Lullabies for Suffering Preorder Promo

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas (if you were celebrating). If you are looking to fill up that new Kindle or spend some of that Christmas gift card on books (what else would you buy?!), Wicked Run Press is having a preorder promo on Lullabies for Suffering: Tales of Addiction Horror. You may remember me raving on Garden of Fiends quite a few times in the past. This is the follow up anthology, and I can't wait to read it! Lullabies for Suffering contains novellas and novelettes from Kealan Patrick Burke, Caroline Kepnes, Gabino Iglesias, John FD Taff, Mercedes M Yardley, and Mark Matthews.

I offered Wicked Run Press some space to promote Lullabies for Suffering and here are the details they provided (a chance to win a signed book from one of the authors!)

It’s happening! 

Lullabies for Suffering: Tales of Addiction Horror,

is now available for presale for Kindle on amazon.

Kindle and Paperback Preorder on Amazon

Paperback Preorder on Barnes & Noble

I’m incredibly excited to unleash this work onto the world. I can’t wait for readers to feast their eyes on these Novellas & Novelettes. The table of contents includes:

                    Kealan Patrick Burke                   Caroline Kepnes

                    Gabino Iglesias                              John FD Taff

                    Mercedes M Yardley                     Mark Matthews

“Why preorder?” You ask. Two reasons:

A:  Save off the publication price. Just $4.99 to preorder for Kindle. 

B: Win a signed paperback copy from one of the writers on the table of contents. Yep! Signed copies from randomly raffled off.

Here’s what’s waiting: 

“How to win?” You ask. Two ways:  

A:  Email a receipt of proof of a presale purchase of Lullabies for Suffering (either paperback or Kindle version) to WickedRunPress@gmail.com with “contest” in the subject line.

(For best results, list your order of paperback preference, and 1st winner will receive top pick, 2nd winner will receive top available pick, etc..)

B: For an additional entry, send a screenshot of a Tweet, Facebook or Instagram post featuring this amazon link:  https://www.amazon.com/Lullabies-Suffering-Tales-Addiction-Horror-ebook/dp/B07Z5FXFJB/ with some variation of the phrase: “Come, listen to these Lullabies for Suffering” (or anything similar) (for a no-purchase necessary entry, simply email option B) 

Two ways to enter. Do one, or do both. 

Winners will be chosen at random on January 1st, 2020. Deadline is midnight on December 31st, 2019. Winning copies shipped shortly after.

There will be Six Paperback winners! 

Once again, Here’s what the treasure that awaits.

1. YOU, signed by author Caroline Kepnes

“Hypnotic and scary,” Stephen king said of YOU, now available as must-binge TV on Netflix. 

2. We Live Inside Your Eyes, signed by author Kealan Patrick Burke

His mastery of the short story is on display here, and this collection weaves the stories together with fantastic creativity. 

3. Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, 

signed by author Mercedes M. Yardley

The whimsical, dark fantasist writes love stories like none other, and her Lullabies for Suffering story takes place within this same universe and includes a cameo by Montessa and Lulu.

4. Little Black Spots, signed by author John FD Taff (plus Book one of The Fearing)

Includes the Bram Stoker nominated story, “A Winter’s Tale.” You also get a copy of Book One of The Fearing (unsigned, but a must read) if you win this copy. 

5. Garden of Fiends AND All Smoke Rises, signed by author Mark Matthews (one copy of both)  

“Tense, imaginative, and empathic, Matthews is a damn good writer, and make no mistake, he will hurt you. ”–Jack Ketchum

6. Coyote Songs AND Zero Saints, signed by Gabino Iglesias

Win a signed copy of both Zero Saints and the ground-breaking, mind-blowing, beautifully lyrical, Bram Stoker nominated, Coyote Songs. Enter now! 

Two options to win. 

1. A presale purchase receipt, of either paperback or kindle.

Click here for Amazon

Click here for Barnes & Noble

2. A screenshot of a social media post which includes amazon presale link  https://www.amazon.com/Lullabies-Suffering-Tales-Addiction-Horror-ebook/dp/B07Z5FXFJB/

Put “contest” in the subject line and email to: WickedRunPress@gmail.com

Do one or do both. (For best results, list your order of paperback preference, and 1st winner will receive top pick, 2nd winner will receive top available pick, etc.. )

Deadline is December 31st, 2019, when the clock strikes midnight and the decade ends. 

Sorry, continental US only.

That’s it! Thanks for listening, and may the odds be in your favor.

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If you've already preordered or plan to order Lullabies for Suffering, be sure to send in your proof by December 31st and good luck!!

Guest Post | The Night Crawls In, LOHF Writers Grant, and Steve Stred

The Ladies of Horror Fiction has the honor of partnering with Steve Stred for the Annual LOHF Writers Grant. We will be able to select a recipient each year to receive grant funding toward their writing career. Please welcome Steve Stred to Book Den today, and be sure to preorder a copy of The Night Crawls In in order to help contribute to the LOHF Writers Grant!

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From Steve Stred:

How exciting has the news been about the 1st Annual LOHF Writers Grant?!!

I know I’ve been absolutely blown away with the response! Thank you to everyone who has kindly pre-ordered, liked, shared, commented, hosted or even tagged someone!

For full details and how to apply, please click the link: https://www.ladiesofhorrorfiction.com/2019/07/26/2019-lohf-writers-grant/

Now to help fund the initial grant disbursement, I’m releasing a poetry/drabbles collection. On September 1st, 2019 The Night Crawls In will arrive. Containing 33 drabbles and 17 poems, all ebook presales and 1st day paperback sales will go towards funding the first grant. All additional sales there-after will be put towards future grants!

My normal partner in crime, Mason McDonald designed the cover for the release and as always, he knocked it out of the park!

Jen from the LOHF crew kindly offered up a guest post spot, so I’m here to share two drabbles that will be featured in The Night Crawls In!

The Clearing. (A Drabble)

It took us three days to hike to the edge of their territory. My daughter grew heavier and heavier on my back, but I knew we needed to make it.

When we arrived, I stopped, surveying the area.

The woods parted, fifty feet of open land, then the woods returned just across the clearing.

Safety.

The agreement said ‘those who make it across are free.’

We had to try. We wanted to live, to survive.

With no creatures in sight, I gripped her tight and started running.

I heard them cry out, rush towards us.

“Mommy?”

We were so close.

END

The Bear. (A Drabble)

We stood in shock watching what the bear was doing.

We were all in the cabin, windows shut, door locked, dogs put away. Had we left some food out in the car that had lured it in from the woods? Was it the electronic music we had blaring or the cussing and yelling of college aged kids doing ridiculous things that had drawn it in?

We didn’t know.

Now we stood and watched as it ripped the doors off the Subaru and made short work of everything inside the car.

This included my grandma who’d been having her afternoon nap.

END

Now, a bit about these two drabbles.

‘The Clearing’ is a short story I had sitting around for some time. I don’t recall when I came up with the idea, but something created this idea of a group of beasts who were territorial. They kept humans within this sector, but the humans did have a chance – they just had to make it across a clearing. So I modified it and turned it into this 100 word creepfest.

‘The Bear’ was born from my growing up in British Columbia. We always see news clips every summer of bears destroying cars and trucks after food has been left inside of it etc. I remember one news report during one such incident had caught my attention. A man was being interviewed after his van had been ripped apart and he said normally at this time of day he’d be having a nap in the van. So I switched that up with a grandma. Poor, unsuspecting grandma.

So thank you to the amazing crew at Ladies of Horror Fiction – both for hearing my idea and jumping on board, but also for letting me submit a guest post here in the hopes we can work to growing this grant idea bigger and better every year!

The Night Crawls In: Amazon | Goodreads
Steve Stred: Wordpress | Twitter

Guest Post | Writing from the Land by Lee Murray

I'm excited to welcome Lee Murray to Book Den today!

Writing from the Land by Lee Murray

Much of my writing, including Into the Mist and now Into the Sounds, is derived from, and embedded in, the land. That deep connection to our landscape and our geography is true for many New Zealanders, not just writers. It is our ‘turangawaewae’ – which translates as ‘the place where we stand’. When I set Into the Mist in the North Island’s Urewera forest, 2100 square kilometres of drifting mist and craggy grey-green mountains and swift-flowing rivers, I had hoped to conjure some of the richness of its character, to reveal some of its mysteriousness and its beauty. So, it was interesting when, about the time I was writing the story, the Te Urewera Act was passed, making the land, once a national park, a legal entity with “all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person.” Sometimes a setting will pay such a powerful role in a story that its readers say it became a character in its own right, but in New Zealand we’ve enacted that idea into law. The landscape has its own identity. But what if that landscape, that character, is known historically to be unpredictable and dangerous as Blood Related author William Cook points out: “The Kiwi Gothic constructs New Zealand not as a place of some pastoral idyll but rather as an environment where danger and horror lurk everywhere. The Antipodean gothic is generally considered to be an expression of the settler anxiety that derived from the confrontation with a hostile and alien environment, such as the native New Zealand bush. Unlike the European gothic, which often tells ghost stories set in old castles, the Kiwi version of the gothic often deals with alienation, family traumas and uncanny experiences in very familiar places.” Uncanny experiences in familiar places. This is how we write from the land because our writers, particularly horror writers, know that darkness and monsters are an everyday occurrence in New Zealand, that the land has its own power, and mythology is a living breathing thing.

“Cinematic and evocative, Into the Mist is a tension-packed expedition into primordial terror. Murray’s writing had me feeling the damp of the forest, seeing the mist curling through the fern fronds, and sensing the danger lurking there. Ancient myths, military men and scientists placed in remote, primordial locations – it had all the right ingredients for me, and it didn’t disappoint for a moment.” — Greig Beck, best-selling author of the Arcadian series

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/world/what-in-the-world/in-new-zealand-lands-and-rivers-can-be-people-legally-speaking.html

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Lee Murray is a multi award-winning writer and editor of fantasy, science fiction, and horror (Australian Shadows, Sir Julius Vogel). Her titles for adults include the acclaimed Taine McKenna series of military thrillers (Severed Press) and supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra co-authored with Dan Rabarts (Raw Dog Screaming Press). Among her titles for children are YA novel Misplaced, and best-loved middle grade adventure Battle of the Birds, listed in the Best Books of the Year 2011 by New Zealand’s Dominion Post. Dawn of the Zombie Apocalypse, the first book in a series of speculative middle grade antics, is forthcoming from IFWG Australia. An acquiring editor for US boutique press Omnium Gatherum, Lee is a regular speaker at workshops, conferences and schools. She lives with her family in New Zealand where she conjures up stories for readers of all ages from her office overlooking a cow paddock.

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Into The Sounds by Lee Murray

On leave, and out of his head with boredom, NZDF Sergeant Taine McKenna joins biologist Jules Asher, on a Conservation Department deer culling expedition to New Zealand’s southernmost national park, where soaring peaks give way to valleys gouged from clay and rock, and icy rivers bleed into watery canyons too deep to fathom. Despite covering an area the size of the Serengeti, only eighteen people live in the isolated region, so it’s a surprise when the hunters stumble on the nation’s Tūrehu tribe, becoming some of only a handful to ever encounter the elusive ghost people. But a band of mercenaries saw them first, and, hell-bent on exploiting the tribes’ survivors, they’re prepared to kill anyone who gets in their way. As a soldier, McKenna is duty-bound to protect all New Zealanders, but after centuries of persecution will the Tūrehu allow him to help them? Besides, there is something else lurking in the sounds, and it has its own agenda. When the waters clear, will anyone be allowed to leave?

Amazon | Goodreads

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Thank you so much for sharing, Lee!

The What If? Scam | Guest Post by Michael Patrick Hicks

Please join me in welcoming Michael Patrick Hicks to Book Den today!

The What If? Scam by Michael Patrick Hicks

Scams have been at the forefront of my mind lately, and not just because, at the time of this writing, I’ve recently learned that my identity was compromised and fraudulent accounts were set up in my name by a scam artist, putting me through quite the rigmarole of adding extra security protections and additional alerts everywhere. Scams, as it just so happens, are also the precipitating incident of my latest horror novella, Broken Shells.

Desperate car dealerships try to lure in customers by mailing them “winning” Money Carlo tickets. This game board looks a bit like something you’d buy at a gas station’s Lottery counter, and you pull up the tabs to match and win. Thing is, everybody is a winner, at least according to the ticket. Once the ticket has you primed with your initial winnings, you have to go into the car dealership, present them with your game board and the special QR code or whatever, and they’ll determine if you’re actually a winner or not. Well, news flash – you aren’t! The whole goal of the Money Carlo scam is to get you to set foot on the car lot and open yourself up to a hard sales pitch.

Money Carlo is an obvious scam. It’s totally in-your-face with its smarmy scaminess, it’s lurid bright colors, and promise of easy money.

But what if?

What if you’re down on your luck, recently fired, strapped for cash, and have a wife and infant to support? What if, with all that, you get a Money Carlo ticket? Even knowing it’s a scam, there’s still that little voice inside you saying, what if? What’s the worst that could happen, especially when you don’t have much else left to lose?

That’s the position Antoine DeWitt finds himself in during the opening chapters of Broken Shells. In a moment of desperation, he finds himself a lucky winner, and even knowing it’s a scam there’s still that surge of hope brought upon by what if?

To answer an earlier question, what’s the worst that could happen? Well, unfortunately for Antoine, his bad luck is about to get a whole lot worse when he meets car dealership owner, Jon Dangle. Dangle has his own secrets that drive him toward desperation, secrets that are far, far older than either man and that are buried deep within the Earth. Secrets that, if exposed, could—

Well, that’s another what if? for another time.


Goodreads | Amazon

ABOUT MICHAEL PATRICK HICKS

Michael Patrick Hicks is the author of a number of speculative fiction titles. His debut novel, Convergence, was an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2013 Quarter-Finalist. His latest release is the subterranean horror novella, Broken Shells.

He has written for the Audiobook Reviewer and Graphic Novel Reporter websites, in addition to working as a freelance journalist and news photographer.

In between compulsively buying books and adding titles that he does not have time for to his Netflix queue, he is hard at work on his next story.

To learn more about Michael and his work, visit his website: www.michaelpatrickhicks.com

Guest Post | Do Your Dreams Have Power Over You?

I'm very excited to welcome Donna Galanti to Book Den today. Be sure to enter her giveaway and check out which books are on sale for free and $.99. Her books have been on my wishlist for a while so you know I'm scooping them up!

Do your dreams have power over you?
by Donna Galanti

Do you dream about the same thing over and over?

For years I had theme dreams. How I wish they were of nice things. Rainbows. Birthday parties. Cooing babies.

Nope. Mine were scary. A man with a machete chasing me to whack off my head. Of course I never actually died in this dream. I always woke up just before being decapitated. But the heads of my loved ones did roll.

Maybe dreaming of monsters is why my favorite show is Supernatural. Okay, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Dean and Sam Winchester are HOT! I guess I’ll have to keep them forever in my dreams. Sigh…

And perhaps we’re better off not remembering our dreams – or re-living them over and over. Perhaps they need to stay as dreams to ward off the dark.

In my paranormal suspense novel, A Human Element, Laura Armstrong is also haunted by nightmares of an evil man chasing her. Only, this man is not a figment of her imagination. He is very real and very capable of killing her from afar. When her dreams become a reality and she discovers her stalker is part of her own destiny she has to decide whether to kill him or redeem him. Ben Fieldstone in A Human Element also dreams of a Laura and a meteorite coming to crush him to death, as it did his parents.

But back to machetes. I ran for miles in my dreams avoiding decapitation from that unknown machete wielding maniac. He swung blades of steel seeking my neck. He chased me. On and on.
Then one day a crowd came. They surged onto the brute and whacked him to death with garden hoses. He disappeared and never returned. For the first time someone came to help me. And they destroyed the thing that haunted me most. They gave me hope.

Maybe this is the reason I write from the darker side with a touch of hope. No matter how dark things are, there is hope for survival.

And then it hit me. The machete man was awfully familiar to the villain in my book, X-10. I think he hides inside me and comes out when I write, and that is the only place he’ll remain safe from now on. If not, I’ll send back in the angry hoard of garden-hose attackers to get him good.

The power of dreams, right? Have your dreams had power over you?

P.S. I’m also giving away a $25 Amazon gift card below!

Excerpt - Ben Fieldstone’s Dreams That Haunt Him:

That night he dreamed.

He stood at the lake on its shore. The stillness covered him in peaceful quiet. The moon shone high overhead painting the wave tops with gold that lapped at the water's edge. Something moved in the distance on the path leading around the lake. It was a girl. She walked toward him as if she knew him. Finally, she stood before him and smiled. He found himself smiling back.

She took his hand and stared at him with her large, brown eyes. She looked so lovely. Her hand was warm in his, her touch sent waves of yearning through his body. She reached up on her toes and kissed him. He squeezed her hand and found himself kissing her back. Their tongues intertwined in a soft, embracing dance. He gave himself to her mouth, falling into her sweet wetness.

She put her hand behind his neck and pulled him closer. "Ben, do you know what I am?" Her eyes held him in a trance.

"What you are? What do you mean?"

"Come with me, I'll show you."

He followed her as she led him down the path. Then he looked up. Something green shone in the sky. The meteorite. It would crush them. She was leading them toward the spot where it would crash.

"No!" He pulled her with him to go back.

"Come." Her large eyes drew him into her.

"No, follow me," Ben urged. "Can't you see, it's coming!"

"Come." She caressed his hand. "It's where I belong. We can belong together."

"No!" He dropped her hand and ran.

His legs pumped fast over the rocks and fallen logs on the path. He turned once. She still stood there under the moon. The green thing filled the sky behind her as it streaked toward them.

She was smiling.

About A Human Element:
One by one, Laura Armstrong’s friends and adoptive family members are being murdered, and despite her unique healing powers, she can do nothing to stop it. The savage killer haunts her dreams, tormenting her with the promise that she is next. Determined to find the killer, she follows her visions to the site of a crashed meteorite–her hometown. There, she meets Ben Fieldstone, who seeks answers about his parents’ death the night the meteorite struck. In a race to stop a mad man, they unravel a frightening secret that binds them together. But the killer’s desire to destroy Laura face-to-face leads to a showdown that puts Laura and Ben’s emotional relationship and Laura’s pure spirit to the test. With the killer closing in, Laura discovers her destiny is linked to his and she has two choices–redeem him or kill him.

Praise for A Human Element:
“A Human Element is an elegant and haunting first novel. Unrelenting, devious but full of heart. Highly recommended.” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling author

Praise for A Hidden Element:
“Fascinating…a haunting story about just how far parents will go to protect, or destroy, their children in the name of love.”—Rebecca Cantrell, New York Times best-selling author

Purchase A Human Element here: On sale for just $0.99 10/27 – 11/2! http://mybook.to/AHumanElement

Purchase A Hidden Element here: On sale for FREE 10/27 – 10/31!
http://myBook.to/AHiddenElement

Donna Galanti Bio:
Donna Galanti is the author of the paranormal suspense Element Trilogy and the children’s fantasy adventure Joshua and The Lightning Road series. Donna is a contributing editor for International Thriller Writers the Big Thrill magazine and blogs with other middle grade authors at Project Middle Grade Mayhem. She’s lived from England as a child, to Hawaii as a U.S. Navy photographer. Donna enjoys teaching at conferences on the writing craft and marketing and also presenting as a guest author at elementary and middle schools. Visit her at www.elementtrilogy.com and www.donnagalanti.com. She also loves building writer community. See how at www.yourawesomeauthorlife.com

Connect with Donna:
Twitter https://twitter.com/DonnaGalanti
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DonnaGalantiAuthor/
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5767306.Donna_Galanti

Enter to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Planting the Seeds of the Garden of Fiends | Guest Post

Hi, guys! To those of you I promised an update, we were able to demolish our old house last week. Things are starting to settle down, and I will be back this Saturday with a much better update.

As for today, I'm very excited to welcome Mark Matthews to Book Den! Mark is the editor and a contributing author of the addiction themed anthology Garden of Fiends: Tales of Addiction Horror.

Planting the Seeds of the Garden of Fiends

By Mark Matthews, editor and contributing author

From an early age, books shaped who I was. Writers were heroes to emulate. I wanted to be Thoreau, I wanted to be Mark Twain. I wanted to be Jack Kerouac.

There was something inside me that only stories could reach, a music only literature could play.

A similar reaction occurred when I had my first drink. The warm confidence, the blissful contentment. A union with God. All my curses lifted, all my deficits erased. It was love at first sip. Other drugs soon followed. I said “no” to nothing, “yes” to everything.

Pretty soon, I needed it to function. I started drinking alone. Getting shakes. Sweats. I went on drug binges and mixed drinking with cocaine, acid, or crystal meth every chance I could. I needed substances to feel normal, otherwise, I had perpetual flu-like symptoms and was intensely angry and bitter at the world. I didn’t care if I died and was quite certain that, due to drugging and drinking, I would die before I was 30 years old.

I nearly proved myself right. By 23 years old, I had alcoholic hepatitis of the liver, a swollen pancreas, my stomach was bleeding and I was shitting blood (sorry, I know that’s gross to read). More than once I went to detox to sober up after the pain got too much, but then I would drink soon as they released me. When money got tight and I needed $1.89 for a half pint of vodka, I visited car washes since that was the best place to gather 10 cent cans. Crazy thing was, the more disgusting I became, the more I needed to delude myself about who I really was. In my twisted mind, I was some misunderstood genius who society hadn’t found a place for, and therefore drinking was my only crutch to live with lesser mortals. Truth was, I was a pathetic lump of flesh.

A turning point came when, rather than just detox, I finally succumbed and went to residential treatment for 3 weeks. I didn’t want to go, but I had no other options. My body could not take any more liquor in it. My spirit was drenched with despair. I remember sitting in the treatment center, unable to stop the tears, and looking out the window with plans to leave, but I had no place to go. Instead, I stayed put, endured the pain of living, and found some humility and some courage. Each day sober felt like a miracle. I learned so much about why I was doing what I was doing, how to stop it, and most importantly, decided my life was worth saving.

No way in hell did I ever think I would go back to college to help other addicts, but that’s what I did. I got a masters in counseling, became a certified addictions counselor, and worked in many different treatment centers. My curse had changed to my calling.

And I returned to my desire to write.

Once I got sober, I started writing again. Writing out the darkness I had experienced was incredibly therapeutic, for if you want to tell the truth, best to do so by making up a story. I wrote one novel, Stray, which was based on a treatment center where I worked that shared a parking lot with an animal shelter. Next I wrote MILK-BLOOD, which tackled poverty, urban despair, and heroin addiction with a supernatural slant. Many readers were shocked by the darkness in the book, but the crazy thing is, it was all true (even if it didn’t happen) and much of the darkness in the book was actually understated. After writing the sequel, All Smoke Rises, I decided to reach out to other authors of dark fiction to see how they would tackle the subject of addiction.

The blog post for ‘addiction horror’ received 10,000 hits. I received hundreds of submissions and had to boil these down to eight pieces, largely of long fiction and novellas. I can’t promise you’ll like this collection, but I can promise it is different. In scope, in length of stories, in content. I’m incredibly proud of what’s inside, since addiction and horror seem a perfect fit. In order to tackle the modern day epidemic of addiction, it takes works of horror to fully explore the devastation.

Addicts, in a certain sense, are not that different than vampires: they live within society but hide their true nature while they feed off the living, siphoning their money, their sanity, always safest in the shadows. They feel cursed with their affliction but unable to stop the compulsion to suck the blood out of others.

And the family of an addict suffers as if something monstrous has taken over their loved one. I can’t help but think of the movie The Exorcist, perhaps the most terrifying horror movie ever made, as an analogy of a family dealing with addiction.

In The Exorcist, a desperate mother seeks out every kind of professional help after her daughter starts acting strangely. Nobody has answers. Things get worse, the young girl’s behavior gets more bizarre. Her very skin seems to be changing. The last resort is to seek help from something spiritual. A war begins to save a life. This true horror story happens every day, probably on your street. Parents losing their child to an addiction that has possessed their spirit. Thankfully, there are parents who are having their child saved through recovery. I know it works. I’ve seen the horror and the damage done, and I’ve seen many come out the other side and survive. Not without their share of scars.

This is the story of some of them. Check out Garden of Fiends: Tales of Addiction Horror

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The intoxication from a pint of vodka, the electric buzz from snorting cocaine, the warm embrace from shooting heroin--drinking and drugging provide the height of human experience. It's the promise of heaven on earth, but the hell that follows is a constant hunger, a cold emptiness. The craving to get high is an intense yearning not unlike that of any other blood-thirsty monster.

The best way to tell the truths of addiction is through a story, and dark truths such as these need a piece of horror to do them justice.

The stories inside feature the insidious nature of addiction told with compassion yet searing honesty. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental deaths, and some of the most incredible names in horror fiction have tackled this modern day epidemic.

• A WICKED THIRST, by Kealan Patrick Burke
• THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE, by Jessica McHugh
• EVERYWHERE YOU'VE BLED AND EVERYWHERE YOU WILL, by Max Booth III
• FIRST, JUST BITE A FINGER, by Johann Thorsson
• LAST CALL, by John FD Taff
• TORMENT OF THE FALLEN, by Glen Krisch
• GARDEN OF FIENDS, by Mark Matthews
• RETURNS, by Jack Ketchum

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Mark Matthews has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of Michigan and a Master’s Degree in Counseling. He is the author of five novels, including On the Lips of Children, MILK-BLOOD, and All Smoke Rises. All of his novels are based on true settings, many of them inspired by his work as a counselor in the field of mental health and treatment of addiction. He's the editor of the anthology GARDEN OF FIENDS: TALES OF ADDICTION HORROR. He lives near Detroit with his wife and two daughters. Reach him at xmarkm@gmail.com

Horror Author John McNee Recommends 5 Books He Hasn't Read | Horror Spotlight

Horror Spotlight is a feature highlighting the newest in horror fiction. If you would like to connect with me or contribute to my Horror Spotlight posts, please feel free to drop me a comment or send me an email at bookdenblog(at)gmail(dot)com.

Today John McNee is recommending 5 recent horror books he thinks we should take a chance on. Pay close attention because he managed to find some really great books I missed on my February post! Also be sure to check out John's latest release Prince of Nightmares. It came out in January just before I started doing my horror spotlight posts.

HORROR AUTHOR JOHN MCNEE RECOMMENDS
5 BOOKS HE HASN'T READ

I don't read as much as I know I probably should or would like to. I spend more time reading about new books I'd like to read than actually reading them. That makes recommending new books I know are definitely good, pretty close to impossible (unless I just lie about having read them, which I guess I could do – why don't I just do that?).
What I'm going to do instead is recommend five recently published books that I think look worth checking out. And I'm going to tell you why.

1. THE VIOLATORS by VINCENZO BILOF

RELEASED: Feb 23rd, 2016
WHAT'S IT ABOUT: Alan Chambers, an anxious loser whose goal is to become a prominent English professor, has just been accepted into the exclusive class on The Artistry of Contemporary Literature. His excitement is dampened when he learns that his new classmates are dedicated to human violation in the name of art. They have given Alan one responsibility—destroy them. These literary violators have discovered a primal link between literature, art, sexuality, and murder. But rape and kidnapping as a means to analyze the works of James Joyce and Homer have lost their allure, and only Alan can save them from themselves.

WHY I THINK IT MIGHT BE GOOD: Awesome cover aside, I've seen a few mentions of 'The Violators' kicking around social media, many from Bilof and authors talking about how they expected he would face a lot of flak for what he puts on the page here. Quite a few mentions of 'pitchforks'. I don't know how much of that is true and how much just marketing hype, but either way it's made me curious enough that I want to find out. Plus I don't really understand or enjoy a lot of pretentious highbrow literature, so if Bilof's taking aim at that crowd then I'll probably get a fair amount of enjoyment out of it, provided the violence is plentiful. I also gravitate towards most any book with an 'anxious loser' as its protagonist. Which brings me to...

2. GRAVEYARD LOVE by SCOTT ADLERBERG

RELEASED: Feb 1st, 2016
WHAT'S IT ABOUT: Thirty five year old writer Kurt Morgan lives with his mother across the street from a graveyard. He becomes obsessed with a red-haired woman who visits the graveyard often, watching her through the telescope in his room. Whose grave does she visit every time she comes? he wonders. Meanwhile, he is writing the memoir his mother has pressured him to write, her own. She wants her book finished, and soon. Among these three - Kurt, the graveyard visitor, and Kurt's mother- a twisted triangle develops, with each person pursuing their specific obsession at all costs.

WHY I THINK IT MIGHT BE GOOD: Another loser as protagonist. I know a 35-year-old living with his mother isn't all that unusual in today's strained economy, but couple it with the voyeurism and red-head stalking and I'm pretty sure 'loser' is what we're dealing with here. Having said that, I'm prone to the occasional bout of obsession over red-heads myself, so I'm not one to judge. In all seriousness, these sound like they could be some interesting characters, with an original dynamic and a mysterious premise. I'm already interested to know why the red-head's always visiting the graveyard, what's in Kurt's mom's memoirs and what the hell's going to become of them all, and I haven't even cracked the cover.

3. THE MASTER'S MARIONETTES by GJ WOOD

RELEASED: Dec 7th, 2015
WHAT'S IT ABOUT: A group of strangers are drawn to a strange, dark place like marionettes with hidden strings. Boyd Shingles, a middle-aged property dealer, duped into purchasing The Red House; the disfigured and murderous Mr Clay, instructed by the voices coursing though the old building; Cullen, a former henchman manipulated and tortured by the puppeteer; Abbott, an old fisherman, and his granddaughter, Lily.
All have been drawn into the horrible show by The Master of the Marionettes himself, Leopold Carr, a malevolent occultist committed to violent and perverse sacrificial tributes.
No one is safe when the Master of the Marionettes pulls his strings and brings forth a long-forgotten evil that will change their world forever...

WHY I THINK IT MIGHT BE GOOD: Well, there's the title. I like that title. A lot. And while I'm a little disappointed that the synopsis doesn't mention any actual puppets (I guess that was too much to hope for?) it still sounds pretty interesting. A group of strangers, drawn into a web of terror which they cannot comprehend. Who lives? Who dies? What is the 'long-forgotten evil' and will it actually show up? It sounds to me like this book could be a lot of fun. Above all else, I'm drawn towards a book that promises a truly captivating villain. The Master of Marionettes, Leopold Carr, sounds like he could be the real deal. I'd like to find out.

4. EXPERIMENTAL FILM by GEMMA FILES

RELEASED: Dec 3rd, 2015
WHAT'S IT ABOUT: Former Canadian film history teacher Lois Cairns - jobless and depressed in the wake of her son's autism diagnosis - accidentally discovers the existence of lost early 20th century Ontario filmmaker Mrs. A. Macalla Whitcomb. By deciding to investigate how Mrs. Whitcomb's obsessions might have led to her mysterious disappearance, Lois unwittingly invites the forces which literally haunt Mrs. Whitcomb's films into her life, eventually putting her son, her husband and herself in danger.

WHY I THINK IT MIGHT BE GOOD: I just love the set-up of this. I like stories in which characters unwittingly lay the groundwork for their own doom, like in 'Heart-shaped Box', say, when Judas Coyne kicks everything off by bidding for the titular box on Ebay. I like the simplicity of that, coupled with the irresistible premise of an investigation into forgotten film-lore. There is a noted creepiness to a lot of early 20th century film and I'm curious about how that could be realised on the page. Full disclosure – I actually have my own idea for a horror novel involving the investigation into the history of a mysterious film. I'd quite like to read this to find out how close our ideas are, if Files nails it, and whether I should just toss my idea out.

5. I WILL ROT WITHOUT YOU by DANGER SLATER

RELEASED: Feb 23rd, 2016
WHAT'S IT ABOUT: Ernie's life is a mess. Gretchen's gone, and the apartment they once shared is this grey, grim city is now overrun with intelligent mold and sinister bugs. Then his neighbor Dee shows up, so smart and lovely. If he can just get past the fact that her jealous boyfriend could reach out of her blouse and punch him in the face at any moment, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
Unfortunately for all involved, a Great Storm is coming and it will wash away everything we've ever known about the human heart.

WHY I THINK IT MIGHT BE GOOD: Of all the writers I'm recommending, Danger Slater is the only one I've actually read, so I'm pretty comfortable saying this is a book you should probably read, even though it seems he's aiming to push the disgust-o-meter to breaking point. From what I can gather, this book is about a man who starts to rot after his girlfriend leaves him, with added cockroaches (I think this is right, but again... I haven't read it). The breakdown of the human body as a metaphor for the breakdown of a relationship is a sound one, offering plenty of scope for grotesque descriptions, but I also know that Slater is the kind of writer who can inject such squalid scenes with a ton of heart and humour, with a flair for the kind of bizarre characters and situations that you don't get anywhere else. Plus, it has another abject loser as its protagonist and we all know how much I respond to that (please no reading too much into this).

So those are my five. If you haven't read them, please read them. If you have read any of them, what did you think? Are they any good? Was I right to recommend them? You'll all probably find out before I do.

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John McNee is a writer of strange and disturbing horror stories, published in a variety of strange and disturbing anthologies, as well as the novel 'Prince of Nightmares'.

He is also the author of 'GrudgePunk', probably the only dieselpunk-bizarro-horror-noir anthology around.

He lives on the west coast of Scotland, where he works for a trade magazine.

Prince of Nightmares by John McNee

Goodreads | Amazon

Welcome to the Ballador Country House Hotel. Nestled in the highlands of Scotland, it is unlike any other lodging. Guests can expect wonderful scenery, gourmet food, and horrifying nightmares—guaranteed. Daring travelers pay thousands to stay within the Ballador’s infamous rooms because of the vivid and frightening dreams the accommodations inspire.

Before Josephine Teversham committed suicide, she made a reservation at the hotel for her husband, Australian magnate Victor Teversham. Once he arrives at the hotel, Victor finds himself the target of terrifying forces, revealing the nightmares and their purpose to be more strange, personal, and deadly than anyone could have guessed.

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Thank you, John!

Guest Post & Giveaway | Flawed Characters and the Arc of Redemption

Flawed Characters and the Arc of Redemption by Jamie Schultz

I like my fictional characters flawed. And by “flawed,” I don’t mean they’re a little clumsy, or a little socially inept in some humorous but harmless way, or that they have any of a dozen other cute, quirky flaws that ultimately have no bearing on the outcome of a story—I mean flawed in almost a Greek tragedy sense. They have a single, pervasive, possibly catastrophic flaw that they struggle with throughout the story, a flaw that will ultimately prove their undoing if they don’t address it.

When I say “flawed,” what I mean is that they make bad decisions, almost always as a result of some single, specific character problem. Caul Shivers, in Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold is one of my favorite examples. He can’t stay away from violence, even when he wants to try to be a better man, and as a result he signs on as muscle for somebody else’s revenge trip, even though he knows better. Unsurprisingly, he ends up paying a heavy price for it. Jack Torrance in The Shining is another good example—his ego and his focus on himself ends up opening the door to all kinds of badness, ultimately turning him into a puppet operated by the Overlook Hotel. Another great example is Walter White, from TV’s Breaking Bad. “I am in the empire-building business,” he says, his chest all puffed out, and, well—look how that worked out for him.

Those are all interesting stories to me, but you’ll notice one common thread: All these characters are destroyed, or nearly so, as a result of their flaw. That’s a valid, interesting, and often heartbreaking arc, and I get a lot from those stories. However, there’s a propensity for them to turn very cynical, and while I don’t mind a little cynicism from time to time, I don’t want to wallow in it.

The flipside of those stories is the story in which the character overcomes his or her flaw. Going back to Stephen King, I was always partial to Larry Underwood from The Stand, who chronically uses up everybody around him and then throws them away when he gets what he needs. Through the course of the story, he makes a conscious decision to move away from that, partly as a result of some pretty traumatic failures in that department early on. I’ve read the book maybe a dozen times, and still, every time I get to the part where he turns away from Nadine, I breathe a sigh of relief.

Those are the stories that really resonate with me. Let’s face it, we all fuck up. We do things we wish we hadn’t, and often we do them knowing at the time that we’re making a bad decision, but we go ahead and do them anyway (anybody who’s had regrettable post-breakup sex with an ex can now hang their heads in shame with me). These stories give me a little hope that people really can change, that I can become a better person, and I feel a little swell in my heart, a sense of triumph at humanity’s better side when I can vicariously live that experience through a great character.

When I wrote Premonitions (arguably, when I write anything), I had that very much in mind. The characters in the story are virtually all criminals, some with better reasons than others, but there are a lot of flaws to go around. The main protagonist, Karyn Ames, struggles with a bizarre condition in which she hallucinates the future—handy in a pinch, but when dozens of possibilities, some presented metaphorically, start crowding her perception, the real world can get swamped in a hurry. The only control over it is an expensive black market drug, and Karyn has gone into a life of crime, basically shoveling money down the hole of her treatment as fast as she can make it.

At the story’s outset, Karyn and her crew are offered a ludicrous sum of money to steal an object of occult significance for a notorious crime lord. For Karyn, who has lived in desperation for all of her adult life, it looks like a way out. That desperation, understandable as it may be, leads her to turn a blind eye to some very ominous developments—and, as we all know, no heist story would be complete if everything went according to plan.

Other characters in the story struggle with their own demons—sometimes in a very literal sense—and most of them are working toward either redemption or simply escaping the consequences.

I can’t say that all the characters find happy endings, and I can’t promise that all of them find the resolution—or escape—they seek, but I can say that I tried hard not to let the story become cynical. It’s a dark story, make no mistake, but redemption (or at least the possibility) is there, and I find that that holds the door open enough to let some light in.

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You can find out more information about Jamie at his website: http://www.jamieschultz.net/.

Follow Jamie:
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Premonitions:
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Jamie is offering one lucky Book Den reader a print copy of Premonitions. US only.

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