Where the Winter Wind Howls by L.V. Gaudet

via Where the Winter Wind Howls by L.V. Gaudet

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Cover Reveal – The Gypsy Queen

Cover by Erskine Designs

COMING 2018

paranormal drama thriller

1952

When a young man with an enthusiasm for get rich quick schemes discovers an old abandoned paddle wheel river steam boat, he has dreams of the riches and glamour she will bring.

His best friend and unwilling business partner sees only rot, decay, and their ruination in the old boat.

Struggling to rebuild her, they are pitted against everyone from the Shipbuilders’ Union to the local casino boss.  Meanwhile, strange accidents and a sense of dread falls on those who enter the boat as she awakens with a hunger for her ounce of blood.

The Gypsy Queen’s dark past will not be forgotten.

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The Woods – Part 6 (The House) Inspecting the House by LV Gaudet

2015

 

The realtor enters first, staring in fascination at the outdated furniture and décor.  The air feels heavy with dust and it tickles the back of his throat.

Awkwardly, he remembers and steps aside to let the other man in.

The buyer steps inside after the realtor and, like him, stops to take it all in.  He scans the room, absorbing the old furniture, the layer of dust covering everything like a shroud. The dust in the air is heavy and gives his throat a dry tickle that makes him want to cough.

With a distracted nod to the realtor, he steps further into the house, feeling a momentary pang of regret for not taking his shoes off. “You are supposed to take your shoes off when you enter someone’s home,” he thinks.  He looks around taking it all in.

“It’s eerie how the house feels like the family just left it moments ago, like they are about to come back at any time.  The house looks lived in, except for the thirty years of dust coating everything and the vague feeling of abandonment.”

The mostly green cover of a comic book left laying open on the floor catches his eye.  He picks up the comic book and looks at it, trying not to disturb too much of the dust clinging to it.  It’s unavoidable, his fingers rub smudges in the dust coating the old comic book.  The Thing, an orange blocky comic book creation made of stone, part monster and all hero.  On the cover, The Thing appears to be battling a many-armed green wall, the green arms surrounding him in a barrage of punching fists.  Marvel Comics, The Thing issue #21 dated March 1985.  The price on it is sixty cents.

The top front corner is curled from a boy’s rough handling.

He puts it down with a frown, wondering if it’s worth anything on the collectors’ market.  He can’t take it, though.  It belongs to the municipality, along with the property and its contents.  At least until after the auction.  He hopes the realtor didn’t notice it.

“How often do realtors scoop up gems like this without anyone ever knowing?” he wonders.

Against the wall on a stand, a tube T.V. with its faux wood exterior box, two front dials, and bent rabbit ears poking up from the top at the back, sits darkly silent, a haze of dust coating every surface.

He walks through the house, past a pair of socks discarded on the floor, and into the kitchen.

“Did you say they still lived here after the boys vanished?” he called to the realtor in the other room.

The realtor is studying the spines of books in a bookcase on one wall.  It’s made of the old particleboard that expands and crumbles when it absorbs moisture, which it inevitably does over time.  The shelves have some warping and bubbling, crumbled on some edges.

“Yes, I don’t know how long.  They lived here while the search for the boys was going, and for some time after the search was given up.”

“And the husband moved out, leaving the mother alone?”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. Months? Years? They locked the place when they took her away. Like I said, we’re the first to set foot in the house since they institutionalized her.”

He leaves the bookshelf and starts for the kitchen.

In the kitchen, the buyer walks around, taking in the two tea towels carefully hung on the oven door handle, yellowed and rotting with age.  The teakettle on the stovetop. On the countertop, a measuring cup sits next to a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. Two bags he guesses are flour and sugar bags sit next them. The bags are faded and stained with age, the paper brittle with age, and even the larger print words hard to read.

“Looks like someone was going to make a cake.”

He turns away, circling the table, studying the place settings set with care.

An old tan rotary dial phone hangs on the wall not far from the kitchen table, where the person on the phone can sit down at the table while they talk, the coiled cord stretched from them to the phone on the wall.

The realtor walks in and looks around, his footprints in the dust coating the kitchen floor joining those following the buyer’s trail across the room.  “Weird, the table is set for four.”

“For her family.” It is said with a dull gravity that makes the realtor turn and stare at him.

He breaks the awkward moment.

“I’ll show you the bedrooms.  There’s three bedrooms, I think.”

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Book Review: The Girl Who Watched Over Dreams by Jeff Russell

Life for Kat (Doctor Katrina Hammond) is not turning out the way she envisioned.  Despite her misgivings, she agrees that her mother going into E.D.E.N.’s perpetual sleep program is the best choice for her mother, who is suffering from chronic rheumatoid arthritis.

Engulfed with sorrow over her loss of her mother, plagued by doubts about the program, and uncertain about the science and the quality of life her mother will have in a forever dream state, Kat agrees to take a job at E.D.E.N. This, at least, allows her to be near her mother and watch over her.

Soon after taking the job at EDEN, Kat is approached by a reporter, Morgan Brewer, who is investigating EDEN.  Distrusting his role as a reporter and suspicious his interest is only a pretense to get information from her to use against her employer; she unwillingly turns to him when she has no other options.

It doesn’t take Kat long to become suspicious that EDEN is not the idyllic sanctuary promised for the faceless residents of their perpetual sleep program.  There is something darker happening behind the scenes of EDEN, and Kat’s inability to let it go pulls her deeper into that secret.

Jeff Russell creates a believable character in Kat, a recent graduate doctor of Neuroscience.  She is grounded by her newness to the field, filled with enough self-doubt to add to the challenges she faces, and likeable.  As she presses on with her clandestine investigations over her suspicions, she is pulled in opposing directions.  She doubts her own suspicions, becomes newly suspicious of her employer, convinces herself EDEN really is helping, and becomes disturbed again by her discoveries at EDEN.

Jeff Russell does not overburden his medical thriller with technical descriptions, keeping the story flowing and compelling.  I read this story in less time than I usually do, laying back and putting off the things I really should be doing so I could keep reading.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

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The Woods (Flash Fiction) by L.V. Gaudet

This story was first published in 2009.  It has been tweeked and improved for your reading pleasure.  Watch for a longer short story version to come.  The story has just begun.  Read on…

 

The Woods – a flash fiction story by L.V. Gaudet

 

It is an ordinary forest, as far as spooky looking woods go, filled mostly with craggy twisted oak trees, their gnarled branches reaching like skeletal fingers and deeply wrinkled cracked-bark covered trunks. The trees cluster together, their branches twisted and tangled together, daring any to enter their midst.

The land here lies low and wet in the spring, leaving the stand of trees a small island of stick-like saplings and sparse tall yellow grass invaded by wild roses with their sharp thorns standing in a shallow bath of melt water throughout the springtime months.

They are far from a silent woods. A small stretch of thick growth surrounded by fields of crops interspersed with some areas abandoned to grass, weeds, and stray crop seeds. Against one side of this stretch of trees, amidst the farm fields, is also nestled a small happy community. The woods team with life, red and grey squirrels, rabbits, mice and voles, and a range of birds. With the damp ground, the woods are a haven for frogs and toads, and of course, the ever present blood-sucking mosquitoes.

It is a typical small town community lying nestled against the miniature forest. It grew from centuries old land of grasslands mixed with forests. The old forests and grasslands were slowly chopped down, turned over, and settled as the world slowly populated with mankind; the landscape of humanity changing from hunter-gatherers to farms, towns, and villages.

Eventually towns and communities grew together to become cities, family homesteads populated into small farming communities, and untouched land became rare pockets of unsullied old growth forests scattered about in tiny fragments bordering farm fields and stretches of small community homes.

Some of these tiny pockets of untouched woods still hold secrets. Some of these secrets are perhaps best left that way.

 

 

The woods sit silent and brooding, an ugly tangle of dead looking leafless skeletal branches that look like they belong in a darker and more sinister world, the world of the dead. The clouds hang heavy, dark, and grey on this day; a suffocating thick blanket hanging low in the sky to cast a pall over this small piece of the world.

The snow lies heavy and wet, crystalline flakes shrinking and melding into a dirty slush as the temperatures slowly warm. In time, the snow will vanish and be replaced once again by the murky stagnant melt waters that will take a few months to dry up.

Most of the rodents, birds, and other small woodland creatures are conspicuously absent on this day, having chosen to hunker down and wait out this gloomy day. Nevertheless, a few squirrels and birds still flit about the skeletal trees, a small rabbit nervously twitching its nose as it sits motionlessly waiting.

Two children playing in their back yard off the woods dare each other to go exploring into the spooky trees.

“I bet you can’t go to the fallen tree,” said the older and taller of the two boys.

The younger boy blanched, his stomach turning sickly, but stared stone faced at the fallen rotting tree laying nestled within the narrow strip of woods beyond their yard. You can see the tree only because there are no leaves on any of the branches.

“I am not going to let you know how scared I am,” he thinks. He can already smell the mossy rot of the long dead tree, although he has never been near enough to it to catch its odor. It smells in his vivid young imagination like death and decay and something even darker. He watches a small red squirrel flit around the trees, untouched by the dark brooding sullenness and the spooks, ghosts, and monsters his mind screams must surely lurk hidden inside these scary woods. He swallowed.

“Can too,” he said, his voice cracking with fear. “I bet you can’t go stand on that ole’ stump,” he countered.

The old stump is a rotting remnant of an even older fallen tree that has long ago vanished into the mud and scraggly growth of the woods. The stump remains, standing defiant and threatening beyond the fallen tree now laying discarded and tangled in the woods, sharp splinters and points of shattered wood sticking up as though waiting to impale any foolish boy who tries to climb it and falls. Its wood is soft and crumbly now with rot, the sharp jagged edges unlikely to be capable of impaling anything for years.

Kevin humphed at his younger brother. He is just as scared, but certainly is not going to let his little brother know that. He nervously hiked up his pants, which did not need it, and stepped forward on a mission. He marched purposely into the woods, careful to keep his back to the younger boy so he will not see the paleness of his waxy fear-filled face.

With a scuff and a shrug, Jesse reluctantly followed his older brother.

A little red squirrel scampered up to the high branches as they passed, pausing to chitter down angrily at the boys.

They reach the first point, the fallen tree Kevin had dared his younger brother to venture to. It is no victory for either boy.

On a forced march of pride, determined not to reveal his fear of some silly trees, Kevin continues on. He crawls over the fallen tree, its rotting length sagging with a soggy cracking beneath his weight. His forward march slows more the closer he comes to the wicked looking ancient broken stump.

He stops; staring at the stump like it is some otherworldly thing. He dares not touch it, yet also dares not, lest Jesse think him weak or afraid.

Unable to let his older brother face the woods alone, Jesse follows. As he draws near the old stump where his brother has stopped to stare motionlessly at it, he notices something unusual looking at the base of the stump.

“What’s that?” Jesse asked nervously.

Kevin pries his eyes from the stump to look lower.  He kneels down, reaching for what lies there.

“Don’t touch it.”

“It’s nothing.”  Kevin picks it up, turning it over in his hand.

Jesse turns at the sound of a cracking branch.

The boys are never seen again.

 

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Book Review: Paladin Book 1: The Evil Within the Woods by Kevin J. Fitzgerald

Before I get into the review, I received a free copy of this book from the author to review.  That said, this is an unbiased review.  I only review books I have actually read, and only give an honest review.

 

If you read Fitzgerald’s other book UnAlive and are expecting a similar read, you will be disappointed.  Kevin Fitzgerald’s UnAlive is a zombie apocalypse adult genre.  Paladin is a middle year’s animal tale gentle thriller.

 

Similar to stories like Watership Down and the Secret of NIHM, Paladin is written from the point of view of the animal characters, specifically the rabbit whose story is central to the plot.  Unlike the other stories, however, the human characters of Paladin are active characters in the story, rather than being some vague aspect of the animals’ world.  This adds a depth to the story in that you are bound not just by the fate of the rabbit, but also the fates of the people who saved him.

 

Paladin starts with the rabbits of the “warenne” sensing a coming change and danger.  I won’t give away what happens, but a catastrophe does happen, bringing the story from the introduction of the wild rabbits to the meat of the story.  This, the first book of the Paladin series, is Paladin’s story, a young rabbit of the “warenne”.

 

Paladin finds himself a home with a boy, Joshua, and his father, Theo.  Their pleasant life does not stay that way for long.  Theo’s onetime employee, Lou Lyons, has other plans for Theo’s business, and a self-invented grudge to avenge, putting Paladin in the center of his revenge.

 

Paladin is a children’s story.  I would place it around middle year’s grades.  The drama surrounding Paladin will appeal to kids who still like stories about animals, but this story is more than about an animal with a human-like sentience.  You are also drawn into the lives of the human characters, whose own drama Paladin is the center of.  In the end, you are left waiting for book two to find out what comes next as Paladin is thrown into the next chapter of his adventure.

 

Paladin Book 1: The Evil Within the Woods by Kevin J. Fitzgerald is self-published and is available on Amazon.

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Book Review: UnAlive by Kevin J. Fitzgerald

UnAlive is hailed as “Night of the Living Dead meets The Book of Eli.”  I had to watch Book of Eli after reading UnAlive to see if the comparison fits.  I would have to say that UnAlive is better than the comparison to Night of the Living Dead suggests, but The Book of Eli is not a bad comparison.

UnAlive starts with a decent hook; the mysterious character, Cian of the Nomos, the half-lives.  It sets the tone that something unusual is going to happen in a way that leaves you curious to learn more.

Something is happening in the world and, at first glance, it seems to be some kind of an attack.  General Pitman Grady leads the military investigation.  Dr. Kwom Thomas joined them as an unwilling guest brought in at the suggestion of Susan Grey.

Meanwhile Adam Gardner’s world is turned upside down and destroyed during what would have been a peaceful afternoon in the country with his wife and two sons, if not for the sudden withering death of the vegetation around him, followed by the movement of frightening shapes coming from the woods accompanied by terrible noises.  But this seems to be a dream and Adam awakes in prison.  We soon learn that it is memories, not a dream.

UnAlive jumps between the military’s attempts to find out what is going on in a world that seems to be dying en mass, Dr. Kwon Thomas’ The Two Natures study from his attempts to research the strange mass deaths of flora and fauna and worldwide collapse of life, an old priest, and Adam Gardner’s life in jail and flashbacks to his life before.

When the zombies, dubbed the UnAlive, take over the world, it becomes a race for survival and against extinction of the human species.  Meanwhile the Nomos, or half-lives, have their own agenda.  I would describe the Nomos as vampires before I would call them zombies.

I was wary when I was asked to review a zombie apocalypse book.  I couldn’t help the inward groan.  I hoped for the best and was ready for the worst.  The obsession with zombies since Walking Dead made its debut has resulted in a saturation of bad zombie everything, and there have been too many bad zombie movies and books before that.  For the record, I do not dislike zombies themselves.  It’s just that the majority of zombie movies  and my few attempts at reading a zombie book have been B movie grade at best – B for B.A.D.  I do, however love The Walking Dead.  So you have some idea where my standards lie in the zombie world.  This book was worth the read.

In UnAlive Kevin J. Fitzgerald gives us a zombie vampire apocalypse with some good descriptions of faces eating themselves from the inside and some scenes that would be Walking Dead worthy if they were adapted to film by a good director and film team.  The book has enough suspense to draw you deeper into the story.

UnAlive is self-published by Kevin J. Fitgerald and is available on Amazon and Goodreads.

You can follow Kevin J. Fitzgerald on Goodreads and Facebook.

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