Sour Candy

Kealan Patrick Burke is an Irish-born contemporary horror author with a winning streak of highly-regarded terrifying novels and novellas. My first dip into his world was his 86-page Sour Candy, available as a thin paperback or a Kindle ebook.

The story opens with childless Phil grabbing some chocolate from the candy aisle of a Wal-Mart for his girlfriend at home. While browsing the sweet treats, he sees a little kid having a total meltdown in the store accompanied by his stoic and unreactive mother. Witnessing this, Phil’s primary thought is, “Man, I’m glad that isn’t my kid.”

On his way home from the store, a car plows into the back of Phil’s Chevy at a stoplight smashing the vehicle like an accordion. When the dazed Phil extracts himself from his car, he sees the driver who struck him is the lady from the store - somehow without her hellion child in tow.

That’s when things start getting scary as hell.

Giving away further plot points would spoil the fun, but if you’ve seen the terrifying film It Follows, you have an idea what’s happening. Creepy kid stories were a staple from the Paperbacks From Hell era of late 20th century horror fiction, and Sour Candy can be seen as a modern homage to that sub-genre.

I liked this story quite a bit and found it generally unnerving and quite scary in parts. I think the author was reflecting upon and playing with the anxiety that childless couples must feel at the prospect of upending their lives by having a kid. Be warned that this story won’t do much in the way of convincing young adults to take that plunge.

In any case, Sour Candy is a fun, scary ride that cemented Burke as an author to watch in the horror genre. Recommended.

Get the book HERE.

The Tent

The few stories and novellas I've read by Kealan Patrick Burke were exceptional. Burke is a veteran Irish author that won a 2004 Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Turtle Boy, a work that kicked off a series of novellas starring a character named Timmy Quinn. His work has appeared in publications by Cemetery Dance and the collections Shivers, Grave Tales, and Inhuman. I've slacked off a bit on horror but wanted to read a few of the “newish” authors that I've enjoyed in the past to get back into the genre more. I chose Burke's 2015 self-published novella The Tent as a good camping spot.

Mike and Emma are a married couple on the tattered fringes of divorce. In an effort to restore synergy back into their failing relationship the couple decide to try camping in rural Ohio with their son. When Mike's cheap tent fails to provide adequate shelter the three very-bad-campers head to the car to call it a night. However, Mike gets the family lost in the woods - in the dark in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone service. 

While Mike and Emma turn on each other they discover that their son has vanished. They conduct a frantic search for their boy and find a weird tent that seems to have been made from flesh and bone. Is the tent hiding a body? A psychotic killer? Or, is the tent itself a monster?

At roughly 63 pages The Tent delivers a spooky atmosphere, unlikable characters, and a terrifying menace to consume the unlikable characters. It is easy to compare horror fiction with horror films, so I venture to say The Tent sort of works like Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Blob with a companion in Jeepers Creepers. Burke changes the presentation to different characters and scenarios to give readers a break from all the shrubbery. If you need a light horror fix then this is a fun hour. Get your ebook HERE.

October Screams - A Halloween Anthology

Kangas Kahn film company have released horror films like Fear of Clowns, Garden of Hedon, and Terrortory over the last 20 years. In 2015, the film company launched Kangas Kahn Publishing, a small publisher that have released titles like With Teeth and Halloween: The Greatest Holiday of All. This Halloween season, the company has published an impressive short-story collection called October Screams: A Halloween Anthology. It is 27 stories authored by some of Paperback Warrior's favorite horror writers. 

Here are some of my favorites from this collection:

Ronald Malfi's “Tate” is a holiday-themed story that centers on a grieving couple on Halloween. It begins with Nick leaving the house to buy some candy for the visiting trick-or-treaters that will surely be arriving. His wife Alice waits patiently for his quick return, but begins to worry when the minutes turn into hours. When Nick returns, he's upset and heads straight to his dead son's bedroom. Alice comforts him, but both are surprised when a boy arrives at their door that resembles their deceased son. As the story unfolds, readers learn more about the boy's death and the finale was a throwback to the old EC Comics horror tales of the mid-20th century. “Tate” was really effective.

In “Perfect Night for a Perfect Murder”, author Jeremy Bates uses the short-story format to present this first-person perspective on how to properly commit premeditated murder. The protagonist is a crime-fiction author that is detailing the advantages of planning the perfect murder to coincide with what he persists is the best day of the year for murder, Halloween. The story is a blend of dark humor and crime-fiction, and it ends with a little twist that I could see coming. Very enjoyable.  

“Masks” is written by Brian Keene and Richard Chizmar and involves some kids pulling a convenience store robbery on Halloween night. There's some social commentary about Covid masks (no doubt Keene's doing) as the kids don costumes to rob the place. As the robbery ensues, one of the kids is forced to shoot a female customer that's wearing a devil mask. When the kids make the getaway, they begin noticing that all of the streets are empty. There is an eerie silence. When the kids are beckoned to the home of a friend, they see more people wearing devil masks. While the story is a bit scrambled and seems incomplete, it nonetheless provided plenty of entertainment. 

I did enjoy man of the other stories, including Kealan Patrick Burke's haunting “afraid of the dark” tale “Let the Dark Do the Rest” as well as the clever, touching doll-perspective short, “Doll”, by Ryan Van Ells. Overall, this collection has some hits and misses, but is sure to please fans of horror stories. If you are a Bates, Keene, Chizmar, and Malfi fan, then these stories alone are worth the price of admission. Recommended.

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Thirty Miles South of Dry County

Kealan Patrick Burke is an Irish author who won a Bram Stoker Award for his 2005 novella "The Turtle Boy". Along with editing anthologies, writing comics and short-stories, Burke has authored five full-length novels. I discovered the author through his novella Thirty Miles South of Dry County. It was originally published by Dark Fuse in 2016. Now, it exists in a collection called Milestone: The Collected Stories Vol. 1. It's self-published in both ebook and paperback.

Burke invites you to a place called mining community called Milestone. It's a raindrop on a rural route that few have seen...willingly. You see, Milestone is a place you visit once a lifetime after certain circumstances - dire or otherwise - have occurred. With invisible walls that seem to surround it, I felt like the town was similar to the video game/film Silent Hill. It's shrouded in fog and has mysterious forces that seem to affect people in different ways. The dead and the living call the town home. 

When an elderly, dying man named Tanner finds his friends have disappeared, he makes the fifteen mile drive to Milestone. There are many reasons why he has avoided the town his entire life. Once he arrives, he sees horrific things, including a mysterious self-appointed town mayor. To Tanner's dismay, the town knows his secret. What is it?

 
With Thirty Miles South Of Dry County, Burke presents a vivid portrait of rural America, brush stroking with remarkable detail considering his Irish upbringing. Tanner is the embodiment of the aging small town Southern man. The town of Milestone is a macabre exhibit that's surrounded with a smooth Gothic curtain. There's mystery, suspense and menace packed into this scary short novel.  

This book also irrigates previous roots sewn in Burke's novel Currency Of Souls by utilizing some of the same characters and locale. The two works are independent and compliment each other in much the same way that master storyteller Stephen King frequents Derry and Castle Rock. It is this enhancement that should satisfy long time Burke fans while still enticing newer audiences. Get the ebook HERE