Book Review: MalContents

Independent newcomers Grand Mal Press have recently released MalContents, a kick ass quartet of novellas by four rising stars of the genre.

First up is Howler by Randy Chandler; a ripping tale set in the American South of the 1930s. When a hairy prostitute known as Wolf Girl escapes captivity in a whorehouse, she joins a carnival of sideshow freaks where she falls under the psychic influence of a strange specimen in a jar.

Historical horror can be difficult to pull off, especially when writers make the mistake of emulating the slower pace of yesteryear in their quest for a more authentic feel. Their dialogue can often sound stilted for the same reason, so it was great to see Chandler avoid these pitfalls with a contemporary style that was constantly engaging.

Next up is The Mushrooms by Gregory L. Norris. When a crazed woman attacks a celebrity chef over claims of plagiarism, the TV host retreats to an isolated cottage in order to recuperate, only to discover it isn’t the safe haven she thought it was.

This is a very well written story and Norris does a fine job of creating an atmosphere of claustrophobic terror within the cottage. He also displays considerable skill in handling a bizarre concept that could have easily come off as b-grade in lesser hands.

Choose by Ryan C. Thomas is the tale of a computer repairman on the run from a madman who’s threatened to kill the repairman’s wife and daughter unless he kills one of them himself.
This is perhaps the darkest of the four novellas, a powerful story that is every bit as bleak and harrowing as it is compelling.

Finally we have The Outsider Trio by David T. Wilbanks, where a man in search of the woman he loves gets caught up in supernatural events after discovering she’s been kidnapped by occultists. This is another fine story that ventures even further into the fantastical than the preceding three, and deftly contrasts action with an overall mood of creeping dread.

Wilbanks describes himself as a writer of horror, fantasy & adventure, and this is a great example of how he blends all three into his own distinctive style.

I really can’t find anything to dislike about MalContents, and look forward to reading more from each of these writers and more from Grand Mal Press.

Update

Page Horrific is no more, so future reviews will be posted right here on Asylumwindows in addition to other prominent sites such as Amazon.

Free Fiction

I’ve had a request to post some of my flash fiction, so I have.

First up, here’s my ten-word terror.

POL POT’S LAST WORDS.

‘It was art. Transforming people. Those fields were outdoor exhibitions.’

And here’s my 80 word story that I mentioned in the previous post.

COMPULSION.

Alone. Scared. Frail. Helpless.
Nose. Mouth. Open. Waiting.
Clamp. Pinch. Tighten. Hold.
Gaze. Dim. Fading. Gone.

Doors. Halls. Lights. Noise.
Shudder. Surge. Thrill. Joy.
Exit. Street. Night. Bliss.
Dizzy. High. Euphoric. Faint.

Stop. Sit. Rest. Breathe.
Calm. Quiet. Steady. Still.
Stare. Space. Moon. Stars.
Trance. Numb. Blank. Void.

Blink. Cold. Stiff. Sore.
Itch. Need. Crave. Ache.
Rise. Stretch. Walk. Seek.
Paths. Stairs. Symbols. Signs.

Wings. Wards. Floors. Rooms.
Curtains. Beds. Lumps. Snores.
Scan. Choose. Wake. Inform.
Old. Feeble. Useless. Next.

Micro Fiction: How short can a story be?

Over the last few years the definition of flash fiction within much of the horror genre seems to have changed from a 1000 words or less to a 100 words or less. In an age of interactive social media and shrinking attention spans, short fiction that’s freely available online is a great way for writers to get exposure, but how much shorter can fiction become and still retain the elements that comprise a story?

When I first heard about The Campaign For Real Fear, the 500-word limit looked daunting. I’d never tried my hand at anything that short before, but Christopher Fowler and Maura McHugh who were running the Campaign, said that if writers couldn’t scare them in 500 words they wouldn’t be able to do it in 5,000.

So I surprised myself when I did indeed manage to write a story under 500 words that was more than just the seed of an idea. My surprise only increased when it won a place in the competition, and a few months later I wrote a 250-word story. Then a story using just 100 words.

Surely a hundred words was as short as a story could be and still have some kind of plot with a resolution, etc. A quick internet search however, revealed numerous short story blogs and contests with a limit of just fifty-five words. I read a few of these ultra shorts. Some of them were pointless, little more than thoughts. But others were good, and they told a story. In just 55 words.

Surely this was the limit.

But a few days ago the excellent Tim Waggoner posted a challenge to his followers on Facebook and Google + to write a horror story using only ten words. Had Waggoner not posted his own example called FANGS, I might have remained unconvinced it could be done. Yet I surprised myself again by writing a ten-word story of my own. Whether or not it’s any good is another matter, but the exercise got me thinking: how much lower could the word limit go?

Eighteen months ago I’d barely written anything under two thousand words. Now I’m writing stories using a couple of hundred. The shortest story I’ve written so far is eighty words. Tim Waggoner got it down to ten. Hemingway reportedly wrote this six-word gem:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

But this is Hemingway, master of brevity. Surely it couldn’t get any lower than six.

Wrong again.

Another internet search revealed multiple websites that list numerous five words stories allegedly penned by a stack of famous writers.
But if five is doable, how about four?
Is three possible?
Two?

Surely two is the absolute limit, because no one, not even Hemingway, could possibly write a one-word story. But then I remembered that someone already had.

When I was a kid, I owned a Giant Book Of Facts, and one of these facts concerned a writing competition where the winning entry was a book entitled Who Rules The World?
Printed on an otherwise blank page was a single word:

Money.

Apparently it was a bestseller.

The Campaign for Real Fear revisited

Peter Tennant is one of the editors and columnists for Black Static magazine. He recently posted his thoughts on the winning Real Fear stories here, which include a nice little summary of my story Showtime.

Thank you Mr Tennant.

Looking At The World With Broken Glass In My Eye

That’s the title of the début short story collection from Mark Justice, one half of the dynamic duo known as Justice and Wilbanks, creators of the Dead Earth zombie series.

The book has been published by the good people at Graveside Tales and apparently an ebook version will be coming out soon as well, so stay tuned.

Mr Justice has kindly posted a free story from the collection on his website for all to read. It’s called Life’s Work, and you can read it here.

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past few years, Mark Justice also hosts the excellent podcast Pod of Horror, which you can download at the equally excellent Horror World.

Shock Totem

It’s always nice to discover another magazine dedicated to horror and dark fiction, especially when it’s completely by accident. Tonight I stumbled upon Shock Totem by misspelling something I was searching for on Google.

Although this is only the 4th issue, the magazine has been going for over three years now. How it’s managed to escape my attention for that long is frankly beyond me, as I spend hours every week trawling the internet in search of new places to submit my stories.

Makes me wonder how many other magazines like this are out there that I still don’t know about.

Anyone care to name a few?

Free ebooks by Kealan Patrick Burke

I mentioned his début collection Ravenous Ghosts in a previous post and now I’ve just found out that the excellent Kealan Patrick Burke is generously giving away two of his books for free.

The Turtle Boy is a novella that I’ve been itching to read for a long time, and now it’s available for instant download in addition to a short story called Underneath.

The Turtle Boy has received rave reviews, so if you haven’t read any of Mr Burke’s wonderful work before, this is the perfect opportunity to start.

Download here and here.

Mangled Meat

This news had me salivating like a dog. Deadite Press has released yet another Edward Lee collection entitled Mangled Meat. As with Bullet Through Your Face, this one contains three more of Lee’s hard to find and highly sought after novellas – The Decortication Technician, The Cyesolagniac and Room 415.

And as if this alone wasn’t cause for celebration, the word is that later in the year Deadite will be re-releasing what is perhaps Lee’s most highly sought and impossible to find novella of all – the notorious Header.

But until then, get your copy of Mangled Meat here.

Dawn of a different kind of dead

Dead Earth: The Green Dawn is the début collaboration from two writers I first became aware of several years ago when I stumbled upon their excellent podcast, Pod Of Horror. Not only was POH a highly informative report on the world of horror fiction and the small press in particular, but Justice and Wilbanks were smart and funny and all their joking and clowning around made it one of the most entertaining podcasts the internet had to offer.

These days Wilbanks is no longer a co-host (come back Dave, your country needs you!) and the podcast is a lot more sporadic, but it’s still great and always worth waiting for.

So, given how well these two guys worked together on air, I was keen to see how they would gel as a writing team.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Jubal Slate is a small town deputy who wakes up one morning to find the horizon green and soon learns that something has gone very wrong with the world. The townsfolk have been having lucid dreams about an un-dead army led by a mysterious figure in red and a strange virus has broken out that blisters the skin and turns people into walking corpses.

The plot seems familiar at first, as do the small town characters with their visions of a sinister leader that reminded me of Randall Flagg from Stephen King’s classic post apocalyptic novel The Stand. But where other zombie stories tend to plunge straight into the action from the first scene, Green Dawn takes the time to let the reader get to know the characters first, so that we actually care what happens to them when things start to go bad.

Jubal’s personal loss leads him to strike out on his own after realising he may be immune to the virus and at this point it becomes apparent that the novella is just a prelude to a much larger tale with a science fiction element that indicates it’s going to be something quite different from what the first half of the book would lead you to expect.

Justice and Wilbanks are not only two up and coming writers but also huge fans of the genre they’re now contributing to, and it’s this sense of fun and enthusiasm that makes Dead Earth: The Green Dawn such a fast and enjoyable read that promise great things to come in Dead Earth: The Vengeance Road.