Showing posts with label monsters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monsters. Show all posts
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Sunday, February 13, 2022
Happy Valentine's Day to all our favorite monsters!
Happy Valentine's Day to all our favorite monsters!
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
Book Review: Strange Gods by Alison Kimble + giveaway
POSSIBLE ULTIMATE TOUR EXPERIENCE TICKETS:
An Unforgettable Sidekick, It’s All About The Journey, Snark It Up, The More The Merrier, A Villain You Love To Hate, I’m Not Crying You Are Crying, Storyteller In The House, Bring On The Magic, A Gate To Another World
by Alison Kimble
July 20, 2021
July 20, 2021
Immortal Works
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 336
CW: Blood, Minor violence in battles, Bullying, Passing mentions of: Drugs, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse; Kidnapping, Animal death
Don't get too close to the edges of the world. Gods and monsters are waiting.
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 336
CW: Blood, Minor violence in battles, Bullying, Passing mentions of: Drugs, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse; Kidnapping, Animal death
Don't get too close to the edges of the world. Gods and monsters are waiting.
Spooky arrives at a wilderness boot camp for troubled teens with two suitcases and an ultimatum: either she keeps her head down over the summer or she won't be allowed home at the end of it. All she wants to do is survive the pyros, bullies, and power-tripping counselors, get through senior year, and start her life somewhere new.
But when an encounter with another camper goes awry and ends with Spooky hiding in the woods, something else finds her. Something ancient and powerful has sent out feelers, hoping to catch a human alone. For its purposes, even a delinquent teen will do.
If Spooky wants to survive to see any kind of future, she will have to figure out how to gain leverage over a god. And as if the one wasn't bad enough, a pantheon of dark entities are lining up between her and the life she's always wanted...
The book delivers what its title promises, i.e., strange gods! We meet our protagonist at a home for delinquent teens and she's one of the "inmates." While she's trying to keep her head down, a night tryst with a boy gets her out of bed. Before her jailers can catch her, a strange deity scoops her up. That's where her situation goes from bad to worse!
Fans of Rick Riordan's PJ series will love reading this book. I was blown away by the creativity of the author because none of the deities we meet are the run-of-the-mill gods you'd find in most books. They were weird and original, which I enjoyed a lot.
I may have had trouble with the pacing because it starts a bit slow and then takes off at a breakneck speed that doesn't stop until the very end. What's more, the plot is written in a way that the characters keep getting stuck solving one problem after another to get solutions for the previous problems they're already facing. That can get annoying after the fifth time.
I also liked how the main character grows and recognizes some harsh truths about herself and the way she's been living. A wake-up call leads to her making a decision that made the ending totally unexpected. Even though this book's being sold as a single, I'm sure a sequel won't be unwelcome and would fit right in with it.
Loved the writing and the plot. Wasn't a fan of the pretty girl being vilified and reduced to a stereotype even after she was given a good backstory.
3 sheep.
Reviewer: Midu Reads
Most of my go-to series are 3 starrers
*No rating - wasn't my genre/dnf'd so rating it would be unfair
1 sheep - won't be picking up another book in a series again
2 sheep - average read with overused tropes and cliches. Will give the author another try/only continuing because of OCD, so must finish a series
2.5 sheep - liked the book but was put off because it was overly long/illtreatment of a character the author had me invest in and so on.
3 sheep - enjoyed the book but have reservations because I expected to be wowed and wasn't
4 sheep - was unputdownable
5 sheep - formed an emotional connection, will read the heck outta this series
Excerpt:
Chapter 1: Spooky
Up until this exact moment, Spooky hadn’t been sure whether or not Luke liked her. Now it seemed improbable there was any other reason he was holding her hand under the table. She stiffened as he curled his fingers around the edge of her palm. She wasn’t sure if she wanted his hand on hers, but she didn’t want to get caught with it there.
Then his touch was gone, and in its place, a piece of paper. Spooky shifted her eyes to the closest counselor, but no heads turned. No one had noticed the exchange.
She crinkled the contraband in her hand: a note. Pens were restricted-use items, so notes were rare. More importantly, notes were risky—you couldn’t change your story once it was in writing. She wanted to read Luke’s face as much as the words he had put on the paper, but she kept her chin pointed at the front of the cafeteria.
“Remember, there is no such thing as your true self, only unlimited potential for growth and change,” Izeah Dodgson continued into the mic. “I want you to reflect on those words when you’re tucked into your bunks tonight.” He scanned the room over the top of his glasses. His bald head shone in the fluorescent lighting. “To close us off, I have an announcement. Yesterday evening, patrol spotted a large animal inside the fence. Now, now.” Izeah put up his hands as if to quiet the room of silent campers. “I don’t want anyone to be alarmed. This is exactly why we have the fence in the first place.”
The fence wasn’t really designed to keep things out. Spooky had seen the exposed chain-link exterior when the cab dropped her off on orientation day. The plastic sheeting that made it impossible to climb only ran along the inside. But the illusion of trust was a core part of Izeah’s philosophy of rehabilitation, so he insisted the fence was keeping animals out rather than keeping two hundred delinquents in. The fence kept things out, just like the motion-activated floodlights “scared off raccoons,” and the foam spork she had just used to eat her runny chili “saved on dishwater.”
“A thorough search of the camp tells us our visitor didn’t stay, but we want to be cautious. If you see anything, anything at all, please alert a counselor.” The mic whined. “We are on the edge of a wilderness. We must respect that we aren’t the only ones out here.”
The second Izeah dismissed the crowd to their post-dinner duties, Spooky glanced down at the scrap of paper in her hand: Meet tonight.
There were no other instructions, but Spooky knew Luke’s plan. That didn’t mean she thought it was a good idea. She tried to make eye contact during post-dinner cleanup, but work duty ended before she could give Luke so much as a head shake.
He was going, whether she joined him or not.
When the last bell rang and the cabin lights went out, Spooky kept her eyes open and began counting. After she reached sixty for the fortieth time, she folded back the blanket, rolled off the bunk, and tucked the pillow in her place. With sneakers in hand, she crept past heavy-breathing campers to the entrance. Not a single floorboard creaked. She had earned her nickname, at least in part, because of her talent for passing through life quietly.
The trick to avoid the motion detectors, Luke had told her, was to do three things at once: jump the lower sensors, duck the upper sensors, and don’t set foot inside the circle. Spooky didn’t trust herself to jump and duck anything, so she squatted and swung a leg around the cabin’s open side. Izeah insisted a circle of open cabins inspired “community,” but the formation also ensured anyone could look out and see her dangling from the doorway. Gripping the wall for balance, she found the ground next to the cabin with her toe. Arms shaking, she transferred her weight and set both feet outside.
She crouched and scanned the night. Her sleep shirt was twisted and stuck to her body with sweat. Her heartbeat should have been loud enough to wake all ten cabins. But nothing stirred.
She had done it. She had snuck out. This was a teenage rite of passage. Even if someone had invited her, she wouldn’t have had the nerve to attempt this at home. She wasn’t sure she had the nerve for it now, but she certainly wasn’t ready to try to reverse the process and get back inside the cabin. Her hands quivered as she put on her sneakers. After a few more moments watching the silent dark, she started across the field toward the back of the main lodge.
Even though Spooky had been at Dodgson for over a month, she had never been outside after the last bell. It was like the world had flipped upside down; the field around her was flat black, while all the light and life played out in the sky above her. Bright points and brilliant clusters and tiny pinpricks twinkled. She had to rely on her feet more than her eyes to find each step.
She exhaled for the first time since she read the note, or maybe for the first time that summer. It was as if the darkness put her at an unreachable distance from the sleeping campers and counselors. Even her limbs felt far away.
Only now, in the quiet, did it occur to Spooky she might be walking into a trap.
Although they had been at Dodgson together all summer, she had only known Luke since he was assigned to cafeteria duty two weeks ago. He’d come up to her while she was setting up the buffet, tucked a hair back into her hairnet, and asked about her nickname. And he kept finding her, in between serving and mopping and scrubbing. He had even started saving a seat for her at meals.
It was unfamiliar territory to have anyone, much less a guy, show interest in getting to know her. She had thought they were becoming friends. Maybe even a little more. And since he’d held her hand longer than strictly necessary to pass the note, almost definitely more. But she shouldn’t let herself forget this wasn’t some guy from English class—every camper at Dodgson was here for a reason. Luke was here for a reason.
Spooky pictured Luke’s straight, pointy nose and white-blond hair. His half smile. She couldn’t imagine that face leering out of the night, ready to inflict violence. But it was possible that Luke had set her up to meet someone else. Someone who wanted to have a private word without the watchful eyes of counselors. She wasn’t aware of any enemies. Unfortunately, it didn’t take much to set off one of two hundred delinquents. There were plenty of stories of accidental offenses leading to nasty consequences.
And Luke had been distant during post-dinner cleanup. While she’d been spraying down tables on one side of the cafeteria, he’d been stacking chairs on the other. When she started collecting serve ware, he began mopping. He’d ducked her attempts to make eye contact. She hadn’t seen him come back from taking out the trash at all.
He’d been avoiding her.
Spooky stopped walking. Why had Luke bothered to write her a note? The forethought seemed sweet at first, but the risk was impractical. Counselors were attentive during announcements; it was the worst possible time to communicate. He could have waited until after dinner was over and whispered the words.
But he’d already tried to do that, hadn't he? Luke had asked her to sneak out twice this week. The note hadn’t given her a chance to say she was too tired, or she couldn’t risk the scuffs. A note only gave her the choice to show up or leave him waiting.
Spooky rubbed her arms through her long-sleeve flannel. She should turn around and get back in bed. She didn’t even know how many scuffs she would get if she was caught out here. It was a big camp, and Luke said patrols only went around once or twice a night, but she should have tried to do the math. The image of Luke standing alone in the cold had been on her mind instead.
She sighed through her nose and kept walking. Spooky liked Luke, or at least, she thought she might start to. She definitely didn’t want him to stop talking to her. And he would have every right to if he took the risk of coming out here and she didn’t show. Going back now would put a quick end to the only good thing happening at Dodgson.
Still, Spooky approached the dumpsters behind the lodge like a ghost. She had come back here dozens of times on garbage duty, but the shape of things changed at night. The lodge had lost its edges. Every shadow was a void. Her ears twitched. Luke had told her to meet him at the door, but it seemed like she had arrived first. She huddled behind one of the rusty bins to wait.
Her toes had just started to go numb when footsteps brushed the dirt nearby. A white-blond head bobbed into view.
“Luke!” He was alone. A laugh bubbled up. Dodgson really did something to your faith in people.
“Sorry I’m late.” He jogged over to her. He didn’t bother to keep his voice low, but they were far from any sleeping quarters. “I had to wait for my cabin-leader to snore.”
“I wasn’t here long,” Spooky said.
He took a step closer. She took a step back and jumped when her shoulder brushed the dumpster. She was relieved it was just him, but just him, alone in the dark, gave her plenty of new reasons to be nervous.
“So, what’s up?” she blurted.
“Oh, you know, out for a midnight stroll.” She could hear his smile more than see it.
“A stroll, huh? Aren’t you worried about the animal that got inside the fence?”
“It was a bear. A huge one.”
“Really? How do you know?” At least there weren’t any grizzlies in Colorado.
“Animal control told me when I showed them where I saw the snake.”
“You saw a snake?” Spooky dropped the casual tone she’d been attempting. “Where?”
“Between the dumpsters. I saw it when I was taking out the trash after dinner. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me yelling.” He chuckled and edged closer. “But don’t worry. They checked everywhere. It’s gone.”
“Was it a rattlesnake?” She picked up one foot then the other, eyeing the shadowy ground.
“Don’t worry.” Luke closed the distance between them. “I’ll protect you.”
“But what if it’s still...”
He put his hands on the dumpster behind her and leaned in.
It was a strange sensation having somebody else’s lips against hers. Things touched her mouth every day, but another set of lips felt different somehow, like she was trying to use her left hand for something she usually did with her right.
She couldn’t tell Luke how strange it was. She couldn’t let anybody at Dodgson find out she was having her first kiss only two weeks after her eighteenth birthday. She would become an instant target for that kind of quaint, teenage naiveté.
But privately, she could celebrate her second milestone of the night. She had pictured this moment for a long time. While she never could have guessed who, where, or when, she had imagined a slow, inevitable, folding together. Lips slightly open, arms entwined, and bodies close.
This was turning out to be a much more thorough exploration of her mouth than she had imagined. And it was getting more thorough by the second.
Luke mimed a slow chew, then a few quick guppy gasps. She tried to catch his rhythm. If he noticed she was doing something wrong, he didn’t pause to address it. She pursed her mouth when his opened, and he gave her lower lip and a decent part of her chin a lick.
Spooky pushed him away. He barreled back in faster than she could wipe her face.
“Luke, hold on…”
The words became garbled as he mashed her lips around. Her hair slid all over the bin as he guided her head this way and that with his mouth. A sticky spot clung to her shirt.
Enough. This midnight tryst was over.
Spooky hitched her foot up to push herself off the dumpster. Her knee slid between Luke’s legs and slammed into his groin.
“Oof!”
Spooky gasped as he doubled over. He backed away from her with a high keen.
“Oh, sorry!” Spooky reached for him. “I’m sorry!”
“What the...” he whimpered. “What’s wrong with you?”
A beam of light swung around the corner of the lodge. Footsteps and voices drifted through the chill.
Counselors on patrol.
“Luke,” Spooky muttered. “Luke, we have to leave.”
A trio of figures rounded the building, flashlights swaying. Spooky jumped behind the dumpster. Luke was doubled over in the open. If he would just move a few feet toward her, the bin would be between him and the oncoming counselors.
“Luke, come here,” she hissed.
He groaned. A beam landed on his platinum hair. He spared one hand from his crotch to block his eyes.
“Hey! Stop right there!” a counselor called.
The voices picked up. The light stayed on Luke. If she didn’t move now they would catch her too.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
Spooky bowed her head and dashed to the nearest tree. The trunk wasn’t wide enough to conceal her shoulders, so she darted to the next one. She scrambled around it and pressed her back against the bark. It wouldn’t take much searching to find her, but there was nowhere left to sneak. Between this pine and the forest was the fence, complete with twenty-foot-high, unscalable plastic sheeting. To “keep out the animals.”
“Any other campers out here making choices that don’t reflect their true potential?” Counselor Jackie called.
“Come on out,” another counselor she knew, Mark, commanded. “Let’s start rebuilding.”
The words didn’t sound natural, but they were familiar from daily speeches and role plays. Unlike Izeah Dodgson, the rest of the staff delivered their canned lines about trust with varying levels of conviction.
The third counselor spoke in a low voice. Spooky heard “slip in behavior” and “initiate the reparation process.”
“...but before we begin rebuilding,” the counselor said. “I want you to choose to be your best, most trustworthy self and tell us: are you out here alone?”
Spooky might not be Luke’s favorite person right now—she could still feel the spot where her knee met his pelvis—but if there was one thing that guaranteed every pyro, bully, and druggie here would turn on you, it was ratting someone out to the counselors.
“I was just checking to make sure I locked the dumpsters after dinner. Animal control came and I got distracted. I wasn’t sure,” Luke whined.
He was talking too much. He sounded like he was lying. She tried to melt into the tree trunk.
“I trust you,” the counselor said in a monotone voice. “But if there were someone out here with you, and you were to tell us now, I would recommend you get thirty scuffs. I’ll talk to Mr. Dodgson about that personally.” He paused. “Otherwise, you’re looking at fifty, minimum.”
Fifty scuffs? Only the rough bark stopped Spooky from sliding to the ground. She had known being out of bounds was a multiplier for whatever else you were caught doing. She should have gone to examine the scuff board after dinner instead of trying to catch Luke’s eye. She should have done the math before leaving her bed instead of counting the seconds.
Fifty scuffs was bad. Fifty scuffs, plus her existing twenty-three, would put her at a serious risk of maxing out before the summer was over. A rise that fast would land her back in Adam Dodgson’s office, in a seat she had vowed she wouldn’t return to after day one.
From the second she stepped out of the cab, everything at Dodgson had been jarring. Her bags were whisked away to be searched. She had to swap the clothes she came in for rough gray pajamas. She had a schedule with building names and times, but no clock or map. She wandered around in loaner flip flops, trying to follow the crowd without getting too close. The other campers looked at her like she was food. The counselors looked right through her.
But nothing at the camp was more jarring than the Dodgson brothers and their conflicting approaches to delinquent rehabilitation.
“Exploratory teens,” Izeah began in his welcome speech, “fall into a pattern of behavior slips and mistrust that feed each other. They make a mistake, and their community implements new restrictions. Parents, teachers, and friends treat them like they are going to misbehave again. So they break more rules. Blame, rules, and offenses pile up until, eventually, they conclude they can’t do anything right. So why try? They’ll always mess up anyway, right? Wrong!” He yelled the answer to his own question so loudly the grass around her could have rippled. “We know you can be better. We’ll give you the trust you need to break the cycle of negative thinking. Here at Dodgson, we give you the freedom to be your best selves. In a controlled environment, of course.”
“Do you know why you’re here?” Adam Dodgson asked as soon as she sat down across from him. It seemed like a silly question. Spooky knew what she had done. His dim office and quiet attention were the stark opposite of Izeah’s blustering speech on the field. Elaborate promises of trust and rehabilitation swirled in her head.
“Err. Because I made a mistake, and I can do better?”
“No. Because you were insufficiently motivated to behave.” Adam had all the hair Izeah lacked. His sandy mane was just graying at the temples. “Outside these walls, the fallout of your actions wasn’t enough to constrain your behavior. Breaking rules didn’t affect you, personally, in a way that mattered to you. I’m going to change that.”
Adam Dodgson reached into the filing cabinet beside his desk and pulled out a red folder with her name on it.
“When you break rules, you get scuffs. When you get scuffs, there are consequences. With the appropriate consequences, you will choose not to break rules.”
Izeah’s speech had mentioned scuffs. The word was meant to evoke something temporary, like a bit of grime that could be wiped away. After all, Izeah said to the field of teens in gray pajamas, he believed each and every one of them had endless potential to do better. Two minutes into their meeting, Spooky had a feeling Adam Dodgson didn’t share his brother’s optimism.
“I’ve talked to your parents, and I’m impressed.” His voice was even and deliberate. “To motivate you to behave this summer, they already had their own consequences in mind. I helped them add a few additional details.”
Adam opened the red folder and repositioned it to face her. Inside were her scuff levels: predetermined punishments for every ten scuffs, up to one hundred.
Spooky had assumed if she was caught sneaking out, she would spend the rest of the summer shoveling chicken shit, or maybe even bunking in the closed cabins with campers who were a little more stabby. Working in the cafeteria and sleeping in an open cabin were privileges of her good behavior. There was Dodgson, and then there was Dodgson.
But the scuff level punishments at camp weren’t what scared her. At eighty scuffs, consequences started bleeding through the fence and into her life outside. Adam Dodgson would take out his horrible red folder and make sure misery followed her through the gates. Spooky hadn’t just left for Dodgson with her suitcases. Her parents had put her in the cab with an ultimatum. If she got one hundred scuffs, the bleak and lonely years so far would be the best of her life.
And now she was about to hit seventy-three scuffs with almost half her time at Dodgson remaining.
“No one under the dumpsters,” Jackie called.
“I’m alone,” Luke whined again.
“Sure you are,” Mark said.
He was close. Too close. The beam of his flashlight waved on either side of the tree. She squeezed her eyes shut. His footsteps grew louder.
A sizzling crack echoed, and her vision blazed red.
Up until this exact moment, Spooky hadn’t been sure whether or not Luke liked her. Now it seemed improbable there was any other reason he was holding her hand under the table. She stiffened as he curled his fingers around the edge of her palm. She wasn’t sure if she wanted his hand on hers, but she didn’t want to get caught with it there.
Then his touch was gone, and in its place, a piece of paper. Spooky shifted her eyes to the closest counselor, but no heads turned. No one had noticed the exchange.
She crinkled the contraband in her hand: a note. Pens were restricted-use items, so notes were rare. More importantly, notes were risky—you couldn’t change your story once it was in writing. She wanted to read Luke’s face as much as the words he had put on the paper, but she kept her chin pointed at the front of the cafeteria.
“Remember, there is no such thing as your true self, only unlimited potential for growth and change,” Izeah Dodgson continued into the mic. “I want you to reflect on those words when you’re tucked into your bunks tonight.” He scanned the room over the top of his glasses. His bald head shone in the fluorescent lighting. “To close us off, I have an announcement. Yesterday evening, patrol spotted a large animal inside the fence. Now, now.” Izeah put up his hands as if to quiet the room of silent campers. “I don’t want anyone to be alarmed. This is exactly why we have the fence in the first place.”
The fence wasn’t really designed to keep things out. Spooky had seen the exposed chain-link exterior when the cab dropped her off on orientation day. The plastic sheeting that made it impossible to climb only ran along the inside. But the illusion of trust was a core part of Izeah’s philosophy of rehabilitation, so he insisted the fence was keeping animals out rather than keeping two hundred delinquents in. The fence kept things out, just like the motion-activated floodlights “scared off raccoons,” and the foam spork she had just used to eat her runny chili “saved on dishwater.”
“A thorough search of the camp tells us our visitor didn’t stay, but we want to be cautious. If you see anything, anything at all, please alert a counselor.” The mic whined. “We are on the edge of a wilderness. We must respect that we aren’t the only ones out here.”
The second Izeah dismissed the crowd to their post-dinner duties, Spooky glanced down at the scrap of paper in her hand: Meet tonight.
There were no other instructions, but Spooky knew Luke’s plan. That didn’t mean she thought it was a good idea. She tried to make eye contact during post-dinner cleanup, but work duty ended before she could give Luke so much as a head shake.
He was going, whether she joined him or not.
When the last bell rang and the cabin lights went out, Spooky kept her eyes open and began counting. After she reached sixty for the fortieth time, she folded back the blanket, rolled off the bunk, and tucked the pillow in her place. With sneakers in hand, she crept past heavy-breathing campers to the entrance. Not a single floorboard creaked. She had earned her nickname, at least in part, because of her talent for passing through life quietly.
The trick to avoid the motion detectors, Luke had told her, was to do three things at once: jump the lower sensors, duck the upper sensors, and don’t set foot inside the circle. Spooky didn’t trust herself to jump and duck anything, so she squatted and swung a leg around the cabin’s open side. Izeah insisted a circle of open cabins inspired “community,” but the formation also ensured anyone could look out and see her dangling from the doorway. Gripping the wall for balance, she found the ground next to the cabin with her toe. Arms shaking, she transferred her weight and set both feet outside.
She crouched and scanned the night. Her sleep shirt was twisted and stuck to her body with sweat. Her heartbeat should have been loud enough to wake all ten cabins. But nothing stirred.
She had done it. She had snuck out. This was a teenage rite of passage. Even if someone had invited her, she wouldn’t have had the nerve to attempt this at home. She wasn’t sure she had the nerve for it now, but she certainly wasn’t ready to try to reverse the process and get back inside the cabin. Her hands quivered as she put on her sneakers. After a few more moments watching the silent dark, she started across the field toward the back of the main lodge.
Even though Spooky had been at Dodgson for over a month, she had never been outside after the last bell. It was like the world had flipped upside down; the field around her was flat black, while all the light and life played out in the sky above her. Bright points and brilliant clusters and tiny pinpricks twinkled. She had to rely on her feet more than her eyes to find each step.
She exhaled for the first time since she read the note, or maybe for the first time that summer. It was as if the darkness put her at an unreachable distance from the sleeping campers and counselors. Even her limbs felt far away.
Only now, in the quiet, did it occur to Spooky she might be walking into a trap.
Although they had been at Dodgson together all summer, she had only known Luke since he was assigned to cafeteria duty two weeks ago. He’d come up to her while she was setting up the buffet, tucked a hair back into her hairnet, and asked about her nickname. And he kept finding her, in between serving and mopping and scrubbing. He had even started saving a seat for her at meals.
It was unfamiliar territory to have anyone, much less a guy, show interest in getting to know her. She had thought they were becoming friends. Maybe even a little more. And since he’d held her hand longer than strictly necessary to pass the note, almost definitely more. But she shouldn’t let herself forget this wasn’t some guy from English class—every camper at Dodgson was here for a reason. Luke was here for a reason.
Spooky pictured Luke’s straight, pointy nose and white-blond hair. His half smile. She couldn’t imagine that face leering out of the night, ready to inflict violence. But it was possible that Luke had set her up to meet someone else. Someone who wanted to have a private word without the watchful eyes of counselors. She wasn’t aware of any enemies. Unfortunately, it didn’t take much to set off one of two hundred delinquents. There were plenty of stories of accidental offenses leading to nasty consequences.
And Luke had been distant during post-dinner cleanup. While she’d been spraying down tables on one side of the cafeteria, he’d been stacking chairs on the other. When she started collecting serve ware, he began mopping. He’d ducked her attempts to make eye contact. She hadn’t seen him come back from taking out the trash at all.
He’d been avoiding her.
Spooky stopped walking. Why had Luke bothered to write her a note? The forethought seemed sweet at first, but the risk was impractical. Counselors were attentive during announcements; it was the worst possible time to communicate. He could have waited until after dinner was over and whispered the words.
But he’d already tried to do that, hadn't he? Luke had asked her to sneak out twice this week. The note hadn’t given her a chance to say she was too tired, or she couldn’t risk the scuffs. A note only gave her the choice to show up or leave him waiting.
Spooky rubbed her arms through her long-sleeve flannel. She should turn around and get back in bed. She didn’t even know how many scuffs she would get if she was caught out here. It was a big camp, and Luke said patrols only went around once or twice a night, but she should have tried to do the math. The image of Luke standing alone in the cold had been on her mind instead.
She sighed through her nose and kept walking. Spooky liked Luke, or at least, she thought she might start to. She definitely didn’t want him to stop talking to her. And he would have every right to if he took the risk of coming out here and she didn’t show. Going back now would put a quick end to the only good thing happening at Dodgson.
Still, Spooky approached the dumpsters behind the lodge like a ghost. She had come back here dozens of times on garbage duty, but the shape of things changed at night. The lodge had lost its edges. Every shadow was a void. Her ears twitched. Luke had told her to meet him at the door, but it seemed like she had arrived first. She huddled behind one of the rusty bins to wait.
Her toes had just started to go numb when footsteps brushed the dirt nearby. A white-blond head bobbed into view.
“Luke!” He was alone. A laugh bubbled up. Dodgson really did something to your faith in people.
“Sorry I’m late.” He jogged over to her. He didn’t bother to keep his voice low, but they were far from any sleeping quarters. “I had to wait for my cabin-leader to snore.”
“I wasn’t here long,” Spooky said.
He took a step closer. She took a step back and jumped when her shoulder brushed the dumpster. She was relieved it was just him, but just him, alone in the dark, gave her plenty of new reasons to be nervous.
“So, what’s up?” she blurted.
“Oh, you know, out for a midnight stroll.” She could hear his smile more than see it.
“A stroll, huh? Aren’t you worried about the animal that got inside the fence?”
“It was a bear. A huge one.”
“Really? How do you know?” At least there weren’t any grizzlies in Colorado.
“Animal control told me when I showed them where I saw the snake.”
“You saw a snake?” Spooky dropped the casual tone she’d been attempting. “Where?”
“Between the dumpsters. I saw it when I was taking out the trash after dinner. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me yelling.” He chuckled and edged closer. “But don’t worry. They checked everywhere. It’s gone.”
“Was it a rattlesnake?” She picked up one foot then the other, eyeing the shadowy ground.
“Don’t worry.” Luke closed the distance between them. “I’ll protect you.”
“But what if it’s still...”
He put his hands on the dumpster behind her and leaned in.
It was a strange sensation having somebody else’s lips against hers. Things touched her mouth every day, but another set of lips felt different somehow, like she was trying to use her left hand for something she usually did with her right.
She couldn’t tell Luke how strange it was. She couldn’t let anybody at Dodgson find out she was having her first kiss only two weeks after her eighteenth birthday. She would become an instant target for that kind of quaint, teenage naiveté.
But privately, she could celebrate her second milestone of the night. She had pictured this moment for a long time. While she never could have guessed who, where, or when, she had imagined a slow, inevitable, folding together. Lips slightly open, arms entwined, and bodies close.
This was turning out to be a much more thorough exploration of her mouth than she had imagined. And it was getting more thorough by the second.
Luke mimed a slow chew, then a few quick guppy gasps. She tried to catch his rhythm. If he noticed she was doing something wrong, he didn’t pause to address it. She pursed her mouth when his opened, and he gave her lower lip and a decent part of her chin a lick.
Spooky pushed him away. He barreled back in faster than she could wipe her face.
“Luke, hold on…”
The words became garbled as he mashed her lips around. Her hair slid all over the bin as he guided her head this way and that with his mouth. A sticky spot clung to her shirt.
Enough. This midnight tryst was over.
Spooky hitched her foot up to push herself off the dumpster. Her knee slid between Luke’s legs and slammed into his groin.
“Oof!”
Spooky gasped as he doubled over. He backed away from her with a high keen.
“Oh, sorry!” Spooky reached for him. “I’m sorry!”
“What the...” he whimpered. “What’s wrong with you?”
A beam of light swung around the corner of the lodge. Footsteps and voices drifted through the chill.
Counselors on patrol.
“Luke,” Spooky muttered. “Luke, we have to leave.”
A trio of figures rounded the building, flashlights swaying. Spooky jumped behind the dumpster. Luke was doubled over in the open. If he would just move a few feet toward her, the bin would be between him and the oncoming counselors.
“Luke, come here,” she hissed.
He groaned. A beam landed on his platinum hair. He spared one hand from his crotch to block his eyes.
“Hey! Stop right there!” a counselor called.
The voices picked up. The light stayed on Luke. If she didn’t move now they would catch her too.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
Spooky bowed her head and dashed to the nearest tree. The trunk wasn’t wide enough to conceal her shoulders, so she darted to the next one. She scrambled around it and pressed her back against the bark. It wouldn’t take much searching to find her, but there was nowhere left to sneak. Between this pine and the forest was the fence, complete with twenty-foot-high, unscalable plastic sheeting. To “keep out the animals.”
“Any other campers out here making choices that don’t reflect their true potential?” Counselor Jackie called.
“Come on out,” another counselor she knew, Mark, commanded. “Let’s start rebuilding.”
The words didn’t sound natural, but they were familiar from daily speeches and role plays. Unlike Izeah Dodgson, the rest of the staff delivered their canned lines about trust with varying levels of conviction.
The third counselor spoke in a low voice. Spooky heard “slip in behavior” and “initiate the reparation process.”
“...but before we begin rebuilding,” the counselor said. “I want you to choose to be your best, most trustworthy self and tell us: are you out here alone?”
Spooky might not be Luke’s favorite person right now—she could still feel the spot where her knee met his pelvis—but if there was one thing that guaranteed every pyro, bully, and druggie here would turn on you, it was ratting someone out to the counselors.
“I was just checking to make sure I locked the dumpsters after dinner. Animal control came and I got distracted. I wasn’t sure,” Luke whined.
He was talking too much. He sounded like he was lying. She tried to melt into the tree trunk.
“I trust you,” the counselor said in a monotone voice. “But if there were someone out here with you, and you were to tell us now, I would recommend you get thirty scuffs. I’ll talk to Mr. Dodgson about that personally.” He paused. “Otherwise, you’re looking at fifty, minimum.”
Fifty scuffs? Only the rough bark stopped Spooky from sliding to the ground. She had known being out of bounds was a multiplier for whatever else you were caught doing. She should have gone to examine the scuff board after dinner instead of trying to catch Luke’s eye. She should have done the math before leaving her bed instead of counting the seconds.
Fifty scuffs was bad. Fifty scuffs, plus her existing twenty-three, would put her at a serious risk of maxing out before the summer was over. A rise that fast would land her back in Adam Dodgson’s office, in a seat she had vowed she wouldn’t return to after day one.
From the second she stepped out of the cab, everything at Dodgson had been jarring. Her bags were whisked away to be searched. She had to swap the clothes she came in for rough gray pajamas. She had a schedule with building names and times, but no clock or map. She wandered around in loaner flip flops, trying to follow the crowd without getting too close. The other campers looked at her like she was food. The counselors looked right through her.
But nothing at the camp was more jarring than the Dodgson brothers and their conflicting approaches to delinquent rehabilitation.
“Exploratory teens,” Izeah began in his welcome speech, “fall into a pattern of behavior slips and mistrust that feed each other. They make a mistake, and their community implements new restrictions. Parents, teachers, and friends treat them like they are going to misbehave again. So they break more rules. Blame, rules, and offenses pile up until, eventually, they conclude they can’t do anything right. So why try? They’ll always mess up anyway, right? Wrong!” He yelled the answer to his own question so loudly the grass around her could have rippled. “We know you can be better. We’ll give you the trust you need to break the cycle of negative thinking. Here at Dodgson, we give you the freedom to be your best selves. In a controlled environment, of course.”
“Do you know why you’re here?” Adam Dodgson asked as soon as she sat down across from him. It seemed like a silly question. Spooky knew what she had done. His dim office and quiet attention were the stark opposite of Izeah’s blustering speech on the field. Elaborate promises of trust and rehabilitation swirled in her head.
“Err. Because I made a mistake, and I can do better?”
“No. Because you were insufficiently motivated to behave.” Adam had all the hair Izeah lacked. His sandy mane was just graying at the temples. “Outside these walls, the fallout of your actions wasn’t enough to constrain your behavior. Breaking rules didn’t affect you, personally, in a way that mattered to you. I’m going to change that.”
Adam Dodgson reached into the filing cabinet beside his desk and pulled out a red folder with her name on it.
“When you break rules, you get scuffs. When you get scuffs, there are consequences. With the appropriate consequences, you will choose not to break rules.”
Izeah’s speech had mentioned scuffs. The word was meant to evoke something temporary, like a bit of grime that could be wiped away. After all, Izeah said to the field of teens in gray pajamas, he believed each and every one of them had endless potential to do better. Two minutes into their meeting, Spooky had a feeling Adam Dodgson didn’t share his brother’s optimism.
“I’ve talked to your parents, and I’m impressed.” His voice was even and deliberate. “To motivate you to behave this summer, they already had their own consequences in mind. I helped them add a few additional details.”
Adam opened the red folder and repositioned it to face her. Inside were her scuff levels: predetermined punishments for every ten scuffs, up to one hundred.
Spooky had assumed if she was caught sneaking out, she would spend the rest of the summer shoveling chicken shit, or maybe even bunking in the closed cabins with campers who were a little more stabby. Working in the cafeteria and sleeping in an open cabin were privileges of her good behavior. There was Dodgson, and then there was Dodgson.
But the scuff level punishments at camp weren’t what scared her. At eighty scuffs, consequences started bleeding through the fence and into her life outside. Adam Dodgson would take out his horrible red folder and make sure misery followed her through the gates. Spooky hadn’t just left for Dodgson with her suitcases. Her parents had put her in the cab with an ultimatum. If she got one hundred scuffs, the bleak and lonely years so far would be the best of her life.
And now she was about to hit seventy-three scuffs with almost half her time at Dodgson remaining.
“No one under the dumpsters,” Jackie called.
“I’m alone,” Luke whined again.
“Sure you are,” Mark said.
He was close. Too close. The beam of his flashlight waved on either side of the tree. She squeezed her eyes shut. His footsteps grew louder.
A sizzling crack echoed, and her vision blazed red.
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Alison Kimble began writing because she loves stories and believes in their power to shape our world and ourselves. Her writing blends the real and the fantastical and crosses genres of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. Now that her debut novel, Strange Gods, is in your hands, she is working on her next novel and a short story anthology. She lives in the Greater Seattle Area with her husband and spends her time walking in the woods, going to the movies, and seeking adventures large and small.
GIVEAWAY
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Excerpt: Monsters, Movies & Mayhem: + giveaway
“The authors’ palpable love of supernatural cinema is infectious; horror fans won’t want to put this down.”—Publishers Weekly
by Kevin J. Anderson, Elizbeth Drisko, Angela Johnson, Ashley King, Scott Lee, Tracy Leonard Nakatani, James Romag, Kailey Urbaniak, Carol Wyrick, Kelly Lynn Colby (Editor)
July 15, 2020
406 pages
Publisher: WordFire Press LLC
Lights! Camera! Monsters?
Sometimes you go to the movies. And sometimes, the movies—and their monsters—come to you. At any moment, without notice, monsters once relegated to the screen become a reality. Aliens and demons, dragons and ghosts, werewolves, vampires, zombies, and seemingly ordinary people who are just plain evil.
Join award-winning authors Jonathan Maberry, Fran Wilde, David Gerrold, Rick Wilber and others for 23 all-new tales of haunted theaters, video gods, formidable demons, alien pizza, and delirious actors. Each story takes you to the silver screen with monstrous results.
Funny or grim, unsettling or cozy… You’ll laugh! You’ll sigh! You’ll scream!
Grab popcorn—and good running shoes—and enjoy the show.
The collection was compiled by grad students as part of the innovative Publishing MA program at Western Colorado University, directed by bestselling author and publisher Kevin J. Anderson, and with support from Draft2Digital.
EXCERPT:
The song ended and Gavin paused to push the buttons to play it again, but then he stopped, looking down at the debris his last brush sweep had gathered. There was some of his own popcorn, and a stray Milk Dud that still looked good.
And a ring.
Gold. Slender. Very pretty. With delicate old world Viking tracery that twisted all the way around the band. He picked it up and sat back on his heels. The ring was dusty, as if it had been there a long time.
Had it? Could he have missed it the other times he cleaned the floor?
It made his heart hurt and the tears ambushed him. He didn’t even feel them coming but suddenly they were there. Shoving their way out of him, choking him, kicking at the walls of his lungs. He caved forward so suddenly his forehead banged against the floor. It hurt but he didn’t care. Not one bit.
He closed his fist around the ring and tried to push the fist into his chest. If he could have managed that he’d have buried the ring in the tear-moist soil of his heart.
“Mom.”
The single word escaped his lips. He blubbered it, and the word slipped free and fell onto the dirty floor.
GIVEAWAY
WordFire Press is giving away one print copy
US only
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Where were these textbooks when I was in school?
I ran across a textbook (The Monster Theory Reader) and fell into that amazon rabbit hole. Here are a few interesting books I found!
by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Jan 15, 2020.
Info: upress.umn.edu.
University of Minnesota Press
Kindle Price: $19.25 600 pages, 33 b&w photos, 7 x 10
University of Minnesota Press
Kindle Price: $19.25 600 pages, 33 b&w photos, 7 x 10
Zombies and vampires, banshees and basilisks, demons and wendigos, goblins, gorgons, golems, and ghosts. From the mythical monstrous races of the ancient world to the murderous cyborgs of our day, monsters have haunted the human imagination, giving shape to the fears and desires of their time. And as long as there have been monsters, there have been attempts to make sense of them, to explain where they come from and what they mean. This book collects the best of what contemporary scholars have to say on the subject, in the process creating a map of the monstrous across the vast and complex terrain of the human psyche.
Editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock prepares the way with a genealogy of monster theory, traveling from the earliest explanations of monsters through psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, and cultural studies, to the development of monster theory per se—and including Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s foundational essay “Monster Theory (Seven Theses),” reproduced here in its entirety. There follow sections devoted to the terminology and concepts used in talking about monstrosity; the relevance of race, religion, gender, class, sexuality, and physical appearance; the application of monster theory to contemporary cultural concerns such as ecology, religion, and terrorism; and finally the possibilities monsters present for envisioning a different future.
Including the most interesting and important proponents of monster theory and its progenitors, from Sigmund Freud to Julia Kristeva to J. Halberstam, Donna Haraway, Barbara Creed, and Stephen T. Asma—as well as harder-to-find contributions such as Robin Wood’s and Masahiro Mori’s—this is the most extensive and comprehensive collection of scholarship on monsters and monstrosity across disciplines and methods ever to be assembled and will serve as an invaluable resource for students of the uncanny in all its guises.
Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction: A Genealogy of Monster Theory – Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
1. Monster Culture (Seven Theses) – Jeffrey Jerome Cohen Part I. The Monster Theory Toolbox
2. The Uncanny – Sigmund Freud
3. The Uncanny Valley – Masahiro Mori
4. Approaching Abjection – Julia Kristeva
5. An Introduction to the American Horror Film – Robin Wood
6. Fantastic Biologies and the Structures of Horrific Imagery – Noël Carroll
7. Parasites and Perverts: An Introduction to Gothic Monstrosity – Jack Halberstam Part II. Monsterizing Difference
8. Monstrous Strangers at the Edge of the World: The Monstrous Races – Alexa Wright
9. Blood, Jews, and Monsters in Medieval Culture – Bettina Bildhauer
10. Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection – Barbara Creed
11. The Monster and the Homosexual – Harry Benshoff
12. The Undead: A Haunted Whiteness – Annalee Newitz
13. Intolerable Ambiguity: Freak as/at the Limit – Elizabeth Grosz Part III. Monsters and Culture
14. Monsters and the Moral Imagination – Stephen T. Asma
15. Introduction to Religion and Its Monsters – Timothy Beal
16. The Self’s Clean and Proper Body – Margrit Shildrick 17. Haunting Modernity: Tanuki, Trains, and Transformation in Japan – Michael Dylan Foster
18. Invisible Monsters: Vision, Horror, and Contemporary Culture – Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
19. Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots – Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai
20. Zombie Trouble: Zombie Texts, Bare Life, and Displaced People – Jon Stratton Part IV. The Promises of Monsters
21. Beasts from the Deep – Erin Suzuki
22. Of Swamp Dragons: Mud, Megalopolis, and a Future for Ecocriticism – Anthony Lioi
23. The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others – Donna Haraway
24. Posthuman Teratology – Patricia MacCormack Previous Publications Contributors Index
Zombies first shuffled across movie screens in 1932 in the low-budget Hollywood film White Zombie and were reimagined as undead flesh-eaters in George A. Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead almost four decades later. Today, zombies are omnipresent in global popular culture, from video games and top-rated cable shows in the United States to comic books and other visual art forms to low-budget films from Cuba and the Philippines. The zombie’s ability to embody a variety of cultural anxieties—ecological disaster, social and economic collapse, political extremism—has ensured its continued relevance and legibility, and has precipitated an unprecedented deluge of international scholarship.
Zombie studies manifested across academic disciplines in the humanities but also beyond, spreading into sociology, economics, computer science, mathematics, and even epidemiology. Zombie Theory collects the best interdisciplinary zombie scholarship from around the world. Essays portray the zombie not as a singular cultural figure or myth but show how the undead represent larger issues: the belief in an afterlife, fears of contagion and technology, the effect of capitalism and commodification, racial exclusion and oppression, dehumanization. As presented here, zombies are not simple metaphors; rather, they emerge as a critical mode for theoretical work. With its diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches, Zombie Theory thinks through what the walking undead reveal about our relationships to the world and to each other.
Contributors: Fred Botting, Kingston U; Samuel Byrnand, U of Canberra; Gerry Canavan, Marquette U; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington U; Jean Comaroff, Harvard U; John Comaroff, Harvard U; Edward P. Comentale, Indiana U; Anna Mae Duane, U of Connecticut; Karen Embry, Portland Community College; Barry Keith Grant, Brock U; Edward Green, Roosevelt U; Lars Bang Larsen; Travis Linnemann, Eastern Kentucky U; Elizabeth McAlister, Wesleyan U; Shaka McGlotten, Purchase College-SUNY; David McNally, York U; Tavia Nyong’o, Yale U; Simon Orpana, U of Alberta; Steven Shaviro, Wayne State U; Ola Sigurdson, U of Gothenburg; Jon Stratton, University of South Australia; Eugene Thacker, The New School; Sherryl Vint, U of California Riverside; Priscilla Wald, Duke U; Tyler Wall, Eastern Kentucky U; Jen Webb, U of Canberra; Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan U
Zombie studies manifested across academic disciplines in the humanities but also beyond, spreading into sociology, economics, computer science, mathematics, and even epidemiology. Zombie Theory collects the best interdisciplinary zombie scholarship from around the world. Essays portray the zombie not as a singular cultural figure or myth but show how the undead represent larger issues: the belief in an afterlife, fears of contagion and technology, the effect of capitalism and commodification, racial exclusion and oppression, dehumanization. As presented here, zombies are not simple metaphors; rather, they emerge as a critical mode for theoretical work. With its diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches, Zombie Theory thinks through what the walking undead reveal about our relationships to the world and to each other.
Contributors: Fred Botting, Kingston U; Samuel Byrnand, U of Canberra; Gerry Canavan, Marquette U; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington U; Jean Comaroff, Harvard U; John Comaroff, Harvard U; Edward P. Comentale, Indiana U; Anna Mae Duane, U of Connecticut; Karen Embry, Portland Community College; Barry Keith Grant, Brock U; Edward Green, Roosevelt U; Lars Bang Larsen; Travis Linnemann, Eastern Kentucky U; Elizabeth McAlister, Wesleyan U; Shaka McGlotten, Purchase College-SUNY; David McNally, York U; Tavia Nyong’o, Yale U; Simon Orpana, U of Alberta; Steven Shaviro, Wayne State U; Ola Sigurdson, U of Gothenburg; Jon Stratton, University of South Australia; Eugene Thacker, The New School; Sherryl Vint, U of California Riverside; Priscilla Wald, Duke U; Tyler Wall, Eastern Kentucky U; Jen Webb, U of Canberra; Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan U
To begin interpreting the corpse as a representational object referring to the deceased, Margaret Schwartz examines the association between photography and embalming—both as aesthetics and as mourning practices. She introduces the concept of photographic indexicality, using it as a metric for comprehending the relationship between the body of a dead leader (including Abraham Lincoln, Vladimir Lenin, and Eva Perón) and the “body politic” for which it stands. She considers bodies known as victims of atrocity such as Emmett Till and Hamsa al-Khateeb to better grasp the ways in which the corpse as object may be called on to signify a marginalized body politic, at the expense of the social identity of the deceased. And she contemplates “tabloid bodies” such as Princess Diana’s and Michael Jackson’s, asserting that these corpses must remain invisible in order to maintain the deceased as a source of textual and value production.
Ultimately concluding that the evolving cultural understanding of photographic realism structures our relationship to the corpse, Dead Matter outlines the new politics of representation, in which death is exiled in favor of the late capitalist reality of bare life.
Hailed as "a feast" (Washington Post) and "a modern-day bestiary" (The New Yorker), Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters--how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future. Beginning at the time of Alexander the Great, the monsters come fast and furious--Behemoth and Leviathan, Gog and Magog, Satan and his demons, Grendel and Frankenstein, circus freaks and headless children, right up to the serial killers and terrorists of today and the post-human cyborgs of tomorrow. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities, Asma argues, but they also symbolize the mysterious and incoherent territory beyond the safe enclosures of rational thought. Exploring sources as diverse as philosophical treatises, scientific notebooks, and novels, Asma unravels traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of an era's fears and fascinations. In doing so, he illuminates the many ways monsters have become repositories for those human qualities that must be repudiated, externalized, and defeated.
An award-winning scholar and author charts four hundred years of monsters and how they reflect the culture that created them
Leo Braudy, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, has won accolades for revealing the complex and constantly shifting history behind seemingly unchanging ideas of fame, war, and masculinity.
Continuing his interest in the history of emotion, this book explores how fear has been shaped into images of monsters and monstrosity. From the Protestant Reformation to contemporary horror films and fiction, he explores four major types: the monster from nature (King Kong), the created monster (Frankenstein), the monster from within (Mr. Hyde), and the monster from the past (Dracula). Drawing upon deep historical and literary research, Braudy discusses the lasting presence of fearful imaginings in an age of scientific progress, viewing the detective genre as a rational riposte to the irrational world of the monstrous. Haunted is a compelling and incisive work by a writer at the height of his powers.
In the past decade, our rapidly changing world faced terrorism, global epidemics, economic and social strife, new communication technologies, immigration, and climate change to name a few. These fears and tensions reflect an evermore-interconnected global environment where increased mobility of people, technologies, and disease have produced great social, political, and economical uncertainty.
The essays in this collection examine how monstrosity has been used to manage these rising fears and tensions. Analyzing popular films and televisions shows, such as True Blood, Twilight, Paranormal Activity, District 9, Battlestar Galactica, and Avatar, it argues that monstrous narratives of the past decade have become omnipresent specifically because they represent collective social anxieties over resisting and embracing change in the 21st century.
The first comprehensive text that uses monstrosity not just as a metaphor for change, but rather a necessary condition through which change is lived and experienced in the 21st century, this approach introduces a different perspective toward the study of monstrosity in culture.
Exploring the pedagogical power of the monstrous, this collection of new essays describes innovative teaching strategies that use our cultural fascination with monsters to enhance learning in high school and college courses. The contributors discuss the implications of inviting fearsome creatures into the classroom, showing how they work to create compelling narratives and provide students a framework for analyzing history, culture, and everyday life. Essays explore ways of using the monstrous to teach literature, film, philosophy, theater, art history, religion, foreign language, and other subjects. Some sample syllabi, assignments, and class materials are provided.
Monsters arrived in 2011―and now they are back. Not only do they continue to live in our midst, but, as historian Scott Poole shows, these monsters are an important part of our past―a hideous obsession America cannot seem to escape.
Poole’s central argument in Monsters in America is that monster tales intertwine with America’s troubled history of racism, politics, class struggle, and gender inequality. The second edition of Monsters leads readers deeper into America’s tangled past to show how monsters continue to haunt contemporary American ideology.
By adding new discussions of the American West, Poole focuses intently on the Native American experience. He reveals how monster stories went west to Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, bringing the preoccupation with monsters into the twentieth century through the American Indian Movement. In his new preface and expanded conclusion, Poole’s tale connects to the present―illustrating the relationship between current social movements and their historical antecedents. This proven textbook also studies the social location of contemporary horror films, exploring, for example, how Get Out emerged from the context of the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally, in the new section "American Carnage," Poole challenges readers to assess what their own monster tales might be and how our sordid past horrors express themselves in our present cultural anxieties.
By the end of the book, Poole cautions that America’s monsters aren’t going away anytime soon. If specters of the past still haunt our present, they may yet invade our future. Monsters are here to stay.
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Book Review: We Call It Monster by Lachlan Walter
by Lachlan Walter
February 10, 2019
251 pages
251 pages
Publisher: Severed Press
ASIN: B07NKW45C3
If you enjoy watching Godzilla films and other Kaiju science fiction/horror ones, like Pacific Rim, then this book may interest you. Also, if you read apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, this might be a book to add to your TBR pile. But unlike those, we get more from the POV of the humans and how they handle survival in an increasingly changing, new world. And since the new Godzilla movie isn’t out until late May, this monsterlicious book will fit the bill for you.
I give We Call It Monster 4 sheep.
ASIN: B07NKW45C3
ISBN: 9781925840520
One ordinary day, an enormous creature dragged itself out of the ocean and laid waste to a city. In the months and years that followed, more and more creatures appeared, until not a single country remained untouched. At first, people tried to fight them. In the end, all they could do was try and stay alive.
We Call It Monster is a story of forces beyond our control, of immense and impossible creatures that make plain how small we really are. It is the story of our fight for survival and our discovery of that which truly matters: community and compassion, love and family, hope and faith.This book is about Kaiju monsters—Kaiju means abnormally large monsters—that come forth from the ocean onto land all over the world, causing destruction and death.
One ordinary day, an enormous creature dragged itself out of the ocean and laid waste to a city. In the months and years that followed, more and more creatures appeared, until not a single country remained untouched. At first, people tried to fight them. In the end, all they could do was try and stay alive.
We Call It Monster is a story of forces beyond our control, of immense and impossible creatures that make plain how small we really are. It is the story of our fight for survival and our discovery of that which truly matters: community and compassion, love and family, hope and faith.This book is about Kaiju monsters—Kaiju means abnormally large monsters—that come forth from the ocean onto land all over the world, causing destruction and death.
The first chapter opens with people attending a party in the coastal city of Sydney, Australia, when they learn giant creatures are coming out of the ocean and attacking. They are baffled, frightened and even excited. There is one point where people come to watch two of the giant monsters battle each other, putting themselves in the middle of the destruction. In this current world where people take out their phones to videotape or snap photos of frightening events, it's not hard to imagine people would do exactly that. Through each chapter, time passes, and the reader learns the fate of humankind and the world after Kaiju appear. No place on the planet is safe from the behemoths as they come from the sea, come by air, and from under the ground. Human armies battle the things but are not effectual against them.
Some places (at least we see how Australia changes) change, due to the monsters plowing through the land or coming from beneath the earth, bringing even new, terrifying plant, insect, and animal life. This isn't a novel with a set series of characters, this is more like short stories with different heroes and heroines.
If you enjoy watching Godzilla films and other Kaiju science fiction/horror ones, like Pacific Rim, then this book may interest you. Also, if you read apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, this might be a book to add to your TBR pile. But unlike those, we get more from the POV of the humans and how they handle survival in an increasingly changing, new world. And since the new Godzilla movie isn’t out until late May, this monsterlicious book will fit the bill for you.
I give We Call It Monster 4 sheep.
Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney
About the Author:
I am a writer, science-fiction critic and nursery-hand (the garden kind, not the baby kind), and the author of two books: the deeply Australian post-apocalyptic tale The Rain Never Came, and the giant-monster story-cycle We Call It Monster. I also write science fiction criticism for Aurealis magazine and review for the independent ‘weird music’ website Cyclic Defrost, my short fiction can be found floating around online, and I have completed a PhD that critically and creatively explored the relationship between Australian post-apocalyptic fiction and Australian notions of national identity.
I love all things music-related, the Australian environment, overlooked genres and playing in the garden.
Friday, December 7, 2018
Spotlight: Darker Days: A Collection of Dark Fiction by Kenneth W. Cain
“Darker Days, the latest collection of short stories by Kenneth W. Cain, delivers on its title’s promise. From the very first story readers are dragged into seemingly ordinary situations that serve as cover for dark secrets. Ranging from subtle horror to downright terror, from science fiction to weird fantasy, Cain demonstrates a breadth of styles that keeps you off balance as you move from one story to the next. There is something for everyone in this collection–as long as you don’t want to sleep at night!”
– JG Faherty, author of The Cure, Carnival of Fear, and The Burning Time.
by Kenneth W. Cain
December 7, 2018
203 pgs.
Crystal Lake Publishing
Genre: Monster fiction, Dark fiction short stories, Horror, Speculative fiction anthology
There’s a little something for every reader within this collection. These 26 short speculative stories arise from a void, escaping shadows that ebb and weave through minds like worms, planting the larvae that live just under the skin, thriving upon fear. These are Cain’s darker days.
In this collection, Cain features stories from the Old West, of past lives and future days, the living and the dead, new and unique monsters as well as fresh takes on those of lore. Once more he tackles themes of loss and grief and the afterlife, always exploring the greater unknown. In “The Sanguine Wars,” Cain takes us to a future where soldiers are made to endure the horrors of war. He explores the complexities of global warming and what lengths men and women alike sink to in “The Reassignment Project.” And, as often is the case, he ends on a lighter note, with “Lenny’s New Eyes” and “A Very Different Sort of Apocalypse.”
When the darkness comes, embrace it. Let it wrap you up in cold. Don’t worry, it’s not your time…yet.
INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING STORIES:
▪ “A Ring For His Own”
▪ “Heirloom”▪ “Rust Colored Rain”
▪ “Prey”
▪ “Passing Time”
▪ “What Mama Needs”
▪ “My Brother Bit Your Honor Roll Student”
▪ “Outcasts: The Sick and Dying 1 – Henry Wentworth”
▪ “The Sanguine Wars”
▪ “The Hunted”
▪ “Her Living Corals”
▪ “Puppet Strings”
▪ “The Trying of Master William”
▪ “By The Crescent Moon”
▪ “Mantid”
▪ “The Underside of Time and Space”
▪ “Outcasts: The Sick and Dying 2 – Gemma Nyle”
▪ “The Griffon”
▪ “Adaptable”
▪ “When They Come”
▪ “The Reassignment Project”
▪ “Presage”
▪ “One Hopeless Night by a Clan Fire”
▪ “Lenny’s New Eyes”
▪ “Outcasts: The Sick and Dying 3 – Anna Kilpatrick”▪ “A Very Different Sort of Apocalypse”
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Writer/Editor/Graphic Designer
Kenneth W. Cain first got the itch for storytelling during his formative years in the suburbs of Chicago, where he got to listen to his grandfather spin tales by the glow of a barrel fire. But it was a reading of Baba Yaga that grew his desire for dark fiction. Shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and One Step Beyond furthered that sense of wonder for the unknown, and he’s been writing ever since.
Kenneth W. Cain first got the itch for storytelling during his formative years in the suburbs of Chicago, where he got to listen to his grandfather spin tales by the glow of a barrel fire. But it was a reading of Baba Yaga that grew his desire for dark fiction. Shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and One Step Beyond furthered that sense of wonder for the unknown, and he’s been writing ever since.
Cain is the author of The Saga of I trilogy, United States of the Dead, the short story collections These Old Tales and Fresh Cut Tales, and the forthcoming Embers: A Collection of Dark Fiction. Writing, reading, fine art, graphic design, and Cardinals baseball are but a few of his passions. Cain now resides in Chester County, Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Michael Okon guest post: How I Got a Publishing Deal and What’s Next
How I Got a Publishing Deal and What’s Next
Nick began trying to sell my book Monsterland to the big publishers and, as expected, it was rejected. Throughout his attempts of selling, he had a call with a film agent and he was pitching her a romance novel. She said she wasn’t really into romance and was looking for something with monsters. He sent her my book Monsterland, she read it over a weekend, and we had a call that Monday. She told Nick and me if we get the book published, she will get it into a producer’s hands to make into a film. Nick found a publisher called WordFire Press owned by Kevin J. Anderson, who has written all the Star Wars and Dune canon books. WordFire signed me to a two-book deal for Monsterland 1 & 2. After the deal was signed, my film agent did what she promised and got my book into the hands of a billion-dollar grossing producer who is now shopping my book to certain studios.
In two years, I went from a self-published author, to a published author with a literary agent, an entertainment attorney, a film agent, a two-book publishing deal, a publicist, and a producer who is interested in turning my book to a film. It’s been one wild ride, to say the least.
Now, what’s next? Well, one may just sit back and relax, and do nothing. Not I. I’ve already completed Monsterland 2 which comes out May 26, 2018. I’m knee-deep in Monsterland 3. I’ve already started beating out the stories for Monsterland 4 and 5. It seems that the next five years are going to be extremely busy with creating stories centered on monsters. What could be wrong with that?
by Michael Okon
October 13, 2017
Pages: 232
Genre: Monsters
Welcome to Monsterland—the scariest place on Earth.
The last couple years of high school have not been fun for Wyatt Baldwin. His parent's divorce, then his dad mysteriously dies. He’s not exactly comfortable with his new stepfather, Carter White, either. An on-going debate with his best friends Howard Drucker and Melvin over which monster is superior has gotten stale. He’d much rather spend his days with beautiful and popular Jade. However, she’s dating the brash high-school quarterback Nolan, and Wyatt thinks he doesn’t stand a chance.
But everything changes when Wyatt and his friends are invited to attend the grand opening of Monsterland, a groundbreaking theme park where guests can rock out with vampires at Vampire Village, be chased by actual werewolves on the Werewolf River Run, and walk among the dead in Zombieville.
With real werewolves, vampires and zombies as the main attractions, what could possibly go wrong?
October 13, 2017
Pages: 232
Genre: Monsters
Welcome to Monsterland—the scariest place on Earth.
The last couple years of high school have not been fun for Wyatt Baldwin. His parent's divorce, then his dad mysteriously dies. He’s not exactly comfortable with his new stepfather, Carter White, either. An on-going debate with his best friends Howard Drucker and Melvin over which monster is superior has gotten stale. He’d much rather spend his days with beautiful and popular Jade. However, she’s dating the brash high-school quarterback Nolan, and Wyatt thinks he doesn’t stand a chance.
But everything changes when Wyatt and his friends are invited to attend the grand opening of Monsterland, a groundbreaking theme park where guests can rock out with vampires at Vampire Village, be chased by actual werewolves on the Werewolf River Run, and walk among the dead in Zombieville.
With real werewolves, vampires and zombies as the main attractions, what could possibly go wrong?
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Michael Okon is an award-winning and best-selling author of multiple genres including paranormal, thriller, horror, action/adventure and self-help. He graduated from Long Island University with a degree in English, and then later received his MBA in business and finance. Coming from a family of writers, he has storytelling is his DNA. Michael has been writing from as far back as he can remember, his inspiration being his love for films and their impact on his life. From the time he saw The Goonies, he was hooked on the idea of entertaining people through unforgettable characters.
Michael is a lifelong movie buff, a music playlist aficionado, and a sucker for self-help books. He lives on the North Shore of Long Island with his wife and children.
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