Undivine Interventions: Reviews of Horror Novels, Past and Present.

I'll be honest. I'd been eyeing the work of Jason Parent for a while, for a variety of reasons. He's garnered a significant amount of positive buzz over the past few years. He's very local to me, just one town over. His books all seem to have slightly off-kilter storylines...all things a guy who reads this kind of stuff looks for. Something different, but comfortable. When I was offered the opportunity to review the book, the author's debut novel, recently re-released by, for my money, the best publisher of horror fiction in the business right now, I was elated. Rightfully so. This book is fantastic. Notes of Chuck Palahniuk permeate the story in a wonderful way...Giving this book has serious mass-market potential. At the very least, I see it becoming a cult-classic of sorts to be revered by college students in a few years time. Jason Parent has some serious ability to tell a story, with an incredibly unique voice and it's that quality that makes What Hid...

There's not much that I can say as a reader of horror fiction about the passing of Ketchum that hasn't already been said. Authors, readers, publishers and horror fans in general across the globe are remorseful for a myriad of reasons, and understandably. In my opinion, and many others, Ketchum revolutionized the genre. Outside of his professional achievements, he was an incredibly humble, kind man. I had the pleasure of meeting him, twice, at conventions and I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the more personal interactions I've ever had with an author of his status. I had the opportunity to share with him how my Warner books copy of The Girl Next Door had been borrowed by a former friend and never returned. We both chalked it up to it being that the book is just that good, that visceral, that outside of the genre norms and mores, that once you read it, you just had to have it. He signed me a brand new copy and we shook hands, a horror fiction fanboy like mysel...

As a collector of the books now known as "Paperbacks from Hell", tomes of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the biggest lure for a guy like me is great cover art. We are often pulled into books with cover art that promises more than the book can ever deliver. Lurid and beautifully drawn, with ghastly creatures and gruesome acts often depicted, the covers often serve as the best advertisement the stories within can hope for. This is particularly true for the obscure authors, the ones long forgotten, who often wrote a book or two and vanished. Books like John McCarty's sole offering to the fiction world, Deadly Resurrection, generally come equipped with some depiction that alludes to a feeling that "man, this book is going to be cool...", And nothing sold books better during this time. Which is what leads me to ask the question...what the hell was St. Martin's Press, who put this out to little fanfare in 1990, thinking?  This has got to be some of the blandest artwor...

Let's skip all the fun and games, the flowery narrative around my reading of a book for once, shall we? The nitty-gritty, brass tacks and all that: J.Z. Foster is destined for great things. I sense serious mainstream crossover potential after reading this, his debut novel, Witch Hunter: Into The Outside. Richard Fitcher is a lonesome hack of a witch hunter. Looking to meet some new  friends, thinking he's getting involved with some LARPers, Richard ends up a hokey  hoax. He gets more than he bargained for when he's volunteered to help a down-on-her-luck newscaster and her cameraman shoot a story on a local Autumn festival in supposedly bewitched town. Things get quicky out of hand and the three are up against all sorts of supernatural beings. It's up to our faux-hero to get it together and become a real hero to save not only their lives, but the whole town from a very real bewitching at the hands of a wicked Warlock. I had a great time with this one. It's a bit ...

My first read of 2018! My first read of age 32! Ohhh, AND it's a William Schoell book! Not only that, but it's probably his most adored, most highly revered title, Late at Night. This makes it sound like there is some sort of system to the order in which I read and review these, and one of these days there may be. But honestly, I generally just pick a book that interests me, and if it's any good, I put a pile of the author's other work in my to-be-read and go from there. Then I read something else and my interest goes somewhere else, and other things trump it in the pile...it's really quite a mess. I wish there was a science to the whole thing. I need a secretary. In any event, given that this is the third Schoell book I've read in the short life of this blog, and I keep coming back to him time and time again...it means I like his books, quite a bit. Late at Night demonstrates exactly why. It's classic, pitch perfect 80s horror fiction. This is the kin...