We're hitting summer hard this year with a packed June, following the late May release of the author preferred edition of Jeffery X Martin's Hunting Witches.
Issue six of Stranger with Friction drops mid-month with a feature on my favorite doom/sludge metal band CROWBAR, as well as all new fiction with the theme of Dark Tourism.
I'll have a Godless Horror exclusive new short story called "What Happened to Spider Baby Jane" dropping on June 23rd, which I'm really excited to share, since it will be my first new piece of fiction in two years (not that I haven't been busy, I've got three novellas and three screenplays in various stages of completion).
June 28th will see the simultaneous release of Thomas R Clark's Summerhome on Godless, Nook, Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. The follow up to last year's hit, The God Provides, Summerhome is a wicked slab of terror that will leave readers reeling!
But on the 26th, we are releasing the first short story collection from Icelandic author Villimey Mist, author of the Nocturnal vampire series. As the Night Devours Us is a wildly imaginative and terrifying cycle of stories that will drop first on Godless with the paperback and Kindle to follow on July 1st.
Our two latest releases are now available! We've started our release of author preferred editions of Jeffery X Martin's books with his debut short story collection, Black Friday: An Elder's Keep Collection. Originally released in 2012, Black Friday introduces us to the town of Elder's Keep, a small town in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains with a fair share of dark secrets. This Appalachian Horror/neo-Southern Gothic collection is simply amazing, and St Rooster Books is so proud to present this handsome new edition!
Next, the sequel to last year's critical hit, Abhorrent Siren by John Baltisberger has arrived! Abhorrent Faith is a tension filled philosophical monster bloodbath that will knock you on your ass! Undead Dad Reads says, "This gem of the extreme horror literature is a fascinating, fast paced, incredible edge of your seat read that pulls the reader in a world of the most hideous, blood churning mutations including the one of faith."
And let's not forget the latest issue of Stranger with Friction the magazine just went live this very morning! Issue five has reviews of Izzy Lee's newest short film, Eric Red and Chad Lutzke's latest novels, and new fiction from Lamont A Turner, Carter Johnson, Jeremy Lowe, and Jeremy Margaree!
For generations, the Sanford family have lived on the rural outskirts of Elders Keep. But now, Lucas Brock and his pregnant wife, Jude, have chosen to make their home among them as the first outsiders to settle onto Wednesday Ridge in a century. With the arrival of new blood, the horrific secrets the Sanfords have been hiding are coming to light. There's something on the ridge, something that should not exist. It is ancient. It is ravenous. And on the ridge, everything is prey.
It takes a lot to unsettle me these days. I have my buttons. I have particular stories I still choose to avoid. But to actually give me that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I used to get as a kid and could see Jason Vorhees sneaking up on a camp counsellor and she's totally unaware-that dread, as a horror noobie, for what is about to befall this person if he/she doesn't turn around and run-it's so rare to feel that these days.
Well, my buddy Jeffery X Martin once again gave that feeling back to me. He did it previously with Black Friday and Hunting Witches. His newest book, The Ridge, (which drops on July 27th) had me sick with dread less than a quarter way through, and it wasn't just the Southern folk horror aspects, that are a hallmark of his work. What got me first was the story of a couple about to have their first baby. In a sense, it's a bit of a fish out of water story. Two people from the city, the husband a college professor, moving out to the country-which is about as familiar to them as the plains of Mars, and the wife being left alone with the weirdo neighbors and all the strangeness that goes along with living in the hills. Lucas and Jude love each other, they are happy together, but I can tell you from first hand experience, moving into a new area, far from friends and family, while pregnant will cause tempers to flare, will bring on stress and anxiety, and if it's only the two of you there with no one else to really talk to-all of that will come out and be directed at one another. Regardless of whether or not the love is still there, you feel trapped in an emotional bubble and the threat of it popping is ever present. That's the heart, the engine, that drives The Ridge.
I have heard it said by many people, any good horror story must still be a good drama if you take the horror elements away. So, in the case of The Ridge, done. Five stars. Two thumbs up. What about the horror elements though? X knows how to scare you. He knows how to dig in, make your skin crawl, make you hold the book away from you just a little more...He can paint a vivid landscape of despair in your brain that's hard to wash away. Violence that rolls by slowly, so you don't mis an ounce of the pain. You feel that bone shatter and you sit with it for as long as the character has to. I think of Dennis Etchison, Stephen King in his prime, maybe a little HP Lovecraft (minus all the "cyclopean towers"), Books of Blood era Clive Barker. X is building a body of work with his Elders Keep stories that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the giants rather than just stand on their shoulders.
I tell ya, X has been inspiring me to work harder, do better, and be more since our bar days back in Knoxville, Tennessee more than twenty years ago. To see the artist he is today is nothing short of awe-inspiring. If you don't know him, I feel bad for you, but you can remedy that by following him on Twitter @JefferyXMartin and like his Facebook page. And order The Ridgetoday!
Do you remember community radio? Of course you don’t, you shitheels with your digital playlists and corporations telling what is cool, and you swallow it like bucketfuls of money jizz. Well, before you get off my lawn, let me tell you something.
If you live in the right kind of town, you have a radio station where people can claim a timeslot and play whatever the fuck they want. Those towns are golden, and need to be given medals for awesomeness. When I was a kid, the station was WAIF, rumbling out of Cincinnati. One night a week, there was a hardcore punk show that I can’t remember the name of, because I drink a lot, and fuck you if you don’t know that kind of pain.
The main DJ called himself Clem Kadiddlehopper, and his sidekick’s name had something to do with hockey. Fuck. I don’t remember. I was maybe sixteen when all this went down. I’m pushing fifty now. I hope I can be forgiven if I forget a few details after all this time. I didn’t think I would live past the age of thirteen, so suck it.
One night, Clem played a song by a band I had never heard of called Hüsker Dü. Now, I knew the name because I had the game. The band took their name from a memory/recognition game that I had gotten for Christmas a few years in the past.
It struck my first because I couldn’t figure out what the chords were. Now, I’m a good guitar player, and I play be ear. But I was befuddled by the crazy shit Bob Mould was throwing down. And it was a slow song! I should have been able to parse those chords out. Nope. Total mystery.
But more important than that, to an angst-driven white Anglo suburban punk, were the words. Damned if Mould hadn’t read my mind and made a catchy tune out of it.
I could be sad, I could be lonely I could still have some friends if I only Didn't play the games I had to play I was important when I was cool Now it gets lonely playing the fool It's a game that anyone can play
Fuck, it was like he had ripped those feelings right from my heart and my balls and said them more plainly than I ever could. I went out the next day and bought the album.
So let’s talk about Hüsker Dü’s FLIP YOUR WIG.
The band was a three piece. Bob Mould on guitar and lyrics. Grant Hart on drums and lyrics. Greg Norton on bass. He rarely contributed vocals, and not at all on this album.
This was the last album they put out before getting signed to Warner Bros. which is pretty much the death knell for any band. Even R.E.M. finally submitted to the Warner curse. They should have stayed on IRS, just like the Hüskers should have stayed on SST.
The opening title song, tight with Bob and Grant taking turns on vocals is a joyous little pop gem. There are a lot of those on this record, from Bob’s “Hate Paper Doll’ to Grant’s ballad, “Green Eyes.” But then, when you least expect it, the record slaps you in the reproductives with a song like “Divide and Conquer,” Bob’s treatise on revisionist history and the “Youth of Today.” It goes into your head like a drill, stirs your brain around, then leaves as brutally as it came in. One chord progression in the whole song. ONE. Fuck Led Zeppelin; this was the sledgehammer of the gods, crashing down upon everything the Establishment held dear, leaving nothing but the jagged seams of the music staff in its wake.
And what could prepare the casual listener for the complete mental breakdown of the last half of the album? Fuck all NOTHING. From “The Baby Song,” played on a slide penny whistle, to the instrumental closing double shot of hellfire that is “The Wit and the Wisdom” and “Don’t Know Yet,” FLIP YOUR WIG shows Hüsker Dü at the height of their power, still in touch with their audience enough to be relevant, not yet appearing on the Joan Fucking Rivers Show.
It was the final show of solidarity, before drugs, sex and the confines of the closet destroyed the band from within. It’s their greatest balance between pure anger and post-punk pop, and on one susceptible night in 1985, it changed my life forever.
A bit about Jeffery with two Fs; he's the author of Black Friday and Stories About You and contributes over at the mighty Popshifter.com. Check out his Amazon author profile HERE. Oh and he's a mighty fine sumbitch to boot!
It is dark and the wind scalpels its way through the cracks in the wooden walls, the spaces between the logs where the newspaper no longer holds back the elements. When the wind rushes in, the fire moves back a bit, as if letting someone scoot past to get to their usual seat in church. Winter is on the way.
Your mother is already in a fitful sleep. Her shoulder twitches occasionally, and she makes small fear noises. Your brother sits in the rocking chair in front of the fire. He does not blink. He stares into the flames, like he is waiting for a message, a sign, a reason to move.
So begins the first story, How We Quit The Woods, in Jeffery X Martin's (Black Friday) new book Stories About You Volume 1. If you read Black Friday you'll know Martin as an engrossing writer and Stories About You possess that same ancient/ritualistic rhythm, that same sense of experience that Black Friday had. But this time Martin has added a twist. The title is quite literal. YOU are the star of each story. The whole book is written in the second person. Hold on. I know what you're thinking and yes, it works.
While not every story is a horror story enough of it is for you creep fans. Martin can deliver the dread by the truckload with literary skills to back it up.What I found most interesting was the meditative quality of the stories, they're almost hypnotic the way YOU the reader is always being addressed.Also, as with Black Friday, emotion is one of Martin's most powerful weapons. He's not just trying to shock or scare you-he's trying to get at your heart. I don't think a book of second person short stories could be pulled off by just anyone. To even go for such a project takes balls and to pull it off with such style takes a mind and imagination like Martin's. Stories About You is very cool and really enjoyable. Screw the mainstream cookie cutter supermarket paperbacks, embrace a writer with class and style, fiends! You can get Stories About You HERE.
In the mountains of East Tennessee lies the town of Elders Keep. Things aren't exactly right in the Keep, and as the town heads towards the holiday season, the evil force that lives within the woods comes pulsing to the forefront. It's all downhill to New Years, and no one in the Keep is safe. This collection of eight short stories is your invitation to join the citizens of Elders Keep as they make their way through a harrowing holiday season. Only the dark and twisted mind of Jeffery X Martin could create a town where humor and terror live side by side in such harmonious agony. Welcome to Elders Keep. If you lived here, you'd be dead by now. (from the Amazon description)
Full disclosure; I've known Jeff Martin since I was eighteen, therefore I have known him longer than I care to reveal. It's been a really long time. We used to haunt the same open mic at a bar called Manhattan's in Knoxville TN's Old City neighborhood. He was probably more influential and helpful to me in growing as a writer than he knows. I could go on and on about all the late night talks and the whack job characters we hung out with, but I'll spare you, dear reader, that tumble down fuzzy-memory lane. After all, this is a review. I wanted to be upfront though; I know this cat. He's a friend. Fortunately my natural bias is reinforced by the fact that Black Friday is an absolute great damn book.
For those who read the line 'In the mountains of East Tennessee' and immediately heard dueling banjos let me point out that Tennessee is the proper South and not the deep South. Much of anything inhabitable in the mountains has been or will be yuppified and at times clash with the more traditional or hillbilly ways and Jeff captures this aesthetic of the modern South with pitch perfect clarity, crafting a rich and deep world. Not to say that those of you who like a little Southern fried redneck scariness won't find plenty to chew on! Jeff writes with a smooth and infectious groove. As much a musician as he is an author, Jeff gave Black Friday a rhythm that is ancient and pagan making each chapter a sort of ritual that you experience in your nerves. The depth of the stories and the diverse cast of characters kept me feverishly turning the page, devouring each story.
Jeff wields the tools of a horror craftsman as he guides us through the downward spiraling, Dante-esque saga of the people of Elders Keep and along the way offers a biting commentary about modern society. A simple drink with a lover or an old friend, a trip to the dentist or the store, a night out at the club or a talk with mom is an opportunity for ghosts and monsters to plunge you into bloody terror. Elders Keep doesn't need ghosts and monsters to scare the crap out of you though. The regular inhabitants can be just as fucked up as anything your nightmares can cook up. The stories "Be Sweet" and "Mouth" genuinely made me cringe.
It was painful to make it to the last story, because I did not want the book to end. Black Friday satisfied on all levels. Get this book now!
And follow Jeff on Twitter @JefferyXMartin and at www.facebook.com/elderskeep. He also writes a kick ass music column for www.popshifter.com
