Showing results by author "Amanda Lyons" in All Categories

For the month of October 2017, J. Ellington Ashton Press, on their Wicked Little Things blog-talk radio, broadcasted a series of Halloween stories. These “Fireside Stories” (as they were called) were a big hit with the listeners, and the decision was quickly made to publish these tales of terror in an anthology.

In Sacrum Umbra you were treated to tales from the shadows, the literary darkness that lives within all of us. Here you will find tales of another sort, the type you might find in the less wholesome end of the collective unconscious and the very depths of the gut. From stories of childhood gone horribly wrong to sex and madness with an impossible cost, this is where you'll find the more gruesome end of the spectrum.

Katja has long spent her life buried in the pain and sorrow of her past, a vampire abandoned to her fate for over 300 years, she never expects to meet another who could help her reclaim her existence. Raven, a poet and fellow lost soul, could be the one to spur her on, but in order to have the future she has only begun to grasp, she must uncover the truth about her origins and the awful event which left her alone centuries before. If she cannot face her past and reclaim her strength, she will lose everything.

In the dark heart of our imagination, and the haunted corners our past there are places we fear to tread. As much as we might try to outrun them, as much as we might try to deny their truths, we are owned by their shape, molded by their claws. The story of our being, they form a Sacrum Umbra, a sacred shadow of improbable origin - our own dark heart.

Bobby Gene is a man who stands out even among his people. Guided by the knowledge of his heritage as a backwoods shaman and more perceptive than many, he's grown to be a valuable asset to those he knows. While he isn't surprised to be the first to know when the woods around him begin to show clues that something isn't right, he doesn't expect just how much these omens and signs will prove to foretell something far more sinister to come.

Alex Pereneaux was sick of his life, tired of the way it all felt fake and meaningless. When he took up his sister-in-law's offer to come to the farm and her request to help his estranged brother, he thought that maybe this was his chance to make amends and start taking his life into his own hands. He hadn't bargained for the darkness there. He didn't know that this was more than a simple battle over land and money. There, in the dark, Alex will find everything he ever asked for - but first, he has to pay a terrible price.

In a post-apocalyptic world where new dangers appear at every moment, Henry is still learning how to survive, and things only grow more complex as the path to his escape grows ever-winding. Abby has become less of a stranger but no less strange and she holds the book with all the answers shut tight in her pack. Henry is still trapped in her nightmarish world, it only makes sense for him to seek it out no matter how much she swears that it would be his undoing. What will he find inside and what will be the cost for his transgressions? It appears he is about to find out.

After five years of carrying on with Jamie's nonsense and his Pickled Pumpkin Men, Ally Laughtner has finally had enough. But will she be able to face all of the challenges between her and the door? Worse, does she know what she's getting into?

After the events of the gothic horror novels Eyes Like Blue Fire and Water Like Crimson Sorrow, the vampire Katja finds herself tackling a great deal. Having destroyed many of the revenant undead and occult relics left behind in the wake of her battle with Marie Gaston, she is exhausted and left with many questions about the master who made her his fledgling and the only other remaining vampire who can tell her more of his secrets, Mateo.

Meant to gather together the stranger stories, the book contains some of the more surreal and ephemeral stories, the ones that just are without much rhyme or reason. Stories like an odd moment in the park, the strange child who won't stop haunting you, an alien invasion that gets very personal, an AI born of a lolcat, monsters in the woods, and a spell gone terribly wrong.

These three stories come with a breath of cold and a sort of longing, the sort of thing that consumes someone if they let it. "Wendy Won't Go" is the story of a family whose loss threatens to consume them all, "Love like Blood" is a story about the limits one will reach before love is gone, and "Cold Comfort" is about the bitterness that devours us within before it goes on to consume everything around us.

A thicket. What could be more normal and harmless than that? As you're about to find out, it isn't the outer appearance that decides your fortune. No. It's the darkness and secrets hidden among the trees and bushes, dark nightmares contained within their leafy branches, that are coming for you. All you have to do is be brave enough. Daring enough. To slip inside.

Having discovered many of Anton's secrets, Katja must now seek out Raven and attempt to rescue him from the nightmare that his life has become. As she seeks him out, Raven is being eaten up by the horror of his own past. A past full of guilt, pain, and a terrible revenant who is more than she seems. In time, these two paths will come to meet and a final confrontation that could mean the end of so many things will be in store.

Billy and Sara are living a life of fear. Every day and every night since Sara was small they have been haunted by a terrible apparition. She is cold and she is cruel, strange and frightening. Her name is Wendy, and no matter where they go and no matter what they do, Wendy won't go.

Henry is a man with trouble on his hands. Setting out for this weekend getaway wasn’t even his idea, and now he’s woken up from a terrible car crash to find himself in a strange place where nothing is as it seems. Now, his whole life has changed, and nothing he knew to be true seems to matter, not when the world is filled with horror and still other dangers waiting in the shadows. Worse, his wife is hurt, and there’s only one woman who can help them get home, a woman who is more mystery than truth....