supernatural horror

Indie April Suggestions – Part 7

For today’s Indie April showcase, I want to throw the spotlight onto 3 authors who write some of the spookiest stuff out there. So, without further ado, let’s meet these gentlemen.

John F Leonard

John F Leonard is one of many highly talented writers I’ve found on Twitter. He writes cosmic horror (one of my favorite genres), as well as wonderfully spooky stories.

The Bledbrooke Works and Congeal are suspense filled tales of terror. Bledbrooke is something of a prequel to Congeal, so you might want to read it first.

Congeal is a post-apocalyptic tale that is downright chilling. It’s the kind of slowburn horror that stays with you, that continues to haunt you long after you’ve finished the book.

Next on my reading list is his The Dead Boxes Archive, and I’ll be reading it during the daylight hours.

Here are John’s Amazon pages:

Canada

Australia

Germany

Check him out. He’s really top drawer, and fast becoming one of my favorite authors.

Andy Graham

Andy Graham writes masterful tales of chilling terror. I hate reading his stories at night, because, quite honestly, they give me bad dreams.

He has the dystopian Misrule series, The Risen World Supernatural thrillers, and I Died Yesterday, a collection of dark fiction tales.

Graham is an accomplished wordsmith. Begin one of his books and you’ll be biting your nails and saying, “What was that noise?”

I’m currently reading A Demon Risen. But only while the sun is up.

Here is where you can find Andy Graham on Amazon:

Canada

Australia

Germany

Ray Zacek

Ray Zacek can scare your socks off, or make you laugh with his macabre dark humor. And when he turns to satire, it’s funny, biting, and somewhat chilling all at the same time.

Want a scary story? Try Cosecha and Daguerreotype. Satire? Try Fresh Catch: Fiction Sushi. Dark humor? Give The Sisters a read. I love his books and you will too.

Take a look at Ray’s Amazon pages:

Canada

Australia

Germany

He’s a superb storyteller who you will fall in love with. I guarantee it.

John F Leonard, Andy Graham, and Ray Zacek are masters of the art of telling us a good story. They are producing some of the best fiction being written today. Give them a try. You won’t be sorry.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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A Possible New Series

The Medusa Ritual (Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations, Book 5) is available on Amazon. You can buy the book here.

Books 6, 7, and 8 in the series are written. I’m currently proofreading and line editing Book 6 and typing Book 7, doing an initial line edit while typing the handwritten manuscript.

The Pierce Mostyn series is loads of fun to write, and doing so has introduced me to the fascinating sub-genre of the occult detective.

The occult detective sub-genre has been around since the mid-1800s. Being largely a fusion of the detective story and the Gothic horror tale. It came into being as the form we recognize today through the Flaxman Low stories by E. & E. Heron. They were first published in Pearson’s Magazine in 1898 and 1899.

The most famous occult detectives are probably Thomas Carnacki, created by William Hope Hodgson, and Jules de Grandin, created by Seabury Quinn.

I very much like detective mysteries, and I very much like supernatural horror — which makes the occult detective pretty close to perfection.

For some time now, simmering on the back burner, has been a contemporary occult detective series of my own. I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I’m getting there.

The series would be something of a companion piece for Pierce Mostyn — readers of one series crossing over and reading the other. At least I hope they will!

There will be more on this in the coming months, as I get additional details of this new fictional world established.

If you haven’t tried Pierce Mostyn, take a peek. The series is on Amazon. Mostyn won’t bite, but the monsters might!

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard

Reading has been a huge part of my life. And quite frankly still is. Long before I developed an interest in music, I was reading.

Don’t get me wrong. I very much enjoy music. But I was a reader long before I was a music aficionado.

When I was a kid I frequently got to spend the whole day at my grandparents’s place. My grandmother used to insist that my brother and I take a nap in the afternoon. I suppose she just wanted us out of her hair for an hour or two.

I’ve never been a napper, and I used that “quiet time” to read. I’d rummage around in my uncle’s books and find something to occupy my time. Some of the books, maybe most of them, weren’t age appropriate. But they were there and nobody said I couldn’t read them.

One of the books I treasured was Groff Conklin’s Omnibus of Science Fiction. The book was published in 1952, the year I was born, and has some absolutely fabulous stories within its covers. And it was in the Omnibus where I discovered HP Lovecraft, through his story “The Color Out Of Space”; an amazing tale of sci-fi horror.

Years later, I picked up the Beagle Books reprinting of the Arkham edition of HPL’s works and discovered HPL in full.

My introduction to Robert E Howard occurred somewhat after my purchase of the Beagle HPL paperbacks in the early 1970s.

A friend of mine at the time mentioned that he thought one of the scariest stories ever written was Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell”.

Intrigued, I went out and bought the Lancer paperback The Dark Man and Others, which contains “Pigeons from Hell” and 14 other fantastic journeys into the weird.

I fell in love with Howard. “Pigeons from Hell” is not only an excellent example of Southern Gothic, it is indeed one of the spookiest stories I’ve ever read.

There is an ongoing debate as to which of the two is the real master of weird fiction. In the circles that I traveled in, Lovecraft was acknowledged as the master. However, being the iconoclast that I am, I held out for REH. My argument was that at their very best the two were equal.

However, of the two, I argued that REH was consistently better than HPL. The overall quality of Howard’s weird fiction is higher than that of Lovecraft.

I realize my position is a minority view. And I think the debate ultimately boils down to one of taste.

When Lovecraft was on top of his game, he was the master of slowburn, atmospheric weird fiction. And there is none finer.

There’s nothing slowburn about Howard. He was the quintessential man of action. His finest weird tales are replete with action.

There’s also the differences in the main characters of the two writers. Lovecraft’s narrators often exist on the edge of sanity. They are not known for their physical prowess, and are often bookish intellectuals. Even their names tend to be unknown, or little mentioned.

Howard, on the other hand, wrote about vibrant characters. Characters that were full of life. Characters, even the women, that were physically and emotionally strong. King Kull, Conan, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Red Sonja. Perhaps this was the case because Howard wrote in series, or at least conceptualized his heroes and heroines as series characters. Lovecraft did not. His main characters for the most part make sole appearances, with the implication that they will not survive. And they don’t. We usually never see them again.

In some ways, my Pierce Mostyn series tips the hat to both of these giants of weird fiction. There is the slowburn, but there is also action. Pierce Mostyn is something of a fusion of HPL and REH. And in that perhaps he’s all CWH.

I owe a lot to HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard. The two giants of weird fiction. Both have influenced my approach to the genre, and how I think it should be written. And if Pierce Mostyn comes across to readers as a fusion of those two giants, I will be very satisfied.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Book Review: Daddy’s Girl by Ben Willoughby

Horror tales come in all shapes and sizes. They can be visions of great cosmic terror or they can be the evil wishes of a child. The story can be one of psychological torment, or one of unfathomable gruesomeness. There are some who don’t see horror as a separate genre, but as a particular effect given to a story of dark fantasy, or science fiction, or slice of life.

And whether or not we like to read stories that frighten us, or listen to them told around a campfire, many of us do. Enough so that horror has gotten its own BISAC genre code and is exceedingly profitable to publisher and writer alike.

My first foray into the realm of the horror story was by means of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Not much later came the stories of Saki. And then those two gothic adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”. From there I read Dracula and Carmilla and discovered the work of HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard’s weird fiction.

I’ve even ventured into the realm of the weird and terrible with a few tales of my own. However, there are a few writers today who write doggone good horror stories and unfortunately remain for the most part unseen. One of those writers is Ben Willoughby and I hope this review, and upcoming reviews of his work, will help to bring him a broader audience.

Mr Willoughby has five books out now in the horror genre. I’ve purchased them all and read two. (He’s writing them faster than I can read them!) Today I want to talk a bit about his novella Daddy’s Girl, which is a ghost story that is very well done.

The ghost story is perhaps the most venerable form of the supernatural horror tale. Certainly it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest within this category. The ghost story plays into our beliefs about life after death. Even today, where the Western world has moved beyond Christianity and pretty much any traditional religion, the ghost story still works. Still plays upon our imagination. I think this is because it’s primal. It taps into the core of our hopes and fears surrounding the greatest of all mysteries — death. And no matter how materialistic we’ve become, few of us want to die. Even believing in an afterlife, few of us want to end our existence here. It is what we know. We fear the unknown.

Mr Willoughby’s tale, Daddy’s Girl, plays on our emotions from two directions. The first is the child’s need for and love of his or her parents. We children may dislike our parents telling us what to do, but when they aren’t there we crave for someone to step in and take over that role. Many of us don’t ever grow out of that need for someone to watch over us. Politicians and demagogues use this to gain control. They feel our pain and tell us lies so we feel good. The bond of child to parent is ever with us.

The other bond is that of parent to child. We as parents will do anything to spare our children at the very least the hardest knocks of life. We teach them and guide them and support them. Children a visible form of eternal life. Through them we in a sense live forever.

Mr Willoughby has combined these two powerful bonds into a tale of parent-child love. The parent’s watchful eye, ever present, protecting his little girl.

I don’t want to spoil the story and so I will leave the storyline alone. Do, though, get yourself a copy of Daddy’s Girl. The book will tug your heartstrings and give you something to think about. As well as scare you into the realization your determination may be stronger than you even realize.

What I like about Ben Willoughby’s writing is that he has a simple and straightforward way to tell a story. It unfolds before us on the page and does so without a mass of purple prose. There is an economy of words in his style and to my mind that allows me the reader to participate in the story. He isn’t telling me everything. Just what I need to know. Which means he is able to paint the atmosphere and mood and generate empathy for the characters without excess verbiage. And that is the hallmark of a good writer.

I very much recommend Daddy’s Girl. I also recommend Raw Head, which I hope to review in a future post. And I look forward to reading his other offerings in the realm of terror.

Ben Willoughby is a fine example of the good things the indie revolution has to offer. If only we take a chance and are willing to read widely.

Comments are always welcome! Until next time, happy reading!

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