Author: Sarah Elliott

Articles / Interviews

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An Interview With R. B. Wood on ‘Winter in the City’ and More!

Winter in the City

An interview with R. B. Wood

By Sarah Elliott

 

It feels like winter is coming. Long nights herald the chills: physical, psychological and perhaps emotional. For some, it may already be here. That time of hibernation. Time to retreat to the safety of the sofa and lose yourself in a book, choosing total immersion in the words of others. Winter in the City is the first anthology to be published by Ruadán books, run by R.B. Wood. Want to know more? Read on.

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Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: The Nightmare Bird by Jane Bryan

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

Dark Scavenger

 

A moonless night falls heavily across clustered rooftops. Wings beat shabby black feathers against its weight. A blue-black heart throbs perceptibly behind gore-mottled ribs as scabbed talons catch the roof-spine ridge that is the apex of a church. Time-tattered wings fold. A raucous caw tears the sky. Red eyes scan a dreaming village.

The first dream comes. 

Red eyes flare to a brilliance that dims the stars. A black tongue flits in pleasure within a cracked beak. A tapped mind nourishes a bottomless dark gullet. 

Dreams flow in succession. 

Dawn stains the horizon. The scavenger reluctantly departs from the banquet.

 

Dream Smoke

 

Valerian, mugwort, passionflower, chamomile. Dried, crumbled, and laced with extract from the blood-red plant that exists outside of man’s nomenclature. The apprentice’s eyes follow intently every measurement, every movement of the master’s hands, knowing the responsibility of the smoke will soon enough fall to him.

“The Nightmare Bird cannot overlook any dream,” the master speaks. “It is compelled to collect all it encounters.” The apprentice holds the pipe, watches the master pack its bowl.  “The smoke will bring the dreams that hold the Nightmare Bird to our village and shield the dreamers’ souls.”

The apprentice nods and swallows his fear.

 

The Nightmare Bird

 

The new moon hides, and my sanity slips. The stars bear down, biding time. Their malevolence is palpable, terrifying. The trees snicker at my fears from the dark. Do I trust my eyes full of profaned bodies of the fallen, or am I the fallen one?

The stray newcomer destroyed the pipe in reckless incredulity. Too few inhaled the smoke that brings the dreaming. No sleep to dream, no dream as offering, the Nightmare Bird has roosted in my mind.

Beyond the village, an unnatural avian cry rends the heavens like a chorus of countless screams.

The world is forfeit.

 

Jane Bryan

Jane Bryan was born and grew up (kind of). She is bipedal, omnivorous, and carbon-based. Her interests include speculative fiction, amateur phrenology, air sculpture, and sarcasm. She lives where her stuff is.

Articles / Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Beneath by Steven S. DeKnight and Michael Gaydos

Disclosure:

Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Beneath
Author: Steven S. DeKnight and Michael Gaydos
Genre: Supernatural Graphic Novels
Publisher: DeKnight Industries
Publication Date: 6th August, 2024

Synopsis: Deputy Sheriff Jess Delgado is tasked with transporting the sole survivor of a mysterious attack along the Texas-Mexico border to CoreCivil, a for-profit immigration detention center closing down due to wide-spread protests. Housing only a handful remaining detainees and manned by a skeleton crew of disgruntled guards, the detention center becomes a desperate battle ground when something otherworldly emerges from deep below the earth. Something that only fears the light. Deputy Delgado must pull together the guards and detainees – two groups that hate and fear each other – to survive the night. Or fall to the vengeance of the things that live beneath. 

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Articles / Interviews

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An interview with Chanan Beizer

Out of Clay and Mud, Comes Adam Circa 1580 – Back Again!

An interview with Chanan Beizer

By Sarah Elliott

 

What’s a Golem like you doing in a place like this? Don’t know what a Golem is? Then you’ve not read The Golem of Venice Beach! Get ready because following the cliffhanger of the first graphic novel, we return to Venice Beach. Why and how? Let’s chat with Chanan Beizer, the one who resurrected the golem for a whole new audience and who concludes this tale (for now) in The Golem of Venice Beach: Book 2 which is available on Kickstarter from September 12th, 2024.

 

Bio: Chanan Beizer has had a varied career including computer programming, film-making, and TV sports production. In 2018, Chanan’s script for The Golem of Venice Beach won the very first ScreenCraft Cinematic Book contest for graphic novels. For the past three years, Chanan has been working with Eisner-Award winning editor, Chris Stevens (Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream) to assemble a dream team of artistic collaborators to bring the story of the Golem to life.

 

This links perfectly to the first question…

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Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: The Threads of Ruin by Michael Adamas

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

I.

 

A black powder was falling from the sky. 

Terry stared at the precipitation in confusion; it was too warm for snow, and why would it be dirty this far from civilization? Her gaze turned toward a maple that was dusted with the substance.

The tree was dying before Terry’s eyes. Its leaves had gone brown and fallen. Pustules bubbled up under the bark, splitting it apart. Jumping back in shock, she saw the grove of pines behind her home decaying with the arrival of the terrible substance.

Terry crumpled to her knees, helpless, as the death came to her forest.

 

II.

 

Lucas squinted, trying to make out the approaching figures through the gloom. The boy was sheltered in the burnt remains of a house on what used to be a nice street. He adjusted his oxygen mask, letting out a muted cough. 

The figures drew closer. Raiders, searching for spoils in a land of poisoned earth. Three of them, and armed. They scattered like the vultures they were and picked greedily through the suburban ruins.

When he was sure that they wouldn’t see him, Lucas picked up the backpack he had loaded with supplies and slipped away, disappearing into the wasteland.

 

III.

 

The planet’s surface was littered with bones. Twisted, mutilated skeletons of trees stood among them, massive grave markers for the species lost. The biologists had seen the sight before on several worlds already.

The taller of the two scanned the soil with several instruments held in his many sets of arms. “Xymethian fungus, without a doubt,” he confirmed, waving his antennae wildly.

The second biologist opened communications with their ship. “Confirmed, the Plague has eradicated this world.”

They sadly entered the shuttle airlock. As the anti-fungal gas surrounded them, they prayed that next time, they would not be too late.

 

Michael Adamas

Michael Adamas was born in a barn and raised in a house. He spends long afternoons in the woods and creates art in his free time. He lives in Ohio.

Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: Glamoury by Deborah Tapper

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

Hoodwinked

 

It’s midnight and the girl in red keeps screaming.

He races to tackle her assailant and finds he’s grabbing handfuls of unkempt fur, solid muscle. Dense clouds part and moonlight pours down as the hideous thing rips free, whirling to confront him. Howling and snapping, yellow eyes blazing hate.

The girl’s laughing.

Peeling off her scarlet dress, her human skin.

He runs, but she’s faster. A leap brings him down and she wrestles him onto his back, claws slicing. Opens his belly with one ferocious swipe, triumphant smile sprouting razor fangs.

“Don’t get greedy, Grandma,” she snarls. “This one’s mine!”

 

Footloose

 

He wakes strapped to an operating table.

Specimen jars line the walls and two smiling girls lean over him. He recognises one: the tireless salesgirl who insisted on fetching every pair of shoes his size, who said he had perfect feet.

She doesn’t have feet now. Or legs. And neither does her sister. One glimpse of their snake-like lower halves and he’s struggling, yelling for help.

Nobody comes.

The giggling sisters lay out their saws and scalpels as his frantic eyes skim the room, desperately seeking escape. And he finally sees what’s inside the countless glass jars.

Perfect human feet.

 

Reclusive

 

She’s high in an inaccessible tower, singing sweetly as she spins. That beautiful voice is mesmerizing. He spends hopeless hours circling, searching for a way in.

Eventually she lowers a thin silky rope. It’s strangely sticky, but it takes his weight so he climbs up. Squeezes eagerly through the tiny window – into a shadowy room overflowing with tapestries. Attendants hover silently, motionless.

He blinks – and the tapestries turn into thick cobwebs. Countless corpses hang from them, sucked dry.

She scuttles out. Strikes before he can flee.

And once he’s safely bundled in her larder, she starts singing and spinning again.

 

Deborah Tapper

Deborah Tapper has been published in anthologies, magazines and online. She lives in the middle of nowhere with her understanding partner, drinks too much strong tea and writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.

Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: A Birth Story by Caiti Quatmann

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

 

I.

 

Blinding lights and pain. The room was alive with chaos, as if an unseen beast was ripping her open. Her screams mingled with the sterile hum of the operating room, each contraction like raw claws tearing through muscle and flesh. 

Unmedicated. Her body fought the intrusion, but the pain was primal, fierce, and relentless. The doctors moved with urgent precision, faces obscured by drapes and masks, while she endured the wild, feral agony. 

Her baby’s cries echoed faintly, a haunting reminder of the life she was fighting to bring into the world, as the beasts above roared their final rage.

 

II.

 

In the clinical silence of the hospital, she drifted like a spectral figure. The birth had been a blur, her mind dissociating to escape the trauma. 

She lay in the dimly lit room, unable to hold her baby, who lay in the bassinet, just beyond her reach. Each creak of the hospital bed felt like a distant echo, her surroundings a mere apparition. 

Sleep eluded her, and she wandered through her days in a fog of memories and pain, a ghost haunted by the shadows of what she couldn’t remember, unable to connect with the life she had just birthed.

 

III.

 

Home was no sanctuary; it was a place of feverish delirium. The doctors discharged her after four days, failing to notice the dawning infection.

Her body, this vessel of new life, flooded with the threat of death.  She was collapsing into sepsis, her skin a sallow mask of illness. 

The once comforting familiarity of home felt alien as she fought the creeping poison within. Her body, wracked with chills and unrelenting pain, seemed to be slipping away, leaving her on the precipice of an abyss, where the family she’d so desperately fought to have now threatened to claim her instead.

 

Caiti Quatmann

Caiti Quatmann (she/her) is a disabled poet and writer. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Yoke (MyrtleHaus) and Editor-in-Chief for HNDL Mag. She studied and taught writing at the University of Missouri St. Louis. Her poetry and personal essays have been published by Thread LitMag, The Closed Eye Open, and others. Caiti lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, and teaches at a local Microschool. Find her on Instagram and Threads @CaitiTalks.

Articles / Interviews

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BENEATH: Dare You Dig Deeper to Discover the Monster?

BENEATH: Dare You Dig Deeper to Discover the Monster?

An interview with Steven S. DeKnight and Michael Gaydos

 

Beneath is the debut graphic novel from Hollywood powerhouse Steven S. DeKnight and seasoned artist Michael Gaydos. Let’s go beyond the surface and find out how this awesome collaboration came about and what you can expect when you pick up this multi-layered incredible graphic novel.

 

“I’ve always loved monsters—ghouls and ghosts, vampires and werewolves, zombies and giant radioactive creatures,” says writer Steven S. DeKnight. “The best genre stories ask questions that often elude the easiest of answers. They make you think while presenting the prestidigitation of entertainment artfully forcing the viewer or reader to challenge their own perceptions and world view.”

 

“My first original graphic novel just happens to be my first foray in the horror genre,” says artist Michael Gaydos. “I love creating sequential art that is full of mood, suspense, and very real character emotion. Steven’s story has all of this and more. I couldn’t be any happier with how the final product came together.”

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