Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 12

Guest Blog: Ghosts, Monsters and Myth: Cusp of Night by Mae Clair

Thank you, Michael, for hosting me on your blog today. I’d like to share my upcoming release, Cusp of Night, with your readers. A story that delves into the Spiritualist movement of the 19th Century, Cusp of Night also touches on ghosts and an urban legend in the present. Releasing June 12th, the book is currently available for pre-order from all online booksellers.

I’m a huge fan of creatures and things that go bump-in-the-night. In 2013 and 2014, I took two trips to research the Mothman, a cryptid that featured into my POINT PLEASANT SERIES. For my HODE’S HILL SERIES, I needed a new creature. Rather than use an existing monster from folklore, I decided to create my own. I’ve always been fascinated by Spring Heeled Jack and borrowed elements such as leaping fences and scrambling over rooftops to create “the Fiend.”

In the history of Hode’s Hill, the Fiend is responsible for several horrific murders in the late 1800s. The creature’s body was never found. Its legend has morphed into the stuff of urban myth. In the present, the town honors the past with an annual Fiend Fest in which contestants dress in costume, hoping to achieve the top prize.

My main character, Maya Sinclair, is on her way home from the Fiend Fest when she witnesses an assault on the patriarch of the town’s leading family. Is the assailant someone dressed in Fiend attire, or the creature returned from the shadows to wreak vengeance?

Cusp of Night is a blending of past and present, dual plotlines which converge in the legend of the Fiend—and restless ghosts the centuries have been unable to disperse.

Ghosts, monsters and myth. Here’s the blurb:

Blurb

Recently settled in Hode’s Hill, Pennsylvania, Maya Sinclair is enthralled by the town’s folklore, especially the legend about a centuries-old monster. A devil-like creature with uncanny abilities responsible for several horrific murders, the Fiend has evolved into the stuff of urban myth. But the past lives again when Maya witnesses an assault during the annual “Fiend Fest.” The victim is developer Leland Hode, patriarch of the town’s most powerful family, and he was attacked by someone dressed like the Fiend. 

Compelled to discover who is behind the attack and why, Maya uncovers a shortlist of enemies of the Hode clan. The mystery deepens when she finds the journal of a late nineteenth-century spiritualist who once lived in Maya’s house--a woman whose ghost may still linger.

Known as the Blue Lady of Hode’s Hill due to a genetic condition, Lucinda Glass vanished without a trace and was believed to be one of the Fiend’s tragic victims. The disappearance of a young couple, combined with more sightings of the monster, trigger Maya to join forces with Leland’s son Collin. But the closer she gets to unearthing the truth, the closer she comes to a hidden world of twisted secrets, insanity, and evil that refuses to die . . .

PURCHASE HERE

 

You can find Mae Clair at the following haunts:

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Review: The Bog by Michael Talbot [audiobook]

The Bog

By Michael Talbot






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My original THE BOG audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

The Bog is an old-school work of 1980s quiet horror. Michael Talbot slowly sets the stage, introducing archaeologist David Macauley and his family living abroad in the UK on a research grant. David specializes in studying bogs, particularly the corpses found preserved within. In a small English village, David uncovers not just a spate of bog bodies, but colorful legends – legends that point toward the true nature of an ancient evil responsible for the death of the bodies he is now unearthing. As readers slowly settle in for what first appears to be a creature feature, Talbot serves up a few interesting twists alongside a couple doses of personal tragedy and plenty of foreboding dread.

One of the things I most appreciated about The Bog was Talbot’s plotting. Even the most seemingly insignificant plot points and character beats play into the larger narrative and receive certain payoffs as the story resolves. A character’s veganism, a child’s fascination with the word ‘moxie’, a tavern’s clienteles apprehension over the appearance of a moth all lead to larger elements within the story, and the introduction of these minor points help to, in various ways, bring The Bog full-circle by book’s end. Throughout the story, Talbot introduces a number of concepts that I enjoyed quite a bit, particularly in regards to the nature of the evil infecting the small hamlet Macauley and his family find themselves inhabiting, which dovetails nicely with David’s work as a historian and scholar.

Reissued by Valancourt, The Bog is narrated by Matt Godfrey. I’ve only recently become familiar with Godfrey’s work, but he’s quickly earned with me the reputation of being a solid reader. I can expect a natural delivery complemented by subtle performances and distinct voice-work for each of the characters. In that regard, The Bog meets expectations. Each of the male and female characters presented here is clearly delineated and unmistakably unique. Listening to this book through my car’s audio system during my daily commute, I could not detect any flaws in the audio production, and the sound is crisp, clean, and well-modulated.

Readers looking for some high-end 80s horror should find a lot to enjoy in Talbot’s work. While The Bog is a bit of a slow-burn, it is ultimately quite enjoyable. Patient readers will be greatly rewarded by the way certain puzzle pieces of the plot align and snap into place as the story progresses.



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Review: Jurassic, Florida by Hunter Shea

Jurassic, Florida (Hunter Shea: One Size Eats All)

By Hunter Shea






My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Hands-down, Hunter Shea is one of the most consistently entertaining horror authors I've come across. I can always count on the man to deliver some truly fun, B-movie pulp in print form, and Jurassic, Florida is no exception. Dig it:

After an act of eco-terrorism against an off-shore oil rig large enough to rock the Richter scale, the residents of Polo Springs begin to notice a sudden increase in lizard activity. Sidewalks are cracking apart, giant holes are appearing in the ground, and iguanas are literally everywhere. If that weren't bad enough, Hurricane Ramona has its eyes set on Polo Springs, causing further calamity and unearthing even more iguanas. Big ones. Like, dinosaur big. Ancient, primitive, twenty-five foot tall iguanas. And those sumbitches are hungry!

Sounds like a good time, right? Well, it is. Like I said, Shea knows how to craft some wild creature features. Jurassic, Florida is a hell of a romp, too, filled with monsters, gore, and carnage, with the pace cranked up to rapid-fire. This one's a slim novella, and the story flies by at hurricane speed, driven by one event after another.

On the character front...well, this is the type of story you don't want to too attached to any one individual. Still, Shea makes a couple memorable figures here, such as Anna, the town's 18-year-old mayor. I wouldn't have minded a bit more backstory to her in regards to the particulars of her election, but screw it. You just gotta ride with it, and figure that if a real-life Alaskan town can have a cat mayor, then a fictional young adult like Anna at least stands half a chance of holding office, so why not? She gets some good moments to shine, as do Don and his family, and a sprightly, young lesbian couple. Don't expect everybody to make it through unscathed, though, and there were a few moments that manage to surprise me with just how blackhearted Shea can be. Good on him!

All in all, Jurassic, Florida is a heck of good time, and one that is reminiscent of natural horror flicks like Them!, and to a degree Godzilla, where giant animals turn the local human population into an all-you-can-eat buffet. By novella's end, I was hungry for more! Thankfully, Jurassic, Florida is the first in a trio of One Size Eats All novellas from Shea and Kensington/Lyrical Underground, so I'll be getting plenty more instances of crazy animals feasting on skewered humans. You really can't go wrong with that.

[Note: I received a copy of this title from the publisher, Kensington, via NetGalley.]



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Review: The Woman In The Woods by John Connolly

The Woman in the Woods: A Thriller (Charlie Parker)

By John Connolly






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Deep in the Maine woods, a tree falls and unearths the remains of a woman, the only mark of her grave a Star of David carved into a nearby tree. Soon, a wave of violence will disrupt the lives of a handful of people as the search for the woman's child ensues, and the book the woman once possessed in the days leading to her demise. Drawn into this is Charlie Parker, a private investigator touched by darkness, and for whom violence surrounds him.

The Woman in the Woods is the 16th entry in John Connolly's Charlie Parker series, and its opening chapters carry with it an unmistakable dread. The threat and promise of death looms large over this series, naturally, but it feels more prominent here, more like a warning. Or, perhaps, more like a preparation. Parker and his associates are growing older, as is the author himself, who recently celebrated his 50th birthday, and who has been writing about Parker for going on 20 years. I can't help but feel like Connolly is beginning to move his pieces closer toward an end game, tightening the narrative threads of particular concepts introduced in previous entries and forcing his characters to reflect on the nature of their demise as a close ally to Parker faces the threat of cancer. Of course, long-time readers will know that not even death can spell the end of a character's story, but it still feels like the noose is tightening around the series and that its finale is soon to be upon us.

As with prior novels, Connolly gives us heartless killers with odd afflictions, detours into the supernatural, and glimpses of an overarching narrative involving the war of good against evil. In The Woman in the Woods, we find evil particularly emboldened. I believe this is the first Parker novel written squarely amidst the turmoil of the Trump presidency, a presidency that has served only to empower white supremacists. Beyond the murderous Quayle and his companion Mors, there is the threat of white supremacy and the burgeoning increase in bigotry and racism as represented by the Stonehursts, the youngest of whom rides around in a truck decorated with Confederate flags. Naturally, Luis takes some issues with this northernmost Confederate idiot, allowing readers to live vicariously in the nitwit's comeuppance. It's interesting to see how the Trump regime has impacted some of my favorite authors and their responses to the creeping nature of this odious moron's hate into their work. In Stephen King's The Outsider, we saw graves desecrated by swastikas, and Nicholas Sansbury Smith's Trackers series has provided a good bit of Neo-Nazi-punching heroics. Sadly, the normalizing of these repugnant attitudes by the right-wing is now common place and hate crimes have been on the rise ever since Trump took office, so it's quite refreshing to see characters like Charlie Parker and Luis taking a stand against this all-too human evil. Their actions and reactions toward the Stonehursts had me smiling rather happily along the way, and I suspect this family of rich racists will be playing a larger role in the books to come.

There are few series that I look forward to with as much anticipation as a new Charlie Parker novel, and The Woman in the Woods delivers on a number of fronts. The characters and dialogue are as sharp as ever, and Connolly infuses the narrative with a sense of creeping dread, one that promises to deliver even more worry and upset in the near future. While I suspect we're finally getting close to the end of Parker's ultimate story, I certainly hope I'm wrong. There's nothing I'd like more than to keep on reading Connolly's series for many, many more years to come, but if the end of near, I believe Parker and company will be going out on a high note, and the end began here, with the discovery of a dead woman lost in the woods.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher, Atria/Emily Bestler Books, via NetGalley.]



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Ten Summer Reads On My Radar

In my part of Michigan, we went from winter and straight into the hottest days of summer, bypassing spring altogether. Because of this, some of the books listed here are not officially summer reads by way of the calendar - the first day of summer isn't until June 21 - but since we've already had a streak of 90 degree days before May was even over, and the summer movie season now seems to kick off in late April, I figure they're fair game! That said, here's some of the forthcoming releases that have caught my eye.

The Woman In the Woods by John Connolly

June 12, 2018 | Atria/Emily Bestler Books

From internationally bestselling author and “creative genius who has few equals in either horror fiction or the mystery genre” (New York Journal of Books) comes a gripping thriller starring Private Investigator Charlie Parker. When the body of a woman—who apparently died in childbirth—is discovered, Parker is hired to track down both her identity and her missing child.

In the beautiful Maine woods, a partly preserved body is discovered. Investigators realize that the dead young woman gave birth shortly before her death. But there is no sign of a baby.

Private detective Charlie Parker is hired by a lawyer to shadow the police investigation and find the infant but Parker is not the only searcher. Someone else is following the trail left by the woman, someone with an interest in much more than a missing child…someone prepared to leave bodies in his wake.

And in a house by the woods, a toy telephone begins to ring and a young boy is about to receive a call from a dead woman.

Jurassic Florida by Hunter Shea

June 19, 2018 | Kensington

FLORIDA. IT’S WHERE YOU GO TO DIE.
Welcome to Polo Springs, a sleepy little town on Florida’s Gulf Coast. It’s a great place to live—if you don’t mind the hurricanes. Or the flooding. Or the unusual wildlife . . .
 
IGUANAS. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE. 
Maybe it’s the weather. But the whole town is overrun with the little green bastards this year. They’re causing a lot of damage. They’re eating everything in sight. And they’re just the babies . . .
 
HUMANS. THEY’RE WHAT’S FOR DINNER.
The mayor wants to address the iguana problem. But when Hurricane Ramona slams the coast, the town has a bigger problem on their hands. Bigger iguanas. Bigger than a double-wide. Unleashed by the storm, this razor-toothed horde of prehistoric predators rises up from the depths—and descends on the town like retirees at an early bird special. Except humans are on the menu. And it’s all you can eat . . .

Providence by Caroline Kepnes

June 19, 2018 | Random House

Best friends in small-town New Hampshire, Jon and Chloe share a bond so intense that it borders on the mystical. But before Jon can declare his love for his soul mate, he is kidnapped, his plans for a normal life permanently dashed.

Four years later, Chloe has finally given up hope of ever seeing Jon again. Then, a few months before graduation, Jon reappears. But he is different now: bigger, stronger, and with no memory of the time he was gone. Jon wants to pick up where he and Chloe left off . . . until the horrifying instant he realizes that he possesses strange powers that pose a grave threat to everyone he cares for. Afraid of hurting Chloe, Jon runs away, embarking on a journey for answers.

Meanwhile, in Providence, Rhode Island, healthy college students and townies with no connection to one another are suddenly, inexplicably dropping dead. A troubled detective prone to unexplainable hunches, Charles “Eggs” DeBenedictus suspects there’s a serial killer at work. But when he starts asking questions, Eggs is plunged into a whodunit worthy of his most outlandish obsessions.

In this dazzling new novel—and with an intense, mesmerizing voice—Caroline Kepnes makes keen and powerful observations about human connection and how love and identity can dangerously blur together.

Devil Sharks by Chris Jameson

June 26, 2018 | St. Martin's

A pleasure cruise in Paradise leads a group of friends to a shark-infested Hell in Chris Jameson's Devil Sharks. . .

When Alex Simmons is invited to a college reunion in the Hawaiian islands aboard the private yacht of his old pal Harry Curtis, he is not sure what to expect. The two men had a falling-out years ago over the suicide of one of their friends. Could this be Harry’s way of making amends? Or is something more sinister in store?

The crew sets sail and arrives at Orchid Atoll, the site of a deserted former Coast Guard station. But they are far from alone. Out here, three hundred miles from civilization, Alex and his friends are about to encounter two very different brands of evil―one human, the other with fins―unlike anything they could have possibly imagined. They have entered a place where there’s no law, no mercy. . .and no way out.

The Cabin At The End Of The World by Paul Tremblay

June 26, 2018 | William Morrow

“A tremendous book―thought-provoking and terrifying, with tension that winds up like a chain. The Cabin at the End of the World is Tremblay’s personal best. It’s that good.” — Stephen King

The Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts adds an inventive twist to the home invasion horror story in a heart-palpitating novel of psychological suspense that recalls Stephen King’s Misery, Ruth Ware’s In a Dark, Dark Wood, and Jack Ketchum’s cult hit The Girl Next Door.

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, "None of what’s going to happen is your fault". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: "Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."

Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. The Cabin at the End of the World is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.

Halcyon by Rio Youers

July 10, 2018 | St. Martin's Press

HALCYON is the answer for all Americans who want to escape, but paradise isn't what it seems. A beautiful island in the middle of Lake Ontario—a self-sustaining community made up of people who want to live without fear, crime, or greed. Halcyon is run by Valerie Kemp, aka Mother Moon, benevolent and altruistic on the outside, but hiding an unimaginable darkness inside. She has dedicated her life to the pursuit of Glam Moon, a place of eternal beauty and healing. And she believes the pathway there can only be found at the end of pleasure.

On the heels of tragedy, Martin Lovegrove moves his family to Halcyon. A couple of months, he tells himself, to retreat from the chaos and grind. He soon begins to suspect there is something beneath Halcyon’s perfect veneer and sets out to discover the truth—however terrible it might be—behind the island and its mysterious founder, Mother Moon.

Behind the Door by Mary SanGiovanni

August 28, 2018 | Kensington

FIRST IN A NEW SERIES!

Occult specialist Kathy Ryan returns in this thrilling novel of paranormal horror from Mary SanGiovanni, the author of Chills . . .
 
Some doors should never be opened . . .
 
In the rural town of Zarepath, deep in the woods on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, stands the Door. No one knows where it came from, and no one knows where it leads. For generations, folks have come to the Door seeking solace or forgiveness. They deliver a handwritten letter asking for some emotional burden to be lifted, sealed with a mixture of wax and their own blood, and slide it beneath the Door. Three days later, their wish is answered—for better or worse. 
 
Kari is a single mother, grieving over the suicide of her teenage daughter. She made a terrible mistake, asking the powers beyond the Door to erase the memories of her lost child. And when she opened the Door to retrieve her letter, she unleashed every sin, secret, and spirit ever trapped on the other side.
 
Now, it falls to occultist Kathy Ryan to seal the door before Zarepath becomes hell on earth . . .

Epidemic of the Living Dead by John Russo

August 28, 2018 | Kensington

From the screenwriter of the original 1968  Night of the Living Dead comes a shocking new wave of zombie mayhem to devour your dreams—and feed your nightmares . . .
 
THEY ARE WHAT THEY EAT
It starts with infected needles. It spreads like a plague. Soon the town of Chapel Grove, Pennsylvania, is overrun with cannibalistic corpses. Some are taken down with a bullet to the brain. Others, torched like kindling. But a few have survived—inside a maternity ward . . .
 
THEY’RE EATING FOR TWO NOW
Detective Bill Curtis manages to rescue his pregnant wife Lauren from the ward in the nick of time. But the other pregnant women are not so lucky. Some of them have been bitten—and infected. Now it’s anyone’s guess what’s growing inside them . . .
 
THEY’RE THE NEXT GENERATION
But the nightmare isn’t over yet. The infected mothers’ newborns appear to be normal. But as the years go by, Bill and Lauren Curtis begin to worry about their beautiful, healthy daughter Jodie. Jodie is drawn to the town’s “special” children, the ones whose mothers were bitten. They’re reaching adolescence now. Their hormones are raging. And they’re starting to possess strange appetitites . . .
 
If you thought millenials werea pain, just wait until you meet Generation Z.

Our Lady of the Inferno by Preston Fassel

September 11, 2018 | Cinestate

FANGORIA PRESENTS #1, COMING THIS SEPTEMBER!

Spring, 1983. Sally Ride is about to go into space. Flashdance is a cultural phenomenon. And in Times Square, two very deadly women are on a collision course with destiny-- and each other. 

At twenty-one, Ginny Kurva is already legendary on 42nd Street. To the pimp for whom she works, she's the perfect weapon-- a martial artist capable of taking down men twice her size. To the girls in her stable, she's mother, teacher, and protector. To the little sister she cares for, she's a hero. Yet Ginny's bravado and icy confidence hide a mind at the breaking point, her sanity slowly slipping away as both her addictions and the sins of her past catch up with her... 

At thirty-seven, Nicolette Aster is the most respected woman at the Staten Island Landfill. Quiet and competent, she's admired by the secretaries and trusted by her supervisors. Yet those around her have no idea how Nicolette spends her nights-- when the hateful madness she keeps repressed by day finally emerges, and she turns the dump into a hunting ground to engage in a nightmarish blood sport...

In the Spring of 1983, neither Ginny nor Nicolette knows the other exists. By the time Summer rolls around, one of them will be dead.

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

September 18, 2018 | Quirk Books

Faust meets rock/heavy metal in this new novel of supernatural horror (and pop culture) by the author of HORRORSTOR, MY BEST FRIEND'S EXORCISM, and PAPERBACKS FROM HELL.   

In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success -- but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in rural Pennsylvania. Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western - she's tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry's meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris's very soul.

This revelation prompts Kris to hit the road, reunite with the rest of her bandmates, and confront the man who ruined her life. It's a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a Satanic rehab center and finally to a Las Vegas music festival that's darker than any Mordor Tolkien could imagine. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul...where only a girl with a guitar can save us all.

Review: The Outsider by Stephen King

The Outsider: A Novel

By Stephen King






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


After a rather dismal outing in Sleeping Beauties, my first Stephen King novel in a handful of years, I had kept my expectations for The Outsider firmly in check. I went into this novel with the expectation and hope that I would, at the very least, like it. Turns out, I freaking loved it!

Right from the very start, King grabbed me. And he didn't let go for the entire book's duration. The Outsider is gripping from page one, and reminds us why Stephen King is a storytelling master. Opening with a section called "The Arrest," King gives us a bit of a double-narrative. In the present-day, Detective Ralph Anderson is set to make an arrest in a gruesome homicide of a young boy. Jogging alongside this build-up toward the arrest is a bit of backstory, told through witness interviews, and police, forensic, and morgue reports, that give us the inside scoop on the victim and the perpetrator, Terry Maitland, a youth baseball coach in the midst of a season-ending game in a packed stadium. Anderson wants Maitland's arrest public, to be a spectacle of shame, and the case against Maitland is airtight - they have his DNA, his fingerprints, a number of witnesses accounting for virtually every one of his movements immediately leading up to and following the murder. It's an open and shut case.

Until it isn't. Until King starts to sow seeds of doubt into the case, small seeds initially, which blossom into wild, unexpected growths, and bits of information that blow the entire case apart and leave Anderson reeling.

The Outsider begins as a police procedural, one that sinks its hooks in deep with its compelling narrative and characters. Regarding the heinous murder of a child, it would have been easy for King to go the route of gruesome, exploitative shock if he wanted. Instead, he approached the case with an almost clinical detachment, delivering the details through impersonal reports from the various departments involved in a murder investigation. He let's us build our own nightmares from the information imparted in these transcriptions, which is a brilliant way to do it. There's a reason King is the Master of Horror, and The Outsider is very much a horror novel. The procedural elements are merely prelude, the meat and potatoes of the narrative backbone that get us to where we're going. What begins as a story of a very real human monster eventually takes on supernatural overtones as the narrative shifts toward the inexplicable. King's Constant Readers will likely find plenty of reason to celebrate the subtle links and parallels established between this work and earlier stories, including the Bill Hodges trilogy.

Some hash has been made over whether or not The Outsider is a continuation of the Hodges trilogy. I can't speak to that, as I never read that trilogy, but I am aware that the character of Holly Gibney appeared previously in those books. The Outsider is intended to be a standalone novel and works perfectly well on its own. However, Holly's introduction here necessitates the revealing of plenty of information regarding the Hodges trilogy by King. If, like me, you haven't read those prior books, you can expect a lot of spoilers for them throughout the last half of The Outsider. So, take that as you will and determine how to proceed.

If you don't mind having the Hodges books spoiled, then absolutely read The Outsider immediately. Do it right now. This book is simply that good. It's easily one of the most compelling narratives I've read this year, and the way King builds this book, effortlessly shifting from police procedural to horror, and injecting enough shocks to keep readers on their toes the whole way through, is absolutely masterful.

The Outsider could have been another phoned-in affair, like Under the Dome, which oftentimes felt like a Greatest Hits retread of King's most prominent works, or worse, Sleeping Beauties, a joyless and dull co-written imitation of King's epics that never captured any of the magic. Instead, this is a pure shot of adrenalized King straight to the heart. It's powerful and gripping, and a whole lot of damn fun, and it sucked me in deep enough that I was positively living this book the whole time it took me to read it. After more than 50 published novels to his credit, there's little reason for The Outsider to be as good as it is, and yet it's not just good - it's one of King's best. Not just one of his best in years, mind you, but one of his best period. This is the Master of Horror doing what he does best - giving us convincing characters alongside a larger-than-life horror, and scaring the hell out of us along the way.



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Audiobook Review: Night Society by Ambrose Ibsen

Night Society

By Ambrose Ibsen






My rating: 3 of 5 stars


My original NIGHT SOCIETY audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Walking past an abandoned house, Mike is struck with inspiration to form a small club called the Night Society. He and his friends, Russell and Jim, agree to take part, and the plan is to break into the house and scare one with another with a spooky game of show and tell. During their inaugural meeting, Russell plays for them a CD of an audio file he downloaded from a torrent site, filling the house with the noise of a woman’s brutal murder. In the days that follow, the three men are witness to sights they cannot explain and they begin to realize they are being haunted by the victim whose violent death they had recently listened to.

Although I had initially suspected Night Society of being little more than an imitative riff on The Ring, Ambrose Ibsen does a fine job taking this story in a novel direction after building up a number of suspenseful scenes, along with a few moments of genuine creepiness, pushing the narrative toward a downbeat and desolate finale that works suitably well. Although Night Society isn’t particularly groundbreaking or original, Ibsen arranges the story’s familiar tropes in some crafty ways and kept me engaged. A lot of this engagement stems from his three central characters, whose point of view Ibsen alternates between from one chapter to the next in round-robin fashion. Each are affable losers content to lazily coast through life with little in the way of aim, with Jim being the group’s resident jackass and quick to chide Russell, a man-child whose apartment contains far more role play games and miniature statues than furniture. Mike is the most level-headed, but the strain that follows their first disastrous meeting of the Night Society becomes readily apparent over the course of this audiobook’s not-quite six-hour runtime.

Having listened to a number of Joe Hempel’s prior readings, Night Society fully met my expectations on the narration front. Hempel has a natural style, and his narration always makes for a smooth, easy listen. The production is professionally handled with no hiccups to speak of, and the audio is crisp and clear.

Night Society was my first encounter with Ibsen, and although it’s not a particularly unique or original find within the horror genre it is solidly entertaining and kept me interested throughout. I’ve little doubt that I will be giving this author another look in the future; in fact, knowing that Hempel has narrated a number of Ibsen’s other titles makes it a downright certainty.

[Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com]



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Review: Blood Standard by Laird Barron

Blood Standard (An Isaiah Coleridge Novel)

By Laird Barron






My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Blood Standard might be one of the best crime thrillers I've read in recent years, and while I'd put Isaiah Coleridge in the vein of a Jack Reacher-like protagonist, Laird Barron produces a work of violent noir that wins on its own merits and kept me hooked the whole way through.

Isaiah Coleridge is a Maori/Caucasian-mixed hitter for The Outfit, a mafioso crime syndicate that has assigned him to Alaska to keep the men there from getting into too much trouble. In the book's opening moments, Coleridge ends up making trouble of his own when he's brought into the fold for a sadistic seal hunt that ends with him attacking a made man. After one of The Outfit's higher-ups cashes in a favor, Coleridge finds himself exiled to the Adirondacks in upper New York. Needless to say, trouble once again finds Coleridge when a local girl goes missing, and Isaiah quickly finds himself caught in the crosshairs of the law, mobsters, and warring street gangs. Given the amount of scarring that covers Coleridge's body like a roadmap, this is just another day in the life of Isaiah.

Coleridge is a great big mountain of a man, and violence runs in his blood. Lee Child fans will feel right at home here, although Coleridge is more introspective and philosophical than Child's wandering former MP. College educated, Coleridge is as book smart as he is street wise, fascinated by ancient Greek myth, and the histories of Odysseus and Hercules lend plenty of thematic weight to Blood Standard. Barron's protagonist is one clearly cut from classical cloth, but his wiseguy mouth keeps him firmly rooted in the modern day. Isaiah is an incredibly well-drawn tragic hero, and one with plenty of tough guy wit, as well as a few moments of self-depreciation.

Barron weaves in moments of introspection between a good number of brief action scenes and plenty of tension, surrounding Coleridge with a number of clearly untrustworthy figures with questionable reputations. Coleridge is also given a few well-rounded foils in the love-interest, Meg, and partner-in-crime-cum-heroics, Lionel, a hard-drinking ex-military sort. Isaiah's scenes with these characters help to inform his growth as a man seeking to turn over a new leaf and set his life right. His history, his brushes with death, his exile from The Outfit, and his own firmly established moral code have left Coleridge grasping for a new life, and we get plenty of glimpses of what that life could be, the promises it could hold for him if he does right, how quickly it could fall apart if he steps wrong, and how badly anybody who crosses him will get hurt.

Laird Barron has crafted a terrific new character here, and half-way through Blood Standard I found myself already jonesing for the next book. I'm excited by the prospect of Coleridge's new life and focus, and I'm dying to see what future odysseys ensnare and disrupt him. This is a character that has plenty of legs for a series, and lots of layers left to mine in subsequent entries. And since I've gone and compared Coleridge to Reacher already, let me just say here for the record that I like Reacher a lot. But I like Coleridge a whole lot more.

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]



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Bookstagrams!

Quick post for today! I thought I'd share some recent Bookstagrams I've been posting over on Instagram. Head over there to give me a follow if you're not already! There's plenty more bookish photo fun to be had, and more on the way.

A few recent additions to my burgeoning collection of @wordhorde books.

The Demise of Kindle Worlds and Why Diversification Is So Damn Important (or, Amazon Isn't Your Best Friend)

Wednesday afternoon I received an e-mail from Amazon notifying me they were shutting down their Kindle Worlds brand. For those that may be unaware, Kindle Worlds is essentially a property that Amazon has licensed from the respective creators for other authors to write in. I don't believe any of those stories were considered canon, and the Kindle Worlds stories fell somewhere between media tie-in fiction and fan fiction that bore (to some degree) a staple of authenticity due to the vetting of submitted stories by Amazon and the license holder(s). I had heard rumblings that the cancellation of Kindle Worlds was coming within the indie author community over the last few weeks, and had been waiting for Amazon to confirm. 

Now that I have that confirmation, it's safe to say I'm pretty disappointed. In 2016, Amazon established a Kindle Worlds domain for Nicholas Sansbury Smith's best-selling Extinction Cycle series. Nicholas invited me and a number of authors to write the line's debut stories to help launch the Kindle Worlds branch of his Extinction Cycle, and Amazon paid us a nice advance to help us recoup cover art and editing costs, in addition to our monthly earnings generated by the sales of our titles. I'd been a reader and fan of Nick's work for a while, and we'd grown to be friends online over the years. Having the opportunity to put my own little mark on this particular series of his was both an honor and a hell of a lot of fun. I'm really proud of how From the Ashes turned out, and it's been one of my most consistent selling titles, bringing me in some revenue each and every month since it was released in October 2016. 

From the Ashes will be going out of print effective July 16, per Amazon. It's only May right now, so the book is still on sale and rather reasonably priced at only $1.99. I encourage you to check it out, particularly since the clock is ticking. You'll want to buy it as soon as you can and keep it on your Kindle for prosperity's sake! 

I'd also like to remind you, particularly if you're an independent author, author-publisher, small press publisher, or even just an Amazon customer, of something we sometimes overlook. Yes, Amazon provides us (usually) wonderful service, a bevy of wonderful shows and movies on its Prime video service, great discounts on products, and they opened up the door for indie authors such as myself to distribute their work for real cash money and find and build a readership. But, it's important to remember one simple fact.

Amazon is not your friend.

Amazon is a business, and a very competitive one at that. They're a book-selling powerhouse, one that has ground the vast majority of its serious competitors into the ground. Do you remember Walden Books, B. Dalton Booksellers, or Borders? Do you know where they are now? They're all gone, dead and buried. Barnes & Noble is the last of the big chain brick-and-mortar booksellers, and they're in serious, serious trouble. While their faults are numerous and they have certainly proven stubborn in their failure to improve over the years, they're just about on their way out of this world forever from the looks of it. Once they're gone, Amazon's only competition are the small independent bookstores, used booksellers, and mom and pop shops. I guess Books-A-Million is out there, but I think there's one or two in my whole state and I have no idea how they are nationally. They're certainly easy for me to overlook anyway.

Amazon has certainly done a lot of good for its customers, and it holds the top retailer spot for a reason (of course, earning a profit of more than $5 billion and paying zero in federal taxes helps mightily...). But let's not ever forget that Amazon is also strangely draconian, some might say tyrannical, as well as wildly uneven, in the application of its policies, which oftentimes sees innocents caught in the crossfire. Amazon recently changed its policies on who can leave reviews and certain criteria they must meet (such as spending $50 before they're allowed to review) before those customers can write a review. The aim here was to crack down on fake or paid reviews, a noble goal to be sure, particularly since virtually anybody could leave a one-star review on any product regardless of whether or not they've bought the item in question or ever even used that product or read that book. For instance, groups who fancy themselves Star Wars "fans" have attempted to wage war against Del Ray and its Star Wars authors by posting one-star reviews of this publisher's new books, typically following a script to hit on particular bullet points that they believe are destroying their childhood and any chance whatsoever at a happy, successful life. Amazon even kicked off 2018 by deleting fake and trolling reviews for Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House after Hillary Clinton's What Happened was bombarded with fake reviews the previous September. Fake reviews are an epidemic on Amazon, and some unsavory indie author types have been scamming the system by bribing reviewers with gift cards in exchange for glowing five-star reviews.

Obviously, shit like this needs to be stopped. But the end result, more often than not, is that legitimate reviewers are the ones receiving punishment. While I haven't had reviews deleted, I have noticed that even though I've spent way more than $50 at Amazon this year, my reviews are almost constantly withheld from posting for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. A large amount of my reading time is devoted to ARCs, or advanced reading copies, that publishers send me either directly or that I request from NetGalley. When I review those books, it's as an unverified purchase on Amazon, which likely accounts for why my reviews are so routinely delayed for odd amounts of time. I'm fortunate, though, particularly since Amazon recently began shutting down customer's accounts, believing those customers were leaving fake reviews, banning them from shopping at the online store. The Kindle Unlimited service is plagued with scam artists, and rather than root out these evildoers, Amazon has instead stripped legitimate authors of their rankings, made their books invisible to potential buyers browsing the sales charts, and in some cases froze authors out of their publishing account. David Gaughran has been writing about this for years, and if you're unfamiliar with all the problems inherit to KU and Amazon's unresponsiveness, you'd do well to check out his blog.

Given all the various press associated with these issues from bloggers like Gaughran, and news outlets like The Washington Post, Amazon is very clearly aware of these fundamental flaws in their daily operations. And yet they're awfully quick to ban, giving customers and authors little in the way of a hearing to plead their cases. There is no innocent until proven guilty with Amazon policies, and Amazon has made one thing crystal clear over the years in their responses to such abuses and their hamfisted tackling of these issues: they do not care.

Amazon is not your friend.

True, though, that Amazon has given writers an incredible opportunity to self-publish, and they most certainly did revolutionize independent publishing, regardless of your thoughts on how granting literally anybody the opportunity to write and publish their work may or may not be a double-edged sword. The Kindle is an incredible device, and I use my tablet on a daily basis. But one must also recognize that what Amazon giveth, Amazon can taketh away. Case in point: Kindle Worlds.

Look, being invited to write a Kindle Worlds title was an amazing opportunity for me. I cannot stress that enough. To be invited into an author's sandbox and have the opportunity to be exposed to that author's built-in audience was incredible, and readers of From the Ashes have treated me very well. At the moment, From the Ashes has 25 reviews with a 4.3 average star rating (out of 5 stars). Readers have called it "Brutal apocalyptic fiction at its best" and that it was a book that kept them "on edge until the last sentence" and that "fans of military sci-fi/horror shouldn't hesitate in picking this up." I'd like to think I stayed true to Nick's style of storytelling in his Extinction Cycle books, and that I kept readers engaged with plenty of action and monster mayhem. It's certainly a book I'm proud of, and I'm a bit sad that it will be going extinct (pardon the pun).

Whatever reason Amazon has for shuttering Kindle Worlds is known only to Amazon. Maybe the line as a whole wasn't selling well enough for them, maybe licensing all the various Worlds got too expensive, or maybe they just didn't want to spend the time and money maintaining it. I'm sure there are sound, rational business decisions behind all this, but this move highlights another very important thing for authors and publishers to keep in mind when it comes to doing business with Amazon. Don't get complacent. Remember, there are still other retailers out there.

No doubt, Amazon is the biggest and most prominent retailer around. However, there are still a few other options, at least in terms of ebooks. iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, Nook (for now), and Smashwords are significantly smaller channels for authors and publishers to sell their books at, but they do represent markets of potentially untapped readers begging to be engaged. The loss of Kindle Worlds should remind people of the dangers of putting all their eggs in one basket. Any writer who was solely dependent on selling their Kindle Worlds titles on Amazon are going to be hurting. And if the day ever comes that Amazon decides to change, overhaul, or eliminate their Kindle Direct Publishing, a lot of authors who have bought in to Amazon exclusivity in order to gamble on Kindle Unlimited are going to have to adapt or die. What happens when Amazon decides KDP is no longer benefiting their bottom line? It could happen. It might even happen soon. Or maybe not at all. But one question you have to consider is, how badly do you want to risk your authorial career in order to stay in Amazon's good graces? Because, trust me, Amazon doesn't give a shit about being in your good graces at all. Amazon is going to do what's good for Amazon, everything and everyone else be damned.

 

Make no mistake: the loss of over 600 more bookstores would be a cataclysmic blow to literacy and reading and empathy in America. We need Barnes & Noble. We need all bookstores, indie and chain. Pure and simple, we need books. https://t.co/uBGKAta4pL

— Chris Bohjalian (@ChrisBohjalian) May 7, 2018

 

We cannot continue to put all our eggs in one basket. We have to diversify in order to survive. This goes for readers as much as it does authors. You can buy all you want from Amazon, but it's important to support local business, too, to help your neighborhoods and your neighbors thrive. Personally, I don't want to imagine a world without bookstores, but we're getting shamefully close to such a view regardless. I buy plenty of ebooks from Amazon, but I also buy plenty of physical books from local shops, my local Barnes & Noble, and specialty presses like Thunderstorm Books and Cemetery Dance. We need a plurality of sellers, and it's important to support them with our dollars. Amazon is not the be-all, end-all of retail commerce, nor should it be. Authors, publishers - If we want to reach readers, we have to go to where those readers are. And yes, Amazon is the lion's share of the market, but there's absolutely no reason to be exclusive to them, especially given how potentially disastrously perilous Kindle Unlimited could be. Being exclusive to Amazon is little more than a case of diminishing returns in the long run. You're better off selling your work on all platforms in order to reach the maximum amount of readers possible. And if the worst comes to pass, you won't be caught flatfooted when Amazon bans you, closes out your account, prevents you from publishing, or decides to pull out of the indie publishing game to focus solely on their own publishing imprints.

As an author-publisher, you cannot rely on one single distributor, regardless of how much more money you make off that particular retail channel. Admittedly, the bulk of my sales come directly form Amazon, but I still move a few copies every month on every other channel, copies that obviously wouldn't have sold if I didn't have my books there. It seems like a no-brainer to me. I want to reach the most readers I can, so I have books for sale right here on this site, in addition to making them available on Amazon, B&N and Nook, Kobo, Google Play, iBooks and iTunes, Audible, in paperback, ebook, and audiobook. All simply because I don't want to be dependent on one retail outlet selling one format. I want to reach every reader I can, wherever they may be, in whatever format they prefer.

Kindle Worlds is closing, but I'll survive because I have other titles available in a variety of formats on all the retailers available to me. From the Ashes is going out of print, and yeah, that sucks, but that's the nature of publishing. Publishers close, imprints fail, books go out of print. It happens. The key is having enough of your toes in the water that you can keep on swimming, and remember that you don't have to stay in one stagnant little pond forever.