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The Unknown
Makanda centers on a crime scene investigator investigating a series of mutilated bodies dating back to 1973 in a region where local legend, cryptid folklore, and biological terror blur into nightmare. Where did the idea behind this story come from?
There exist real police reports and other supporting documents from 1973 from people who saw the Big Muddy Monster firsthand. Funnily enough, I’m acquainted with one of several people who saw the monster and were interviewed by the local Murphysboro police department (though I didn’t find that out until after I’d written my novel). I took eyewitness accounts and local legend and combined them with violence, gore, fear, suspense, and a giant dash of biology to add my own nefarious spin onto the landscape and unsuspecting folks of southern Illinois.
Giant City State Park becomes almost a character itself in the story. How did the landscape and atmosphere of southern Illinois shape the tone and direction of the novel?
Giant City State Park is a legitimate character in real life. The park is huge and beautiful. Every day, folks come from all over the world to visit the park and its gorgeous winding trails, verdant expanse, and serene landscape. The Shawnee National Forest here in southern Illinois is exceptionally large, with a varied terrain of rock formations, woods, creeks, wetlands, and flora and fauna. The park is peaceful yet dark and brooding come sundown. It’s quite atmospheric in many ways.
The idea of a local legend returning in a new form is central to Makanda. What do you hope readers take away about the relationship between myths, fear, and the unknown?
I hope that folks understand that while times change, people change, and landscapes change, our cemented fears rarely change. Sure, it can be said that myths change – which they do (that’s part of the allure of our myths and legends). But at the end of the day, those myths, fears, and the unknown rarely change in our minds. The circumstances that cause that fear may change, but the idea behind the fear remains the same. We will always be afraid of the what-ifs. We will always be afraid of the unknown. And we will always be afraid of the boogeyman in whatever form it manifests itself. Don’t believe me? Go and read IT by Stephen King. That book will change your mind.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I write all the time. Even on days that I’m physically and mentally drained, I have to write so as to offer my mind some respite from itself. I refer to the endless library of information inside my mind as my Hoard. Inside my Hoard are a plethora of folks, and the only thing they require to become real and substantial is my unwavering, incessant need to write. If I write, those folks inside my Hoard become quiet. If they’re quiet, I’m allowed a smidgeon of peace from time to time. With that said, I have enough written works to release one novel every year or two for the next two decades. However, as it currently stands, I do not yet know what book will be released next. I’ll pray to God for clarity on what comes next. But I will say that I’m leaning towards a collection of short stories based solely on southern Missouri during the summer. Whatever book comes next will be within the next year and a half to two years.
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When mutilated hikers begin turning up in Giant City State Park, crime scene investigator Janice Redfield suspects the truth is far worse than an animal attack. Decades earlier, locals whispered about the Big Muddy Monster—a towering nightmare blamed for a string of brutal deaths in 1973. Now the legend is waking up.
Born from a microscopic parasite older than history, the creature grows smarter and deadlier with every host it consumes—cricket, snake, deer, man—until it becomes a towering apex predator with a hunger for perfection. As blood floods forests, classrooms, and homes, science, obsession, and violence collide.
Makanda is a relentless descent into body horror, biological terror, and vivid brutality—where survival may demand the unthinkable, and mercy comes at the price of sanity.
Makanda
Makanda is a horror novel rooted in southern Illinois, where local legend, forensic investigation, cryptid folklore, and biological terror all feed into the same creeping nightmare. The story begins with Janice Redfield investigating mutilated bodies in Giant City State Park, then stretches back to 1973 to show how the area’s old fear of the Big Muddy Monster never really disappeared. By the time the book states, “Terror was on its way,” it’s not just setting a mood. It’s warning the reader that the past and present are about to overlap in a very bloody way.
What makes the book feel personal is how much time it spends with Janice and Frank Redfield. Their marriage is funny, affectionate, blunt, and lived-in, full of teasing, coffee, anxiety, sex jokes, hiking, hunting, and the kind of shorthand that only comes from deep love. Frank’s anxiety and Janice’s emotional exhaustion give the horror a human center, so the monster isn’t just something stalking the woods. It’s something pressing against the fragile comfort of their everyday life.
The creature itself is a mix of cryptid nightmare and biological experiment, and that combination gives the book its identity. The science around spores, hosts, cocoons, cytoplasm, and genetic recombination turns the local monster legend into something physical and evolutionary. At the same time, the story keeps the folklore texture alive through old memories, whispered fear, sightings, and people who know more than they want to say. When the book later says, “The hunt was on,” it lands because the monster has become more than a rumor. It has a target.
The novel is also graphic, and its violence is meant to be felt. Bodies are torn apart, heads are destroyed, and death is often described in close, messy detail. But the gore isn’t the only thing driving the story. The book keeps circling grief, abuse, racism, trauma, and the damage people carry after seeing something they can’t explain. Gladys and Jonas bring in the scientific curiosity, Janice and Frank bring the emotional weight, and the older townspeople bring the history that makes Makanda feel haunted before the monster ever steps into the light.
Makanda is a creature-horror novel with a strong sense of place and a lot of heart beneath the blood. It’s about the woods, the stories people tell about them, and the terrifying idea that legends might simply be misunderstood biology waiting for the right conditions to return. The book works best when it lets its characters talk, joke, worry, and love each other before the horror crashes in. That makes the final stretch hit harder because by then the reader isn’t only afraid of what’s in the trees. They’re afraid of what it can take from people who’ve become real.
Pages: 404 | ASIN : B0GY67TRWH
Shadows of the Archipelago: An Anthology of Philippine Mythological Creatures
Shadows of the Archipelago, by E. R. Escober, is a dark anthology that reimagines Philippine mythological creatures through tragic, emotionally heightened stories of love, terror, betrayal, and vengeance. Across tales centered on the Nuno sa Punso, Tikbalang, Manananggal, Diwata, Multo, mermaid, Batibat, and Aswang, the book treats folklore not as decorative mythology but as a living force: something old, wounded, and still watching from the edges of human life. These are monster stories, yes, but the deeper concern is often what people do to the misunderstood, the lonely, the beautiful, and the cursed.
I was struck by how insistently the book asks me to reconsider the word “monster.” Escober’s creatures are frightening, but they are rarely simple villains. The Nuno becomes a protector whose love is misread as horror; the Tikbalang’s violence grows from persecution and grief; the Batibat becomes less a random nightmare than a moral reckoning. The book’s strongest moments come when folklore and human cruelty collide, creating a kind of gothic pressure in which the supernatural is not the scariest thing in the room. I appreciated that the stories don’t merely parade legendary beings across the page. They give them sorrow, appetite, dignity, and doom.
The style is dramatic, sometimes operatic, and it leans into excess: curses crackle, grief burns, bodies transform, and love tends to arrive already shadowed by catastrophe. That intensity won’t be for every reader. But the book’s fervor also gives it its peculiar magnetism. It reads like folklore retold around a fire by someone who refuses to whisper, someone who wants each legend to feel less like an artifact and more like a warning pressed into your palm.
I would recommend Shadows of the Archipelago to readers who enjoy folklore, mythology, dark fantasy, supernatural horror, gothic tragedy, creature horror, and mythic retellings with a strong emotional core. Readers who admire the folkloric menace of Neil Gaiman or the culturally rooted darkness of Silvia Moreno-Garcia may find a similar pleasure here, though Escober’s work is more fevered and melodramatic in its delivery. This is a book for those who like their legends blood-warm, grief-soaked, and morally thorny.
Pages: 210 | ASIN : B0GP2QB14K
The Light Reapers: A Good Day to Die
The Light Reapers: A Good Day to Die, by Gary Hickman, is a post-apocalyptic military horror thriller that follows Priest and the Light Reapers as they face a world overrun by infected monsters, ruthless human enemies, and the rising threat of the Trinity, three intelligent, terrifying beings with plans that reach far beyond simple survival. The story moves from brutal rescue missions and underground battles to safe zones that may not be safe at all. At its core, though, this is a book about loyalty. Who gets saved. Who gets left behind. And what it costs to keep fighting when the world keeps giving you reasons to stop.
Hickman writes like he wants the reader strapped into the passenger seat of an armored vehicle with no seatbelt. The action comes fast, loud, and bloody, but there is more going on here than gunfire and monsters. Priest is written as a man shaped by rage, grief, and purpose, and that mix gives the book its emotional weight. He’s not soft, and the story never pretends he is. Still, the quieter moments, especially the ones built around Dora, Doc, Vivian, Lia, and the larger Reaper family, give the violence somewhere to land. I liked that. Without those moments, the book could have become one long firefight. Instead, it has breath between the explosions.
Hickman’s choices are bold, sometimes harsh, and often intentionally uncomfortable. This isn’t a gentle post-apocalyptic novel. The horror is physical, but it is also moral. The monsters are frightening, yet the human betrayals can feel even uglier. I found myself thinking a lot about how the book treats obedience, power, and protection. The Trinity wants control. The Reapers survive because they choose each other. That contrast works well. The dialogue can be blunt and rough around the edges, but it fits the world and the people living in it. These are soldiers, survivors, killers, parents, lovers, and friends trying to hold a line in a ruined world. They don’t speak in polished speeches. They snap, joke, curse, grieve, and keep moving.
I would recommend The Light Reapers: A Good Day to Die to readers who enjoy gritty military science fiction, post-apocalyptic horror, and action-heavy thrillers with a strong found-family thread. It will especially appeal to readers who like their heroes damaged but loyal, their villains monstrous in more ways than one, and their survival stories soaked in danger from the first page to the last. This is a violent, emotional, high-stakes genre novel, and it fully commits to the brutal, high-stakes story it sets out to tell.
Pages: 381 | ASIN : B0GZZ51ZBW
Illusion of Control
Be Wary of Wishes Gone Awry is a collection of horror and dark fantasy stories where ordinary desires like love, relief, and progress are granted in twisted forms. From ships to suburbs to labs, your settings feel grounded before they unravel. Why start from the ordinary?
I often begin with the ordinary because that’s where trust lives. A quiet suburb, a research lab, a ship at sea. These are places we believe we understand, and they give the reader something solid to stand on. Once that foundation is set, the unraveling feels closer and more invasive.
To me, horror works best when it grows out of the familiar rather than arriving from something distant or unknown. The ordinary holds its own vulnerabilities in routine, comfort, and assumption. Those become the fault lines where something darker can take hold. By the time the world begins to warp, it is already too late to step away cleanly.
Many characters believe they’re making rational, even loving choices. Why was that illusion of control important?
Because it’s one of the most human illusions we have. People rarely see themselves as reckless or destructive in the moment. They see themselves as justified, careful, or acting out of necessity or love.
That illusion of control creates a kind of tragic tension. The reader often senses the danger before the character does, which makes each decision feel heavier. The characters are not foolish. They are navigating incomplete truths, emotional blind spots, or quiet desperation.
In many ways, the horror doesn’t come from losing control. It comes from realizing you never had it in the way you believed you did.
Many stories use guilt, grief, and shame as part of the fear. Why lean into those emotions? Do you see horror as a way to process those feelings or to expose them?
I believe it is both. Guilt, grief, and shame are already haunting emotions; they linger, they distort memory, they reshape how we see ourselves and others. Horror gives those feelings a kind of narrative body. It lets them move, speak, and sometimes retaliate.
I’m interested in how these emotions refuse to stay buried. Horror becomes a space where what’s been avoided or suppressed is forced into the open, often in exaggerated or symbolic ways. Yet, there is also a quieter side to it. Writing through those emotions can be a form of understanding them, tracing their edges, seeing how they grow, and what they demand.
In this sense, horror is both exposure and exploration. It reveals, but it also listens.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
My upcoming novella, Patchwork: An Ozian Tale of Dark Fantasy, is set to release at the end of May. It reimagines Oz as a haunted, decaying fairyland, a place where creation and decay exist side by side, and every act of transformation leaves its mark.
I also have several other projects in the works, but after Patchwork, my focus will shift to a dark fantasy novel titled The Dreamer. The story follows Maddie, a young woman struggling with a prophetic bloodline she can no longer keep locked away. Standing on the edge of revealing her curse, Maddie must decide whether to confront the fate it foretells or be consumed by it.
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