L.L. Soares | Dreadful Tales

Long time no see, Dreadful readers! There has been a lot of activity in the scattered home offices of DT. We’re keeping busy with everything from babies to job promotions and all the other life stuff in between, but we haven’t forgotten our beloved readers or the dark lit that brought us together. We hope to ease back into the swing of things little by little and find the puss-oozing pulse of what’s hot in horror fiction once again. Most importantly, we look forward to reconnecting with you all.

First, I want to kick off our first post of October with our Book of the Month announcement. We completely slept through September’s book A Bad Day for Voodoo (sorry, Jeff Strand!) which I take full responsibility for since the Book Club has always been my baby. Although I’m a week and a couple days late there is still plenty of time to dive into our October book.

This month we are reading Life Rage by the Bram Stoker-nominated L.L. Soares. You might remember Soares’ short story “Sawbones” from April’s Book (anthology) of the Month Zippered Flesh: Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad! Soares’ contribution to the anthology was met with rave reviews and he definitely stole most of the limelight from the other authors, which is no small feat given the talent included in that collection.

Soares is also a film critic and runs a horror movie review site Cinema Knife Fight which has a whole buttload of talented writers I think many of you will recognize.

Please join us this month for the October reading of L.L. Soares’ horror novel Life Rage. One reader dubbed this “a fix for those of us who thrive on darkness.”

You can pick up your copy for Kindle here and don’t forget to stop by The Mortuary (here) to chat about your reading experience and ask the author himself some questions!

-Meli

As most of you probably know, we launched the Dreadful Tales Book of the Month Club, a book club for macabre maniacs hosted by The Mortuary, this past April with a reading of Zippered Flesh: Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad!. This short story anthology was initially on my radar because it included “Paraphilia” by one of my favorite authors, Lisa Mannetti, but it turned out to be a perfect collection for a horror book club, wonderfully morbid with widely diverse content. Zippered Flesh, edited by Weldon Burge and published by Smart Rhino Publications, contains 20 short stories by genre veterans and relative unknowns, but all share one common theme: (as you may have guessed) body enhancements.

Undoubtedly, each reader has their own expectation of what constitutes body enhancement and how that will be presented in Zippered Flesh, but you will find there are more imaginative horrors to body modification than strangely placed tattoos, piercings, or plastic surgery for wannabe Barbies.

One woman tries to become the ultimate sex object in Graham Masterton’s aptly titled “Sex Object.” Don’t be fooled though, this story isn’t concerned with ridiculously large breast implants or liposuction; rather we are introduced to a doctor that “used his surgical genius to create such erotic aberrations…”

There are historical pieces, like the deadly delights on the high seas in Elliot Capon’s “By Hook” and P.I. Barrington’s “Independence Day.” A couple stories present frighteningly realistic psychopaths while others still exist in the supernatural realm of our darkest fantasies.

Zippered Flesh features psychological drama with an unbelievable twist like Charles Colyott’s “Comfort;” straight science fiction, for example in “Unplugged” by Adrienne Jones; and future worlds offering body modification to unbelievable extremes like Jonathan Templar’s darkly humorous “Marvin’s Angry Angel.” This is a truly exceptional collection of stories sure to hit the hot spot of any horror fiction fan. Almost every tale is burned into my memory and with 20 entries that is phenomenal.

I could go on and on about how wonderful this collection is, and I do along with Jason Darrick in our Zippered Flesh podchat.

Be warned, there could be cursing, bad grammar, mispronunciation of author names and just regular English words! Please send all hate mail or complaints to the head of our complaint department, Jason Darrick. You can find him on Twitter or Facebook. Direct all compliments to the head of the compliment department, me (Meli)! You can post praise and romantic flourishes here or here. We can also be reached at dreadfultales AT gmail DOT com.

Enjoy!

(If you are interested in joining the book club, we are currently wrapping up Greg Lamberson’s zombie road novella Carnage Road. This is a short one, so a great time to start. We’re discussing the book here.)