All Us Witches: a handmade masterpiece, an experimental novelette or a writing experience, that tips the hat to the Lancashire Witches. Leyshon brings Geraldine Monk’s words into his cut-up photography writing style, uses Lewis Carrol’s Ladder Puzzle creating a story from MAGIC to SPELL also features: Rhys Hughes and Jordan Krall.
And the Night Did Claim Them is brilliant! Bradshaw delivers a darkness we all face one day. Whether it’s loss, regret or something you can’t let go—the darkness is there. Waiting for you to tip your glass and say farewell. The light will be on the other side, when we except what is gone and make the choice to cross into the murky depths of the night.
Does the AI-powered home exorcism kit really send those demons back to Hell? The host of the Mind Matters podcast sits down with the visionary who disrupted the exorcism industry who uses machine learning to communicate with Satan’s spawn. In this interview, host Tim Richmond asks the tough questions to find out whether all the viral videos of people with demonic possession are real, and if his Bluetooth-enabled device is all we need to prevent Hell on Earth. YOU NEED TO READ THIS!! GRAB YOUR KIT FROM GODLESS
A neighborhood becomes the blueprint of death under an architect’s gruesome curse and his house of horrors. Powerful character development, horrifying and evil. Hollow House is an infectious page turner, with a foundation of dread and atrocities violent by design. Recommended for Haunted House fanatics!
Karla Kay reviews DIABOLIQUE – JOHN PAUL FITCH “THE HOUSE OF TEARS “Thomas screamed until his lungs were empty. And it was then that he understood why this place was called The House of Tears.” Erotic Horror, BDSM, desires fulfilled and a longing for forgiveness. Dark and disturbing. This one is a definite favorite!!” “Each of these are entertaining and are sure to satisfy any horror lovers dark desires when getting lost in dark fiction.” …READ HERE REVIEW HERE!
JJ: What is your favourite poem in Beautifully Broken about and what inspired it?
Laura: My favorite poem is entitled: River In Reverse It is about being pushed one way in your life because that’s the accepted flow of things and me saying, no. I will flow against everyone’s idea of who I should be or what my life should look like. I am a river in reverse.
When young Sarah McPhee discovers a beautiful blue rose growing in the garden, it transports her imagination to a new world – one filled with blue rose horses and blue rose streams. But there’s a gray city nearby this wondrous world, one where a boy is trapped, sad and scared. Now it’s up to Sarah to do whatever she can to help him and, in doing so, discover the magic of The Boy with the Blue Rose Heart. Brought to life with gorgeous illustrations from the wonderful Luke Spooner.
UPDATE: We have sent the files over to the printers, which quoted an 8-10 week turnaround. When the books arrive we will begin shipping out Preorders. Reminder if you ordered a copy overseas additional fees may apply. If you have further questions please email us. If you have already emailed us in regards to your copy, then we will reply soon. Thank you! hybridsequencemedia (at) gmail (.com)
Hello peeps! Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Scott J. Couturier, author of The Box, sixteen twisted tales to infect your psyche. Describe your ideal reader. Courturier: Anybody who enjoys Weird fiction, & moreover who appreciates being challenged by a read. I hope LGBTQ+ readers especially will find something of value. The futuristic story […]
Click below to read the Interview… I say Waffles too!
Editors Donald Armfield and Maxwell I. Gold have taken their book, Hybrid: Misfits, Monsters and Other Phenomena, very much to heart in selecting the poems and stories within (a hybrid format in itself), to include bizarro, noir sci fi, sword and sorcery, and speculative fictions for a reading that has something for just about anyone. These tales will either provide you with a straightforward reading or something to puzzle over, leading your thoughts to deeper meanings. Or maybe no meanings at all, just some go-with-it and enjoy moments. A good collection of mixed authors should always make you want to seek out their other works and this book will certainly have you doing that. It should be noted too that the cover design and illustration by Luke Spooner (we often overlook the graphic designers when doing reviews, don’t we?) is quite good.
The first story, Making Friends, is a comedy of errors involving a happy dog, a curious but unhappy creature, and a couple of farmers meeting the neighbors they never knew they had. Angela Yuriko Smith paces it all into a 1950s sitcom-like nocturnal interlude for Miriam and Bill. It is a good choice as the opening story, breezy and light, and visually funny: there be monsters here, but they are not all gloom and doom and gory pieces.
That is, except for what happens to the villagers in the Ruination of the Gods by Dr. Chris McAuley (Stokerverse) and Claudia Christian (Babylon 5 and Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator). A wizard tries to raise the dead but gets caught. As all diligent readers know by now, what happens to people who get on the wrong side of wizards, caught in the act of doing questionable things, means terror to come. Kail, the Conan-like warrior (or Kali, since the proofreader must have been out to lunch with this one), ignores the giant stew-pot death waiting for him for doing the same punishable act and gets into trouble quickly. Luckily for him the monsters from the sea provide a bloody good diversion for the villagers. While this story uses the standard sword and sorcery approach (an angry wizard, a beguiling witch, and a warrior torn between duty and personal need), McAuley and Christian handle the action, the gory pieces, and the tragic fallout of his decision well, leaving the path open for future adventures.
If you lean towards a 3 Stooges-like bizarro storyline, go to Hopital Automatique by D. Harlan Wilson first. It defies description, as any good bizarro fiction should, but if you have watched the 3 Stooges in the comedy short, Men in Black (1934), that provides a bit of a warm-up to the absurd mayhem wrought here. It is an I-don’t-know-what-is-happening narrative and therein lies the fun. The pace is frenetic, the characters and milieu insane, and this opening line will sum it all up for you: “The car didn’t run over the nurse until she had changed my bedpan and injected a second dose. It was a Datsun.” I question how a Datsun got into his hospital room in the first place, but at least it was not an elephant*, and that second dose sounds like a clue. On the plus side, she did manage to change his bedpan before being run down. The only other meagre clue I can give you for this one, without giving up and speaking to Wilson first, is that Hopital is the French word for hospital. For the rest, you are on your own.
More sensible humor will be found in Alicia Hilton’sSavages Anonymous. A funeral home basement in Trenton, New Jersey, provides haven for a nude extraterrestrial with two heads, an extraterrestrial arachnid and other assorted aliens—along with some mutants—griping about the challenges of getting along with humans. A boy’s ghost interrupts their proceedings, sending Xapanna (the two-headed alien) on a vendetta for the boy’s murderers. The Crime Stoppers Tip line sends her in the right direction. The action and humor are conveyed through very short paragraphs, many one to two lines long, and an endearing ending that ties back to the difficulty of getting along with way-out others.
Art by: Jules Tavernier
The Scoocoom of Big Rock Mountain is a more serious weird western with a more traditional approach to hybrid terror. Taking place sometime between the 1860s to early 1900s, a former buffalo hunter, Max, now sheriff, has family and Big Foot problems (skookoom is a Chinook word meaning Big Foot). Max, having helped to decimate the Indian tribes by hunting the buffalo to near extinction, is partially responsible for the scoocoom putting the bite on the settlers for its food source. Max also has a drinking problem that makes his aim a bit tricky and his step a lot unsure. Once you get past the proofreader still out to lunch (scoocoom flips to skoocoom a few times), Michael Knost delivers a simply plotted western with all the right emotional and weird elements for his characters and events.
The Big Foot theme is seen again in Maero by Lee Murray, a poem where a day packer is enjoying his hike until he comes across a severed limb and “glossy giblets quivering.” This first-person account with the Maero (Māori for Big Foot) is not the usual “train-train” encounter. A sadder one is to be felt in Kolkata’s Little Girl, in which Bandhura is “waiting, in front of a blue-clothes shop for someone to tell her story.” A too long and heavy mala hangs around her neck, hinting at a deeper meaning hidden among the poem’s lines. Alessandro Manzetti’s acheri is haunting and begs for a longer treatment.
There are many hybrids to be found in this collection of twenty stories and poems. The editors have crafted an engaging reading experience across genre types, of which this review has only scratched the surface. As Dark the Night will trap you in Stella’s depression-fueled shadows; the noir science-fiction Vis-à-Vis puts you there in Punktown among the low-lives and no-lives; and Slo-Mo will make you mind the sloths and give them a wide berth and forget the selfies. All these stories make for an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
*For those not familiar with the Marx Brothers, the reference comes from Groucho’s quip as Captain Spalding: “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got to my pajamas I don’t know.” Feel free to also substitute proofreader for elephant if you are so inclined.
We are ecstatic to announce the ToC for – Hybrid: Misfits, Monsters and Other Phenomena All these talented writers we get to work with is a dream come true. Stories and Poems by:
As Dark the Night – Nicole Givens Kurtz Clawing Through Mud as More Leaves Silt Down, as Plastic Bags, as Cast-Off Bottles – Romie Stott Fracking-lution – Linda D Addison Home is Where the Howl Is – John Claude Smith Hopital Automatique – D. Harlan Wilson How Does Your Garden Grow – Gene Flynn It Calls To You – Jamal Hodge Kolkata’s Little Girl – Alessandro Manzetti Madre Tempesta – John Palisano MAERO – Lee Murray Making Friends – Angela Yuriko Smith Mother Eve – Marge Simon My Farther’s Ashes – Philip Fracassi Raven-Wolf – Cindy O’Quinn Ruination of the Gods – Chris McAuley & Claudia Christian Savages Anonymous – Alicia Hilton Scoocoom of Big Rock Mountain – Michael Knost Slo-Mo – Michael Bailey Strange Progeny – Bruce Boston Vis-a-vis – Jeffrey Thomas Introduction by: James Aquilone And this creepy, gorgeous cover design by Luke Spooner
“POETRY has proven to be a lifeline for a Killaloe woman in overcoming depression and breaking a cycle of pain sparked by childhood trauma… At an early age, she developed a love of writing and turned to poetry to help her explore difficult issues and the sense of having been born irreversibly broken… Ultimately, Beautifully Broken, is a collection laced with hope and optimism. There is a deep sense that, for Laura, “as life endures, my story unfolds / another new chapter to be told.”
You can read the entire interview with the poet. HERE
photo credit: John Kelly
“The poems are often very raw,” Laura said. “I want to write from the soul. I don’t shy away from issues. It also means people contact me to say they have had the same emotions. When we write and share poetry, we realize that we are not alone. I take great comfort from that.”
“I had a memory of sweeping up a collection of porcelain dolls which were broken during an argument, and some of them stained with blood. I knew I had to capture that image and begin to deal with that memory.”
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