Indie Ink Runs Deep: Ani King

 

Every now and then I manage to talk a small press author into showing us a little skin... tattooed skin, that is. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. Whether it's the influence for their book, influenced by their book, or completely unrelated to the book, we get to hear the story behind their indie ink....

Today's ink story comes from Ani King, whose released their story collection Family Night earlier this year with Mason Jar Press! 

The Presence of Wildflowers by Ani King

I can be a particularly impulsive person, which is evident in all of my early tattoos. It is also evident in my writing process, which is largely a vibes and inspiration driven affair. A fair number of the stories in Family Night were written in stoplight bursts on my phone, or at the kitchen counter while asking if my family would be so kind as to let me just write this down, even though we might have been in the middle of something.

            As far as my tattoos, I spent very little time considering what they should be beyond what felt cool in the moment, while also factoring the amount of money I had available at the time. I have a couple of terrifically stupid, cheap tattoos, including a playboy bunny with blue flames around it that I got on my stomach. I have since had two children and grown well into middle age and that bunny looks really bad now. I will not be sharing a picture here of that tattoo. I also do not fully remember the circumstances in which I chose it but will note that it is also a shared tattoo. Yes, someone else has the same bad tattoo, with the flames in a different color, and no, we were not sober. We don’t even know each other anymore. I tell you this first for a couple of reasons: it makes for good contrast against how long I spent thinking about and planning this wildflower forearm sleeve, and it probably will make most of the characters who inspired the tattoo seem a little obvious. I’m not saying that Anne Shirley or Jo March or Lolly Willowes would get an impulse tattoo (I’m lying, in modern times Jo for sure would have some embarrassing literary quote, I promise you), but I am absolutely saying that young adult Pippi Longstocking would have a left forearm full of ink and poke nonsense that she did herself. I will not be taking counter arguments.

This specific tattoo was always meant to do a lot of heavy metaphorical lifting, and so much like a short story that takes forever to complete, the style and intent shifted over the course of six years. It started with a list of words that I felt like I was reclaiming (obstinate, difficult, headstrong, stubborn, to name a few); I had also just come to the full realization that I am non-binary. Gender non-compliant, if you’re nasty. As I thought about the words themselves, I found myself returning to foundational books and characters, largely from my elementary and preteen years. For a brief moment, I thought about getting a typographically interesting box of the most impactful words, with wildflowers growing out of the box. I like the imagery and how it would let me throw a little love for Michigan into the mix. As well, wildflowers are stubborn plants, weedy and prone to growing even where they might not be wanted, and they tend to survive where other more delicate or desirable flowers would not.

As a person who is prone to impulsive decision, I have always needed at least a couple of rules that keep me employable and from having too much expensive regret. My three tattoo rules are: no words or names, no political symbols (ask me how I came up with this one, and yes, the answer is a very expensive cover job), no flags. As you can see, I was prepared to break one of those pretty quickly. I was having a really hard time bringing all the elements—the flowers, the characters, the words and meanings—in a way that sounded at all appealing. As much as I am an artist, I am not a tattoo artist, and that was evident after five years of trying to come up with something.

My tattoo artist did an amazing job, though I did not remotely explain the relationships between the flowers, characters (and one author) or words and feelings that they were representing. I managed to tell her which flowers I was keen on (except I forgot one), and that I didn’t want it to be too structured. What she designed after a five-minute interaction is perfect: sketchy, organic, and very free. She added a few more flowers that pop up here in Michigan and included the ferns I had forgotten. A fun final fact: I didn’t get to see the design until the day of my appointment, so in a way it felt a bit impulsive because I took one look, fell in love, and about twelve minutes later my artist inked the first line.

 

Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, 1945 | Goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis)

Picture of a white person’s forearm with a sketch-style tattoo of wildflowers.
This image is focused on the Goldenrod part of the tattoo,
which has black-lined stems and leaves and unlined yellow blossoms. 

Until I was about eight, I lived in a conservative, restrictive environment. I largely read select Little Golden Books, and Bible stories or books that were tied to Bible stories in some way. Sometimes it surprises me that Pippi Longstocking made its way to me in that time period, considering what  subversive female character she was compared to how I was supposed to behave. I related far more to Annika and Tommy Settergren than Pippi, and like them I think I found her as terrifying as I did amazing. Pippi was the very definition of non-compliant. She was willful and confident and headstrong, and she was always asking why, and while not without her problems, she was very happily herself.

A lot of the time, Pippi is treated like a nuisance, like she’s too much, like she’s a problem to be managed into obedience, and Goldenrod is a hardy, beautiful, overpowering plant that millions of people are allergic to, and bees and other bugs and birds love this flower. In fact, Goldenrod is tremendously important to bees in that it provide nectar and pollen in quantity, and it’s still around in late summer and early fall when other plants are already done for the year. I like to think Pippi in real life would be a stay too late at the party until someone very directly explains that it’s time to leave kind of person.

 

Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, 1908 | Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota)

Picture of a white person’s forearm with a sketch-style tattoo of wildflowers. 

This image is focused on the Queen Anne’s Lace part of the tattoo, 

which is lightly done black line work, to emphasize the delicacy of the blossoms.

Where Pippi is honestly kind of cool, Anne is dramatic and messy. She has big feelings all the time and she desperately wants to be beautiful, and just as desperately wants to be good, but she also wants to be loved as herself.

The core thing about Anne is she’s so vulnerable. Her layer of armor barely covers her deep sensitivity, and her heart lives on the outside of the armor. While it’s not graphic, on the page trauma, Anne goes through being moved around foster homes, often chosen or rejected based on her gender and usefulness; she’s known hunger, she knows enough to try and get in front of all the complaints Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert are going to have, because she’s heard it all before. But still, there’s a bit of her that cracks every time she’s confronted with her supposed flaws, no matter how much she tries to summon the mantle of graciousness that might hide it when then remark cuts. Associating her with Queen Anne’s Lace is pretty obvious, but if there’s any wildflower that simultaneously belies its own toughness and fragility, it’s this one.

 

Jo March, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, 1868/1869 | Chicory (Cichorium intybus)

Picture of a white person’s forearm with a sketch-style tattoo of wildflowers.
This image is focused on the Chicory part of the tattoo,
which has lightly sketched purple blossoms and watercolor style leaves and stem. 

Chicory is a hardy plant, said to represent perseverance, determination, and adaptability. I think it’s a flower worthy of representing Jo March, who was in many ways representing her creator, and I like to think they would both appreciate the comparison. When I look at Chicory on the side of the road hanging out with all the other ditch weeds, I think, Dang that is a masculine but jaunty plant! I love that Jo March is rough and wild and boyish, and also tenderhearted to boot. Her best friend is a boy who is in love with her and she is not in love with him, and I remember thinking of the boys I had friendships with, that I roughhoused and spit and swore with, as being a part of a brotherhood with me, and what a blow it is to find out those boys were thinking of me like a girl. I didn’t have the words yet to explain it when I was younger, but I understood why Jo was so disappointed, even in herself. Sometimes it would a lot easier, or feel a lot safer, to do the expected thing. She even considers it, knowing she doesn’t love Laurie, but out of loneliness. As well, Jo isn’t fearless, though she lets people think otherwise. I’ve always thought it’s more that she does things despite the fear, because the end result is more important. She hustles to sell her stories, she works hard to take care of her family, she sells her hair for a good amount of money and is deeply sad about it, so she’s a hard worker for what or who she loves. And like Anne, she also feels set apart at times. She struggles with the boundaries of her sisterhood expanding and changing, even while changing them herself.

Louisa May Alcott was herself a deeply political person, an abolitionist and feminist, and she intentionally never married. In an interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, she said, "I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body.... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man." The authorial layer feels well represented in Little Women, and I think Alcott, who was also a very practical person who worked as a nurse during the American Civil War, was part of helping people find employment, and later raised her niece after her sister died, while managing her own health issues. Determined. Adaptable. Reliable.

 

Meg March, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, 1868/1869 | Marguerite Daisies (Garden marguerite) 

Picture of a white person’s forearm with a sketch-style tattoo of wildflowers.
This image is focused on the Marguerite Daisies part of the tattoo,
which has pale purple and blue blossoms and a black shared stem.

There’s a lot that could be said about Meg’s role in Little Women as the oldest daughter, and the mini-Marmie and peacekeeper. Or about Jo wanting Meg to be the kind of woman who bucks marriage and everything that comes with it so she can tread the boards, but how Meg actually would like marriage and most of what comes with thank you, especially if it could please be with the poor but hot tutor from across the way. But the thing about Meg March that has always stuck with me is from the scene that made me hate Laurie’s smug rich-boy ass with a vengeance. She’s at a party and she is so happy to be at the party, because most of the time she is doing chores and helping care for her family, and yes, her sisters can be fun, but they are also her responsibility, and no one at this party is her job. Of course, there are all these rich girls with more modern, more expensive dresses, and one girl takes her under her wing, but in that benevolent rich girl way where it’s not quite actual kindness. Meg embraces it, she lets herself be “Daisy” which is the benevolent rich girl’s nickname for her. And listen, as a kid who grew up on hand-me-downs, thrift-store finds, government cheese, and Kiwanis Christmas baskets, I promise you Meg did not think she was going to live like this afterwards. I’d bet money she never even forgot for a second that it wasn’t real. But Laurie couldn’t let a girl have a minute, instead he craps all over her dress and how she looks and then lectures her about essentially being fake and basic. I still hate him for it, because it takes a lot to lean into a moment where you know you’re not welcome and still make something of it your own, only to have this oblivious, moneyed-up, hometown-bro crap all over it. The Marguerite Daisy is a little more dressed up that some of its siblings, just a little bit more delicate in the petals, and I chose it for Meg’s moment as Daisy, where she very briefly got to enjoy something on her own. Still mad at Laurie though.

 

Lolly Willowes, Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner | Lady Fern (Athyrium felix-femina) 

Picture of a white person’s forearm with a sketch-style tattoo of wildflowers. 

This image is focused on the fern and fiddlehead part of the tattoo 

which is done in a thin, black line style, with a couple of leaves that have a dusky green color. 

Finally, we come to the plant I forgot to mention to my tattoo artist about, the one she included in her design as a given, and to Lolly Willowes, the spinster-aunt, possibly-aro-ace satanist of my heart. I didn’t find this book until I was a little shy of forty, at which point I became obsessed with it and gave a lot of my middle-aged lady friends copies, because I felt (and still do) that it said a lot about women bucking the expectations of age and station; it said a lot about being done with doing emotional labor for everyone else. It absolutely said a lot about wanting even more than a room of one’s own and then fighting to keep it by becoming a satanist and hexing bothersome nephews so they will not in fact move to town and continue to disrupt everything and fit everything into the shapes they want. When Lolly Willowes finds in herself someone she would like to get to know, everything changes. She wants to be alone, because she’s not especially lonely when she is, not after most of a lifetime spent caring for others. She doesn’t resent having done so, but once she embraces life for herself, she can’t possibly let it go. As I get older, I find that I crave more alone time, I enjoy the time I can spend in my own head.

I chose the Lady Fern for this representation because the ferns in a floral arrangement are considered filler, even though the bouquet often looks shabbier without them. In a field, or along the edges of a forest, ferns are the background characters in the party, but ferns are capable of living through below freezing temperatures for a while, and they’re a backbone plant in their ecosystem, and one of the first plants to grow back after a wildfire. Ferns are so dependable that they are sometimes overlooked or taken for granted, much like Lolly Willowes becomes in her family. Like my favorite spinster aunt, ferns are complicated in their beauty and they’re not all that intentionally inviting. I personally find the smell of hot ferns nostalgic, but also a little unpleasant, though not so much as certain body sprays and colognes. Lolly Willowes helped raise kids and carefully lived in the background to maintain an easy seeming peace in her brother’s home, and then she went to whatever lengths she could to keep her own actual peace. I’m not saying we all need to make the quietest and politest of fictional deals with the devil to do so, but I am saying it’s an option, and I don’t judge.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Releasing October 20, 2026

Pre-order here

FAMILY NIGHT is by turns a lyrical celebration of queerness and an exploration of family and loss, often through a lens of magical realism. Ani King's collected flash fiction stories explore relationships and connections: a teen girl attempting to summon her missing mother home with cigarette smoke and yacht rock songs; two sisters disputing how to care for an unhealthy elderly unicorn; a woman accidentally raising two daughters from the bones of her long-dead pet rabbits. Throughout FAMILY NIGHT, there is a sense of yearning for connection, be it with family, old friends, lovers, or community.

Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer and artist from Michigan. Ani is a Monarch Queer Literary Award recipient, with work on the Wigleaf Top 50 Long List, and in Best Small Fictions 2025 and Best Microfiction 2026. Family Night, their debut flash collection is out in October 2026 with Mason Jar Press. 

The 40 But 10: Ajesh Chacko

 

I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Ajesh Chacko is an Indian author interested in the ordinary moments that quietly shape a life. The Hours We Never Entered is his literary novella about grief, attention, love, and what it means to be present when life refuses to follow a plan.

Why do you write?

I write because I’m interested in the parts of life that are easy to overlook while we’re busy trying to get somewhere else. A conversation we almost miss, a room after someone has left it, the way a small regret can stay with us for years — those things feel ordinary until they suddenly don’t. Writing gives me a way to stay with them long enough to understand what they mean.

 

What made you start writing?

It wasn’t one dramatic moment. I kept finding myself thinking about the same questions: Why do we postpone the people we love? Why are we so good at organizing life and still so bad at being present for it? Eventually those questions stopped feeling like thoughts and started feeling like a story. That became The Hours We Never Entered.

 

What’s your kryptonite as a writer?

Trying to make every sentence perfect too early. I can spend far too long adjusting a line that may not even survive the next draft. I’ve had to learn that sometimes the best thing you can do for a story is keep moving and come back with clearer eyes later.

 

Describe your book in three words.

Grief. Attention. Presence.

 

Describe your book poorly.

A man ignores a nineteen-second voice note, goes to the coast, meets a dog, and slowly realizes his calendar was not actually the meaning of life.

 

If you met your characters in real life, what would you say to them?

I think I’d say less than I imagine. Tom has enough people telling him what he should do. I’d probably sit with him for a while and tell him he doesn’t have to turn grief into a lesson. To Lucy, I’d say thank you. Even though she is absent for so much of the book, her warmth is one of the things that keeps the story alive.

 

Would you and your main character get along?

Probably, but I think we would annoy each other first. Tom likes control, efficiency, and having an answer. I understand that part of him more than I’d like to admit. We might spend the first hour disagreeing and the second hour realizing we were arguing about the same fear from opposite sides.

 

Do you read the reviews of your books or do you stay far far away from them, and why?

I read them. I’m a new author, so pretending I don’t care what readers think would be dishonest. At the same time, I’m trying to learn the difference between listening and chasing approval. A thoughtful negative response can teach me something. A positive one can encourage me. Neither should decide what I’m allowed to write next.

 

What’s the one thing you wish you knew when you were younger?

That life does not begin after the next achievement. It’s very easy to live as if the real version of your life is waiting somewhere ahead — after the right job, the right amount of money, the right plan, the right timing. I wish I had understood earlier that ordinary days are not the waiting room. They are the life itself.

 

What scares you the most?

Not failure in the usual sense. What scares me more is reaching the end of a year — or eventually the end of a life — and realizing I was physically there for it but mentally somewhere else. That fear is probably one of the deepest reasons this book exists.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Purchase the book here

A NINETEEN-SECOND VOICE NOTE.

He listens too late.

 

Tom Kerr is good at measuring attention. His job is to make people look, click, and return. Being present in his own life is harder.

 At 8:17 one morning, his younger sister Lucy sends him a nineteen-second voice note. Tom listens too late.

In the weeks that follow, grief fractures his routines, his relationship with Rachel, and the version of himself he has spent years building. He leaves the city for Bellwether, a wind-worn coastal town where a widowed landlady refuses easy answers, a nurse with a dry sense of humour keeps him honest, and a stray dog named Finn begins following him home.

Tom goes looking for quiet. What he finds is messier: guilt that cannot be solved, love that cannot be scheduled, and moments that ask nothing of him except that he be there.

 The Hours We Never Entered is a literary novella about grief, attention, love, and the difficult grace of staying present when life refuses to be fixed.

 

 

Indie Spotlight: Kevin R. Andrade

 

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Kevin R. Andrade, who released In For a Dime on August 5th. 

Origin Story

The origin story behind In for a Dime and the first book of the series, Ten to the 405, was a bad beat in the first game of the 2011 college football season between USC and Utah. A blocked field goal and a returned touchdown overturned by an erroneous penalty call caused millions of millions of dollars to switch hands. From that game, began the origins of Jake Hansen. Out of that moment of frustration emerged the idea of a man whose whole life had become a bad beat- someone who had once possessed talent, ambition and promise but had squandered it. Jake devolved into a disgraced former journalist, a man damaged by his sins, vices and proclivities and found himself searching for redemption.

 

The world of Jake was created in Ten to the 405, the first book of the series. Many of the short stories that occur in the South Bronx were inspired by real stories and my own experiences as a journalist, although some poetic license was used to reshape and serve the novel. That mixture of truth and invention is central to the way I write. I begin with something real - a person, a neighborhood, an anecdote I might tell in a bar and then I ask how a similar experience might affect the characters inhabiting the world of In for a Dime and Ten to the 405.

 

By the time I began writing In for a Dime, Jake, as well as Pete, Lamar, Sophie, Danny and a few of the ancillary characters had developed their own histories, flaws, loyalties and voices. I have a relationship with these characters and it’s not simply to move the plot forward. I wish to convey what each of them wants, what they fear, what they regret and what lines they will, or will not, cross. I believe the most revealing moments occur not during the violence or mystery, but in the quieter conversations between people who have survived together and have found salvation in each other.

 

Loyalty is paramount in these books. Jake and the people around him are imperfect, reckless and compromised. But when someone they love is threatened, they are there. Their loyalty is what saves them and it is also what puts them in dangerous situations and forces them to make choices that challenge their morality.

 

Above all, In for a Dime, is a love letter to Los Angeles. It’s not a postcard version but a missive to the sprawling, divided, beautiful, unforgiving city beneath it. Its bars, streets, freeways, neighborhoods and people, shape every decision. Los Angeles is more than the setting for the Jake Hansen series. It is one of its most important characters.

Former journalist turned reluctant PI, Jake Hansen, alongside Pete Mills and Lamar Wagner, is hired to track a missing accountant and $2 million in stolen funds. But when their investigation leads to a dangerous web of corruption and a sex trafficking ring tied to the city’s elite, the case becomes personal.

When Sophie, their bartender and closest ally, is targeted by a predator from her past, the stakes escalate. With bodies dropping and the law closing in, Jake and his crew must uncover the truth before everything they care about is destroyed.

In for a Dime delivers a dark, cinematic look at loyalty, corruption and the cost of digging too deep.

Kevin R. Andrade is the author of the Jake Hansen Mystery series, including Ten to the 405 and In For a Dime.

A Mexican American raised in Ohio, Kevin earned degrees in English and Political Science from Bowling Green State University before building a career as a speechwriter, music journalist, travel writer, and novelist. He has lived in Los Angeles, Mexico City, Boston, and New York City, experiences that continue to influence the authentic settings, dialogue, and characters throughout his fiction.

Before writing novels, Kevin crafted speeches for politicians, interviewed music legends, and explored destinations around the world as a travel writer. Those experiences taught him that every person has a story worth telling, a philosophy that continues to shape the characters and investigations at the heart of the Jake Hansen Mystery series.

The 40 But 10: Ivan Carl

 

I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Ivan Carl. Ivan is a traveler, engineer, and educator. The idea behind The Equation began decades ago in the Andes mountains and took shape over years of adventures with family and friends — and one question he couldn’t stop asking: what makes a life work? He still travels the world with his wife and kids, and the pursuit continues.

What made you start writing?

I had a message I really wanted to share with the world, and writing this book was the most fun, and I think the best, way to share it. I've always loved a great story, so weaving my message into a thriller felt like the natural way to reach as many people as possible.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I'm outside as much as I possibly can be. I love hiking, skiing, surfing and playing tennis with my friends and family. If there's a mountain or a ocean nearby, that's usually where you'll find me.

What’s your kryptonite as a writer?

Self-doubt. When I start worrying about whether the writing is good enough, or whether I'm really connecting with the reader, that's when I struggle. Getting out of my own head is the hardest part of the work.

How do you celebrate when you finish writing a new book?

Well, this is my first book, so I only have one data point! I celebrated by taking my van up to the North Cascades for a solo overnight and a backcountry ski. It was the perfect way to mark the moment. The photo on my dust jacket is actually from that trip.

Describe your book in three words.

Thoughtful, entertaining, unfinished. (That last one is on purpose. The book is designed to leave you with a question, not an answer.)

Would you and your main character(s) get along?

For sure. I think I'd get along really well with Nathan, the protagonist. We'd have a lot to talk about. And honestly, I think I'd even get along with the antagonist, as long as we could openly debate the big questions in the book without letting that define the relationship. The best conversations are often the ones where you can politely disagree.

If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?

Paulo Coelho. I'd love to know whether he's as philosophical and interesting in person as he is on the page. I suspect a day with him would leave me thinking for months.

Do you read the reviews of your books or do you stay far far away from them, and why?

So far, I'm reading all of them. Whenever I can, I engage with the reviewer. I've had some genuinely fascinating conversations with readers after they finish the book. If anyone reading this wants to connect, you can always reach me through my website.

If you were stuck on a deserted island, what’s the one book you wish you had with you?

50 Philosophy Classics. It's a little obscure, but it's a beautifully condensed summary of the great philosophical works. My time on the island would be filled with deep thought and a lot of internal debate which, honestly, sounds like a pretty good island to me, especially if there was a surf break too!

If you could time travel, would you go back to the past or forward into the future?

Definitely the future. I'm endlessly curious about how humanity will overcome the challenges we face today. I'm an optimist. I believe we have a very bright future ahead, even now. My ideal journey would be to jump forward in fifty-year increments, just to watch the world evolve. I would also love to see how my book has been received!

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Releases Septmber 1st, 2026

Amazon      |     Audible 

Some truths are hidden. This one could change the world.

A murdered professor. Two words written in blood. And an equation that could change everything.

Nathan Brooks was a mathematician going through the motions — publishing papers, chasing tenure, measuring his life in productivity metrics — until his mentor was killed for a discovery he'd spent forty years protecting. Now Nathan has the key to the research, a former intelligence operative at his side, and a target on his back.

The equation is elegant. What it proves is explosive — and the organization that has spent two centuries burying it will do whatever it takes to make sure Nathan never shares it with the world.

What would you risk to know the truth?

What I read in August

 

Here's what I read in July.  Ten books total. Of those,  three were 5 star reads,  four were 4 star reads,  one was 3 stars, and two were 2 stars. A pretty strong month,  comparatively.

Seven of them were review copies. Two were audio. Three were print.  The longest book was 400 pages.  The shortest was 176 pages. A total of 2676 pages read. 

Last Day of a Prior Life by Andres Barba

5 stars. Last Day of a Prior Life is a ghost story that might not be a ghost story, but one that will absolutely steal your heart.

Our unnamed narrator is prepping a house she’s trying to sell, moving through the familiar motions of cleaning and staging, when she turns from the sink and sees a boy sitting perfectly still in one of the kitchen chairs. She asks him what he wants, and when he doesn't respond, tells him he can’t be there, that people are coming, and he simply stands up and walks away. A quick search of the house reveals nothing. No boy. Not a trace. Just a lingering sense of unease and curiosity.

She moves through the showing in a kind of waking dream, unable to shake the encounter. She doesn’t tell her The Man She Lives With. She doesn’t tell anyone. Instead, she cancels her appointments the next day and returns to the house, pulled by a strange, quiet desire to see the boy again.

But what she finds is even stranger. A reflection of herself at the sink, turning, reacting to the boy exactly as she did the day before. The cringey moment replaying itself without her permission.

From here, the story slides beautifully into that eerie space where reality thins as she begins to slowly detach from herself and chases the strangeness of the house and the boy who haunts it. It's less about the supernatural and more about the parts of our lives we abandon, neglect, or refuse to face.

This is a captivating, dreamlike meditation on obsession, grief, and the inescapable regret that follows as a consequence of the choices we make. It’s tender and unsettling.

I went in with zero expectations and found myself completely enraptured. If this isn’t on your radar, consider yourself officially on notice.

Summer Fun Masscare by Craig DiLouie

Brought this book with me while vacationing in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains bc I anticipated it would be the perfect horror companion, expecting a full on slasher, dripping with campy ’90s nostalgia and enough bloodshed to make a VHS horror fan grin. Unfortunately, that’s not what this book delivers.

We get maaaaybe five minutes of gory goodness before the story pivots hard into a tongue and cheek police‑procedural. From there, it’s nearly 200 pages of following the local deputies as they try and repeatedly fail to solve the case before it goes cold… just like the eerily similar massacre from the early ’80s. And the one before that. And the one before that. Because this town has a long, strange history of bodies piling up in the same patch of woods, stretching back to the ’60s.

Local legend blames a hare‑masked creature that burrows underground and rises every so often to feast on human flesh. Deputy Tom, however, is convinced the truth is far more human ... and far more personal. With ties to the ’83 killings and this fresh massacre happening practically under his nose, he’s determined not to let the killer slip away again.

I’ve yet to find anything by DiLouie that hits the same unforgettable high as Suffer the Children, though I keep hoping. I really thought Summer Fun Massacre might be the one ... but nope. It’s not a bad book, just not the book I was expecting. Instead of a slasherfest, we get the behind‑the‑scenes politics of small‑town policing and the slow grind of an investigation that may never find its monster.

If you’re looking for a procedural with a horror edge, this might work for you. But if you’re craving a blood‑splattered slasher romp? Adjust your expectations accordingly. Sigh.

Marla by Jonathan Janz

I picked up Marla right after finishing Craig DiLouie’s Summer Fun Massacre, not realizing I was about to tumble into another horror novel obsessed with small‑town police politics. A weird coincidence for vacation reading... almost as if the universe decided I needed a double feature of local cops losing their minds.

But Marla did something different. Beneath the procedural surface, this is straight‑up grief horror. It's packed with small‑town secrets, a string of bizarre deaths that make zero sense, a community that seems to know more than it’s willing to say, and a mother–daughter duo who radiate unease from the moment they appear on the page, with Marla herself becoming a person of interest when she's spotted right before or right after someone dies. Meanwhile Carl, our main guy and local cop, is perpetually one step behind every death, which only makes the whole thing feel more frustrating and cursed.

I’d actually marked Marla as a to‑buy title years ago after seeing people rave about it, not realizing it was a limited release. Trying to track down a copy was fruitless, so when it popped up on NetGalley, I wasted no time in requesting it. And honestly? I found it to be worth the wait.

This was my first Jonathan Janz novel, and it won’t be my last. His writing is super accessible, and quietly unsettling in that creepy WTF way that keeps you glued to your Kindle screen. It's more psychological than splatter, where the atmosphere is thick and the emotional undercurrent of grief, guilt, and the way loss distorts our perception, gives the story a bit more weight than I had expected.

Marla isn’t just another small‑town horror procedural. It’s stranger, sadder, and more haunting than that... and it's left me wanting to dig deeper into Janz’s backlist.

Meat Bees by Dane Erbach

Serendipity and I? Besties. I swear, half the books I pick up at random end up weirdly connected, like they’re conspiring behind my back. My last two reads both dove into small‑town police politics and the absolute clown‑show attempts of local cops trying to handle supernatural chaos.

Then Meat Bees waltzed in with the same vibe. And here’s where it gets freaky. My husband, our son, and our daughter‑in‑law had just come home from a trip to the Smoky Mountains. And not just the Smokies — the Tennessee side. And not just the Tennessee side — but a tiny town right outside Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, where this book goes completely off the rails. Dolly Parton Stampede? Drove right past it because we opted for the Pirate dinner show instead. Mountain coasters? Planned, but the weather said “lol no.” Souvenir shops full of Dolly merch and chaotic tourist tchotchkes? We lived in those and are 100% guilty of leaving with arms full of fun merch.

So tell me — what are the chances of picking up a book set in the exact place I just visited for the first time ever? I love when the universe aligns like that. It feels intentional, like life is unfolding on a track you’re meant to follow.

Erbach wrote this after their own Smokies trip, when their kids got attacked by wasps. Thankfully, we avoided that nightmare. Aside from some aggressively hungry nighttime mosquitos, nature pretty much minded her own business. And thank god, because if I had stumbled across skeletonized bodies or heard the mountain whisper “leave now,” girl… I would’ve sprinted. I am not built for wilderness horror. Scarlet, Liz, and their Stovetop Outfitters co-workers? Bless them. I would not have made it.

Hard pass.

Four solid stars. The writing is sharp, the pacing is wild, and the story barrels forward like a zipline you can’t get off. There's some gore here but not the kind that would make anyone vomit in their mouth or get that weird fuzzy feeling behind thier knees. And good lord, I tore through it all because I had to know how it all wrapped up.

The Burn Line by Jonathan Sims

Damn, this book had me by the throat.

Sims plunges you straight into the dark, claustrophobic labyrinth of the London Underground, where something is stalking commuters on the Central Line... yet no one remembers a thing. Five strangers wake without having realized they dozed off, full of anxiety they can’t explain, faintly smelling something sweet and rotten, brushing greasy ash off their clothes like it’s no big deal, but also realizing they’ve all experienced the same thing.

As they gravitate toward one another and begin unlocking the memories that were taken from them, the novel tightens like a noose. And once they start remembering? Oh, they regret it immediately.

Sims excels at atmosphere — the claustrophobia, the tension, the sense of being hunted. The book toys with you, unsettling you in all the right ways. But when the creature finally steps into full view, the reveal is simultaneoulsy satisfying and disappointing, shifting the story from something uniquely eerie into something a little more cliche. The pacing mirrors this - slow, deliberate dread that give way to bursts of frantic momentum.

Even still, The Burn Line remains an engrossing, grimy journey through the London Underground and the social machinery grinding beneath it. Imperfect, yes but undeniably compelling. Even so, I tore through it. It’s creepy, it’s weird, it’s sweaty in that summer‑subway kind of way. A perfect pick for a gross, humid afternoon when you already feel like something is breathing down your neck.

Tapeworm by AP Thayer

FFS, you guys. Two pseudo‑vampire wannabe novels back‑to‑back, completely by accident. I started The Burn Line right as I queued up Tapeworm for my commute, and somehow I ended up in the exact same situation twice: books insisting their weird little creatures were vampires when they were very clearly… not. The synchronicity was almost unsettling and this one was just...sigh.

This book was weird, the sex was icky, and I still have no clue if those things were supposed to be vampires or just desert parasites with a superiority complex.

The opening drags — we’re stuck with a miserable couple on a desert vacation with their equally miserable couple‑friends. Fast‑forward a year: same trip, except now the husband shows up solo and refuses to talk about the split. Then he meets a hot desert girl and immediately loses all brain cells.

Nothing actually happens until the last 2.3 hours — which I listened to at 1.9x speed because the narrator read so slowwwww — and then suddenly it’s chaos. Are they vampires? Parasites? Worm‑people? I finished the book and still couldn’t tell you.

And the sex scenes. LORD. I am not built for “daddy do me dirty” desert kink. These scenes were physically painful to endure. I have yet to encounter a monster‑spice moment that isn’t cringe, and this book doubled down.

In the end, Tapeworm is a strange, uneven novel that left me more perplexed than satisfied. Entirely too horny, completely confusing, and absolutely not the vampire book it thinks it is.

Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm

Our Cut of Salt is presented as a haunted house novel, but what it really offers is a multigenerational family narrative with a light supernatural undertone. The pacing is slow, the prose more clunky than not, and the ghostly elements feel symbolic rather than frightening — with nearly all the actual “haunting” crammed into the final few pages.

The premise had real potential - a house shaped by grief, resisting new occupants, waiting for the return of those it lost. It’s evocative, even cinematic at times. But the novel devotes most of its energy to the inner lives and hidden traumas of three generations of women, leaving the haunting underdeveloped and rushed.

It’s not a bad story — just not the one I signed up for. If this had been marketed as a generational narrative with a haunting twist, I’d have been less disappointed. And if it had leaned harder into the “rage house” concept, it could’ve been something wild and memorable.

I came for the angry house. What I got instead was a family epic with a ghostly garnish.

Jaws by Peter Benchley

It's about time I read this, right?! Born in the 70's, I grew up on the Jaws films, but I'm honestly not sure I would have ever picked up the book if I hadn't seen it on sale on Chirp.

The narration wasn't horrible. Erik Steele has a weird, slightly transatlantic accent, unless he's softening up a Lawng Island accent but it's defintely not the New Yawk accent I grew up with. His women voices were a little cringe and some of his male characters sounded a little too similar to each other, but Benchley's writing had a tendency to overstate who was speaking so it was really easy to follow.

The writing has that very dated, very direct "why you listen here, you" flavor to it which was kind of refreshing, and there was tons of male posturing, which was quite entertaining - all of which lends itself really well to audio.

While the movie ruined beaches and ocean swimming for a lot of people, calling Jaws, the novel, horror... I dunno. The book definitely focused more heavily on the relationship between Brody and his wife, and the politics that drive a summer tourist town, than it did the actual people eating, blood spraying, terrifying, man eating shark. And when it did focus on the shark, it was kind of neat because we were given the shark's perspective... which I enjoyed. Sadly though, once Brody, Hooper, and Quint all hit the ocean together, it felt like Benchley chucked that approach into the water with the chum. Oh well.

And was the affair subplot really needed? A forever pet peeve of mine... authors throwing in cheating spouses, especially when it's not really doing much to drive the story forward and just creates an unnecessary distraction. Book Brody was angry and violent enough. Why anger him more by making his wife sleep with someone else while he's already fuming over the giant fish who keeps killing the tourists and the mayor who refuses to let him close the beaches?

I know it sounds like I'm bitching a lot but keep in mind, I'm comparing book to movie and you will almost never hear me say this because I'm firmly camp "the book is better" buuuuttt... not in this case.

If I just take the book at face value, it's a 4 star. I really enjoyed it. And I looked forward to hitting play on the app every time I got into the car soooo....

Maybe I'll take a peek and see if Benchley's other book is marked down on Chirp... to keep the fish vibes going a little longer!

The Instruction Manual to Being a Vampire by Craig Wallwork

Hold up. Just hold up one freakin’ minute. Truborn Press dropped an unexpected front‑runner for my favorite read of the year, and somehow you’re all sleeping on it. How is no one else reading this book yet? It’s flying under your radars and frankly, you should be ashamed.

The book opens with a woman strolling into a police station covered in blood, wearing a necklace made of severed fingers, calmly announcing she’s the witness to thirty‑three murders. That’s page one. From there, Wallwork hits the gas and never lets up.

As the investigation unravels, we learn our narrator narrowly escaped a late‑night attack thanks to an elderly vampire priest named Roth — the same priest who recently appeared at her grief counseling session, which she reluctantly attends after her father’s death in an attempt to find connection and eavesdrop on other's sufferings. After witnessing the brutal way he dispatches her attacker, she teams up with Roth to help him hunt the “bad blood” he needs in order to survive. Think Dexter, but swap the forensics for fangs. Both murderers with weird moral codes.

Wallwork shines a whole new light on the vampire genre and torches the tired damsel‑in‑distress narrative while he’s at it. Our leading lady is nobody’s victim. She goes toe‑to‑toe with anyone who has the balls to cross her path.

But here’s the kicker: beneath all the gore, the book digs deep into loneliness, grief, and the hollow ache of trying to keep living when life keeps taking. It’s as much about redemption as it is about revenge... a fist punching straight up through blood, bile, and despair. And just when you think you’ve got the whole thing figured out, Wallwork’s like… uh… no ya’ don’t.

This one’s a wild, bloody, unexpectedly tender standout... and absolutely a contender for my top reads of the year.

For fans of In The Valley of the Sun and Coffin Moon.

Last Days by Brian Evenson

This book had been sitting in my Kindle TBR for waaay too long, and landing a NetGalley copy of the sequel Phantom Limb, which is coming out in October, was exactly the shove I needed to bump Last Days straight to the tippy top of the pile.

I adore Brian Evenson. Not only does he write fiction like no one else, he’s genuinely one of the coolest humans walking around. He was incredibly generous with his time the few chances I had to meet him, and hosting him as a #SMOLfair keynote speaker was one of those pinch‑me moments I’ll never forget.

All that gushy admiration aside, I am kicking myself for waiting this long to read Last Days. This thing is a phenomenally fucked‑up masterpiece and gets every single star from me. Kline might be one of the calmest, most unhinged MCs I’ve ever encountered, and I am fully obsessed.

I wasn't feeling well yesterday and took a sick day from work, and devoured this book with every scrap of energy I could muster... and honestly, it was the perfect story to disappear into. I cannot wait to dive into Phantom Limb today and keep riding this Evenson high.