Darla Drake, a.k.a. the Duchess of Death, was both majestic and frightening. Her innate beauty would not make her look out of place sitting atop a gilded throne; her innate monstrosity would not make her look out of place sitting atop a pile of bones. 

Also known as the Duchess of Dismemberment, Darla had been terrorizing the counselors of Camp Clear Creek for 20 years and was a living legend. Up until recently she loved being a monster and being feared by humans. Stories had been written about her (mostly fan fiction) and there was even a Netflix movie. “Everybody in the world knew who Darla Drake was,” said Gretl the Gobbler, “But did she know who she was?”

That was the big existential question Darla was struggling with. Doing unspeakable things to unsavory people no longer fulfilled her. She was in a funk. “I just want something else,” said the mopey monster, “I want something more.” Like Peggy Lee, she wondered “is that all there is?”

Darla wasn’t getting any sympathy from her family and friends. “You want something else?” asked her mother incredulously. “We’re monsters, for goodness sakes. We scare. We stalk. We hunt.” Her best friend Gretl agreed. “Keep doing what you’re meant to do—make crusty teenagers pee themselves before tearing off their limbs.”

After two decades of jump scares, life had become routine for the Duchess of Death. Maybe she needed a distraction? Or maybe a new challenge? She got both when Jarko Murkvale (great name btw) came to her hometown.  

Jarko was some sort of octopus-human creature looking for a new place to call home. Monsters were generally territorial, and Darla wasn’t happy when she saw the interloper terrorizing kids at a nearby sleepaway camp. Worst of all, she was kind of blinded by the octopus guy’s charisma. Said author Jason Pinter: “Darla hated herself for even thinking it, but Jarko was … kind of hot?”

As it turned out, Jarko thought Darla was kind of hot too. Instead of getting into a big monster fight, the rivals fell into a big-hearted monster romance. Their unlikely love affair was funny too. Really funny. I didn’t generate an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the laughs, but I think there was at least one joke on every page.

The pair’s relationship was a little rocky at first—they were two different monsters with two different ways of frightening people. Said Darla to her new boyfriend: “I have my methods and you have yours. My methods are like a knife’s edge, delicate and refined. Yours are like a bunch of tentacles flailing around like an octopus caught in a blender.”

Despite their differences, however, the two lovebirds eventually found a way to coexist. Jarko helped Darla resolve her lingering identity crisis, and as a couple they became infamous as the Duchess and Duke of Death. It was a monster match made in Hell. 

[ Dating & Dismemberment / By Jason Pinter writing as A.L. Brody / First Printing: June 2023 / ISBN: 9798988386902 ]

A few years ago, Carter Renfrow shot a man in Memphis just to watch him die. But instead of being arrested and sent to Folsom Prison, he successfully evaded the police. He became a drifter and lived his life in the margins of society. 

Covid-19 was a big help for him. Wearing a gaiter mask was useful to a criminal who wanted to stay anonymous. And since everyone else was basically stuck at home during the pandemic watching TV all day, it was easy for Carter to move silently from town to town without raising any suspicions. 

That all changed dramatically one night when he was ensnarled in a multi-car pileup while driving through the Boston Mountains of Arkansas. With no way off the mountain and EMS vehicles arriving shortly, Carter knew his life as a free man was about to end.  

The author spends a big chunk of time describing the details of the car crash. In doing so, he brings together four of his five main characters: Carter, along with a young women named Aniyah, a little girl named Stacey and a creep named Jed who thought he was Kraven the Hunter. 

The fifth member of the cast came along shortly after the crash—a 15-foot-tall cryptid known colloquially as the Ozark Howler. It was a bear-cat-dog bipedal beast that moved with the “fluidity of water separating from the shadows of the forest like a building storm.” It was an apex killing machine not of this time or world, explained Jed. “It was magnificent.”

The highway crackup occurred along the Borderland Pass, a desolate section of the Ozarks featuring nothing but trees, rolling mountains and the animals who dared call the place home. According to Native legends, the area was prime Howler territory. Ancient Caddo and Quapaw tribes had unsuccessfully tangled with the wendigo-like monster—as did Mayans, Spanish conquistadors and white settlers. In time, the Borderland Pass was simply abandoned and became a no man’s land. 

But now it was time for the Howler to come out of hiding. The crash site provided a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet for a beast that was probably tired of munching on muskrats all day. The sounds of bone gnashing and gurgled laughing filled the air. 

Carter, Jed, Aniyah and Stacey flee into the nearby woods hotly pursued by the hungry Howler. This is when Tragic (the latest effort from author Edward J. McFadden III) turns into a 72-hour slow motion tragedy. Spoiler alert: there’s more than one monster roaming the Ozark Mountains. 

Indeed, McFadden’s novel is a slow ride that takes time to build up speed. The reader spends an awfully long time amidst the highway rubble. Maybe too long, I don’t know. But trust me, the Howler is a nasty creature—you’ll be glad you stuck around for the crazy ending.

And speaking of endings, this one has a prescient one. After the happy (unhappy) finale, a family of Howlers huddles together by the side of the Borderland Pass. They sit in silence, birds flitting around them, the hum of the highway carrying through the forest. “They waited,” wrote McFadden with a hint of foreboding. 

[ Tragic / By Edward J. McFadden III / First Printing: June 2023 / ISBN: 9781922861731 ]

Jellyfish are otherworldly and weird looking, and you definitely want to avoid them when you’re in the water. From what I hear, their stings hurt like hell and the pain lingers for weeks. According to my sister-in-law, who was attacked by a jellyfish on a beach in Bali, the sting feels like a million needles striking all at once followed by a rough sandpaper massage. 

The sting of a tiny, two centimeter Jellyfish can ruin your vacation in paradise, but what about the sting of a jellyfish the size of a football field? What would that be like?

Evan and Mei-Mei are about to find out. When the young married couple inherit an island off the coast of Palmetto Dunes, South Carolina (that’s right—an entire island), they ditch their hip urban lifestyle for an idyllic island adventure. As they step off the boat and embrace their new homestead, the couple share an unexpected shiver. To them, the island exists upon the divide between Heaven and Hell. 

The Jellyfish action doesn’t start right away, however. Evan and Mei must first eradicate four escaped convicts sheltering on the island. The riffraff ogle Mei-Mei in her skimpy bikini (that’s so rude!), but otherwise they’re just a minor speed bump in the story.

Once the criminals are out of the way, the monster jellyfish asserts its kaiju dominance. And believe me, this thing is a king-size motherfucker. It’s the “Godzilla of jellyfish,” says author J.A. Johnson. 

“It was huge. It’s bell was maybe 100 yards across, a smooth grayish expanse rising up from the sea like an inflatable island. It was an impossibly great, colossal monstrous jellyfish.” 

Up close, Evan is struck by the massive cnidarian’s smoldering intensity. He understands that, in some alien way, this is a supremely intelligent creature. His wife isn’t similarly impressed. “That damn jellyfish is just another thing in the sea that can kill and eat us,” she sulks. 

There’s an unexpected twist, of course, and readers don’t have to wait long for it. The jellyfish is in its sexual phase (thus the novel’s title: Medusa’s Children), and is literally populating the South Carolina coast with “jelly people.” 

And that’s not all. Have you ever heard of Turritopsis dohrnii? That’s what we have here. The “immortal jellyfish” is able to regenerate itself over and over again. Outside of being killed or eaten, it will never die. I could be wrong, but this may be a fatal miscalculation by the author. I predict a series of never-ending sequels forthcoming. 

[ Medusa’s Children / By J.A. Johnson / First Printing: June 2023 / ISBN: 9798396849686 ]

Suckerville was a small Illinois town located along the banks of the Mississippi river. In many ways it was an unremarkable place filled with the usual hustlers, layabouts and Hee Haw rejects. 

But Suckerville was remarkable in one significant way. It was ground zero for an invasion of giant mutant leeches. The bloodsucking carnivores were born in a nearby boggy inlet and quickly scampered ashore to spread their venom and zombie-like disease.

The first victims were a honeymoon couple spending their wedding night on a cozy pontoon boat. After consummating their marriage (“I love you more than country music,” purred the satisfied bridegroom), the newlyweds were attacked by leeches ripping through the bottom of their love boat. The bride was quickly turned into a ravenous monster with tits like two angry worm mouths filled with gnashing pinprick teeth. The groom, I’m sorry to say, never had a chance. 

Before anyone could sing “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts, the leech bride was crawling all over Suckerville turning residents into ambulatory mutant parasites. Looking for a convenient one-stop blood buffet, the rabid zombie leeches headed toward Doc’s Dockside Tavern, a popular local watering hole. It’s here where we finally meet the assembled heroes of the story. 

There’s James Dean Speers, an unreliable fuckup, his best friend Rowdy and two comely beer poster gals named Honey and Ruby (naitre Hailey and Trudy). Ready or not, the Inferior Four had to figure out a way to turn back the predatory worms. With the song “Kashmir” blasting from the sound system, Speers and his friends knew it was time to “get the Led out.”

Sadly, Speers failed to prevent the customers at Doc’s from getting infected with deadly leech cooties. HIs ex-wife got it, the young couple kissing in the bathroom got it and the establishment’s bouncer got it. Doc, the tavern’s namesake, got it just as he was on the verge of figuring out an antidote to the venom. Even the friendly guard dog got it. 

Thinking about it now, the final act of Chris Sorensen’s novel was a little like 2022’s Academy Award-winning movie. Killing the oncoming mutant monsters was important (of course), but it couldn’t be done without J.D. Speers confronting his past, present and future in one messy multiverse of bad decisions, bad luck and bad karma. The endgame was literally everything everywhere all at once. 

[ Suckerville / By Chris Sorensen / First Printing: May 2023 / ISBN: 9780998342459 ]

A cave entrance was accidentally discovered in a small Missouri town during the Civil War. To be honest, says author Judith Sonnet, it wasn’t exactly a cave. At the time it was just a burrow, no more than a rabbit’s hole. 

One hundred years later, the rabbit hole had been expanded into a deep, circuitous chain of caverns that sprawled underneath southwestern Missouri. At some point, an ambitious developer spent a ton of cash to turn the area into a popular tourist destination. The Rabbit Cave Resort was built at the cave’s entrance and offered “an experience unlike any other—dining dancing and spelunking.” The resort also featured a Playboy Club-like lounge called the Rabbit Den. 

Things were going well until the spring of 1974. That’s when everything went pear-shaped. The resort was overrun by a horde of giant prehistoric creatures emerging from the cavern’s deepest recesses. Giant newts with saw-blade skulls, a millipede the size of a school bus and a couple of bats the size of German Shepherds. Ironically, there were no rabbits down the rabbit’s hole. 

The two giant bats provided one of my favorite moments in Sonnet’s book. Descending upon a vulnerable group of hotel guests, the bats were hoping to score a quick snack. Things turned absurd when the bats found themselves in a fist fight. Even now, the image of a man punching a bat truly makes me laugh out loud. 

Easily the most aggressive creatures to emerge from the cave were the snails. There were snails the size of baseballs and snails the size of doormats. There was even a snail that was the size of a small automobile. Writes Sonnet: “They came in a wave of mucus and roiling slime—an orgy of tendrils, flickering proboscis and wavering eyestalks. A malignant amalgamation of gunge and stink.”

In one memorable scene, a giant snail was seen swallowing an unlucky bastard. It lifted its head, opened its mouth and sucked up its prey with a mighty slurp. Afterward all that could be seen was a mangled hand hanging from the creature’s quivering throat. It reminded me of the iconic poster for the 1972 movie Frogs.  

The snail invasion was terrific. Who knew that gastropods could be so compelling? They were unlike any snail you’d ever seen. “They were more like living tumors,” writes Sonnet, “huge bubbles that waggled obscenely.” 

Snails had one fatal weakness, however. They didn’t work in concert with a hive mind or under any instructions from a queen. I’m not even sure snails had brains. There was no strategy to their attack. They simply pursued food as it was presented to them. 

Nonetheless, at some point during the invasion a snail the size of a lion tried to establish some sort of alpha status. It crept atop a stalagmite, raised its lumpy head toward its peers and released a triumphant snotty sneeze.

Here was the moment (perhaps) when the snails would coalesce around a charismatic leader and destroy the human race. But it wasn’t to be. Only a few snails swiveled their eyestalks toward the elevated one. The wannabe alpha snail quickly fell in with its peers and was swallowed by the crowd. It was over. The moment was gone. 

[ Deep Dark / By Judith Sonnet / First Printing: May 2023 / ISBN: 9781959778417 ]

Summers in Arkansas are the pits (pun intended). It’s “hotter than a whore in church” and there’s not much to do except stay inside, drink your mom’s beer and watch horror movies on Shudder. I guess you could get a job at Walmart if you were ambitious. But who wants to do that?   

Looking for some teenage kicks, a carload of drunk, stoned and rowdy kids decide to spend an afternoon at a nearby rock quarry. It’s been abandoned for years, but the open-pit mine still provides ample opportunities for diversion and mischief. 

The gang includes Pete the punk rocker and his girlfriend Hailey, best buddies Stacy and Kenneth and a couple of random girls named Ana and Megan. Little did they know that this was going to be their last adventure together. 

Forty-five minutes later, after hiking through the woods and passing an abandoned school bus (symbolism noted), the kids finally reach their destination. There’s nothing sexy about the dilapidated quarry, but there’s romance in the air nonetheless. Stacy and Megan, in particular, find a secluded spot and engage in some kissing and frottage. 

Unfortunately for the lovebirds, We Shouldn’t Have Let It Out is a short book and their petting session doesn’t last long. It was time for author Jonathan Tripp to introduce his monster from the black pit. 

At first there’s nothing remarkable about the creature. Based on the book’s cover and the author’s early descriptive language, it resembles a simple Susuwatari—one of the dust mites from the movie My Neighbor Totoro. Even though these things generally hang out in dark empty houses, they’re not very scary. 

That changes pretty quickly. The creature from the quarry is clearly malevolent and seems to have a pinch of mind control power. Also: it’s hungry. “Feed meeee!” it hisses impatiently.

One by one, the monster drags its victims down into the pit. Pete and his girlfriend are the first to go, but all of the characters eventually get their own tragic (and somewhat humorous) ending. “A perfect day has gone completely to shit,” grumbles Stacy when he realizes he’s not getting out of the quarry alive. 

There’s lots of gore and humor here (thank you very much), but unfortunately the author isn’t much of a stylist. Awkward syntax, inconsistent grammar and shifting points of view undermine the narrative. Ultimately, We Shouldn’t Have Let It Out exists as an immature effort from an emerging talent.

Checking out his author page on Amazon, I can see that Jonathan Tripp is putting out books at a rapid clip. That means he’s spending a lot of time pounding on his keyboard. After awhile he’ll figure out craft and style. Here’s a bit of advice for the young author: Keep typing until you start writing. And good luck! 

[ We Shouldn’t Have Let It Out / By Jonathan Tripp / First Printing: April 2023 / ISBN: 9798388816474 ]

Here it is. Resting comfortably between the covers of Amazing Monster Tales, No. 4: Into the Briny Deep is the most titanic earthly creature of all time. After years of reading books and comics about swamp things, man-things, giant lizards, great apes and cyclopes, I have finally stumbled upon the greatest primordial monster the world has ever seen. I’m referring to the Brobdingnagian beast from Lee Allred’s short story “Murmuration of a Darkening Sea.” 

The thing lurked for uncountable eons beneath the sea. Now on land, the green black waves of water and brine seemed to shift and wriggle into one sinuous monster born from the deepest fathoms. 

The composite creature wasn’t made of mere pisciforms of flesh and bones and fishy scales, said Allred. “It was made of the sea water itself, translucent iridescent things not bound by the laws of nature.”

There wasn’t anything else in the latest edition of Amazing Monster Tales that compared to Allred’s “great murmuration from the deep.” The creature was a bit Lovecraftian, I have to admit, but it was still a unique and wondrous creation all its own. 

That said, however, the mighty leviathan in Grayson Towler’s story was remarkable as well. “Crotar” looked like a mutant Sperm whale with a dash of Humpback, Orca, dolphin and a dozen other marine mammals thrown in for good measure. “It was as if some essence of each animal, from the mightiest of the great whales to the humblest porpoise, had been drawn together and assembled into a single Olympian entity,” observed the author. 

The latest monster anthology from editors DeAnna Knippling and Jamie Ferguson also contained compelling stories about a Mediterranean sea queen, a lovelorn (horny?) sea dragon, a shark woman and a Ponyo-like fish boy. “The Late Bloomer” by coeditor Ferguson was about a young man and his family who vacationed yearly by the seashore. Only later, with the help of his girlfriend, did he realize how important the sea was to himself and his family.

And finally: There’s a little bit of Disney’s The Little Mermaid in “Blood and Water” by Alethea Kontis. Instead of being a beloved mermaid like young Ariel, Kontis’s siren was death personified. She was the shark, she was the thing to be afraid of. 

Rose was a siren who drank the blood of her victims. It wasn’t just the blood she craved, said Kontis, it was everything. She needed the sense and the feelings, the emotions and the pain, the good and the bad. She needed to feel love. She consumed souls to fill the barren places inside her. 

She finally gets what she needs when she’s introduced to her benefactor’s young daughter. The ending is hopelessly tragic, but you know what they say: “Love is a wonderful and horrible thing.”

[ Amazing Monster Tales, No. 4: Into the Briny Deep / Edited by DeAnna Knippling and Jamie Ferguson / First Printing: April 2023 / ISBN: 9798391563198 ]  

Platoon Lake was located deep within the Powamac Forest of Nova Scotia. It stretched for miles and provided a magnificent and inspirational view of eastern Canada.

But there was a curse upon Platoon Lake according to First Nations folklore. Stories were passed from generation to generation about a hideous creature called the Q’thahkral living at the bottom of the lake. Anybody who got too close to the water’s edge would instantly be snatched by the horrible sea monster with a thousand eyes and tentacles. 

Powamac locals didn’t believe in the centuries-old folk stories. Even though dozens of dead bodies washed ashore every year, Platoon Lake remained a popular camping and fishing site for nearby families.

Unlike his friends and neighbors, Reece Napier believed the old native stories were true. In fact, he didn’t understand how people could believe in Jesus, angels and miracles but not the strange things that lived in their own backyards.  

Reece was convinced Platoon Lake was a paranormal hotspot and he wanted to check it out. Because he was an amateur cryptid investigator, he packed up his camera and electromagnetic field recorder and hit the road. He was determined to catch a glimpse of the elusive Q’thahkral. If he did, perhaps his meager podcast audience would increase. 

As Reece got closer to the lake, strange things started to happen. Not only did he glimpse giant tentacles lurking in the shadows of the forest, but the radio in his truck started playing the sound of people screaming. At some point he was overcome with the feeling that he was being closely watched. 

By the time he arrived at his destination, Reece was ready to turn back and go home. He knew that he had made a big mistake the second he saw the lake begin to churn and bubble. 

The legends were true: the Q’thahkral was real. “It’s large serpentine head rose from the water and blotted out the shine of the moon,” said author Sédrie Danielle. “It’s gargantuan body had dozens of tentacles both small and large, and its head was full of eyes. The monster’s mouth was as wide as the abyss and its demonic wailing was loud enough to wake the dead.”

There were a handful of random characters at Platoon Lake along with Reece to witness the emergence of the Q’thahkral. They weren’t important characters in any way, but they all competed vigorously to be the “final girl” of the story. You’ll never guess who survives. Hint: It ain’t Reece.

Two surprises await readers at the end of the novel. One: the Q’thahkral wasn’t a sea monster at all. It was something else entirely. And two: the author may be working on a soon-to-be-released sequel. If that’s the case, I’d say we’re probably gonna see Reece Napier one more time. 

[ The Tail of the Q’thahkral / By Sédrie Danielle / First Printing: April 2023 / ISBN: 9798390635391 ]

Gigi Stein is a monster woman living in a human world—a green-skinned, pinup, hotrod beauty queen with a bad temper. Like all the best green ladies (such as Gamora, She-Hulk and the Wicked Witch of the West), Gigi is hell on wheels. 

For some reason, hotrods have played a big part in monster culture over the years, and Loretta Kendall’s novel Gigi’s Monster Garage is definitely part of that continuity. I can’t tell you why monsters and nitro-burnin’ muscle cars hooked up in the first place—blame it on Ed Roth, I guess, or George Barris, Robert Williams or maybe Elizabeth Watasin. And don’t forget about Rat Fink, Mr. Gasser, the Weird-ohs, Odd Rods and the Munster’s Drag-u-la Coffin Car.  

Kendall’s novel is an adult monster romance starring a Bettie Page-like Bride of Frankenstein, an abusive Frankenstein greaser and a sexy human fboy. Also in the mix are a sundry of memorable supporting characters to make things extra spicy. My two favorites of the bunch are Barrett Jackson, the seven-foot Sasquatch who talks like a 90s-era sit-com hipster and Izzy, a blue imp who’s described as “a sparkling, glitter-bombed, rhinestone-loving weirdo.”

The drama began five years ago when some kind of “flashpoint” created a single world shared by humans and monsters. It was like everyone went back in time to relive Halloween circa 1953. “It’s just crazy,” reflects Fox Adams, the dreamy drifter who ultimately falls in love with Gigi. “Until recently, monsters were just stories on a movie screen. Then bam! Here they are.”

In this version of “Horror Earth,” Victor Frankenstein VII is a rich billionaire who digs up dead people, sprinkles them with fairy dust and sells them as sex slaves. Gigi Stein isn’t like the other “Frank-n-People,” however. She’s not a reanimated love doll lacking brains and emotions. She’s smart and has feelings. Despite what she’s been told by Frankenstein and all the other monsters, she knows deep down that she has a soul. She won’t let anyone use her body as a tool for their pleasure.

But, alas, Gigi is a monster with a raging monster libido. She needs some relief. She’s got an impressive collection of sex toys in her closet and often uses her motorbike as a vibrator, but what she really wants is a tumble between the sheets with a willing partner. Because she refuses to have sex with Frank N. Stein—the monster she was originally made for—she needs to start dating.

That’s when Fox Adams arrives. Described as “sex on raw steel,” he immediately catches the attention of Gigi. She offers him a job at her auto shop and starts flirting with him right away. After a few weeks of stop-and-go action, the pair agree to go on a romantic date.

There’s only one problem: Poor Gigi’s never been on a date before. After all these years she still doesn’t know the first thing about humans and their mating rituals. 

For advice, she asks her best friend Izzy what to expect. “Here’s what you do,” says the sassy blue devil girl. “Get down on your knees and suck him like a lollipop. And if you’re lucky that boy will eat your cookie like the Cookie Monster.” That sounds like pretty good dating advice to me. 

[ Gigi’s Monster Garage / By Loretta Kendall / First Printing: April 2023 / ISBN: 9798338418074 ]