Momentary Aberrations

by Tom Cardamone

148 pages, Paperback

Published October 26, 2025

About the author

Tom Cardamone’s speculative short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Spectrum award. His work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies like So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction, Best Gay Fiction, Best Gay Erotica, Best Gay Romance, and Madder Love: Queer Men and the Precincts of Surrealism. He is the author of the erotic fantasy novel, The Werewolves of Central Park and editor of The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered.

Reviews

[Shrike]

Momentary Aberrations by Tom Cardamone is beautifully written queer speculative fiction. Gold Elevator, the first piece, sets the tone perfectly: "Keep swallowing flesh and breathe out new languages." I adore this exploration of fear, filth, and fantasy. Onto the favorites shelf it goes.

I'm partial to collections with interconnecting threads, and this book delivers. Mr. Moonlight's spooky programming is an especially cool intersection. I love imagining these wildly different stories illuminated by the same black-and-white broadcast.

Thanks so much to the author for sending a copy my way! I'm leaving this review of my own accord.

[Drew]

What if Bram Stoker's Dracula enticed queer victims with a shot of semen instead of a dram of absinthe? The intoxicating result might be like Tom Cardamone's third short story collection -- unafraid of neither the graphically erotic nor the literarily Gothic: Vampires are outwitted via strategically timed blowjobs ("The Life Crimson"); "Ringu"-like VHS tapes release horrors first glimpsed via anime porn ("Night Market"). In a closing essay ("Recall the Creature"), Cardamone admits to the shaping influence of Saturday afternoon TV double-features. Movies like ""I Was a Teenage Werewolf" as well as novelizations of pulp flicks like "Funhouse" inform his kink esthetic whether he's crafting an amusing tale about a new sleeping medication that may have homosexual side-effects ("You Decide How Much Is Enough") or a modern-day fable about a dryad whose nympho appetite gets redirected to precious metals ("Bent on Midnight Frolic") . There's Poe-worthy shocks here too ("A Seppuku of Centerfolds," "Grey Salamanders"...). but with Cardamone, unlike EAP, the chills are always accompanied by serious heat.