The biggest news is that I will again be tabling with the Bizarro Writers Association at the Printer’s Row Lit Fest from Sept. 12 to 13. Come by to say hi to myself and the other Bizarro and horror authors there, and buy some signed books. Thank you as always to Michael Allen Rose and Sauda Namir for organizing it.

My main writing project at the moment is a surreal religious horror novelette called The Meat-Eating Sun. It’s about a Pilgrim crossing a strange and hostile landscape to find the true face of God. I found the character compelling enough that I’m also working on a prequel story as well.

I’m also continuing to shop around two novellas. One is a highly experimental work called The Neon Hums My Name about a hotel that seems to exist outside of time and space. The other is called Silence in the Concrete Cathedral. It’s a mystery about a man who writes video game manuals for a living searching for a priest who has gone missing.

I hope to attend more lit events now that I’m in a city where more happen.

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The houses leave behind their families who squat on the empty lots where their dwellings once stood with all their furniture and belongings surrounding them. They sit and await the day new houses move in to shelter them.

—

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Gianluca Cameron’s You Know It’s Black takes place in some undefined far future Earth where half-human, half-animal people, known as demi-humans, have become a common part of the population. The story follows the rich mouse-woman Eris as she goes to parties, has sex with various characters, develops a relationship with her mole-man driver Beaufort, and engages in endless discussions on philosophy.

The print of Dominant Curve by Kandinsky existed alongside a piece of what was known as “gay furry pornography” in the early 2010s. Both radiated beauty that existed beyond banal representation, assured our heroes of the validity of their patronage and acted as remnants of the bygone age where humans stood above animals rather than being faced everyday with their proximity to such beings. Beings of pure and divine synthesis.

This is one of those books where I went in with certain expectations from the description and the cover. The expectations were dashed by the first chapter. The book opens with a pair of characters meeting for prom. These are only minor characters who only appear very briefly again. However, thinking in terms of story and characters in a book like this isn’t entirely accurate. This is a highly experimental work more interested in mood, imagery, and ideas.

Rather than an overarching story, it makes more sense to read each chapter as an individual vignette. There is continuity between them, characters will come and go with little overall impression, some chapters will introduce concepts that are never further explored.

Your mileage will vary on reading a whole book like this, but it’s clearly intentional. What I can think it can best be compared to is like switching and scrolling between several social media apps. The result is seeing conversations and images where you don’t always get the entire context.

The novel is very dialogue heavy, and many of the conversations are about society, the government, art, religion, and the characters’ odd fixations. One chapter is almost entirely a conversation about Hyperborea. Another is about a character raging about his faith as he’s trapped inside a box filling with sand.

One of my favorite moments, and one of the funniest, is when Eris has a date with Vincent Gallo. It’s revealed she actually really hired him to have sex. They have a strange roll in the hay that ends with Eris’s genitals changing. Not because of the sex, they just change on their own every so often.

You Know It’s Black is an odd book, probably the strangest one I’ve read so far this year, but it is a fascinating read. It’s full of outlandish images, but also manages to capture something very real about the disordered time we’re currently living in.

Buy You Know It’s Black by Gianluca Cameron here.

—

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The new feel bad all the time edition of If today the sun should set on all my hopes on cares is now up on Amazon and Godless with new cover art by Ruth Anna Evans.

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i.

at times
i’m struck by the feeling
that i missed something
some important event
some appointment i should have kept
some task i was supposed to have done
but it passed me by
and that fact will haunt me forever
not in ruining my life
or even making it materially worse
but by leaving
an unexplained sense of emptiness
that will never be filled
nor will i ever learn
what i’m even missing

ii.

many days
i find myself
waiting for something
but i don’t know what

—

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If you follow me on any social media, you probably know that I’m preparing to move in a couple months. As a way to raise some money, because moving like everything is expensive, and to give me a little less to have to haul I’m currently having a sale at my Big Cartel site.

All of these books come signed. If you want a special personalization, please put it in the note at check out. Otherwise, I’ll just sign them.

MY BIG CARTEL SITE

Also, while I shouldn’t need to do a fundraiser or anything like that, I could still use any cash that I can get. If you appreciate my work and want to throw me a few bucks for it, you can donate at this Paypal link.

PAYPAL.ME/BENARZ13

And of course, you can always pick up my work at Amazon, Bookshop, or request it at your local bookstore.

AMAZON
BOOKSHOP

Also, don’t forget that Rob Ramirez’s debut novel is available again from Anxiety Press.

CANDY SHOPPING AT THE END OF THE WORLD

I appreciate everyone reading and supporting my work. I hope you’ll continue to during this transition.

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For those of you who want signed copies of my books, it’s now easier than ever to get them. I’ve started a Big Cartel site where you can order a signed copy.

Be sure to leave a note at checkout if the name it want it personalized to is different from the name it’s being shipped to.

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John Lakerman, a journalist working for the alternative outlet donkeyWolf, is doing a piece on a new drug called Noumenon. When he travels to Miami to try out the drug, he begins falling down a rabbit hole that goes deeper than he ever expected. He discovers a company named Phenom Games, a company specializing in augmented reality games, has bought out the producers of Noumenon. While investigating the company, and their new game How I Killed the Universal Man, he finds himself questioning the nature of reality and his perception of it.

“The camp dissolves as Lakerman’s thoughts lose structure, language poorly subtitling the fluidity of images trafficking his mind.”

One of the things I enjoyed most about Thomas Kendall’s novel was the way be paints a very convincing near future. This a future where everyone walks around with Internet connected implants, AI is major part of everyday life, and climate change has caused many issues that people just have just learned to deal with.

Even Lakerman’s job as a journalist reflects the plight of current writers. He sees himself as churning out content for an outlet that doesn't care much about truth and spends most of his time drinking Negronis when he's not working. In spite of that, he can't help but dive deeper after his experience with Noumenon.

As you can probably tell from some of the names here, the major concern of the novel is the way technology affects our perception of reality and, at times, reality itself. There's a heavy influence from Philip K. Dick (even a shout-out in the form of a company named UbIQ) and shades of Thomas Pynchon in the paranoia and eccentric names.

As the story progresses, Lakerman falls deeper into the How I Killed the Universal Man game and has trouble distinguishing between reality and the game. It even encourages him to trea reality as a game by offering Lakerman multiple choices on how to proceed in his interactions with others as if they were NPCs.

The game, for all their philosophical pretenses, serve only to alienate Lakerman. They drive him further into seeing others as accessories and push him deeper into his own mind. It eventually pushes him away from reality and his own identity altogether. By the end of the novel, he’s in another time and body

The novel is full of striking images. One that stood out at me was towards the end when the game has transported Lakerman back to Victorian England. While attending a party, the guests are attacked by various zoo animals. This results in the death of Charles Darwin. The game even points out things like that a gorilla being present was historically inaccurate for the time. Right before this, Lakerman, still in the Victorian setting, had sat in on a lecture on how zoos were a representation of the broken relationship humans had with nature. By this time, Lakerman’s grip on reality seems nearly at a breaking point.

How I Killed the Universal Man is a fascinating and trippy entry in the genre of cyberpunk noir. The novel is full of thought-provoking ideas about reality and perception, man’s relationship to nature, and the banal dystopianism of ubiquitous consumer technology. It’s a novel well-worth your time.

Buy How I Killed the Universal Man here.

—

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Rob Ramirez’s debut novel is back in print under his preferred title! Thank you very much to Anxiety Press for picking up this fun little book.

Stay tuned because he’s currently working on his follow-up.

Pick it up at Amazon now.

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After Rubber's Lover, Fukui took a hiatus from films to work on various smaller projects as a director for hire. When he returned to movies, he worked in the direct-to-video market instead of film.

Hentai Land: This is a documentary about a body painting model and shows various sessions of her being painted on by manga artists. The only one I recognized was Henmaru Machino.

The choices of artists, locations (such as a torture exhibit in a wax museum), and the surreal sections between the body painting sessions carry all of Fukui's unique directorial voice. I also assume he had an interest in the subject matter, the body being a major themes in his films.

That said, I didn't find this all that interesting. The parts interviewing the model about her life were kind of dry. While the results are interesting, it's not exactly riveting to watch body painting for almost an hour.

I'm surprised I was able to find this film, especially a version with English subtitles. There’s definitely a craft to this documentary that’s admirable, along with unique subject matter, but I also don't recommend it unless you have a deep interest in body painting or very niche manga art.

Den-Sen/Suicide DVD: A trio of directors for a cooking show receive a DVD that says it will induce the watcher to commit suicide. One of them takes it home, watches it, and throws herself off a balcony. The two remaining directors, along with the sister of one of the DVD’s previous victims, set out to investigate the source of the DVD.

I didn’t go into this one with high expectations. The poster and the synopsis made me think it was going to be a low-budget rip off of The Ring. It definitely lifts some elements from The Ring, and in general it’s a bit derivative and low-key. It also somehow manages to look cheaper than all of Fukui’s previous films, including his student films. In spite of all of that, it’s a fairly decent found footage/faux-documentary horror film.

There are some staples of Fukui’s prior works here such as a noisy industrial soundtrack and the explanation for the DVD being a mix of technology and the supernatural. It is, however, his most conventional film so far. This was his return to a making a narrative movie, and he lumps it with his video production work in the interviews I’ve read, which makes me think Fukui doesn’t think highly of it.

While I was kind of lucky to find this, I don’t think it’s particularly worth hunting down unless you’re a freak like me trying watch every single one of Fukui’s movies.

Onne: I could only find this one with a Russian dub, which I found a bit odd. I tried to watch it anyway, but this one is heavily dialogue driven, so I just ended up skipping through it to get an idea of what it looked like.

According to the synopsis, the film is about two recluses connecting online when a gas attack starts making other forms of communications difficult.

This one takes place almost entirely in the two recluses’ rooms, making it look even cheaper than Den-Sen. With such a limited budget and setting, all you have is the limited cast (about five people at most) being able to talk, which makes it disappointing I couldn’t find an English subtitled version.

The Hiding: I’m very disappointed I could only find a trailer for this film. This short is Fukui’s return to working independently and to the themes and visuals he envisioned in his earlier work. That’s obvious from the trailer and the synopsis, which say this is about a woman moving into a new apartment to hide from her abusive ex-boyfriend, only to be attacked by a cruel woman with psychic powers.

It’s only been shown at film festivals, but let’s hope it’s released on home video or online at some point.

S-94: This is the final film Shozin Fukui’s final film before his passing. It’s a full return to his signature style from his earlier work.

A virus has seemingly wiped out all of humanity except for two women. One of them wants to save humanity, and one just wants to end it all. Things get even more complicated when they find a surviving man who seems to have been immune to the virus.

While it was great to see this return to form, this short film does feel like a rough sketch for what could have been a much more fleshed out idea. The acting leaves something to be desired and there are some gore effects that look incredibly cheap. There are also some ideas that don’t seem fully developed.

That said, this film’s juxtaposition of sexuality with sterile medical visuals, the post-Covid-19 fear of disease, and humanity becoming something beyond human all make it a fascinating watch. It’s clear that Fukui had much more passion here than he had in a while. It’s a tragedy he didn’t have a chance to make another after this.

Conclusion

Shozin Fukui had a unique vision. His mix of cyberpunk, body horror, and the limits of psychological pain made him a difficult but striking filmmaker. It is a shame that he went many years working in low-budget video and couldn’t get more films that fit his vision made. One can only imagine what ideas he had in his back pocket before he passed.

Rest in peace to a visionary.

—

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After his short films and his work on Testsuo: The Iron Man, Shozin Fukui would go on to make his first feature film.

964 Pinocchio: A cyborg sex slave named Pinocchio who’s had his memories erased is thrown out by his owners when he’s unable to maintain an erection. While wandering the streets, he meets Himiko, a homeless woman who has also lost her memory. They develop an emotional connection, but when they become intimate, it returns both their memories and triggers something horrible in their minds. Meanwhile, the doctor who made Pinocchio sends out goons to retrieve him.

I’d watched this years ago, but re-watching it was a great experience. This movie is uncompromising, visceral, intense, and even touching and hilarious at times. Some might find the over-the-top acting off-putting, but it’s clear there’s a unified vision of intense and heightened emotions happening here.

Fukui once said in an interview that the main theme of 964 Pinocchio is when mental anguish exceeds physical tolerance, what Bataille might call “limit-experience.” Both Pinocchio and Himiko go through extreme mental and physical pain, often inflicting them on each other, but in doing so, they eventually reach a deeper unity and a kind of transcendence.

The film is full of many themes. The way capitalism turns the body into a commodity, identity as a malleable rather than a fixed thing, and the indifference of society to the underclasses. All the while, it can still be enjoyed as a fucked up headtrip full of weird sex and over-the-top violence.

It’s easy to see why this is his most well-known film. Personally, though, I prefer his follow-up, Rubber’s Lover.

Rubber’s Lover: A group of scientists perform dangerous and unethical experiments on unwilling participants, hoping to use a new drug to induce psychic powers. When the corporation funding them tries to shut down the project, two of the scientists go rogue and make one last ditch effort using one of their own as a guinea pig. The results are more than they bargained for.

Even more so than 964 Pinocchio, this film had a huge impact on me when I watched it years ago. I can see where the imagery and atmosphere heavily influenced my own work, especially in Music is Over!

The themes of limit-experience are present here like they were in Fukui’s previous feature. Here, it’s explored with an even more sharpened focus. The experiments are explicitly to force their subject’s minds into going beyond thought and having a physical effect on the things around it.

The theme transcending and synthesizing opposing forces is heavily present in the characters. One of the scientists is obsessed with his own muscles and body, lashing out and sexually assaulting one of his female colleagues. The other is much more reserved and inside his own head. One of the woman scientists is highly sexual, wearing fetish costumes and enjoying torturing subjects in a manner highly resembling BDSM play. The woman accountant arriving to shut down the experiment is much more conservative. She’s all business.

As the film progresses, the differences between these characters is exaggerated and, eventually, obliterated by the third scientists who they successfully conduct the experiments on. His newly found powers violently breaks down the barriers between them. The differences between mind and body, virgin and whore, and even male and female are destroyed and made into a single new thing.

The black-and-white cinematography is striking, as is the set design. It manages to create a lab that’s both futuristic and plausible, while still using elements of surrealist imagery and fetish gear. The soundtrack is also perfect.

I believe this film is Shozin Fukui’s masterpiece.

C-Files: The Truth of 1999: There’s some conflicting information about whether this came before or after Rubber’s Lover. Based on what I can find, it was likely released after and probably sometime in 1997. Fukui mentions in an interview that after Rubber’s Lover, he started focusing on direct-to-video releases, which this appears to be.

It isn’t available anywhere online and no available physical copies of it appear to exist. The little information I can find says this is a documentary about the paranormal. That’s literally all that I could find in my research.

Based on what I can glean, this was more hired work than something that was based on Fukui’s vision like his prior films. In fact, he seems to have gone entirely into doing direct-to-video work for hire from here for several years. He wouldn’t direct another movie until 2004.

Next time, I’ll get into his post-hiatus and final films. No promises, as those are even more difficult to find than his early short films.

—

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On April 2nd of 2026, Japanese director Shozin Fukui passed away . He left behind a body of work that embraced a DIY approach, extreme subject matter, and cyberpunk body horror. He never reached massive popularity, but his films are well-regarded by a select few. The most well know of these are his features 964 Pinocchio and Rubber’s Lover.

I want to look at all of Fukui's available films. Before getting to his more well-known features. I wanted to start with his early short films

Chaser of the Ranger: I can find no information about this film and it may be lost. It was apparently made when Fukui was a student. Some have also said it's just Scourge of Blood under a different title, but I can find no evidence either way.

Scourge of Blood: An 8mm film Fukui made as a student. He was in a band at the time and this short film plays a lot like a music video. A leather-clad punk chases down a victim and stabs him to death. His interest in extreme imagery and subject matter was already present here. It's easy to see the early version of the images and techniques he would use in his later movies.

Metal Days: The final student film and one that also isn't available. This one is apparently an hour long and featured members of the band Fukui was in at the time. The plot details I found online says this follows a group of punks as they steal weapons from a military base. This one certainly isn't lost, Fukui did showings of it during his life, but it's never been made available on home video or streaming.

Gerorisuto: A young woman, possibly mentally ill or possibly possessed by something supernatural, has seizures on the subway, vomits at length, and picks fights with pedestrians. The imagery in this is one that would be further developed in 964 Pinocchio. In many ways it feels like a practice run for that and his next short film. There are times when the lighting is so bad I couldn’t see anything. This is true both of a copy I found online and the DVD I have of Rubber’s Lover that includes this as a bonus feature. It seems like this was shot even cheaper and quicker than his prior films.

Caterpillar: Several young people go about their day as a giant metal caterpillar roams the city. Their bodies and minds gradually fall apart. Fukui apparently worked on this film at the same time as he was working on staff for Tetsuo: The Iron Man. It’s apparent he borrowed some of the techniques and imagery from Tetsuo, but Fukui makes them his own. It’s the most abstract of his short films to this point, and that’s saying something. More than the rest, it feels like a practice run for 964 Pinocchio. One of the characters could even be said to be an early version of the Pinocchio from that film. Despite that, it still stands very well on its own.

Next time, I’ll get into Fukui’s feature films.

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The bad news is that Baynam Books Press, the publisher of If today the sun should set on all my hopes and cares..., has shut down. The good news is 13 Days Publishing stepped in to pick up the book. It’s now available on Godless, Kindle, and in paperback.

Here’s your chance to pick it up if you missed it the first time.

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In this sequel to his novel Outré, D. Harlan Wilsons takes an already shattered reality and pushes it even further to the complete death of reality and beyond.

Outré used Moby Dick as a jumping off point for both its narrative and its schizoanalysis of the nature of film, reality, and identity. Usurper continues to explore similar themes in the same manner, this time using Ulysses. A central narrative does run through the book of a hack director by the name of Caliban Ogg trying to adapt a “Doomsday edition” of Ulysses, an alternate version of the novel by James Joyce which sounds more like a mix of Dhalgren and Naked Lunch.

In contrast to Outré, Usurper is even more unmoored from its central narrative and from reality itself. Not only has the difference between film and reality collapsed, reality itself is as dead as God. The result allows a million realities to bloom, but the nearly omnipotent Studio wants to take them all over and turn them into fodder for their films. Of course, these films don’t exist for the sake of art, but profit. Capitalism survives not only the end of the world, but the end of reality. Call it capitalist irrealism.

This all sounds very dense and academic, and there are parts of the book that certainly are. The back of the book bills it as “theory-fiction,” which is accurate. While some familiarity with postmodern philosophy is helpful, it’s not entirely required to enjoy the book. Wilson’s absurdist sense of humor makes Usurper a very fun read.

Some of my favorite sections are the various monologues. A few of these are labeled as “Monologue I,” where an unnamed character discusses the themes of the book with a deep contempt for the audience he’s addressing. Others are things like an acting coach teaching his class “how to die in high style with true grit.”

In another section, the titles of forthcoming movies for a mega-theater are listed. The titles begin arguing with each other, sequels for movies not yet out have apparently been filmed and set for release, and all of them have a release date of “TBA.” This goes on for two and a half pages.

For all the humor and absurdity, there’s still a lot of existential meat. The internet is turning everything into “content” and the people in power seem to believe they can just lie and bullshit a new reality into existence. Usurper is full of thoughtful explorations of this increasing folding of reality into hyperreality and how to grasp identity in spite of this.

“After reality, the cult of personality is the only thing that matters. And cults are crutches.”

Usurper is hilarious and entertaining as well as being an entertaining work of schizoanalytic criticism. D. Harlan Wilson continues to prove himself as a one of the most unique and funniest authors working today. For anyone looking for a read that’s both intelligent and completely absurd, I highly recommend this.

Buy Usurper: Essays on the Death of Reality.

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The Utopianoid Republic is under the thumb of Uruk Ouroboros, a figure who seems to have combined every possible totalitarian ideology into one. A lower-class citizen named Martynchoko is selected to be made into a model patriot for the regime’s propaganda. With the help of his talking donkey, however, Martynchoko starts to see the mechanisms behind the Republic. It sets in motion the events that hurl the world towards a brutal war.

When Michael Mulvihill sent me Utopianoids to review, I was expecting a dystopian story with a more straight forward, if satirical and ridiculous, plot. Instead, Utopianoids is full of philosophical digressions and discussions on classic literature, vignettes from life in the Republic, borderline hallucinatory sections, and vivid scenes of war.

This isn’t a bad thing of course. I was pleasantly surprised to find the book was much more unique than I anticipated. Mulvihill packs a lot in the short chapters.

This isn’t to say it’s perfect. Some of the scenes, such as a Utopianoid propaganda event being a literal circus presented by clowns, are a little on the nose and aren’t as funny or interesting as they could be. Some of the discussions on the nature of freedom and individuality also aren’t particularly insightful or groundbreaking and sometimes fall into hitting the same note over and over.

That said, there’s more to like than to dislike in this novel. In a time where the people in power have been working to shatter the idea of a shared reality, the Utopianoid Republic is the ideal satire of dictatorship. The leaders of the Republic spout slogans about homeland pride and working for a greater good, but it has no ideology beyond reproducing its own machinery.

The scenes of the bloody war that erupts towards the end are visceral. The way it juxtaposes those with the lives of the comfortably privileged, who barely know about the carnage happening a block away from them, rings incredibly true.

Utopianoids is a dense read with some flaws, but I still recommend it. It’s a unique take on the dystopian genre for more adventurous readers who aren’t quite looking for something extreme or highly experimental.

Buy Utopianoids by Michael Mulvihill

___

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When you pick up a book called Beyond the Planet of the Vampires that bills itself as a “gay pulp horror novel,” it creates certain expectations. When it cites creators like Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jean Genet, and James Joyce as influences, it bends those expectations. When I opened up Ulrich Baer’s novel, it broke all expectations into pieces and tossed them in a fire.

“In the morning I surrender my head to the iconic vaults of the library, its neoclassical murals of some white goddess of wisdom, clicking microfiche I can’t find

Yr face, now”

There’s no getting around it. Your enjoyment of a book like this is going to be based on your tolerance for heavily experimental literature. If you picked this up expecting a weird story about vampire aliens with lots of gay sex and found yourself very disappointed, I wouldn’t blame you. That’s not to say this novel doesn’t have all those things. They’re just present in the most fragmented and non-linear way possible.

The comparison to “pulp” novels seems especially wrong for a book this formally experimental. However, I found myself reading through this book quickly. I finished it in about only a few sittings. In spite of how strange this book is written and formatted, there’s a feverish intensity to it that’s very reminiscent of the page-turning fast pace of pulp novels. Baer’s parade of images of strange violence and queer sexuality between brief musings of philosophy and abstract descriptions of landscapes is actually enthralling.

There is a plot in the book, albeit, one that’s told in a very, very loose manner. The beginning contains scenes of space travel, gothic castles, and alien planets, but as the book goes along, the imagery becomes more fragmented and personal. One could see this as the result of psychic attacks from the alien vampires destroying the narrator’s brain. However, I think trying to look for a linear plot from a book like this misses the point.

Our experiences and memories of them are rarely entirely linear. If one were to play back their memories of a prior day exactly as they move through one’s mind, it would likely be very fragmented and dream-like. By attempting to use language, including bending its normal rules, to get at understanding the different aspects of how we really experience things helps present a new and fuller picture.

Baer’s novel interplays fantastic elements like space vampires and haunted castles with images of queer sexuality and longing, invoking the long-standing cultural associations of camp and outsiderness. Think like if Rocky Horror Picture Show were cut-up and heavily distorted. In that, I believe the book succeeds in its goals.

Beyond the Planet of the Vampires is an unusual novel and certainly not one for everybody. However, I believe its poetic prose, vivid imagery, and fascinating juxtapositions of pulp tropes and queer sexuality make it a very worthwhile read for people interested in experimental literature.

Buy Beyond the Planet of the Vampires by Ulrich Baer here.

___

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The Dinner Show and Other Consumptions is now available in Kindle and paperback on Amazon.com. It was already released on Godless as an eBook. Those of you who prefer Kindle or dead tree editions can get it now.

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10. The Spook Who Sat By the Door by Sam Greenlee

A radical thriller the remains relevant to this day.

9. Moju the Blind Beast by Edogawa Rampo

A surreal, extreme novella by one of Japan’s most fascinating authors.

8. Wild Turkey by Michael Hemmingson

This was a modern noir with a lot of unexpected twists. I couldn’t put it down.

7. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

A classic, intense novel of growing up lesbian and gender-fluid in the 20th century.

6. Welcome to Your Dreamtime by Norman Spinrad

This is the anti-Ready Player One. A sharp, creative satire of how mass culture and corporate IP are increasingly colonizing the imagination.

Full Review

5. Left Hand by Paul Curran

One of the strangest and most visceral experimental works I’ve read.

4. I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett

Percival Everett remains a favorite. This was was a hilarious, entertaining satire of race and identity in America.

3. The Tunnel by Russell Edson

I’d read a handful of Edson’s poems, but this was my first full book of them. It didn’t disappoint in the least.

2. We’ll Never Be Fragile Again by Thomas Moore

I maintain Thomas Moore is one of the greatest working authors at the moment. This book was an absolute gut-punch. A heart-breaking meditation on love.

Full Review

1. The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay

This is releasing early 2026, but I had a chance to read an early copy. It’s an amazing read. A unique take on the Gospels and the early life of Jesus told in a thrilling story with well-crafted, tight prose.

Full Review

Honorable Mentions

Red Flags: Stories and Other Disturbances by Charlene Elsby

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin

I Live In Hell by Mike Salinas

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

A Condescending Wound by Benzo Monroe

Pick up my short story collection, The Dinner Show and Other Consumptions, as an eBook on Godless.com.

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A vacationer finds himself suddenly alone in a tourist city. A tabloid journalist makes a horrifying discovery about a famous pop star. A woman joins an eating challenge reality show that turns deadly. A vengeful ghost haunts a poem.

This is just a sample of what’s on the menu in this serving of a dozen morsels of horror cooked up by the amazing mind of Ben Arzate.

“Arzate’s America is much like ours, dangerous and twisted, except there’s something...off. If you think you can escape, it’s too late. Just try to stay on the beaten path. You’ll make it. Probably.” - John Bruni, author of Tales of Questionable Taste

“Ben Arzate showcases his prowess in the Horror and Bizarro genres with inventive-as-hell body horror, truly scary, slow-burn found footage, and fun with form, like his text message account of the apocalypse. His collection is bleak and lonely some places, terrifying in others, with his signature dry, dark comedy showing up exactly when needed.

Arzate is a trope-crusher. Anytime you think a story might sound familiar, he tells us all why he’s the one to tell this particular tale, and each time, he proves you haven’t read one quite like this before. Feast your eyes on this one. It’s one wild-ass ride!” - Lauren Bolger, author of The Barre Incidents

“The Dinner Show is a literary smorgasbord of Transgressive and horrific stories. These stories show a wide range of Ben’s talent. From crafting Clive Barkerian nightmares to haunting pieces that drag at your soul. Reading this collection is like stepping into a world parallel to ours; one that’s covered in a grimy film, distorted by a layer of static.

Ben Arzate writes the kind of stories I love to read; strange, atmospheric, and fantastic!” - Matthew Vaughn, author of Bowery

GET IT AS AN EBOOK ON GODLESS.COM NOW

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Hector Ghouseau is an alcoholic burnout scraping by in Chicago. Little does he know, his father lost a bet with Hell long ago, and Beelzebub is coming to collect his winnings; Hector’s soul. Bub’s recruited a serial killer to assist him, and the walls seem to closing in on Hector. With the help of his best friend Tommy, his ex-girlfriend Sammie, and an angel taking the form of a spider named Bandini, Hector struggles to survive the onslaught of Bub, his hired killer, and his army of flies.

One of my favorite aspects of the Mike Salinas’s debut is the way that it mixes a gritty Chicago full of down and out characters with a fantastic, at times surreal, vision of Hell full of strange beasts. Salinas’s Chicago is one full of dive bars, run-down apartments, liquor stores, and smelly alleys. Supernatural creatures hide amongst it in the form of insects, spiders, stray cats and pigeons.

The cosmology of the I Live In Hell uses Christianity as a basis, but takes on its own direction. God is distant, perhaps gone altogether, and Lucifer has given up his throne in Hell, leaving Bub to take over. Even Jesus shows up in an unexpected place in a scene that’s both fascinating and hilarious.

This is another thing I really enjoyed about this novel. Salinas uses humor well without undercutting any of the horror of the things happening to Hector and his friends. In what’s probably the most harrowing part of the book, a demon makes its way into Hector and Tommy’s apartment. It uses its powers to force the two to relive their most traumatic moments from childhood. In Hector’s case, it’s his abuse at the hands of his mother. In Tommy’s, the suicide of his big brother. This disturbing scene is followed up by Tommy noting, after they manage to banish the demon, that it stole all their beer on the way out.

Besides it’s great, grimy atmosphere, the pacing of the plot is excellent. It moves fast, especially towards the end. It keeps you turning the page while still having interesting asides into the lives of its characters and world building. Like the best supernatural thrillers, it escalates gradually in its other-worldliness, coming to an intense and strange climax.

I Live In Hell is Mike Salinas’s debut book, and it’s a strong one. He mixes creeping dread, intense violence, and horrifying trauma into a page-turning story with a unique take on Hell and the afterlife. I look forward to seeing what Salinas does next.

Buy I Live In Hell by Mike Salinas here.

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Pick up my books at Amazon, Bookshop, or Godless. You can also request them at your local library or bookstore.

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