666 Flags: A Fund Raising Anthology

by Ben Arzate, A.M. Bacon, Erin Banks

Ladies and gentlemen I am beyond proud to announce the authors who will be participating in what will hopefully be the first of an annual fundraiser to create a legal defense fund for all indie horror creators. We live in a dangerous day and age when the overly vocal minority seem to have an unbalanced amount of power. Guilty people want to ban or burn books. People who want to keep the status quo want authors and artist punished for their creative vision. It is my pleasure to light the path and my honor to be associated with these gifted writers. Join us or stay sane!

132 pages, Paperback

First published June 19, 2023

About the author

Ben Arzate writes and lives life. Sometimes he forgets to do the latter.

Contact: benarz13(at)gmail(dot)com

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few months ago, I started seeing a lot of my favorite indie authors changing their profile pictures to a black dot with words about resisting cancel culture. Intrigued, I asked why and was told it was in support of a fellow indie author that had lost his job because someone complained about a horror book he had written years ago. After some research, I found this to be true and made it a point to order this horror book to show my support to an author who had lost his livelihood because of a work of fiction. To think someone could lose their job because an anonymous person took offense to a work of fiction was absolutely bonkers to me. Then I started seeing posts about setting up a legal defense fund for indie authors should they ever be caught in the same harrowing situation. I was thrilled to see a publisher taking action that could have a tangible effect if this were to happen again. This is a very long-winded way to say that I was extremely excited that 666 Flags came to be. It's an important cause and I'm very happy that PsychoToxin Press decided to put out a call for stories based on the theme park that committed this unjust firing.

Now for the book itself. This anthology was extremely fun. Stories from multiple authors set in carnivals and amusement parks were bound to be a blast and my expectations were definitely met. With an anthology theme about a specific thing, it is not uncommon to find some repetition and similarities in the stories, but this only occurred a couple of times. The similarities were not with the stories themselves; they were all unique and original, but the same setting was used more than once. There wasn't a single story that didn't entertain me on some level, but as usual, some stood out as clear favorites.

Amusement by Jesse D'Angelo. This one was excellent. The tension was high, the gore was quick but brutal. It was completely bananas and fun!

Full Circle by C. Derick Miller. I really enjoyed the way we started this story basically knowing the basic outcome within the first couple of paragraphs. The remainder of the tale was spent experiencing our MC Joe's descent into madness. Finding out his hidden darkness, the amount of time and effort he went into planning his horrible revenge, and a fairly surprising twist toward the end made it a wonderfully twisted tale.

A Quick in and Out by J. Rocky Colavito. This one was my favorite. An amazing story based on a social media sensation crew that excites viewers by trespassing in locations that are supposedly haunted. There was some top-notch character development, fearful imagery, gore, queer inclusion and revenge. A perfect short story.

This anthology is definitely worth picking up. It is for an important cause that all of us in the horror community should be getting behind. Authors and readers alike.

[A.M. Bacon · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a contributing author, I am a little biased for this collection, but don't take my word for it.

This story collection combines the works of 13 of some of the newest breakthrough authors in the Horror world.

We were brought together to help bring awareness to the cancel culture that ruined one of our own's dream job because he wrote a historical fiction story years ago that had a marriage, and thoughts on marriage to, a younger girl in her teens. The story was based in the early 1800's when that practice was commonplace, and that would have made it historically accurate. But then Six Flags fired him because somehow they found out who he was, where he worked, and got him fired.

The thirteen stories in this collection range from mild horror to full blown extreme. None of them are the same, and the variety is refreshing and introduces you to new talent in the genre.

I highly suggest this book, and my favorites were Trick Mirror and Amusement.

We need another of these anthologies!

Amusement parks are some of the creepiest, scariest, most popular locations for a horror story and we need more stories!