Night of the Wendigo [Kindle Edition]

William Meikle (Author)

Book Description

Four hundred years ago a Scottish cargo ship fell prey to a Wendigo at an early settlement on the Hudson River. Now a team of archaeologists have uncovered the boat, and let loose the evil.

Soon Manhattan is hit by an ice storm like no other. Besides the wind and ice, there is something else moving in the storm. Blue, cold things, with razor sharp teeth.

Editorial Reviews

Review

""Night Of the Wendigo" is one hell of a story by one hell of a storyteller at the top of his game and is a tale that is not to be missed... I give it my highest recommendation." - Famous Monsters of Filmland

From the Author

Since I moved from Scotland to Newfoundland I've developed a love/hate relationship with cold weather. Part of me finds it fascinatingly beautiful, and I'm often in awe of the force and majesty of the winter storms that sweep this island from January till April. But another part of me pines for warm, sultry days in the sun.

Back in the winter of 2007/8, a particularly harsh one in these parts, I started to have a germ of a story idea. At that stage I only knew I wanted to do an "ancient evil comes back for revenge" tale, and I wanted to trash a big city in print. (This was before I wrote CRUSTACEANS, and I hadn't tried anything on this scale before.) That it would involve weather extremes was a no-brainer, given that, at the time I had the idea, we had three feet of snow on the ground here.

I started with no real plan beyond an opening scene where archaeologists uncover an old boat on a cargo dock in Manhattan. Pretty quickly a cast of characters started to squabble for my attention; cops, forensic teams, other archaeologists and a conspiracy nut. Somehow they all fitted in to the same story, and I had to step back for a while to outline a plot.

Four hundred years ago a Scottish cargo ship fell prey to a Wendigo at an early settlement on the Hudson River. Now a team of archaeologists have uncovered the boat, and let loose the evil. Manhattan is soon overrun by an ice storm like no other before it. There are things moving in the storm. Blue, cold things, with razor sharp teeth.

The characters never stopped squabbling, but the main character, the winter storm itself, rode roughshod over them, and it was the force of the storm that drove the story forward in my head.

It runs in my mind like any number of big dumb disaster movies, with its theme of chaos and destruction coming to modern Manhattan, with antecedents in the Emmerlich and Devlin blockbusters 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and even Godzilla.

I'd love to be able to sit down with my popcorn and beer and watch it for myself on a big screen. It's a dream I have.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 409 KB
• Print Length: 282 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: B0088JJC90
• Publisher: DarkFuse Publications (March 31, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007QM2BAC
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,563 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An ancient evil walks the streets of New York. July 14, 2012

By Chris McCaffrey

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

William Meikle is great fun as a storyteller, and so is "Night of the Wendigo." I was expecting a small sort of campfire story about a native American Indian legendary creature but this is much more than that. What starts as a monster romp turns quickly into much larger story. Seamlessly weaving an account of an encounter with a savage mythical creature contained in a 400 year old diary with a cataclysmic battle fought on the present day streets of New York provided this novel a very interesting depth. A wendigo is a terribly nasty demonic creature with powers to possess and animate the dead and even change the weather to suit its bidding and this story gets bigger as the threat grows. Great characters. Plenty of humor. And a plot structure that kept this story humming along at a great pace until the conclusion. Not subtle. Not literary. But quite a bit of fun if you like old fashioned horror novels like I do.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A night of terror you won't forget! February 7, 2013

By TobyT

Format:Kindle Edition

A white-knuckled ride through the fertile imagination of Willie Meikle that will leave you gasping for breath! This was my first sample of Willie Meikle and DarkFuse Publishing and I loved it! Yeah, I'm a DarkFuse author, but so what? NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO is like the cool creature flicks that we all loved as kids, but on steroids. The creatures are ferocious, the characters are well thought-out and easily differentiated and the action is non-stop - just the way I like it! Good job, Willie!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars No Spoilers here! Just read this book NOW!!! January 2, 2013

By K. Saiz

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you love H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce or August Derleth's Gothic Horror, this is a modern day example of their style. It hits you fast and hard & does not stop. Great Characters, rapid movement of plot, truely spine chilling. I wish I had read this during our horrid Texas summer months, maybe then I could have slept!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Where the Wendigo Walk.... February 7, 2013

By recluse

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Remember when being scared was fun? William Meikle does. NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO is a grand, old-fashioned seasonal horror novel that delivers. In spades. Because, out there in the dark, as the snow falls and the wind howls, you'll believe that the wendigo walk.
What more can you ask for?

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant May 9, 2012

By Ginger Nuts of Horror

Format:Kindle Edition

If ever there was an author whose novels should be turned into brilliant popcorn fest films then it is Mr Meikle. Meikle is the master of the modern pulp novel. His stories capture the readers imagination and takes it on a whirlwind of a roller-coaster ride that will leave you breathless come the last page.

I had the honour of reading an early draft of this book a couple of years back, at that point it had a different title, so I was unaware when I purchased this book that I had already read a version of it. Not one to waste money, combined with the fact, that even if this version was identical to the one I had already read I knew I was going to in for a great time.

Night of The Wendigo, is another near perfect example of why I love Willie's writing, within minutes I was transported into another world, a world in which all the crap of real life didn't exist. All that existed and all that mattered for my time spent in this book was the book itself. Some books require you to think and concentrate, and some books like this places your brain right in the centre of an 3D Dolby 7.1 surround sound narrative. And please believe me this is no criticism of Willie's writing, Willie has a gift for writing highly entertaining thrilling novels, and this is no exception.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars An exciting page-turner of a book. April 25, 2013

By David L. Brzeski

Format:Paperback

This is based on a review copy sent to me by the author.

William Meikle is a con-artist! He somehow, sneakily, managed to trick me into reading a zombie book. I tend to avoid zombie books. They usually bore me rigid.
In this case, however, I'm glad he did. This is by no means just a zombie book. The main evil in the book is very different from and possibly even more dangerous than the Wendigo I read about in the famous story by Algernon Blackwood, and let us not forget, it creates ice-zombies.
I had a certain deja vu while reading the flashback parts of the story, which were presented as the diary of the captain of a Scottish cargo ship some four hundred years in the past. This is because I had read it before, as a short story, in the anthology, 'High Seas Cthulhu'. So I suppose that makes this a Cthulhu mythos novel of sorts, albeit it doesn't name-drop any of the usual Lovecraftian books, or entities anywhere.
An archaeological dig has unearthed the remains of this cargo ship and released the Wendigo. People start to die, their bodies found flash-frozen. Soon Manhattan is hit by the mother of all ice storms. Many more people die, but some rise again and they're so hungry.
This book is informed as much by classic drive-in B-movies as it is by prose fiction and it's none the worse for that. It would, in fact, make a pretty good film. It's an exciting page-turner of a book that I finished in just two sittings. My only criticism is that I don't rate the cover much.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars fast frozen fun February 19, 2013

By Robin Winter

Format:Kindle Edition

Oh my this was great. I started it and finished in one day. Delightfully horrific, spinning along at speed, I appreciate that Meikle breaks some old tropes about who survives and who doesn't. I can see the movie in my head, with the right director handling the gusting blinding snow and spraying blood, it would be a great ride.

More About the Author

I'm Willie, a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with fifteen novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries, the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others. My work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and publications.

My current best seller is THE INVASION, a sci-fi alien invasion tale with mass carnage, plucky survivors, and last minute rescues. It has been as high as #2 in the Kindle > science fiction charts. (and #4 in Kindle > horror ). Please check it out.

I've been asked many times why I write what I do. I choose to write mainly at the pulpy end of the market, populating my stories with monsters, myths, men who like a drink and a smoke, and more monsters. People who like this sort of thing like it.

I don't write for the critical acclaim of my peers. I couldn't give a toss what other writers think of me. I'm writing for two reasons... myself and a readership. Posterity, if there is one, can decide on whether it's any good or not. Besides, the harder I work at it making my writing accessible, the more readers I get, so I'm doing something right.

But that's still not why I do it. My pat answer has always been the same. "I like monsters."

But it goes deeper than that.

I write to escape.

I grew up on a West of Scotland council estate in a town where you were either unemployed or working in the steelworks, and sometimes both. Many of the townspeople led hard, miserable lifes of quiet, and sometimes not so quiet desperation. I was relatively lucky in that both my parents worked, but I spent a lot of time alone or at my grandparent's house.

My Granddad was housebound, and a voracious reader. I got the habit from him, and through him I discovered the Pan Books of Horror and Lovecraft, but I also discovered westerns, science fiction, war novels and the likes of Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Alistair MacLean, Dennis Wheatley, Nigel Tranter, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov. When you mix all that together with DC Comics, Tarzan, Gerry Anderson and Dr Who then, later on, Hammer and Universal movies on the BBC, you can see how the pulp became embedded in my psyche.

When I was at school these books and my guitar were all that kept me sane in a town that was going downhill fast. The steelworks shut and employment got worse. I -could- have started writing about that, but why bother? All I had to do was walk outside and I'd get it slapped in my face. That horror was all too real.

So I took up my pen and wrote. At first it was song lyrics, designed (mostly unsuccessfully) to get me closer to girls.

I tried my hand at a few short stories but had no confidence in them and hid them away. And that was that for many years.

I didn't get the urge again until I was past thirty and trapped in a very boring job. My home town had continued to stagnate and, unless I wanted to spend my whole life drinking (something I was actively considering at the time), returning there wasn't an option.

As I said before, I write to escape.

My brain needed something, and writing gave it what was required. That point, back nearly twenty years ago, was like switching on an engine, one that has been running steadily ever since.

And most of the time, the things that engine chooses to give me to write are very pulpy.

I think you have to have grown up with pulp to -get- it. A lot of writers have been told that pulp=bad plotting and that you have to have deep psychological insight in your work for it to be valid. They've also been told that pulp=bad writing, and they believe it. Whereas I remember the joy I got from early Moorcock, from Mickey Spillane and further back, A E Merritt and H Rider Haggard. I'd love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

I write to escape.

I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it