Month: November 2021

GUEST BOOK REVIEW by Christa Carmen: A Mighty Word

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A Mighty Word
By: Joshua Rex

Genre: Horror, Magical Realism, Speculative Fiction

Publisher: Rotary Press
Publication Date: 4.12.2021

Pages: 175

Kevin Heartstone is a past-obsessed tenth grader grieving the loss of his father, an architect and restoration specialist, and struggling with his mother’s new relationship with the owner of a demolition company. While visiting his father’s grave, Kevin encounters Jane Cardinal, a fifteen year old girl who has been dead for over a century and a half. Jane, along with her contemporaries, have recently been re-animated by the by-product of an anti-depressant produced by Still City’s leading employer—Preventative Solutions—which has been illegally dumping the waste into the decaying area neighborhoods and cemeteries. Jane will be Kevin’s link to a time for which he longs, while Kevin himself will become central in his fractured hometown’s survival, and the dilemma of reconciling its past with its present by conciliating the dead with the living.

Halloween is a two-faced entity, characterized both by long-standing traditions and a host of fun, more modern frights. While one can celebrate the night on which the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is thinnest by visiting a cemetery to pay respects to a lost loved one, an equally viable option is to gather a group of costumed friends to shudder before the latest A24 horror film.

Joshua Rex’s A Mighty Word, like Halloween itself, encompasses the best of seemingly competing worlds. It is a celebration of things that have come before as well as an exploration of that which scares us most in the here-and-now. Death. Loss. Change. Oblivion. No longer recognizing the world around you, or your place within it. It is a novel that engages insightfully with the fear that the best of humanity has come and gone.

The story takes place in fictional Still City, a community that is keeping its last grip on life by producing and promoting an antidepressant called Plaiscene, manufactured by Preventative Solutions. When the toxic byproducts of Plaiscene seep into the ground, causing the deceased residents of Treestone and Neil Memorial Cemeteries to rise from their graves, it quickly becomes clear that the dead are far less monstrous than those in Still City intent on keeping Preventative Solutions running smoothly, no matter the fallout.

Too busy navigating an unfamiliar world after his father’s unexpected death to have bought into the Plaiscene hype, Kevin Heartstone is clear-headed (and open-minded in the way that only somewhat-different-and-subsequently-alienated-kids can truly be) when he stumbles upon the reanimated Jane Cardinal, and finds that his old-fashioned view of things aligns him closely with her and the other corpses.

Kevin and Jane’s fight for what is right is not only hard-hitting in today’s politically embittered times, but in the hands of Joshua Rex, it’s rendered hauntingly on the page. During Kevin’s solitary treks through a ghostly, near-abandoned city, he would “search the newly vacant lots for scraps of the recently demolished, finding perhaps a plaster acanthus curl from a Corinthian column, a spandrel or bracket dowel, a pane from a latticed window.” As the dead rise, they contemplate their surroundings, those spots that were once “hallowed,” that once held “rows of handsome oaks and flowerbeds bright as barrelfuls of spilled jewels.” Even death is beautiful here, and when the mayor takes drastic measures to escape culpability in Still City’s demise, his end is marked by “a volcanic spray brilliant as brimming lava… superimposed against the red and orange shell burst of twilight.”

It’s clear that Joshua’s care wasn’t for a single, or even a handful, of elements when it came to penning this novel. Characters are not sacrificed for plot; neither is language for dread-inducing suspense. Horror—sociopolitical, Gothic, and the beautiful macabre—along with captivating discourses on life coexist bewitchingly on the page.

Some of the best horror, the best stories regardless of genre, are those works which are not easily categorizable; A Mighty Word resists being put in a box much in the same way that the wise and dignified corpses who shape its narrative refuse their stuffy coffins. If Halloween is as much for tradition as it is for the newer rituals that continue to shape it, then Joshua Rex’s novel is what you should be reading this October 31st. It’s a delightful trick of horror subgenre, and an overall treat of dark fiction.

Boo-graphy:
Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked won the 2018 Indie Horror Book Award for Best Debut Collection, and additional work has been published in places such as Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Fireside, Not All Monsters, and Behold the Undead of Dracula.

These days when I’m not writing, I keep chickens, read books like Mary, Who Wrote Frankenstein and The Gashlycrumb Tinies to my daughter, forget to pull a daily tarot card, and tinker with a dog food recipe concocted to make my beagle live forever.

Most of my work comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past or else into the dark corners of nature, those places where whorls of bark become owl eyes and deer step through tunnels of hanging leaves and creeping briars only to disappear.

Something Borrowed, Something Blood Soaked —
A young woman’s fears regarding the gruesome photos appearing on her cell phone prove justified in a ghastly and unexpected way. A chainsaw-wielding Evil Dead fan defends herself against a trio of undead intruders. A bride-to-be comes to wish that the door between the physical and spiritual worlds had stayed shut on All Hallows’ Eve. A lone passenger on a midnight train finds that the engineer has rerouted them toward a past she’d prefer to forget. A mother abandons a life she no longer recognizes as her own to walk up a mysterious staircase in the woods.

In her debut collection, Christa Carmen combines horror, charm, humor, and social critique to shape thirteen haunting, harrowing narratives of women struggling with both otherworldly and real-world problems. From grief, substance abuse, and mental health disorders, to a post-apocalyptic exodus, a seemingly sinister babysitter with unusual motivations, and a group of pesky ex-boyfriends who won’t stay dead, Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked is a compelling exploration of horrors both supernatural and psychological, and an undeniable affirmation of Carmen’s flair for short fiction.

READING from Stalker Stalked: Matthew Lee Goldberg

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Stalker Stalked —
Lexi Mazur is a depressed, alcoholic, pill-popper whose only joy has become her reality TV shows, often fantasizing that the people on TV are a part of her world. After her boyfriend Steve leaves her, she fixates on the show Socialites and its star Magnolia Artois, following every facet of the girl’s life on social media in the hopes of befriending and becoming more like her.

But stalking isn’t new to Lexi. She ultimately won over her ex Steve by following and manipulating every minute detail about him so he’d fall for her. In fact, she landed her other ex-boyfriend Jeremy in the same way. Being a pharma rep, she’s used to manipulation to get doctors to buy her drugs, along with the perk of saving pills for herself.

But what happens when the stalker gets stalked?

Recently, Lexi has felt someone watching her: in her apartment in Queens, at her job. At first, she thinks her mind’s playing tricks, but the watcher is behaving just like she would. And soon they begin leaving threatening clues like she starts to do to Magnolia once her obsession grows more dangerous. Is it one of her exes out for revenge? Her only real friend from childhood who she’s always had an unhealthy rivalry? A detective who may have figured her out? The reality star Magnolia trying to turn the tables? Or even someone she might not know?

Lexi learns the only way to beat her stalker is to use her own stalking prowess to outsmart them at their own game. But has she finally met her match?

Boo-graphy:
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of eight novels including THE ANCESTOR and THE MENTOR, currently in development as a film off his original script, and the YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du Polar. STALKER STALKED will be out in Fall ’21. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared as a contributor in Pipeline Artists, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, Hypertext, If My Book, Past Ten, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City.

GUEST BOOK REVIEW by Romana Drew: The Haunting of Hill House

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First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

Author: Shirley Jackson
Genre: Horror, Gothic
Publisher: The Penguin Group (Penguin Classics)
Publication Date: 11.28.2006 (1st published 10.16.1959)
Pages: 182

“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.”

I first read this book when I was twelve. Rereading it as an adult has given me a different perspective and greater appreciation for the book.

Kathy and I sat on my bed and read The Haunting of Hill House aloud. I read one chapter, and she read the next, I think. Memory can play tricks. Kathy wasn’t much interested in books. I may have read it to her? It really doesn’t matter. I read it while sitting on my bed when I was twelve.

As I started reading it this time, I realized that I didn’t remember the beginning or the ending, only that I was scared. Hill House was haunted and creepy. I was genuinely frightened about what might happen next but couldn’t stop reading.

I don’t think my twelve-year-old self realized that this book is so much more than just a scary story.

Dr. Montague invites several people to spend a summer with him in the supposedly haunted Hill House. Two women, Theodora and Elenore, accept. Luke, whose family owns the house, joins the party. Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, the daytime caretakers, complete the initial cast.

Dr. Montague is a thoughtful, careful researcher with a penchant for studying supernatural manifestations. Theodora is a free spirit looking for adventure. Luke is an ordinary young man here to keep an eye on the guests. But life has not been kind to Elenore. Lost, forgotten, and cast aside, Visiting Hill House is the only adventure she ever has, the only time she makes her own decisions.

The view from inside Elenore’s mind is often chilling. Some people are resilient. They can weather great tragedies or difficult living conditions, stay sane, and recover. Elenore isn’t one of those people.

Too many unexplained things happen at Hill House to make this just the ramblings of Elenore’s misfiring brain. Cold spots, things that go bump in the night, and shared hallucinations, suggest that Hill House itself has a mind or at least the ability to control the minds of its occupants.

This book was written in 1959 when men tended to dominate women. That attitude is well represented in The Haunting of Hill House. Neither Theodora nor Elenore see it as anything out of the ordinary. I doubt that my younger self noticed.

I think my younger self saw Elenore as being driven bonkers by Hill House. My older self sees her as a tragic and complex character deserving of understanding and sympathy.

The story develops slowly, taking plenty of time to flesh out the characters and set the scene before anything unexplained happens. The first manifestations are harmless, but the tension keeps building.

Hill House is dark, claustrophobic, and alive. If you visit, don’t stay after dark.

The book deserves its status as a classic. The Haunting of Hill House will leave you thinking about the house and the other characters for a long time.

Boo-graphy:
Romana Drew is a retired park ranger. She lives in California with her husband where they raise baby squirrels for the wildlife care center she runs. When asked, she could go into detail about her background and education, but finds that to be rather boring. What she will say is that she is quiet and loves the outdoors. When she’s not drawing pictures, she writes about fictional worlds, aliens, and other fantastic things that her imagination pours into her mind.

Website
Amazon Author Page

End of Innocence —
Lenea’s brother spends every clear night pointing a telescope at the same stars. When she confronts him, he lets her look through the telescope. A small sliver speck changes course, slows, and merges with a larger silvery spot.

In that brief moment, her life changes. Her brother spies on space aliens! Soon she learns the aliens have a settlement in the Kenned Valley, and that her boyfriend monitors their communications.

What do they want, and can her world survive?

The Marauders of Sazile —
Aliens, called Hocalie, come to Earth, cute, furry, and apparently harmless. They didn’t even bring weapons. They say they’re searching for one person to represent Earth at the Intergalactic Trade Center on Rosat. The right person.

Thousands of people apply. Earth’s governments vie to get their representatives picked. The Hocalie listen to all the suggestions. Then they choose Robin Mayfield, a young artist. Only after they are in space, and it is too late to turn back, do they tell Robin why they picked her. The Hocalie believe that only she can stop an intragalactic war. But they won’t tell her how she is supposed to do that.

No one knows who the Marauders are or why they are attacking different worlds. They appear out of nowhere to attack then disappear just as fast. They never make any effort to communicate and never respond to any form of communication.

The Marauders of Sazile is a fast-paced space adventure. The Hocalie are ever so gentle, but clever enough to hold their own against even the worst enemy. The Langons are technologically advanced but arrogant, self-centered, and domineering. The Marauders only want their world back.

Throughout her adventures, Robin keeps a journal. She also draws pictures of the people and places she visits. The Marauders of Sazile is Robin’s Journal. Some of her illustrations are included.

GUEST MOVIE REVIEW by Jamie Lee: Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

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Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

Director: Brian Clemens

Starring:
Horst Janson
John Carson
Shane Briant

A master swordsman and former soldier and his hunchbacked assistant hunt vampires.

Watching Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter around Halloween is a tradition I’ve maintained, since I first saw the film on TNT’s Monster Vision.

It was one of the last movies produced by Hammer Studios and from what I understand, it was supposed to be the first of a series, but the studio unfortunately closed, not long after.

However, what we are left with is a remarkable fusion of vampire story and swashbuckling action.

The film left such an indelible mark that I went into fencing, during college; for me Captain Kronos was THE fencing movie. Beyond the overall spirited aspect, the movie is far more than a “simple” vampire film.

The story begins with Captain Kronos answering the call of his old military brother, Dr. Marcus. Kronos and his companion, Professor Hieronymus Grost, answer Dr. Marcus’s call for aid and begin their investigation into the nature of the attacks and possibility of a vampire. One unique aspect of the vampire they’re hunting is that its feeding drains its victims of their youth and vitality. In addition to trying to figure out who the vampire actually is, Kronos and Grost must try and discern the nature of the vampire, as the pair must first determine the weakness of the vampire in question. In fact, at one pivotal moment of the film, they must experiment with various methods of dispatchment, after a newly born vampire is captured and restrained by the duo. (I’ll avoid spoilers.)

The movie is fun, while maintaining the feel of a Gothic horror investigation. I recommend that anyone give it a watch at least once. In checking a few notes, such as the release date for the film, I discovered that Dan Abnett released a limited comic book series that I will be tracking down, as there is never enough Captain Kronos.

Grab your favorite snack or the Halloween candy you and I both know you will not be giving to trick-or-treaters, and prepare to enjoy, “The only man feared by the walking dead!”

As for me, I too, will be heading towards, “Anywhere, everywhere, wherever there is evil to be fought.”

Boo-graphy:
Jamie Lee has been writing fiction for 30 years. His debut release, Harmony, has been 25 years in the making. While he holds a degree in Microbiology and welcomes comparisons to a mad scientist, writing has always been his first love and interest.

After a successful private release in 2019 of short stories, Harmony was finally ready to debut in March of 2020.

However, life had other plans.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the release, rollout, and convention travel in support of Harmony to come to a screeching halt.

With an unexpected year-long hiatus, Jamie chose to work on final edits and begin to focus on the second book in the Harmony series, Cacophony.

When not writing, Jamie is a fervent, life-long gamer. He can be found every Friday night with long time friends playing any number of online RPGs and, during the week and weekend, building and painting his countless Warhammer armies, playing any chance he gets. He also enjoys health and fitness, reading, music, traveling, searching or the best bar-b-que and being fueled by endless coffee and kombucha. He is forever searching for the perfect haunted home to live in since his condo is simply not large enough for a proper library or laboratory.

GUEST POST: Jamie Lee

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If there’s one thing that’s resonated with me and my writing, it’s the idea that the Celts thought that the veil between worlds became thin during Halloween (or Samhain, as they called it).

During the Halloween season, I immerse myself in films that resonate with the idea of the spirit world having a stronger influence in the day-to-day. 

With that thought in mind, I’ve created a list of my top five films for October and most certainly, Halloween!

When the spirit worlds growing stronger, the following movies either use auspicious times or the ritual actions of their primary actors to initiate events.

1) Dust Devil (1992) —
A killer working his way across South Africa, who may be a spirit, clothed in flesh using the ritual of murder to regain his former place of power. The titular Dust Devil, or nomad, is played by Robert Burke, who also played the lead in Stephen King’s Thinner, and is a character displayed in time – so much so that the character appears in the director, Richard Stanley’s, previous film, Hardware, which is set in the distant future where the nomad character is played by Carl McCoy of the band Fields of the Nephilim.

The nomad character is an interesting concept of a spirit trying to return home through the violence and sacrifice of its ritual actions. And while the setting may not scream Halloween, the cinematography is haunting yet, at the same time, beautiful.

2) Trick ‘r Treat (2007) —
A shared anthology tale, linked by the character of Sam. The stories weave into one another to tell a cohesive whole, but are excellent on their own with everything from werewolves, revenants, and the perils of not checking your Halloween candy. I recommend watching it at least twice and paying closer attention to Anna Paquin’s and her sisters’ comments the second time through. What ties it into the theme is the thought, would any of the film’s events (stories) have happened if something or a series of events hadn’t served as the catalyst for them, in the first place? Still, a great film with supernatural elements occurring on literal Halloween.

Halloween (1978) —
Michael Myers as one of the original, invincible, serial killers. They’ve played with the idea, for good or ill, in subsequent sequels with Michael being the way he is due to ritual actions on the part of some shadowy group. Some of the trailers for the new Halloween film suggest that Michael is ascending through murder, which has parallels to Dust Devil above. Regardless of your interpretation, the movie is set on Halloween with the predations of an invincible killing machine. The creepy theme song deserves an honorable mention and should be played, loudly, as part of any proper Halloween soundtrack.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) —
A movie dripping with gorgeous visuals. While I’ve always been a big fan of Hammer Films and Christopher Lee in the role of Dracula, this movie adheres fairly closely to the source material, with Gary Oldman doing a fantastic job in the title role. The original novel, by Bram Stoker, is also a recommended read for a lone, Hallows night. 

Nightbreed (1990) —
Clive Barker’s “Nightbreed” has little to do with Halloween, other than monsters. Okay, a lot of monsters, all of whom are trying to live their life in the city of Midian that they’ve built beneath an old cemetery. It also turns out the actual “monsters” in the movie may be the human prejudices haunting the denizens of Midian. Into this is thrust Boone, who is convinced by his psychiatrist, Doctor Decker, that he is serial killer who then goes to Midian to live amongst the other monsters…only to become both savior and destroyer. A tale as old as time, everyone! I strongly recommend watching the Director’s Cut, which was lost for decades, found, and reassembled by Scream Factory. It was originally conceived to be the “Star Wars” of monster movies, with subsequent titles which sadly, never materialized. The film resonates with what a monster actually is. I can only refer you to my own writing. 

Regardless, of if you  are interested in digging into my central theme concept, you can’t go wrong making these movies a part of your ? days of Halloween. My ? days tend towards 365, but individual interest may vary. Stay spooky!

Boo-graphy:
Jamie Lee has been writing fiction for 30 years. His debut release, Harmony, has been 25 years in the making. While he holds a degree in Microbiology and welcomes comparisons to a mad scientist, writing has always been his first love and interest.

After a successful private release in 2019 of short stories, Harmony was finally ready to debut in March of 2020.

However, life had other plans.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the release, rollout, and convention travel in support of Harmony to come to a screeching halt.

With an unexpected year-long hiatus, Jamie chose to work on final edits and begin to focus on the second book in the Harmony series, Cacophony.

When not writing, Jamie is a fervent, life-long gamer. He can be found every Friday night with long time friends playing any number of online RPGs and, during the week and weekend, building and painting his countless Warhammer armies, playing any chance he gets. He also enjoys health and fitness, reading, music, traveling, searching or the best bar-b-que and being fueled by endless coffee and kombucha. He is forever searching for the perfect haunted home to live in since his condo is simply not large enough for a proper library or laboratory.