Dark Humor | Novella Review | AstraDaemon

LOCH NESS by Matt Shaw is more dark humor than horror. Entertaining and full of cheeky characters, but not what I was hoping for.

The author raised the bar pretty damn high with BELOW DECK, and I haven't been fully satisfied with Shaw since then.

I still enjoy his writing, and I recommend this one to his fans, who will appreciate the details the most.

As always,

AstraDaemon

Bloody Stumps

WHAT WE KILL by Howard Odentz is a mystery-thriller centered on four friends who can't remember the night before:

One has a triangle burned into his forearm.
One has lost her pants.
One is missing his glass eye.
The last is covered in blood.

As images of big, black eyes and the cries of sheep haunt their addled brains, the town fire alarm and police sirens can be heard in the distance.

What is happening to them? What is happening to their pristine town?
What's more, why can't they remember any of it?
What . . . what did they do?

Even though the story moves at a steady pace, alternating bits and pieces of memory with backstories of their adolescent lives is quite maddening. I read the book in one sitting because I had to know what in the hell happened to them. The ending is completely worth the effort. I think this story would make a great movie.

At first, I couldn't stand the narrator's constant need to explain their family situations and relationships with one another, but when a huge secret is revealed towards the end, I understood why the author laid out every detail of their personal issues.

Odentz has a special gift for mixing young people and family drama into horrifying stories, in the most surprising ways. Not only do I recommend this novel, I also suggest reading his stories, SNOW and BONES.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Blame Jane Fonda

BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW by Rachel Asher is a riot. Any story which begins with demons worried about getting "bitch slapped by the almighty Lucifer" has me completely hooked. There are so many great lines in this short story, I couldn't stop grinning.

I felt some apprehension as the two demons moved in on their quarry. The foreshadowing is pretty good, but I felt some confusion at the revelation. Took me a moment or two to understand exactly what had happened.

I wouldn't call this horror by any means, but Asher has created an entertaining piece of dark humor.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Dinner With A Friend

SPECIMEN 313 by Jeff Strand features a mad scientist experimenting with flesh-eating plants, but the story is told from the POV of one plant in particular. Max starts to feel a bit off, but his mood changes when a new specimen named Jenny is planted next to him.

The plants are my favorite characters. Strand's creation is a mix of The Happening with Little Shop of Horrors. I enjoyed the scene with the discarded plant cursing at the others, and I wish the author had included more interactions within the greenhouse experiments.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Devil's Dining Room

His mother is filling her days with vodka and orange juice, and his psychotic little sister keeps cutting the heads off her dolls. His delusional grandfather won't stop staring at non-existent cows in the pasture, and their farm dog is acting meaner than usual.

Everyone blames Cooper for the tragic accident which took his girlfriend’s life. Now a group of slackers from Mount Tom Regional High School are gathering deep in a forest clearing—at the Devil’s Dining Room—eager for the rising of her ghost on Devil’s Night, the eve before Halloween.

Bones by Howard Odentz is nothing like what I expected. I thought it would be the story of a troubled young man haunted by a ghost. Instead, Odentz has created a family drama with a supernatural twist. While I suspected there was a hidden layer, the depth of Cooper's pain is a horrifying surprise.

Odentz weaves one hell of a ghost story with the darkest of details.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Nothing Is What It Seems [Interview]

Mists of the Dead by Travis Adkins resembles a blend of Warhammer fantasy, zombie horror and Monty Python humor. This is nothing like Adkins previous work, Twilight of the Dead and After Twilight...more like something one would find in a hardcore RPG session. There is a lengthy setup as characters are introduced one by one, while Warrel the Suave has several detailed interactions in the process of preparing for a lengthy journey with a famous wizard.

Once the travel party is underway, I almost died laughing at the name of the God of Crossroads, but I managed to keep reading. The variety of creatures they encounter is amazing and the descriptions are so good, at times I felt I was right there with Warrel and the others.

The novel is well-written and has a lot to offer readers, but there were times I struggled to get through the slow pace. I had several false starts in the reading process because I needed to be in the right mood for this genre mix. I also disliked Warrel quite a bit...he has such a high opinion of himself, very irritating...but his annoying qualities made him a more interesting character.

I asked Adkins to stop by the Lair to answer some questions about his latest release to offer more insight into Mists of the Dead...

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Author Travis Adkins with his wife, Rebecca.

Q. Mists of the Dead is quite a departure from your writing style in Twilight of the Dead, or any of your previous work, for that matter…where did the idea for this story come from?

The idea began, very roughly, as a short story I started writing to go into Permuted Press’ Undead Anthology volume 2 or 3, (wherever it would fit,) way back in the day. It had the characters Warrel, Kogliastro, and Gumgen, and began on the Smuggler’s Trail. Characters had no backstory, and the story itself was going to be straight-up swords & sorcery versus zombies.

But I abandoned it. I don’t like sitting down in front of my computer and just “making up” a story as I go along. It feels too cheap—like I’m cheating the potential reader. It feels no different than when you were a kid at bedtime, or sitting around a campfire, and asked a grownup to tell you a story. Some people are better at it than others, but nonetheless there is a flood of improvised stories that in the end mean nothing. They have no substance. I don’t want to contribute to that, which is why I’m nowhere near prolific as I’d like to be.

But, it seems, no idea of mine stays abandoned forever. In my mind, over time, the characters grew, new situations were presented, and the world expanded. I keep a plethora of notes and outlines. My notes are probably as long, if not longer, than the novel itself. I add notes to stories every day. And only when the story was fully-formed, and had meaning, and had structure, did the urge become irresistible to sit down and put it together. I think that’s mainly why I don’t consider myself a writer—I’m more of a “story-putter-togetherer.”

“Where did the idea for the story come from,” though was your question. And the best answer I can give in a short amount of space is, there is a multitude of ideas wrapped in a skin of plot to hold them together, and bones to give them structure. In many ways the events and situations are an allegory for my autobiography.

Q. When I read this story, it kind of reminded me of the Gotrek & Felix books from Warhammer. Which genre influenced you more: fantasy or horror?

Every genre influenced me, but certainly fantasy and horror are at the forefront. Also, in the interest of sharing equal time: the unsung genre that most contributed was Victorian poetry and prose. It was verse I had never truly explored until I met my wife, who teaches Victorian literature, and so I desired to read the books she taught so as to better converse with her on the topic. For many years I did not write; I only read. And read and read and read. I read everything from many genres. Nothing did not disinterest me. But when it came to Victorian prose, I was absolutely smitten. I found publishing houses that helped give me my fix: Norton and Broadview republish the classics, and a company called Valancourt releases the really obscure stuff.

In your first question you addressed the different writing style, and I think this is a good place to explain it. This writing style is my default now. It’s how I see words structured when I’m forming paragraphs in my head. Mists of the Dead was so Victorian, in fact, that the final editor (and owner of Henchman Press,) Leo Champion, asked me to break up some of the longest paragraphs—paragraphs that sometimes went on for pages. The ideas and concepts of a Victorian paragraph are meant to be ingested—and ruminated upon—as a whole. (Similar to how I say Kurt Cobain’s songs are meant to be understood.) I was resistant at first to break up my paragraphs, until Leo said, “The Victorians have been dead for a hundred years.” And then I understood I needed to poke my head up a little further from antiquity.

Q. Did you have a specific audience in mind when you were creating the character Warrel? Why did you choose someone like him to share this adventure?

I made a bard because, especially in Dungeons & Dragons-type fantasy, they are generally considered jacks-of-all-trades. I needed a protagonist who thinks, sees, and feels, questions everything, and wants to learn as much as he can. A bard takes interest in all things and has a grasp of many topics. And in Warrel, I wanted to make the quintessential bard—a poet, a musician, a romanticist, an acrobat, quick-witted, silver-tongued, and able to seduce anyone or anything—every hallmark of a bard, and make the character feel real, not just a caricature for a roleplaying session. What would a bard be like in the flesh?

I said earlier the book functions as an allegory, and one of my intentions writing it was to present a kind of humanist philosophy. Now Warrel isn’t the best humanist, because this is a story and he is a bard, but he learns and he thinks and he feels.

Q. What was your process for creating this world and the characters who live within?

I’d say more than half of my exposure to the fantasy genre comes from games—tabletop and video. And these games have many sequels and the worlds within stretch for eons without any real change. Sure, there are wars and other calamities, but nothing is ever invented. And I always questioned, “Really?” Why are these worlds stagnant for so long? You could look at a map, and aside from geopolitical changes, the landscape is generally the same.

So for my world, and in keeping with my Victorian theme, the first rule was: Change. And I don’t think it’s difficult for a reader to understand. This is every fantasy world you’re familiar with, with the exception that it’s finally entered an Age of Steam. They have railroads, telegraphs, and rudimentary photography. If it dips its toes in Steampunk, it’s only incidentally. I wanted to explore, much in the same way of Victorian controversies, the fear of all this newness, and in a fantasy setting what all this innovation means for magic users. Which species will thrive under the weight of technological progress, and which will succumb?

Q. Do you have plans to do anything more with this particular world?

I have notes and outlines for several other novels that occur on Erda. They’ll take place all around the same time. Different characters, some overlap.

I’m currently working on a novel called Wickhaven. In a departure from the narrative structure of Mists of the Dead, it will have several point-of-view protagonists, including a paladin of a dead god, an archer from the Gold Wall, and Bartolio, the half-dwarven librarian cleric we saw in Nimbo’s shop.

Q. What else can readers expect from you in 2018?

By request I wrote a story, (after a month of outlining and research,) for an anthology by Thom Brannon and Rob Pegler called Wizards of Mass Destruction. It should be out this year.

Thank you for sharing!

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If you're not a true fan of the fantasy genre, don't even try to read this book...otherwise, prepare yourself for one hell of an adventure.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Saturday Short: Snow

An epic and sudden blizzard is blanketing Mount Tom Regional High School . . . in October. A dangerous man is stalking the hallways, and three teens harbor a secret that may get everyone killed if they don't figure out how to stop the snow and the rampage.

Snow by Howard Odentz is a brilliant mix of horror and folklore...one of the best short stories I've read in a long time. I love the mix of characters: an updated version of the Breakfast Club, complete with all the current social issues high school students have to deal with.

However, the threat they have to deal with is one of the oldest existing legends in the history of mankind. Odentz portrayal of this historical figure is the most original version I've ever come across. The details of the library attack scene are the perfect touch. I found every part of this story enthralling.

This is the kind of fiction I can recommend to everyone I know.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Sunday Survival: Owner's Apocalypse Manual

The Zombie Survival Manual by Sean T. Page is very detailed without being overwhelming. Many other survival books are so difficult to get through, it would be easier to take on an undead horde with your bare hands. This manual is much easier to navigate.

It’s entertaining without lowering itself to cheesy humor. It’s like a cross between an RPG guide and an Ology book (ex: Dragonology). There’s even a test at the end, and a couple of certificates that you can hang up in your doomsday shelter.

Last but not least, Sean Page is not someone jumping on the zombie bandwagon. He is an excellent horror writer, but his specialty is writing survival manuals. He has created a sub-genre of his very own. Check out his Alien Invasion Owners’ Resistance Manual, if you require more proof. Page ALWAYS does an incredible amount of research for his books.

There is a strong British influence within this book, but it is applicable to most countries. I definitely recommend Page’s manual to my fellow zombiephiles, regardless of your Z-plan.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Modern Fable

Be Careful What You Wish For by A.C. Hutchinson is a fantastic short story with dark humor. I thought it was funny...David had a gift, abused his gift and paid for it. Envisioning his table visitor as Samuel L. Jackson made it even better. The author did a fabulous job describing the characters. Hutchinson took a couple of common themes and twisted them together to form a modern fable.

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This story is going to be added to my nominee list for Top 2018 Short Stories. We need more modern tales like this. While I love the classics, Aesop's Fables aren't as popular as they once were and sometimes adults need reminding of those valuable lessons.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Weird Wednesday: LMAO

Coffee Break Murder Blues by Bart Hopkins Jr. is a sweet little piece of flash fiction that both reviewers and authors should read. Ironically, I was involved in a discussion about the pros and cons of authors reading reviews, so this find is perfect timing. Maybe I shouldn't laugh at a serial murder, but, such is life in the horror community.

In just a few pages, Hopkins hooks the reader, provides some entertainment and somehow manages to make his characters developed just enough to give the impression there is more story to be had. I think Hopkins needs to write something else with Jordan.

As always,
AstraDaemon