I had plans to take her on a shopping spree for a bit of impulse buying at a local art supplies store while my wife had ordered a book for me from Shocklines -- Your One-Stop Shop for Horror. She ordered a book that I have been saving my lunch money for weeks to purchase.
The book is Prodigal Blues by Gary Braunbeck. You can check out the book here on Shockline's website or on Cemetery Dance Publications website.
Gary writes books that are classified as horror, but here's the secret: they're really stories that, emotionally, gut you like a fish. His most powerful writing draws upon the tragedies of his past and then his craft hones the words to scalpel-sharp edge so you barely feel the cut until you're bleeding. And you love him for it.
I urge you to check out In Silent Graves by Gary if you can. It is a paperback edition, with some revision, of an earlier hard-to-find small press novel called The Indifference of Heaven. Check your bookstore and see if they can get it for you, or your library. If the library doesn't have it see if they can inter-library loan it from another library -- maybe by using worldcat. It's worth searching for. Although Barnes and Noble Online doesn't offer the book anymore, you can sometimes find a used copy through them.
In Silent Graves
You can find out a lot more about Gary Braunbeck in the semi-autobiographical work Fear in a Handful of Dust: Horror as a Way of Life. Not only will you get some excellent reviews of movies and music, you'll get context by way of the life of the reviewer (which is Gary himself) and insight as to why somebody would write horror novels and short stories in the first place.
Fear in a Handful of Dust:
Horror as a Way of Life
Meanwhile, I am waiting with bated breath for my copy of Prodigal Blues. It will be his first non-supernatural horror novel and promises to be his most emotion-flaying story yet.
Did I mention that my wife really loves me?
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