Morning Is Dead [Paperback]

Andersen Prunty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2010

Things went wrong for Alvin and April Blue. In a hospital at night, April sits next to Alvin, bandages covering his burned skin, listening to his heart beat on a monitor, and wonders how they ended up here. But she can never imagine the world of insanity, drugs, and crime that Alvin has fallen into. A place where fetuses are used to create simulacra, radiation victims prowl the streets looking for sacrifice, houses are arbitrarily detonated, and the police force is more like a marauding gang of thugs. A place where it's always dark and morning is dead...

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Rarely are readers of horror given the opportunity to laugh while wanting to throw up in their mouths a little bit . . . It's like peanut butter and chocolate, if peanut butter and chocolate were laced with rust, vomit, blood and oozing green radiation byproducts. - Jessica Brown for Horrornews.net

For the pierced, brooding goth and/or Chuck Palahniuk fan ... Is it all just a really bad acid trip? Actually, it's something much, much worse. Pick up this book if you enjoy blood-curdling, mind-screwing chills and thrills. - Tucson Weekly

An emotionally devastating descent into bizarre horror. If Philip K. Dick wrote horror, Morning is Dead might be what he'd have written. It's the book to read when you want to feel paranoid about your marriage, your work, your neighbors, your town, and your life in general. Don't worry, though. You'll enjoy every second of it. Gripping and creepy as hell. - Jordan Krall, author of Squid Pulp Blues and Fistful of Feet

Morning is Dead is event horizon dark. You won't find a positive thought in the entire story. - Nathaniel Lambert, co-author of Sideshow PI: The Devil's Garden and It's OK To Be a Zombie

Buy it now. Read it. If you want a book that is scary, creepy, disturbing, surreal, and compelling, then you will enjoy Morning is Dead. - Lance Carbuncle, author of Grundish and Askew and Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed

Alarmingly pertinent ... Nobody is safe and nothing is sacred. An amazing book. - Matthew Revert, author of A Million Versions of Right

Like a true nightmare, this night-time world has danger at every corner. - Nick Cato, author of Don of the Dead

The despair and heartache are palpable, the strangeness nigh impenetrable and the horror intense. - Garrett Cook, author of Archelon Ranch

Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Grindhouse Press (April 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0982628102
• ISBN-13: 978-0982628102
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #295,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andersen Prunty is an American fiction writer. In 2006 he won an online contest sponsored by The Harrow and judged blindly by Ramsey Campbell and Brian Keene for his story "Rayles." His first book, a collection of weird little stories called THE OVERWHELMING URGE, was published in 2008 by Eraserhead Press. In 2009, two of his books (THE OVERWHELMING URGE and ZEROSTRATA) were nominated for the Wonderland Book Award. He is also the author of MY FAKE WAR, MORNING IS DEAD, and THE BEARD, among others. He currently lives in Dayton, Ohio. Visit him on the web at www.andersenprunty.com or contact him via email at [e-mail]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very nice!, November 3, 2011

By 

bugZilla (VA, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Morning Is Dead (Kindle Edition)

This is the second book that I've read by the author and when I hit the "free sample" button I started to feel like a junkie and I knew I was going to buy it a few chapters in. I'm glad I've found Prunty and I like his style. This book is very good. I really enjoy how the author has a tendency to tell several stories as once in his books and lets the reader decide which one is best, plausible, favorable or meaningful while keeping the ride bouncing and humorous. In this book reality is much more fragile than people would care to admit and perspective can shatter one to the next and I like his jabs at industry in general. I particularly like how he bounces between two characters in this story and builds suspense in the process. I found myself falling into his trap and I started turning pages faster as it built and I really wanted to see where things were going. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll just say that I recommend it and I have hit the "free sample" button once again. This author is going to get all my money ... GD the pusher man LOL

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Morning is dead because Prunty killed it. That evil, evil man., January 7, 2011

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Morning Is Dead (Paperback)

Andersen Prunty, Morning Is Dead (Grindhouse Press, 2010)

The big twist at the end of this novel has been revealed in a couple of other reviews I've read. I will avoid doing so here, but were I you, I would avoid reading other reviews of the book until after you've read the book itself in order to save yourself for the final chapter. Anyway.

Coming into this book, I thought I knew two things. The first was the word on the street that Andersen Prunty was poised to become the first bizarro author who could actually break into the mainstream, as opposed to mainstream authors who've been co-opted into bizarro (Robert Devereaux and Steve Aylett being obvious examples). The second is that there were zombies. Turns out the first is accurate, anyway. I can't claim to be anything remotely close to widely read in bizarro, but what I have read of it has often seemed the work of inspired amateurs; enjoyable, but lacking the sort of experience and polish that it takes to sell a novel to Doubleday or Grand Central or whoever the big publishing house is these days. (I've been out of the bookselling business for a while. When I was still in it, Random House was the big deal...) Prunty definitely has the enthusiasm of the inspired amateur about him, but there's also a bit of that spit and polish, as well. It's obvious there's an overarching theme here, there's a sense that Prunty really thought about where he wanted this book to go and what he wanted it to do, rather than just sitting down and seeing where the ride took him, and I cannot overestimate the importance of that in putting together a piece of professional-quality fiction. In short, I'm telling you that if you're intrigued by this whole bizarro thing and you're looking for your first intro to the genre, this is an excellent place to start.

Plot: Alvin Blue is in a coma in the hospital. His wife April is sitting beside his bed, waiting for him to either come out of said coma or die. The narrative goes back and forth between April conversing with her friend Maribel in the hospital room and pieces from Alvin's perspective. Are they horrific nightmares? Is he living some sort of purgatorical atonement in his head? Is something else entirely going on? Or, as it seems, has he truly slipped into an alternate dimension, where the local industrial plant (the Point) is actually a shadow government that controls all of Dayton, Ohio, where the sun never shines, where women make money by selling fetuses to Dr. Lucky's Abortion Clinic, where the cops are drugged-out sex fiends and radiation-scarred mutants walk the streets in search of fresh prey?

Morning Is Dead is a blissful, somewhat gross (though not nearly so much as most of the bizarro I've read) amalgam of Anthony Burgess' The Wanting Seed and Dark City, the Alex Proyas film. Those are two influences that it would be pretty darned difficult to screw up, at least as far as I'm concerned, given a writer with any talent whatsoever. And while Prunty's stuff does have the rushed, sometimes skeletal feel that's been common to the bizarro I've read over the past few years, he is undeniably a talented writer, and he does a solid job with this story. Well worth picking up, and as I said before, a very good introduction to this new-ish subgenre. *** ½

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The one that got me hooked..., December 11, 2010

By 

BJ "Brett Starr" (East Peoria, IL United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Morning Is Dead (Paperback)

"Morning is Dead" kicked my a..!

This is the blackest rabbit hole you could possibly fall down!

What's an Andersen Prunty?

I loved this book, the characters, the storyline, the absurdity. For only having 142 pages, you get more then you'll ever bargain for.

Alvin Blue is gone. Gone, gone, gone down so deep he no longer sees the morning light!

The book has a little bit of everything: sex, corrupt cops, mainly two aptly named Officer F...pants and Officer B....hole, an obssesed archer, people who rust when they sleep, fetuses, radiation victims and in this world houses are chosen randomnly for detonation (thus the cover of the book).

I've read two of Prunty's other books My Fake War, Slag Attack and his book of short stories The Overwhelming Urge and "Morning is Dead" is by far my favorite!

Anyone can make up a bizzare story, making that story readable and interesting is the hard part, Prunty has done that at it's finest!

Take the trip that is "Morning is Dead" and you won't regret it.

Buy it, read it, tell your friends!

For other great bizarro short fiction, check out Jeremy Robert Johnson's Angel Dust Apocalypse!

Enjoy~