Showing posts with label CWA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CWA. Show all posts

Friday, September 10, 2021

Heavy Metal Fiction with Amanda Berthault

 


Shadows Unveiled by Amanda Berthault
EdenEcho Publishing, Chicago, IL, August 10, 2021
Electronic, Print, 229 pp.

About the Book
Heavy metal singer Shadow McKinley has faked his death to leave behind what he considers a torturous life. While disguised under his new identity as Shanley, a traveling pool hustler, he meets Macy, a teenage runaway and fan of his former band. Her plan to find her father in Los Angeles has fallen apart, and together they begin a cross-country road trip to get there. But Shanley makes one huge mistake, and their adventure turns into a desperate escape from the police and a struggle to stay alive. And with Macy unknowingly tormenting him with flashes of his past, Shanley must fight to keep his secret—not only from her, but from a world that is determined to find him. 

My review:
Shanley, a mysterious pool hustler, arrives in Kansas with little more than a truck to live in, dwindling cash in his pocket, and a need to earn money yet stay on the move.

The drama escalates when a young girl, obviously alone and defenseless, arrives in town wearing a t-shirt that means trouble to Shanley.

This contemporary action adventure opens with a noir feeling as Shanley’s favored costume is a black fedora and sunglasses worn at all times. As we peel back the layers of secrets, we’re drawn into a life on the run. Shanley and Macy are engaging people, lovingly drawn and wholly engaging. Who couldn’t cheer them on as Shanley reluctantly agrees to help young Macy travel across country? Their innocent adventure turns harrowing as they encounter the underside of humanity.

Shanley and Macy come from deeply flawed backgrounds and fight for survival after emotional and physical abuse. Shadows Unveiled shows the reader through narrow points of view and flashbacks how each of them learns to take the best of themselves to work together to accomplish a common goal and face the consequences of their actions.

Ultimately a story of survival and friendship, Berthault, a native Chicagoan with a passion for music, offers a novel that will start serious conversations about how we listen to each other and care about ourselves and our friends. I appreciated the reality of hearing how it sounds when I think I’m offering helpful advice. Plumbing the depth of someone else’s pain, letting them speak their story and not pushing them deeper into an inability to cope by sharing platitudes and empty shoulders isn’t true support. Shanley is able to turn his experience around and do something that helps teenage Macy, whose outside life seems idyllic, as much as his own is obviously dysfunctional. And maybe Heavy Metal Fiction will become a shelf label. I was intrigued by the way Berthault’s characters were so deeply affected by the music and lyrics in different ways. Shadows Unveiled is the first book in a planned trilogy and I look forward to reading more.

About the Author:

Amanda Berthault is an author, editor, and music lover who wants to make “Heavy Metal Fiction” a real genre. She has a BA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and has had multiple musically themed short stories published over the past two decades. She lives in the Chicago suburbs where she runs a freelance editing business helping other independent and self-publishing authors.




Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Track 9 by Sue Rovens

Track 9

Track 9
By Sue Rovens

$1.99 eBook
$12.00 Print

Buy on Amazon
Buy on Barnes and Noble

About the Book
After a catastrophic railway accident leaves a trail of carnage and devastation in its wake, the small train station in Rain, Germany is shuttered. Six months later, Gary and Grace Wolf, returning home after their belated honeymoon, find themselves trapped inside the now defunct terminal. What they discover within its walls leads them to make harrowing decisions. What they learn about each other pushes them to the brink of disaster. Back in Bloomington, Illinois, their best friends, Mike and Sarah Waverly, await their return. A few hours before the plane is scheduled to land, Mike becomes tormented by troubling premonitions concerning Gary and Grace. Driven to find out the truth, Mike finds himself battling mysterious and inexplicable obstacles that plunge him into his own personal hell. Everyone's fate hangs in a precarious balance as the clock runs out.

My Review
Tying inexplicable zombie terror, bad donuts, wholly unlikeable clueless tourists and even worse friends, an obnoxious prescient child, a train that is and isn’t there, and tying it between small town Illinois and very small town Germany, is no mean feat.
Readers of horror will be intrigued by Rovens’s story of a very, very bad train wreck and the aftermath of ghoulish behavior by the survivors…and the non-survivors. Meanwhile, devious and dull, faithless and obsessive business partners and friends air their grievances as their fates play out both in Illinois and Germany. Mike can’t seem to realize he lives in nasty Gary’s pocket, even when Mike’s wife points it out and he agrees. Grace can’t seem to find a personality until it’s too late, and her husband, Gary…well, let’s just say everyone gets what he or she deserves in this adventure of a honeymoon gone horribly wrong.
Told in migrating viewpoints, the reader is treated to a devolution of humanity as fears are aired and hung out to wave in the gory breeze. Lots of body parts, phantom invasions, premonitions, and bumps on the head, let alone in the night. A nice big bang finishes the job. I did have to put it down and finish it in the morning…

About the Author
Sue Rovens is a suspense/psychological-horror indie author who is an active member of the Chicago Writers Association. Her two novels, Badfish and Track 9, are available in both paperback and Kindle formats. She also has two short story collections, In a Corner, Darkly: Volumes 1 and 2 - think Twilight Zone kicked up a notch.
Sue also runs a blog, suerovens.com, part of which features interviews with authors from a number of different genres. It's a very active blog with content being added a number of times per week.