All About Audio(books)—H.P. LOVECRAFT

The Dark Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft are perhaps the perfect treat this Halloween season. Six volumes of short stories filled with suspense, intrigue, horror, myth, cosmicism, and the arcane by a writer Stephen King has called “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.” Add to that the aesthetics of oral story telling, and you have yourself the perfect scary story for the campfire.

Treat yourself with to a sample listen of “Haunter of the Dark” from volume five of the Dark Worlds collection, a story from Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, in which Lovecraft spars with a character created by his contemporary, Robert Bloch. Layered and complex, “Haunter of the Dark” pulls you in from the first line. “I have seen the dark universe yawning…where the black planets roll without aim…where they roll in their horror, unheeded, without knowledge or luster or name.”

Visit Maynard and Sims’s ghostly BLACK CATHEDRAL

As All Hallows’ Eve approaches, disturbing reports have begun to surface around the globe. The ficticious tales of horror that so many readers enjoy, particularly during this ominous time of year, are often born from the imaginations of their authors, but some are born elsewhere. Some’s true origins lay in fact. Today we share the beginnings of just such a tale, that of Black Cathedral, brought to you by two masters of the realm of horror, Maynard and Sims.  

Chapter One

It was what had happened here, and what was about to happen again, that made it obvious this was the start of it all.

There was nothing very special about the house—a medium sized English suburban semi-detached, built some time in the 1930s, complete with bay windows and a stained glass panel depicting sunrays, set in the solid green-painted front door, so that it looked like sunlight captured on grass; nothing much to set it apart from its neighbors. Except for what had happened there.

The tree lined avenue was the picture of normality; cars parked either side against the neat verges, hedges precisely clipped, a child’s bicycle on a front drive, the sound of an electric mower buzzing like a sun lazed bee. The house they were visiting looked welcoming, and would have been a pleasant place to spend the afternoon. Except for what was going to happen again.

Robert Carter hesitated, pushed open the front door and, after taking a deep inward breath, stepped into the house. Sian Davies, his assistant, followed close behind, her pad in hand, pen poised to take down notes and to keep an accurate record of events as they unfolded. Both of them were certain events would unfold.

Carter carried a small device, holding it out in front of him, sweeping the air in broad strokes, like a warrior brandishing his sword. The device looked very much like a photographer’s light meter. It was no more than three inches square and an inch deep. On one end was a small white dome, on the front a dial with calibrations from one to one thousand. But while a photographer’s meter measured light, Carter’s machine could detect the slightest changes, the tiniest fluctuations, in magnetic fields. Perfect for suspected hauntings.

Carter was thirty-five, tall and slim with an athletic physique he owed to the four hours a week he spent at the gym, combined with regular games of squash and racquets. The exercise was complemented by a healthy diet, apart from far too many cigarettes, a light intake of alcohol, and occasional sex with willing partners.

Sian Davies had none of these attributes, and none of the virtues of a healthy lifestyle. She was short, dumpy, with spiky black hair and a small tattoo of a rose on her shoulder. And she had a crush on Robert Carter the size of a small country. Yet despite their close working relationship, Carter was a total mystery to her. There were rumors of a great love affair—some forbidden passion that had ended and left Carter a scarred, emotional wreck. Some of the rumors had even linked him with Jane Talbot, Department 18’s brightest star, but Sian was not sure she set much store by them. She liked and respected Jane Talbot—aspiring in her own small way to be like her—and she knew Jane was happily married.

Sian was worldly enough to know that men like Robert Carter were always the targets for the mythmakers and rumormongers. The scurrilous stories told around the Department’s water coolers were fed and nurtured by jealousy and envy. Sian preferred her own fantasies. They sustained her during long lonely nights and gave her a reason to get up every morning. Often they weren’t the type of fantasy to share around the coffee machine at work.

“Ambient temperature in the house low and dropping rapidly.” Carter was speaking into a small microphone attached to the collar of his shirt and wired to a digital recorder he carried in his jacket pocket. As if to prove his point his breath was starting to mist in front of his face. There was also an oppressive atmosphere in the house. An atmosphere that couldn’t be measured with meters but one that was almost palpable.

He trusted the readings on the various instruments he carried, and when they read that there were disturbances in the electromagnetic fields and unusual fluctuations in temperature he knew he had something definite to deal with. The instruments had their uses, but more often than not he preferred to rely on his own feelings; the vibes—primitive instincts inherited from mankind’s prehistoric ancestors, so dulled in the majority of people to be absolutely worthless. In him they were honed to razor sharpness. So much so that he rarely began an investigation like this without careful preparation, building his mental defenses as carefully as a bricklayer builds a wall. Sometimes he worried he had built the wall so high, so strong, that nothing could penetrate it, not even if he wanted it to.

The house had been decorated some time in the 1970s, but the browns, yellows and pinks had faded with age and looked more muted now than when they were first applied. The Fleming’s, the owners of the house, were a couple in their seventies, both retired. It was Mrs. Fleming who had taken the steps to bring in the Department. Her younger brother was high up in the Whitehall pecking order, and a frantic phone call to him had set the wheels in motion. Another phone call was made to Department 18’s head, Simon Crozier, with the request that the Department investigate the house. In deference to the request, Carter—the Department’s top field man—had been sent’, even if Crozier did hate his guts.

Carter reviewed the file in his mind. Six months ago the couple started hearing things that disturbed their prosaic little life. At first it was nothing more than a few scratches on the ceiling, the odd footfall on the bedroom floor when they were both downstairs, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away rationally; a loose board settling into place, birds or mice setting up home in the eaves of the house, nothing to be alarmed about. They were both getting old and the mind could play tricks.

The smells were more alarming. According to the Flemings, the kitchen was often filled with the reek of ozone that smelled something like an electrical short circuit. In the lounge it was the odor of sour cream, and in the bedrooms the musty mud and straw smell of an animal pen. But it was the entrance hall that had the most distinctive and most repellent aroma. Mrs. Fleming described it as ‘the smell of something washed up on a beach; dead and rotten’ and, standing there in the hall, Carter had to agree. ‘God, it stinks in here,’ he said. Sian made a note in her pad.

The needle on the meter twitched significantly, leaping a quarter of the way around the dial. He frowned. “There’s a huge amount of electromagnetic energy coming from the kitchen. Let’s go take a look.”

The Horrors of Department 18 Exposed

The horrors of Department 18 exposed
By Paige Turner

Hertfordshire, UK (AFP)—What was recently reported as a domestic disturbance at a downtown apartment block that resulted in three deaths looks to have been a cover-up for something far darker. An eye witness has stepped forward with an account of the ‘disturbance’ that is greatly different from the official police report. Much of the facts of the case have been sealed, not by local law enforcement, but by a government agency simply referred to as “Department 18.” While this department volunteered no comment when contacted, sources have led to two researchers, Len Maynard and Mick Sims, who have had past dealings with the government agency in question. I was able to meet with them briefly and what they had to say was quite shocking.

I had to agree to meet up with them in a bar in an out-of-town suburb. The booth they had chosen was at the back, presumably an exit within easy reach. They sat facing the doors so they could see who was coming in. Throughout the interview one of them talked while the other was clearly keeping a watchful eye out for…well, for what, or for whom?

Q. When did you first discover the existence of Department 18?

It was while we were writing Black Cathedral. It mentioned, almost in passing, Department 18. This was something we had heard about in whispered conversations in and around the restaurants and bars of London.

We then, over a period of a few months, became aware that we were being—what should we say? We were being ‘watched.’ We became aware our phones were being hacked, people were seen outside our houses, our friends and families reported being contacted about us.

So Department 18 exists, so far as we know. In Whitehall in London, near where the Guards in their Bearskin hats and the Changing Of the Guard and Buckingham Palace all get photographed every day, are some palatial offices where tea does get drunk, and investigations do take place.

We didn’t realise by mentioning it in our novel that there would be quite such a fuss. We didn’t think when we got our website www.maynard-sims.com updated that linking to the www.dept18.com website would mean attention on this scale.

Q. In Night Souls and Black Cathedral, you reveal to the public a variety of paranormal activity going on in the world today as well as the inner workings of a secret government agency that works to protect society from any dangers these activities pose. Why did you decide to go public with these events and Department 18’s involvement in them?

When you gradually realize that your own government is keeping tabs on you it makes you more than paranoid. It can’t be true because the government is there to protect us. That’s what everyone is encouraged to believe.

Every time you hit on www.dept18.com, even if out of curiosity, then a file is opened up on you and you come under their scrutiny.

When we knew Black Cathedral was making many waves in high places, and Night Souls would make that worse, we decided to investigate as many paranormal events as we could find. Not only in England and the U. S. A. but worldwide. It was eye-opening. So many events that conspiracy theorists get castigated about are in fact linked to the Department and many have supernatural origins.

Q. Night Souls reports on Department 18’s discovery of the existence of the Breathers, a species of vampire-like creatures that feed on human souls. Do you expect people to be able to look past their pop culture-infused ideas about vampires and take the necessary steps to protect themselves?

We think the Spiraci, or Breathers, are the Vampires of the 21^st Century. Ironic, really, when they have been around for centuries. They are the iVampires if you like, the bloodsuckers for the SmartPhone generation.

Certainly the Breathers encompass all modern trends, and always have, to ensure they keep up a steady stream of ‘candidates’ for their ‘restaurants.’ If they have to masquerade as rock gods to get what they want, then they will. If they have to don Armani to infiltrate the upper echelons of society then they do that as well. You only have to look at news clips and videos from past decades and you’ll see them in the background, mingling with the crowds. Look at film of the Stones at Altamont. Look at the crowds in Dallas.

Everyone should protect themselves against them, but thanks to Department 18, no one will get to hear about them. Only through Night Souls reaching readers can the public be made aware of how much danger we are all in.

Q. From the events told in Black Cathedral, clearly the men and women of Department 18 are willing to risk their lives to overcome these paranormal threats. While once a much more public unit, the Department’s operations are now very secretive. Does the public have anything to fear from Department 18? Does it help or hurt the Department’s cause to work unseen in the shadows?

The origins of Department 18 can be traced back to a meeting in 1922 between Fletcher Pressman, the munitions millionaire, and Genevieve Madison, an American medium, well-known in the United States for her work in the field of psychic research, and equally for a series of exposes of fake mediums and clairvoyants.

During the Second World War their services were called upon by the War Office. Hitler was rumoured to be dabbling in the occult and especially black magic, and so Pressman, Madison, and their team were given the role of advisers to the SIS, the Special Intelligence Service.

Pressman died from a heart attack in 1944. It was a blow from which Genevieve Madison never recovered and, immediately after the war, she went back home to America where she died eighteen months later. Rather than disband the team, the government initiated a special department to carry on the investigations into paranormal phenomena.

Q. You recently discovered that Department 18 has case files open on both of you. Have you ever been contacted directly by a Department agent in regards to the cases you’ve made public in Night Souls and Black Cathedral?

(At this point both Maynard and Sims demanded we move bars. I don’t know if they saw something or if the question was too raw for them. We took to our vehicles and drove a complicated back and forth route to another bar in a different part of town. When we were seated in a booth that suited them, we ordered steaks, burgers, some Sam Adams and Smirnoff, then we got started again.)

Len was nearly led into a ‘honey trap’ by a female Department operative. He was contacted discreetly at work and a relationship began to build that seemed perfectly natural and normal. After a few dates he became suspicious. She never talked about herself much, never wanted to go back to her place, and had no family photos to show.

It was when she began to ask detailed and pressing questions about Len’s writing that he became aware that this lady was more than she purported to be. She took the break up badly, was persistent in trying to get back with him, but when he in turn followed her, as best he could—after all we have had no covert training—he found her pressing the buzzer of a building in Whitehall London. She was Department 18.

Mick was at a cocktail party in London when two apparently friendly business types engaged in what became a long and increasingly personal discussion about Mick’s political beliefs. It was when they asked if he would be interested in joining a certain charitable organization that Mick made a polite exit for the buffet. Shrimp was good.

Q. In your opinion, should Department 18 be doing more to educate the public about paranormal activity?

Simon Crozier says, “We at D18 now tend to operate beneath the public radar. Although we are a part of the Civil Service, and accountable to the usual government committees and ministries, we work in the same kind of netherworld that MI’s 5 and 6 inhabit. At the end of the day, whether they are aware of us or not, I like to think that we work in the public’s best interests, and that has to be our primary concern.”

That is a lot of baloney. They keep things secret because it suits them to do so. If the public became aware of half what they get up to there would be an outcry.

Q. Have any new cases surfaced that you’re researching?

There are several cases on the www.dept18.com site that refer to stories of ours that have been published over the past 30 years. Although, on the site it states that “these cases have been cleared for wider dispersal.” This is in fact a lie, as access to them triggers a link being made to the accessing computer and from that moment onwards you are theirs. This is a typical excerpt from one of their files (CASE STUDY: D18 / 3257 / 2005) NOTE—this story (as with many other cases, has been written up as a piece of fiction by LH Maynard (see NOTE 1953) & MPN Sims (see NOTE 1952) as a short story ONION and was published in a fiction anthology THE SECOND BLACK BOOK OF HORROR. This is edited by a Charles Black (ACTION—research and ascertain details of Mr Black.)

Even more worrying are the personal files they have compiled on us. Here is CASE STUDY D18 2008 / 39—M P N SIMS / Michael Philip Norman Sims was born in New Cross London in December 1952. He moved to Enfield in 1956—see case 38. He met Maynard in 1964 in Enfield Middlesex. Father dies in late 50’s leaving widow. Mother dies after long Alzheimers aged 71. Has brother, seems unrelated to investigation. Has wife and daughter. All 3 close family live in ——— in Hertfordshire. Michael appears to have done reasonably at his schooling, leaving at 19 and began work in banking where he is still employed. This may be a mask for his real activities. Since age 21 Sims has written supernatural stories. Many mirror to a specific degree known and recorded D18 investigation. NOTE—is Sims privy to Department data? In 1979 with Maynard, Sims had his first book published SHADOWS AT MIDNIGHT. And so it goes on.

Q. Would you ever consider working with/for the Department?

I think this conversation is over. Have you ever been to London? Why are you asking all these questions anyway? Do you know Robert Carter?

At this point in the interview both Maynard and Sims stood and left the bar, using a side exit. I watched them get into a rented Buick and drive off into the night. Clearly my last question had spooked them.

I have to add, though, that they had thrown enough bills onto the table to enable me to order a very nice Key Lime Pie for dessert and still leave a decent tip.

It seems clear to me, reviewing their responses, that there is something deeply sinister in Department 18. Whether these two authors are at risk of personal harm, I can’t say.

But what I would say without hesitation is that the public has a right to know. I for one aim to get Department 18 out of the shadows by shining a very bright light on them.

Pardon the Interruption—THE WOMAN, now a major motion picture!

The film adaptation of The Woman by Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee premiered at Sundance with an explosive reception. The buzz continues on a grand scale after the theatrical release last Friday, October 14th.  Directed by co-author Lucky McKee, the film captures the horror and humor of a rural family’s attempt to ‘civilize’ the matriarch and last surviving member of a clan of cannibals. Check out the trailer for the film below!

 

The Woman by Jack Ketchum and Lucky McKee available in paperback.

Busty Covers for Breast Cancer Awareness Month!

While not a cure, laughter is a great medicine. To celebrate National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and hopefully bring a smile to those in need of one, we’ve put together a scintillating sample of Dorchester’s most beloved, busty book covers. From all shapes and sizes, these well-endowed women (and men!) clearly have a thing for showing off their assets. Heck, some of these could be used in illustrated guides for partner breast exams!

Exhibitionism, you say? Try exaltation!

Show your support by stopping by the Susan G. Komen foundation and donating to a very worthy cause! Now, without further ado, please enjoy this vast array of beautiful bosoms.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Free Fiction—SIREN’s Ligeia lives on

READ A NEW SIREN-RELATED SHORT STORY NOW AT SIREN-HORROR.COM

Fans of John Everson’s novel Siren should visit the new website devoted to the lore of the deadly sea creature. Not only has Everson partnered with Nox Arcana to provide the goosebump-inducing background music for the new site at www.siren-horror.com, but he also has just released a brand new, free story about Ligeia, the siren of Siren.

Originally written for an Italian webzine with a “Pirate Ship & Sirens” theme, after the story was translated and released in Italian, Everson released it on the www.siren-horror.com site as a Bonus Story titled “Ligeia’s Revenge on the Queen Anne’s Resurrection.”

In addition to free, previously unpublished (in English anyway) Siren fiction, the new website also includes “The Map” showing the town of Delilah, where the novel takes place, as well as a “Preview” teaser chapter from the novel. There are also reviews, a couple of blogs about the “Making Of” Siren (including one originally published on Borders.com) and a section on the “Legend of the Siren” which details some of the classic mythology of Sirens.

The site also features the “Songs of the Siren”—some music videos featuring songs that Everson listened to while writing the novel.

Check it all out at www.siren-horror.com

Pardon the Interruption—NIGHT SOULS by Maynard and Sims

Night Souls by Maynard and Sims is new in trade paperback this month—just in time for Halloween! Check out the book trailer below…

“Maynard and Sims books just keep getting better and better, and Night Souls might just be their best yet. You are doing yourself a disservice if you do not give their books a try. I can only hope that there are more adventures in store for the intrepid souls of Department 18.” —Famous Monsters of Filmland

“I was a huge fan of Black Cathedral and am an even bigger fan of Night Souls. Maynard and Sims know what they’re doing when it comes to the supernatural and suspense.” —Horror Review

“We are offered a chiller/thriller that is a roller coaster ride worthy of an X-Files and John le Carré mash-up.” —Shroud Magazine

Western Wednesdays—BAD MEDICINE + Giveaway

Spur-nominated author Paul Bagdon returns this month with Bad Medicine. Tragedy breeds a quest for revenge in this action-packed ride through the Old West. And wouldn’t you know it? I’ve got a copy hot off the press that I’m just itchin’ to give away. Enjoy the preview of chapter one below and throw us some feedback in the comment thread to be entered to win the paperback.

Happy Reading,
Allison Carroll
Editorial and Web Coordinator

Chapter One

The sun hung over Will Lewis and his Appaloosa stud, Slick, like a gigantic, flaming brass disk, sucking all moisture from the earth, the desiccated prairie grass, and the man and his horse. An endless sweep—a swell—of merciless heat had begun shortly after first light and had escalated almost exponentially since then.

Slick was dragging his toes and weaving slightly, even at his plow-horse walk. His head hung low, muzzle barely a foot from the ground.

Will reached forward and took a pinch of hide from Slick’s neck, stretched it up an inch or so, and released it. The flesh moved back into place slowly, lethargically—Slick was baking in his own hide and not far from going down. Lewis knew that it was a sure bet that if Slick did go down, he’d never get up again.

Will hefted his canteen: it was maybe a quarter full. His throat was a sandpit, his lips cracked and weeping blood, his entire being screaming for water. He reined in, slouched down from his saddle, dumped the canteen into his Stetson, and held the hat to Slick’s muzzle. The horse sucked once, emptying the hat, and eyed Will, demanding more, begging for more.

Lewis stepped back onto his saddle, red and black spots floating in his vision. He pulled in a long, deep breath. The spots didn’t disappear but they diminished in size and number.

His words weren’t anywhere near perfectly formed, and he could barely hear himself speak. “We shoulda hit th’ town if Hiram’s directions was right. Hiram—he’s a idjit. He jus’ mighta up an’ killed me an’ a good horse.”

Slick was weaving more noticeably.

“Sonofabitch,” Will mumbled, and heeled Slick to keep him moving.

At first Will thought it was just another oddly shaped cholla. As he drew closer he saw it was a sign. Like all the signs of jerkwaterWest Texastowns, it was a slab of barn wood with hand-painted text. It was pocked with bullet holes and speckled with shotgun pellets. The sign read dry creek.

Slick’s head shot up as if he were suddenly checking the sky, his nostrils flared, his breath huffing through them. He smelled either humans or water—it made no difference to him. Either one promised the end of his thirst. He picked up his pace without urging from Will.

Another couple hundred yards later the tinkling notes of a honky-tonk piano reached Will. A vision of a schooner of beer the size of a hog’s head popped into his mind and refused to leave it. His throat moved up and down in a swallowing motion without his volition.

They came down a grade and Dry Creek spread before them, such as it was. There were the usual false-fronted structures on either side of a pitted and rutted street that put a tail of dirt and grit in the air behind each horse and wagon. The town offered a mercantile, a shoe and boot, an undertaker and furniture maker, three saloons, and a sheriff’s office. At the end of the street was a small church, and beyond that, a livery and blacksmith operation. The reason the town existed—a railroad depot with stock fences—rested at the far end of the street, beyond the church and stable.

Each gin mill had a watering trough in front of it, partially under the hitching post. The scent of water goaded Slick into an awkward, shambling lope and Will gave him all the rein he wanted. The horse slid to a stop at the first trough and buried his muzzle in the water, sucking like berserk bellows. Will climbed down and fell to his knees next to Slick. He pushed some of the horse spittle and green scum to the side and planted his face in the water.

The water was piss warm, metallic tasting, with a good growth of stringy, weedlike scum at the bottom—and it was the finest thing Will Lewis had ever tasted in his life. He drank until he puked, stood, dragged Slick’s head out of the trough, and stepped into a stirrup. Slick fought him, rearing and snorting, but Will wheeled him around and jabbed his heels into his sides, pointing him toward the blacksmith shop. Too much water at one time to a dehydrated horse could cause founder or twisted gut. If Will’s old man had taught him anything, it was this: “Ya take care of yer horse fore ya look after yerself.”

The smith was a barrel of a man with forearms like hams, a full beard, and the chest of a bull buffalo. His hair, twisted and greasy, hung well below his shoulders. He came out to meet Will as he dismounted.

“Nice animal,” he commented in a deep, hoarse voice, “’cept the poor fella’s dryer’n a dust storm in hell. You oughta know better’n to—”

“That horse an’ me just crossed that goddamn desert out there,” Will snarled. “I gave him the last of my canteen an’ both of us come close to croakin’. You got a problem with me, do somethin’ about it. If not, shut your yap an’ listen. You water this boy every twenty minutes, maybe a quarter bucket. I want shoes all around—not keg shoes, neither. I want you to turn them outta good bar stock and bang in an extra nail at each toe. Give him small rations of molasses an’ oats, maybe some corn, a few times a day, an’ all the good hay he wants—not this burned out shit you got stacked up here, the trefoil an’ clover I see there in the back. Got it?”

The smith grinned. His teeth were an almost startling white. “Feisty, ain’t you? Now look—all that’s gonna cost you some money,” he said.

Will flipped a double eagle to the big man. “You need more, let me know.”

The blacksmith raised the coin to his mouth and bit down on it—hard. Will saw the muscles at the man’s jaw flex and harden.

The smith wiped the coin on his muleskin apron and dropped it into the pocket of his denim pants. “Look here,” he said, “we got off to a bad start. I had no way of knowin’ you crossed the sand. I figgered you was another twenty-five-a-month-an’-chow cowpuncher who’d run a good horse to death. I was wrong.” He extended his right hand. “Lucas Toole,” he said.

Will took the hand. It was like grasping a brick that had grown fingers. “Lewis,” he said, “Will Lewis.”

Lucas grinned again. “I got me a bottle out back—real whiskey, not ’shine. I was wonderin’ maybe you’d like a little taste after drinkin’ some of that good water outta the barrel there with the scoop hangin’ on it. Pure deep well water it is, cold ’nuff to crack yer teeth.”

“No more’n I want to wake up tomorrow morning.” Will grinned, heading to the barrel. “But maybe first, my horse…”

“I was hopin’ you’d say that,” Lucas said, stepping ahead of Will with a bucket, filling it a quarter full, and holding it to Slick’s muzzle.

It was good whiskey, just as Lucas said: the label was real, not a sloppy counterfeit, and the booze tasted of woodsmoke and fresh prairie grass. Will took three long sucks. “Damn,” he said almost reverently, handing the bottle back.

Lucas lowered the level of the bottle a good two inches and wiped his mouth with his arm. “Done some time, Will?” he asked.

Will’s eyes showed nothing. “Time? What makes you think that?”

“Well, hell,” Lucas said, “there’s jus’ somethin’ about a man who been inside for a good bit—his eyes ain’t never still, and he don’t seem to ever relax. He’s always tight, like he’s waitin’ for a punch he knows is comin’ but he don’t know exactly when.”

After a long moment, Will said, “I done four. I was movin’ some beef that maybe had the wrong brand on ’em. An’ I lost the bill of sale, too. Musta flew right outta my pocket with the wind. The fact I was movin’ ’em at night towardMexicodidn’t impress the law positive.”

“That’ll happen to a man,” Lucas said. “Where they lock you up?”

“Folsom.”

“Damn. Hard time.”

“Yeah.”

“My younger brother done three in Folsom,” Lucas said. “That’s how I knew about how a fella looks when he first comes out.”

There was a long and somewhat uncomfortable silence. Lucas broke it by asking, “So—what’re you gonna do now?”

“My brother, Hiram, has a cattle spread not far from here. I’ve got some money I hid out before I went to prison. Me an’ Hiram are gonna expand his place a lot—more land an’ more beef. Hiram, he’s a hell of a hand with…”

Lucas’s grin dropped as suddenly as it would have if someone had sucker punched him. “Hiram Lewis, that’d be?”

“Well, yeah. But what…what…?”

Pardon the Interruption—BLOOD TIES by Judith E. French

“French can add another gripping suspense to her repertoire of bestsellers with [Blood Ties]. With a gift for creating an ominous yet homey atmosphere, the author spins another web of a suspense-filled tale with intrigue and romance. This novel picks up where Blood Kin left off, with deadly secrets, the curses of a Native American burial ground and plenty else to keep readers on edge. The author makees you feel like you’re right in the midst of the action.” —Romantic Times Book Reviews

Blood Ties is now available for the first time in e-book!

Exclusive 6 Chapter Preview of THE PUMPKIN MAN by John Everson

August ends, September begins, and it’s as though someone flips a switch. Suddenly it’s fall, the leaves are turning, the weather’s cooling, and the stores are bringing out the Halloween decorations. It always seems a bit premature, but then before you know it, the holiday has come and gone.

To gear up for Halloween and Dorchester’s release of The Pumpkin Man (Oct 4, trade and e-book) by horror heavy-weight John Everson, we’re offering an exclusive six chapter preview of the book to our e-newsletter subscribers. Every Friday, beginning this Friday the 16th and ending October 7th,  subscribers to our General Interest and Horror newsletters will receive installments of the first 6 chapters, including the prologue and journal entries, in their inbox!

Everson himself will be stopping by the blog after the preview wraps up in October, so be sure to stay caught up on the preview chapters. If you’re not already signed up for one of the Dorchester free e-newsletters, sign up now! Don’t miss out on this exclusive content plus all the latest news, coupons, and more newsletter insiders!