Show of hands, how many of you out there have worked for a large corporation before? For those of you sitting at your desk with a hand raised, likely sipping a lukewarm coffee that may or may not have been the last cup before the carafe needed to be refilled (you think we don’t know?),…
Continue reading ➞ The Atrocity Archives – If You Gaze Long Into IT, The IT Also Gazes Into You
I’m certainly not a prolific reviewer - you can take a look at the history of the blog and see that without too much difficulty. At the same time, since joining The Quill to Live I’ve reviewed a decent amount of horror stories. I’ve come to some conclusions on what attributes great (or just my…
Continue reading ➞ The Ballad Of Black Tom – Not Going To Dance Around This One
This is pretty much the coolest post ever on the site, and I’ll tell you why. I’m writing from the future! Not only did we here at The Quill to Live receive an advanced reader’s copy of The Gutter Prayer (in exchange for an honest review), but I’m writing this from the back of a…
Continue reading ➞ The Gutter Prayer – Get Your Mind In This Gutter
I’d like to start this one out with an apology. I’m four books into this five book series and I have officially run out of ways to make the “Cabal [method of transportation]” joke. I’ve spent kind of an embarrassing amount of time trying to come up with a way to make it work and…
Continue reading ➞ The Brothers Cabal – Turns Out Horst is Back
Winter Tide, by Ruthanna Emrys, is a book I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time. Essentially a subversive take on Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, the book is told from the perspective of one of his “monsters”, and I’d always been intrigued by the description. Now that I’ve wrapped up this story, I’m incredibly disappointed…
Continue reading ➞ Winter Tide – Cooler than the Other Side of the Salt Water
For those of you who have been reading the blog for...more than 1.5 years (wow it’s been awhile now huh?), you may remember a short recommendation list I made for the zombie fiction genre. In the opening blurb that isn’t nearly as pithy or interesting as I thought at the time, I mention that books…
Continue reading ➞ Coldbrook – Something Something Lukewarm, Something Something Bad Pun
Boy howdy it’s mid-August and you know what that means: horror review time! There’s nothing scarier to me than 90 degree days with 90% humidity, and the electric bill that will be coming from me running my AC on the highest possible setting for months on end. In honor of the true terror brought on…
Continue reading ➞ Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute – It’s A Frighteningly Good Time
We Are Legion (We Are Bob), by Dennis Taylor, is the simple tale of a man. A man who gets hit by a car and wakes up as a synthetic consciousness around a century after his initial life (and death). I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear that Bob is the man that the story…
Continue reading ➞ We Are Legion (We Are Bob) – So Many Stories To Choose From, And You Chose These?
I was having a conversation with the other QTL staff the other day about how hard it can be to sort out the proper cosmic horror from the remainder of the “weird fiction”, and how frustrating that can be for someone who likes cosmic horror so much more than weird fiction. We came to the…
If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s horror stories. If there’s one more thing I like, it’s murder mysteries. If there’s one last thing I like, it’s dirigibles. You can imagine my excitement when I first discovered that the second book in the Johannes Cabal series was titled Johannes Cabal the Detective, the increase in…
