JEFFERY X MARTIN's SHORT STORIES ABOUT YOU and PAUL LUBACZEWSKI's I NEVER EAT CHEESESTEAK live on GODLESS HORRORS! And More!

"The new owner of a home that holds a terrible surprise. An insomniac whose quest for sleep leads you to a horrifying discovery. The parent of a little girl who holds the keys of damnation and salvation in her tiny hands. You are all these people, and more. In this brave collection, author Jeffery X Martin makes the reader the main character in fifteen nerve-grinding new stories, filled with horror, humor and jagged pieces of human nature."

"They say life is what happens when you're making other plans. It is also what happens when you need cash to record a demo, but that isn't as catchy in a song, or a meme. Al was coasting through life without a plan or a clue when he was offered a way to make quick cash without doing anything illegal, mainly because killing vampires is not technically against any laws. If he agrees he jump starts his musical career, but on the downside, he has to combat the forces of undead evil, including their horrific fashion sense. Will Al survive? Will his punk rocker sister Angie finally dump her loser boyfriend? Will Al's girlfriend come to her senses and dump him? Will Al's gruff partner Abdiel become "woke"? (Depends on your definition) Will the citizens of Philadelphia discover the dark festering evil that lurks in their very city?(other than Eagles fans) Will anyone eat an actual cheesesteak? The only way to find out is to read this book, because there will probably never be a Cliff Notes for this one!"

Both books are available on the excellent and revolutionary Godless Horror app, which is a must have for horror fans who prefer e-readers over paperbacks. For you physical media fans, Cheesesteak is available right now and Short Stories About You should be live within the next couple of days.

In Other News...

Starting in issue six of Stranger With Friction, we are excited to announce we will be serializing the new novella by Carter Johnson called Tales from Behind the Counter!

Dropping next month, April 21st, on Godless and Amazon, St Rooster Books is proud to present Saint's Blood by Ryan Bradley! Want a reason to be excited? Check out what Owen King, author of Double Feature: A Novel and Sleeping Beauties (with Stephen King) has to say about it;

"Miracles do happen in Ryan Bradley's dark and unrelenting Saint's Blood, but be warned; they come at no small price. Saint's Blood is an impressive debut. I enjoyed it and I'm excited to see what Ryan Bradley writes next." 

There's just over a month left to get your submissions in to us for No One Likes a Tourist: An Anthology of Dark Tourism. What is Dark Tourism? It's going to the site of tragedy, disaster, murder, or other dark events rather than going to Disney World for your vacation. I'm talking about touring Chernobyl or taking the Jeffery Dahmer serial killer tour. For this anthology, I'm asking you to take this concept and create your own dark tourism scenario. People going to bad places and having bad things happen to them. As always; no sexist, racist, homophobic, or transphobic material. I really don't like the rape-revenge sub-genre either, and I'm unlikely to accept such a story. Otherwise, go nuts! 

Word count: 3-5 thousand words

Payment: $20 and a contributor copy or the equivalent of $20 worth of contributor copies

Deadline: May 1st, 2022

Send to: Holyrooster76@gmail.com

PARHAM'S FIELD a novella by JEFFERY X MARTIN

Let's take a road trip back to Elder's Keep. Back to the mysterious hills and hideaways of East Tennessee. A place of beauty and heavy history. A haunted place. Haunted even before the Cherokee got there, probably. A place where I grew up. Author Jeffery X Martin grew up there too.

So connected to the dirt beneath his feet, my old friend Jeff started weaving tales about Elder's Keep, or The Keep, in his first short story collection, BLACK FRIDAY. He brought us back to The Keep with HUNTING WITCHES, a novel. Both journeys were chilling, emotional, and as haunted as those green hills. Now he takes us back with his newest story, a novella, that just went live on Valentines Day, which was eerily fitting.

The story opens with a murder. I'll leave it at that. Then begins the investigation, heading by sheriff Graham Strahan and accompanied by Joseph "Josie" Nance, who runs the Elder's Keep Historical Society. The murder occurs in Parham's Field, a place everyone in The Keep knows to stay out of. The details of the murder has Strahan stumped and he turns to Josie for some help. It's Josie that suggest they go talk to the shut in, Dr. Parham, who Strahan just assumed was dead, as his house and property had been in disrepair for as long as Strahan could remember.  They pay a visit to the old doctor together, just to ask a few questions, but nothing is ever simple in The Keep, and the men get a tale nothing could have prepared them for.

PARHAM'S FIELD is such a tightly, well crafted, and tragically beautiful slow burn of a story, that I found myself bouncing along to the book's own unique rhythm and getting lost in a narrative that's part family history, part police investigation. This isn't a mystery, it's, as the doctor says, a confession. Jeff pushes the needle towards the red ever so gently, ever so slightly, building a sense of dread from page one-which you'll carry with you anyway if you've read either of the previous books-and then holds the tension until what you find is undeniable, regardless of where your mind may have been at the beginning. Vague, I know, but I feel it's important to guard the book's secrets. Let Dr. Parham tell them to you, after all, it's his story to tell.

On a couple of personal notes, Jeff's wife finished the book in tears and refused to talk to him for the rest of the night. I think that's important to know going in. "It gets dark," Jeff said. Yes it does. Also, there's a bit about a church in a place called Wheat. That church is said to be haunted and I personally tried to break in there when I was 18 or 19 to see if it were true, but...events had my friends and I speeding away from the area at 100 MPH. A little midnight ghost hunting lead to a wrong turn and we found ourselves on restricted government property. Kids.

I'm giving PARHAM'S FIELD my highest recommendation. You don't need to have read the previous two books to get into it, but they're so good as well, there's no reason to skip them. You can order your copy HERE. 

WHAT'S YOUR TOP THREE FAVORITE HORROR FILMS? JEFFERY X MARTIN GIVES US HIS IN A GUEST POST!

Do you read Jeffery X Martin? BLACK FRIDAY, STORIES ABOUT YOU, HUNTING WITCHES..? X is an old friend and an amazing writer. We used to perform at the same bar back in Knoxville. I was just a dumb kid and he was an early supporter. So I'm honored to run this, his second guest post for Stranger. Follow the LINK to get your hands on X's books. And now...

JEFFERY X MARTIN’S TOP THREE HORROR MOVIES

When I’m asked to make a list like this – and it’s always an honor to be asked to write anything for someone else – I realize how fluid my Top Ten list is. I watch a lot of horror, which makes sense given my occupation, and new great stuff pops up all the time. My Top Three, however, is pretty solid and doesn’t move about much. Well, not this week, anyway.

3. CARRIE (1976)  -- Not just one of the greatest horror movies, but one of the best films ever made. Carrie evokes so many emotions, watching it should be part of the Voight-Kampff test. Carrie is a stone cold classic. It manages to

excoriate organized religion, high school cliques, and the lack of information women receive about their own bodies. While things don’t end well for anyone in the film, Sissy Spacek is a marvel to watch as a girl who takes her personal power, embraces it, and uses it to set fires with her mind.  A pivotal piece of feminist cinema, and one of Brian De Palma’s finest directorial efforts,

2. JOHN CARPENTER’S THE FOG (1980) – Carpenter’s follow-up to Halloween has often been looked upon as a flawed film (even by Carpenter himself, according to interviews), a soft lob after the non-stop intensity of the goings-on in Haddonfield. I respectfully disagree. Not only is The Fog as scary as Halloween, if not more so, it’s the best American ghost story filmed in the last forty years. It is a campfire nightmare come to life, complete with hidden treasure, the walking dead and ghostly lepers. It never operates outside of its own logic and the special effects, all practical, are surprisingly good. This solid scary movie holds up like suspenders, and is one of the few must-sees of the genre.

1.) SUSPIRIA (1977) – Dario Argento’s masterpiece is like nothing you’ve seen before. The story of an American girl who goes to Germany to continue her ballet training, Suspiria takes its fairy tale elements to the darkest corners of the magical forest. With a brilliant soundtrack, violent set-pieces, and witches that would make MacBeth run screaming from the forest, Suspiria sneaks into your brain and sets up residence. It will not leave. Suspiria is an assault on everything you’ve come to expect from the genre, and it stands alone as horror-art. Every horror movie that has come since owes some kind of debt to Suspiria. Not one of them has ever fully paid up.

GET EXCITED; MURDER BALLADS IS COMING

I can't overstate how much I'm looking forward to Bluetrane Productions' upcoming Murder Ballads. The teaser trailer dropped on line a couple days ago (you can watch below) and it reminds me of those great Dario Argento films like Deep Red or Tenebre. I only know director/co-writer James Branscome via Twitter but he seems like a righteous dude with impeccable taste, but I've know co-writer Jeffery X Martin for a hell of a long time. If you haven't read his books Black Friday or Stories About You then you need to get on that shit!

Bluetrane Productions has released the teaser for Murder Ballads to help build interest in the project and to seek additional funding. You can and should follow Murder Ballads progress on Twitter and Facebook at

https://twitter.com/Murder_Ballads

https://www.facebook.com/bloodsplatteredbanjos

And take a minute to read the press release and then watch the teaser.

Bluetrane Productions is pleased to announce the beginning of pre-production on their first feature length film production, MURDER BALLADS, a horror thriller in which a mysterious killer murders their victims in gruesome ways that resemble the lyrics of traditional folk songs. 

Co-writer/Director James Branscome describes it as a “hillbilly giallo.” 

“I got my fascination about the songs from my grandfather,” Branscome said. “He grew up listening to bluegrass, folk, and country music and played the banjo. I didn’t appreciate it right away, but once I did, I really got into it. As I did my research, I discovered I was drawn to certain songs. More often than not, those songs were the most morbid lyrically. And I started getting ideas of doing something based around the songs.”

“I’ve always loved gialli (Italian murder mysteries),” Branscome continued, “especially the films of Dario Argento, Sergio Martino, and Lucio Fulci. James DeHaven and I talked about wanting to write one for years, but we could never find the hook. Then I thought about the folk songs and suddenly it all came together.” 

“Since we’ve been working on projects over the years, I’ve always felt we were headed towards something great,” co-writer James DeHaven says. “I’m excited to be a fan of genre films, especially knowing that ‘Murder Ballads’ is so close to becoming a reality. We haven’t been given anything new in a long time. I think ‘Murder Ballads’ is going to fill a gap that genre fans have been longing to be filled. It’s a smart, gory horror movie. This isn’t your mother’s ‘Sound of Music.’” 

Creator of the horror fiction series, “The Elders Keep Project,” and film essayist Jeffery X Martin helped bring the story together. “I knew James from his earlier work, a comedy web-series called ‘Pumpkin Morgue Paranormal Investigations.’ I pitched him some stories and wrote a couple scripts. Collaborating with James was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. We saw eye to eye on almost everything right away. We’ve been working together ever since.” 

Martin is also a fan of gialli. “I know some people have tried to make American giallo films,” he says, “but they’ve always seemed to be missing a couple of elements. ‘Murder Ballads’ captures those great giallo aspects while making it something uniquely American, specifically the American South.” 

“Murder Ballads” combines a compelling murder mystery, filled with shocking gore and suspenseful set pieces, with a story that plumbs the depth of the history of American music. 

“We want nothing more than to share the things we love with the rest of the world. Folk music, giallo movies and horror that doesn’t insult anyone’s intelligence,” Martin says. “It’s an ambitious project, and we can’t wait for everyone to see it.” 

“At the end of the day, we’re fans,” Martin concludes. “We want to make the kind of movie we would want to see as fans. Hopefully, that will resound with other fans and make this a special event.” 

With the first round of casting done, Bluetrane Productions is preparing to reinvigorate the horror genre with “Murder Ballads,” an official selection in the Screenplay Competition of Fright Film Fest 2013.

And here's a murder ballad just for kicks...

The Louvin Brothers "Knoxville Girl"

Come On Down To Elders Keep...

Elders Keep...'Some houses are haunted...Some ground is unholy...The town of Elders Keep is something else entirely.'

Writer and friend Jeff X Martin's Elders Keep project demands your attention.
From the site; Nestled in the Foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains lies Elders Keep, a small town not too far off the beaten path. 
It has withstood the ravages of time, the elements and inhabitants. It has not lost its connection with the forest and the mysteries within. It is a place of strange rumblings, shadows and whispers. This is where The Fear lives, a place of horror, bloodshed and bad ideas.

The welcome mat is out. Consider this your engraved invitation.

Join us in Elders Keep. 

Chapters are available as they're released on Nook and Kindle for 99 cents. The second chapter, Be Sweet, was released on Valentines Day. This is very cool, fiends. Won't you join us..?

You can also follow Jeff on Twitter, @X_the_Unknown