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Review for Staircase In The Woods by Chuck Wendig

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As I’ve said in my other reviews, I try to find a common thread in them. I want to connect to the stories personally. Sometimes, I can do that easily; sometimes, I can’t.

Chuck Wending is a favorite author. Wanderer’s is a book that my wife and I devoured in a week for me and a few weeks for her. It got us through lockdown in 2020 and everything that year threw at us. It’s a big book about a virus.

Utah experienced a lot of growth in the 1980s. New subdivisions sprouted up overnight, and many were left unattended for days. They became playgrounds for my friends and me.

Half-finished staircases lead to empty floors—kitchens without their floorings.

Among all of this was a staircase that was by itself. It was like that for a month or more. I don’t know why they stopped building. It’s a finished house, but forty years ago, it was a monolith that we’d jump off of. We’d launch our bikes and come down hard on our seats.

While reading Staircase in the Woods, I thought of those days of freedom—of being us, with no parents to avoid, and me and my friends having fun.

I received a copy from the publisher because I reviewed Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around The House. I thank the publisher for trusting me with a book that will be released in April 2025.

This book begins with events that happened years before. We discover the incidents leading to the event and how they changed the group.

We learn a lot of dark things as these friends look for one of their own who vanished years before on a staircase in the woods. One of them decides they need to find out what happened.

SPOILERS INCOMING

I try not to do spoilers in novels; it’s nearly impossible with this book.

They get through a portal similar to the one their friend vanished in. They soon discover the world inside the portal is different. It’s dark, disturbing, and nightmarish, giving me feelings of House of Leaves throughout the reading. The Navidson Record is in place throughout the story, or it felt that way to this writer.

It’s a story about discovering the darker parts of yourself. Confronting those parts, those shadows, the things you’d rather not talk about. The childhood lost because of abuse, both mental and physical.

The book finds its footing quickly when we enter the portals, and the characters move through the world. At once, they adjust and modify their way through. In the book’s latter pages, it’s a dangerous game of cat and mouse as they search for a way out.

When we reach the end, each character has learned more about themselves and their friends.

This is Chuck’s darkest, most visceral, and messed up book I’ve read.

It’s also one of my favorites. I’m looking forward to the world reading this one and discussing it and the characters’ experiences.

It’s made me look at what I’ve been able to let go of, what I continue to hold on to, and whether it’s healthy to do so.

There will be discussions about what occurs in this book. They will cover many topics.

I loved this book, and I’m thankful the publisher gave me a copy. Thank you to Random House and Kay Popple for the offer.

Review for Kill Your Darling by Clay McLeod Chapman

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Every parent thinks about what they’d do if they lost their kid. When they’re babies, we worry about whether they’re breathing in their cribs. When they’re toddlers, they get quiet in their rooms. We run to their room, and they’re usually asleep in a pile of toys or stuffed animals.

We lose sight of them when they get older, and we walk around the store. All the thoughts run through our heads. When they get to be teenagers and start driving or hanging out with friends, hell, in America, we worry about them not coming home at the end of the day because of a shooting.

That latter part is an everyday worry for me.

: SPOILERS AHEAD :

In Clay’s story, he takes the idea of losing your kid to violence and does a masterful job of following Glenn, our protagonist, through the stages of his life. Also, through the stages of grief.

Glenn feels the police have failed him and his son in discovering how he was killed.

His boy was left in a dirty, empty lot as a teenager.

Over the years, Glenn has done research and called whichever detective was assigned to the cold case, but he had a breakthrough when his wife urged him to join a writer’s group.

Glenn writes a story about his son’s death and how he believes it happened.

When he presents the story to the writer’s group, it begins a fracture in a community he believes hid the truth of what happened to his son. Glenn learns he didn’t know his son as well as he thought.

The heartwrenching ending for this book is brilliant, and I believe it captures the book well.

Glenn is looking for one last connection to his son. He finds it in writing the book but also in learning the truth about his son’s death.

It’s a magnificent ending, and as with all of Clay’s books, it will pull on your emotions.

I finished this book at work, and while it was a slow day behind the bar, I had to keep myself from crying.

We all think about how we’d handle the loss of our kids. Clay orchestrates a great story about loss, grief, and understanding that once our kids get older and have their own lives, we don’t know who they are.

We try to understand them as they grow older, and the best we can do is be there for them as they move through the world. Listening to them is essential.

Good morning, Good Evening or Goodnight?

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I’m writing this as I put a self-imposed ban on social media. I have deactivated my IG, Threads, and TikTok to get my head right. I have contemplated quitting writing over the last month, but I sold a book recently, and my thriller, Disunion By Force, is selling well.

I needed time to get my head right. It’s been in a bad place, and while I like sharing my journey with my mental health, it appears that my family doesn’t like seeing me struggle. I haven’t posted my usual content. I have been writing reviews. I’ve enjoyed the distraction of writing reviews for the last year. I’ve read some fantastic books. I got most of them through NetGalley.

I am going to start submitting short stories again. I feel I’ve fallen off somehow, and short stories are a way for me to get my head back in writing. I have three books left to review for my NetGalley account. After I finish the books I have, I’ll be taking a break from doing reviews for a while.

I’ll be cleaning up 30-40 short stories for submission. Each is a horror story and fits into various subgenres.

I’m taking time for myself, which will exclude social media for a while.

I am playing World of Warcraft: The War Within with my wife. It’s a great expansion, and we’re both enjoying it. I’m currently reading Nobody’s Hero by M.W. Craven. It comes out in December and is one of the books I received on Netgalley.

I’m not really watching anything. I will be seeing Terrifier 3 in a couple of weeks. I saw Beetlejuice this past weekend for my youngest’s birthday. It was fun—not great, but fun. She really enjoyed it, and it was nice to spend time with my wife and kids.

My job at the bar has changed a bit. It was bought in July, and they’ve made some significant changes. The food is better, and the menu is more manageable. It’s a lot cleaner than before.

I work four shifts now. I only worked once every week before. It’s been slow as some of our regulars change as the bar changes. That’s fine. People change in every aspect of the life of a business.

I’m ready to get back to work on the page.

Review for House of Bone And Rain by Gabino Iglesias

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Gabino is one of my favorite authors. I’ve taken a few of the writing classes he’s offered. I’ve read Coyote Songs, Zero Saints, and The Devil Takes You Home.

He’s not just a fantastic writer but a nice dude. He cares about the writing community, and his legendary tweets and TikTok posts about writing and some of the shady operators within the community reflect this.

I knew very little about this book going in. I try to do that for many reasons. I only knew the author. I received my copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

I remember the people I hung around with in high school, the crazy things we did, and the stunts we pulled, and I’m glad there is no video footage.

This book is about that. It’s about, at least to me, the brotherhood we take into adulthood.

We meet Gabe. He has a girlfriend, Natalia, who wants to leave Puerto Rico. He has friends Bimbo, Tavo, Paul, and Xavier. This is his brotherhood. These people he vouches for, fights for, and will do anything for. If someone messes with one, they mess with all of them.

This quote struck a chord early on: “We’re all sad animals looking for something to lift us out of the mud we lived in and make us think being alive was worth it.”

There’s something about Gabino’s writing that pulls the reader in. I’ve never been to Puerto Rico, but with his help, I know what it feels like to walk the streets and know if going to one part of Old San Juan will cause problems.

Bimbo’s mother, Maria, dies just before Hurricane Maria makes landfall. This is all intentional. They take it upon themselves to find out who killed her. This brings us into the realm of Dante. It’s a spiral of epic proportions as this group descends into the abyss of murder, mayhem, and death.

The storytelling and the connections to all the religions that make Puerto Rico the place it is had me feeling like I was back in American Gods as Shadow took his steps.

We followed these men and this brotherhood through the various belief systems within Puerto Rico. It was a learning experience and fascinating. This book is as brutal as Gabino’s others, but there’s a point to it, as with The Devil Takes You Home.

The darkness within Devil Takes You Home emerges in the House of Bone and Rain, but its brutality is never for show. You know that there’s some truth to it. There’s a reality to it. Gabino never does his violence for show.

When the bodies start adding up, and the brutality takes a turn I wasn’t expecting, the reality of it is as with this quote from the book: “You don’t need a huge army to take over the world; you need three or four crazy motherfuckers who really love you and are will to do whatever had to be done.”

This is what this book is about—showing up for those who need you.

Gabe realizes this too late.

There are some things in this book I can’t put in a review because of spoilers, but Gabino has written another banger.

I pre-ordered this in April, long before I could read it. He’s that good.

I’m looking forward to reading other’s reviews and having someone to discuss this book with.

Review for I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

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My first Slasher was Halloween. I was 10. My mom rented a couple of movies from UHaul—yes, you could do that at one point—and I watched them repeatedly.

My older sisters were teenagers, and I was left to my own devices. My younger sister was too small to watch it, and I knew that after the first time through.

I remember the opening scene vividly. Michael stalked around the house. His mask went over his face, and he stabbed his sister.

The reveal of him being a kid blew me away.

Moving forward in time to the following parts of the movie, I loved it. It’s still one of my favorite horror movies.

I always wondered what made Michael that way. Rob Zombie’s version touched upon this, which I loved.

Stephen does something with this creation idea in I Was A Teenage Slasher. It’s not what you expected; it certainly wasn’t for me. I struggled to read this early on. I needed help understanding the connections or the placement of certain story aspects. When it all came together, I was blown away by all the connections.

I’ve read many of Stephen’s books, but his Mapping The Interior is one of my favorites.

I’m halfway through the final book of The Lake Witch Trilogy. I had to set it down to finish book reviews.

Stephen crafts a story with Slasher mainly about a loner, maybe a bit of an outcast, like Jade in the Lake Witch Trilogy. Having read the book’s acknowledgments and seeing how personal Slasher was to him, I liked it better. He pulled a lot from his growing up in Texas. His acknowledging that made me think about my own writing and how I put bits of myself into it.

I felt a kinship with Tolly Driver. I know what it feels like to be an outcast. I was an outcast for most of my childhood. We moved around a lot. I attended five different elementary, three other middle schools, and three different high schools. I know that’s a little for some. I was the new kid/outcast most of the time. I learned to make friends quickly.

Knowing how Tolly felt being at parties and having others treat him differently and the reasons that come out in the story(spoilers) made me like him more.

He wants friends. He wants his classmates to like him, but instead, they shun him. His desire to be liked by someone leads him to be at a party. That’s where the story actually starts.

We see Tolly being with his friend Amber; then it takes a turn I wasn’t expecting. This event is sad to watch/read? Stephen’s description is so amazing that I felt I was watching it.

What happens is the birth of The Slasher. Stephen takes all of the things in the movies and makes us see what it’s like behind the mask. From the small things, quick movement, the ability to open any door to the more significant things, the indifference in the killer’s eyes, and the ability to withstand any physical punishment, it’s these things that really capture the idea of the book. As a fan of these types of movies, Stephen does this masterfully.

I can’t give things away, but it does take a turn. The brutality of a Slasher movie is front and center in the kills. It stands out as the work of someone who loves the genre and takes care to make it feel natural to the reader.

Stephen is at the top of his game in this one. If this is a standalone, it’s one of Stephen’s best.