I love a good vampire novel when I saw Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson as a recommendation by an author whose novel I'd recently read, an enjoyed Nat Cassidy who wrote Nestlings. I decided to give it a try. The story is about Duane Minor, a bartender just back from a tour in Vietnam.

He's married and he and his wife have adopted their 13-year-old niece, Julia. Life is going fairly well in spite of the fact that Duane is an alcoholic who tends bar a recipe for disaster, if ever there was one. Apologies to Sam Malone. Things are far from perfect as their niece. Julia has troubles at school and is trying to find out what it means to be part of a loving family.

Things start to take an even worse turn. When two men enter the bar he works at and confront the owner when he asks about it, he's told to basically mind his own business. As a combat vet and the owner's family member, the option to mind his own business wasn't something he could take. When he found out that the two men were dealing drugs in the bar, he took action.

What follows is an examination of grief and loss, and the horror of an unhinged madman who also happens to be a vampire taking his revenge for Duane's intervention. If there's one thing I love more than a vampire novel, it's a novel with imperfect characters. Dwayne is a broken man who has been slowly put back together by the love of his wife and the care of her family.

When things go badly, he begins to fall apart. And he's not the only broken character in the novel. Julia is incredibly angry and lashes out at every opportunity to distance herself from other people. Watching her change in more ways than one was a really fascinating exploration of the things we do when vengeance is the only thing we can focus on.

Once things have fallen apart, it's up to his niece who wants to take vengeance for the loss of her aunt and other family members to take care of business. She goes to extreme methods to track down the man and have the resources necessary to confront what turns out to be a very old, very crazy vampire.

This is not a happy book. So much goes wrong. The few things that go right don't last. Rosson has created characters that I deeply care about by the end of the novel. What's especially cutting is that from the very beginning of the novel, it's patently obvious that important characters have a short shelf life for all the darkness and despair of filling the pages.

This is an incredibly engaging read. In addition to the well-crafted characters, the plot moves along at a fast pace and the situations that occur are believable in spite of the fantastic circumstances. All in all, I'm glad to have discovered Keith Rosson and I look forward to reading more of his books.

I give this story an enthusiastic five stars. Just make sure you have some happy things to do after you read it.

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I plan on using this audio as part of the audiobook version of this collection once I've recorded all of the stories. If you have any feedback on the audio, let me know. Otherwise, enjoy!

I love something with a dash of Steampunk. Or a whole cup. As a result, I’m a big fan of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. The organization, created for a series of wonderful books by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris, investigates supernatural happenings in Victorian England and around the world. I was invited to include this story in one of their shared world collections. Once I received the rights back, I changed some of the details to remove the connections per our agreement, but this retains the heart and soul of that world. 

I’ve been a fan of Joe Hill’s work for a long time. Much like his father, I think his strongest works are also his shortest. I’ve really enjoyed the graphic novels he’s produced, especially The Cape and Basketful of Heads. 

Recently, I noticed he had a new novel out, his first in about ten years. I didn’t pay particular attention to how long the book was. It’s not usually something I worry about. When I started reading it, I immediately fell into the story. Fast forward a couple of hours and I saw that I was about eighteen percent of the way through the ebook when it felt like I should be a lot closer to the end based on where I thought the story was going. 

Folks, the length of the title is exceeded only by the length of this book. The print version clocks in at 896 pages in the hardcover. I didn’t let this deter me. I don’t mind lengthy books, so long as things move along at a good pace. Authors need the space they need to tell the story they want to tell. 

I’d summarize the book for you, but frankly the subtitle does a really good job of that. It got me thinking that I should include a descriptive subtitle for all of my works.I will say that the bargain these six friends make takes around thirty years from spooky start to rip-roaring finish. 

That’s right, this story spans about three decades in the telling. Joe tells this story from the point of view of each of the six friends, putting them each in the driver’s seat for some portion of the novel. 

In so many ways, it’s clear that Joe is his father’s son. Neither is afraid to take their time building characters and exploring the ramifications of the situation they’ve set up. It’s also clear that Joe loves his dad’s work and as such he pays several homages to the King universe. 

Having said that, he is his own story teller. I think he’s much better than his dad is when it comes to creating well thought out and very broken characters. And that’s some very loud praise, considering how good King’s character work is. He also excels when it comes to working through the consequences of the actions those characters take. The stakes are always pretty high and well explained. The payoff is satisfying and my emotions were taken along for the ride. 

Having said all of that, does this behemoth of a book have any flaws? There were a couple of times where the dramatis personae got confused in my mind. In addition to the six protagonists, there are a couple of antagonists who populate this book’s world, and that’s not to mention a host of side characters who get plenty of time on the page. With all of those names bouncing around, sometimes I felt the need for a program. 

There was also one fairly major plot point, an antagonist who was built up throughout about two-thirds of the book, which felt weak. The build up was wonderful. It was a revenge driven thread where the motivation was clear and the timing of the character’s making an appearance was well done. Sadly, the payoff was a bit like a damp firecracker. She showed up to do what needed doing and ultimately didn’t turn out to be much of a threat. It was a bit like if King had failed to have Trash Can Man blow the nuke and instead let off a packet of C-4. He could have left her out entirely and had some other way of doing the damage this character ultimately did and probably saved a hundred pages.   

Putting those things aside is relatively easy. The first issue is perhaps a problem more with this reader than the book and the second is still entertaining for all of its flawed execution. Taking everything into account, I give this book four stars. I enjoyed the ride, bumps and all. I just hope it doesn’t take ten more years for him to produce his next novel.  

This is one of the stories from my short story collection Blood Borne (affiliate link).

This story takes place in the same universe as and shares characters with Two Steps from Hell. When asked by Charlie Brown (yes, I know) to take part in his Dirty Magick: New Orleans anthology, I decided to revisit that tale. This is a prequel of sorts, exploring a relationship more than TSfH allowed. There’s enough time between that story and this to write more of Willie’s adventures. I plan on doing just that as time allows.

Light of the Outsider, by Matthew Wayne Selznick, is a heist story set in a fantasy world that’s on a different planet a la Pern. Well, it’s that and it’s so much more than that. The royal baby has been kidnapped. The kidnappers are on the run and factions from the government and other interested parties are after them.

The real stand out here are the characters. Matthew uses very close third person to tell the tale and he moves from character to character, letting us get to know them, their motivations, and their fates. The characters are well fleshed out and diverse in motivations and thought processes. I fell in love with several of them, but don’t get attached to any of them. The stakes are high, as they should be, and the cost of failure is often death.

As character driven as this book is, the plot is just as good. The intrigue is thick. The story moves along at a good pace, slowing down only long enough for you to catch your breath every once in a while. 

It’s also an emotional roller coaster. There were action scenes that made me giddy and some real gut punches as some characters met their fate. 

After having talked with Matthew on my podcast and reflecting on my read of the story, I’ve gained an even bigger appreciation for the world building he does here. The “Shaper’s World” has a rich language, creatures not seen on Earth, and a society entirely different from any fantasy novel I’ve read before. 

Matthew took the freedom offered by creating a whole new world to invent something truly thought provoking and rich in its detail. But he doesn’t let the story get bogged down by those details. There are no “info dumpy” paragraphs. The reader is allowed to discover this world’s differences in organic and fascinating ways. 

That does require going in that you know this is a different world and you’re being dropped into it. Once you get a feel for things, which doesn’t take long, you’ll get carried away and want to see more of what’s happening in this world. I look forward to more stories in this setting. There is a follow up novella, “The Perfumed Air at Kwaanantag Bay” (affiliate link https://amzn.to/45FnF0t), which is just as good a read. It’s different in tone, and let’s us see what befalls the characters left at the end of the novel. Both it and Light of the Outsider get an enthusiastic five stars from me.  

Affiliate Link - https://amzn.to/3M460Zz

This is the audio for chapter one of a book I'm working on (and have been for a while) called The Harvest.

I'm going to start recording my own audiobooks starting this year, until I can afford to hire someone. I'm curious to know if there's anything in the quality of this recording or my reading of the work that would need to be tweaked for eventual sale as an audiobook. Please give me any and all feedback you have!

What do you think about prologues in general? This one specifically? What do you think about the quality of the audio? (I know I have a couple of chair squeaks in there. I need to de-squeak my chair.) Should I include the prologue in the finished book?

Dave makes his living with his pearly whites. Imagine his terror when he wakes up with incredible dental pain. Is it a cavity or something... worse. (It's worse. Whenever I use the ellipses it's definitely worse.)

Today's story is about Bobby and a very special guest he finds in his back yard.