Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 81

Occultober Day 10 One Night in Drake Mansion by Channing Whitaker

Occultober Day 10 One Night in Drake Mansion by Channing Whitaker

A good old fashioned haunting has long been a staple of horror so on Day 10 we turn to a genre that has given us such extraordinary books as The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House.

 

A reality TV show has offered a reward of one million dollars to be split between five people if they manage to stay in a famous haunted house (the Drake Mansion) from dusk until dawn. One’s an actress, one’s a medium, one’s a ghost hunter, one’s a medical student, and one’s a supernatural debunker. Everyone is very excited when they enter the house and start to explore, wondering why a whole family disappeared here eighty years before and why so many people who have entered the house since have died.

 

Then, as you might imagine, strange things start to happen—things the paranormal enthusiasts instantly claim are signs of ghosts while the skeptic offers completely plausible non-supernatural explanations. To add tension to the story, the group comes across the journal of Drake, the former owner of the mansion, and we begin to relive the experiences of him and his family just before they disappeared, raising the very real probability that the mansion really is haunted.

 

I’m not going to give away the ending. This is an extremely well-crafted tale and will have you playing with both supernatural and mundane explanations for what is happening in the mansion. I will say, it’s exciting to the end and a totally satisfying resolution to the mystery.

 

If you’re interested in One Night in Drake Mansion, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 9 Riders Where There Are No Roads by David Bain

Occultober Day 9 Riders Where There Are No Roads by David Bain

H.P. Lovecraft changed the horror/sf genres with his introduction of Cthulhu in the early twentieth century. Cthulhu is one of a number of ancient extra-dimensional entities so horrific and incomprehensible to the human mind that simply seeing one can drive a person insane. Humans are like insignificant gnats to these creatures who are constantly trying to work their way back into our universe with the help of crazed fools. Many authors have honored Lovecraft by building elaborate stories grounded in the Cthulhu mythos. David Bain’s Riders Where There Are No Roads is one of the latest tributes and unique to my experience because it’s set in a version of the old west.

 

Six men and one woman—mostly gunfighters, bandits, and a buffalo soldier—have found themselves in an afterlife that’s very different from what Sunday school led us to expect. It’s a huge western desolate landscape where a demon who is usually in human form and a group of his followers hunt down people who accidentally open gates into this world so they can torture them and turn them into demons like themselves. These men and women have decided to risk their own existence to try and put a stop to it—and it’s quite a wild and weird ride. This book is unquestionably as western as they come and yet—not anything like the wild west we’re used to reading about. I think Lovecraft would be proud to see he inspired this series.

 

If you’re interested in Riders Where There Are No Roads, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occulttober Day 8 High Above the Waters by Gilbert M. Stack

Occultober Day 8 High Above the Waters by Gilbert M. Stack

Ghosts are not a creature you usually find at the center of an urban fantasy novel—which might explain why I chose to put one at the heart of my book, High Above the Waters. The novel is a standalone story that intersects sixty years later with some of the characters and events of my Pembroke Steel series. It was a lot of fun to write and it continues to haunt me ten years after I finished it.

 

The big question at the heart of many ghost stories is why did the spirit linger in this world and it’s the critical question at the heart of this novel—but it’s not the only one. Ghosts give us a chance to explore the past in a peculiar way, and in so doing for our heroes (or heroine, in this case) to learn a lot about themselves.

 

High Above the Waters is now available on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited, so if you subscribe to that series, you can read it for FREE. Here’s the blurb:

 

Marcus Hunter won’t stay dead; he stalks his bridge all bloody red.

Throws people off on stormy nights; and smiles as they scream in fright.

 

As a pregnant fifteen year old, Autumn Fields learned firsthand that the town ghost was more than a creepy legend. Rejected by her boyfriend and beaten bloody by her father, Autumn climbed out onto the old railroad bridge at the edge of town to kill herself, but a mysterious figure talked her into running away instead. Sixteen years later, she’s come back to Prospect with her daughter to learn if there really is such a thing as a ghost on Hunter’s Bridge…

 

If you’re interested in High Above the Waters, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 7 Nomad by Jamie Nash

Occultober Day 7 Nomad by Jamie Nash

Some of the greatest horror stories were set in outer space (anyone remember Alien?) and that’s where Jamie Nash brings us in the very creepy novel, Nomad. The tension is present from page one when the heroine wakes suffocating in a cryogenic chamber while an unknown man tries to break her out of the tube. She escapes into chaos with no idea where she is or who she is. The chamber, where hundreds of additional tubes are stored, is blowing up and only the heroine and three people manage to escape to relative safety—but two of those are already dying from wounds they suffered getting out.

 

What follows is a rather involved mystery. Where are they? How did they get there? Who are they? And why is someone trying to kill them? This is a good mystery with a great and very creepy science fiction solution. The physical threats are very real and no one can really be trusted. But be forewarned, the violence and suffering in this novel is extremely graphic and it was hard to listen to.

 

So if you like your science fiction with a lot of tension and an excellent creep factor, you should give Nomad a try.

 

If you’re interested in Nomad, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 6 Wilders by Cass Kim

Occultober Day 6 Wilders by Cass Kim

For Day 6 of Occultober, we return to the zombie apocalypse where Cass Kim has found a new take on an old theme. Her equivalent of the zombies (and for the record, her story does not have zombies but the far more creative “wilders”) have not yet completely destroyed civilization. Humanity (at least in the United States) has adapted to what keeps getting referred to as the “half-pocalypse”. Life is not easy in the new normal, but it is livable. This provides a quite different story environment than the typical tale and that was very refreshing.

 

What’s more, Kim’s book is not about simple survival but something much more important in the grand scheme of things. (It’s difficult to write about this without giving away an important plot twist.) There is plenty of action in the book, but larger issues than personal survival are dealt with on a very intimate level that really struck home with me.

 

So those are the big issues that can be summed up as Wilders has a unique flavor for this subgenre, but by themselves they would only have made this an interesting book—not a great one. Fortunately, Kim populates her world with a believable cast of teenagers who are trying to thrive in the half-pocalypse. It’s a difficult balance which Kim handles with a master touch dealing with the basic immaturity of young people when the consequences of teenaged rebellion can include being eaten alive by wilders. Add to that parents who are emotionally damaged by the civilization-threatening events and Kim has created a social environment that quickly builds sympathy for her cast and adds quite a bit of tension to the story.

 

Finally, every novel can benefit from superb narration and Liz Brand certainly does her part to bring this book to life—especially excelling at young, easily differentiated, voices.

 

 

Cass Kim isn’t on Facebook (I think this is an age thing—young cool people do Instagram) but she very kindly answered a few questions for me which I happily include here. She’s also made Wilders free on Amazon from October 6-10. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RQ74LG7

 

The Interview:

The half-pocalypse gives your series a very different flavor than many other books in this subgenre. How did you come to set your tale before the world finished falling apart?

 

Thank you! I think I was trying to look at how things might play out more realistically. It’s stuck in the half apocalypse because the rules of the virus are more realistic, giving humanity a fighting chance. I wanted my characters to have some quieter moments that allow them to relationship build and react with thinking, not just fight or flight instincts.

 

 

Which one of your main characters is most difficult to write and why?

I think for me Syd was the hardest because she has the most different dialect, and she’s a little older than the others, but still doesn’t fit in the with adults fully either.

 

 

Would you like to tell us a little about the rest of the series? No spoilers, but where are these books going?

 

The series is complete now as a trilogy. The second book I wrote (but first in the series) is a prequel set ten years earlier, showing the outbreak. It has totally different characters. I know it's chronologically first, but I think it's a little more fun to read second, since knowing the details of the virus in "Wilders" increases the tension in "The Change." The final book, "Consequences" deals with the aftermath of the decisions made in "Wilders" and then ratchets up the action for the second 2/3 of the book. It ties up all the loose ends.

 

And finally, what are you working on now? More Wilders? Or do you have new projects bursting to escape from your mind and onto the screen?

 

I'm actually editing a lot right now. I have a freelance line and developmental editing business (https://casskim.casskim.com/services/...) that is starting to get busy, which is wonderful. I'm not sure what's next for me as a writer, but I do plan to put something new out in early 2021. Still deciding which way to lean with a few projects. I did just publish the second of the "Autumn Nights" charity anthology series: "Autumn Nights: 12 Chilling Tales For Midnight" - all profits from this installment got to Feeding America. All profits from the 2019 Autumn Nights anthology ("Autumn Nights: 13 Spooky Fall Reads") go to the ASPCA.

 

 

Occultober Day 5 The Lucius Fogg Series by Dan Wickline

Occultober Day 5 The Lucius Fogg Series by Dan Wickline

Urban fantasies are a rapidly growing segment of the spooky stories that compose Occultober. Most urban fantasies are mysteries focusing either upon tension in the supernatural community or frictions between the supernatural and mundane communities. A lot of the fun in reading them—especially early books in a series—comes from figuring out how the supernatural community works and why it hasn’t overrun the mundane community yet.

 

Enter Dan Wickline’s Lucius Fogg series. It’s built upon the Nero Wolfe model established by the amazing Rex Stout. Lucius Fogg is a master sorcerer—perhaps the greatest alive in post World War II New York City—but he has one significant restraint on his power. If he takes even one step outside of his home, he will die. To get around this difficulty, he employs private detective Jimmy Doyle to do his legwork for him as he investigates supernatural phenomenon that catch his interest.

 

Jimmy Doyle is a World War II vet who took a bullet to the head and spent three months in a coma. He only woke up because Fogg sent a magical pendant to him which a nurse hung around his neck. Now he has a metal plate in his head together with a strong sense of justice. He’s also got a lot of attitude that makes you wonder why he doesn’t get slugged more by the men he provokes.

 

The final piece of background that is critical to understanding this series is that most Americans do not believe in the supernatural even though quite a few of those creatures live among them. A lot of that ignorance is made possible by the Compact. The relative peace that New York City enjoys was built upon a compact between Fogg, the chief vampire and werewolf of New York, and a famous hunter who had been trying to kill off all the supernatural creatures in the city. This compact kept NYC from breaking out into total war at the price of Old Town (about thirty blocks of the city) being turned over to the supernaturals. New Yorkers believe this is an area of such tremendous crime that not even the police go there, but those in the know understand the truth. There’s a kingdom within New York City where mortal law does not hold sway and a lot of what Fogg and Doyle do is try to make certain that the supernatural problems stay in Old Town so the rest of the city can ignore the threat posed by their neighbors.

 

You can read my reviews of the individual books of this series here: https://www.gilbertstack.com/lucius-fogg. I just wish Dan Wickline would sit down and write a few more of them, but in the meantime, he’s arranged for book 1, Deadly Creatures, to be free on Amazon from October 5 to October 9 at this link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

 

If you’re interested in Lucius Fogg, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 4: Invasion at Bald Eagle by Kris Ashton

Occultober Day 4 Invasion at Bald Eagle by Kris Ashton

Alien invasions are the root of many a great Occultober tales and Kris Ashton has come up with a particularly creepy take on the subgenre. The story is set in Bald Eagle, a sparsely populated Colorado town, in the 1960s. Bald Eagle is a tiny little place with one hotel, a two-man sheriff’s department, a weekly newspaper, a nuclear plant and a hippie commune. Life is pretty tame in Bald Eagle despite the fact that the hippies enjoy protesting nuclear power and the manager of the facility freaks out every time they arrive with their signs. Bert, the sheriff, is pretty laid back and sensible about his job, at least until he discovers that his daughter, Sharna, who is supposed to be in Denver has actually joined the commune and its free love lifestyle.

 

While the sheriff tries to figure out how to stick all the hippies in jail without forever alienating Sharna, strange things begin happening at the commune. A silver egg plummets from the sky into the lettuce patch and “stings” the hippie who picks it up. The next day he begins to act stranger than usual as does the woman he sleeps with a short while later.

 

I don’t want to give too much away, but things really start to heat up when Derek, the leader of the commune, gets undeniable evidence that his fellow hippies aren’t just sick, but have something sinisterly wrong with them. He runs for it, eventually encountering the sheriff who locks him up and is uninterested in stories revolving around strange eggs from the sky and the changes they have wrought on a hippie commune. Yet within a couple of days, the sheriff can’t pretend that the problems growing in his town (a large number of disappearing persons and more of the silver eggs) are all originating from hippies taking bad drugs and he is forced to deputize Derek, plus the head of the local nuclear plant, and a journalist in an attempt to save his community. The federal government also gets involved but they seem more intent on quarantining the town and wiping out all the infected rather than in helping people.

 

This is where this novel goes from being merely entertaining to gripping. These unlikely defenders of humanity have to come up with a plan to save Bald Eagle—both its handful of uninfected residents and those who have already been contaminated by the eggs. Their plan is a little hokey but frankly, with the pressure they are under, it’s totally believable they would try it. One of the strengths of the story is how Ashton deals with this effort and the extraordinary pressure on these men as they try to save everyone—especially the handful of very young kids who seem to be immune to the contagion. People you come to like die painfully and frankly I quickly reached the point where I couldn’t figure out how anyone was going to survive the crisis.

 

If you enjoy a good mystery-turned-horror-thriller, you’ll like Invasion of Bald Eagle. I know I did.

 

If you’re interested in Invasion at Bald Eagle, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 3 Dire Wolf of the Quapaw by Phil Truman

Occultober Day 3 Dire Wolf of the Quapaw by Phil Truman

Here’s a spooky book in which a great deal of the tension is derived from not knowing whether or not the supernatural is involved in the horrific crimes.

 

Deputy Marshal Jubal Smoak is hard on the trail of Quapaw bandit, Crow Redhand. Redhand has shot Smoak twice so the deputy is highly motivated to bring him to justice. Then Redhand becomes the prime suspect in a massacre of a Quapaw family and the stakes raise considerably. Smoak needs to get his man before more people are senselessly butchered. The problem is that—dangerous as Redhand is—he’s not the only suspect in the murder. A drifter had a fight with two of the now-dead family members and more troubling yet—for the superstitiously minded—there’s a Quapaw legend about an evil spirit that takes the form of a giant dire wolf and the locals clearly fear this monster is behind the crime. Smoak isn’t big on superstition, but the reader will certainly find themselves seriously considering this possibility…

 

As if that isn’t enough of a mystery/adventure, there are very intriguing side mysteries that keep wrapping around the main problem. One of these was so cleverly inserted that I missed its possible connection to the main story until Smoak started putting the pieces together. Once he did, I started to figure out the whole plot—and isn’t that a significant part of what the reader wants in a good mystery? A fair chance to figure out what’s going on and then the excitement of seeing the hero try to bring the villain to justice?

 

This is a good mystery, but it’s also a good western. If you like both, you’ll definitely want to read this novel.

 

If you’re interested in Dire Wolf of the Quapaw, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 2: Dads vs. Zombies by Benjamin Wallace

Occultober Day 2—Dads vs. Zombies by Benjamin Wallace

Zombies hold an extremely important place in the paranormal fiction of the last couple of decades thanks in no small part to the works of brilliant authors such as Robert Kirkman and Laurell K Hamilton. One represents the zombie virus and one represents magical zombies. But the genre has grown so much since then and I’ll be introducing a lot of different types of zombie stories in the next 30 days. The first one is the very funny, but still powerful, Dads vs. Zombies.

 

As you can probably tell from the above, I really like the zombie apocalypse subgenre and read a lot of it. So, it is with some authority that I state that this was one of the best zombie apocalypse novels out there. It has a solid plot that would fit in nicely with any book in the genre (three men trying to reunite with their families as the world falls apart around them) but it’s the extraordinary level of humor that lifts this book to the top of the ladder.

 

The novel opens with our three dads (John, Chris and Erik) at the bowling alley where they have been forced to join a league by the much-hated president of their Home Owners Association. The three men don’t appear to like each other very much and it’s fairly clear that at least one of them (John) probably isn’t liked by much of anyone. The laughs start early in the chapter and continue to the end of the book. The banter between these three men is superb as Wallace draws out each man’s very distinctive character. Forced to walk home because they’ve been drinking, the zombie apocalypse comes to unlife around them and they don’t notice. By morning, the world has gone to hell and our three dads are trying to figure out how to find their families and reconnect with them.

 

Then the mistakes begin. In many of these novels the heroes are super smart and physically capable. They kill zombies better than Rambo. That does not describe our dads. John, especially, has an almost superhuman ability to do something stupid. And these blunders both add to the tension and create extraordinarily funny situations. Laugh out loud funny. Grab your sides funny. Rip yourself a new hernia funny. Get your eighteen-year-old son to start listening to the book with you funny. It’s that good.

 

It also took me in directions I didn’t expect several times. Part of this is because John continually does such comically stupid things. But many are also just good plot twists. I was sorry when the book came to an end because I just wasn’t done listening to it yet. Fortunately, I see on Audible that Dads vs. the World is coming so the humor will continue.

 

If you’re interested in Dads vs. Zombies, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...

 

Occultober Day 1: The Jungles of Ekanga by Gilbert M. Stack

Day 1—The Jungles of Ekanga by Gilbert M. Stack

Welcome to Occultober 2020—an exploration of the spookier side of literature: urban fantasy, paranormal adventures, and, of course, horror. To open the month, I offer one of my own novels which is out today, The Jungles of Ekanga. And since I can’t review my own work, I’ll just tell you a little about it.

 

Jungles is a prequel novel to Legionnaire, my 10,000+ sales military fantasy series—but it’s not a clone of those stories. Where Legionnaire focuses primarily on what would be considered conventional military threats in the fantasy genre, The Jungles of Ekanga takes an inexperienced Green Vigil Marcus Venandus and confronts him with a horrific and decidedly non-conventional danger deep in the untamed jungles of one of Aquila’s more recently conquered provinces. This is fantasy sliding into the horror genre as Marcus faces threats that he and the men under his command never dreamed were possible.

 

Jungles is packed with enemy shaman and warriors, treacherous senior officers, a mysterious murderer, and a mystery at the heart of it all that I hope will send shivers up and down your spine.

 

If you’re interested in The Jungles of Ekanga, why not join the discussion on my author page at Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/GilbertStack...