Everything is bigger in Texas - including the horror! A Piney woods meth dealer clones Adolph Hitler. A nightmare exorcist meets an inexorable fiend. An eyeball collector gets collected. The apparition of a lynching victim tracks down his executioners. A Texas lawman is undone by shades of his past. A Baphomet recruits converts as a local summer camp. The tales of the baker's dozen who appear in this anthology demonstrate why everything is scarier in Texas…
This book is one of the winners of the 2018 North Texas Book Awards - Short Stories Category.
E. R. Bills is a writer from Fort Worth, Texas. He received a BA in Journalism from Southwest Texas State University and does freelance writing for publications around Texas.
I chose this rating because I am a little biased. I am a huge fan of Jeremy Hepler's. His stories are well thought out and exciting as heck! The players in this story are interesting enough and put out in the story as if they were close friends but not too close. It is like tantalizing is with the characters of the story and the plot and action are well thought out but not too wordy. All in all, this book is wonderfully put and my fave author is the shining star in my eyes!
The lineup is solid with some new names and some well-worn ones.
The Teeth by Jacklyn Baker: I will definitely be reading more from this author. The story...well...the first word...hooks you like a hit of laughing gas & taps into an aesthetic fear that I didn't realize was there. This would have been fun as a full story but was a well done & quickly escalating couple pages, nonetheless. Bring the Novocain.
Cemetery Days by Patrick Harrison III: a good ole big-footed creature feature. The story focuses on two kids growing up in the South who stumble across Bigfoot. Harrison III does a fantastic job setting up his characters and his dialogue is beautiful.