For my next, Women in Horror Month feature, I’m happy to present To Be Devoured by Sara Tantlinger. Tantlinger is a Bram Stoker Award-winning poet and I believe this is her first published novella. Here’s the synopsis:

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What does carrion taste like? Andi has to know. The vultures circling outside her home taunt and invite her to come understand the secrets hiding in their banquet of decay. Fascination morphs into an obsessive need to know what the vultures know. Andi turns to Dr. Fawning, but even the therapist cannot help her comprehend the secrets she’s buried beneath anger-induced blackouts.

Her girlfriend, Luna, tries to help Andi battle her inner darkness and infatuation with the vultures. However, the desire to taste dead flesh, to stitch together wings of her own and become one with the flock sends Andi down a twisted, unforgivable path. Once she understands the secrets the vultures conceal, she must decide between abandoning the birds of prey or risk turning her loved ones into nothing more than meals to be devoured.


What a wonderful and disturbing tale from Tantlinger. Without spoiling anything, I have to say the downward spiral of the main character is horrifying and very well written. I enjoyed getting into Andi's head and watching the story play out. Tantlinger has an amazing eye for the visceral and many of her scenes made me cringe (in a good way). If you like bloody horror and ever wondered what raw meat might taste like (you know, that itch in the back of your brain that keeps asking what it would feel like to tear meat with your teeth and feel the splatter of hot blood on your cheeks...don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about, it's there, inside you, gnawing its way through your gut) then do yourself a favor and join the committee.

Continuing our journey through Women in Horror Month, I’m pleased to share my review of Donn’s Shadow by Caryn Larrinaga. Donn’s Shadow is the sequel to Donn’s Hill and if you haven’t read it, then I highly recommend you fix that as soon as possible.

Here’s the synopsis:

Return to the most haunted small town in America...
Mackenzie Clair finally has this whole ghost-hunting psychic thing figured out. The Soul Searchers are a hit, she’s got pet-parenting down, and she even has a plan to banish the poltergeist running amok at a lakeside cabin. Best of all, Donn’s Hill feels like home. But not everyone loves the town as much as Mac.
A world-famous paranormal debunker thinks the psychics in Donn’s Hill are lying about their abilities. His determination to destroy the Soul Searchers threatens Mac’s livelihood, and when a killer strikes, the sheriff’s suspicions threaten her freedom.

Mac needs all the help she can get to find the real murderer and clear her name… even if that help comes from beyond the grave.   

This novel is a mystery novel so I’ll keep this review spoiler-free. One of Larrinaga’s biggest strengths is creating a cast of believable, three-dimensional, characters. At one point in the novel, we are introduced to a person who by all accounts is supposed to be an asshat; however, this character has been nothing but nice up to this point. That being said, the protagonist trusts her friends’ opinions, and therefore by proxy, because Larrinaga has created these believable characters, I too trust in them.

On top of this, there were several unexpected twists in turns in this book. I am pretty sure I said WTF out loud more than a few times. It’s refreshing to see a storyline go in new and different directions other than the expected.

Something else fun in this book is the exploration into the world of psychics, mediums, and diviners. It’s obvious that Larrinaga did her homework on the subject and I learned a thing or two from this story.

The last thing I’ll say (unless I get into spoilers) were the scenes that were full of creepy tension. Who knew the slightest creak of a floorboard could be unnerving in written form. My hat’s off to her for being able to paint a picture vivid enough that I could easily see it in my mind as I read along.

Larrinaga leaves the story open for another novel in the Soul Searchers Mysteries, and I for one can’t wait until it comes out.
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While Donn’s Shadow stands strongly on its own, you’ll get so much more out of the tale if you read Donn’s Hill first. 

February is Women in Horror Month. In the past, I have taken the opportunity to highlight amazing women who write horror through interviews and such. This year, I wanted to do something a little different.

I decided to tackle my, to be read pile, and not only that, I decided to focus my efforts on all the kick-ass women authors in my, to be read pile. Therefore, to kick off Women in Horror Month, we’re starting with Betty Rocksteady’s novella, The Writhing Skies.

The Writhing Skies released back on Oct 1, 2018, from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. I bought it when it first came out and then it quickly found a home in my ever-growing pile of books. 2019 was a shit-show when it came to reading for pleasure, but I vowed 2020 was going to be different. So far I’ve stuck with that goal and I’ve read four so far.

Here’s the synopsis:

THE SKY IS HUNGRY
Glowing lights and figures in tattered robes force Sarah from her apartment. Outside, phosphorescent creatures infiltrate her every orifice. They want to know everything, especially the things she would rather forget.
Featuring 20 black and white illustrations.
 
It’s a short synopsis but it accurately hits on what this story is about. If you are a fan of weird cosmic sex horror, then this book is definitely for you.

First off, this book is strange. Rocksteady for sure hit it out of the park when she was going for cosmic horror. We never really find out exactly what’s going on, and that’s perfectly fine because the true horror isn’t what’s currently happening to Sarah and the rest of the world, rather the true horror lies in what has already happened to Sarah.

The story evoked all sorts of feelings, from horror, disgust, and sadness. My hat’s off to Rocksteady for being able to hit me with those kinds of feels in such a short tale. However, if you read my review of her collection of short stories, In Dreams We Rot, you’ll know that she is a very capable writer. Also, you can check out my interview with Rocksteady here where we dive into what makes her the awesome author she is.

This is a novella that makes you think, makes you cringe, and makes your face twist into all sorts of different expressions as you read it. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Now, on to a spoilery discussion. Leave now if you don’t want to know the inner secrets of, The Writhing Skies.

As I mentioned above, while there are strange and horrible things happening to Sarah and the rest of the world, the true horror is what has already happened. As the story moves forward, we find out that she was coerced into having sex which results in a pregnancy. Her boyfriend is quite the ass and devises a plan to abort the child, giving Sarah false assurances that it won’t hurt too bad, that he’s done it before (that should have been a big warning sign), and that everything would be okay. We also find out as the story goes on that her boyfriend’s level of assery goes so deep that it puts the Marianna Trench to shame.

In short, his plan to abort the baby is kicking the shit out of Sarah until she starts bleeding. Truly horrifying, and while I would like to think that his chosen method of abortion doesn’t happen that often, I would probably be shocked at how often that it, or similarly dangerous methods occur. A reason why safe and obtainable abortion options need to be readily available for those who need them.

Horror often is a medium that highlights current social/political/economic issues and this novella didn’t hide that fact. Everything that is happening is a result of those choices as if the act itself awakened some cosmic beast from its slumber. The way the creatures or entities interact with Sarah is a metaphor for her own feelings on what happened to her. They can simultaneously make her feel at ease, pleasured, hurt, disgusted, sad, and confused, which I believe is how she probably felt during everything leading up to the abortion.
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This story stuck with me long after I finished it and I’ve thought about it many times.

The long awaited third book in my Dark Tyrant Series is finally live! It took me way longer than I anticipated to finish this book. I had to battle through busy life getting in the way, burnout, writers block, and just about everything under the sun. However, it's done. It's ready. It's here! Get your copy today.

Thulisile Mahlangu is the captain of an elite team of paramilitary soldiers trained to deal with large-scale supernatural crises. But when an Alpha Protocol is radioed in from an agent who was reportedly dead, Thuli and her team are put to the test. Their mission: verify the radio call, exterminate the problem, and bring the agent back to the Bureau of Investigation, Observation, and Defense of Extraordinary, Extraterrestrial, Demonic and Paranormal Activity. As time runs out, Thuli begins to question everything and wrestle with her own inner demons. If she doesn’t succeed, the Bureau will release an Omega team, and the Omegas have no problem scorching the earth to fix problems. Alpha Protocol is a fast-paced tale that is one part action thriller, one part supernatural horror, and a dash of dark comedy. ​

I recently went and saw the movie, Underwater and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. It spoke to me on a Lovecraftian level. First off, here’s the synopsis:

Disaster strikes more than six miles below the ocean surface when water crashes through the walls of a drilling station. Led by their captain, the survivors realize that their only hope is to walk across the seafloor to reach the main part of the facility. But they soon find themselves in a fight for their lives when they come under attack from mysterious and deadly creatures that no one has ever seen.

First off, without getting into any spoilers, let’s go over the good parts of this movie. I am not a huge fan of Kristen Stewart, but in this film she did great. They cast her perfectly for the character she was supposed to play and she did a fine job. Second, I always find T.J. Miller funny, and he didn’t disappoint this time around. He added much needed comic relief to an otherwise tension-packed film. Third, the director, film crew, and writers did a wonderful job utilizing isolation in this film. I’ve always found that horror works best when the characters are isolated from the outside world, and since this movie is set six miles underwater, you really can’t get much more isolated than that. Fourth, they didn’t reveal the monster too fast. Movie monsters do well to stay hidden, showing up only in glimpses or deep shadows. The magic is broken once we get the full reveal. It wasn’t until very late in the film that they showed the monsters in their entirety.
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Now, let’s get into the bad, and there was some bad. For one, this is an underwater research facility. Knowing what I know of government facilities in extreme locations, is space equity. In other words, there won’t be lots of open space. 

This movie opens showing wide hallways and an otherwise empty locker room that is frickin’ huge! No way are they going to go through the time and effort to build such a facility with that much empty space. Second, I had to roll my eyes when we see the peeps getting into their underwater pressure suits and they tell the newbie research assistant (a woman), ‘oh, you got to take off your pants because they won’t fit in the suit.’ At first, I was like, sure, okay whatever. But at one point we see a few of the characters get out of their suit and of course, the women are wearing nothing but sports bras and panties. The dudes…t-shirts and boxers that are baggy as all get-out. If you’re going to make a rule, then stick with it. I can go along with your bullshit rules as long as everyone plays by the same ones. The pants can’t fit…why is that? Too baggy? Then a t-shirt shouldn’t work either. They could have solved this by making them wear some special wetsuit or something like that other than making it about gratuitous skin shots.

There were a couple of other things I liked and disliked, but we’ll get into that in the spoilery section below. Overall though, the pacing was great, the tension was somewhat, and the story was fun. It’s not a deep movie (other than being six miles deep), but it was highly entertaining.

​I give it 4/5 underwater research facilities. 

Still here? Cool beans. We’ll flip the script here and I’ll start with somewhat I didn’t like spoilers. First off, it is way too easy to blow that facility to hell and back. Kristen Stewart only had to pull up a page on a touch a screen and then move some sliders, then we were into a 1 min countdown to self-destruct. No special codes or key cards. Nothing. Just flip to page two and slid the levels and kaboom. What the hell? Second, there were odd things playing in the background, like touristy music or welcome to Roebuck Station audio. This is an underwater mining/drilling facility, not a tourist destination. I can’t imagine that they’d be playing that crap over the speakers. But what do I know? Then, during the end credits we see newspaper clippings stating the company was going to go back and rebuild the facility and start drilling again. START. DRILLING. AGAIN. As if they didn’t’ learn their GD lesson the first time around.

As for the good, and this is where the movie sold it for me, was with the big baddy monster. It was a huge leviathan/kraken looking thing! It was amazing. They showed you the whole creature, but it was well done and near the end and so very worth it. I was instantly thinking Dagon or Cthulhu when I saw that sucker. I love that it was “woken” up by the drilling and came to wreck some souls.
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Super fun show. I totally recommend this movie if you’re into shows like Alien and the like. 

Continuing my journey to make a dent in my to-be-read pile, I conquered John Hornor Jacobs' novella, The Sea Dreams it is the Sky. Man oh man, what a ride it was. The back cover blurb for the story reads as follows:

A brilliant mix of the psychological and supernatural, blending the acute insight of Roberto Bolaño and the eerie imagination of H. P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself.

Here was my take:
What a wonderful read! This novella is a slow burn in the best way possible. By the time I reached the end I found I was devouring each sentence like a rabid dog placed in front of a gourmet feast. Jacobs gives you enough to make your skin crawl but hints that there's so much more in the miasma that if you knew what was there, your skin wouldn't just crawl, it would tear itself off and run as fast as it could. If you like slow horror that takes its time, then read this novella.

This story was well crafted. It was slow in the sense that Jacobs took his time ramping up the strange, weird, and supernatural in the book. However, I'm not saying this as a negative at all. It was somewhat refreshing and when the strange and weird do begin to occur, it has more impact because of his choices. Makes me double-think how I write my own tales as generally most of my stories start off with a bang and take off. 

I won't spoil this one at all, I simply recommend if you like horror in the same vein as Lovecraft, or the movie, The Ninth Gate, then check this one out. 

It's alive! My second collection of short stories is live! I'm super stoked about this one, because not only does it have stories that have appeared in recent anthologies, it also has some stories that have never been released as well. That's right! You, dear reader, can experience these tales for the first time. This one also has some flash fiction and a rare poem (rare because I rarely write poetry). 

Inside this tome of horrors you can find the following tales:
"The Devouring Maw" which initially appeared in Hunger: A Collection of Utah Horror. It's about some folks down in southern Utah on the hunt for a lost arch. Well, they find it, but they also find something else. Something sinister.

"The Dark Place" which appeared in the anthology, Peaks of Madness: A Collection of Utah Horror. It's about a young girl who's on the run and takes refuge in a cabin in the woods. The cabin has a small door upstairs with a note that reads, do not open. Simple enough, but then something starts knocking from the other side of the door.

"The Temptation of the Moon to Shadow" is a poem I wrote that appeared in the HWA's Poetry Showcase Vol. 5. 

"The Demons We Bring" appeared in Old Scratch and Owl Hoots: A Collection of Utah Horror and if you're familiar with my short story, "Horishi Tom" then you'll recognize the main character. The events of this story take place before the events in "Horishi Tom". 

"The Cedar Box" is my fantasy western, think gunslinging elves trying to survive in a hellwaste. An old elf carries a precious cedar box with him as he searches for someone. 

"Mr. Abernathy’s Music Box" appeared on this very website as a bonus and is about a peculiar passenger on a sea voyage and his mysterious music box. 

"The Horror of Sunshine Meadows" was a piece of flash fiction I wrote that appeared online. It's about someone who finds a young girl standing outside of a forest. Things are not always what they seem. 

"Final Moment" has never appeared in any anthology, so you're getting it now for the first time. It's about a woman who buys a horrifying painting at auction only to find she's bringing much more home with her.

"Kathy Loves Kittens" appeared on the Tales to Terrify podcast. It's about a man who survives a horrifying car wreck only to find that his daughter isn't only missing, but seeming has disappeared from existence. However, someone knows where she is.

This collection is full of suspenseful stories. If you like horror or dark fantasy, check it out!
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One of my 2020 goals was to read more books. I have a to-be-read pile of both physical and ebooks that is ginormous! I'm definitely in the category of people who like to buy books which may or may not ever get read. However, I'm trying to make a steadfast effort this year to make a dent into that pile. The first book I finished, was Let Sleeping Gods Lie by David J. West. 

The back cover blurb reads as follows:

Louis L’Amour Meets Lovecraft
​Porter Rockwell, wanted for a murder he did not commit, is hiding out in Old California selling whiskey to thirsty forty-niners. When his friends dig up some monstrous bones and a peculiar book and offer to sell it for a helluva price, Porter can’t resist the mystery.
But when both his night bartender and the sellers are murdered at his saloon Porter has to find out what the mysterious artifacts are all about. With some Native American legends, Sasquatch, Lovecraftian horror, and murderous bandits thrown in, not even bullets and blades can stop Rockwell from leaving a swath of righteous carnage in his wake.
Let Sleeping Gods Lie is a weird western fantasy in the vein of classic pulp fiction and Louis L’Amour books. If you like frontier justice, larger-than-life characters, and witty humor, then you will LOVE the first installment of the Cowboys and Cthulhu series.
Buy Let Sleeping Gods Lie to get lost in a horrific weird western adventure today!

I've read several of West's other books, to include his other Porter Rockwell stories. I enjoy West's style of writing as it is very reminiscent of the old pulp adventure stories from back in the day. Now, unless you're new to my blog, you'll know that I'm a sucker for Lovecraftian tales, so when I saw that West was finally merging his Old West stories with Lovecraftian mythos, I was all in. His other Porter Rockwell stories merely touched at the weird and dark, while this one plunges right in with both feet. Here's the review I left on Amazon and Goodreads:

West delivers a story that reads like it's a masterful blend of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft! I'm a sucker for weird westerns and West never fails to deliver. This story is action packed and hits all the right notes. I loved all the nods to Lovecraft.

West can also paint a scene. All throughout the book there was some wonderful imagery, but this one bit stuck with me:

They rounded a bend and came head on against a like-minded group of riders. Stoney’s men, the Mountain Hounds. When a hard rain falls, who was hit with the first drop? Impossible to say, but the thunder certainly sounded. Pistols and rifles were drawn and fired. Horses and men screamed as they careened together, an avalanche of flesh and lead.

Bottom line, if you like westerns and if you like Lovecraft, then this is the book for you. Do yourself a favor and read it. 

​I recently watched the Netflix Original, In the Tall Grass which was based on a short story written by Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill. After I finished viewing the film, I decided to catch up on the story since I had never read it. In this blog post, I will give a review of both the film and the story, as well as offer some comparisons. We will get into spoilers, but I’ll let you know when those are coming so you can veer away if spoilers aren’t your thang.
 
Let’s dive into the film since I watched it first. The basic premise is that Becky and Cal DeMuth (siblings) are traveling across country on their way to San Diego. Becky is pregnant and she is giving her child up for adoption to a family there. On the way, they stop along the side of the road because Becky gets nauseous and has to throw up. While parked, they hear the voice of a child in the nearby field of tall grass crying for help. They decide to go after the boy and find that getting out of the tall grass is much more than it seems. 

While they are in the field, they eventually meet up with Tobin, a small boy who called them in, his mother, Natalie, and the boy’s father, Ross. The field seems to move things around, making navigation quite difficult. In the center of the field (and quite frankly, the center of everything) is a large standing rock with strange carvings on it.
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I can’t get into much more without spoilers, so I’ll just give you my spoiler-free review on the film. I give it 3.5/5 stars overall. It was a fun premise, it was shot well, and there were some fairly horrifying scenes. Patrick Wilson plays the father of Tobin and does a bang-up job. I like him in almost everything he plays in and he didn’t disappoint in this film. However, it was confusing (more on that below) and I was distracted trying to figure some things out. 

I read the short story hoping it would explain some things, but it didn’t. As I first started reading the short story, I felt as if it were rushing through things too fast and not spending much time with the characters and after reading the first third, I thought the movie was better than the story.
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However, once I finished reading the story, I definitely enjoyed reading it more than I did watching it. It was shorter than the movie (of course) and only took about 20 minutes to read. I can’t tell you how many pages it was, as I read it on my Kindle. However, King and Hill didn’t mess around with the convoluted plot that the film introduced, and instead get right to the root of it all and offer up an extremely horrifying tale. For the short story, I give it a 4/5. There were some very disturbing scenes in the story. I would have given it a full five stars, but I subtracted one mainly because I wanted a little more and I think it could have been made into a novella easily. 

To compare the two, the premise of the story is the same as the movie, and the movie did a good job following the story in the beginning. However, after about 30 minutes, the movie goes off the rails into its own territory and even introduces characters that didn’t appear in the short story. If you like King or Hill’s stories, give the film a watch. I found it enjoyable despite some of the confusion. It’s kind of creepy and has some Lovecraftian/Cosmic vibes.
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Now, let’s get into some nitty-gritty details. WARNING! Spoilers ahead.

Okay, so in the movie, we have Becky and Cal going into the tall grass to look for Tobin. They get separated fairly quickly and the grass doesn’t let them come back together for a while. Meanwhile, Cal finds Tobin, or I should say, Tobin finds Cal. The boy is burying a dead bird and mentions something that the grass doesn’t move dead things and it’s easier to find dead things and all that creepy lore. The statement adds flavor to both the short story and the movie. Although in the short story, Tobin states that the birds stay away and must talk to each other, except the crows, as he finds more crows than any other bird.

Tobin says that to find Becky, Cal will have to follow him to the rock. Once he touches the rock he can see and find her easily because basically the rock knows everything. The same thing happens in the short story.

While Becky is trying to link up with Cal, she runs into Ross, Tobin’s father. He’s acting kind of strange but seems somewhat helpful. Long story short, Ross is linked with the rock and wants to bring Becky and everyone there so they can touch it too. Obviously, Becky doesn’t want to, which I don’t blame her.

Here’s where some confusion sets in. In the movie, we see Tobin touching the rock, which means he should be crazy like Ross. However, later on, Ross acts like Tobin never touched the thing and we gloss over the earlier scene like it was a figment. Also, later on, Becky’s ex-boyfriend, Travis shows up and ends up touching the rock to save her, because apparently once you touch the rock you know all the things, including how to get out of the grass. But instead of going full dark side, he helps her and gets her out. Are we to believe that he fought the influence long enough to save his love? Who knows?
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Small details I suppose, but I kept wondering what the hell was going on? They play with time loops, so perhaps there was a loop where Tobin touched the rock and another one where he doesn’t? I dunno. Anyway, it’s worth a watch, and for sure worth a read.