Moku Kino Make, known in some circles as Dead Body Island, was located 500 miles off the Florida coast. It was a convenient place to dump murder victims and toxic waste. It was also a great place for a Herbert West-Reanimator-like mutation event. 

Here’s the moment when all the dead bodies and toxic sludge came together to create the titular Valley of the Frankensteins: “The rotten remains of two dozen corpses bobbed like potatoes in a stew of lime green Jello,” wrote author Dustin Reade. “Where limbs accidentally bumped against one another, they fused, shocked through with something very close to life. A chemical reaction. The fusing of RNA and DNA and melted plastics and medical byproducts.”

Reade continued: “Severed heads fluttered their eyes open, seeing milky white ribbons of liquid latex and petroleum go by as the desiccated remains of a human torso floated by in search of a new way of thinking. An arm here. A leg there. Not in any normal order. Not in any way that made sense, but it was something new. It was twenty-four monsters being born in an ocean of filth.”

A quick note here: Don’t judge a book by its cover, especially in this case. The Frankenstein monsters in Reade’s latest effort don’t look anything like goofy caricatures of Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester in resort wear. One day (I’m sure) someone will write a novel about Frankenstein and his bride taking a Carnival Cruise to Club Med, but that day has yet to come. 

Instead, Reade uses the phrase “Frankenstein monsters” to connote a secondary meaning. They were creatures of unnatural origins. Said the author: “They were poorly put-together people, a madhouse of wrecked humanity—their flesh a bubbling, pestilent cauldron of pollution and rot.”

They had multiple eyes, vertical maws, tails made of human fingers, faces like starfish and numerous heads stacked on top of shoulders like a totem pole. They were swamp things, iguana people and Kiseijuu-like parasitic beasts. Each new iteration was horrible and terrific at the same time. 

Into the valley of the Frankensteins rode a disparate group of mobsters, flunkies, FBI agents and hazardous waste personnel. After surviving a sundry of bizarro challenges on their own, they eventually came together in a climax involving a thirty-foot colossal beast made of human bric-a-brac featuring one hundred legs, one thousand eyes and endless rows of teeth. All the Frankenstein monsters were great, but for me the appearance of the toxic kaiju was the topper to this funny and oddball version of Monster Fantasy Island.

[ Valley of the Frankensteins / By Dustin Reade / First Printing: August 2023 / ISBN: 9781915546397 ]

Coming Out of the Coffin is about Vladimir Radu, a 23-year-old gay vampire from New Jersey. The novel’s title is a cute pun that promises readers a funny LGBTQ+ coming-of-age story with a horror twist. And that’s exactly what author D.A. Holmes delivers.

It’s a terrific book, but I have one little quibble with the book’s premise. Vlad’s sexual angst was basically a non-issue. Vampire queerness has already been integrated into mainstream media. Was Carmilla gay? Yes. Was Dracula gay? Probably. Was every vampire in an Anne Rice novel gay? The truth was, all vampires were symbols of non-binary sexuality—they were transgender creatures of the night.

Vlad was gay, but honestly he had more pressing problems to worry about. For one thing, drinking human blood was now off his diet. No more killing, no more lurking about in the shadows. The whole vampire thing had become totally repulsive to him. 

Could a young, urban vampire like Vlad survive simply by eating popcorn and drinking soda every day? No, of course not. For a vampire or anyone else, that wasn’t a great diet. “It’s not healthy,” warned his mother. “You’ll become weaker and lose your senses. Your hunger will take over and you’ll transform into a creature of sheer carnage.” She was talking about “vampire psychosis” of course—a feral state of bloodlust that would turn Vlad into a raging superpowered monster. That’s exactly the thing he was trying to avoid. 

Vlad was also trying to avoid a gruff, hyper-masculine  vampire hunter named Lance Crosby. This guy was a hardcore nutjob. He enjoyed capturing “suckers” and letting them sizzle like bacon in the sun. Instead of smelling like a nice piece of pig meat, he noted, they generally smelled like pig shit. 

In a weird way, this was all new and exciting to Vlad. He grew up in a world of creaking mansions and old shriveled servants. His childhood was like a staid old Victorian-era novel. There had to be more to life than that, he thought. “I want to explore the world,” he told his unsupportive parents. “I want to live life as a human. Get out there. Date guys and fall in love.”

Moving out of his parents manor, getting a job, making friends and hooking up with a cute gym rat was all part of being a young independent vampire. So what if Vlad was being stalked by vampire hunters and 19th century occultists? So what if his parents didn’t approve of his new lifestyle? He wanted to experience the true misery of human life in all of its glory. Mission accomplished. 

[ Coming Out of the Coffin / By D.A. Holmes / First Printing: July 2023 / ISBN: 9798395301598 ]

As an ex-reporter and editor, I was a little concerned that author Harrison Phillips wasn’t going to provide 5W1H information in Psychoraptor, his latest novel about a hangry velociraptor run amok onboard a luxury cruise ship. 

The FW1H writing method (or Kipling Method) stands for “Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.” It was a great way to assemble data and present it in a straightforward manner. It’s an acronym that’s familiar to all journalists, ethicists, researchers and detectives. In my opinion, it’s also an important guideline for any author working on a novel. 

I wasn’t the only one initially worried about the lack of 5W1H in Phillips’s splatter raptor novel. Characters in the book had questions too. “Where had the velociraptor come from?” Laura Michaels wondered. “How was it even possible that such a creature was still alive?” 

All of it sounded like the plot of some shitty sci-fi movie to Laura, but the dinosaur had to have come from somewhere. How had it gotten on the ship? And more importantly, did someone bring it onboard intentionally?

Phillips answers some (but not all) of these 5W1H questions, but he waits until the very last chapter to do so. Laura and the rest of the ship’s passengers must contend with the inexplicable prehistoric predator with no context beyond basic survival. 

The Royal Sapphire was an elite cruise ship with 16 decks, 4 swimming pools, 12 restaurants and over 5,000 guests and 800 crew members. The author has a lot of fun imagining what kind of chaos a velociraptor could cause in such a situation. Maintenance workers, security guards, a gaggle of children and Sammy the Shark, the ship’s goofball mascot, all have memorable and fatal encounters with the dinosaur.

All this mayhem provides ample opportunity for Phillips to flex his writing skillz. His use of simile in particular is outstanding. Like this: “His insides slithering out of him, sinking down to the bottom of the pool like a cluster of necrotic eels nesting in a cloud of blood.”

The most memorable (and horrible) scene in Psychoraptor happens during a sexual encounter between a horny steward and stewardess. The two sweethearts experience an abrupt coitus interruptus when the dinosaur bursts into their cabin. 

“Sarah held her breath as the animal cocked its head to one side,” wrote Phillips. “It was looking at her, trying to figure her out. It blinked once, pounced on top of her and bit down on her face. Its teeth puncturing her cheeks, scraping against bone. When it pulled its head away, a mask of flesh was torn from her skull.” Splayed and naked upon her bed, Sarah screamed while watching the velociraptor eat her face. 

[ Psychoraptor / By Harrison Phillips / First Printing: July 2023 / ISBN: 9798852258762 ]

Forever Lost at Sea: Ryujin Rising is a novel about three unlikely shipmates chasing a sea dragon across the Northwest Passage. Is it a good yarn? Yes, I think it is very good. 

But I have a question for authors Anghus Houvouras and Sara Hutchins: Who is the hero of your story? I’m curious. Is it Charles Wickham, a small town reporter looking for a big front-page byline? Is it Hideo, the Japanese monster hunter who kinda looks like a monster himself? Or maybe it’s Bess Riley, the young proto-feminist sailor? 

According to mythologist Joseph Campbell, a hero in literature is a character who experiences a challenging adventure that ends with a victorious homecoming. Heroes usually act at the behest of fate and divine forces, but ultimately their journey is all about self-discovery and self-development. Using this simple definition, I’d argue that all three mariners are the heroes of the story.

Wickham, for one, is introduced as a wealthy English dandy who has no experience IRL. For most of the novel, he is simply an ineffectual naif. Little did he know that his journey across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago would give him hero status. 

And Bess Riley is a young woman raised along the California coast. At the beginning of the story, she’s just a local fisherwoman with no prospects for the future. Joining the hunt for Eisendrachen the Destroyer gives her options. She dreams of getting her own ship and being the first female whaling captain. (Note: whale hunting was legal in the U.S. at the time of this novel.)

As a character with a unique origin story and a well-defined quest, Hideo is the presumptive and natural hero. Unlike Charles and Bess, he clearly understands his destiny. Hideo is a hunter who must kill the ryujin—he doesn’t have a choice, he is the chosen warrior.  

The creature itself is the size of multiple whales with teeth like daggers (or maybe arrows). “It looked like a dragon, or some other monster straight out of the pages of a book of myths and fables.” 

As fearsome as it is, however, the sea monster’s behavior is a bit puzzling. Even though it kills with abandon and without mercy, it allows the heroes three to escape its clutches multiple times. 

Hideo thinks he knows why. Like himself, the creature adheres to an ineffable universal hunter’s code. “We are the same,” he explains. “Hunters locked in combat, both existing only to vanquish the other.”

[ Forever Lost at Sea: Ryujin Rising / By Anghus Houvouras & Sarah Hutchins / First Printing: July 2023 / ISBN: 9781922861771 ]

Gothic cinema is hard to define. Certainly there’s an existing iconographic tradition that encourages castles, ghosts and bad weather, but there aren’t any hoary plot points to direct storytellers. In fact, the plot isn’t even important according to Renee Balcombe, the producer of the indie gothic horror flick at the heart of Jonathan Raab’s latest novel. “Atmosphere is all that matters, tone and color. Vibe over verisimilitude,” she says.

Gothic horror is an expression of anxiety-ridden id, continues Balcombe. “What we’re trying to do,” she explains, “is produce an extended mood piece punctuated by thrilling, decadent explosions of color, fog, practical effects and blood. Plot is for brain-dead YouTube film critics pointing out logical inconsistencies in works that operate beyond logic.”

Most importantly for Balcombe and her crew, Hierarchies of Blood is a movie that’s attempting to capture the physical world and the spiritual world on 35mm film stock. It’s been done before, of course, films made in concert with occult and supernatural forces. They call it Cinéma Goblin.

That’s why the film crew (consisting of a small group of theater kids and art weirdoes) sets up camp deep in the woods of New York’s Fingers Lake region. The area reportedly has a connection to otherworldly forces and is arguably the most gothic place in the U.S. “Proximity to certain elements can alter things,” says Balcombe. “Reality itself becomes more pliable. Magic—real magic—is easier to perform.” In other words, it’s the perfect place to receive transmissions from the goblin world. 

And that’s exactly what happens. The filmmakers rouse an ancient vampire and his monster minions, and find themselves fighting a nightly battle in multiple realities. Their weapons of choice include wooden stakes, holy water, movie cameras, tape recorders and Tungsten flood lights. 

Interspersed throughout the monster mayhem is a lot of jibber-jabber about the power and influence of cinema. None of it is unwelcome because Raab’s enthusiasm for his subject is articulate and never-waning. Filmmakers are masters of manipulating light, sound and shadow, he says. Imagine what kind of movie they could make if they went beyond the simple tools they’ve been using for a hundred years. Cinéma Fantastique is that idea. An evolution of the art by harnessing forces that predate Auguste and Louis Lumière, that predate modernity. 

For added insight into their situation, the production crew occasionally hunker down to smoke cosmic cannabis and watch Cinéma Goblin in the basement of an abandoned castle. Raab’s account of these movies is first-rate. “This is how the spell is cast,” he says. “This is how we remake the world.”

[ Project Vampire Killer / By Jonathan Raab / First Printing: June 2023 / ISBN: 9798987968802 ]

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 ]