REVIEW: Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love

Rating: 5 out of 5

Life isn’t always cut-and-dry. Sometimes, the most terrible of circumstances can directly lead to the most wondrous acts of creation. A personal tragedy can spur an artist to craft their life’s seminal work. Addiction can result in the addict steering an otherwise ill-fated existence onto a path of hopefulness. Society can rally around a national catastrophe, bringing people together, opening up pathways to communication and goodwill. This is true even on a cosmic scale, when something as violent as the Big Bang leads to the creation of life, itself.

And sometimes, an abused woman and a serial killer can find love, because existence can be the darkest of jokes, whose punch-line is hidden beneath layer after layer of human frailty. It is a play in ten thousand disjointed acts without an ending. A contradiction that is at once both alluring and terrifying.

Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu is all of this, and so much more.

Mercedes Yardley, as an author, is herself a contradiction. Her work is darkly whimsical, gorgeously macabre, optimistically cynical, and outwardly aloof, with a dash of cheerful angst thrown in for good measure. Her gift with prose is magical; she’s very nearly creating long-form poetry, channeling every bit of darkness you could imagine, stuffing it into a black hole, churning and squeezing and choking the emotions for all they’re worth, and spitting out something absolutely breathtaking on the other side.

I really cannot say enough about this book. Sure, you can likely find many antagonists as depraved as Lulu the serial killer. Yes, there have often been Fallen Woman heroines that are as lonely, pathetic, and cursed as Montessa. But you would be hard pressed to find another work of fiction that could demonstrate as much dreadful wonder in their mutual discovery of each other. One is evil, the other tortured; together, their story is somber, ugly, and yet eye-mistingly wonderful.

And yes, there is a message lurking within the beautiful prose, hidden in the glint of Lulu’s First Kill Knife. Buried beneath the layers of Montessa’s abuse. Lingering inside the suffocating miasma of ambiguity that governs both of their thoughts.

But what that message is, is up to you to decide.

That is the last contradiction Yardley has given you.

Damn, how I love this appallingly beautiful book.

I think I’ve found a new favorite.

Purchase this book at:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

The Great Glitterbeard Challenge

In 2011, I was feeling in a rut. I had a book to write, and the idea was solid in my head, but for whatever reason, my inspiration failed me. In order to remedy the situation, I called a good friend of mine and challenged her to a writing competition. The details of the challenge aren't necessarily important; what is important is the fact that simply being engaged in a challenge that I could actually lose spurred me onward. I put my head down and worked, and in forty-eight days later, I put the finishing touches on a little book called Silas.

So here we are, almost five years later, and I find myself in the same position. I've been putting off writing the third book in the Covenant series, and it's time for me to find a way to kick myself in the ass. That means I had to get back in contact with my old friend and together cobble together another challenge that will help put our production into overdrive.

So hey, Mercedes Yardley...I CHALLENGE YOU!

Yup, that's her. And okay, she was the one who actually put forth the challenge to me when I complained about not feeling motivated, but hey, let's not split hairs, okay?

So this is the way this challenge will work: Once the starting gun sounds tomorrow morning, the first writer to reach 90,000 words combined in their various projects wins. It's simple, right? That's the beauty of it. And you know what else is beautiful? The fact that winning pretty much means you're the awesomest awesomesause in awesomeland.

But for the loser...ah, the loser. Here's the catch. Public embarrassment is always a great motivator, right? Of course it is. Which is why Mercedes proposed that the loser has to dress themselves up in a glitter beard, take a picture, and use that as their public profile picture for a whole month. A WHOLE DAMN MONTH! And in case you don't know what such a thing as a glitter beard might look like, well...

Or something like that.

As you can plainly see, this is not a challenge either of is will be keen on losing. Oh the humanity! And to keep myself honest, I'll be sure to post regular word-count updates. When? Not entirely sure. It's a work in progress, I say with a shrug.

So there you have it. Once again, the gauntlet has been thrown, Mrs. Yardley.

Let the best alien being win!

(And I'll likely be greeting everyone glittered up in a few months. Dammit.)

Check out Mercedes' blog, A Broken Laptop, or visit her Amazon Author Page. Trust me, it's worth it.

Review: Shock Totem #2

Rating: 5 out of 5

In July of 2009 a new twice-yearly magazine came out that excited me. It was called Shock Totem: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted. I purchased that little digest-sized publication, dove in, and loved the experience of reading the wicked stories within. In every way this new venture excited me; for too long, dark fiction has been under represented in the literary print market. This was a shining beacon in the perpetual darkness.

Months passed. Then a year. Finally, this past July, the second issue of Shock Totem came out. Sure, that’s a long time between issues, but let me tell you, it was well worth the wait.

Issue two of Shock Totem just might be the best magazine I’ve ever had the opportunity to read. Unlike the first issue, in which I found there to be a couple duds, there were none such here. Every story tipped the scales upward towards fantastic. For my review of the first issue, I simply pointed out my favorite two stories, seeing as I didn’t want to expose the ones I didn’t like. For this issue, seeing as all were fantastic, I will give my quick-hit thoughts on each.

The Rat Burner by Ricardo Bare – A creepy tale of city slums, hidden doorways, and the price upon one’s soul. The tone brought me in and wouldn’t let me leave. Loved it.

Sole Survivor by Kurt Newton – A dark and strangely hilarious take on extreme game shows. In a way, it reminded me of a more concise version of Running Man’s concept.

Sweepers by Leslianne Wilder – Wow. This one grabbed me. A short piece about the waters of the world rising. I’ll never look down from a skyscraper the same way again.

The Rainbow Serpent by Vincent Pendergast – The tale of a man on a bus ride and an ancient creature who’s adapted to the times. Definitely my favorite of all the entries. The tone and themes enclosed within are fantastic.

Hide the Sickness by Mercedes M. Yardley – This is a nonfiction essay by one of the magazine’s editors, but it is such a brave and heartfelt piece of writing that I feel I must include it here. Ever wonder about juvenile sex offenders? Let’s just say that the story of Mrs. Yardley’s experience is one you won’t soon forget.

Pretty Little Ghouls by Cate Gardner – Another quirky and fun little tale. I won’t explain much, because the plot hinges on every word, which takes talent. It’s quite good.

Messages from Valerie Polichar by Gra Linnaea and Sarah Dunn – This, for a while, was my least favorite story. The inclusion of technology and technological terms in a work of fiction has a tendency to turn me off because it can date the tale horribly. However, this one, by the end, I grew to appreciate, and it became my second-favorite. It’s the story of a woman who obsesses with the dead and Facebook. Sound like an odd plot? It is. And it works.

Return from Dust by Nicholas D. Bronson – A man is blown to bits and is reconstructed. A good exploration what it means to be human and the point when we lose touch with that humanity.

Leave Me the Way I was Found by Christian A. Dumais – This short tale is very Ringu-like and eerie, about a video that causes sickness in the masses. There’s a melancholy sense of doom that hangs over it like a cloud of acid.

Upon My Return by David Jack Bell – What would happen if a Christ figure were to appear in the present day? This depressing little story of a misunderstood carnival worker says it all.

That’s it for stories. There is also a review section inside, an interview with James Newman, and Howling Through the Keyhole, a Shock Totem staple, where the authors give their thoughts on the creation of their stories. The editors, led by K. Allen Wood, have put together a master collection of the macabre. All in all, it is a rewarding literary experience.

I highly recommend this magazine, and those to come. The only problem I see with it is this: With the quality found within, the bar has been set, and set HIGH. It’s a lot to live up to for issue #3, which I will be waiting for with bated breath.

Shock Totem at Amazon.com

Shock Totem Website

The New Ladies of Horror

Throughout my life, the women in it have always been among the most important to me. From my mother to my grandmother, to all the aunts who looked after me as a child, to the brilliant schoolgirls I felt kinship, admiration, and adoration for, to my daugher, to the love of my life who I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, they have all served to inspire and motivate me towards bigger and better things, while grounding me in a state of introspection through which friendship, family, and personal exploration can grow. I love and cherish them all.

Having said that (or perhaps to expound the point), I am an equal opportunity observer when it comes to the matter of the sexes in the world at large. I find Ellen Degeneres as side-splittingly funny as Eddie Izzard, Jane Austen as overrated as Thomas Hardy, Carly Fiorina as amazingly adept with money and expanse as Bill Gates, Tracy Chapman as soulful as Jeff Buckley, Maya Angelou as gifted with prose as Robert Frost, and so on and so forth. Through this, however, I have noticed there is one arena where women - truly inventive women - are severely underrepresented. And this arena is one which is very close to my heart; horror literature.

As a teen I fell in love with Anne Rice. The Witching Hour was the first novel of hers that I read, over a week-long stay at my cousin's house-on-a-lake in New Hampshire, and it was most certainly not the last. I read each of her books up until she became a new-wave holy roller. She's right up there with Barker, King, Layman, and Koontz. But after her, what for the other popular women in the genre?

Not much.

So now we're left with the Stephanie Myers' of the world, creating dumbed-down versions of Rice novels. (Don't get me wrong, I applaud Myers for her success, but let's face it; she writes for twelve-to-fifteen-year-old girls. To include her in the genre would be akin to calling Judy Blume an example of post-feminist literature) There's a chasm of female frighteners out there that begs to be filled. I wish to, right now, start it off my pouring a couple drops in, myself.

I present to you two writers who carry with them as much talent and inventiveness as any I've read of late. Their names are Mercedes M. Yardley and Michelle Howarth, and it is a pleasure to read the both of them. Now, I'll take the opportunity to delve into each one.

Mercedes M. Yardley describes herself as a writer of whimsical horror, and I defy anyone to come up with a better description of her work than that. There is an ingrained mystery in everything I've read, a sense of witholding that sucks you into a story and threatens not to let you go, even after the tale has reached its conclusion. She can be haunting, quirky, and sometimes humorous, yet never lapses into self-mockery or confusion.

The three stories I've looked over - Murder for Beginners (Shock Totem #1), The Container of Sorrows (The Pedestal Magazine), and Water Boy (Whidbey Writers' Workshop) - are each unique in their voice yet consistent in their ability to captivate. Her writing has the added bonus of making one ponder the little things in life, the tiny needles which poke holes in our collective souls. And her as-to-now-unpublished novel, which I've had the honor of reading the first chapter of, will end up being quite the unorthodox little gem once it is published. From the small portion I was able to see, it reads like the lovechild of Doug Adams and Peter Straub. It is truly alluring.

Whereas I have only just recently been introduced to the work of Mrs. Yardley, one Michelle Howarth I have been ingesting for years, since the day she arrived at the Writers' BBS as a naive yet passionate young pup. My, how she has grown over these years; into a woman of vast talent at both finding the hilarity buried in the gloom and penning cringe-inducing horror, sometimes simultaneously. Her creations, while jocose, reveal a hidden depth and darkness, saying that once this particular author decides she will do away with pretense, we all best look out.

I have read most stories Michelle has created and published, and even many that haven't, and it is impressive how undeviating her voice stays throughout, capturing the reader, engrossing them and then grossing them out, until finally the rug is pulled out from under you, revealing the crux of a joke that has been played on you, the reader, with skill and aplomb.

So there you have it; two woman who have the potential to not only thrive in this genre, but transend it. They are a pair of the freshest and most creative minds I've had the pleasure of exploring in years. Read them. Enjoy them. Support them. They need this, from all fans, of not only horror but good literature, to thrive as they deserve to.

The website of Mercedes M. Yardley can be found here.

The website of Michelle Howarth can be found here.

Do it. Start exploring. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

This has been a message from the Journal. I only have your best interests in mind.