December Scaredy-Kit!

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December Scaredy-Kit!

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1whitewavedarling
Nov 30, 2019, 3:55 pm

This year, December is all about finishing out the year, and maybe starting off the new year with some new favorites.

If you need to catch up on some other scaredy-kit plans, then this is by all means the time to do it, but this month is also about discovering small press and indie authors who might go unnoticed otherwise. With today being small business Saturday, I thought it might be the perfect time to post!

It used to be that small presses and indie & self-publishing authors had a bit of a bad name, but more and more small publishers and indie authors are making a real name for themselves as quality publishers/writers. Although they can be harder to discover, they're worth the work!

If you have a favorite small/indie publisher or author who fits into this realm, I hope you'll take the opportunity this month to tell us about them. Meanwhile, here are some of my favorites...

If you're looking for quality horror, Hellbound Books is a fantastic small press that publishes a lot of great work. Unnerving Mag is primarily a magazine, but they're also publishing more and more quality horror fiction. In fact, they have a "Rewind or Die" series that's paying homage to the horror of the 80s in 2020, and you can subscribe to the whole series of 20 novellas (in ebook form or print form) if you want to introduce yourself and some horror lover you know to a bunch of great horror writers in the indie scene.

On the indie author side, JK Franko and Tony Marturano are writing fantastic suspense. Michaela L. Cane writes a blend of suspense and erotic paranormal romance that I adore, and Michael Sliter writes the best grimdark I've seen on ages. J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon are writing some great horror and dystopians, and I also think a lot of Grace Hamilton, who writes post-apocalyptic fiction. If you want something more on the humorous or sci-fi side, JD Brink has put out some fantastic work.

All of these are indie and/or self-publishing authors who aren't the easiest folks to discover, but they're worth looking into. Most of them (if not all) can be found on Kindle Unlimited and Amazon.

So, who are you exploring this December?

2LibraryCin
Nov 30, 2019, 3:59 pm

I did a bit of investigating a week or two ago and discovered a couple on my tbr published by small presses.

Options for me:

- Fantasticland / Mike Bockoven (publisher: Skyhorse)
- Garbage Man / Joseph D'Lacey (publisher: Beautiful Books)

3JayneCM
Modifié : Nov 30, 2019, 11:24 pm

I am thinking of Pretty Marys All In A Row by Gwendolyn Kiste (Broken Eye Books) - a novella about all the Marys of urban legend and those creepy rhymes - Bloody Mary, Resurrection Mary, etc. My problem is finding books like these at the library. So if not, I will revisit modern thrillers with No Exit by Taylor Adams.

4Tess_W
Modifié : Déc 1, 2019, 2:48 pm

I'm going to read The Yellow Wallpaper, which I've had on my e-reader for years. It's tagged as a horror classic, so it's time! This was a short story and I had to finish it to be able to understand it. I THINK it is a story about a woman suffering from post childbirth depression. It is gothic in nature. Meh....

5JayneCM
Déc 2, 2019, 5:30 pm

>3 JayneCM: I will still try to get hold of my indie press book, but I read No Exit last night as it was due back at the library. So glad I did!

I read it as a revisit of the modern thrillers category. I do not generally read thrillers; in fact, until starting the category challange for the first time this year, I would say I would only have read two or three. So I do not have much of a comparison. All I can tell you was this book was a ride. I read it non-stop - luckily everyone had gone to bed as if I had to stop to cook dinner, everyone would have gone hungry!

It had me gasping with each twist and turn in the plot. And there were so many twists. Every time I felt I could take a breath of relief and you knew how it would all turn out, a new twist would present itself. But none of them seemed inconceivable or contrived. There was even an extra twist on the last page just when you thought everything was all wrapped up.

6MissWatson
Déc 6, 2019, 3:32 am

I finished El príncipe de la niebla by Carlos Ruiz Zafón which would have also fit for May's theme of children's horror.

7mathgirl40
Déc 11, 2019, 9:58 pm

I'm not sure I'll manage to finish this book by the end of the year, but I'm hoping to read Armed in Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield, which is supposedly a blend of fantasy, historical fiction and horror. It won the Aurora (Canadian SFF) Best Novel award this year, and it's published by independent publisher ChiZine.

8lowelibrary
Déc 13, 2019, 1:51 am

I am reading Thirst by Dania Deschamps from the small indie press White Bull Publishing

9MissWatson
Déc 13, 2019, 3:50 am

Las luces de Septiembre is the final volume in the Trilogy of Fog, and it is just as meh as the first one.

10JayneCM
Déc 13, 2019, 7:49 pm

>9 MissWatson: Great perseverance then, to get through them all! Sometimes you just keep reading hoping it will get better, particularly if it seems like a good story idea.

11MissWatson
Déc 15, 2019, 4:46 am

>10 JayneCM: Well, the main purpose was to reactivate my rusty Spanish, and that worked. Mostly because the vocabulary here is quite restricted.

12LibraryCin
Déc 24, 2019, 11:53 pm

FantasticLand / Mike Bockoven
4 stars

When a hurricane ravishes Florida, amusement park FantasticLand is left on its own for a while, as it’s a bit further inland, plus there is plenty of food to keep the few hundred staff who stayed behind going for quite a while. Most of the staff is young, in their late teens or early twenties. Little do they know on the outside that the staff have turned savage and are killing each other…

We actually hear about the aftermath at the start of the story. The book is in the form of interviews, looking back at what happened. The start of the book is interviews with people about the storm itself and the people ready to go in to help, and the preparations within the park for disasters. The main part/middle of the book is interviews with the staff left behind in the park, as we get a look at how things went bad and the things that actually happened in the park while they were cut off from the outside world. The interviews at the end were with people associated with the rescue and aftermath.

This was very suspenseful, though a little slow to get started, as it took a bit to find out what was going on inside. Every chapter was interviewing a different person, so there were a lot of characters to remember, but it gave insight into a bunch of different perspectives. Very creepy at times. But, for those who like creepy and horror, it’s one you want to keep reading.

13JayneCM
Déc 26, 2019, 2:21 am

>12 LibraryCin: I'm saving this one up for either KITastrophe or ScaredyKIT for next year! Good to hear you liked it.

14LibraryCin
Déc 26, 2019, 12:26 pm

>13 JayneCM: Yes, I was thinking it would make a good KITastrophe one! It was a ScaredyKIT read for me this month, though I think it would have fit in one of my challenges any month since October.

15chlorine
Modifié : Déc 28, 2019, 5:26 am

I missed several months for this challenge, and among those the theme that inspired me most was the one about ghosts. So I read Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand. This is in the form of interviews years after a famous folk star singer disappeared in the summer while the band was staying in an old house in the countryside.

It was a pleasant read, that I would recommend.

16LibraryCin
Déc 31, 2019, 5:10 pm

This one is more suspense/thriller than horror, but I'm counting it.

The Other Mrs / Mary Kubica
4.5 stars

Will and Sadie have moved out to an isolated island community in Maine after Will’s sister died and left her house, and the care of her 16-year old daughter, to them. They are hoping this will be a fresh start for their family after they’ve come across a few bumps. Unfortunately, not long after they move in, a woman across the street is murdered.

This was really good. It kept me wanting to keep reading, wanting to know what would happen. The story is (mostly) told from three different viewpoints, Sadie being the main one. I didn’t think Sadie was particularly likeable. There were (of course) twists at the end. I had figured out one small portion of what would happen at the end, but I had other theories that were wrong and there was far more than what I’d guessed.

17mathgirl40
Jan 2, 2020, 10:12 pm

I finished Armed in Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield and loved it. It's set in 14th century Bruges and mixes very realistic depictions of that time and elements of horror and fantasy. I highly recommend it. It's published by ChiZine Publications, which unfortunately, has been embroiled in controversy recently.