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Women in Horror Month: Drive, She Said: and Other Stories by Tracie McBride

cover art for Drive, She Said by Tracie McBride

(  Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Drive, She Said and Other Stories by Tracie McBride

IFWG Publishing Australia, 2020

ISBN-13: 9781925956689

Available: Paperback, Kindle

 

This book contains eighteen short stories of horror and dark fantasy written by the author. The tales feature women as protagonists, doomed heroines, and villains. While all the stories in this collection are well executed and well written, a few of them stood out above the others for me.

 

The tale “Breaking Windows” treats possession as a virus transmitted somehow through sight. Treatment is an ocular prosthesis that are programmed with demonic spectrum detectors. Jess’ partner, Leo, opts to get them implanted and he does his best to persuade her to do the same. As the statistics look grimmer, and a pregnancy test comes out positive, Jess must make her choice.

 

In “Ugly”, Janine has a growth on her face that, after treatment, continues to grow…and grow…and grow. This story in particular has some gruesome body horror involved.

 

In “The Changing Tree”, Sten, Liath, and the other boys of age are counting the days until ‘Changing Day’. The priestesses who guard the Changing House don’t allow anyone in the grounds unless they are chosen. All that Sten knows is that the chosen walk in boys and walk out as women. All of the women of the village had the same origin. What unfolds is a touching story of the two friends as they grapple with the changes of identity, gender, and sexuality.

 

Lara and Maxine are sisters who share a dark secret in “Slither and Squeeze”. The story opens on a subway with Lara trying to calm down an old homeless man who is yelling about a snake, disrupting other passengers. After she gets him calmed down, the sisters have a conversation about what to do about the situation. He witnessed the Change, something the sisters can’t abide. However, they are at odds about what to do: kill him or leave him as his words are only the drivel of a deranged old man.

 

In “Life in Miniature”, Michael is picked up by a middle-aged woman, thinking this will be some kind of favours traded for a meal and a shower kind of thing, but discovers too late that she has a more specialized use for him. She has so many realistic dolls in the house, but they do not look quite right around the faces.

 

This is just a small offering that Tracie McBride offers in her book. She has a concise way of writing her short stories that did not leave me wanting more at the end. I don’t want to say she ties everything up nicely at the end. That does not quite fit. It’s more like she provides just enough in each tale for the reader to digest. I will definitely be picking up more of McBride’s work. Recommended.

Contains: blood, body horror, sex

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on February 3, 2021 by , Reply

WiHM: Gearing Up For Women in Horror Month? Take This Quiz!

Women in Horror Month starts tomorrow, and I thought I’d kick it off a day early to give you all the opportunity to try this quiz I made of books by women writers of horror published during this century. I looked at a lot of lists online, and as far as we’ve gone, it seems like there’s still a ways to go, particularly when we’re talking about horror for adults (the reverse is true with YA horror- it is almost completely authored by women). We need to be seeing new names on these lists, not just Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson (as influential and talented as they are).

This is not an exhaustive list.  I couldn’t include everyone I would have liked, and some of these writers are prolific- I tried to include just one title for each author, which might not necessarily be their most well-known book. I did like seeing that there seems to be a fair amount of diversity, or at least more than there was. All of these were written since 2000, and most in the past ten years. The closer we get to the present, the more women writers of all kinds there seem to be!  At the same time, don’t be surprised if you have read fewer of these authors and books than you realize. Think of this as a jumping off point if you haven’t chosen a book yet to read for WiHM.

I’d love to see more suggestions! This is a great month to share your favorites, so tell me all about yours!

 

Posted on January 31, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The House that fell from the Sky by Patrick Delaney

cover art for The House That Fell from the Sky by Patrick Delaney   ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

The House that fell from the Sky by Patrick Delaney

Oblivion Publishing, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0578660790

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

This book is perfectly placed for those who miss the weird horror of Bradbury and Bentley Little, and are aching for something new. Patrick Delaney has arrived with a strong entry into horror that is tough to classify here; is it weird horror, cosmic horror, or something else? Read on. The journey (quite long at 566 pages) is a wild and rewarding one.

What do you do when a house lands in the middle of town, seemingly dropped from the sky? Well, first off, it’s not quite a house. What it truly is defies logic. Several stories tall, with unknown rooms within, it both petrifies and intrigues the town. In classic horror novels, the townsfolk would run for cover (save for the cliched characters in bad movies). In this case, true to the current unreality that’s taken over our world, everyone treats the unknown entity like a traffic accident that needs to be examined, eschewing any dangers.

Scarlett, Tommy, Jackson, and Hannah meander through life. Scarlett, a recent dropout from college at age 29, is in search of something to connect herself to anything meaningful. She’s the glue that holds the group– and the novel– together. Each major character is drawn in believably flawed design, so that the mixture of the group adds to the intrigue and horror that lead them to enter the house, and elicits true empathy for the characters– not neccesarily a given in horror today.

Of course, corporate America steps in (a nice touch) and offers up a lottery to determine who will be the first visitors/victims to the monstrosity sitting in their city. There is a cash reward for entering, but  exiting could be a bit difficult from this Lovecraftian Hotel California.

When Hannah buys her way in, the others jump in to help save her.

What is the house itself? To save the secrets within and protect readers from spoilers, what lurks within is drawn much differently from any generic haunted house. Delaney borrows from the greats and devises something unique. Refreshingly, his storytelling and plot twists sidestep a number of cliches common to the haunted house subgenre.

Delaney has spun a fun tale that will keep fans of intriguing horror entertained throughout, and produced something that will keep everyone on their toes. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Posted on January 18, 2021 by , Reply
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