June | 2014 | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Book Review: Hoffman’s Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales by Cameron Trost

Hoffman’s Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales by Cameron Trost

Cameron Trost, 2012(Second Edition 2013)

ISBN: 9781468073331

Available: Paperback, eBook(Smashwords, Kindle edition)

Hoffman’s Creeper and Other Disturbing Tales is an interesting collection of short stories that focus on seemingly ordinary people doing seemingly ordinary things. “Ordinary” does not last long, though, as evil twists out of them. The first story, “Not To Be Read”, takes place on a vacation in Scotland. Lightning and The Ritual both examine the lives of youngsters. Groups of friends gather in “Hardwicke’s Fair Share”, “Party Trick” and “Cockatoo Cabin”, discovering the nasties in their world. An office worker pursues a rare LP in “Cathedral Man and The Rare Twelve Inch” as he haggles with a homeless man during rush hour. The collection culminates with “Hoffman’s Creeper”, the story of a botanist, his rare creeping ivy and what it needs to thrive.

This was a good collection. The author covered a lot of variety in his subject matter with varying degrees of success. Generally the language was descriptive, and the author did a good job at establishing the story worlds. The characters had distinctive voices, and the plot lines were solid. My criticisms would be more on specific stories as some of them left me flat. “Not To Be Read” had an anticlimactic ending; “The Butcher’s Window” failed to build suspense effectively; and “Patrick O’Malley” was too short to pull me in. The progression of the stories started with the weaker ones at the start, and built to the best ones at the end. Strong stories included “Beneath the Flowers”, which made me think;”Cathedral Man and The Rare Twelve Inch”, which kept my attention– the environment felt real; and “Hoffman’s Creeper”, the strongest of the lot, nicely evil. The author brought it together on this one. Overall this was a strong collection and worth reading. I have not read any of Cameron Trost’s work previously. Recommended for adult readers.

Contains: Sexual situations, incest

Reviewed by: Aaron Fletcher

Medallion Press Tries A New Approach to Ebooks With Gregory Lamberson’s “The Julian Year”.

I’m not writing creatively today, just sharing this information because I think using new technologies with ebooks is intriguing. Sometimes it makes no difference, sometimes it’s cool on an individual level but there’s no ripple across the publishing pond. But all kinds of things we can’t imagine yet are POSSIBLE… And this time it’s also interesting because it involves horror author Gregory Lamberson’s novel The Julian Year, so readers will get to experience how this technology can affect the experience of the horror reader.

So, to the news– straight from the press release:

Medallion Press, a subsidiary of Medallion Media Group, has developed a new technology aimed at revolutionizing the reading experience for millions of book lovers across the globe.

TREEbook is a patented new technology which allows authors and publishers to create novels with multiple story branches, giving readers the possibility of a unique and completely unpredictable reading experience over and over again. Based on each reader’s individual reading habits, each TREEbook-enhanced story has the potential to seamlessly branch down new and undiscovered story lines, giving greater insight to the characters, a deeper look at the story, and even alternate endings—all within one book. There are no choices to make. Readers simply read at leisure, while the TREEbook technology works in the background.

“It gives readers a chance to experience a story like never before,” says Adam Mock, COO of Medallion Media Group and one of the inventors of TREEbook. “We’ve taken the traditional reading experience and enhanced it with our innovative TREEbook technology, which has the ability to organically branch a story down alternate paths. So if you’re ready to dive into the next level of reading, this is it.”

Medallion Press has five TREEbook-enhanced novels scheduled to release by end of 2015. Genres range from Horror to Historical Fiction.

As of now, there’s only one way to experience TREEbook-enhanced novels, which is to download Medallion Media Group’s free MMG Sidekick app for the iPad.

The very first TREEbook-enhanced novel release is The Julian Year by award-winning horror author Gregory Lamberson (The Jake Helman Files, The Frenzy Wolves Cycle). In The Julian Year one of the main characters, Julian Weizak, an obituary writer in New York, celebrates his birthday alone in a bar on New Year’s Eve. At the stroke of midnight, scores of homicides break out on the East Coast.

Julian discovers that, in all, 20,000 murders are committed that night in New York alone, with the murder epidemic spreading across the country and the world, time zone by time zone. At midnight each day thereafter, 19,178,082 people around the world become homicidal maniacs, contributing to the biggest killing spree in history. It looks as if the chaos can lead to only one end: the extinction of mankind.

To learn more about the TREEbook visit www.thetreebook.com.

For more information about Gregory Lamberson or his TREEbook novel The Julian Year, visit www.thejulianyear.com.

For questions about the technology behind the TREEbook visit the blog of MMG’s Executive Director of Technology, Brian Buck, accessible from the homepage at www.medallionmediagroup.com

Medallion Media Group, which includes Medallion Press, Medallion Movies, and Medallion Music, is on a mission to provide dynamic multimedia entertainment in collaboration with innovative writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, and technologists. With a creative approach to book, music, and film production, we seek to synergize the arts and cultivate developing technologies to carve a path on the leading edge of content delivery.