Book Review: A Graveside Gallery by Eric J. Guinard

 

A Graveside Gallery by Eric J. Guinard

264 pages, Paperback

Published February 2025 by Cemetery Dance Publications

 The art of the short story is one that I have a ton of respect for. I love any kind of short story, no matter the genre, but the short horror tale has a special place in my heart. A story meant to creep the reader out or unsettle the person reading is one of my favorite magic tricks. 

Eric Guinard is in a unique position to become one of the best practitioners of these dark arts because of his constant work and study in the genre. As an editor, he not only works with the greats in the fantastic Dark Fiction Primer series, but he also reads slush pile for anthologies he is editing.  That combination of working with the best, and let's be frank, the stories I am sure he has to reject, is important.

Reading and poring over some of the best work or the best authors will teach you many important lessons about the craft of writing horror. That said, reading the stories that don’t work, or are almost there, will teach you even more.  All that editing, reading, and learning mixed with a writer's imagination is part of what makes Eric a great author of the dark, weird, and unsettling story. 

One of the things that also separates Eric from other authors is his keen sense of setting both with place and time in history. It is what makes his work different and special. Stories set in pre-depression Chinatown, in the Beat era, and 1950s LA are well researched. Guinard puts us in these places deep in the past.

My favorite stories were A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds, A story about gay Hispanic teen in 1950s LA,  If I Drive Before I Wake, a short piece about self-driving cars, and the Chinatown ghost story Ascending Lights of Yu Lin. The BEST story in the collection was Ommetaphobia, a tale about a blind character gaining sight.

Let's highlight some moments that show off Guinard’s skill. Catch some creepy vibes here…

 “I follow, and the door frame creaks when I grab it for support, because my legs go to soup at what I see. I almost turned away, though it's no more crazy than talking to a skull made of sugar or of dead Papa carrying it around.

Jet black and electric blue that's the night sky, shimmering and buzzing like lights of an all-night diner, while agate-dusted shades zoom by, darting through alleys of a crowded universe. My eyes fight to adjust, to make sense, because the Crescent moon is this sideways Grin of teeth, clamping a cigar that blows puffs of firecracker flares, which drip shadows onto the hands I shoot up and reflex. The stars pulse too, like you've never seen.”

 Ommetaphobia is the story where I thought Guinard just took his skill to another level. Every word feels like a working gear. The idea of seeing eyes for the first time and being afraid of them. Really cool idea with better execution.

“The eyes were a lunacy by which all the rest of life was now measured, and the longer he examined them the greater in number they seemed to appear. He was terrified of what he saw, with the terror, at least had dulled to a distant sensation detached like knowing a large frothing dog rages on the other side of a leaning, rickety fence; as long as the fence holds, you're safe but Dean wondered what would happen when the fence pulling back those eyes might finally give way.”

Last, I would point to the Chinatown story…The Ascending lights of Yu Lan: “Spirits are released this night, and lanterns guide them to us from the afterworld for communion, then guide them back. Without the lanterns, without loved ones lighting the way, ghosts will get lost. Those lost ghosts are the pretas, the ghosts unloved, unmourned. Lost to existence, wandering forever in the dark.”

That last one is a good example how how Guinard makes use of setting. I loved this collection. I read it off and on in the middle of a reading slump. These stories dragged me out of the slump. For lovers of short horror stories, you can’t go wrong.

 

Book Review: Awry: Stories duncan b. barlow

 

Awry by duncan b. barlow

212 pages, Paperback

Published April, 2025 by Bridge Eight Press

 

Reviewing fiction from duncan b. barlow always presents me with a challenge of where to start. I met him for the first time 35 years ago. Give or take a year, but my math should be correct. The first time I consumed the art of this creator it was music. It was an Elk’s lodge or VFW hall in Indiana, without a stage, and his band his Louisville-based hardcore band Endpoint, was playing. Duncan was the guitar player who went crazy while they ripped through their set. I went home with the vinyl of their new (at the time) record ‘In a Time of Hate.’

It was Duncan who sold me the record, still sitting on a shelf here in this office. A year and a half later, I wanted to book an Endpoint show, and I was given Duncan’s phone number. It was 1992, and when we got on the phone, somehow the topic of horror fiction came up. I had already had the dream of becoming a writer, and Duncan was the first person I met who wanted to be a writer too.

We were both into hardcore music, writing, etc. We were both learning disabled. We shared passions and had similar educational struggles.  Duncan’s success with multiple bands was always an inspiration. Many years after that, our first books just happened to have the same publisher.  I was greatly inspired by Duncan’s weird, dark prose that flirted with genre in the same way that a Brian Evenson or Margaret Atwood story does.  It is a collection that touches on genre, but it is not held back by the ghettoized distinction of pulp fiction. 

It could be Duncan’s position as teacher, a writer with his foot in academia, but more than realistically, it is the skill, the precision. It is also a story-first method that doesn’t worry about genre in the first place. (Those of us know most writers feel that way when they sit down to write)

Awry is filled with short stories whose connective tissue is careful, deliberate choice of words. There are dark stories, ones I would consider horror, some are experimental, and some just emotional. My three favorites are more in the horror vein, but that is not a shock. Those three stories are worth getting the entire book for. There was something that I enjoyed in each story but the stand-outs for me were special. 

My favorite stories are Of Flesh and Fur, The Fine Set of Teeth, and The Father’s Work.

On Flesh and Fur was once published as a standalone novella. This is a darkly surreal tale that builds off a strange desire to reproduce…

“My desire to have a child began when I was organizing my basement. Transferring musty things from weary cardboard boxes to sleek plastic containers. It was a thing of beauty. All clear and labeled.”

Of Flesh and Fur stands out as a weird tale; it drips with surreal and at times creepy vibes.

“I lay in bed that night, and it prodded me. A bird pecking in my chest. Let me out. When I fell to sleep, I dreamed of a brown river faded by a vast white ocean. Floated there, the current leading me to land. A surge of water crested the tree line, and when I passed the conflux, the wave towered behind me. Collapsed onto me, and in the tumble, I heard a solitary word. Baby.”

A powerful tale, I can see why Duncan chose it to publish it as a stand-alone, and it might be the best in the collection, but it is not my personal favorite.

My favorite is Fine Set of Teeth, which worked to get my skin crawling. The way the story unfolded made me laugh and uncomfortable at the same time. It feels like something spun out of the hilarious opening paragraph. I found the story evoked major feelings. 

“The tooth's origins were unknown to him, but when he’d woken, disoriented from the dream he could not remember and went to the kitchen for a glass of water, Gavin found the tooth resting on the table. The tooth was spotless save for the thin string of saliva, which ran between the crown and the tabletop Gavin scratched his left temple. The remaining strands of hair caught on his freshly chewed fingernails. The tooth had to belong to someone.”

But the story that evoked the strongest feelings for me was the Cormac McCarthy-like The Father’s work. The southern gothic weirdness of this story again gave me the correct creeps.

“The nurses at the hospital asked Boone a litany of questions, and he responded with the following answers a few minutes ago, trapped under a tractor, hatchet, and finally, just plain bad luck. They wheeled Cade into surgery, and a nurse escorted Boone to a room with an empty bed, where he remained until Cade returned from surgery, not to tend crops, the pig, or shower.

On the second day in the hospital Cade was more present so Boone said do you know why I done it.

The boy nodded.” 

There is no writer I compare Duncan to instantly but those looking for slightly off-beat stories look no further. His novels are equally hard to pin down. You could accuse me of bias, but if I didn’t like it I would be silent. I love this work and think he reflects the writer I know. That is a great thing about writers from outcast tribes. The stories are in any way punk rock, but that outsider vibe drips off the pages. Awry is a powerful work.

Book Review: Extremity by Nicholas Binge

 

Extremity by Nicholas Binge

176 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication: September 16, 2025 by Tordotcom

 

I should state right off the bat that I root for every book I open to read. Binge had a huge hit on his hands with Ascension. He got a blurb from Stephen King, and he is translated into nine languages. Frankly, he has more success than me, so keep that in mind. He has incredible ideas, and I understand the appeal.  The thing is that I was challenged by Ascension. I loved the concept, but didn’t jive with the execution. The narrative was set up to be epistolary, a narrative limitation that Binge didn’t follow and apparently no editor along the way told him he was only writing like it was a letter to start chapters.   

Extremity is a book that I think has a fantastic set-up, but much like the first Binge I read, I could not jive with the writing style. 

Reviews tend to be extremely personal, as a reader, we all have things that will instantly turn us off to a reading experience, and for me, it can often be first-person narratives. Not always, there are plenty of first-person narratives I do enjoy. Often, those books cause me to forget about how the story is told. It might be a writer’s disease that most readers will not look deeply into. 

First Person is like found footage movies to me. Found footage movies often “break the rules” of the story by doing things like having a running camera set down in a room while people have a private conversation. If you are doing a first-person book, then you have to in my opinion follow the rules and not cheat. Delores Claiborne by King and Malerman’s Incidents Around the House are examples of first-person done perfectly without cheating. 

Nicholas Binge seems intent on using first person but unwilling to accept the limitations of the form.  I can’t suspend disbelief when the POV shifts between first-person narrators, because I start wondering why this person is telling the story now. It shines a spotlight on the wizard behind the curtain constantly, and I am seeing Binge’s motivations, not the characters.  

For him to switch narrators, he had to use the device of starting each point of view shift in a character's name in bold, because a reader wouldn’t know which I was telling the story. If you want a three POV story, in my opinion, it is a bad idea to do it this way. 

Now If that doesn’t bother you, and you think I am being a harsh asshole, let me tell you that Extremity is a high-concept time travel novel combined with police procedural and a bit of cosmic horror. The concept at the core is cool. The execution did not work for me.    

As an example, I will point to page 36-37

“Mark!” Julia shouts, sprinting at full tilt from the other side of the room. The girl darts away, escaping back off into the house with the rifle.

Julia grabs my gun and follows.

I try to get up, but my brain’s in shock all I can think about is the muzzle of that rifle directly in front of my eyes.”

OK, a few things...this passage ends Mark’s POV, and we switch to Julia. In a third-person narrative, I accept the author’s choice of transition. But when it is First person, I am thinking why did Mark stop telling the story with a gun in his face?

Julia Torrimsen: I knew Paul's house like the back of my hand, and by the way the shooter was moving through it, she did too. This is how Julia’s POV starts…

“I followed her left out of the back living room and into the library.”

I see why Binge is withholding POV, and giving us information. Mark was knocked out and John was going to think Julia did it. So then, before the chapter ended, he had to switch POVS again.  This is one example, but the short novel is littered with moments. Are they writing this story? Co-authors? Are they giving testimony? Why these three voices?

Sometimes they are talking to the reader, and other times not. So lets talk about when the characters talk directly to the reader. Sometimes they stay in character but often they tell the story like a novelist, which took me out of Ascension, and it took me out of the story here too.

A shame because there are interesting ideas at work. I like the idea that a time machine becomes one of the worst possible inventions.

“The great machine of our doom. The greatest invention of our time period, the last thing humanity will ever create.”

The stakes of the story are powerful, and I was interested in where it was going, so I finished it despite all my problems with it. Maybe the first-person thing doesn’t bother you, and there is a chance that this time-travel cosmic horror police procedural will work for you. It has much going for it. I wish I could say I loved it, but I gotta be honest. Binge and I have different storytelling approaches but I am sure it will work better for many of you. I don’t personally think he is being served well by editors