Toe Tags

Toe Tags

by Michael A. Kechula, William Pauley III (Editor), Michael A. Kechula

Genres: Anthologies, Horror, Fiction, Short Stories

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Michael A. Kechula is a retired tech writer. His fiction has won first place in eight contests and placed in seven others. He’s also won Editor’s Choice awards four times.

His stories have been published by 114 magazines and 30 anthologies in Australia, Canada, England, India, Scotland, and US. He’s authored a book of flash and micro-fiction stories: “A Full Deck of Zombies--61 Speculative Fiction Tales.”

eBook available at www.BooksForABuck.com and www.fictionwise.com

Paperback available at www.amazon.com.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ratings breakdown:

The Things That Left Their Skin - William Pauley III - *****
Grief - T.J. McIntyre - *****
Sins of the Flesh - Nathan Rosen - *****
Mysterio and Galatea - Michael A. Kechula - *****
The Tourist Trap - Oonah V Joslin - ****
The Lesser of Two Evils - Robert C. Eccles - ****
L'esprit de la Table - Nathan Rosen - ****
The Shed - Joshua Day - ****
The Sleepwalking Corpse - Jimmy Calabrese - ****
The New Girl - L.B. Goddard - *****
My Little Brother Turns Nine - Nathan Rosen - *****
Skyline - Brett Saunders - ***
The Mouth of Babes - Angel Zapata - *****
Skin (The Nayjeed) - Lori Titus - ****
Abracadabra - Nathan Rosen - ****
The Farm - Stephanie Barnett - *****
Maniac - Chad Case - ****
The Unclean - Graeme Reynolds - *****
In the Woods - Nathan Rosen - *****
Replaced - Joshua Scribner - ****
Agoraphobia - Brian Barnett - *****

The artwork by Joshua Day and William Pauley III - *****

[Mav Skye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toe Tags is a cascade of dark horror, a fabulous collection that will leave your soul tainted… and wanting more. I give this anthology five stars for unique voices and truly horrifying stories.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A spine tingling collection of horrific tales written by new horror writers. Some of the tales are accompanied by wonderful black and white photos with scratches to embellish the picture. A very good read if you like horror. Very much looking forward to read Toe Tags 2: Blood and Bizarro.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is made of short stories (Horror) and is a really great read. Lots of new authors to keep me in reading material. A must read!

[S.M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Given the generally high marks this book has received (mostly from the contributors and their acquaintances I see), I figured it safe betting that this collection would be an enjoyable read. Toe Tags doesn't feel like it even made it past a quick cursory glance from its proofreader. With stories switching from past to present tense with no reason other than the author's sloppy oversight, to (somewhat baffling) spates of a clear inability to distinguish between "than" and "then", this book is riddled with Grammar and Punctuation 101-level mistakes. I had the strong impression that very few if any of the authors were asked to make revisions beyond their first drafts. Needless to say, it made for a lot of distractions while reading.

The stories themselves, while for the most part unique at their core, are neither frightening nor very enjoyable. That's not to say there aren't a couple of good stories in the collection. However, there seems to be both a lack of story development and general writing style from the large majority of these tales, and the overall work suffers for it. I often found myself bored as I read through this book, which to my mind read like a high school writing project slung together by a band of friends rather than an anthology of new and talented horror authors. On more than one occasion I wondered how a good chunk of these poorly written and cliche-abused stories were approved for publication at all. I had higher expectations, and Toe Tags is definitely not one of the best horror anthologies out there.

[Tj · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a contributor, I'm biased, but this was a good collection of horror stories ranging from random bizarro weirdness to the more traditional ghost story.