Living After Midnight

All hail the new flesh, er, the new media!

The advent of e-readers and near instantaneous delivery of a book over the internet is alarming to some, but is a great opportunity to others. Some savvy authors have adopted this as a method of cutting out the middle man, and as a way to get closer to the reader, and the possibilities going forward are frankly exciting. Of course, this places an even stronger burden on the consumer to tell the good from the bad without help from the marketing campaign of a major publisher. Today, some of the good stuff, a new anthology from editors David T. Wilbanks and Craig Clarke, called Living After Midnight.

(Caveat: counting the two editors and the contributors to this anthology, over half those involved are friends of mine to some degree. I believe this sort of information should be provided up front, so the reader knows of any possible bias. I try not to let personal feelings affect what I think about a story, but it is always possible I would be more kindly disposed to this book than to, say, Tales from the Taliban: The World’s Leading Terrorists Share Their Favorite Jihadist Fiction.)

There are six stories in Living After Midnight, all inspired by heavy metal/hard rock bands (each story title is the name of one such band). Less that discourage those of you who are fans of chamber music and Celine Dion, no knowledge of the heavy music scene is required to enjoy these stories, as the authors for the most part use a name or image as a starting point.

Randy Chandler’s story “Spooky Tooth” tells about a rocker’s connection to lycanthropy – with a twist.

Matthew Fryer’s story “Iron Maiden” features a ghostly galleon and eerie sirens luring men to their doom.

In “Black Sabbath”, Steven L. Shrewsbury’s characters inhabit a world after a zombie apocalypse. The zombies themselves have mostly rotted away, leaving the greatest danger to the survivors – each other.

Co-editor David T. Wilbanks gives us a story about magic and curses in “Judas Priest” a slam-bang story about dueling creatures from another plane of existence.

L. L. Soares provides the well-written “Slayer”, about an aging rocker’s inevitable encounter with the acolyte of great and powerful supernatural entity.

There has to be a favorite in every collection, and mine is “Motorhead” by Kent Gowran, a crime/chase/horror story that seems to have pure adrenaline mixed with its ink. Mr. Gowran understands the way a great pulp crime story is created: the writer strikes a match to the story on the first page, and watches it flame its way to the end. You’ll want to look for more from this author.

The book is well laid out, an important consideration, since typos and formatting errors are the pet peeve of the users of e-readers. Effort was put into this book to make sure that wasn’t a problem. The very cool artwork (seen to your right) is by Carrie Gowran.

Living After Midnight is available from Smashwords and Amazon, for the bargain price of just $2.99. It’s one of the things that make having an e-reader worthwhile, and I strongly recommend it to you.

.

Pod of Horror #55

Mark Justice' Pod of Horror, the best horror-related podcast in the known universe, has just posted their 55th episode. You can download it or listen to it at http://www.horrorworld.org/poh.htm. Mark interviews David Jack Bell, Nick Cato, and site favorite, the enormous and talented Steven L. Shrewsbury. As always, the beautiful Nanci Kalanta has all the news and latest goings-on in horror to share with the listeners. Check it out.
'

Tormentor Available For Order

A while back, I reviewed Steven Shrewsbury's new novel Tormentor. I didn't realize at the time it would be two-and-a-half months before it would be available from the publisher, but you can now order it directly from Lachesis here:
http://www.lachesispublishing.com/proddetail.asp?prod=Tormentor.
If you are a fan of Howardesque, action-packed stories, you should order it. And you can get three of them for the price of one "Limited edition."
'

Whore of Jericho

That header should see a spike in hits for the site, although I imagine anyone who come here after Googling “Whore” will be disappointed.

One of my favorite authors working today is Steven L. Shrewsbury, and of his work, I have a particular affection for his stories about the barbarian warrior Rogan. They are somewhat hard to find, however (a publisher who collected the Rogan stories would be doing a very good thing), so I was happy when a copy of the 2006 chapbook Whore of Jericho, featuring Rogan fell into my hands courtesy of my friend Mark Hickerson. It is obscure enough I couldn’t find any information about the publisher Pitch Black, LLC, so I imagine there aren’t that many hanging around.

The story opens in the ancient city of Jericho, with some exposition from the seer Kira, the wizard Elajac, and the artist Teragram, a scene that I found reminiscent of the three witches scene in MacBeth. Rogan and his woman Keevah have been hired, along with their fellow Kelts, to defend the city, and are in the process of concluding their final battle. Rather than being paid off, the pair are taken prisoner by Teragram and Elajac. It seems that Teragram practices a very peculiar sort of art, transforming humans directly and painfully into glass sculptures and she has her eyes set on Rogan as her next subject. Unfortunately for the sorcerous trio, Rogan has a knack for escaping from confinement, and isn’t the type to forgive and forget.

As always, Shrewsbury delivers a hard-hitting story in the grand tradition of sword & sorcery. Seek it out and read it.
‘

Tormentor

Author Steven L. Shrewsbury (Hawg, Thoroughbred) has long been compared to Robert E. Howard, who is best know for creating Conan the Barbarian, although he wrote in practically every paying field in the 20s and 30s. This comparison comes closer, in my opinion, in his new novel Tormentor, than any of his other work. Tormentor is the book Robert E. Howard would have written had he been born seventy years later.


Battlin’ John Kern is a former boxer, a one-time top contender. He gives up the ring after a man dies from his fists, and joins the Marines. After being wounded in a blast in Iraq, Kern begins seeing unworldly visions, which persist after he is sent to Germany. There, the visions lead him into a battle with a transsexual alchemist*, a group of necrophiliacs, and a cult dedicated to bringing a legendary torturer (the titular Tormentor) back from Hell to ravage the Earth. Kern is never one to back away from a fight, but he’ll face long (and weird) odds here.

There is also a story-within-the-story, an adventure of Shrewsbury’s barbarian creation, Erik Bedlam, a Conan-esque berserker with a shard of metal stuck in his skull. Bedlam stories are always a treat, and here you learn the ultimate fate of the character. The story is integral to the main plot, so it is not added just to make the book longer.

One of the best adjectives used to describe Howard’s work (though mostly out of use today) is “two-fisted”. It denotes a rugged action oriented approach to story-telling. I’m happy to say Shrewsbury’s work, including this novel is very two-fisted. Characters are direct, and the action sequences come along quickly. Battlin’ John Kern is a hero writ large, and his opponents are of the type seldom seen.

As always, Shrewsbury pulls no punches. The sex and violence is graphic, and if you occasionally have to pause in reading you Murder, She Wrote novel tie-in because it makes your heart race too much, his work is probably not for you. But anyone who appreciates a good story well told, and an adventuresome style rarely seen these days, should be reading Shrewsbury’s work, and should definitely pick up Tormentor. It is published by Lachesis Publishing, and may be ordered on line or wherever fine books are sold.

My 300th post on this site. Yay me. I need to get a real life.



* As a running gag on some message boards, I’ve teased Shrewsbury about scenes in his work where a male character suffers a traumatic loss of his genitals. In this book, Shrewsbury has reversed that trend, and added a penis to a woman, so I guess there is a type of cosmic balance at work here.
'

Hawg

I was already interested in Steven Shrewsbury’s work after reading his short story collection Thoroughbred, and that interest was piqued by meeting him at Hypericon. I was able to purchase his new novel Hawg at the conference.
Hawg takes place in rural Illinois, although the setting could just as well have been the South. It opens with a pair of drug mules sneaking up on a farmer and meeting a fate worse than death. It seems the farmer has a most unusual creature on the farm, what appears to be a half-man, half-hog, seven feet tall with steel tusks, and the instincts of an animal. This is Hawg. After chance exposes Hawg to the drugs carried by the two luckless drug runners, he breaks free of his cage and runs amok throughout the countryside, killing and eating the locals, and raping any female of fertile years. It is never explained why Hawg is the way he is, although there are allusions to Hawg’s father being on board the Eldridge during the Philadelphia Experiment. Local law enforcement is slow to react, but they are soon trying to stop an almost unstoppable killing machine. With two children in the way.
This is a rip-roarin’ action packed adventure, filled with scenes that will offend anyone who can be offended, and a subtle wit throughout. I read the first 50 pages one day, then finished the rest in one sitting.
Steven Shrewsbury is not yet a household name, but he will be, and it is books like Hawg that will accomplish this. If you want to say you were reading him before he became famous, order this now. You may do so at the Horror Mall (click on the banner), or at the Graveside Tales website.

Thoroughbred

I’ve never been a big reader in the sword ‘n sorcery genre. Although I read Robert E. Howard’s (Conan, Kull) work when I was younger, as well as Fritz Leiber’s Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser stories, as an adult, the only writer in the genre I enjoyed was the late Karl Edward Wagner. Most of the material of this type I’ve encountered since has been derivative adolescent wish-fulfillments, closer to fan fiction than professional work. But I have now found an exception to that sort of thing with a book of short stories by Steven L. Shrewsbury, Thoroughbred.

Shrewsbury works in a similar barbarian mileu as Howard, but does so with wit and originality lacking in most of Howard’s acolytes. Shrewsbury’s best creation is the barbarian Rogan, who is featured in two of the six stories in this collection. In the main piece, also named “Thoroughbred”, Rogan is hired to rid a mountainous village of some troublesome satyrs, who turn out not to be satyrs at all, and even more trouble than Rogan expected. Rogan also appears as a boy in the excellent short story “Poison of the Elder”, probably my favorite of the bunch.
Other stories include one written from the point of view of the biblical Goliath’s companion. A story presenting an adventure from Goliath’s point of view is fascinating, and seems obvious, although I had never thought of it, and I don’t know of any other writer who has either.

Shrewsbury presents a view of the barbarians that is consistent and filled with sly wit. There isn’t a weak story in the bunch, and I would recommend this title. I’ll be looking for Shrewsbury’s other work myself.

My big criticism is not of the author but the publisher, Carnifax Press. There are several typos left uncorrected in the text, some pages are cut at an angle, and, at least in my copy, one page is out of sequence , which caused some momentary confusion. It’s an attractive book, the publisher just needs to work on some quality control issues.