The Life of a Slush Reader
Would you like a peek into what it is like to read through the slush pile? Amazingly, it is quite a bit like being a high-school English teacher, if the lists being passed around the Internet are any...
View ArticleI’m in Love With a Zombie
No, I’m not suggesting that we start a Zombie Romance Day for all those afflicted with a passion for the reanimated, or life-challenged, or whatever the politically correct term is for zombies these...
View ArticleThe Alien Apocalypse
The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died. —Revelation 16:3 [ click photo to enlarge ] A sign of …...
View ArticleA Night to Remember
One of the hallmarks of speculative fiction is an attempt to predict the future. From science fiction to alternate histories to apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic fiction, an attempt to map out future...
View ArticleRed Riding Hood
No, it’s not blindingly original, but it is an interesting premise. What if we retold the story of Little Red Riding Hood and attached a werewolf mythos to it? And let’s suppose we got a solid cast in...
View ArticleThe Door to Hell
Most Shock Totem readers are likely familiar with a little slice of hell on earth known as Centralia, Pennsylvania. This is the coal mining town that was featured in the video game series and film...
View ArticleDance the Night Away
I’m by no means an expert on 16th century France, but I’d imagine it would involve an unhygienic population, rampant disease, chickens running everywhere, cheese and wine. Now that I think about it,...
View ArticleThe Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told
Ellery Queen, but with a supernatural twist? Nice. I can get into that. And that is sort of what this book is. The first few offerings had me worried. They are what you might describe as “kitchen sink”...
View ArticleSilas
I’m not a dog person. I don’t exactly dislike dogs, they are sometimes cute or endearing, but mostly I just tolerate them. They are dirty, slobbering, noisy, needy creatures who add little to my life....
View ArticleAlong Came a Spider
When the first stuffed specimens of the duck-billed platypus arrived in Europe, many biologists were certain that those wacky Australians had to be hoaxing them, the nineteenth-century version of a...
View ArticlePig-Man Born in Guatamala…
OK, I’ll admit…I’m a child of television. No, I don’t subscribe to cable or satellite TV and haven’t for many years now. I have never seen your favorite show. That’s right, not a single episode of Lost...
View ArticleThe Books of Mortals: Forbidden
Forbidden is the first in a planned trilogy for authors Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee called The Books of Mortals. I got this book having already read and enjoyed a number of Dekker’s novels, so I was...
View ArticleFrank ‘N’ Con Report – First Strike
Living in the middle of nowhere, you get used to the idea that you’ll have to travel if you want to see much of anything, particularly when that something is a specialized interest, like a horror...
View ArticleThe Lake
The Lake, by R. Karl Largent, is one of those 90′s-era ecological disaster novels that slipped under the radar (at least, it did for me). The Lake is written as a personal memoir of Elliott Wages, a...
View ArticleTales of Grand Illusion
Recently, a writer friend on Facebook posted about how he hated the “who you know” model for advancing his writing career, but he acknowledged that most of his opportunities came from people he knew. I...
View ArticleThe Gate 2: 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair
FULL DISCLOSURE: The editor and publisher of this anthology, Robert J. Duperre, occasionally writes reviews for Shock Totem. The book also features work from Duperre as well as stories from Shock Totem...
View ArticleRed River Blues
Quick, name a vicious fish from the Amazon River that kills humans. Pffft! You said, “Piranha,” didn’t you? Don’t lie, you did. Well, I don’t know if the piranha just has a poor press agent (or a good...
View ArticleCome Together
We are all aware of the publishing sea change that has been occurring over the past several years. Through e-books and POD publishing, authors have been bypassing the traditional publishing houses in...
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