House of Dead Trees is out! First book review is in!

http://bricksofthedead.com/2011/12/14/supernatural-book-review-house-of-dead-trees/

Go to Bricks of the Dead to read the review of my haunted house novel House of Dead Trees. This book has been in the works for a while, but it's finally out, and so is the first review. Spoiler: I got an -A!!!

Another Great Review for Mort!

Thanks to Jeff Burke for the awesome review of Mort, featured on his website Ask Me About Zombies. Click the link to read the whole thing.

Excerpt: "THE GOOD: Mort is actually a really sweet, heart-warming story wrapped in a crass, sexual, violent package (like a cute puppy dog wandering around the set of porno shoot). The best parts of the story depict Mort’s unlikely friendship with Cactus Pete, another survivor. Pete is everything that Mort is not: attractive, physically fit, and a bit dimwitted. Their bromance is the heart of the novel, and even as disturbing as some of their behavior is, you’ll find yourself rooting for both of them throughout the book."

Excerpt from "Til Death"

Hey, gang. I've just finished writing a 10,000 word short horror story called "Til Death" and have made it available for the kindle and nook ereader devices. It is about a newlywed couple trapped in the basement of a rural home during a zombie outbreak. It is set in the same universe as Mort, so you zombie fans will hopefully enjoy it. I plan to write more short fiction so that there's not such a big gap in my releases between the full-sized novels. Caution: it is very explicit and violent. Here's an excerpt from the first four or five pages. Only 99 cents at amazon or barnes and noble!

1. In the Kitchen

Rachel Carlson inched her eyes above the window sill and peered into the backyard. Her heart was beating so hard it felt like someone was rhythmically squeezing her head, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She didn’t think she’d ever been so scared for so long. Not in her whole life. Not even close.

“Come o-oooon… where are you?” she whispered.

She had almost been too scared to venture out of the basement. She was afraid one of those… things might have wandered into the house during the night. They seemed dumb, but they could fool you. They didn’t think, and they didn’t seem to have emotions, but they had a kind of sly instinct. And they had no mercy. None. If she was by herself, she probably wouldn’t have been able to work up the courage to come out of her hiding place, but she wasn’t alone. She had Charlie, and he needed her to be brave.

It was just a little after noon, the yard between the house and the barn brightly lit. It was the Dog Days of Summer, the sun a hot, hard-boiled egg, the sky cloudless but for a few wispy smears of white near the horizon. She could see the porch and a big oak tree with a rope swing, and several feet past that, a picnic table and a stump with an axe in it. At the edge of the yard, before the property gave way to endless rolling hills of pale pink prairie grass, there was a big red barn and a garden—but as far as she could see, no monsters.

Where were they?

She’d checked the house already, upstairs and down, making sure they were all outside, no nasty surprises ready to jump out of a closet or grab your ankle from beneath a bed. There were five of them, she believed: a mother, a father and three kids. She’d locked the outside doors as she crept carefully from room to room-- something she’d neglected to do when they first fled here, pursued by those things-- trying to ignore the blood stains in the middle of the livingroom floor, which had dried the color of chocolate syrup.

Just like she tried to ignore the dead dog lying in the middle of the back yard, flyblown and pulled apart, its ribs jutting out and its entrails spread in the dirt like someone had pulled the pin on a grenade and shoved it down the poor animal’s throat.

For the first time since she’d gotten here, Rachel was hopeful. Maybe they’d forgotten about the fresh meat hiding in the house and had wandered off. It was possible.

She could see the grill of an old farm truck through a gap in the barn doors, and the question that was running through her head was: does it run? Because if it did, then maybe they could get to it and escape. Maybe she could get Charles to a hospital, find someplace where he could get proper medical attention.

She didn’t have any alternatives. The power had gone out two days ago. The radio stations were all off the air. She’d tried her cell phone first thing, when they were safely inside the farmhouse, but she’d only gotten a robot voice that said, “We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please try your call later.” Now it just showed NO SIGNAL.

Her phone was dead, the power was dead, the radio stations were dead… for all she knew, the whole world was dead.

And it wouldn’t be long before Charles was dead, too.

No! she thought, shaking her head stubbornly. He’s not going to die! Don’t even think that! He’s going to get better, or you’re going to figure a way out of here and get him to a hospital.

But she didn’t believe it. Not in her heart of hearts. There was no place for lies in the Heart of Hearts. No comforting untruths, no room for cowardice.

Rachel started to rise, thinking she would sneak out the kitchen door and try to make it to the barn. If she could get to the truck, she could try the engine. If it started, she would find those fucking things and run them over, maybe back up and run over them twice, and then she’d pull up to the door and fetch Charles from the basement and get the two of them the hell out of here. There had to be somewhere they could go, someplace that hadn’t been devastated by the Phage.

She had just risen to full height, in view of the barnyard, and one of the monsters came stumbling from behind a brilliant yellow bush that was just on the other side of the oak tree. It was the fat one. The one in the bloody coveralls. Mr. Frobisher, she thought, recalling the name that was hand-painted on the family’s mailbox. She’d seen it when they first arrived-- The Frobishers, writ cheerfully among bright painted sunflowers. For some reason, she had remembered the name. She didn’t know why.

The fat one stumbled to the center of the yard, walking stilt-legged, like his gears were about to seize up. His thin hair blew in the humid breeze, flapping upon the bald spot he’d probably tried to comb it over when he was still alive. His skin was a mottled, cyanotic blue, with black mold winding up his bloated neck from his collar. The mold had begun to spread to his jowly cheeks, she saw, and when he opened his mouth to groan, she noted his lips and tongue were black with mold as well.

Rachel dropped back out of view, trying to restrain her yip of surprise.

She squatted below the window sill, cursing her bad luck, but she was glad she hadn’t tried to make a run for the truck parked in the barn after all, because Mr. Frobisher had been lurking out there behind the yellow bush the whole time, and he would have caught her halfway across the yard.

They were dumb… but they were sly.

Rachel eased back up to see what Frobisher was doing.

“Ew!” she muttered, pulling a face.

The redneck was kneeling in the yard beside his dead dog now, chewing on one of its legs. She was glad his back was turned. Bad enough to know what he was doing; at least she didn’t have to suffer the gruesome details.

A moment later his wife came lurching around the corner of the house, dressed in a tacky satin nightgown, and the two began to tussle over the dog leg, snarling and hissing at one another in the middle of a cloud of agitated flies. Mrs. Frobisher howled, teeth gleaming in the mangled mess that was her upper lip and jaw. Her husband pushed her down and returned to chewing on the family pet.

Chivalry wasn’t just dead, Rachel thought. It was un-dead.

Feeling nauseated, Rachel slid to her hands and knees and withdrew to the basement door. She scooped up the bottle of antibiotics she had found in the second story bathroom and reached up for the doorknob. She eased through the door and pulled it to behind herself, then stood, took a calming breath and headed down to check on her husband.

2. In the Basement

“Hey, beautiful,” Charlie murmured.

It was hard to hide her despair, but Rachel forced herself to smile and replied: “Hey, funny-face.”

Her husband was lying on a cot, his wrists bound to the metal frame of the headboard. In the joyless white light of the Coleman lantern sitting on the crate beside him, his face looked ashen and skeletal. His eyes had sunk in and his cheeks were hollow and his skin had taken on a decidedly unhealthy pallor. He was sinking fast, she knew. He seemed to have wasted even further, just in the short time she’d been upstairs checking to see if the Frobishers were still hanging around.

As if he’d read her mind, he swallowed thickly and asked, “They still out there?”

Rachel nodded as she crossed to an old-fashioned freezer. There was a plastic jug of purified water sitting atop it. “Yes, they’re still shambling around outside,” she said, and she filled a Styrofoam cup with water. As she carried the cup to him, she added, “I think there’s an old truck in the barn out back. I was just about to make a run for it when Old Man Frobisher came shambling out from behind a bush. He probably would have gotten me if I had actually made a break for it. Here, take a couple of these. They’re antibiotics.” She put the pills into his mouth, then brought the cup to his lips. He drank noisily, then smiled at her in gratitude.

“Thanks, I was so thirsty,” he sighed.

“No problem, babe,” she said, sitting on the edge of the cot. She stroked his thigh, hiding her shock at the heat she could feel coming through the fabric of his pants. His fever had risen. The Phage was cooking him alive, using him up. There were already faint blue splotches on his forehead and cheeks, and his eyes looked rheumy and cataract. He was in the final stages of the transformation, she knew, and with that realization came a desperate feeling of helplessness she could hardly bear.

“I don’t think you should try for that truck,” Charles told her. “There are plenty of supplies down here. You could hold out for quite a while. Long enough for the government to get things back under control, or for the virus to burn itself out.” He spoke with his head hanging down, exhausted. Even speech had become an effort for him.

He was right, of course. Finding this farmhouse had been a stroke of luck. The Frobishers had been a paranoid lot. Their basement was stocked with supplies. It had thick concrete walls and air vents near the ceiling. There were several cots to sleep on, and the walls were lined with canned food and medical supplies-- and plenty of drinking water, too, in rows upon rows of plastic one gallon jugs. Old Man Frobisher had probably built it during the Y2K scare, when everyone was freaking out over a possible technomeltdown. She remembered her own parents stocking up on drinking water and canned foods at the time. She and her husband probably could have stayed down there for months, if Charles hadn’t gotten infected.

She didn’t argue with him about abandoning their refuge. They’d already fought bitterly about it, and he was so sick. There was very little fight left in him.

But she just couldn’t let him die! She couldn’t!

She was just about to rise and return upstairs—monsters or no monsters, she was going to try for the truck in the barn!-- when he spoke.

“Not much of a honeymoon,” Charles said softly. He said it with a little snort of a laugh.

Suddenly there were two Charlies lying there with his wrists tied to the bedframe. Then three. A dozen. Rachel wiped her glittering eyes and sniffed. “I’m such a selfish bitch,” she said bitterly. “I’m so sorry, Charles.”

“Sorry? For what?” he asked, trying to raise his head.

Tears tumbled down her cheeks like jewels. She let them fall into her lap. “For making you wait,” she answered. “For making us wait for our honeymoon. I was so stupid. I thought it would make it more special.”

They were driving to South Carolina, to the hotel they’d reserved at Myrtle Beach, still picking bird seed from their wedding out of their hair. That’s when the whole world went crazy. They’d stopped at a service station to fill up the car. Rachel was sitting in the passenger seat, checking her makeup, and Charles was filling the tank. She remembered she was so nervous about getting to the hotel, because they were married now, and they were finally going to do it. No more excuses. She’d looked up at Charles in the side mirror, and he saw her and made a silly face, and then the car rocked as a horde of howling lunatics came running into the gas station parking lot. They surrounded him, clawing and yelling. Charles had fought them off, getting scratched and bitten before escaping them into the backseat. As the lunatics snarled and beat at the windows, Rachel had slid behind the wheel and driven away, tearing the hose from the gas pump in the process, screaming at the top of her lungs all the way down the block. As Charles lay in the backseat, bleeding, she drove through a world that had plunged into a nightmare.

There were people running wildly through the streets. Buildings were burning. They were hit twice by other vehicles driven by panicked survivors, but somehow she managed to keep the car moving. She drove past a knot of infected people eating a woman alive on the sidewalk. The newsman on the radio said a supervirus had escaped from a government lab, was spreading like wildfire, that the world was in chaos, and foreign nations were threatening to cauterize the infection by nuking the United States.

They’d fled to the country, driving until the car was out of gas, and then they’d hoofed it. After being forced to flee into the woods when they tried to hitch a ride with a truckload of crazed rednecks, they started hiding in the weeds whenever a car passed. Charles sickened within 24 hours of being infected, growing weaker by the minute. They came upon the Frobisher’s farmhouse and decided to ask the family for assistance, hoping for someplace to hide out. But the Frobishers were already infected—Ma, Pa and all three kids—and the two of them had fled from the crazed clan the only place they could: the Frobisher’s own house, hiding in the basement from the family’s cannibalistic designs.

“If only I wasn’t so silly, we could have… And now we’ll never…”

Charles had refused to make love to her here in the basement, though she had wanted to that first night. He was afraid she would get infected. And now he was too far gone to do anything of the sort, even if he had wanted to.

But he was laughing. His shoulders shook with his weak exhalations.

“What? Why are you laughing?” she demanded, her feelings hurt.

“Darling, you might not have done it before, but I have… so don’t feel guilty on my account,” he gasped.

“Oh, you--!” She slapped him lightly on the leg. “Why do you always have to tease me?”

She knew he wasn’t a virgin. He was five years older than her, a man of the world at twenty-four. She hadn’t expected him to be a virgin, either, although she was. She had always wanted to wait until her wedding night, a special gift to give the man she wanted to live the rest of her life with. Such a stupid sentiment, but he had gone along with her, charmed by the idea and hopelessly in love with her, and now this…!

He didn’t speak for a long time. His respirations had become very shallow.

“Charles?” she whispered.

Feeling the icy claws of horror sink into her belly, she cupped his cheeks in her palms and raised his head.    

He opened his eyes. They were milky and filmed over, but he smiled at her. “Remember… the fireworks…?” he breathed. “I said… I was going… to marry you.” And then the life went out of him.

3. Head, Meet Axe

“This is probably going to sting a little,” Rachel said, raising the axe above her head. She was trying to make a joke of it in honor of the man she had fallen in love with, but it came out sounding cruel and mad to her own ears, and she started to cry. She dropped the axe to the concrete floor of the Frobisher family bomb shelter, sobbing, and sank on her ass beside it.

The Phage had revived her husband shortly after he died, and now he was like all the rest of the monsters: dead and yet not dead. He tugged mindlessly at the ropes that bound his wrists to the bedframe, snarling and hissing at her, his handsome features twisted in rage, his eyes rheumy and soulless white marbles. It was Charles, but it was not Charles. It was a hideous caricature of the man she had married.

You have to do this, Rachel said to herself. You can’t just let him… BE like that!

But it was hard. Maybe too hard.

She thought about the gentle prankster who rubbed her feet whenever they were sore, who had been so proud when he won a stuffed animal for her out of a coin-operated crane machine—just like a kid!— who had, just days ago, promised to love, honor and cherish her forever, and it seemed like blasphemy.

She had to chop her husband’s head off.

The only way to kill them for sure, the newscaster had said before all of the radio stations fell silent, was decapitation. That or some other kind of severe damage to the brain: gunshot, blunt trauma… chainsaw.

Guns were out, because Rachel was scared of guns, and she didn’t think she had the strength to bash his head in with a can of Ravioli either, so she decided on the axe she’d found at the far end of the basement, near the stove.

Eventually, he was going to get loose, whether he tore the bedframe apart or sawed through his own wrists with the ropes that were binding him to the bed, so she might as well do it and get it over with.

In a way, she would be setting him free, she reasoned. Putting him to rest. Besides, it wasn’t even really him. Not anymore. His soul had taken flight the moment he died-- had gone straight to heaven, she was sure-- and left behind this horrid thing. Not even a “him” anymore. A violent, slavering “it”.  She had tried to talk to it, but it was mindless… just a crazed animal that jerked and twisted at the ropes that bound its wrists, sawing relentlessly through the meat of its arms.

Maybe… maybe if she covered its head with something…

Wiping her eyes, Rachel clambered to her feet. She looked around, spotted a burlap sack of potatoes. She pulled the cord that held the end of it shut and shook the bag out, watching the spuds go rolling every which way along the concrete floor. Then, holding the empty sack in her hands, she cautiously approached her dead husband.

Charles snarled and jerked more vigorously on the bed, trying to get at her. Tarry black blood oozed down his forearms. He had sawed his wrists almost to the bone, she saw.

“Charles?” she murmured as she eased closer.

He lunged and snapped at her.

“Baby?”

 He hissed and bucked his hips.

“Just hold still, now. Don’t bite.”

His teeth clacked together, but she jerked the sack over his head and jumped back without getting injured. She stood for a moment with her hands over her mouth and nose, trembling, then turned and went to fetch the axe.

Just do it fast. Don’t think about it, she counseled herself.

But when she returned, axe in hand, she saw that he had fallen still. He’d quit struggling, was no longer even snarling.

She watched the burlap sack turn left and right, like a kitten with its head stuck in a box, and then he made a whining sound in his throat, and she thought: I can’t do it. Not like this either.

To purchase the full story, and support this humble wordsmith, click the link below:

Til Death for the Kindle

Til Death for the Nook

If you enjoy it, maybe you can leave me some positive feedback. I'd appreciate it!

Rod

Interview with little ol' me

Check out my interview on zombie blog Bricks of the Dead.

Short excerpt:

"ZombieMutts: Even major publishers seem to have somewhat of a bastardized idea of what horror content is. Inside a bookstore looking on the shelves you see a lot of cookie cutter horror books sharing space with the sci-fi books. Yet what’s being produced in the E-Book market by self-published authors to indie publishers is very different.


Rod Redux: That’s why I’m making a living and they’re closing shop. Seriously, though… when I develop a story idea into a book, I continually ask myself: Is this original? Has it been done before? How can I make it MORE unique? I get on the internet and search for names, try to double check myself for originality, because it’s easy to accidentally copy someone else nowadays, there’s so many people writing books and making movies and comics. The mainstream publishers do the opposite. They say, “Harry Potter was such a huge success. How can we repeat this?” The problem is, Harry Potter was a success because it was original. There was nothing else like it. You lose that when you try to manufacture the NEXT Harry Potter or the NEXT Twilight. The best advice I could give to an aspiring writer would be to concentrate on originality, not on copying what’s considered “hot” at the moment, because it’s the originality, not the subject matter, that makes them hot.


ZombieMutts: Mort is a huge fan favorite character that would have fit perfectly in any number of situations. What made you drop him into the zombie apocalypse?


Rod Redux: From the outset, he was a zombie book character. His genesis as a protagonist was the question: what was the worst thing to be if there was a zombie apocalypse? The answer was, “a fat guy”. He’s the guy who is supposed to die first. The nerdy, fat, smart guy. He can’t run. He’s not fast or graceful or particularly brave, but he’s very pragmatic, and I believe, if there was a zombie apocalypse, that it would be the practical people who had the best chance of surviving. Plus, he genuinely cares for the people who become his friends during the course of the tale, and that gives him the strength to persevere, even after he’s been shot in the head with a cattlegun and infected with the Z virus and all the other horrible stuff that happens to him. If you don’t love something or someone, why fight? You’re going to die eventually anyway, so just let the zombies eat you and save yourself the bother. Plus, Mort is French for “death”, so even his name is sort of zombie-related."

Click here for the full interview!

Book Review of Mort, posted on bricksofthedead.com

Book Review: Mort

By zombiemutts on September 8th, 2011
Posted In: Reviews

Mort. That’s the name of the hero in this book, also called Mort. Not a very impressive sounding name, is it? Well neither is the guy himself. Out of breath after a light jog due to years of sitting on a stool in his comic book shop, Mort isn’t the type of main character who normally graces the pages of a zombiepocolypse book. Instead you’d expect a hero who dons a tactical vest while slapping clips into a carbine, but only while in-between tossing grenades at the tidal wave of zombie hordes that are coming his way. Mort isn’t like that.

This is a story about a normal guy who is trying to survive one day to the next after the apocalypse. A note about that apocalypse: he missed the beginning of it since he is such a hard sleeper, and didn’t even realized it had happened until he saw an employee being chased. Mort is, without a doubt, the most memorable main character – not to mention all around unique zombie book - that I have ever read. Mort is flavored with laugh out loud moments while still maintaining its horror base and tension. It takes skillful writing to accomplish that, and Mort somehow never stops being serious while dispensing well-placed humor.

Nothing about Mort is formulaic; it thrives in its cleverness.

Identifiable characters can elevate trash to passable entertainment, and make a good story great. In Mort‘s case, the character development is done both organically and believably. By the end we end up seeing a little bit of Mort in all of us, and I think we all know someone a like his brash sidekick, Pete. I don’t know if it was just the love for an everyman hero, but I was cheering for Mort throughout the story.

And if zombies aren’t enough for you, there is another supernatural group, who has been hidden in the shadows of humanity for centuries and add a significant twist to the story. Chances are you will figure out what they are, as hints are subtly laid out, but the ending was nonetheless a complete shock and unique enough to where an entire books series could be written based on the idea – and I hope that’s exactly what happens.

The book is also incredibly graphic at times, and I will gladly admit there were several parts of the book that literally made me cringe in disgust. But it wasn’t vileness for the sake of vileness, or cheap gore to keep up the horror novel aesthetic. Those cringing moments fit, and they fit perfectly to either advance the story or give it additional depth. As a pretty big fan of Rod’s collective work, I recognize such moments as an indelible part of his style and appreciate that he never simply jams something into a story for shock value. He is simply too good of a writer for such cheap genre crutches.

I bring this up because some of the more ghastly scenes, as well as Pete’s harsh language, have received criticism from reviewers, which is quite honestly bizarre when considering Mort and the rest of Rod’s work is clearly in the horror genre. Let’s face fact: sometimes people do and say things to each other that are far worse than anything a monster is capable of. I love the fact that Mort, along with the rest of Rod’s work, will leave me thinking about that even after I am done with a book. It’s horror that sticks with you long after the book is back on the shelf.

My one issue with Mort was I felt it was a bit too short. I was left wanting more. But then again I don’t feel like it was missing anything so maybe it was just right.

At this time this is Rod Redux’s only foray into the zombiepocolypse but he does have plans for a Mort prequel.

Grade A-

Check out Bricksofthedead. Cool Site!

Latest Book Review: Indian Summer, by reviewer badlucksunshine

Five Stars out of Five *****

"Any reader(s) familiar with Redux's prior novels will be taken aback by Indian Summer. Instead of his brilliant approach in reinventing classic "monsters", this piece is a fictional memoir of the human experience in all of its tragedy and beauty with its own monsters. It is not devoid of horrors and atrocities, but these are true-to-life experiences rather than supernatural. Eddie, the 9 yr old boy who is the focal point, endures through his innocence being stolen from him via a series of events that are NOT for the squeamish. But again, the emotions, reactions, and circumstances are all very real. Redux captures the viewpoint of a child with eerie precision and actually returns the reader to that state of mind. There is a spectrum in Indian Summer of both pain and redemption that has not been successfully brought about by most authors. As a fan of Redux's other works, I didn't expect such a blunt and direct story lacking in his signature dark humor, which is another aspect that makes this that much more unique. I'll make no comparisons to other writers or books, but whatever elements you may be familiar with have been reinterpreted. If you can handle a dark depiction of reality, you have no excuse to not read Indian Summer."

You can buy Indian Summer below, for the Kindle ereader or in paperback format.

Indian Summer for Kindle or Paperback

What's Coming for Gon in the next installment of the Oldest Living Vampire Saga?

In the next volume of the Oldest Living Vampire saga, the 30,000 year old immortal encounters a village that is populated by the descendants of the tribe he was born to as a living man. The tribe of fisherman still remember their "god" Thest, and welcome him into their midst, but peace eludes Gon as he must contend with his vampire child Ilio, who has become smitten with a mortal female. Uncomfortable with being worshipped as a demi-god, Gon nevertheless accepts his former role as protector of the river people, and lives for the first time among mortals.


Despite Ilio's rebelliousness, years pass in relative tranquility... until Gon's people are assaulted by the nomadic vampire raiders who destroyed Ilio's tribe. Gon's preternatural powers are tested to their limits as he tries to defend his people from the bloodthirsty raiders. Yet, even amidst the battle, the lonely Gon finds himself drawn to the beautiful and fierce vampire Zenzele, leader of the raiders, and she to him. Zenzele, like Gon, is a true immortal, and though the Oldest Living Vampire is powerful, his enemies are numerous.

Zenzele has a simple solution to their stalemate: if Gon agrees to join her, she and her roving band of vampires will spare Gon's descendants from further depredations. In fact, she swears, they will help him to protect his people. But refuse, and she will wage war against Gon and the family he protects, even to the last man, woman and child.


"Surrender to me, Thest, and you will be lavishly rewarded," Zenzele whispers with a seductive smile, her words more plea than promise.


"Surrender to me, and I, in turn, surrender to you."

Gon's selfish decision will forever alienate him from his vampire child Ilio, but he is helpless to resist the allure of the immortal warrior princess.

As Gon relates the details of their tempestuous love affair to the murderer he holds captive in modern day Belgium, the Oldest Living Vampire continues to shift the pieces of his secret plan to end his own immortal suffering.

The real star of House of Dead Trees-- The Forester House

This excerpt is from Chapter Six, Titled "The House". In this segment, the show's director and a couple of its technical crew get their first sight of the infamous Forester House. Please be aware that this is a work in progress...

Robert Forester was leaning against the side of his car when Raj and the two Dans came jouncing over the last hill and pulled to a stop a couple feet away. Forester was a tall, thin fellow, thirty-three years old, with sandy blonde hair, a beard and a fair, freckled complexion. He reclined against his car, a dark blue Mercedes, his arms crossed, and watched as the doors of the Ghost Scouts’ black SUV swung open and three men clambered out. His mouth was a thin line, his eyes narrow. The sun had just lowered itself upon the jagged horizon, squat and red as an overripe tomato, and his shadow stretched long and thin across the grassy gravel drive.

“You’re late,” he said.

Raj took the lead, approaching the thin man with his hand held out. “I apologize, Mr. Forester. We had a bit of trouble finding the turnoff. I had the address programed into the GPS, but it kept sending us in circles.”

Robert Forester stepped away from his car and clasped Raj’s hand. They shook briefly. “I suppose it couldn’t be helped, then. Truth be told, I had some difficulty finding the place myself when I first got into town. Please, call me Robert. And you are?”

“Rajanikanta Chandramouleeswaran.”

“Wow. That’s a mouthful.”

“Everyone calls me Raj.”

“I guess so,” Forester said, the furrows around his eyes softening a little. “Yeah, so anyway… Sorry you got lost. Maybe I should go down to the end of the road and tie a red bandana around a tree. I’ve been trying to get someone to cut back some of that brush, but nobody wants to do any work on the property. I guess the people around here are superstitious.”

“You’re not a local?” Raj asked.

“No, my parents lived up north until they died. After that, I sort of… drifted a while. I’m a freelance artist, so I don’t have to stay in any one place for work. No wife or kids, either. I pick up and go whenever I feel like it.”

“Until now,” Raj said.

Forester smiled. “Yeah. Now I own this.”

As if that was their cue, both men turned to look at the Forester House together.

The house was big. That was Raj’s first impression. He’d caught little peeks of it as they bounced up the winding and washed out driveway—the flash of the sun on a window, the spires of its roof—but this was the first time Raj had seen it as a whole, and with his own eyes. He’d seen photographs, but photos were a pale approximation.

The first thought that went through Raj’s mind was: What a monster!

It was a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian, but his impression wasn’t motivated by physical dimension alone. The Forester House had a presence. It seemed to crouch, and looked ready to gobble up the first unwary soul unlucky enough to venture too close.

And it was ugly.

The house was asymmetrical, with a steep, pointed roof, a jumble of towers and gables and arched Palladian windows, but the asymmetry of its design was no excuse for the way roof met wall and wall met foundation, every angle just slightly off, none of its lines exactly square or level. There was a broad, sweeping porch. Balconies jutted from several of the second-story rooms. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to its architecture, only that the edifice was meant to be great and excessive and overwrought. From its decorative spindles to its heavy stone piers, its tangled topiary to it Byzantine bracketing, there did not seem to be any region of its surface upon which the eye could rest comfortably or for long.

All its pretentious flourishes seemed disproportionate in their abundance. Its strangely patterned wood and stone siding was repugnant. The delicately turned porch posts, the dentil molding, the half-timbered gables, the copious stained glass windows. It was too much to take in all at once. Its features, in their excess, came together in unexpected and unpleasant ways, and seemed individually to spring out when the eye stumbled across them.

Robert Forester glanced toward Raj as the two men absorbed the atmosphere of the house, and the expression on Raj’s face made him laugh. “It’s a sight, isn’t it?” Forester asked.

It’s hideous, Raj wanted to say, but that would have been rude. Instead, he replied, “It certainly is.”

But the home’s new owner seemed to catch wind of his thoughts anyway. Robert Forester turned back to the house, the humor fading from his eyes, and he said, “Maybe I’m crazy for planning to stay here. It seemed like a grand idea when I was living in the city. Reclaim the ancestral home, you know. Live in the famous haunted house. But now, after actually setting eyes on the place, being inside it for the first time, I think I might be making a mistake. What do you think?”

He glanced back at Raj, who shrugged noncommittally.

“If you’re asking me for advice, I can’t tell you anything one way or another. Not until we’ve investigated the home.”

“Do you really believe in ghosts, Mr. Chadramoolease—Er, Raj?” Robert Forester asked. “I mean… I’m sure you have to say you do, but… do you?”

Raj nodded. “We’ve been doing the show for nine years now, Mr. Forester. In that time, I’ve seen things that lead me to believe there are indeed phenomena in this world we have not yet quantified scientifically.”

“The supernatural,” Forester said.

Raj shrugged. “Call it what you will.”

“What do you call it?”

“The underpinning of the universe… The quantum substratum… The laws of physics get a little fuzzy below the subatomic level.”

“So you would call what you do the science of the supernatural?”

Raj tilted his head.

“And you think you can help me? Your team of ghost hunters?”

“We try to help when we can.”

Behind them, Big Dan and Little Dan had finished unloading the back of the SUV. They shuffled toward the house, large aluminum cases bumping against their knees.

“The place got lights?” Little Dan asked the owner.

“I had all the utilities turned on when I first arrived in town,” Robert answered. “The electricity is working, but I can’t guarantee how reliable it is. I hope you have surge protectors.”

“Oh, yeah,” Little Dan said with a friendly grin. “This ain’t our first rodeo.”

“If you could show us inside,” Raj said to the owner, gesturing toward the front door. “I’d like to get some preliminary readings, familiarize myself with the layout of the home. Plus, I’d personally love to have a look around. This house is quite famous in paranormal investigation circles. But I’m sure you’re well aware of that.”

They started across the lawn toward the front porch, their legs swishing through knee high grass that had been allowed to grow unchecked—probably for ages. As they walked, a grasshopper or two flicked into the air, buzzing away on wings that rattled like rice paper. Aside from the flick and buzz of the grasshoppers, however, the air was strangely still. There was no birdsong in the forest that encircled the big house on the hill. No whirring cicadas. Only the sound of the wind in the treetops, and from time to time, a furtive little crackle, as something small and timid fled through the underbrush.

The grass, too, was lifeless. Withered. Yellow. Raj could feel it crunching under the soles of his shoes as he walked, brittle as spun glass, but the main of his attention was centered on the house.

The house… the famous house…

He could feel his heart begin to race as the quartet approached the veranda. His chest got tight, as if his windpipe had shrunk to the size of a pinhole.

THE house!

Forester House was the most infamous haunted house in North America, rivaled only by the Winchester Mansion, the Villisca Ax Murder House, Waverly Hills Sanitarium… and his team had exclusive rights to document its hauntings! No paranormal investigators had been here in decades! None would have the chance to investigate after, as the new owner planned to completely remodel it.

The home’s new owner, Robert Forester, was rambling on about his aunt, who had left him the house in her will, Robert being the last living male descendent of the home’s original owner. His aunt had written him a letter shortly before she died, Robert said, explaining the conditions of his inheritance, that he must never sell the house or take up residence within its walls.

“’The land is cursed, and the house doubly so,’ she said,” Robert related over his shoulder with a grin. He dug his keys from his pocket as he climbed the veranda steps. “’It is our burden to safeguard the innocent from the wicked things the hearts of men are led to do here.’ I thought she was being melodramatic. You know, because of the house’s infamy. Until the first time I stepped inside.”

Raj started up the steps… and felt dizziness wash suddenly over him. He snatched instinctively for the step rail, waving his left arm, but his flapping fingers couldn’t find it. Luckily, Big Dan was right behind him.

“Hey!” Big Dan exclaimed as he shored up the listing director. “You okay, boss? What’s wrong?”

“Whoa, careful, dude!” Little Dan cautioned.

“I’m so sorry!” Raj said, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wavered for a moment, drew himself upright. “It’s passing. Must be my allergies. My inner ear... it threw off my balance for a moment.”

Robert Forester was standing in the open doorway, his brow furrowed. He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether Raj was being serious or playing out some little piece of theater.

“Are you going to be okay?” Forester inquired.

Raj stood and waved to the homeowner. “I’m fine now. I have very severe allergies. I took my allergy medicine this morning, but, I guess, all this grass and… the woods…”

“Are you sure? It’s not any better inside. I can assure you of that.”

“Yes, yes. I apologize. Please. Let’s continue.”

Raj put his hand on the rail and finished climbing the steps. Still frowning, Robert shifted aside and gestured for his guest to precede him.

“Enter freely, and of your own will,” Robert said with a ghoulish smirk as Raj walked past him.

Raj smiled politely, but, stepping into the dark throat of the house, it didn’t seem particularly funny.

Between Two Ficuses with Jeff Strand

It is my pleasure to chat today with a Bram Stoker Award nominee and... just a truly, truly talented horror, fantasy and suspense writer. He is the author of Wolf Hunt, Mandibles, The Sinister Mr. Corpse, Pressure, Dweller and many, many other "gleefully macabre" novels and short stories, most of which can be had for a pittance for the Kindle ereader device, or in various hardcover and paperback forms at your local closed bookstore. Best know for weaving humor into his terrifying tales, let's all say hi and get to know this prolific bestseller a little bit better.

Rod: First of all, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to sit down with me here on Red Ramblings. It makes me really uncomfortable when men stand so close in front of me while I’m talking.

Jeff: Sorry about that. I’ll stand behind you.

Rod: Ok... thanks.

Jeff: (Stumbling around behind the set)

Rod: Here. Just sit here. Oops! You okay? Here. There ya go... I really appreciate you taking time out of your hectic schedule to visit me today. It is such an honor to interview you for my blog! Please excuse me if I seem a little nervous. I’m not the type of guy to get all gushy and star struck, but I have to confess, it’s pretty nerve-racking for a new writer like me to be talking with such a… legend in the field of horror and fantasy fiction. So, anyway… first question: Your novels Ghost Story and Shadowland are two of my favorite novels of all time. Of the books that you’ve written, which are your personal favorites, Mr. Straub?

Jeff: Thanks! I appreciate the compliment. Personally, my favorite of my own books is...wait a minute, WHAT?!?!?!? You sloping-foreheaded dullard, you've got the wrong interviewee! I'm Jeff Strand!

Rod: Jeff Strand? Who’s that? (Typing) Hmm… wow. Did you know you’re not on Wikipedia? (Typing) In fact, I really can’t find out much about you at all. Are you sure you’re famous?

 Jeff: Yeah.

Rod: Okay, here you are… sorry about that. So, um, Jeff… out of all the “books” (quotation fingers) that you’ve written, which is your personal favorite?

Jeff: They're all awesome in their own way. I think my favorite is a tie between Wolf Hunt and Pressure and Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) and Fangboy and Benjamin's Parasite and The Sinister Mr. Corpse and Mandibles and Single White Psychopath Seeks Same and A Bad Day For Voodoo and Gleefully Macabre Tales and Dweller and half of The Haunted Forest Tour and Out of Whack and Kutter and How to Rescue a Dead Princess and Elrod McBugle on the Loose and The Severed Nose.

Rod: Did you know that your photos on the internet make you look like a red-headed Freddie Mercury? What’s that like?

Jeff: Is he the guy who did that Wayne's World song that's like a bunch of short songs put together? He totally rocks. "Flash! Ooooohhhhh! He saved every one of us!" Is it copyright infringement to quote a lyric from the Flash Gordon song here? I hope so, because you'll be the recipient of the lawsuit, not me. Hahahahahahaha!!!

Rod: I think that falls under "fair use" law... sort of like the plots of your books. Ahem... I see that you’ve been nominated for the Bram Stoker awards—more than once, in fact. Three questions: Which of your books were nominated? How much does it cost to buy a Bram Stoker Award nomination? And how does it feel to be the Susan Lucci of horror novelists?

Jeff: Pressure, Dweller, and Gleefully Macabre Tales were nominated. If you've got my kind of connections, you can buy a Stoker nomination for a pack of cigarettes and a gun with the serial number filed off. And why do people who lose an award, like, twice, always say "I'm the Susan Lucci of the [Insert Award Here.]." According to the Google search I just did, Susan Lucci lost 19 times! If you didn't lose 19 times, quit frickin' comparing yourself to Susan Lucci! Also, she finally won back in 1999, so this question has been irrelevant for over a decade.

Rod: I didn't know that. (Note to self: no more Susan Lucci references...) We have a lot in common. I see here you started writing in grade school, drew comic books, and had a poem published by Pizza Hut. I also started out making my own comics books in grade school, and in seventh grade I started selling risqué slogans to a company that manufactured humorous pins and novelty greeting cards for $25 a one-liner. My best one was “Keep a stiff upper lip… or I’ll shoot it up your nose.” What kind of humorous childhood stories can you share with us to help fill up some of this dead space?

Jeff: I don't get the stiff upper lip joke. Is the point that it doesn't make any sense? When I was a kid I had some hermit crabs and they died, which was not a particularly humorous event but for the purposes of this story we'll pretend that their deaths were accompanied by wacky sound effects.

Rod: Like "Pingyoooowwww!" or more like "cruuuuuunch"? Haha, that's funny... Jeff, you’re probably best known for mixing humor and horror in your novels. Have you ever considered writing something good?

Jeff: Briefly, in college.

Rod: Did you know that my eBooks on Amazon generally outsell yours? I just wondered if you knew that. You don’t have to answer.

Jeff: No, no...the lower numbers are better in Amazon sales rankings. When your ranking is over 2 million that doesn't mean you sold 2 million books.

Rod: Ouch. That was... kind of mean. So... Mandibles is one of your most recent books. Question: why?

Jeff: It's actually not. It's a book from 2002 that I recently re-released as an e-book. Nice research, dude!

Rod: Do you have any advice for aspiring young artists or writers who think they might have a chance of competing with bigshot writers like you and me? I mean, aside from telling them to “just give that shit up”? Ha ha! Right? Right? High five!

Jeff: (Looking at Rod's notes) Did you suddenly switch from a numbering system to a lettering system with these questions? You are the drunkest interviewer I've ever endured.

Rod: Moving on...! You co-authored Draculas  with some really high-profile horror authors… and J. A. Konrath. What was it like working with that hack, and how did it feel to be his little bitch? Did you split the proceeds four ways, or was it more of a three-on-one? You know, he never would Facebook friend me… that butthole.

Jeff: It was a 25/25/25/25 split, minus expenses, which thanks to a glitch in our Excel file means that we all owe Konrath about fifty bucks a month. He spends the money on colorful yarn, yet nobody ever sees him knitting. It's very odd and disturbing. He probably didn't accept your friend request because your profile picture was his head on a stick.

Rod: Finally, this is the part of the interview where you get to plug your latest crap… I mean, books…  or whatever. (Orders pizza)

Jeff: What kind of pizza are you getting? Will it have jalapenos? Can I have a slice? No, no, don't get Dominos. I gave them another try after their freaky "We know our pizza used to suck, but now it doesn't!" commercial, but they still offer a sub-par pizza experience. If you order from Marco's, I'll totally pitch in for half.

In conclusion, I’d like to thank Jeff for coming down to the meat packing plant for this little interview, and for being such a great sport.  You didn’t let anyone know you were coming down here tonight, right, Jeff? Cool. So come over here. I want to show you something. Do you know how we deal with competition down here…?

Jeff Strand was the author of Wolf Hunt and Fangboy and some other books. Well, technically, he's still the author of those and the others...he's just dead now.  Which means that his books are going to sell even better. Dammit.

Click here to purchase the excellent Wolf Hunt, along with all the rest of Mr. Strand's books on Amazon.com for the Kindle ereader... or in archeological paper format if you still prefer the smell of rotting wood pulp and ink.

After a hard day of writin' bestsellers, Jeff and Rod like to

kick it with a couple bottles of fine malt liquor and

hang with their peeps at the Stinky Clam! *

( * Disclaimer: Jeff and Rod are not that cool)



Wolf Hunt by Jeff Strand Only $2.99 for Kindle

BUY IT TODAY!

Excerpt from House of Dead Trees! Featured character: Allen Mandel

Allen Mandel is the "leader" of the Ghost Scout team, and one of it's founding members. Allen is a pragmatic and rational man. He became interested in the supernatural following the death of his father, who he worshipped growing up. He seeks incontestable proof of life after death as much for himself as for the fame, but he's recently been distracted by a marriage which seems to be stalling out.

Please remember this is a work in progress...

From Chapter Two...

Allen Mandel cursed as he sliced the ball and watched it arc across the greens, its descending trajectory angled straight at the water hazard on hole eight of Diamond Lake Golf Course. “God DAMN it!” he cried, and his golfing partner, Jim Dagstine, chortled. Allen squeezed the grip of his driver, trying to quash the image that flashed suddenly in his mind: him, wrapping his golf club around his buddy’s skull. His ball went into the little pond with a distant ker-plunk! and then he felt the tension drain out of him, and he couldn’t help but chuckle, too.

Fucking whore! Fuck-shit!

“I hope you piss straighter than you golf, my friend, or I feel sorry for your housekeeper,” Jim said with a pat on the shoulder.

“Naw,” Allen said with a rueful grin. “My aim in the bathroom’s just as terrible.”

 “That’s nasty, dude. I wouldn’t have admitted that,” Jim laughed. Allen stepped out of the way and Jim squatted to place his tee. “So what’s up? You’ve been golfing like shit for the last two or three weeks.”

As Jim bent to place his ball on the tee, Allen wondered if his buddy knew just how fat his ass looked in that position. Jim was dressed in one-hundred-dollar-a-pair, green and yellow argyle Loudmouth golf pants, and the breadth of his derriere was really quite remarkable. Jim Dagstine had a peculiar pear-shaped body, normal-sized everywhere but through the hips. Allen considered mentioning it to his friend—a little jab for all the enjoyment his buddy had derived from Allen’s terrible showing so far today—but he held his tongue.

Save it for later.

“You having problems with the old lady again?” Jim asked, as he stood upright and squinted across the fairway. He shaded his eyes with his gloved hand, lips pulled back from his teeth. The chrome-bright June sun glimmered on the surface of the water hazard, the ripples made by Allen’s golf ball still oscillating outward from the spot where it had plunked into the drink.

“Trouble? No. There’s no trouble,” Allen said. “I wish there was trouble. That would be better than what she’s doing.”

Jim glanced at Allen sympathetically. They’d been friends for five years, practically from the day Allen moved next door to him. They didn’t have much in common aside from sharing a demented sense of humor. Jim was a proctologist, and Allen… well, Allen was a famous television personality, star of the cable reality program Ghost Scouts. But they got along pretty well. They’d even been known to admit they were best friends from time to time, but only after they’d gotten enough beer in them to get a little maudlin.

“She giving you the old silent treatment, huh?” Jim asked.

“It’s more than that,” Allen said while Jim slid a club from his golf bag. “It’s like she’s just shut down. Or shut me out. When she looks at me, it’s like she’s looking right through me, like I’m not even there. It makes me feel like Bruce Willis in that movie The Sixth Sense.”

“You guys still fucking?” Jim asked, examining his 9 iron.

“Nope. It’s probably been two or three months since we made love.”

Jim grimaced. “Yikes! Two or three months? I noticed your forearms were getting bigger.  I just thought you were going to the gym more.”

Allen chuckled. “I’m even getting callouses.”

Jim stepped up to the tee. He thrust his gigantic ass out and wiggled it around, then took a couple practice swings. “You should have an affair,” he said after a swing or two. “Famous TV guy like you… I bet you could take your pick from a million nubile groupies.”

Allen cocked an eyebrow. That was actually not far from the truth. He could take his pick from hundreds of eager female fans—young, good-looking, hot-for-his-dick Ghost Scouts fans. He’d had plenty of offers, been followed to his hotel room when Allen and the gang were on publicity tours, even got cornered in the men’s room a couple times. One gal, a thirtyish bleach blond with giant breast implants, had walked up to him in the back room of a convention hall, dropped to her knees without saying a word and dived straight for his zipper. She’d actually had his pecker out before he’d had time to collect his wits and disentangle himself from her.

And then there was Tish. Young, attractive, unattached and willing.

“But I don’t want them,” Allen said stubbornly. “I want Sharon.”

Jim stepped to the tee and swung. It was a beautiful drive. Both men stood and watched the little white ball rise into the blue porcelain sky. It hung in the air for a moment, then gracefully descended to the green, bouncing once, twice, then coming to rest just a few feet away from the cup.

Allen laughed as Jim grinned back over his shoulder at him.

“You’re a real cocksucker,” Allen said, shaking his head.

“Don’t you wish,” Jim replied smoothly.

They shouldered their bags and headed toward the golf cart.

Step One: Kindle Cloud Reader, Step Two: Ubiquity

When Apple changed their in-app purchase policy, forcing ebooks vendors to remove their integrated stores, Amazon quietly began developing a web-based Kindle reader to bypass the restrictive new rules. Their solution to Apple's understandable efforts to restrict competition is the Kindle Cloud Reader.

The Kindle Cloud Reader grants you the ability to access your Kindle library from the Ipad, as well as a couple PC browsers like Chrome and Safari. You can peruse your library, download a limited number of books for offline viewing, and shop for new reading material, all in one intergrated HTML5 web app.

Early reviews across the web are positive, with a lot of readers giving Amazon a thumbs up, not only for the pleasant new Kindle reading experience, but for their cleverness in sidestepping Apple's efforts at suppressing competition with their own ibookstore.

However, I have a feeling the ramifications of this new wrinkle in the unfolding ebook saga are going to turn out to be much larger than some might realize. Most dedicated ebook readers have some type of web browser functionality. How long will it be before we see the Kindle Cloud Reader optimized for Android, the Nook Color's web browser, and smart phones?

By creating a web based reader, Amazon has basically set the stage for ubiquity. Pretty soon, I imagine we'll see the Kindle Cloud Reader app being optimized for nearly every device imaginable, from cheap Android tablets to the Sony Reader's web browser. After all, how hard can it be to tweek a simple thing like display size now that the underlying programming is finished?  And I'm sure we'll see all the other ebook vendors follow suit. Kobo, in fact, has already announced theirs.

Click the link below to visit Amazon's new Kindle Cloud Reader... and be sure to purchase one of my books (or all of them) to read on your fancy new cloud service!

Kindle Cloud Reader