Book Review: Crucified Dreams edited by Joe R. Lansdale

Like any self-respecting horror fan, I’m a huge fan of Joe R. Lansdale’s work. So, I was very excited to check out this collection of short stories Lansdale had hand-picked to appear in Crucified Dreams. In the introduction, Lansdale explains how he set out to capture stories that were similar to his maverick writing style, and I think he has done a fine job with the selections featured in Crucified Dreams. He has plucked unsettling, off-kilter stories from the very best horror authors out there (among them Stephen King, Harlan Ellison and Lansdale himself) that span nearly four decades.

From the back cover:

A naïve young woman witnesses a brutal murder and discovers the soul-deadening price of being a New Yorker. The family man quits smoking with the sinister assistance of a family-friendly corporation. A truck driver takes a simple shortcut, and lands in a living hell and a battle to the death. An aging Hollywood screenwriter’s career is on the wane until he reinvents himself as a less principled man.

Crucified Dreams reaches down through the gutters into the shadowy depths of the imagination. These are the savage tales that unite noir with horror and the ordinary with the unfathomable. Combing the urban, the paranormal, and the downright terrifying, these award-winning stories go where your deepest fears—and inner demons—are already realized.

Classic tales from horror masters reside within the near 400 page collection, and while I enjoyed all of the stories, I did have a few favorites. Harlan Ellison’s “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” left me breathless and paints quite a gloomy picture for apathetic city-dwellers. “The Mojave Two-Step” by Norman Partridge and “Front Man” by David Morrell show the danger of following fortune and glory, one from the view of a stolen ice cream truck barreling through the desert toward Vegas and the other through the eyes of an award-winning but aging screenwriter looking for work in shallow Hollywood. I wholeheartedly enjoyed the characterization of the two leads in Jeffrey Ford’s “Coffins on the River”, about two old artists who take quite a trip that results in a terrifying ghostly encounter. “Copping Squid” by Michael Shea is an excellent Cthulhu-inspired tale set in the ‘hood, and Ellen Klages gives us an eerie look into an alternate universe through the perspective of a little girl in “Singing on a Star”. “Nightbeat” by Neal Barrett, Jr. offers up another alternate (or future) world filled with made-up words that conjure up a beautiful yet sinister landscape.

These are but a few of the 19 tales featured in Crucified Dreams, and while those mentioned were my favorites I must say that all the short stories in the collection were well worth reading and left an indelible imprint upon my psyche. The collection is a mix of the gritty and graphic with the subtle and psychological and will be a welcome addition to any horror fan’s book collection.

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Interview with Author Jeremy C. Shipp

Jeremy C. Shipp is a weird author of Bizarro, horror, dark fantasy, and magic realism. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 50 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Harlan County Horrors, Apex Magazine, Pseudopod, and The Bizarro Starter Kit (blue). While preparing for the forthcoming collapse of civilization, Jeremy enjoys living in Southern California in a moderately haunted Victorian farmhouse with his wife, Lisa, and their legion of yard gnomes. He’s currently working on many stories and novels and is losing his hair, though not because of the ghosts. His books include Vacation, Sheep and Wolves, and Cursed. And thankfully, only one mime was killed during the making of his first short film, Egg.

Fatally Yours: When and how did you fall in love with the darker genres of horror, fantasy and sci-fi?

Jeremy Shipp: In truth, I can’t recall a time when I didn’t love dark tales. My favorite movies as a kid included Dark Crystal, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Return to Oz. And when I played pretend with my brothers, our recurring characters consisted of a mummy, the grim reaper, and a floating mouth that could eat people and transport them to another dimension.

Fatally Yours: When did you realize you wanted to pursue writing? Have you always known you wanted to be an author?

Jeremy Shipp: In 4th grade, I wrote a rather long short story about a semi-friendly opera-loving alien named Chomper. That’s when I first realized how much I loved the writing process. Then, when I was 13, I wrote my first novel, and I’ve been writing about one book a year ever since. I think I’ve always wanted to be a writer. As a baby, one of my favorite toys was a pen.

Fatally Yours: How did you start your writing career and what was the very first thing that you had published? 

Jeremy Shipp: When I was 18, my high school creative writing teacher took me under his wing and encouraged me to send out my work. So that’s what I did. The first story I sent out was a horror comedy called “Love Thy Demon,” which was soon published in an online magazine.

Fatally Yours: Do you follow a certain routine when writing a novel? Do you put in a certain number of hours per day?

Jeremy Shipp: After an idea wriggles its way into my skull, I brainstorm my brains out. Then, I start writing the novel from the beginning. And I carry around an Idea Notebook everywhere I go. My novel-writing process also involves eating copious amounts of peanut butter. I try to write at least a few hours every day.

Fatally Yours: The worlds you create are usually surreal distortions of reality. How do you come up with such imaginative worlds and make their issues so relevant to our own reality?

Jeremy Shipp: When writing a tale, I let my imagination run wild and I let my muse dance a strange jig, but my mind is always rooted deeply in reality. And so, my stories are funhouse mirror reflections of my life and of our world.

Fatally Yours: Do you hope to convey a certain message to your readers through your writing? When a reader is finished with one of your books, what do you hope they take away from it? 

Jeremy Shipp: I want my readers to explore the evils of our world. Evils like racism, sexism, class stratification, factory farming, hierarchical thinking. And, above all else, I want my readers to recognize the light in the darkness. There is evil everywhere, yes. But there is good everywhere too. And that’s a wonderful thing.

Fatally Yours: Does your writing ever involve any kind of research or do you make it up as you go?

Jeremy Shipp: I’m always researching various topics and interviewing people. Even when writing a story set in unfamiliar reality, I want the details of that reality to ring true. For instance, I recently spoke to a guy who eats raw animal organs, so that I could realistically describe the taste of brains.

Fatally Yours: Where do you get inspiration for your stories?

Jeremy Shipp: I’m inspired by the wide, wide world of twisted social systems, and I’m inspired by my small world of family and friends and strangers (the stranger the better).

Fatally Yours: Tell us about Cursed, your novel that is on the Stoker Awards final ballot. 

Jeremy Shipp: Cursed is the story of Nicholas and Cicely. They’re cursed, so they decide to create a support group of sorts for cursed individuals. Together, this group of oddballs and outcasts attempt to figure out who cursed them, why, and what the heck they can do about it.

Fatally Yours: What are your favorite stories that you’ve written?

Jeremy Shipp: Right now, I feel especially fond of Camp, Those Below, Dog, The Sun Never Rises in the Big City, Fungus of the Heart, Monkey Boy and the Monsters, Ula Morales, and Agape Walrus.
Fatally Yours: How do you feel about the trend of ultra-gory horror novels as opposed to the classically more psychological tales? 

Jeremy Shipp: I’m actually rather wimpy when it comes to reading and writing and watching ultra-gory tales. For instance, I could barely read American Psycho, and my soul ached for weeks after watching Martyrs. I don’t have a problem with ultra-gory horror novels, but as far as my own preferences go, I don’t like reading or writing stories where violence exists for its own sake.

Fatally Yours: Who are your main influences?

Jeremy Shipp: I started writing novels when I was 13, and back then, my main influences were Ray Bradbury, HG Wells, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne. These days, I’m inspired by many of my favorite writers, including Arundhati Roy, Lois Lowry, Franny Billingsley, George Orwell, Jeff Kinney, Francesca Lia Block, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Hempel, Aimee Bender, Haruki Murakami.

Fatally Yours: What are some of your favorite books and films?

Jeremy Shipp: Some of my favorite books: The God of Small Things, 1984, The Giver, The Mighty Book of Boosh, Wicked, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, American Born Chinese, The Folk Keeper, Let the Right One In, Slaughterhouse-Five, Like Water for Chocolate, Kafka on the Shore, Original Wisdom, Ishmael, I Was a Teenage Fairy, A Clockwork Orange. Some of my favorite films: The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Princess Mononoke, Oldboy, Memento, Happiness of the Katakuris, Fight Club, the original Star Wars trilogy, Spirited Away, Kung Fu Hustle, Lagaan, Lord of the Rings, Ponyo, Totoro, Dead Alive, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, City of Lost Children, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Up, Robin Hood, Enchanted.

Fatally Yours: What is one horror novel you think more people should read?

Jeremy Shipp: Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

Fatally Yours: What was the last book you read?

Jeremy Shipp: Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata, which is a superb novel about family and illness. One of my goals right now is to read all the Newbery Medal winning books.

Fatally Yours: Can you tell us about any upcoming projects and/or new novels you are working on? 

Jeremy Shipp: My newest story collection, Fungus of the Heart, is coming out later this year. I also have short stories forthcoming in Cemetery Dance, Rosebud, Apex Magazine, Agape Walrus, Wicked, and other publications. In addition to this, I’m working on a new novel, a comic book series, and a short film. You can learn more about all my projects at www.jeremycshipp.com

Book Review: The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

Even if you don’t think you’ve ever heard of Joe R. Lansdale, I bet you have. Have you seen Bubba Ho-Tep? Or perhaps watched the Masters of Horror episode Incident On and Off a Mountain Road? Well, both of those were adapted (pretty faithfully, I might add) from Lansdale stories. The witty, outrageous and unforgettable dialogue from Bubba Ho-Tep is pure Lansdale while the heart-stopping action in Incident shows he can build a terrifying story.

I was fortunate enough to receive an early review copy of The Best of Joe R. Lansdale, due out March 2010, which collects many of Lansdale’s most acclaimed, weird and wondrous stories! The collection features sixteen of Lansdale’s short stories, including the previously mentioned Bubba Ho-Tep, Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, as well as Mad Dog Summer (my personal favorite from this particular collection), Godzilla’s Twelve Step Program, the non-fiction Hell Through a Windshield and many more odd and outrageous stories!

Lansdale’s writing style ranges from shocking to sentimental, but always surprises with its down-home style and wicked wit. All of the stories contained in this collection are well worth reading. Lansdale’s outlaw-style writing, complete with colorful characters and provocative settings, pops from the pages and makes you eagerly beg for more remarkable tales. This is Texan storytelling at its best – rude, crude and offensive! His stories have a tall tale feel to them, and though they contain many unpleasant circumstances and characters there is also an underlying sentimentality to them. They are both sweet and sour, but leave the reader satisfied in the end.

My favorite story in the collection is Mad Dog Summer, about a young boy in backwoods 1930’s East Texas who finds himself caught up in a sinister and grisly murder mystery. The story is built around the legend of the Goat Man, who legend says roams the woods and preys upon wayward folk. This story sent chills up my spine, especially as told from the point of view of a young boy. The frightening images of the Goat Man standing on the edge of the woods pretty much made me want to dive under the covers. It also deals with issues of racism, harsh (in)justice, intolerance, growing up and learning to do the right thing no matter what. These themes and the well-drawn characters as well as the details that Lansdale incorporates into the story really pulled me in. I truly did not want to put this story down and had to read it from beginning to end!

The strength of Lansdale’s stories rest squarely on the shoulders of his colorful characters, who are usually piss-full of vinegar and colorful language. They mainly hail from the hearty backwoods of Texas or other rural places, living hard lives and encountering many strange creatures, including zombies, mummies and even albino mules. Lansdale breathes spectacular life into these characters as he has them encounter some truly extraordinary experiences. And then there is just the pure and unbridled imagination of Lansdale – where else can you find a crotchety old Elvis stuck in a convalescent home with a black JFK or Godzilla on the road to recovery from his propensity to destroy things? There is nothing in horror literature like the characters in a Joe Lansdale story, that’s for sure!

The Best of Joe R. Lansdale is a must-have book for the lover of the weird, the champion of the bizarre and the fan of the outrageous. If you are looking for a unique experience that will leave you equal parts stunned and nostalgic, frightened and amused, look no further than the “high priest of Texan weirdness” himself, Joe Lansdale.

In Lansdale’s own infamous words, “Come on in – the weirdness is fine.”

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Book Review: The Dark Verse, Vol. 1 by M. Amanuensis Sharkchild

The Dark Verse, Volume 1: From the Passages of Revenants is a collection of 26 fantastical short stories from the darkly imaginative mind of author M. Amanuensis Sharkchild. Sharkchild’s stories were first featured on his self-produced podcast “The Dark Verse” where he would release a fantastically horrific story every two weeks.

The podcast developed quite a following and led to the stories being collected into The Dark Verse Volume 1. This is a beautifully black-bound book with a silver foil cover and black dusting that contains some of the most bizarre and engaging stories I’ve ever come across. The tales tell of distant dimensions and unbelievable beings all the while oozing with an otherworldly atmosphere.

Each and every one of the stories drew me in with the eloquent and sophisticated writing of Sharkchild. Delving deeper and deeper into the great unknown, Sharkchild conjures visions of horrifying monsters and mysterious worlds beyond our own. He creates a window that peers into the black abyss, and the result is that things from the unknown start to look back.

Some would be quick to point out the similarities between Sharkchild’s esoteric style and H.P. Lovecraft’s writings, but though they appear similar I would argue that Sharkchild has a very distinct and unique way of unveiling his mysterious stories. I will say that like any good horror author, Sharkchild’s stories will leave you unhinged as you get a glimpse of the strange species that permeate his imagination and have scrawled themselves into this book.

For example, in the short story What the Flesh Cannot Keep the “Haunter Behind Space” is described by the poor mortal who sees it as “eyes that covered every surface, the souls within them, and the vulgar, detestable complacency of existence that saturated every ounce of its being”. Of course, seeing such a creature would prove fatal to any mortal…

One of my favorite stories is The Changing of the Feyth, told in two parts, about feyths, which are regarded as demigods in their realm. The feyth protagonist describes his race as such: “Our flesh is ash gray and its texture is that of leather. Our eyes are as black as coal and our teeth are as sharp as swords. Our ears are large and so are our noses. We grow to be tall as giants, but our bodies always keep the same slenderness, no matter what our strength or what we consume. Our only master is the Almighty of Shadows…” The story is about how one feyth turns against his brethren and is filled with bloody battle, ghosts and even fairies.

In the story titled Between the Corridors, a small child is haunted by the “Midnight Apothecary”, a nightmarish vision that invades his very mind. It perverts childhood innocence and memories of balloons and ice cream with a menacing and sinister parasitic creature that invades the child’s mind and won’t let go until he relinquishes it.

The book is filled with excellent stories such as those mentioned above, so it is hard not to talk about each and every single one as there is not a bad one in the entire collection. For space sake, I’ll have to keep it down to those mentioned above with hopes they give you a general gist of the fascinating tales told by Sharkchild.

All of Sharkchild’s stories are inhabited by grotesque yet sometimes wondrous beings who have managed to break forth into our own world. These unimaginably horrific monsters populate these short stories, and Sharkchild’s writing brings them to startling and shocking clarity. His stories exist on a different plane, a dimension where unspeakable horrors lie in wait, ready to assault and invade our own existence. These are tales that could reduce you to madness as you marvel at their complex simplicity. Horror lies in fearing the unknown, and boy, does Sharkchild ever have a grasp of how to scare us!

Besides the articulate and intelligent way Sharkchild tells his stories, I must also comment on the overall aesthetic of the book, which is absolutely gorgeous. The outside of the hardback book is wrapped in a faux leather with silver foil stamping adorning it, as well as black dusting on the edges of the pages. Its presentation is impeccable, but only gets better when you open the tome, for inside is stunning artwork by John F. Stifter. Truly, this is one of the most beautifully books I’ve ever reviewed and Armored Books did a fabulous job with its design. This book, though no doubt well-read, will adorn my bookcase for a long, long time.

The Dark Verse, Volume 1: From the Passages of Revenants is an elite collection of fascinating and frightening stories that is sure to impress any horror aficionado who is looking for more peculiar tales rather than the standard slasher/zombie/vampire/serial killer novels that tend to permeate horror fiction. Its high quality is a rarity and I, for one, will treasure this book for a long while.

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Book Review: The Good Humor Man by Andrew Fox

In 2041, the government, or what’s left of it, has banned all fatty foods, making a pound of real chocolate worth more than a kilo of cocaine on the black market. Groups of Good Humor Men, government-sanctioned vigilantes, patrol the country and destroy any illegal contraband foodstuffs they find. Meanwhile, shady nutraceutical company MannaSantos controls the market with genetically engineered foods, but people and animals are still wasting away from a mysterious, quick-spreading disease that is a result of a MannaSantos experiment gone horribly wrong.

Only Dr. Louis Shmalzberg, a fallen Good Humor Man and plastic surgeon, begins to uncover the evil behind MannasSantos and holds the key to humanity’s salvation – in the form of Elvis’ liposuctioned belly fat from a surgery his famous plastic surgeon father performed. Yet, Dr. Shmalzberg must travel across the country, getting entangled with an assassin who wants the Elvis fat for a foreign dignitary, a cult evangelizing anorexia, clones from MannasSantos, a voodoo queen, hit-men dressed as Elvi and a woman addicted to liposuction, to hunt down the preserved Elvis fat.

Will Dr. Shmalzberg track down the Elvis before he is captured, killed or before it becomes too late for humanity?

The Good Humor Man is an amazing novel that tackles serious issues like obesity, nutrition, genetically engineered food, the agricultural business, body image and many, many other important topics in a very entertaining, darkly humorous way. In the tradition of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, The Good Humor Man makes us question just where we are headed as a nation and what we can do to prevent author Andrew Fox’s vision.

We all know that America as a country is F-A-T. We are one of the most obese countries in the world and in September 2008, the World Health Organization named the United States as #9 in a list of the most obese countries, with 74.1% of adults, or 237 million Americans, being overweight. So, what if all fatty foods were outlawed in the U.S.? What if a huge agribusiness like MannasSantos took over and made genetically engineered foods like “Leanie Lean” meats for the masses? Sure, the nation’s overall health would probably improve and people would lose weight, but at what cost? What if some genetically engineered experiment went awry and millions of people and animals began to waste away? This is the kind of catastrophe Dr. Shmalzberg must deal with in The Good Humor Man, but the threat of this happening in real life is definitely a possibility. Which is why the book is so engrossing and entertaining. It may be fiction, but author Andrew Fox weaves enough facts and “what if’s” about the possibility of this really happening to the U.S. to completely capture the reader’s attention.

Fox also captures the reader’s attention by giving them a wild ride with The Good Humor Man. Though he puts Dr. Shmalzberg into impossible after impossible scenario, you can’t help but keep reading to see just how he’ll get out of his next scrape! Fox deftly writes the character of Shmalzberg, along with the multitude of other colorful characters, so that they are all believable.

The book is also extremely fast-paced, though it took me a few chapters to really get into it. As soon as Shmalzberg hits the road in search of the Elvis, though, I was hooked. Shmalzberg deals with so many different characters, settings and predicaments on his journey that at times I felt too much was crammed into the book, but Fox somehow makes it work and continues to entertain the whole way through.

My only complaint was towards the end when the book did begin to drag, weighted down by too many old characters that decided to pop up for one last showdown with Shmalzberg. I felt that the ending was drawn out and could have been pared down for a smoother ending.

Other than that minor issue, The Good Humor Man is a very satisfying read that gives you plenty of food for thought!

Available from Amazon!