Take a Ride into the Weird Wild West with KC Grifant and Her 2nd Installment of the Melinda West Series

Cover Image courtesy of
Brigids Gate Press, LLC

Once again, KC Grifant offers up an entertaining, genre bending read with Melinda West and the Gremlin Queen. I had the fortune of reading the first installment of the Melinda West series over a year ago, and this second installment is just as imaginative as the first with an obvious tease for a third installment at the end.

I do recommend picking up Melinda West, Monster Gunslinger and reading it first in order to get to know the main characters and the Weird West world that they live in. It also sets up some important elements about Melinda’s backstory and her struggle with PTSD that might be confusing if you go into book two blind. But if you’re a series reader, this mashup of Wild West, Horror and even SciFi promises to have some longevity.

As with the first, this installment is plot centric and pulpy, and I feel like it pulls its story from a wellspring of pop culture Scifi reimagined for a Wild West world, with the obvious hat tip to Gremlins. There are touches of Alien, and the Borg in Star Trek comes to mind, but the story is still its own story and not some rehash dressed in Western duds. Also, Grifant populates the piece with a diverse cast.

I want to thank Brigids Gate and Grifant for approving this ARC request via NetGalley. And one final shoutout for the striking cover! Click on the cover image above, or the link below for purchase options: 

https://brigidsgatepress.com/product/melinda-west-and-the-gremlin-queen

Another Self Promo Post --This Time for Reals

 And I know, the last blog entry about an anthology barely included me in it -- the Dancer anthology -- which had a couple of my haikus and a lot of short horror gems from other writers. But this time I need to give a shoutout to Graveside Press and this beautiful horror anthology called Tiny Terrors: Spring 2025.

I have checked out Graveside Press in the past, and was blown away by A Mortuary for Songs by Elizabeth Guilt in particular. It inspired me to submit something to an open call for submissions, and I did, never thinking it would get accepted. But it did, and here it is: The Body and the Blood, among a list of over thirty stellar pieces by various authors. It's fresh out, as of today and while I haven't had time to read all of the stories in it yet, I have read a few. So let me touch on those three because, again, I was blown away.

The ones I chose at random to read gave nods to classic horror authors while maintaining their own originality.

Lawyer, Captain, Cook by Kevin Oldham tells the tale of a lawyer who makes a disturbing bargain while on a privateering journey across the high seas in order to save his own skin, as it were...

The Echo and the Altar by P. N. Harrison pays respects to Lovecraft, as a son discovers the reasons behind his veteran father's PTSD.

The Confession of R. N. Renfield (Undated and Unread) by Kay Hanifen presents Stoker's side character from Dracula and gives him an intriguing backstory.

and then there's mine, The Body and the Blood, about a priest on the edge of losing his faith until he finds himself locked inside his church with others taking refuge at the dawn of a zombie apocalypse. George Romero is mentioned... 

Okay, maybe my entry has a totally different tone, but that's the beauty of this anthology. There's a little something for the niche horror fan and a whole lot of everything for the general horror fan. The writing of the above three mentioned stories is stellar, and I give props to the Graveside Press editors who tackled mine. So go to the direct link at Graveside Press, or go to your favorite book retailer and buy your copy. It's a worthwhile edition to any horror reader's collection.

click for sales link

Self Promo Time—But Not Really: Reviewing Dancer, A HauntedMTL Charity Anthology

Cover Image
Courtesy of Czykmate Books

So, I’m between a rock and a hard place with this unique little anthology of horror. You see, I'm in it, and I have made a commitment to refrain from rating my own work. My contribution to this collection consists of two haikus, six total lines within 150 pages. So maaaayyybeee I can review it? Without technically rating it? The haikus are fantastic (haha jk), but seriously, the collection of short stories and poetry is worth a look. Standouts for me include:

Kevin Hollaway's graveyard crime story Unrest

Nicole Luttrell's environmental horror piece Everything Is Fine

Sci-fi horror The Hunger Between the Stars by Kody Greene

Kathy Sherwood's The Roadside Room about a dangerous one night stand

Glenn B. Dungan's weird The Bug Room about a boy and sentient bugs with cryptic lessons

Rob Swystun's touch of folk horror with Canta Hotinza, about a mysterious construction site spreading across the land

But that’s not all. Sarah Das Gupta has both poetry and short stories of merit, and the rest of the collection has the potential to resonate with readers of a variety of tastes and interests.

Better yet, the curator of this collection, Jim Phoenix, plans to give the proceeds of this book to a worthy charity, the children of Ukraine. Anthologies are a great way to get in a touch of reading when you’re too busy to commit to a full fledged novel. And this one is for a great cause! Check it out. I recommend it even if I’m technically a part of it. My part is two cents worth of the entire book, so I think I might get a pass this time. 😉

Find it here, or wherever you choose to buy your books.

The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias — A Gritty Noir Laced with Twisty Supernatural Horrors

Cover Image courtesy of
Mulholland Books

The Devil Takes You Home, by Gabino Iglesias is an intense and dark read about a man who deals with loss by burying himself in the shady life of a hit man. It’s a well written piece, and it takes some wild curves that rely on religious superstition to justify the weirder aspects of it. The main characters are also bilingual, so if trying to decipher passages of Spanish text bothers you, be forewarned.

I personally find the Spanish a challenge in a good way. First, it lends authenticity to the characters of Mario and Juanca in particular. Second, it gives me a chance to judge my progress in Duolingo, and I’m happy to report that I got the gist of what was being said. Most of the time. When I didn’t, I decided I was experiencing the story like the other gringo characters, and that could be considered important too.

The weirder aspects of the story, without spoilers, involve blessings and curses and devil magic, and they didn’t always land well with me —there’s often a fine line when it comes to suspending disbelief in stories like this—and sometimes I was scratching my head. In retrospect the supernatural horror elements are laid out in a way that connects the threads of weirdness, but I was definitely pausing to determine what was going on, on occasions.

Also, there’s not a lot to like about the main characters, with exception to their loss. If you need a main character to root for, you won’t find it here. This story is gritty and rough and it deals with how we get through loss, so it’s an interesting take on it from a horror perspective. And, of course, sometimes taking a ride with extremely flawed characters gives us a new perspective on things. Take the show Breaking Bad for example. This story brings us into a world of drug cartels and border crossings and Mexican gangsters doing heinous things, so if you like those kinds of stories, then you’ll want to check this one out.

Find it here, or wherever your favorite books are sold.

Into The Forest and All The Way Through — a poetry collection for the missing

Cover Image courtesy of
Burial Day Books

A collection of poems inspired by—and dedicated to—women throughout the United States who have gone missing or who have been killed with their cases left unsolved. This is an ambitious project to say the least, and a noble effort with the intent of shining a light on the prevalence of missing woman cases that go unsolved over the course of decades. Pelayo touches on two or three cases per state to fuel her inspiration, with a dedication to each case that inspired her.

The actual poems were hit and miss for me. The ones that hit, though, hit hard with a five star punch. Average them out with the still-worthy-of-merit misses, and I can give this a solid recommendation. The Horror Writers Association agrees with its Stoker Award nomination.

You can check out Into the Forest and other Cynthia Pelayo works of horror here: 

https://linktr.ee/cynthiapelayoauthor