Do you remember all the fuss surrounding Y2K? Back in 1999, some people thought computer networks would shut down on January 1, 2000, and widespread chaos would ensue. Personally, I knew a married couple who drained their bank accounts and bought a self-sustaining cabin off the grid in Utah. They were prepared for the collapse of civilization. 

The “millennium bug” never happened of course, but it was certainly something people talked about—including the characters in T.D. Lawler’s novel Super Beast ’96. 

It was 1999 and Matt, Zach, Jose, Becky, Tracy and Jenny had just graduated from high school. They knew they were the last graduating class of the decade. Heck, they were the last class of the century. On a personal level, they felt the ever-looming specter of Y2K.

“What do you guys think is actually going to happen when the clock rolls over to 2000?” asked Jenny one night during a camping trip. The answers she received from her friends were all over the map. An Alien invasion? Zombie apocalypse? The arrival of the Antichrist? Jenny herself had the best answer. “Moon Nazis will finally come back to Earth and try to take over the world,” she said. 

There were no zombies, aliens or moon Nazis in Lawler’s book—just a scruffy eight-foot-tall werewolf. When it first appeared, the beast was described as looking like a grotesque parody of a wolf. The facial features were all there, but they were wildly distorted. “The elongated muzzle was twisted into a manic grimace,” wrote the author, “revealing yellowed fangs that jutted from its maw. Glowing red eyes burned with a furious inhuman intelligence.”

The werewolf had recently come to the outskirts of Pembine, a Wisconsin townlet. After feasting on easy prey like farm animals, it started hunting humans. It was bad luck that Jenny and her friends were camping smack dab in the middle of the beast’s kill zone. 

But like all monsters, Lawler’s werewolf was a lonely  wretch. For 50 years he’d been unsuccessfully trying to share his lycan gift with someone. “I’ve been alone so damn long,” he cried. “I want a companion who’s the same as me … someone to be my friend.”

A friendly werewolf doesn’t rip people to shreds, however. A local hunting party and the Pembine police couldn’t stop the beast, and now it was up to the unwitting teenage campers to kill the wolfman. 

Lawler is a young author (this is only his second novel, I think), but he already shows great promise. He’s got a nice flair for descriptive language and his characters talk like real human beings. Confession: as a reader, there’s nothing that makes me cringe more than stilted dialog. 

In addition, Lawler has put a lot of effort into compiling a 90s-era soundtrack for his novel. Megadeth, Metallica, Static-X, Slipknot, Machine Head, Korn—you could easily cobble together an entertaining mixtape of tunes based on his recommendations. He’s obviously a music nut. After all, even the title of his book is a ripping Rob Zombie song. 

[ Super Beast ’96 / By T.D. Lawler / First Printing: January 2025 / ISBN: 9798302706102 ]

With over 50 horror films under her belt, Desiree Starr had earned her status as a scream queen. Twenty years ago, she appeared in He Knows When You Are Naked and she’s still, for better or worse, churning out the same kind of sexy, exploitive and scary movie to this day. 

Sure, she’d love to make the transition to mainstream fare. What cult actress wouldn’t? Unfortunately she’d never been offered a substantial role in an Academy Award-winning movie like Jamie Lee Curtis. Instead, like Linnea Quigley, she supplemented her income with writing books and appearing in horror-inspired workout videos. 

When she was asked to star in an upcoming horror flick being filmed on a college campus in Northern Florida, Desiree jumped at the opportunity. Bullet City, her latest attempt at respectability, was a box-office bomb and she needed the paycheck to pay for her lux Long Beach condo. 

She took the gig but was immediately disappointed by the movie’s nubile cast. She didn’t like seeing the overabundance of busty gals flouncing in front of the cameras. Desiree’s expectations for College of the Living Dead hit rock bottom. She knew from experience that the bigger the actress’s cup size usually meant the lower the film’s budget. 

Desiree would soon discover that the movie had more serious problems than gratuitous nudity. Even before principal shooting began, actors and wannabe actors were being abducted and murdered by a demonic Aztec queen from the 16th century. 

Five-hundred years ago, Zyana, the half-sister of King Moctezuma II, traveled from Mexicana to La Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth. During her journey she was magically transformed into a human-spider-vampire-mole creature. After all those years of searching for the fabled Fountain of Youth, Zyana had turned into a crazy, obsessed monster. 

The scream queen and the Aztec queen don’t tangle until the last four pages of the book—which was kinda disappointing. But I promise there’s more to Return of the Scream Queen (the sequel to Night of the Scream Queen) than a brief novel-ending diva showdown. 

For one thing, it’s pretty funny. Anyone who subscribes to Monster Agogo Magazine and enjoys the quirks of the cult movie industry will get a chuckle from the mix of A-list, B-list and C-list characters in the book. A favorite character of mine was Desiree’s ex-boyfriend, Dr. Donald Becker. The authors really go hard with his obsession with white teeth and his idolization of Tom Cruise.

And finally, Desiree herself was totally awesome. Being a middle-aged scream queen wasn’t easy, but she always found a way to rise above the absurdity surrounding her.   

[ Return of the Scream Queen / By Michael McCarty, Linnea Quigley & Stan Swanson / First Printing: February 2025 / ISBN: 9781946874689 ]

What do the grapes of wrath taste like? What exactly does the sound and the fury signify? Why is the lightness of being so unbearable? And does water have a particular shape??

Sheesh! Why do writers and filmmakers continually  pick flowery (and vague) titles for their creative projects? Instead, let’s celebrate simple declarative titles like Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. With titles like these, you know exactly what to expect. 

You can add the latest novel from Melissa Lason and Michelle Garza (collectively known as the Sisters of Slaughter) to the list. There’s no poetry in the book’s title, but readers know exactly what they’re getting with Janitors vs. the Living Dead.

It all starts when Serenity Canyon—an exclusive resort-like community in Sedona, Arizona—becomes ground zero for the zombie apocalypse. Since none of the posh residents have any survival skills whatsoever, it falls to the maintenance staff to battle the neighborhood scourge. 

But first, here’s a little backstory: The 35,000-year-old zombie parasitoid is discovered by accident during a scientific excavation in Siberia. When it’s brought back to the U.S., the government hopes that it might be an effective weapon of war (and profit). Instead, all it does is kill and reanimate the dead. 

The Serenity Canyon zombie outbreak is an unmitigated disaster. Everyone instinctively knows that if it spreads beyond the gated community it will surge like wildfire in a summer wind. It could even signal the end of mankind. 

Thank goodness the collected members of Serenity Canyon Maintenance are on the case. Disparagingly known as the Scum Crew (Scüm Crüe?) by their snooty employers, the team arms itself with all sorts of things to neutralize the undead army—a couple of mop handles, two screwdrivers, a razorblade gum scraper, a fire extinguisher, a leaf blower and a ride-on lawn mower. They probably have access to a variety of desiccants and sorbents as well.  

The zombies (called “walking shitbags” by the authors) don’t move very fast, but their stamina is unending—like an unstoppable apocalypse in slow motion. The soundtrack to their attack is a chorus of flatulence and belching followed by a glissando of vomit. 

The reason why these zombies are called shitbags is because their bodies are “frankensteined” together with human waste from an old derelict outhouse. This origin story allows the authors to gross out readers with neverending descriptions of shit, piss, snot and vomitus eruptus. Their enthusiasm for bodily excretions is truly impressive. 

[ Janitors vs. the Living Dead / By Melissa Lason & Michelle Garza / First Printing: April 2025 / ISBN: 9781639511891 ]

In her introduction to this new lycan-lovin’ anthology, editor Annie Knox recalls her youthful affection for monsters. “I was convinced that they must be real,” she writes. “The idea of monsters lurking in the world around us, unseen but felt, both thrilled and frightened me.”

Given her life-long proclivity, it makes sense that Knox would someday curate a terrific short story collection that takes werewolves seriously. They are, she says, symbolic of a thousand things. For example, they’re an allegory for puberty and a metaphor for transformation and change. They also represent mental health disorders and the uncontrollable animalistic side of humanity. 

Werewolves can also draw inspiration, and exist side-by-side, with classic literature. Contributions from Simon John Parkin and Nora Studholme (in particular) borrow cultural cachet from William Shakespeare and Margaret Atwood. “One Last Kill” is about the tragedy shared by brothers and “A Dark Place to Hide” explores the loss of female agency and other Gilead-like themes. Both stories are very good. 

Some authors are empowered to forgo the familiar horror tropes associated with lycanthropy. Or, I should say, they willfully subjugate the hysterics inherent in the genre. I have to admit that these are my least favorite stories in the collection. But that’s my problem. Others may disagree. In general, I greatly enjoy the gnashing, the shapeshifting and the howling. 

Personally, my favorite thing in the first volume of Creature Feature Classics is “Wolves Only Come Out at Night.” Not only is it well written (props to author Davey Cobb), but it balances a whole bunch of disparate points of view in a mere 23 pages. 

The story begins with a prologue of sorts. Seeing the moon in the sky was a bad omen, writes Cobb. “When it was present so too was evil, the sickness that plagued humanity under night’s blanket. Vagabonds, murderers, harlots, thieves. The moon was their beacon, confirming that the hour was for malice.” 

To eradicate vagrancy and dangerous fauna, the town of Butterwood hires a mercenary to cull wolves, bears and foxes—anything and everything that threatens the townsfolk is butchered to extinction or driven out.  

Butterwood’s artificial tranquility is shattered by the arrival of a werewolf. Cobb handles the ensuing chaos like a champ. The manner in which the werewolf, the werewolf hunter and the werewolf hunter’s daughter disrupt the town’s citizenry and municipality is unexpected to say the least. The resolution is totally crazy. No spoilers from me, but I’ll just say this: in Butterwood there is no truth in justice. 

[ Creature Feature Classics, Vol. 1: Lycanthropy / Edited by Annie Knox / First Printing: February 2025 / ISBN: 9798310686472 ]

Who doesn’t enjoy a good old fashion home invasion yarn with a big dose of cryptid fuckery? I’m ngl, few things in life are more beautiful than a pulse-pounding story about a monster in the basement and the roar of a chainsaw.

This paradox of horror is on full display in Trog, the latest novel by Zachary Ashford. Looking for kicks, three masked serial killers smash their way into a house in rural Australia. The homeowners do the best they can to defend themselves, but things escalate dramatically when a huge bigfoot-like creature escapes from a subterranean prison.

There are no bigfoot or yeti in Australia, but there is something called a yowie, an antipodean sasquatch-like beast with roots in Aboriginal mythology. Caged for decades in an underground cavern, the monster—named Trog by an old carny with a hankering to become the next P.T. Barnum—capitalizes on the the surrounding chaos to set himself free. 

According to Ashford, Trog is truly hideous. “His teeth, jagged and pointed and full of rot, drip with foaming saliva,” he writes. “His eyes are deeply intelligent, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize the monster is possessed with insane rage.” 

Throughout the book, the yowie is nigh unstoppable. And he’s pissed off too. The pesky humans have hurt him and he wants to pull their limbs from their bodies and smash their faces with his fist. One victim’s body snaps like dry spaghetti as the yowie rips her in half.

Trog is a monster, no doubt about it, but he isn’t evil like the trio of home invaders. Wearing zombie, skull and wolf masks (which define their personalities more or less), the gang roams Australia’s hinterlands killing people indiscriminately for fun. “This isn’t a political statement,” explains the brute wearing a wolf’s mask. “It’s entertainment.”

Wolf is by far the most dangerous member of the gang. He’s a large man who carries a sledgehammer resembling the kind of weapon a Norse god might use. Later, he picks up a chainsaw for further emphasis. Says Ashford: “Even if he wasn’t a psychotic home invader, everything about him screamed fuckwit—the howling, the over-the-top approach to the invasion. almost like he was trying to be a movie character and not a real person.”

As it turns out, Wolf is the lucky bastard who gets a one-on-one showdown with the yowie. It’s man-against-beast as the novel ends with both combatants getting a taste of their own brutality. It’s beautiful. 

[ Trog / By Zachary Ashford / First Printing: March 2025 / ISBN: 9781998763450 ]

Every novel—whether it’s genre fiction or literary fiction—has to have a beginning. Some books start slow and some books start with a bang, but either way, the author needs to figure out a way to open a door into the story. 

Gore vs. the Cryptid Kaiju by authors Zachary Cole and Cody Bratsch ends with a big monster battle royale. That’s no surprise. But how does it start, you might wonder?

Cole and Bratsch make a commonsense decision. They begin their novel with an origin story of Gore, their titular monster. Not only does the prologue establish the course of the narrative going forward, but it also builds the framework for an upcoming war of gods.

The prologue accomplishes its mission, but does so in the most artless way possible. I’ve been stumped for days trying to come up with a way to summarize the opening sequence of events without sounding like a complete dunce. Here’s the best I can do: A man throws his ex-girlfriend and her date down a mountain cliff. Surviving the fall, the teenage girl eats her dead companion to stay alive. Eventually, she turns into a 100-foot-tall wendigo.  

After the cringy prologue, the writing settles down into a comfortable groove. And that groove includes various iterations of kaiju and cryptid battles featuring (among others) a skinless centaur, a giant bat beast and the aforementioned wendigo. 

The first clash occurs 100 miles outside of Las Vegas at Area 51. The facility, notoriously known for sheltering space aliens, was actually filled to the brim with terrestrial horrors. People called it a monster prison but Doctor Mark Hudson liked to think of it as a monster zoo. 

A professional cryptozoologist, Hudson is a member of the world’s top monster-fighting force. With the help of a handful of military colleagues, he travels around the globe chasing and studying beasts of folklore and legend. “I’m a monster geek,” he admits with a shrug. 

The monster jailbreak at Area 51 is terrific. This is where the centaur demon from Scotland is first introduced. The 95-foot-tall nuckelavee ravages the military base and later chases its wendigo rival to the West Coast. Dr. Hudson and his crew are in hot pursuit as well. 

Since the transformation from human to wendigo, Gore was torn by conflicting emotions. “Her mind was split in two,” say the coauthors. “Half of her was human, revolting against the violence and hunger that the other half, the wendigo half, called out for.”

After the Area 51 smashup, Gore drops to all fours and gallops to Los Angeles for some long-simmering retribution. She’s on a personal journey to kill the man who threw her off the mountain cliff. She can smell him in LA despite all the aromatic distractions from Randy’s Donuts, In-N-Out Burger, California Pizza Kitchen and Trejo’s Tacos.

The ensuing battle between the nuckelavee and the wendigo (plus a little interference from another cagey cryptid) turns Los Angeles into a hell pit. But that’s okay—the wendigo finally gets what she wants. To quote Dr. Hudson: “Never underestimate the fury of a vengeful monster.”

[ Gore vs. the Cryptid Kaiju / By Zachary Cole & Cody Bratsch / First Printing: March 2025 / ISBN: 9798311615747 ]

All the writers included in the new anthology Combat Monsters: Untold Tales of World War II agree: War and monsters is a lot like love and marriage—you can’t have one without the other. 

Give props to editor Henry Herz. Not only did he curate this terrific collection of weird war tales, but his story “Das Mammut” represents the most overt example of how men and monsters coexisted during wartime. 

In 1943, Germany unleashed a super weapon upon Russia. The Land Dreadnought was an impenetrable walking battleship that couldn’t be stopped by conventional artillery. Inexplicably, it looked like a gigantic Mesopotamian ziggurat. 

But Russia wasn’t without a super weapon of its own. Recently, the Motherland had discovered a three-headed, fire-breathing dragon sleeping in an abandoned mineshaft. The beast was now a valuable asset in the Red Army. 

Although Zmei Gorynych was an ancient creature, he had the attention span of a teenager. He needed the guidance of a pilot—someone to keep him focused during battle. That someone was Kapitan Andrei Petrov.

As Gorynych and Petrov prepared their strategy to destroy the Dreadnought, they formed a bond of respect and friendship. To be honest, their unlikely camaraderie probably wouldn’t have happened in any other situation. The story’s tragic ending underscored the bittersweet consequences of war. 

Another example of unlikely unions forged on the battlefield can be found in Jonathan Maberry’s story “A Terrible Aspect.” Two supernatural creatures stumble upon each other during separate but similar missions. They’re both trying to eradicate a coterie of Ariosophists making trouble in Italy. 

Even though the two preternatural agents were on different sides of the war, they quickly agreed to work together to defeat their shared enemy. Maberry includes a dollop of glamour in his story to make readers pine for a little romance between the Italian benandanti and the American mercenary.

Other excellent stories include “The Fourth Man” by Jeff Edwards about a soldier who sells his soul to an unholy god in order to defeat an ancient leviathan and “The Night Crew” by Peter Clines about a boatload of seafaring vampires. And just for me, there’s a David Mack story about Americans dropping an A-bomb on Japan in order to slay a Ghidorah-like giant monster.

The most uplifting thing in Combat Monsters comes from author Bishop O’Connell. “Nachthexen” is about a group of female Ukrainian pilots fighting Nazi troops in concert with the Russian Air Force. The story features a witchy brew of Ukrayina patriotism and female empowerment. Without a doubt, it’s my favorite thing in this collection. 

[ Combat Monsters: Untold Tales of World War II / Edited by Henry Herz / First Printing: February 2025 / ISBN: 9798874748432 ]

When readers first meet Tom Tennyson, he’s just a 14-year-old kid. He and his father have plans to climb the tallest mountain in the world and, if possible, kill the elusive abominable snowman. 

Like Holden Caulfield, Peter Parker and Hamlet, the mopey Prince of Denmark, Tom was an angsty boy—he hated his abusive father (for good reason) and he certainly didn’t want to be anywhere near the Himalayas. Said author Sam M. Phillips: “The mountains stood like sentinels between him and a manhood which felt elusive, something his father would not bestow upon him, not until he helped bring in the yeti and mount its head on the wall of their family home.”

Soon enough, Tom and his father (and their friendly Sherpa guides) came across the yeti. It was 10-feet tall and four times the bulk of a regular man. Its leathery face seemed almost human but with an overriding ape-like countenance. Up close, the beast’s eyes were keen and intelligent, yet piercing and feral. 

The encounter didn’t go well. Even though Himalayan legends tell us that the yeti is shy and nonconfrontational, this one was neither. This particular snowman was an aggressive and hungry hunter. Tom survived the attack and made it down the mountainside alive—but not before shooting the monster in the face with his father’s vintage Lee-Enfield rifle. 

Jump ahead 22 years and Tom was a 36-year-old billionaire (as measured in Australian currency). He was also a self-professed “cryptid collector.” In other words, he had spent a good chunk of his adult life collecting DNA samples of various cryptids, including the barghest hound and the aniwye, a skunk-like creature the size of a bear. And now, after traveling the world and the seven seas, he was back in the Himalayas for a second go-round with his yeti nemesis. 

The reunion between man and monster occurred almost immediately—even before the climbing party left camp. As it turned out, the yeti had a long memory and was patiently waiting for Tom to return to Mount Everest. Said the author: “The yeti bore down on him like an avalanche of crushing whiteness.”

This is when Cryptid Collector really gets nasty with lingering father and son baggage. Not only was Tom facing the same savage snow beast from before, but he was also fighting against his father’s toxic DNA. This type of internal/external struggle is  popular with writers, and I must say, Phillips uses it effectively to bring his novel to a roaring conclusion.  

[ Cryptid Collector / By Sam M. Phillips / First Printing: January 2025 / ISBN: 9781923165465 ]

It all started when Dr. Jane Tiptree found a decapitated sasquatch corpse in a dumpster behind a haunted house. Later, she attached the head of a great white shark to the body. With a few more tweaks, Shark-Squatch became a freedom fighter in the on-going war against misogyny and fascism. 

Dr. Tiptree created Shark-Squatch to fight against the over exaggerated male-dominated society that took root in the United States in the year 2029. For example: the color pink was declared illegal and adult bookstores were now stocked with sports magazines. 

Furthermore, military officers who weren’t straight white dudes were deployed to an island purchased by President Donald J. Trump. Shortly afterward, the U.S. government would declare war on the island and then nuke it off the map. 

In 2031, President Trump appointed podcaster Joe Rogan as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer for the entire country. The police were rebranded as “Agents of Rogan” (AR for short) and they quickly morphed into a Schutzstaffel-like organization. Experts agreed that this was the moment Trump’s brain worm took total control of his body. 

The biggest cultural war happened when Kid Rock was appointed the country’s Chief Music Officer. His clampdown of music created a severe schism between men and women. He championed bands like Iron Maiden, Black Flag and Pantera and banned performers like Taylor Swift, Alanis Morissette and Meghan Trainor. 

It was Trainor, surprisingly, who sparked a nation-wide revolution when she became the avatar of an underground anti-fascist organization. The Pink Pony Club was dedicated to destroying President Trump’s legacy of inhumanity. Because it was a terrorist group, anyone in the club who was captured by the Agents of Rogan would be executed at a participating McDonald’s. 

The Pink Pony Club was happy to have Shark-Squatch on its side. He was a brute—eight feet tall and built like a brick house. Said author Damien Casey: “His abs were harder than concrete filled with steel and wrapped in a balloon made of bulletproof glass.”

Accompanied by Matilda “Tilly” Coralie—his pink bikini-clad BFF—Shark-Squatch invades the central headquarters of AR. The pair’s mission: find out who’s in charge and abolish centuries of government cruelty and oppression.

Before they completed their mission, however, Shark-Squatch and Tilly needed to defeat a few AR monsters. The wildest of them was the Fresno Night-Croc, the only creature that rivaled Shark-Squatch in sheer badass cryptid-animal hybridization. I must admit, Casey’s monsters have always been awesome in previous novels and the Night-Croc is no exception. Standing 12 feet tall, he had two massive red wings and a crocodile snout between his legs. According to Tilly, he looked like an upside-down dick flopping out of a pair of crocodile skin pants.

With his mission done and all the monsters (mostly) defeated, Shark-Squatch became an official Pink Pony Girl. He was half shark, half sasquatch—and all hero.  

[ Shark-Squatch / By Damien Casey / First Printing: January 2025 / ISBN: 9798348184360 ]

The best villains are always the guys who think they’re the heroes. For example: General Zod, Thanos, Erik Killmonger and Light Yagami were all misguided creeps who thought they were doing the right thing. 

In Trapped!, the first novel in Richard D. Bailey’s ongoing historical horror series (read my review here), Dr. Vladislav Volkov wanted to prevent WWII by creating an army of wolf-human hybrids. And now, in the second book, he wants to save humanity from itself by turning humans into subservient sheep—literally. 

Volkov had good intentions (I guess), but he was a madman warped by the horrors of war. Rumors of grotesque animal experiments followed him like a dark shadow—abhorrent acts that would disgust even the infamous Josef Mengele. 

Over the years he created boar, bear and armadillo hybrids along with werevolks, vampire cats and one sexy kangaroo lady. His flock of sheep people were just the latest attempt to reimagine the world we live in. Note: the author never attempts to explain how Volkov does this. The mad doctor merely has a “recipe book of mixes and serums” tucked away in a safety box somewhere. 

Trapped! Again! takes place 25 years after the first novel ends. It was now the swingin’ mid-sixties—Lyndon Johnson was president of the United States, Tom & Jerry were on TV, Bob Dylan picked up an electric guitar and the Beatles were set to perform at New York’s Shea Stadium. 

Along with his white-cloaked minions (affectionately called the Klueless Klutz Klan), a former Cuban intelligence officer, a French chef and (briefly) Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, David Berg and Charles Manson, Dr. Volkov was in Georgia planning his sheeple invasion at Grimclaw Manor, a large two-story, antebellum plantation house.

Naturally, his mad scheme couldn’t go unheeded. A global ministry of spies and government agents (and one journalist) were dispatched to infiltrate Grimclaw Manor. The Primal Pack, a superhero-like group comprised of former Volkov animal hybrids, were also on the case.  

With so many minions, monsters, superheroes and spies running around Volkov’s mansion, Trapped! Again! could easily have spun out of control. As he did with the first novel, Bailey decides to let each of his characters tell the story through their own experiences. It’s not exactly Rashomon (the 1950 movie by Akira Kurosawa), but it helps the reader contextualize the fractious narrative. 

And, of course, the whole thing’s a goddamn hoot. Volkov was a cagey smartass, the quippy Primal Pack were a lot like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the consortium of global gatecrashers each had their own lovable eccentricities and foibles. The novel eventually ends with a frenzied Silver Age slugfest that checked all my fanboy boxes. I’m really looking forward to the third book in the series Trapped! Finale! coming soon. 

[ Trapped! Again! / By Richard D. Bailey / First Printing: January 2025 / ISBN: 9798306162454 ]