Matt Hayward

Here lies some first rate, freaky, creepy, fiction. Which begs the question, if this is issue #22 where can I get my hands on the first 21? Because I want them all and so will you.
If you like short horror stories you will love these.
In "Late Fee" A spurned lover gets more than he bargained for when he wanders into an old timey 80's style video store. "Horror Junkie" is a tale of best friends and roommates who share an affinity for horror movies until one of them gets a bit too extreme.
"Room 207" is probably best left alone but a man on his way to surprise his wife makes a quick stop-over at a motel and lets his curiosity get the best of him. In "Drummer Boy" a happily married couple who have been trying to conceive find an antique toy that may bring them luck. Of course not necessarily good luck....
"The Seventh Date" is a tale of a love spell gone wrong.
"That's The Price You Pay" is a story of a shop owner and the strange curios for sale in his antique shop, though there is no charge to see the main attraction in his store.
"Ion Dissonance" is a story of a young man who can't quite tell where dreams end and reality begins.
In "Girl Six' an interrogation takes a very strange turn. All in all these stories were quite unnerving!
I received a complimentary copy for review… (más)

Letteralmente una rivelazione: per essere un esordio e per essere un libro non lunghissimo ha tutte le caratteristiche di un libro di successo.
L'ho trovato davvero intrigante, mai banale o scontato e con una serie di plot twist e rivelazioni davvero ben congegnati.
Il focus sui personaggi ed in particolare sul protagonista lo rendono particolarmente interessante da leggere, un'avventura oscura nella mente umana e nel male che nel mondo si nasconde.
Ottimo lavoro.

Ne parlo QUI … (más)

4.5/5 stars!

WELCOME TO THE SHOW is a themed anthology with all of the stories revolving around, (or involving in some way), a rock 'n' roll club named The Shantyman. That's it! There's no hard thread connecting all the tales other than the club itself. That makes WELCOME TO THE SHOW different because there's no one "bad guy" to blame things on. In this case, the "bad guy" is anyone or anything the writer wanted them to be. In this regard, I think the authors involved had a lot more leeway as far as the direction each story would take and I think that resulted in an above average anthology as far as the quality AND the variety of the stories within.

I can't get into all of them here, because I don't want this review to be as long as the book itself, but the ones that stood out the most to me were:

WHAT SORT OF RUBE by Alan M. Clark. A was a perfect start to this book, providing a bit of history and setting the tone. (I've never read any of Clark's work before, but he's on my radar now.)

NIGHT AND DAY AND IN BETWEEN by Jonathan Janz. This story went in a totally different direction than what I had expected. Loved it!

TRUE STARMEN by Max Booth. I'm not sure that it was supposed to, but this story cracked me the hell me up! It's the first time The Shantyman hosted pod-casters instead of a band, and the results just made me laugh.

OPEN MIC NIGHT by Kelli Owen. The 27 Club-you know, those singers and musicians that never made it past that age? I thought this anthology would be a shoe-in for stories about that club, but this was the only one. I was glad because it made this tale stand out even more.

PARODY by Jeff Strand. Zany Chester and his plans to be the next Weird Al fizzle out before they even got started. (It's birdies, not bodies!) Chester had to go to a few back up plans, actually, and none of them were pretty.

DARK STAGE by Matt Hayward. This tale spoke to me in a personal way which made it that much more horrifying at the end.

A TONGUE LIKE FIRE by Rachel Autumn Deering. The end was NOT what I was expecting at the beginning. Usually I can see that coming..in this case I saw something coming, but not what I got. Well done!

Brian Keene's tale RUNNING FREE made me laugh at the premise before it got all serious. (A man trying to run himself to death by heart attack, thereby evading death from the cancer already running through his body. Come on, that's kind of funny! [All right, I know I'm messed up.]) Anyway, this story didn't go the way I thought it would and I loved how it tied into previous tales in this book.

WE SING IN DARKNESS by Mary SanGiovanni. This story had everything that I've come to expect from Mary's work. A terrifying future where music is banned is only the beginning.

I enjoyed this collection and even though it was a little uneven throughout, the variety and quality more than made up for that. I liked that everyone didn't have quite the same view was to what was going on at The Shantyman because that allowed for more creativity in the tales. Variety is the spice of life and all that, you know?

I read a lot of collections and anthologies over the course of a year and there is no doubt in my mind that WELCOME TO THE SHOW will be among the best I've read this year. For this reason, I highly recommend it!

You can get your copy here: https://amzn.to/2RQ6a50

*11.12.18 We are currently reading this book, along with most of the authors in the Horror Aficionados Group at Goodreads. Feel free to join us, read along, and ask questions of the writers, if you like! (Our read continues until the end of this month.) Here's a link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19582938-november-2018-group-read-1-with-gu...

**I bought this book with my hard earned cash and these opinions are my own.*… (más)

4.5/5 stars, rounded up due to the laugh factor! Who knew how powerful a jar of pennies could be?

Fresh out of prison, Joe enjoys walking in the woods of his hometown, (who wouldn't when they had been confined for so long?) A glint of glass beneath the leaves catches his eye, and he doesn't know it yet, but it will change his life forever. How could a jar do such a thing? You'll have to read this to find out!

Even though Joe is an ex-con, he's a good guy. He's trying to do the right thing. He's off the drugs, he's off the lousy wench of a girlfriend, and he's trying to make things right with his dad. It's not long after he gets home that his friend Kenny is trying to talk him into returning to a life of crime and it's hard for Joe to resist. I think this is part of the reason that I liked Joe so much, he was realistic. It's easy to say you're going to go straight when you get out, but nothing is easy about reestablishing your life, and his character reflects that reality.

I'm not going to delve further into the plot, because it should unfold as the authors intended. However, I will say that there were portions of this book that were LAUGH OUT LOUD FUNNY. Not just for people like me, (I've been told I have a juvenile sense of humor at times), but for anyone. I DARE people to read about what happened to Kenny without laughing. (I read that part on my lunch hour and couldn't tell my co-workers what made me laugh so hard I cried.)

Joe was my favorite among the main characters, but I did like the others as well-they were well drawn and felt real to me. There were a few people and items mentioned that I would have liked to learn more about-namely the Crimson Sisters. And what was up in that room full of statues and goat guts? This inquiring mind wants to know!

Be prepared to read this rather quickly, as I posted an update last night at 80% and about 2 minutes after that, I knew I was staying up to finish this book. It was exciting, it was hilarious at times, it was scary, it felt realistic and the ending was only slightly predictable.

I don't know if these authors are planning to collaborate again in the future, but let this serve as my plea...I need more! Preferably, as soon as possible!

Highly recommended!

Available June 1st, but you can preorder here: https://amzn.to/2JV0fuU

*Thanks to Mr. Ford for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my review consideration. I considered it, said HELL YEAH! and here we are.*
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