To Wallow in Ash, & Other Sorrows

by Sam Richard

Winner of the 2020 Wonderland Book Award for Best Collection

Written during the black-depths of early widowhood, To Wallow in Ash, & Other Sorrows explores grief, loss, and the alluring comforts found within the heart of oblivion. In the spirit of J.G. Ballard, Georges Bataille, and Kathe Koja, these nine Sorrows are a cross-section of literary splatterpunk, transgressive fiction, and weird horror, which seek to illuminate the terror, dread, and discomfort of mourning through the black mirror of the grotesque.

This book is full of pain.
This book is full of tears.
This book is full of ash.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Short Story Collection

159 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2019

About the author

Sam Richard is the author of several books including The Still Beating Heart of a Dead God and the award-winning To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows. He has edited ten anthologies, including the cult hits Profane Altars: Weird Sword & Sorcery and The New Flesh, and his short fiction has appeared in over forty publications. Widowed in 2017, he slowly rots in Minneapolis where he runs Weirdpunk Books. You can stalk him @SammyTotep across most socials or at weirdpunkbooks.com

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories contain more truth than many of us can bear. They pay homage to the raw existence of loss and grief and the horrors that accompany the void of privation. The author's angst is palpable, and he molds each story around the empty shapes that are left behind by the death of a soul mate. Emotions, sexuality, and the depth of physical purgatory are explored in detail, leaving the reader feeling deeply moved and as emotionally purged as the author. Magick and hallucinatory offerings also have their places here, expanding the directions of imagination and the possibilities of redemption.

[John The Crippledgimp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn this book is sad full of the grief, emotions, and the insanity that one feels when losing there soulmate. I could feel the pain of the writers loss his emptiness of losing the one that gave him light. I hope I never have to experience such loss and sorrow. This collection took me awhile to read mostly because it was so dreary, dark, and every word felt full of pain and loss. This collection hits hard and makes you think about pain grief and loss in ways most would like to ignore. Beautifully written but if you read it take your time digest it because even though it's full of darkness horror and pain there is a beauty in the way the words cry out in there own way in each story......... Just damn

[Alex (The Bookubus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is brutally honest about the descent into darkness that the aftermath of loss and the process of grief can be. There is an impressive variety in the style and content of the stories and they are all seriously evocative. There is sadness here but also plenty of layers of the dark and disturbing (and some kinda gross stuff too!) Some of these stories feel incredibly personal while others not so much but still pull from those personal experiences and feelings. An excellent collection that will stick with me.

[Renée · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and gut wrenching. The first story was my favourite.

[Ben Fitts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horror might be a unique genre in that it is widely associated with one specific emotion rather than the variety of life that one otherwise tends to look for in storytelling. However, as any member of the initiated can tell you, horror can run the gambit of feelings and emotions. But if there was ever one book to prove that fact, it would be To Wallow In Ash and Other Sorrows.

This collection would be deserving of a five star rating based on the strength of its opening title story alone, but it’s a strong collection through and through. The stories in this book use grief, loss, hope, memory, love, lust, regret and more to create one of the most chilling collections that I’ve encountered in a while.

[Steve Stred · Rating 5 out of 5]

** Edited as review is now live on Kendall Reviews! **

This may very well be the single hardest book I’ve ever read for review.

Consisting of nine stories, ‘To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows,’ is literally one of two reasons Richard is alive.

The collection begins with an introduction from the author. I know some people love those, some hate them, but this one is completely necessary but also devastating in its reason.

Richard lets us know that his wife passed away suddenly, from an undiagnosed connective tissue issue. This caused an aneurysm. She was gone in her early 30’s. So, Richard is now alive for only two reasons; their dog, who he doesn’t want to leave with the unknown of what will happen to their fur-kid and writing. His outlet.

The collection covers a variety of genres, each feeling like a snippet into the harrowing grief that Richard was dealing with when he was writing the story.

It opens with a story that feels all too personal. I read it and felt a bit awful after, as though I’d accidentally been invited to a private conversation. It showed that, while Richard was absolutely devastated, he was going to attack the stories with no filter. Completely raw and bleak, you’ll read this and love how beautiful it is but also just how it makes your skin crawl.

The melancholy throughout felt like I was watching a My Dying Bride album come to life, the drums slow, the guitar only coming in for spurts of decay, keeping things moving along.

I’m not going to focus too much more on the stories that follow the opener, because these stories need to be read, digested and thought on by each reader.

This collection hits all of the notes you’d want, but the absolute soul-crushing despair that Richard brings to each piece should be experienced on their own merit and with as little pre-knowledge as possible.

I know I’ll be letting this sit for a few months and then I’ll re-read it. I don’t normally read things I’ve already read, but this collection has such depth and texture, that I know I’m going to want to dive back in and let the worlds Richard’s created open again and expand.

This is a book I truly want to recommend, but I also want to say – read at your own peril. It is dark, hurting and the words weep from the page.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A harrowing, raw collection of what I suspect is the original definition of "grievances." (Just looked it up: from the French, grever, "to burden", combined with "grieve.")

An excellent collection and a perfect fit for what NihilismRevised does best, which is to find the void and give it a good telling to.

I've definitely found that chaos is best written about once you can look back at it. So I hope, in a weird way, that Richard has just begun to write about his grief, and suspect that this is a promising step on the best yet to come.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sam Richard has really carved himself a niche in the world of horror. And I'm writing as a reader who has read a lot of horror. Ghosts, demons, serial killers, monsters, backwoods psychos, rapists, plagues, elder gods, witches, warlocks, ecological disaster, abound in good stories and bad, as that is horror after all, but after a while it can all seem sort of the same. Not so in To Wallow in Ash and Other Stories. To be sure the reader gets their fair share of gore and nastiness, but from an emotional substrate I've never encountered in any horror fiction quite like this. His tales of loss, sorrow, transformation, the obsessions of a widower, are so evocative because they are so grounded in detail with a command of language startling for subject matter in many stories so intimate, revelatory, and personal. I won't single out any for mention, because they are all fully worth reading, although I will say even "The Prince of Mars," about William Burroughs as a sort of Edgar Rice Burroughs hero, delivers a moving experience despite its standing apart from most of the other stories in its quirkiness and humor. Make no mistake, To Wallow in Ash won't be like any other collection of gruesome fiction you will ever read. This is pain explored so masterfully in the written word.

[Lesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really the best book I’ve read about (around, under and through) the genuinely surreal experience of sudden loss. What is vaguely described by nonfiction books as “grief” takes fearsome shape here. It can be hard to navigate at times, and some bits of the writing are stronger than others, but it is worth the time invested as long as you don’t expect to come away healed.

[Joe Ortlieb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the most emotional collections I've ever read. I felt the loneliness and heartbreak. I felt a chill running down my spine. The stories were written with not only his heart but his soul.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

At its core, To Wallow In Ash and Other Sorrows is a mediation on grief accomplished through a lens of horror. The collection is bookended by two of the most honest, heart wrenching, and emotionally disturbing pieces of short fiction I’ve read in years. Especially the final tale, Deathlike Love. It’s one of those rare horror stories that leaves you in a funk for hours or even days after reading it.

Though the majority of the stories are metaphorical tales dealing with grief, loss and pain, some can be considered palate cleansers—short breaks from all that bleakness and callbacks to a better time. They’re all great, but my favourite is The Prince of Mars, an absolutely amazing pastiche of William S. Burroughs.

Everyone who reads horror fiction is doing themselves a disservice by not picking up this collection. It’s destined to become a classic in the field and a prime example of the emotional richness of the horror genre.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep, dark, and disturbing at times. Created out of a tragedy comes “To Wallow in Ash and Other Sorrows” by Sam Richard. Now, I’m not one that gets too "in touch" with my emotional side very often, but this book is something else. This is a gut punch to your most inner emotions. And it doesn’t take long to see why.

Based on the loss of a loved one, a spouse, a life partner, Sam wrote these stories in the few days that followed. Out of respect to Sam Richard, I won’t go too far in depth in this review about the tragic event that resulted in the loss of life. I will leave that up to you. In the introduction, Sam goes into detail about the events, and touches briefly on where these stories come from.

I don’t know Sam Richard personally. We’ve chatted a few times here and there. I know him as the dude who runs Weird Punk Books. Who supplies me with these books that are a bit different, that I enjoy. I know him as the guy I see on Twitter from time to time promoting authors that he works with and their works. I’m going to add a “hell of a writer” to that now.

“To Wallow in Ash,” although in a minimal form, is a bit of release for Sam. It’s an outlet. It appears to have allowed him to get some deep thoughts and feelings out and printed. Maybe a bit of a coping mechanism. And these are some fucked up stories. The stories all deal with the loss of a loved one in different ways. Each has just enough shock and disturbing information to keep you wanting to know what’s coming up. You can feel the pain in each story, as the words allow you to flawlessly glide through. The loss of the loved ones leave voids behind that are filled with grief mixed with weird horror.

Although these stories are fiction, tidbits of truth are sprinkled throughout. Real life truth of the horrors that happen, and the empty spaces left behind creating lives to have missing pieces. Bottom line guys, this is not a happy book. But the stories are so damn good.

And even though these stories are so damn good, I found myself reading this collections a little slower than usual. I was letting the darkness and the disturbance and the dreariness to sink in. Beautifully written, this book is able to hit every one of your emotions, while still delivering on that weird horror we’ve all come to like. So it is definitely one you need to take some time with and allow yourself to take it all in, to digest.

In coming up with this review, I found myself struggling at times for the proper words I want to use to describe it. It’s so deep and personal, so I decided there are no proper words to use to describe it. I can’t sit here and tell you enough to make me think I’m getting my point across strong enough for you.

Sam Richard tells you some stories. These stories are weighted down with grief, loss, insanity, guilt, torture, and just plain horror. You can’t unread what you witness within these pages. Some will stick with you longer than other. Some will conjure up old feelings you may have had at one time or another. Some will make your heart ache.

I’m not going to go story for story, but I will mention my favorites. Without a doubt, the first story kicks off the collection with a great “What The Fuck” feeling, in “To Wallow in Ash.”
“Love Like Blood” does not miss a beat. “Those Undone” is insane. And the final story, “Deathlike Love” is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read.

[Elf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had a hard time trying to write about this book. It's a great book, I can get that out of the way pretty fast, but when I try to say something, anything really, about it words just kind of break up into a runny alphabet soup. This is a book about grief, but not like any book about grief you'll ever read. There is no silver lining, there is no release from these dark chains at the very bottom of the deepest chasm. There is no "I got over it and am happy now." That's not really how grief works, and Mr. Richard put himself out, flayed himself open, and showed us all of it just to let you know that whatever you think about true, heart searing, soul destroying grief (unless you have experienced it yourself) is probably wrong, romanticized, or otherwise just a fancy. These tales from beginning to end are harrowing with only one aside that could be considered lighter fare, notably written before the death of Mr. Richards's wife. This is a very bleak collection that explores some of the darkest fringes of the human experience in such an honest, vulnerable, yet mentally disturbing (in a good way!) manner that most people would probably have a time with it. Especially if you think things should always work out just fine. Sometimes they don't. For those looking for some really dank, dark human emotion, however, this book can fill you with something resembling joy or awe as you surpass each obstacle and each story, standing quite strongly on its own, weaves a much wider picture of grief and its power. I truly thank Mr. Richard for writing this collection and sharing it with the rest of us.

[Seb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sam Richard used writing as a catharsis after the death of his wife...


I can't always make sense of what he's trying to say in his narrative the stories being a medium to express his grief, I can only feel his pain, his sadness, his anger, all wrapped up in a dark, black, harsh, hard, bloody, violent whole. And riddled with heartbreaking phrases about what he should have said, what he should have done, or to express his darkest thoughts.

[Tim Murr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I reviewed it for Biff Bam Pop and included the link below for a more detailed review. This book is a wrecking ball and stretches the boundaries of horror fiction. It should be on everyone's shelf.
https://biffbampop.com/2019/10/16/31-...

[Elford Alley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of grief-inspired horror, there is an incredible rawness and weight to each story. This collection will stick with you for a very long time.

[William Tea · Rating 5 out of 5]

***this review originally appeared on The Ginger Nuts of Horror website***

Sam Richard knows a thing or two about putting together literary tributes. As owner of Weirdpunk Books, he’s edited and published such anthologies as Blood for You: A Literary Tribute to GG Allin, Hybrid Moments: A Literary Tribute to the Misfits, and The New Flesh: A Literary Tribute to David Cronenberg.

Now he’s released his own debut short story collection, To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows (published by NihilismRevised). And though not formally marketed as such, this book is in many ways a tribute to Richard’s biggest influence of all: his wife.

In his introduction, the author is upfront about the circumstances that led to this book’s creation. In 2017, Richard’s wife Mo died suddenly and without warning. Nevertheless, her presence is felt on every page here, every sentence and every word, every drop of blank ink and every empty white space. The book is dedicated to her and virtually every story selected for inclusion here has some connection to her, either by virtue of being a piece she herself enjoyed in life or, more often, being directly inspired by her loss.

Knowing all that makes To Wallow in Ash a difficult book to read, and an even more difficult one to review. One can only imagine what it must have been like to write.

To wit, the opening title story reads more like a confessional than a piece of fiction. Told from the first-person POV in a conversational style, the tale’s unnamed narrator finds himself a widower in a situation that is essentially a retelling of events from Richard’s own life.

After cremating his spouse, the narrator returns home with an urn full of ashes and a determination to find some way of holding onto his lost love. The method he chooses is stomach-churning, and his spiraling descent into grief, desperation, and self-destruction is heart-wrenching. That the early half of the narrative sticks so closely to Richard’s own admitted experiences, to the point where the piece initially appears to be a non-fiction essay rather than a made-up story, makes the latter half all the more vivid and harrowing.

Though the next tale is much more blatantly fictional it proves no less soul-crushing. “Love Like Blood” focuses on another widower, this one a man who searches fruitlessly for solace at the bottom of a bottle. One drunken night at a local bar leads to a surreal encounter with a woman who seems in every way his late wife’s double. When the man wakes up in bed the next morning, the doppelganger is gone, leaving the poor guy with nothing but a wicked hangover and an even wickeder VHS tape. “Love Like Blood” goes in a very different direction than one might first assume, and ultimately climaxes in a finale that is shocking, yes, but also disturbingly relatable.

In any other book, “The Prince of Mars” would be solid piece of entertainment, but here it is more: A welcome mercy. A drink of water. A much-needed gasp of air following the suffocating blackness of “To Wallow in Ash” and “Love Like Blood.”

Trading the intimately personal for something more high-concept, “The Prince of Mars” is an inspired mash-up of literature’s two great Burroughs, Edgar Rice and William S. Richard deftly evokes the voice of the latter as he drops the notorious beat author (or at least his thinly veiled alter ego “Bill Lee”) into a fairly straightforward retelling of the former’s first Barsoom novel. Much star-crossed romance, hot man-on-Thark action, and excessive drug use ensues. The juxtaposition of E.R.’s innocent swashbuckling pulp with W.S.’s debauched appetites and hallucinogenic language is riotous. It is also, somehow, surprisingly touching.
Surprising in its own way is “I Know Not the Names of the Gods to Whom I Pray.” One of Richard’s shorter tales, this one nevertheless packs a lot of oomph into a small package with its sensual, lyrical, and grisly account of a pair of lovers locked in an endless cycle, killing one another only to resurrect and do it all over again, over and over for all eternity. It’s serves as a gory, gothic meditation on love and loss, on need and suffering.

Following that is “The Verdant Holocaust,” the second of To Wallow in Ash’s two pieces written prior to the passing of Richard’s wife, alongside “The Prince of Mars.” However where “The Prince of Mars” sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to the rest of the collection’s material (in truth, that is part of its appeal), “The Verdant Holocaust” feels very much at home.

With a plot concerning a pair of punk rockers struggling to revive their friendship after the suicide of a bandmate, it more overtly shares the same themes of death, mourning, fatalism, and attempted (though not necessarily successful) reconstruction that run throughout the collection. That said punk rockers soon run afoul of an apocalyptic backwoods cannibal cult does nothing to lessen the potency of those themes, but it does lighten the mood (in a sense) via a veritable blood-orgy of grisly b-movie splatter.

Another cult is at the center of “Those Undone.” Instead of relishing in the excesses of the trope like “The Verdant Holocaust,” though, “Those Undone” soberly explores the emotional and psychological toll of a child growing up in such an environment. Little by little, piece by piece, the youthful narrator is orphaned, first from his parents, then from his faith, later from sister, and finally from himself. It’s a haunting reflection on survivor’s guilt, and on the directionless that comes when everything you knew disappears overnight.

Guilt of a different kind features heavily in “We Feed This Muddy Creek,” a story about a member of a gang of serial killers who tries to leave the bloodshed behind when he meets a woman who fulfills a need in him that no body-count ever could. This tragic romance tastes bittersweet before it even begins, with an agonizing sense of inevitability looming large from the first line all the way to the fittingly cruel but strangely serene end.

The final two stories in To Wallow in Ash somewhat mirror the first two, being among the most transparently autobiographical pieces in Richard’s oeuvre. In the alternately melancholy and absurd “Nature Unveiled” a married couple engrosses themselves in ancient magick and occult practices. When the wife dies her husband returns her ashes to nature. Soon enough, nature itself becomes a weapon against the living, with even the most unassuming woodland critter suddenly turning vicious and hungry, as if intent to spread the woman’s death to the rest of the world.

Finally, in “Deathlike Love,” a grieving widower left alone in the morgue with his wife’s body seeks the comfort of carnal intimacy with his deceased lover one last time. What in another writer’s hands might come off as mere sleaze or shock value is instead imbued with sincere understanding and emotional intensity, and is all the more raw and corrosive because of it. Though it’s not hard to see where this tale is going, that doesn’t make the journey there any less brutal. Indeed, “Deathlike Love” might be the most upsetting piece in To Wallow in Ash since its titular opener.

Knowing the truth behind them, even Richard’s most outrageous fictions become unforgivingly real. This collection is not the kind of book one should read all in one sitting, despite the modest page-count. This is a collection best digested in chunks, a story at a time. Anything more is almost unbearable. Nearly every page surges with confrontational energy, a kind of blunt honesty that rarely leaves room for reassurance in its single-minded pursuit of total, aching, human vulnerability.
​
In that way, however, the book does offer one subtle comfort, though it’s one that’s easy to miss. For all its heartbreak, pessimism, doom, and despair, that this collections exists at all is a testament not simply to death, but to survival as well.

Simply put, as much as To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows stands as a tribute to a Richard’s late wife Mo, it is equally a tribute to Richard himself.

[Sharron Joy Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible exploration of widowhood that will shatter your heart, it is convulsive grief, overwhelming loss held up and viewed through a horror mirror, this was superb but as with all Sam’s book please check the trigger warnings, I loved it!

[Jonah Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine iterations of one story upon each other, connected by a viscous web of slime and saltwater tears. You start crying on page fucking three but by page seven you’re cringing with “Aaahhh oh god” as this is not just any writer, but a horror writer in mourning. The end result is a dripping network of sorrow, violence, and an eternal sense that something is wrong with this world, someone is missing.

[Brennan LaFaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

To Wallow in Ash, & Other Sorrows is unlike traditional short story collections. When I think of a collection, I think of an author having an avenue to showcase their variety and highlight a period of time in their career. This book does something rarely captured in the medium. It pinpoints a condensed period of time, following the sudden death of the author's. Grief is approached from every angle, thinly veiled, and explored through fictitious means. Certain seemingly-unrelated stories act as interludes, but the author's notes give them context, adding to the viewpoint of this book as a snapshot. Richard's book is not for the faint of heart. It's an unflinching and brutally honest look at one of the most traumatic events a person could experience.

[Lucas Mangum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this collection after an entire month of reading almost nothing but Richard Laymon and Bryan Smith. Amid all that bloody good pulp, it was nice to read something meditative, personal and moody. The collection opens with an introduction that contextualizes the stories and lets us know upfront that it won't be an easy read. Nearly all the pieces contained within this collection explore loss and its many dimensions. My favorite of the bunch is probably "Nature Unveiled," though they all punch pretty hard. The tales also veer into pulp territory--there's even a mash-up of Edgar Rice Burroughs and William S. Burroughs--and while a lesser author would let these genre trappings pull him away from his central theme, this isn't the case here. As someone who's time and again found solace in horror and transgressive art, I found these elements enhanced the narrative, existing as fantasies with which the narrator seeks to escape the true horrors of existence. Grief hovers over each paragraph. The too-huge void left in the wake of a deceased loved one dwarfs the antlered gods, Martians, and zombies found within these pages.

[Morgan Dante · Rating 5 out of 5]

To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows is an unfiltered look at grief that is often uncomfortable to read, which I love. I like how obscene and profane some of these stories are. Something that is difficult about grief is that there are, according to society, Acceptable Feelings and Unacceptable Feelings. Often when I became furious or agitated or would cry years after a death or trauma, I was told that I wasn't normal. Same when I'd shut down and become stoic.

I think this collection also captures some of the surreality and darkly absurd humor of grief, such as in the first titular story when the narrator contemplates what to do with his wife's butt plugs. Often, grief in writing generally deals with possessions, but what *do* you do with someone's sex toys after they've died? Also, what exactly is the physical effect of subsisting on your loved one's ashes? Specificity is the strength of this prose, especially with a topic where, because of discomfort, people often speak in generalities.

The eponymous short story "To Wallow in Ash" is strong because it elicited grimaces of sympathy for me with the descriptions of physical and emotional deterioration. "Raw" is an understatement, but it also captures the tedium of grief and depression. Grief hollows you out, rather than feeling dramatic or poetic. It quite literally ashens you.

I also quite like many of the other stories, particularly "Nature Unveiled." Overall, this is a powerful collection full of romantic cannibalism, surreality, and gnarly gore.

[Chrissi · Rating 4 out of 5]

While graphic, and at times hard to read, I think this book was a fantastic collection of short stories. Sam Richard’s grief is palpable in every single one, and is a disturbing reality check about death and loss. A good reminder to appreciate those in your life, because you’ll never know when they’ll be gone. I was not a big fan of The Prince if Mars and Deathlike Love, I think overall this is a strong collection and worth a read for horror fans.

[Jo Quenell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short but very heavy collection that jumps between horror, crime and transgressive fiction, all emphasizing heavily on the theme of grief from a recent widowers' perspective. While there's not a bad story in here, the two standouts (for me) were 'Deathlike Love' and 'We Feed This Muddy Creek.' The former is one of the most viscerally upsetting stories I have read in a long while, while the latter evokes heavy Lansdale/Norman Partridge feels.

Reading this in one sitting made for a rather bleak Thanksgiving.

[Jessica (Spooky KidLit & We Who Walk Here, Walk Alone) · Rating 5 out of 5]

To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows is so visceral and intensely personal that part of me feels like reviewing it is an act of violation. Sam Richard’s stories are raw, his words laying bare his grieving, bloodied soul. Mostly written after his wife’s death, they explore the pain, sorrow, and guilt that rage through his widowhood. He grapples with faith and the cruel vagaries of the cosmos, exorcising demons while clinging to his lover’s ghost. This astonishing collection of weird, dark fiction will leave you shattered, and I highly recommend that you let it tear you apart.

[Kyle Rader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is not for the faint of heart. The author makes this painfully clear to you, the reader, from the start. Here is a collection of horror--both real life and fiction---centered around grief and loss, about what it means, really, really means to exist after one you loved has gone on. The stories run the gamut from darkly poetic to pulpy science fiction and there isn't a wasted word in the entire collection. Highly recommended.

[Brittney Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply disturbing and oftentimes difficult to read. I commend the author or trying his best to articulate the feeling of grief through weird horror, as being vulnerable is not an easy feat.

I think some of the stories rushed too quickly and lacked grounding elements to really center the reader. I think some of the stories needed to marinate more, but I feel odd critiquing such an honest book.

“To Wallow in Ash” was by far the best story!

[Mother Suspiria]

The brutal beauty of pure, undiluted pain- magnificent devastation laid bare and prism'd thru the lens of horror, refracted and reflected back with raw, intimate honesty- a void of grief and loss where the only catharsis is Art, TO WALLOW IN ASH by Sam Richard will leave scars. Let it.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very solid collection. Everything from grief and loss to humanity to joy and love.

[William Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is perfect for what lies within those pages. Love....has no boundaries. Love is infinite.