only life ruined by living in a Frank House, and it’s more than shoddy workmanship and incompetence involved. It seems like there might be some cruel design behind it all.
The reader is treated to unsettling glimpses into the world Frank is crafting with his seemingly alien compulsions, whetting the appetite and setting the mind awhirl as we approach the dizzying and horrific conclusion in the missing town of Plutarch, TX.
A ghost story with a hint of cosmic horror resides at the center of the mystery Bentley Little lays out for us with The Handyman. There’s a hint of Danielewski’s House of Leaves in these pages and a little bit of the Winchester Mystery House thrown in for flavor, but it’s distinctly Little in craftsmanship.
The narration provided by Chris Andrew Ciulla is fantastic, especially on those rare occasions when we get to hear Frank brought to life with his peculiar speech pattern and unusual cadence.

Your English Is Good by Colt Skinner

Colt Skinner’s debut, brought to us by the unholy alliance of D&T Publishing and Godless, is one hell of a ride. Your English Is Good introduces us to Eddy, a biker hired as protection for Grace as she entertains clients for the night. On the surface, Grace appears to be a prostitute or dominatrix, but appearances can be deceiving.
We learn a great deal about Eddy–both his past and aspirations within the Dead Mariachis Motorcycle Club–as he finds himself drifting through reminiscence and reflection in the strangest way upon first meeting Grace. She seems to have a peculiar effect on him, but it’s nothing compared to the influence she has on her clients, but that’s what they’re paying her for.
While short, this story succeeds in blending elements of cosmic and body horror with a meditation on morality and sacrifice. In the end, we’re forced to consider that it may be that the most inhuman among us who display the most compassion and decency and that it’s all-too-human to exhibit a total lack of humanity.
Skinner leaves the reader wanting, hoping there’s more to the story of Grace and Eddy than what we’ve been exposed to. More than that, we’re left hoping there’s a lot more on the horizon from this emerging author because his English is good, but his writing is excellent.

You can obtain this story from http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Your English is Good by Colt Skinner

Candyboy by Ash Ericmore

Michael is the final Smalls brother to make our acquaintance in Ash Ericmore’s Smalls Family series, and he’s the core around which this whole sequence of events has orbited. It’s Candyboy’s thriving drug enterprise that rubbed the Eastern Europeans the wrong way.
Coming together after what happened to Bod in the previous installment, the Smalls brothers could have ventured out en masse to take their bloody and brutal revenge on the Eastern Europeans; but Candyboy feels responsible for what’s already happened, and it’s up to him to set things right in a truly Smalls fashion.
Michael Smalls will torture, degrade, and dice up anyone and everyone who stands in his way as he searches for the man calling the shots.
Ericmore, perhaps recognizing how profoundly Backy has wormed his little baby way into our black hearts, delivers more baby action with this volume. And, while there is no baby armor this time around, the little ones find a way to fly into the midst of the action just the same.
As we reach our agrarian climax, Ericmore pulls out all the stops with Candyboy destroying everyone and everything in his path, using whatever he has at his disposal, including farm implements.
This story is a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to what will hopefully be one of many Smalls Family series. Not that there should have been any doubt.

You can find this title as well as the other Smalls Family stories at http://www.godless.com or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Candyboy (The Smalls Family VII) by Ash Ericmore

Merry and Bright by Matt Henshaw

This story begins with what appears to be a charming little family gathered together near the tree to open presents on Christmas morning. Of course, knowing that this is a story from Matt Henshaw should give you pause, and provide some indication that things will not remain so tame and prosaic.
It isn’t until grandma and uncle arrive with three presents left near the front door that things begin to change for the worse. Driven by compulsion, the trio of Daniel, Sally, and Billy start unwrapping the presents with disastrous consequences.
A lump of coal is just fine with me if that’s an alternative to what happens to this family when they find themselves on Santa’s naughty list. Thankfully, Henshaw isn’t in R&D at Santa’s workshop, because Christmas would be a rather different experience for a lot of people.

This story was released as part of the AntiChristmas event at http://www.godless.com for December of 2021. You can obtain it for yourself by going to the website or by downloading the Godless app to your mobile device of choice. The link is below:

Merry and Bright by Matt Henshaw