Fall is Family Time
and Family Horror is better in the Fall
Hey friends,
Coming out of Halloween with some new recs and news on the publishing front.
Clay McLeod Chapman has squeezed his way into my life over the past few years as one of my all-time favorite writers. From comics to short stories to novels (and at least one play currently being staged in NYC), everything of his I’ve put my eyes on has hit me in the stomach with emotion and drawn me into the lives of such vividly realized characters, I can’t help but put whatever he writes near the very top of my towering TBR pile.
This is certainly true with one of his most recent releases, the short novel KILL YOUR DARLING.
I read this book in a single sitting. Couldn't put it down. Absolutely gripping and earned every last iota of my attention until I gently placed it down after the last line and stared off into the distance of my house for a few minutes, thinking about my wife and children and family and pain and vengeance and sadness and all of the things Clay effuses his writing with.
Get this book and read it, consume it, breathe it, and then be sad and scared and feeling things for a while. You'll be glad you did.
JK-LOL by Patrick Barb (available January 14, 2025)
This modern riff on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson gave me another single-sitting read, and another heart-rending family tragedy.
Barb lays down the meanest rollercoaster of a book in this novella. He launches out of the gate with his Jeckyll and Hyde/split identity set-up, and kicks you in the pants with steel toed boots, driving full bore into the pure mean-spirited nature of our tenaciously online existence.
Don’t expect happy endings or safety on the other side, as what you’ll find in the shadows between these pages is humanity’s own darkness peering back at you, whispering to you, tugging on the worst impulses you may harbour in the wrinkles of your gray matter.
Patrick Barb won’t let you hide, so come along for the ride.
And finally, we come to something I am very excited to announce: I have a story in Hotel Macabre Vol 1, coming from Crystal Lake Publishing this December! The Table of Contents on this anthology is stacked, and I am honored to share this book with so many outstanding authors, of which there are too many to name here.
My contribution to this (“A Message from the Past, A Message from the Future”)
was a place winner in Crystal Lake’s monthly Shallow Waters flash fiction contest. It tells the story of a girl caught in a time loop immediately prior to nuclear annihilation, and has a brief homage to my grandfather, Ray K Gensler, who worked on the Manhattan Project himself (and whose certificate from the US Army Corps of Engineers - Manhattan District, I still have).
In any case, pre-orders are live, and if you are reading this, I can almost guarantee you’ll find much to love in this first of its kind anthology, and the start of a new series from the indie press darling Crystal Lake.
That is all for now!
Thanks for reading and supporting my writing. Go check out those newest works from CMC and PBarb!
—
JG