This is going to be a quick one. It’s been a hell of a week. My mother is in the hospital, diagnosed with Leukemia and getting treatment. I won’t get into the details, but it has been a lot to process. I’d completely forgotten about the newsletter and honestly, I was going to skip it this week and put it out next week, but I also figure it’s good to sit in front of the computer and get some work done just to get my mind off of things. That’s one of the great things about writing. It’s an escape.
Welcome to Confusions, Delusions, and Formidable Impressions.
News
Yuletide Nightmares just dropped from the brand new imprint from Brian Berry, Slaughterhouse Press. This book features a who’s who of indie authors including myself with a story called “A Choir of Ill Angels” about one of those neighborhoods that is a destination around the holidays for homes decked out in Christmas lights, only this year things get out of control as a choir of strange angels sing unusual variations of traditional Christmas songs. It’s a wild one and I had a blast writing it.
Another anthology that dropped recently is Splatterpunk’s Basement of Horror, edited by Jack Bantry. Another anthology that features a who’s who line-up. And another that I was fortunate enough to land a story in. My offering is called “Moches”. For those of you who are fans of Broth House, “Moches” features Chef Fontaine years before opening the Broth House soup kitchen. A lot of Broth House readers told me they wanted to know more about Chef Fontaine, so I decided to write short stories about his career before opening Broth House. This is the first one. I have another in mind. I suppose I’ll eventually put them out together in a collection. Anyway, it’s quite a nasty little tale.
Recent Reads from Hell
I just finished The Breeze Horror by Candace Caponegro (Onyx, 1988). It took several weeks to get through this one. I didn’t feel like DNFing it, but something about the story didn’t sit well with me. Basically, a massive storm of acid-like rain falls, killing everyone who gets caught in the downpour. Well, kills or leaves them hideously burned. The story takes place on an island where the people who were safe in their homes are terrified of the zombie-like beachers (for whatever reason, they keep to the beach) who were caught in the rain. I feel like there was a decent idea here, but the execution didn’t quite work. Almost like the set of parameters in the beginning of the book change throughout without any clear reason why. Like how is it when people try to flee on boat, they hit a fogbank and disappear, but in the end our protagonist escapes in a boat and floats away unscathed? The melting people are all killed and then come back with superpowers, but why? It isn’t that there needs to be some scientific reasoning behind this, but it feels like the author just threw in things to accelerate the story rather than building them from a distinctive foundation. It seemed as if the plot was written into a corner, so the author made some shit up to get the plot back on track, whether it made sense or not. But, strangely, I still kind of liked it, warts and all.
Currently reading Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected and starting The Comfy-Cozy Nihilist by Nathan D. Ludwig.
Final Thoughts
This week’s final thoughts come from Veronica, an awesome TikToker who just finished This Damned House and made a super cool video about it.
Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser