Shock Totem: Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted 2011 [Kindle Edition]

Jennifer Pelland (Author), Lee Thompson (Author), Jack Ketchum (Author), Mark Allan Gunnells (Author), Robert J. Duperre (Author), Mercedes M. Yardley (Author), Kevin J. Anderson (Author), K. Allen Wood (Author), Shock Totem (Author)

Book Description

This special holiday issue of Shock Totem features an eclectic mix of holiday-inspired dark fiction from K. Allen Wood, Mercedes M. Yardley, New York Times bestseller Kevin J. Anderson, Robert J. Duperre and more. Also anecdotal holiday recollections from Jack Ketchum, Jennifer Pelland, Mark Allen Gunnells, Nick Cato, and a host of others.

Celebrate the holidays with Shock Totem!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The stories in Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted make Silent Night, Deadly Night look approximately as gritty as The Muppets Take Manhattan." --Shroud Magazine

About the Author

Shock Totem is an American literary journal specializing in dark fantasy and horror. The debut issue was published on July 1, 2009. The publication's main goal is to promote and support new and established authors by focusing primarily on fiction, but also through nonfiction articles and interviews (called "conversations").

Product Details

• File Size: 978 KB
• Print Length: 94 pages
• Publisher: Shock Totem Publications (November 16, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00695SL8I
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #374,829 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant holiday edition of one of my favorite genre magazines November 28, 2012

By Bracken

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I don't tend to go for holiday themed anything, but being a big fan of Shock Totem already I decided to give this a whirl. I am so glad that I did. The whole issue is a stand out, but in particular, Mercedes Murdock Yardley's story is brilliant and if John Boden's "Tinsel" doesn't break your heart, then you don't have one! Seriously. It's heart-breaking. Also, if you hate clowns as much as I do (and I really, REALLY HATE CLOWNS!), you're going to love K. Allen Wood's "Streamer of Silver, Ribbon of Red." That's a guarantee. More quality work from the team at Shock Totem.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Holiday horrors & macabre memories June 22, 2012

By Wag The Fox

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This issue of Shock Totem brings together eight short stories, as well as eleven short trips down memory lane with various authors sharing their Christmas memories--twisted and macabre as they might be. It starts off with a story by Mercedes M. Yardley called "Heartless" that is just all the way disturbing, about a heartbroken woman who finds a demon in her bed and she is too lonely to wish it away.

K. Allen Wood's "Streamer of Silver, Ribbon of Red" is a story that starts off with a sinister sense of humor. I mean, the villain is a homicidal clown dressed up as Santa--come on. The story plays out through the clown's point of view, which I had my doubts about, but as it played out it became clear that the story just wouldn't work any other way. And the payoff had a mischievous Hitchcock feel to it.

My favorite story is a relatively short piece called "Tinsel" by John Boden. I'll simply sum up my thoughts on this tale by saying stories of loss and loneliness don't always resonate as well as this one. Well done.

There's a couple other stories that offer some snow-dappled scares like Kevin J Anderson's "Santa Claus Is Coming to Get You!" and Robert J. Duperre's "One Good Turn." As for the holiday memories, they were like bonus interludes between the stories. Jennifer Pelland's had one of those childhood memories that echoes something from my past, while I'd say Mark Allen Gunnells had one of the more charming stories.

Honestly, I would have been perfectly happy to trade the memories from more fiction, but I'm not complaining. It's a nice slice of holiday hellscape wrapped with a pretty red ribbon--and dripping with blood. Happy holidays!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Volume of Sublime Malevolence December 17, 2011

By Shroud Magazine's Book Reviews VINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

Culturally, we tend to adopt a dualist approach to the holiday season, bookending our naughty/nice deliberations between those representative yin-yang extremes of the color spectrum, Black Friday and White Christmas. Perhaps this is the kind of simplicity we need to get through the Exodus-rivaling travel, wallet-flogging, and family intrigue, not to mention all the trite, overdone bitching over department store Christmas muzak casually rattled off ad nauseam--as if buying toilet paper to the strains of Kelly Clarkson's latest breakup anthem back in October had been some kind of transcendental, edifying experience! Which is to say, amidst yuletide chaos tradition is employed as a small oasis, and we seize upon it for whatever serenity it can offer us.

Now imagine you're standing next to the tinsel-festooned tree in your mother's living room, nursing a second eggnog and wondering how long you can resist those Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sugar cookies. The Burl Ives is on repeat and you're smiling and nodding even though you haven't picked up a goddamned word Uncle Ralph has been laying down lo these last forty-five minutes.

Screw it, you say to yourself, Rudolph can light the way down my esophagus for him and his whole gang.

Ralphie finally pauses to take a breath and you make an escape speedy enough to rival those epicene teenage vampires that are all the rage these days. You've almost reached the dessert spread when the sound of breaking glass stops you in your tracks. A fat man in a crimson suit lined with white fur waves jollily through a shattered windowpane then thrusts an industrial sized nozzle into the room. The intermittent, multihued illumination of the outdoor Christmas lights reveals a hose snaking across the backyard to a tank soldered onto the back of his souped-up sleigh. You are tempted to utter some of the same obscenities dad did while staple-gunning those blinking faux icicles and glowing plastic evergreens to the eaves, but before the vituperation finds its way to the tip of your tongue an elf hits a switch on the sleigh, the hose engorges, and soon the room is awash in bloody gore--plasma and fat and bits that could probably be put together in the form of an organ by Auntie Ester, the family's jigsaw master.

Ho, ho, ho! Never sounded so sinister.

The preceding scenario is something of an allegory for what Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted achieves. This excellent volume of sublime malevolence from the provocateurs at Shock Totem magazine dispenses with the goodwill toward men fairly early on and sets about planting sticks of dynamite around that aforementioned oasis. Fair warning: The humor is black, the twists are twisted indeed, and before you stick a finger in the splatters of red stuff coagulating everywhere, please be aware chances are it is not cherry pie filling.

It would be a shame, really, to degrade shock value with a detailed review. But in the interest of whetting appetites let's just say that in the skewed Shock Totem reality bad clowns occasionally become even worse Santas, some elves are not nearly as gregarious as Dudley Moore and Will Ferrell, getting exactly the gift you ask for can be more curse than blessing, and not all kids take Santa's "naughty" verdict lying down.

Oh yes, K. Allen Wood and crew go there...and then some. Remember when Siskel and Ebert threw a tantrum back in '84 over Silent Night, Deadly Night? Those scolds had no idea. The stories in Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted make Silent Night, Deadly Night look approximately as gritty as The Muppets Take Manhattan.

As an added bonus Shock Totem peppers the volume with holiday recollections of several horror fiction luminaries--brief respites from dark otherworldly visions, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartrending.

Christ, what more could a fan of horror fiction ask for, really, than a poem by Jack Ketchum about decorating a Christmas tree stoned out of his gourd in 1969?

Reviewed by Shroud's Shawn Macomber