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The Roof People

1 comment By Benjamin Percy

My sister slept with the light on until she was 27. She rightfully blames me. I would leap out of closets with my hands made into claws. I would... Continue »

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Benjamin PercyBenjamin Percy 9781455501663

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God Laughs When You Die

by Michael Boatman

ISBN13: 9780976654629
ISBN10: 0976654628
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

A host of drug dealers meets a foe they cannot kill. The president accidentally invites demons into the country and watches the pope turn into a sabertooth tiger. A man, dead since 1920, lives again in present day Los Angeles to satiate a malevolent goddess. These tales by Michael Boatman will disturb, terrify and traumatize you. Boatman grabs you by throat and drags you kicking and screaming through his prose. With a dash of Lansdale and a smattering of Martina's Wild Cards, the tales within inhabit the dark and nasty side of our souls, and throughout Boatman infuses it all with a keen wit and an eye for detail. And when he lets you up to breathe, like God, you might just find yourself laughing. This is the sort of stuff I like to read as the bells sound midnight. Paul Haines award-winning author of Doorways for the Dispossessed Boatman's debut collection will knock you down and kick you in the teeth. Alternatingly hysterical, grotesque, bizarre, and fantastic, Boatman's collection is a must-read for anyone itching to get their hands on fresh new fiction that pulls no punches. Ronald Damien Malfi, author of The Nature of Monsters and The Fall of Never Michael Boatman writes like a visitor from hell. Someone out on short term leave for bad behavior. I love this stuff. He's one of the new, and more than promising, writers making his mark, and a dark and wonderful mark it is. Joe R. Lansdale

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: Grady Harp, September 18, 2007 (view all comments by Grady Harp)
Dark, Skanky, Funky Little Twisted Tales: Performance Art

GOD LAUGHS WHEN YOU DIE: Mean Little Stories from the Wrong Side of the Tracks - that's enough of a title tied with a terrific cover art borrowed from Hieronymus Bosch to make any inquisitive mind pick up this book. The fact that it is the debut outing of classy actor Michael Boatman adds to the impetus, but it is the settling in with these nine weird short stories that makes the reader realize that here is a new writing talent in the making. The stories could be read aloud and be considered as performance art, so full of wild imaginings and colorful creations, at times repulsively detailed explorations of body cavities and characters who drop in like gargoyles to keep the eye and the senses alert.

Where Boatman finds these ideas it at once curious and frightening. Yet he is able to tell the stories with a superb vocabulary that seems to ooze from the page like a jellied corpse attempting to rise. There is a lot of violence here, yet controlled with a sense of building tension for the reader to quickly turn the page for more detail. His 'characters' are flat like comic book figures - until they speak or do perverse and nasty deeds, and then they are strong enough to resemble memories from bad dreams or dyspepsia.

Sounds like a book that might be more than the average reader could swallow? Maybe. But it is definitely an art form looking for an incarnation and Boatman seems to be able to open and close each of the fairly brief stories like an able craftsman. If the 'book' feels dissociative, then that may be part of the purpose of choice of format. Whatever Michael Boatman has created here begs for development into a novel state, and perhaps being committed to a full-length book on one topic would hone the ideas and imagination with the skills he so obviously has at hand. Try it - but leave the night light on... Grady Harp
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Product Details

ISBN:: 9780976654629
Author:: Boatman, Michael
Publisher:: Dybbuk Press, LLC
Subject:: Fantasy - Dark/Horror
Subject:: Horror - Anthologies
Subject:: Horror - General
Publication Date:: 20071031
Binding:: TRADE PAPER
Language:: English
Pages:: 148
Dimensions:: 8.50x5.50x.32 in. .43 lbs.

Related Subjects

Fiction and Poetry » Horror » General
Fiction and Poetry » Science Fiction and Fantasy » Fantasy » General
Metaphysics » General
Religion » Comparative Religion » General

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