Books

Everyone is haunted in one way or another. If not by actual spirits, than by memories, regrets, failings, near-misses and might-have-beens. The trauma of abuse, too, can haunt a person for a lifetime. There are many ways to deal with our private ghosts; some self-medicate via drugs or alcohol, others try to flee, but the bravest among us face their traumas through therapy, support groups, or counseling. Yet while confronting past hurts may ultimately heal, the journey towards catharsis can be perilous. Excavating psychological wounds is akin to opening Pandora’s Box; once the metaphorical phantoms are loose, they are difficult, if not impossible, to put back.

One author willing to explore those darker recesses of the human heart is Kay Hanifen, whose debut Miravalle Books novel, The Last Ballard, is a vivid study of generational sin set amid a spooky supernatural Gothic backdrop.

For those who don’t remember or were too young to experience the decade first-hand, the 1980’s were rad. Those Regean-era years of MTV and Miami Vice, Molly Ringwald and Michael Jackson, “Smooth Move, Ex-Lax” and “Where’s the Beef?”, yuppies, punks, skinny ties and larger-than-life hair were a New Coke (and Columbian coke) fueled head-rush of day-glow pop-cultural kitsch unrivaled unto the current day. In theaters it was the age of soon-to-be immortal icons: Freddy and Jason, Doc and Marty, Bill and Ted, Mr. Myagi, The Goonies, The Princess Bride and Dirty Dancing, Rambo, John McClane, and Ah-nald.

Merely mentioning the Old West arouses near-legendary associations singularly embedded in the collective American consciousness. That era of Manifest Destiny, of painted vistas and unending horizons. Cowboys and Indians, gunslingers and cattle rustlers, hard days and long nights on the open range, showdowns at high noon. It was the time of Dodge City and Deadwood, the Pony Express and the Oregon Trail, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and the shootout at the O.K. Corral.

We’re all haunted by the past. Regrets and failings, the near-misses and might-have-beens. The trauma of abuse, too, whether it be emotional, mental, or physical, can linger long after the deeds themselves are done. There are many ways to deal with our personal ghosts; some seek solace in drugs or alcohol, while others choose to ignore the pain, unknowingly entrapping themselves in a cycle in which the abused are destined to become future abusers.

The strong among us acknowledge their traumas and face them, through therapy, support groups, or counseling. But while confronting past hurts can ultimately heal, the journey towards catharsis can be fraught with danger. Excavating buried psychological wounds is akin to opening Pandora’s Box; once the metaphorical demons are loose, they are difficult, if not impossible, to put back.

For what is horror, really, than a story about evil of one sort or other?
—Halloween director John Carpenter, Fangoria magazine, March 2001

Critics of horror have long asserted that the genre glorifies evil. The argument contains at least a small kernel of truth; unique among storytelling forms, horror—in all its various iterations—almost uniformly places its narrative emphasis, not on the hero, but the villain. Saying that such a perspective glorifies evil, though, ignores a more obvious fact: that identifying with the villain allows the audience to safely and vicariously indulge sentiments of anger, revenge, violence, and other anti-social feelings that would be unacceptable to express in real life.

“I’m taking a ride
With my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again
He knows where he’s taking me
Taking me where I want to be
I’m taking a ride
With my best friend”

— Depeche Mode, “Never Let Me Down Again”

Travelogues are as old as writing itself. From Marco Polo to Kerouac, there’s always a vicarious satisfaction to be gleaned reading of someone’s journey in a land you’ve never seen. This is true even in fictional form, where details of strange fantastical realms can provide much-needed escapism from our own troubled times.

One person that understands that never-ending appeal is Texas author Izzy Von, who returns to the wild world of the walking dead (and worse) she created in last year’s rowdy romp A Dandy Among The Dead in the recently released sequel novel, Xmas Of The Dead, a rollicking escapade through a most unusual zombie apocalypse.

Across the ages, many have tried to answer that fundamental question: What mysteries lurk within the human heart? Innumerable creative minds have attempted to satisfy the inquiry through literature, song, theater and film, but none more so than the humble poet. Oft-misunderstood, derided by some as scribes of pretty, meaningless verse, poets have long examined the innermost truths of the collective human spirit, our desires and hurts, our joys and triumphs and, sometimes, our blackest, basest impulses.

One poet unafraid to plumb those shadowy recesses is A. L. Garcia, whose new book, My Split Tongue arrives February 21st from Quill & Crow Publishing House. Subtitled A Bilingual Collection, My Split Tongue (translated as Mi Lengua Dividida) offers audiences a dual-language descent into the darkest corners of the soul.

The Problem of Evil is one that has perplexed philosophers and theologians since time immemorial. The question itself is simple—Why does wickedness exist?—but settling on a single solution isn’t as straightforward. In modern times man’s rampant inhumanity has been attributed to a host of psychological diagnoses, psychopathy, narcissism, sadism, schizophrenia, insinuating that our inner demons are the roots of evil. Religion offers differing explanations: in Buddhism and other eastern belief systems it’s thought that merely existing causes our collective suffering in the karmic cycle, but the Abrahamic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—take a more literal approach, laying the foibles of humankind on a malefic cosmic force. This adversary goes by many names, Satan, Iblis, the Lord of Flies, and his infernal acolytes populate the myths and legends of cultures worldwide: the Slavic vampire and werewolf, the Arabian ghoul, the ravenous Wendigo of Native American lore.

Winter. The word conjures snowball fights and sledding, Christmas displays and lazy days spent home from school. Yet grim shades lurk beneath those cheery wonderland joys. Winter is the time when daylight dwindles and skies darken with overcast gloom. The earth becomes barren, trees turn skeletal, and even the animals slumber. Those long, somber months blanketed with snow and ice, a season of ending before spring’s distant rebirth. And through the ceaseless nights we huddle for warmth and ignore the frightful reminders of death’s ever-stalking shadow…

Few ways exist to combat winter’s dread better than curling up with a good book. One person who understands that fact is Canadian editor Rhonda Parrish, who invokes the season’s foreboding menace with her latest Tyche Books offering, Hauntings And Hoarfrost, a multi-author anthology (available January 28th) featuring twenty-two literary interpretations of the season’s spookier side.

by Michael McKown

In the quiet, sunlit corner of an old, creaky house in Pasadena, CA, where the walls whispered secrets of yesteryears, sat Emily, now in her late seventies. The room was cluttered with memories: photographs, old letters, and mementos from a life well-lived. For decades, her friends and family had been nudging, sometimes pushing, her towards a singular endeavor—writing her memoir.

Emily had lived a life that seemed almost too vibrant to be captured in mere words. She had danced through the '60s, marched in protests that shaped the world, loved and lost, and found love again in unexpected places. Her tales were not just stories; they were chapters of history, personal and global. Yet, the idea of pinning these experiences down to paper was daunting. When was the right time to start?

Dozens of books are reviewed here at Critical Blast each year. Given that the site was founded upon the principle of exposing independently produced genre works to a wider audience, most featured books are of a decidedly science fiction, fantasy, or horror nature. This year was no different, and the submissions sent to us for review were as diverse and exciting as ever.

As with any list, some caveats are necessary. First, while it may say ‘Top 10 of 2024’ in the headline, not every book included was necessarily published in this calendar year; some were submitted to us in 2023 but were read and reviewed during 2024, thus making them eligible. Secondly, while we oftentimes review multiple books by a single author in any given twelve month period, in the name of fairness a writer may appear on our list just once, meaning that only their absolute best is chosen. With those things in mind, let our inaugural ‘Top 10 Indie Books of the Year’ countdown commence!

Folklore is the wellspring from which almost all horror derives. Many of the genre’s most familiar stock figures evolved directly from those superstitious yarns of old, passed down by our primitive ancestors as warnings about the dangers lurking in the dark bowers of man’s domain. The vampire, the werewolf, the zombie, ghosts and ghouls—each began, once upon a time, as tales told in hushed whispers around a campfire, tales that over time become the legends we know today. Every region of the globe has its own distinct folklore, and the horror genre has seemingly plundered them all over the decades for its selfish creative needs, to the point where it seems audiences have become cynical, even bored, by standard tropes and ideas.

Often unfairly maligned as overwrought, melodramatic, and campy, what we now refer to as Gothic literature began in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole’s seminal novel, The Castle of Otranto. Wildly popular with 18th-century audiences, the book created many of the conventions still associated with the subgenre today: distressed damsels beset by supernatural evils amid the oh-so-scary backdrop of ruined castles, ancient monasteries, and/or creepy catacombs. Gothic literature flourished in its original form, popularized by authors like Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, and Edgar Allan Poe, and continues to fascinate the public today through the works of mainstream names like Anne Rice and the independent efforts of such niche proprietors as Quill & Crow Publishing House.

Love. It’s the one thing nearly all of us strive for, more than any personal achievement or career ambition. Undying love may be the seemingly unattainable ideal of Shakespearean sonnets and Harlequin romance, but with the proliferation of modern-day matchmakers, speed-dating, Tinder and other online apps, it’s clear people the world over yearn for the unique emotional connectivity love provides. But relationships are hard enough if both parties are alive and well. When one or the other is already pushing up daisies, undying love takes on a completely new meaning, as Lacey Todd, the protagonist in Alana K. Drex and Billy Ray Middleton Jr.’s hilarious new novel, Oops, I Killed My Boyfriend, inadvertently finds out.

All fictional works are voyages of discovery. The audience embarks upon imaginary worlds, eager yet unknowing where its creators will lead them. Whether it be a slam-bang cinematic spectacle or the more intimate patterns of prose, a certain trust exists on such journeys; our time and emotion is invested in the hope that we’ll be ushered to places both entertaining and enlightening. Sometimes, however—as the enduring popularity of horror proves—those escapist excursions can become dark, dangerous affairs. The fear genre’s wisest creators understand that unspoken covenant with their audience and accept the responsibility, temporarily guiding us through blackened nightmare forests. All we have to do is take their hand…

In an unstable and chaotic universe, the only constant is change. From the collapse of galaxies to the passing of seasons, the mutation of bacteria and the splitting of atoms, cycles of birth, death, and renewal envelop us. People, with our finite lifespans, have attempted to defy time’s ticking hands, through science, through medicine, through construction and art. Yet art is itself an agent of change: each creative movement is the inheritor of previous endeavors, sometimes happily, other times gleefully destroying what’s come before.

One author who understands that transitory nature of existence is Jim Horlock, who explores the theme to its most frightful degree in the new Quill & Crow Publishing short horror collection, Change & Other Terrors.

Transformation. In many ways it’s the theme common to all horror tales. Through film and the printed page, the human body—nude, dead, mutilated or deformed—has evolved into the oft-fetishized narrative centerpiece, whether it be a lycanthrope’s bestial metamorphosis, Dr. Jekyll becoming Mr. Hyde, or the putrefying decay of a zombie. With a lineage extending back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour Out of Space’, straight through to Clive Barker’s body-modifying Cenobites and the films of Japanese writer/director Shinya Tsukamoto and Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, horror embraces physical change like no other genre.

Rising from the coastal plains of the American Eastern seaboard, the Appalachians are made up of a broken chain of peaks, ridges and dissected plateaus extending from Newfoundland to Alabama. The Catskills of New York, the Poconos, the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains are just some of the densely forested ranges constituting the chain, and even in this modern technological age, the Appalachians conjure visions of impenetrable, untamed wilds. The early Scots-Irish, Scandinavian, and German immigrants who settled those rural barrens brought with them a rugged, earthen work ethic and clannish pride for kin, but something else, too: beneath their Protestant Christian communities lurked the folk beliefs of the Old World they’d left behind, sprites and witchcraft and creatures of the night haunting the isolated bowers of man’s domain.

Dan·dy (dan’dē), n, pl. -dies, adj. -di·er, -diest. —n. 1. a person excessively concerned about their clothes and appearance; fop. 2. something or someone of exceptional quality. —adj. 3. characteristic of a dandy; foppish. 4. fine; excellent; first-rate. [1770-80, origin uncertain] See also: —dan’dy·ish, adj. —dan’dy·ism, n.

Zom·bie (zom’bē), n. the body of a dead person supernaturally imbued with the semblance of life.

Poetry is the music of the written word. Rooted in the rhythmic magical incantations and oral storytelling of preliterate cultures, from the epic verse of Gilgamesh and Beowulf to the romantic Shakespearean sonnets and political allusions of Yeats, poetry has assumed a vast range of elusive, sensuous, and lyrical forms. In Classical times poems were explained in spiritual terms—Homer and Hesiod claimed their writings were inspired by the Muses of Greek mythology—while in western European tradition, the oft-irrational sentiments of the poet were believed to be tainted with madness.