A dead end street – nine houses, nine neighbours, nine creepy little horror shorts!
The host of a street dinner party makes the startling revelation toA dead end street – nine houses, nine neighbours, nine creepy little horror shorts!
The host of a street dinner party makes the startling revelation to his guests that the original residents of their houses were a coven of nine witches who made a pact to keep “the spirits bound to the other realm”. But, in time, that magic has been weakening, “barely holding on by a thread”. If the residents fail to strengthen the number nine in their lives, then the resulting failure of that binding could free those spirits. “Terrible things could happen on Nine Street”. And THAT is the basis for a thoroughly entertaining collection of tales indeed!
TWISTED TALES OF A DEAD END STREET is a bravura collection of fast-paced horror shorts with themes of murder, animal abuse, paranormal, and malevolent spirits delivered with humour, a cast of characters with tongue-in-cheek Dickensian names, and suitably gothic atmosphere. Although each of the chapters stands on its own merits as a compelling short story, the linkage between the stories provides the basis for a clever ending twist in the final chapter.
This is the first of three books that I purchased when I met the author at a local book fair. I’m definitely looking forward to the other two and I’m thrilled to have made the acquaintance of such a skilled local author that I can happily recommend to fellow readers.
“People … it appears we have a problem of some magnitude here.”
A heat wave in northern New England, a fearsome storm, a fog, and then an all-encom“People … it appears we have a problem of some magnitude here.”
A heat wave in northern New England, a fearsome storm, a fog, and then an all-encompassing mist traps a motley collection of shoppers in a grocery store. The mist is pure evil and what it brings to life with it will raise the hackles on a reader’s neck.
THE MIST is a fast-paced, gruesome, gothic, imaginative, creep-fest that showcases Stephen King’s flair for creating a cast of characters with a myriad of reactions to what is pure over-the-top Hollywood horror. But it’s great entertainment and, goodness knows, it’s easy to recommend to lovers of the horror genre.
“Human beings have been eagerly devouring notions of evil and horror since we dwelt in caves and jumped at the shadows and noises occurring just outsi“Human beings have been eagerly devouring notions of evil and horror since we dwelt in caves and jumped at the shadows and noises occurring just outside the comforting range of firelight.”
“Canadians, especially, have always been concerned with notions of what lies beyond our normal existence.”
In ONLY MONSTERS IN THE BUILDING, author Mark Leslie went to great lengths to assure readers who shared his concerns that while paranormals might be creatures that inhabit that realm beyond our normality, they are definitely people too. People, in fact, with all the frustrations, foibles, fears, and failings that we “normals” deal with everyday in our lives. And, in crafting his cast of what Leslie characterized as “supernatural misfits (a studious fairy, a vegan vampire, a shy mermaid, a clingy werecat, and an extroverted troll)”, he also crafted a clever mystery and a brilliant master class in “show, don’t tell” character development!
How did he do it??
ONLY MONSTERS IN THE BUILDING is effectively a novel length reproduction of conversations in a series of therapy sessions between a confused patient (distressed werewolf and definitely paranormal though he may be) and his therapist. But Leslie has managed to alternate those periods of the eponymous Canadian Werewolf Michael Andrews’ directed self-examination with chapters of real-time interaction with the rest of his fellow abnormal paranormals in a cozy locked-room style murder mystery that makes the entire package genuinely enthralling, entertaining, humorous, and compelling.
Leslie’s development of Michael Andrews’ skills as an author and his personality and back story may not constitute a birth to present day autobiography (I mean … how could it? Andrews IS a werewolf after all!). But the extent to which Leslie injects himself into the Michael Andrews persona would please even the likes of Charles Dickens, author of the classic DAVID COPPERFIELD. The novel is absolutely jam-packed with film, music, television, and 20th century cultural references that reflect Leslie’s love of the world he lived in as he grew up. He even managed to sneak in a few cheeky references to his own writing by attributing it to work in Andrews’ bibliography. Fairy Ellie’s gushing praise of SILENT SCREAMS, Michael Andrews’ first and wildly undersold and distinctly unpopular first novel, was in fact a stand-in for one of Leslie’s earlier collection of short stories, ONE HAND SCREAMING which he prefaced with this comment concerning his propensity to mentally collect everyday occurrences for use in his writing,
“Silent screams bounce around inside my head like an impending storm brewing into a force that will escape in a wild dance of chaos and be lost forever if I don’t stop to jot them down.”
If you’ve got more time and patience than you know what to do with, perhaps you might want to re-read ONLY MONSTERS IN THE BUILDING with a view to snagging and listing all of the cultural references or Leslie’s meta-references to his own previous novels, novellas and short stories. An aspiring future scholar of English literature might choose to use that as in a Masters or PhD thesis after Leslie has attained classic status as a horror humorist.
Definitely recommended as one of my Top Ten favourites for this year.
Paul Weiss
P.S. Recommended that is with the very strong caveat that this is NOT a stand-alone novel and would make very little sense without an understanding of the Canadian Werewolf back story. But, fret not, do yourself a favour a go back to A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK, #1 in the series. You're in for a real treat!...more
“Even if, one day, proof is given that our fear-created beings do not actually exist, we will probably invent new ones”
Even as Shakespeare’s coven“Even if, one day, proof is given that our fear-created beings do not actually exist, we will probably invent new ones”
Even as Shakespeare’s coven of witches knew that meeting with Macbeth would ultimately result in something evil,
“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. Open locks, Whoever knocks!”
so did the mind of Canadian author and purveyor of horror shorts know that unexpected meetings between strangers might produce strange, dare I say it, twisted outcomes!
UNEXPECTED STRANGERS is a delightful, quirky, quick and easy, eyebrow raising collection of oddball shorts. I was more than pleased to see the author take a couple of quick shots at two of my favourite boogiemen - organized religion and its propensity to proselytize; and the world’s current misguided fascination with fascism and the far right!
Well done, Mr Leslie. Keep ‘em coming! I’m a big fan and I’m definitely looking forward to further anthologies like this one.
“Literature has always fascinated me. With writing, humankind has developed the ability to elevate a person to a state of immortality.”
… “Perhaps that“Literature has always fascinated me. With writing, humankind has developed the ability to elevate a person to a state of immortality.”
… “Perhaps that is why I had spent the last three decades of my life writing, trying to capture the spirit of myself on paper.”
Well, Mr Leslie, I gotta hand it to you. If this literary tidbit reflects your objective as an author and this gruesome, juicy collection of three little pieces of mayhem reflects “your spirit” on paper, then you’re one mighty sick puppy, LOL!
ACTIVE READER and Other Cautionary Tales From the Book World is a short (but most definitely not sweet) read at 64 pages that will take little more than an hour of your time. But the frisson factor and the number of times that you will find yourself raising your eyebrows with a wry head-shaking grimace are out of all proportion to the miniature proportions of the collection.
ACTIVE READER is a tale of stalking and psychopathy with a brilliant, totally macabre twist ending that would shock even hard-core fans of LAW AND ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT. BROWSERS is a tale of a bookstore with a twisted personality, reminiscent in my mind of the rooms in Robert A Heinlein’s AND HE BUILT A CROOKED HOUSE. If the limited reading time remaining in what we all know is our limited life bothers you, it is a tale that will give you pause and make you perhaps more careful of what you wish for. Last but not least, DISTRACTIONS is a cautionary tale that speaks against taking the simplistic mantras offered by many self-help gurus too literally.
I’ve been a Mark Leslie fan for some time now and ACTIVE READER is obviously on the list of reasons why. Definitely recommended and a virtually certain addition to my Top Ten List for 2024.
And (LOL … I think!), once you’ve read the eponymous story, you’ll understand why I’m a little bit freaked that Mr Leslie signed my copy with the caption, “To Paul, one of my favourite ACTIVE READERS”!! Oh, oh!
I might also add that I'm prompted to seek out my long unread, languishing copy of George Stewart's EARTH ABIDES.
”I read evil things between the lines in the newspapers, and usually very faintly but sometimes quite plainly I see, behind the transparent front o”I read evil things between the lines in the newspapers, and usually very faintly but sometimes quite plainly I see, behind the transparent front of things, that cave-man face …”
THE CROQUET PLAYER is definitely not the kind of story HG Wells fans would expect if they were looking for sci-fi novels that might compare to the likes of THE TIME MACHINE or THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU. It is actually a dark, deeply atmospheric ghost story written with a foreboding, “haunting” literary style that would have done credit to the likes of Edgar Allan Poe or HP Lovecraft. The evil in the story arises from a small town named Cainsmarsh in a clear reference to the first biblical murder. While it dabbles briefly in the ultra-religious Calvinistic preaching against the scientific truth of Darwin’s theories of evolution, ultimately THE CROQUET PLAYER is believed by literary scholars to be a cautionary allegorical tale warning England and the world against the dangers of Hitler and his emerging cult of Nazism. In effect, Wells compares an unnamed Hitler to an emerging universal evil in the world that is equivalent to a resurgence of antediluvian and unevolved beast man or caveman. Frankly, I think this is an insult to the behaviour and thinking of pre-Homo Sapiens species such as the Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon and reflects a rather self-righteous view of the advanced moralistic state of human thinking.
I would prefer to consider a somewhat more modern interpretation (strictly my own, I might add) in which the entire story is allegorical INCLUDING the references to caveman fossils and bones. Consider the caveman fossils and bones as being Hitler and the evils of Nazism which ought to serve as its own warning to today’s and future humanity. The frightening ghostly evil emerging from the mists of the story’s locale in Cainsmarsh stands in for the global fascination with neo-Nazism and hard right-wing politics with which the world is currently flirting. Most notably, of course, the USA might do very well to consider HG Wells as having offered a prescient warning against the rising evils of Trump, MAGA Republicans, and their version of neo-Nazism. YMMV and you might consider this idea to be far wide of the mark, but it is what it is.
“Three smallmouth bass so far, another three pike, and a couple of smaller pickerel … she had pulled in about half of the net already. She’d hoped “Three smallmouth bass so far, another three pike, and a couple of smaller pickerel … she had pulled in about half of the net already. She’d hoped for a few more fish.”
In MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW, Canadian author Waubgeshig Rice explored what happens in a post-apocalyptic world where the bridge to civilization, as fragile and as tenuous as it was when it existed, collapses utterly – complete power failure, total communications blackout, no internet, no telephone, no television, no delivery of any goods or commodities, no fuel.
Ten years later, life in a small aboriginal community fully isolated from the outside world, from the white world, a life renewing their dwindling Anishinaabe traditions, has encountered the fatal roadblock of dwindling resources. Their lake is overfished and the land-based animal resources have fled the neighborhood of their community. Migration to a new home has become a vital necessity and the elders of the community have decided it is time to send a scouting party to their traditional home area of the northern shores of Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. They need to discover whether life in their former home is viable.
As one might expect in any such novel, the reader is met with a complete spectrum of actions and reactions – heroism, cowardice, bravery, courage, violence, fear, hope, despair, doubt, greed, generosity, leadership, withdrawal and, of course, more than a few deaths under a myriad of related circumstances. Sadly, author Rice also tells a story in which a post-apocalyptic world has failed to learn from its past errors, its past hatred, and most definitely has not evolved into a post-racial world. Racism and xenophobia remains an endemic component of white, western society.
MOON OF THE TURNING LEAVES is a worthy sequel and although it does not have quite the strength and compelling urgency of its predecessor MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW, it is an easy novel to recommend to those who enjoy themes of post-apocalypse and dystopia. Learning some of the components of aboriginal Anishinaabe culture and their relationship to the world around us is a definite bonus.
I’m generally not a fan of the horror genre. That and my brother’s firmly stated dislike of Stephen King’s work Yes, Virginia, there IS a multiverse!
I’m generally not a fan of the horror genre. That and my brother’s firmly stated dislike of Stephen King’s work (our tastes seem reasonably closely aligned) kept me from trying anything by King for until I was firmly ensconced in my eighth decade of reading. Other than serendipity and finding a free copy in one of our Local Free Library boxes, I can’t imagine what prompted me to start with an immense chunkster like 11/22/63! But start it I did … and my reaction is hands down “WOW”! 11/22/63 is a page turner for every one of its 1100 pages.
If somebody suggested to me that it was possible to create a novel that dumped historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, dystopia, alternate history, and romance into a genre blender to create a credible and completely compelling novel that would have me holding my breath through the length of a 1000+ page doorstopper, I would in turn have suggested that they get their head read. 11/22/63 fits the bill.
A time portal or an alternate world portal is a well-worn fantasy trope. Indeed a reader of fantasy and science fiction would not raise many eyebrows if they suggested it was over-used. But once Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in small town Maine steps through a time portal and finds himself in a very racist, very misogynist, very McCarthy-esque anti-Communist mid-20th century USA, Stephen King’s awesome story-telling ability will carry you away.
The pathos in King’s description of an essay from one of Epping’s students describing his father’s sledge-hammer slaughter of their entirely family was heartbreaking. The heartwarming evolution of Epping’s love for fellow teacher Sadie Dunhill (in the past, mind you) would put to shame any efforts by any romance author you care to name. There’s a fabulously clever twist. Epping’s presence in the past invokes the well known butterfly effect and changes his subsequent future BUT any return visit to the past resets everything to where it was before his first step through the portal. Now THAT would put a smile on any successful sci-fi or fantasy author’s face. The new past and alternate future history created by Epping’s interference in the events in 1963 Dallas is disturbing and completely terrifying.
Taking a cue from Alfred Hitchcock’s working manuals and his perennial cameo appearances in his movies, King manages to squeeze in any number of sneaky references to Pennywise, the evil clown of IT fame. (I’m betting there were other references to previous novels sprinkled throughout the story but – as I said – I haven’t read any other King novels so, if they were there, they went right over my head).
Did I say that I hadn’t read any other King novels? That’s a situation I plan to change very quickly.
“The big smile I’d been sporting vanished like critical thinking skills at a Trump rally …” It’s tough not LOL, you had me with the opening sentence!
“The big smile I’d been sporting vanished like critical thinking skills at a Trump rally …” It’s tough not to feel proud of a clever Canadian author who likes to take an occasional dump on the Republican situation in the USA. But I digress.
LOVER’S MOON, #5 in Leslie’s CANADIAN WEREWOLF series, closes with an ominous epilogue in which Michael Andrews, expat Canadian author living in New York City and the eponymous werewolf of the series, is advised in curt, unfeeling, and very hard-edged terms, that any further contact with Gail, the hard-won love of his life is out of the question. She is, forever more, beyond his reach. Gail’s brother, Ben, goes on, “Sit down, Andrews … you’re definitely going to need to be sitting down for this.” With hardly enough time to draw a shocked breath, HEX AND THE CITY picks up the story line there and continues.
For reasons long buried in the mists of paranormal’s antiquity, Michael Andrews’ and Gail Sommers’ love, their friendship, and, indeed, even the act of thinking of or communicating with one another, has fulfilled the terms of an old curse and opened the world to the predation of evil denizens of the paranormal world – trolls, wraiths, evil witches, and the mundane world of violent crime, hatred, and the unfortunately more familiar likes of hard right-wing xenophobia, pugilistic nationalism, and neo-Nazism. The ugliness of white supremacist skinhead groups like the Proud Fighters for America degenerates to dangerous new levels. HEX AND THE CITY is the story of Michael’s and Gail’s battle to deploy the tool of witch’s magic to reverse that curse and to find a way to fulfill their love for one another in spite of it.
“ … understand that you are a very small part of the world. You cannot create magic; you are magic. And you can learn to harness the power of the earth’s magic if you stop thinking about it and start listening to it. Every animal, every star, every blade of grass and drop of water. All life. All death. All of it is connected, and all of it is magic.”
In more general terms, HEX AND THE CITY might be characterized as an adult good vs evil tale set firmly in a world that is a combination of human evil, horror, and the paranormal. To a reader with firmly established left-wing proclivities like my own, it might even be perceived as an extended metaphor for the USA’s current struggle against the accelerating existential threat posed by the rise in right-wing Republican nationalism and its effect on American culture. However you interpret the novel’s story line, it must be said that HEX AND THE CITY is a gripping, fast-paced and deeply moving page-turner from first page to last that represents growth and an as yet unseen maturity in Mark Leslie’s writing skills that has been enabled, fostered, and assisted by his partnership with co-author Julie Strauss.
Kudos to both Leslie and Strauss for a job well done. I’m definitely looking forward to more of your work both in partnership and as individuals.
“We realize that we know next to nothing about the Anasazi”
“After three decades of mysterious and inexplicable discoveries … we don’t understand their“We realize that we know next to nothing about the Anasazi”
“After three decades of mysterious and inexplicable discoveries … we don’t understand their culture, we don’t understand their religion. We cannot read their petroglyphs and pictographs. We do not know what languages they might have spoken. We do not know why they covered the Southwest wit lighthouses, shrines, roads, and signaling stations.”
Nora Kelly is a dedicated young archeologist figuratively following in her father’s footsteps trying to uncover the answers to the host of questions about the Anasazi, an enigmatic southwest US aboriginal culture. When she receives a letter from her father, long thought to be dead, that hints at the existence of Quivira, a mythical Anasazi city, the El Dorado and the Rosetta Stone of their culture as it were, she rapidly puts together an expedition into the difficult, isolated heart of Utah’s wilderness canyon country. With the help of the puzzling instructions contained in that letter, Nora now sets out in search of her father’s literal footsteps to find Quivira, an unprecedented archeological achievement that would completely eclipse the likes of Howard Carter’s celebrated discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.
But someone (or something) does not want her to succeed and it seems they are willing to go so far as gruesome ritualistic murder to stop her. And there seems to be reason to believe that those who would stop them are “the spotted-clay witches, the skinwalkers, the wolfskin runners”.
THUNDERHEAD is 10% horror and supernatural, 30% extended informative, educational, and spectacularly interesting essay on the search for the history of the Anasazi and the minutiae of archeological techniques and research, 50% high speed suspense thriller with spills, chills, twists, and turns, and, last but not least, 10% reserved for the requisite inclusion of a little boy-girl action and romance. Oh, and did I say that it’s a 100% enjoyable addition to the Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child canon and a great start to the new Nora Kelly series. Between Nora Kelly and the re-appearance of New York Times journalist Bill Smithback of Aloysius Pendergast RELIC fame, the series promises to be thoroughly entertaining. I’m definitely looking forward to the next entry, OLD BONES.
“Before crawling inside, the fire ant releases a chemical signal from the tip of its abdomen, directed to all the nearby fire ants.”
“It means, FOLLOW “Before crawling inside, the fire ant releases a chemical signal from the tip of its abdomen, directed to all the nearby fire ants.”
“It means, FOLLOW ME. Then the first giant fire ant wriggles eagerly into the house towards the alluring, familiar smell of its target.”
MURDER BUGS is a bit of a tough nut to crack when it comes to deciding which genre it belongs to. The back cover marketing blurb suggests it “is a fun mystery novel about an entomologist recruited to help the police catch a serial killer who uses insects as deadly weapons.” Well, that’s certainly accurate insofar as summarizing the plot in a single line is concerned but I’d stop a long, long way short of suggesting that there was anything even remotely “fun” about it. For my money, it’s a hard core horror and far future sci-fi combo that uses a unique and quite gruesome series of murders as the underlying motivation.
In my experience, the plot details were entirely unique, entertaining, and even informative – insects, insect habits, and their chemicals and toxic venoms as a murder weapon; the state of scientific research in the field of entomology; oversized insects created by DNA manipulation; and (get this one!) use of recombinant DNA techniques to create an insect-human chimera that added notions of rational human thinking and the trace of human emotions to the more instinctive behaviour of insects such as ants, scorpions, and centipedes. I was even impressed to discover that, without interrupting the story flow for even a moment, author Coakley had managed to insert a brief info-dump style sidebar essay on the behaviour and treatment of a normal human herpes simplex virus and its tendency to jump out of hiding when the carrier is under stress (and having been a carrier for most of my life, I know ALL about how it comes and goes in a most irritating fashion!)
Last but not least, I was pleased to note that the novel’s setting was my very own hometown, Hamilton, Ontario, and I commend Coakley on getting the geographic details absolutely spot on. Getting a visual image of the story’s events through the entire length of the novel was an added bonus.
I’m happy to recommend MURDER BUGS as a worthy addition to the world of horror and sci-fi by another Canadian author who deserves a wider readership. Well done, Mr Coakley.
DARK SHADOWS is Mark Leslie’s third collection of macabre short stories under the series title NOCTURNAL SCROn shadows, scarecrows and silent screams!
DARK SHADOWS is Mark Leslie’s third collection of macabre short stories under the series title NOCTURNAL SCREAMS. If horror built on gushing gore, gruesome violence, or groping, grunting and groaning vampires and zombies with episodic bouts of graphic sex is your thing, you’re definitely in the wrong place. Leslie’s version of horror shorts can be characterized as a thinking man’s old-time story-telling suitable for scaring the pants off your friends around a campfire. With a distinct economy of words he tells the kind of eyebrow raising, shiver inducing tale that creeps up behind you, taps you on your shoulder and makes you whirl around with a gasp (or a silent scream) wondering how that brilliant twist ending snuck up on you out of the darkness.
Leslie himself proudly calls this collection “three quick jaunts into worlds where darkness mingles with the echoes of cries in the night”. The collection is a small one and will take no more than an hour to read through but it’s brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable and easy to recommend. Be warned … if you are a lover of backcountry camping on Canada’s northern wilderness lakes, what you used to thrill to in the call of a loon will never sound the same to you again!
“… she chanced a glance over her shoulder. That was when she saw him”
“… a heavy set man of about 250 pounds and perhaps six feet tall, wearing a red p“… she chanced a glance over her shoulder. That was when she saw him”
“… a heavy set man of about 250 pounds and perhaps six feet tall, wearing a red plaid hunting jacket, dark green work pants and steel toed working boots. That was not unusal in a mining community during hunting season. The peculiar thing that made Mary decide to hightail it out of there were the navy-blue ski mask the man wore and the hatchet he carried.”
LOL, Holy Jason, Batman … djathink!! I’d be shocked if I read anything at all by Mark Leslie and didn’t find at least one tongue-in-cheek, hit-you-between-the-eyes, come-at-you-out-of-nowhere piece of laugh-out-loud humour like that one. And that, of course, is despite the fact that it occurs in the middle of a totally serious short horror story whose ultimate character and surprise ending is near heartbreaking pathos.
NOCTURNAL SCREAMS VOL 4: LITERARY HAUNTS is an all too brief collection of three shorts that showcases the growing talents of Canadian author Mark Leslie. SPIRITS is a wonderful tale of undying love in a paranormal tale showcasing ghosts in a haunted theater. FALL SPECTACLE is the gripping tale of a small northern community terrorized by an axe murderer. And, last but not least, LESS OF A MAN is a novel twist on a zombie tale in a literary world that, for my money at least, is too darn filled with zombie wars and other zombie tropes of every conceivable flavour. Well, one might say that the flavour of this one is definitely unique. See if you don’t agree!
While Mark Leslie is also not above allowing a little romance and hot sex segment to make a cameo appearance from time to time, it is never gratuitous, intrusive or unreasonably graphic.
LITERARY HAUNTS, a thoroughly enjoyable one or at most two sitting collection of short stories is easy to recommend. I’m a continuing fan.
“No amount of preparation would ever make the sensation of having his nostrils shoved inside his ass as he was squeezed to the size of tardigrade r“No amount of preparation would ever make the sensation of having his nostrils shoved inside his ass as he was squeezed to the size of tardigrade remotely pleasant.”
Passing “through a micro black hole that connected with the right dimension” is obviously a pretty tricky and physically demanding feat, LOL!!
I suspect it’s a simple truism that it’s impossible to find an anthology in which every story knocks the ball out of the park. So let’s get the bad news out of the way first.
A SONG OF DARK THINGS and MESSING WITH THE MULTIVERSE are, not to put too fine a point on it, simply indecipherable. They’re clearly included based on the stated anthology theme of “mystic portals”, “alternate dimensions” and “undiscovered landscapes” but I don’t think the intention was for their plots to remain undiscovered as well. In this reality, the editors of UNKNOWN REALMS would have done well to omit these two laggards as they are the ONLY weak entrants in a rock-solid anthology of winners!
As to the rest, THE MIDNIGHT CITY, for example, is at once a heartbreaking and heartwarming tale dealing with the emotional fallout of a friend’s suicide when one feels in significant part responsible for that suicide in the first place. THE DEMON OF CORPUS CHRISTI is a sweet little paranormal short in which an author solves the perennially recurring problem of writer’s block. MICROSCOPIC MAYHEM is a sci-fi treasure and, if I may say so, with a slight modification of character names and descriptions and a minor change-up in the terms used for technology, it would serve admirably as a screenplay for a STAR TREK episode in any of its incarnations. Brilliant, thoroughly enjoyable, humorous in good measure, exciting, high-speed space opera on board a starship with time and space travel capability.
I could go on but suffice it to say that every one of the tales in UNKNOWN REALMS save the two noted weak links in the chain are solid four- to five-star champions. I’ll definitely be looking for a couple of the collections referred to in closing marketing blurbs, A TWIST OF FATE: A Twisted Fairy Tale Anthology and COUNTERCLOCKWISE: A Time Travel Anthology. Yessirree, definitely recommended!
I purchased this gem at a local book fair so, with considerable thanks, I'll pass along extra kudos and two thumbs-up to the proud Canadian authors included.
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