David Dubrow's Blog, page 41

Friday Links: Conan in Love, The Demon Samurai, and Last Rites for the Vulture

Melvin Williams AKA "Little Melvin," a former drug kingpin in Baltimore, has died. This kind of news normally wouldn't be relevant to this blog, except that I met and worked with Little Melvin, albeit briefly. It was an interesting experience.

And now, on with the Friday Links.

At this time of year I envy my friends who live further north, with snow and ice and slush and...

Actually, I don't. Let's see what happened this week in the world of the unusual, the bizarre, and the horrific:
Sean Eaton discussed Conan in love with a lady pirate at his always readable R'lyeh Tribune : "There are a number of Lovecraftian themes in Queen of the Black Coast, including the reference to an elder race, the devolution of a once proud civilization, concerns with cultural and racial purity, bizarre vegetation and haunted ruins.  The winged creature Conan eventually fights is similar in some respect to the monsters in Lovecraft’s earlier ghoul stories, that is, in being devolved." Ghost ships full of rotting corpses are washing ashore in Japan. Go figure.For real pulpy goodness,  Breakfast in the Ruins  brought us Simon Quinn's novel Last Rites for the Vulture: "Despite the blatant horror / witch-smut come-ons of the cover and the papal evil-hunting nature of it’s protagonist, ‘Last Rites of the Vulture’ is a more or less generic globe-trotting, Bond-esque action adventure story, very much in line with other mid/late ‘70s ‘action’ series like the ‘Enforcer’ or ‘Destroyer’ books. There are plentiful exotic locales, daring crimes, gratuitous pop history info-dumps and cartoon tough guy antics... but very little hint of any supernatural/ or occult elements, insofar as I could tell. Oh well."A Mexican lobby card for The Last Starfighter flew out of Zombos' Closet . I loved that movie as a kid, though I saw it in a theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and not in Mexico. At Confessions of a Reviewer!! , Nev Murray reviewed the novel Demon Mania: "It’s eighteen months after the attack at Blackwood. Amy Malone along with her husband Shane and daughter Emily think they are safe and sound in their new life. They are wrong. The Lost Society have found them again." Ruined Head  reviewed the 1978 classic novel The Demon Samurai: "Kirk, seeing a psychiatrist in Tokyo to combat his nervous exhaustion, undergoes an experimental treatment involving the injection of an LSD-derivative drug. The psychedelic dose transports his mind to a stylized landscape reminiscent of an ancient Japanese scroll, where he glimpses the threatening figure of the samurai. Meanwhile at the studio, a screen test of Monster Valley unleashes the spirit-samurai, who physically erupts into the corporeal world from the spools of film."Sharon Day showed us some unusual rock spheres at Ghost Hunting Theories (it's cooler than it sounds, trust me): "In the 1930s, hundreds of huge stone balls were found in Costa Rica. They have ranged in size and up to 16 tons. They were made of a hard stone, granodiorite. There were deemed made by man and not made by nature (such as was the case in Mexico)."  Soiled Sinema took on the movie A Safe Place, starring Tuesday Weld and Jack Nicholson: "Based on a play by Jaglom that he originally performed in NYC in 1964 with his then-girlfriend Karen Black in the lead role and himself portraying a character that would eventually be played by Jack Nicholson for the silver-screen, A Safe Place was mainly aesthetically influenced by both improvisational theater and European arthouse films by Fellini, Godard, John Schlesinger, Ingmar Bergman, etc., among various others. " Here , I talked about the new edition of The Blessed Man and the Witch .  Nev Murray gave it a very kind write-up.Illustration by Earl Geier for Call of Cthulhu's Blood Brothers supplement.

The Blessed Man and the Witch 2nd Edition

I've released a Second Edition of my novel The Blessed Man and the Witch that includes a new cover and an excerpt of the sequel The Nephilim and the False Prophet.


While the Second Edition doesn't change any of the story in any way, I have cleaned up some of the grammar and added back matter like About the Author and Author's Note sections. That's one of the great freedoms of digital publishing: improving the product as you go.

It's likely that I'll improve the blurb, but after that, no more tinkering. I'm moving forward. The Nephilim and the False Prophet should be ready for publication early next year, and I'm already working on the outline for the third and final volume in the Armageddon series.

If you haven't already, pick up your copy of The Blessed Man and the Witch today!

Ken Preston's Lost the Plot

In a world of spam selling African princes who need your help to uncover untold riches, magical pills that increase everything a man might want to increase, and vacation packages to paradise on Earth, author Ken Preston has presented a giveaway that's too good to be true...but nevertheless is true.
Not only is he giving away a free Kindle Paperwhite e-reader to a lucky winner of his contest, but every entrant, win or lose, get a free copy of his awesome vampire novel Joe Coffin: Season One . That's...that's crazy. Even if you don't win, you still win.

I can only assume that Ken's lost the plot. So what you need to do as soon as you can is click the link , enter, and get ready to win either way, because I suspect Ken will come to his senses pretty soon.

New Kindle Single Now Available!

My short story Get the Greek is now available as a Kindle Single in the Amazon bookstore!


To paraphrase the great Mark Twain, "Everyone talks about the commercialization of the holiday season, but nobody does anything about it!"

Had this story been written by populist television personality Bill O'Reilly, it would have been titled Killing Santa. My publisher wanted to title it When Judah Met Santa (though in her Boston accent it came out like "When Juder Met Santer"), but I nixed it because this isn't a love story. It's a short, comic tale about Hanukkah, Christmas, and the lengths one historical figure might go to end the commercialization of the holiday season.

Actually, it's got a few historical figures in there. Plus an angel. And Santa Claus. It all works, believe me.

Get your copy for $0.99 while they're still so cheap!

Interview with Ken Preston

I very much enjoyed Ken Preston's vampire novel Joe Coffin Season One , and in honor of the release of the sequel, Joe Coffin Season Two , I sat down with Ken and interviewed him.

Next to zombies, vampires are the most written-about monsters in horror today. What makes the Joe Coffin series stand out from the rest?

I know exactly what you mean. Do we really need another vampire novel? Seriously?

The answer to that question is tied up with the reason I write fiction. My stories aren’t about vampires, or zombies, massive robots, aliens, sex, love, hatred, racism, bravery, monsters, sinners, saints, well you get the picture, I could go on but I won’t.

Whatever story I write, in whatever genre, my main focus is always on the people in that story. I want to find out who they are, what makes them tick, what they would do in certain situations and why. I want to feel something for them, even the villains, I want the reader to feel something for them, become invested in the story through the people in that story.

So the fact that the Joe Coffin books are populated with vampires is kind of secondary to me. I’m not particularly clever at the author marketing side of the business, or making a plan to write a bestselling novel. If that had been the case I would have researched what was the up and coming genre to be writing in. But no, I had a story I wanted to tell, I needed to tell, and that story was about a mobster called Joe Coffin.

Who happens to fight vampires.

Some people like to listen to music when they read. What would be a good soundtrack to read Joe Coffin by?

Oh wow, now that is an interesting question.

I’m not sure I know how to answer that question, so can I tell you what I have been listening to whilst writing Joe Coffin?

You have to bear in mind that I recently bought myself a turntable, and so my listening choices suddenly became limited to what I still had on vinyl.

Let’s see…

I picked up a record recently called Louisiana Rock n Roll. Hadn’t got a single idea what it was going to sound like, but I was pleasantly surprised. Highlights on that album are ‘Sea of Love’ and ‘Breaking up Is Hard to Do’, both of which I can envisage being played over a violent scene in a movie adaptation of Joe Coffin.

I have also been listening to a lot of Electric Light Orchestra, and I actually namecheck one of their songs in Joe Coffin Season One. ‘Evil Woman’ aptly describes Steffanie.

Jim Croce has also been a favourite recently, and here I’m going to let you in on an in-joke in Season One. In the chapter titled ‘meaner than a junkyard dog’ Emma jokingly refers to Coffin as Leroy. Big Bad Leroy Brown is a Jim Croce song, and one of the lines in the song describes him as “…meaner than a junkyard dog.” But I never actually explain that in the book!

Some Ennio Morricone would be great to listen to. He writes such cool musical scores, and again I reference him with Tom’s ringtone being the theme tune from ‘The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly’.
And last but certainly not least, we need to have some Queen. Maybe ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ or ‘Killer Queen’!

Of all the places in the world to set a vampire outbreak, in Joe Coffin you placed it in Birmingham, England. Why?

The short answer to that question is, because I live there. Or at least very near. I’m familiar with Birmingham, so I don’t have to do a whole lot of research for my settings.

The longer answer is this: Partial inspiration for Joe Coffin came from an old BBC TV series called Gangsters. When I was a child I used to stay up late on a Friday night to watch it. I was far too young to be exposed to material like that (particularly the scenes involving drug taking) but I loved it. There was nothing else like it on TV, and there hasn’t been since.

The setup is fairly hackneyed and overused, even back then when it was first shown. A villain is released from prison and wants to simply get the money he is owed and then get out of town. Of course it’s not that simple, and things become a lot more complicated.

What made it stand out was the writing. Quite simply it’s written and filmed as though it was a spaghetti western, (there is even a nod to this from the director in that the strippers in the club strip to the theme tune to The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly) or an American film noir.

In fact, I was so enamored of the series that an early draft of Joe Coffin was set in the 1970s, when Gangsters was filmed and set.

Unfortunately the final series of Gangsters wound up becoming extremely surreal and disappeared up its own arse, something I promise isn’t going to happen to Joe Coffin.

Tell us about your plans for the ungentle giant named Joe. Where do you see the series going?

The core concept I initially had for Joe Coffin was of a vampire hunter who happens to be married to a vampire. That’s kind of where I am headed still, although the series has become much broader than I anticipated, and with a multi-character storyline.

The vampire threat is going to keep growing, and Joe is going to keep on being right in the middle of it, even though that is the last place he wants to be! I feel like I am telling one huge story over the course of these books, and there will definitely come a time when I will write THE END and that will be it, no more Joe Coffin books. But when that is, and how it will happen, I have no idea.

Joe Coffin isn’t the only thing you’ve written. Tell us about your other books.

I have a short story collection out, called Population:DEAD! . That has had some great feedback, especially the title story (zombies, another horror trope!) and How To Eat A Car, and The Man Who Murdered Himself. The Man Who . . . in particular struck a chord with readers, and I get asked about the ending. I have to say, yes I know for sure what happens at the end, and I even point out that there is a clue in the story, but you’ve just got to go with what you think. Go with your ending.

That particular story is also about depression, and I was just coming out of a period of serious depression when I wrote it. It was part of the healing process for me, and I think that can be partly why it resonates with readers.

I also write romance books for a British publisher. Quite a big gap between those two genres, I know, but like I said, it’s always more about the people than the plots or the genre for me.
I also have a Young Adult series starting soon, involving time travelling dinosaurs!

Which of your characters has the most Ken Preston in him (so to speak)? I do hope it’s not Corpse.

Ha! Nope, and neither is it Stump! Actually, it’s someone much worse than either of those two. It’s Tom Mills. Readers reacted so strongly to him. They said things like ‘I hated Tom,’ and ‘I absolutely loathed him’. And I was punching the air, going YES!

Because Tom is a despicable character. Absolutely. But I kind of felt for him, and empathized with him a little. I can’t excuse anything he does in the book, but still . . .

Shortly after Joe Coffin Season One was published and I was getting this reader feedback about Tom I was still going through counselling, and I chatted with my therapist about this. She said, maybe those people who have expressed this feel this way because they see a little bit of Tom in themselves, and it repulses them.

I don’t know. Maybe.

Everyone likes to talk to genre writers about genre fiction, so let’s get away from that for a moment. Who’s your favorite literary (non-genre) fiction author? Favorite literary work?

I absolutely adore To Kill A Mockingbird. I don’t want to say anything about the controversy surrounding Go Set A Watchman, but I haven’t read it and I don’t intend to. To Kill A Mockingbird is too precious to me.

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is another amazing book, although we are straying back into genre here, as this big, fat, Man Booker nominated novel is simultaneously a science fiction tale, a fast paced thriller, a historical drama, a comedy, and an end of the world fable. Don’t tell me how rubbish the film is, read the book instead.

You’re a family man. How do you think that affects your writing?

Family is very important to me, obviously. As I write this I am at a skatepark where my son is having skateboarding lessons. Everything else, including the writing, fits around family. Family, and family history, also infuses my writing. It was difficult for me to write the opening chapter of Joe Coffin Season One, with the two boys exploring the abandoned house. And then, coming back to Tom Mills, it was very hard being in his head sometimes, especially when writing down his thoughts and feelings on his son, and his wife.

Another aspect is my own relationship with my father, which wasn’t particularly good. Absent fathers are a common theme in my books, although I never intend them to be. Joe Coffin’s father was a difficult man, and helped shape the young boy into the man he is now. Tom is an absent father to his own son. The most evil vampire of all is referred to as ‘the Father’. Hmm, maybe I need to go see that counsellor again.

How have your artistic background and training affected your writing career?

It’s all wrapped up in one, to be honest. Creativity is the driving force of my life. If I was stuck in a job that didn’t allow me to express myself creatively I know I would go insane. Seriously.

I’ve written about this before, but I am convinced that part of what made my father the man he was, was his denial of his true, creative self. Unfortunately for him he was born into a culture and a time that pressured men to be a ‘Real Man’. To be a ‘Real Man’ seemed to involve spending your all his time outside of work in bars, with a cigarette permanently dangling from your mouth, and bullshitting his way through life.

But he did have a creative side which, despite his attempts to hide, I caught glimpses of. It makes me sad that he was ashamed of his creativity, and that he had to hide it and, ultimately, do his best to deny it.
Creativity, whether it be writing, painting, music, tapestry, rock carving, anything, is the driving force of the universe, and shapes the meaning of our lives.

Tell us about your love affair with the movie Jaws.

It is the perfect movie.

Oh, you want more? ;-)

I first saw Jaws upon its release in 1975 in a packed cinema, and I was eleven years old. Almost as a single entity we, the members of the audience, screamed, laughed, gripped our armrests, and jumped out of our seats for the running time of 120 minutes.

At the end of the movie, when Chief Brody takes aim and blows the shark out of the water, the entire cinema audience jumped to its feet and cheered and clapped, releasing all that tension, and reveling in Brody’s (our) victory.

That was it for me. I was hooked on movies forevermore. And for me, Spielberg has never topped that movie experience. Yes, he’s made some damn fine movies since, but Jaws? That film is note perfect.

I was going to finish there, but I think I will say one more thing. Something I have never told anyone before. I think maybe another reason I loved Jaws so much is the character of Brody, played so brilliantly by Roy Scheider.

Looking back from a perspective of being a father myself now, I think as a child I projected Martin Brody onto my own life. He was the man I wanted to be my father. And no, not because he kills a man eating shark. But because he is a family man, one devoted to his wife and sons, who isn’t absent in their lives. Well, for the first half of the movie anyway. But then when he is absent in the second half, that’s because he’s hunting down that man eating shark, to ensure the safety of his children and the town of Amity.

Right, time for me to look up the number of that counsellor again!

I highly recommend the Joe Coffin series as a terrific, character-driven vampire tale full of blood and sex and even some laughs. Visit Ken at his website, and say hi to Joe while you're there! 

Friday Links: Nightmare Castle, Devil Goddess, and Industrial Strength Conte Cruel

Thanksgiving is next week, so there won't be a Friday Links post; instead I will be spending time with my family. To make up for it, here's an extra-special Friday Links, collecting the weird, horrific, and bizarre things that happened over the week.
Breakfast in the Ruins  discussed the gothic film Nightmare Castle: "So, get this for plot line: Dr Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Muller), a saturnine scientist involved in questionable and secretive experiments involving frogs, bubbling test tubes and exotic plants, catches his aristocratic wife (Steele, of course) in an adulterous greenhouse embrace with the hunky gardener (spaghetti western regular Rik Battaglia). Crazed with jealousy, the good doctor vows to torture the lovers to death, making use of the castle’s conveniently appointed medieval dungeon in the process, only to discover in the midst of his gloating that his wife, “..upon realising what a vile, perverted monster [she] had married”, has already disinherited him, instead leaving her estate and fortune to her “simpering idiot” twin sister Jenny."At Jim Mcleod's Ginger Nuts of Horror , Alex Davis reviewed the 2015 film Headless: "After a slightly surreal trailer for 'Wolf-Baby' (presented a la some of the Grindhouse trailers out there) we move on to Headless, the story of an unnamed serial killer who relives his dark past over and over again in a spree of depraved violence and murder. And if ever a film laid out its agenda in the early running, this would be it. By the end of the credits I was feeling decidedly uneasy, and there were still 80 minutes ahead of me."What's inside  Zombos' Closet ? A must-see pressbook of the 1955 movie Devil Goddess!  Sean Eaton brought us some industrial strength conte cruel at his always-trenchant, perpetually interesting  R'lyeh Tribune : "Despite the realism that distinguishes this form of horror, the dire situation imagined by the author will seem preposterous if the reader examines it too closely.  Yet a well written conte cruel can be an oddly satisfying read, a kind of psycho-emotional calisthenic.  The form works well as a thoroughly documented nightmare of incarceration and claustrophobia.  To the extent that the reader identifies with the protagonist, he or she can be thinking of escape routes well in advance of the demise or rescue of the fictional victim."Nev Murray reviewed The Blood of Talos at his Confessions of a Reviewer!! : "I remember reading about this story when Keith Deininger was just talking about it. It hadn’t been published and he was telling us all about this epic fantasy tale he wanted to tell. It all sounded wonderful when it was being talked about but sometimes it never materialises. This man has well and truly put his money where his mouth is and raised us all a bit more."A man in Taiwan  married his dead girlfriend's ashes : "It is not unheard of in Asia to have a 'ghost marriage,' where a dying or dead man will be arranged to marry a female corpse to keep him happy in afterlife. However, marrying an urn with a wedding dress attached might be taking it to the next level." Divine Exploitation  told us about a movie called Dickshark. It appears to be a comedy of some sort.Sharon Day at Ghost Hunting Theories thinks that we're all a bit more accepting of the paranormal: "The discussion of paranormal is not taboo any longer which allows people to compare notes from alien contactee experiences to UFO sightings, strange encounters in the woods and grandma's ghostly figure at the foot of the bed. Our population is also aging and the bigger questions of the universe are being pondered. The studies of ghosts and near-death experiences are of great interest to those of us a bit closer to the grave." The Unflinching Eye reviewed Bone Tomahawk: "Mashing up genres requires real finesse to pull off, resulting in any number of cinematic trainwrecks, but Zahler's fusion of western and horror in Bone Tomahawk is a thing of beauty. We've seen a few good examples before (Antonia Bird's Ravenous; J.T. Petty's The Burrowers), but I don't think it's ever been accomplished this seamlessly." (Interested readers can see my review of Bone Tomahawk here.) Here , I talked about the similarity of recent college protests to the removal of Lovecraft's bust from the World Fantasy Award and how I became involved with the Beyond Lovecraft Indiegogo campaign.Illustration taken from the Stormbringer supplement White Wolf: Temples, Demons, & Ships of War .

Beyond Lovecraft: Where My Money Meets My Mouth

There are 17 days left to contribute to the Beyond Lovecraft Indiegogo campaign .

I've never met Beyond Lovecraft's writer Jasper Bark except in cyberspace. He contacted me after I wrote a glowing (and deserved) review of his short story collection Stuck on You and Other Prime Cuts to thank me. (As an important aside, Beyond Lovecraft's artist Rob Moran did the extraordinary chapter illustrations for Stuck on You.) 
Later, I reviewed Jasper's graphic novel Bloodfellas, which was an awesome piece of work. You'll note that Rob Moran also did the covers for Bloodfellas. 
Months later, Jasper asked me to help with the marketing and sales efforts on Beyond Lovecraft, and I was of course enthusiastic about the project: a great writer and a great artist working together on my favorite horror subgenre is definitely a match made in R'lyeh (so to speak). As a terrible cynic and rugged individualist I'm nobody's fanboy, but I knew I had to get in on the ground floor of a project like this. 
In addition to volunteering my time, I contributed to the campaign: I went for the Pickman's Model perk, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how Rob transforms me into a Lovecraftian nightmare.
Finally, I have also donated a never-before-published short story to the project titled Beneath the Ziggurat, where Lovecraftian horrors, Spanish conquistadors, and Aztec natives collide. A short excerpt is included at the bottom of this post.
At the time of this writing there are 17 days left to donate to Beyond Lovecraft. If there was ever a time to contribute, it's now. What are you waiting for? The perks alone are worth the investment. Be part of something great, something made especially for you. 
Even if you're still on the fence, please share the link to the campaign: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/be... to get the word out. Thanks!

Beneath the Ziggurat(an excerpt)
My hands shake, but that is due to age.  As my life creeps toward its end, the fear that has gripped me for decades has loosed its fingers.  See you the splashes of ink, the words that meander upon the page?  As I said, it is age.  I will die soon.  I should have no more to fear.
Matlaltemoc was the name given me on the fourth day after I emerged from my mother’s womb, shrieking as all newborns do in confusion, terror, and loss.  The date was 6 Acatl 1 Ehecatl 11 Malinalli, or, as Friar Rodrigo would have it, April 15, in the Year of Our Lord 1511.  The latter is the “correct” date, just as my name was “corrected” from Matlaltemoc to Mateo Alvarez, also thanks to Fr. Rodrigo.  I bear him no ill will.  What good would it do?  He is long dead, or worse.
For the most part the Spaniards have been good to us, we free people of Tlaxcala.  So they should: with our help, Hernán Cortés annihilated our hated enemies the Aztecs.  My father, Jaguar Warrior Itztli, died in the last siege of Tenochtitlan alongside hundreds of Tlaxcalans and at least a dozen Spaniards.  I remember little of him. 
Not long after the fall of the Aztec empire, the Franciscan friars came to save our souls.  Mictlantecuhtli , Xochiquetzal, Centeotl and all the rest of our gods were replaced with the gentle Jesus Christ, who died on the Cross for our sins.  Fr. Rodrigo stayed in my village of Panotla to build a church and teach us Spanish.  At his end, he thought that Jesus, son of a greater God, would be stronger than what we found beneath the ziggurat.  
The palsy that causes my hands to tremble has increased.  Perhaps it is fear.  Shall I tell my tale, then?  No more dissembling?

Of Busts and American Colleges

The president and the chancellor of the University of Missouri have resigned due to pressure from students over three or four unconnected campus incidents that have been characterized as racist. Now students across the country are up in arms, protesting university leadership and demanding changes to the college and financial systems of the United States.

There's no easy way to put this, so I have to say it straight out: nobody who supports trigger warnings, complains about microaggressions, or demands a "safe space" free of disagreement will ever achieve greatness in any field of endeavor worth mentioning.  And yet the American college system is where such concepts are birthed, promulgated, and put into practice. What these young revolutionaries are demanding is destructive and poorly thought out at best.  Lacking ideas, lacking the work ethic and accomplishments and education of the people they seek to destroy, what they'll replace the current system with is unworkable.  Granted, the current system is absolutely terrible, with overpaid professors filling young skulls with rancid, politicized custard from a bully pulpit, but it's better than forgiving all student loan debt, demanding free public college education, and upping the federal minimum wage to an arbitrary $15.00/hour. That doesn't just affect colleges: it affects everybody, and it's not possible to implement.

Compare that to what's going on in science fiction literature, where certain authors have been ostracized by a small but powerful (and vocal) minority devoted to redefining the genre. Their latest success is replacing the bust of H.P. Lovecraft with something else as the World Fantasy Award because Lovecraft held racist views. Renowned Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi has since returned his World Fantasy Awards, saying:

I was deeply disappointed with the decision of the World Fantasy Convention to discard the bust of H. P. Lovecraft as the emblem of the World Fantasy Award. The decision seems to me a craven yielding to the worst sort of political correctness and an explicit acceptance of the crude, ignorant, and tendentious slanders against Lovecraft propagated by a small but noisy band of agitators.

I feel I have no alternative but to return my two World Fantasy Awards, as they now strike me as irremediably tainted. Please find them enclosed. You can dispose of them as you see fit.

Joshi correctly made the point that the outrage over Lovecraft's racism is selective, at best: John W. Campbell and Bram Stoker were also racists, yet still have awards named after them. Why?

Like the protesting college students, not one of the people supporting the removal of Lovecraft's image from the World Fantasy Award will ever achieve greatness. None of them will ever have the same effect on genre fiction that Lovecraft had. They're destroyers, not creators, and what they'll put in place of what they've torn down is without value.

Friday Links: Embrujada, Charles Herbert, and Devil Times Five

As we start the next holiday countdown, this time to Thanksgiving, let's look back at what happened in the world of the strange, the unusual, the horrific:
Nev Murray, the UK's foremost fan of turkey dinosaurs, reviewed the novel The Other Boy at his Confessions of a Reviewer!! : "Now, for whatever reason, I didn’t fancy this one. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. I think it may be because I have never heard of either authors. I am generally a bit sceptical of collaborations, especially when it is authors I have never heard of. Very especially if it’s a husband and wife team. I have been there before. It didn’t work out so well. However, I have faith in the chaps at Dark Chapter Press so decided to give it a go. How did it work out?"Professor Kinema talked about the late, great Charles Herbert from inside Zombos' Closet : "At one Monster Bash several years ago Charles Herbert was sharing a table with B-movie/schlock producer/director Bert I. Gordon and his daughter, Susan.  He was very fan-friendly and we had one brief chat.  I bought a few items, he autographed a few items and, with Susan, posed for a few photos." The Horror Digest  had this to say about the movie Last Shift: "It's not that I'm in awe by what I just saw but more like ummm what the fuck just happened? Also I need to change my underwear. Also seriously what just happened? Oh right THAT. Hot tip: If you're not into shitting your pants every 5 seconds, maybe stay away from this one." (I'm not into shitting my pants at all, so this is a no-go for me.) At Jim Mcleod's  Ginger Nuts of Horror , Mike Duke reviewed the movie Stung: "Later, once its dark and the party is in full swing a horde of the wasps burst out of the nest entrance and begin flying around and stinging some of the guests who, within in a couple of minutes collapse with seizures and then have a human sized wasp sprout out of their now shredded bodies. Here’s where the blood and gore begins to run rampant."Continuing our film theme,  House of Self-Indulgence  reviewed the 1981 movie The Loveless: "These cats have the market on coolness cornered, and no small town is going to cramp/undermine their style. Whether they're lighting a cigarette or dragging a comb through their greasy hair, everything they do has the potential give off an air of cool. In a way, I kind of feel sorry for those saddled with the task of being cool nowadays. I know, nothing's technically been cool since at least 1985, okay, maybe 1986, but that doesn't stop people from trying."'Embrujada was the subject of a post at  Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! : "The problem is that Sarli’s character, Ansise, is married to Leandro (Daniel de Alvarado), a despotic lumber baron with a malfunctioning pee pee. This means that we get to see scenes of Leandro futilely humping the leg of a supine Isabel Sarli while weeping. In fact, if watching a voluptuous woman have blighted sex with catastrophically ugly old men is your thing, you can put those worn Ron Jeremy tapes away, because Embrujada is the only film you will ever need from now on."Sean Eaton reread Herbert West: Reanimator at his incisive, brain-ripping R'lyeh Tribune and analyzed the experience for our reading pleasure: "Herbert West: Reanimator is for the most part a pre-Mythos tale, and like The Horror at Red Hook (1927) derives some of its weird imagery from vaguely Judeo-Christian or Greek and Roman mythological sources.  (The latter story contains appearances by Satan, Lillith, incubi, succubi, Moloch and so forth.)" I Think, Therefore I Review brought us four movies from the 1970's involving bizarre children and/or horrific mothers: "Devil Times Five – Teen idol Leif Garrett and his sister Dawn Lyn make for some creepy youngins in this 1974 picture also known as Peopletoys – and a dozen other titles for good measure. Eerie seventies lullaby notes ironically accent the snowy vacation spot, yuppie couples, and old fogies as perilous, icy, winding roads lead to vehicular disasters. Nuns and kids should be a sign of safety, however, real snow filming, old fashioned cars, and past technological isolation up the apprehensive mood." Here , I reviewed the movie Bone Tomahawk and The Mighty Jewmanberg's book Super Syndicate: When Heroes Divorce. Illustration taken from Call of Cthulhu's The Complete Dreamlands supplement.

Book Review: The Mighty Jewmanberg's Super Syndicate: When Heroes Divorce

The Mighty Jewmanberg's Super Syndicate: When Heroes Divorce contains two discrete stories: the title novella, involving superheroes, family, and a terrible drug called Shine; and a shorter story titled Sundown: Don't Die Again, an urban fantasy piece.

Super Syndicate is very much a high-concept story, both funny and light-hearted.  Themes of separation and reconciliation are woven throughout the text, with mixed results.  Least effective was the subplot involving Gravnarr and Pulsana, a superhero couple feuding over an issue that happened off-camera and bolstered by the conceit that everyone from Grav and Pulse's planet was born...emotional.  Introduced early, solved in the middle, and forgotten at the end, the narrative would've been better off without it.  Morris and Lisa's story was a bit more poignant despite the light-hearted tone, and used a magic bracelet as a metaphor for a child caught in the middle of an acrimonious divorce.  The theme of family was handled well with Marco, captain of the Super Syndicate, and his brother Vincenzo, leader of the Empire Elite superhero team, and the interplay between characters as both rivals and family members was a joy to read.

At times witty, at other times subtle, the humor in the story put The Mighty Jewmanberg's comedy chops on display.  He has a gift with dialogue, and some parts had me laughing aloud.  MJ also adopts a didactic style in his writing, explaining things to the reader like your dad telling you a bedtime story.  The light-hearted tone made it work.

Sundown: Don't Die Again wasn't as explanatory in style, though it maintained that lighter tone.  Unfortunately, while the concept was interesting, the execution needed work.  This was a story with dark themes, and MJ's humorous style didn't fit as well.  Feeling more like an introduction to a story than a complete narrative, I was left wanting more.  Hopefully in future works we'll see Jack Mitchell again.

Overall, MJ has written a couple of stories worth your time, especially if you're in the target audience: early-to-mid teens.  Four stars out of five.