All Entries Tagged With: "Michael McBride"

Innocents Lost Excerpt

As we’re down to your final copies of Innocents Lost by Michael McBride, I wanted to release an excerpt from this novel.  There’s been quite the buzz about McBride’s latest.  Check out what Horror Mall customers have been saying:

Posted by JASON PHILLIPS

I got to page 80 and put this book down twice. Why? Well it’s not because it was rubbish! In fact it is a great story that smacks you hard. This was very hard to read as a parent with children involved but Michael keeps you reading.

You follow two main characters who meet up in the book, one trying to find his daughter the other trying to find the person who took his daughter. This is a very clever book with a good twist.

This is a must for any McBride fan, hell it’s a must for any horror fan!

Posted by William C. Rasmussen

I simply do not understand why this book is not a sellout!? Innocents Lost by Michael McBride is an unbelievable tale! It’s a short novel that combines gut- and heart-wrenching scenes, a furious pace, and a dazzlingly clever, twisty plot! McBride’s story of gruesome child abductions perpetrated by a cold-blooded, relentless serial killer is quite simply a superb tale! It gets my highest recommendation!!

Posted by Geoff Guthrie

Innocent’s Lost is a story about child abduction, and at the beginning of the story an FBI agent who works on child abduction gets his little girl abducted on her birthday. The agent, Phil Preston, then falls apart and devotes every resource to find this child abductor in hopes of finding his little girl alive.

McBride weaves an interesting tale here; we have the child abductions, but we also have a mystery with a Native American Medicine Wheel and why does this relate to the story, and also why is this child abductor doing what he is doing, is there a story behind this? So it’s not a simple story. McBride weaves the tale into a mystery where Preston is putting together the pieces trying to figure out how to capture this child abductor. Also there are multiple twists to the story as well, and it’ll have you thinking.

This is an engaging horror story that runs like a thriller and keeps you turning the pages to find out what’s next. The story is not as bleak as one would think when it comes to child abduction because there are other parts to the story like the Medicine Wheel that keep you in wonder and interest. This was a solid novel by McBride, I enjoyed reading it, and I highly recommend it!

Innocents Lost–Excerpt From The Novel

22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming

Fremont County Sheriff Keith Dandridge surveyed the site from the edge of the forest. The scene before him was beyond his worst nightmares. In his eleven years in law enforcement, he had been involved in some of the most ghastly cases in the Rocky Mountain region, most notably the Schoolhouse Slaughter in Pine Springs eight years ago. A disgruntled, bipolar teacher named Irving Jepperson had lined up his class of twelve sixth grade students at the front of the room and fired upon them at close range with a shotgun. Four of the children had managed to escape through the window while the custodian and another teacher subdued him. Eight eleven and twelve year-olds had been heaped on the floor at the foot of a chalkboard peppered with buckshot and spattered with blood, bone fragments, and gray matter when he arrived. There had been nothing left of their faces or upper torsos, leaving the parents to identify their children by their blood-soaked clothing and shoes. And somehow, even that carnage paled by comparison to the horror that unfolded before him now, perhaps not in sheer ferocity, but in the palpable evil that emanated from the clearing.

The amount of planning that had been invested into the creation of this tableau was staggering.

A ring of halogen lights encircled the wagon wheel design. They provided precious little illumination, and instead cast long shadows from the rock cairns and walls. More lights would have to be airlifted in with a supply of portable generators, but not until they had thoroughly scoured the ground for evidence. They couldn’t afford for the rotors of a chopper to blow away even a single footprint, and the nearest other suitable landing area was a mile and a half to the northeast. For now, the ERT crew was gathering whatever they could find and photographing even the smallest stone from every appreciable angle.

With such an elaborate setup, Dandridge knew they would only discover what the killer wanted them to find. This was no haphazard burial site. An inordinate amount of time and care had gone into designing something meant to be seen.

This promised to be the longest night of his life.

“You’re going to want to see this,” an evidence tech he recognized as Brad Stewart said from his left, where two large piles of stones had been removed from one of the cairns and stacked to either side of it, framing a maw of shadows.

Dandridge reluctantly approached, accepted the proffered flashlight from Stewart, and shined it into the hollow base of the cairn.

“At a guess,” Stewart said, “I’d wager she was killed roughly two years ago, but we’ll have to wait for the ME for a more official assessment.”

“She?”

“That’s our working assumption. She’s still too young and skeletally immature to tell definitively.”

Dandridge crouched and had to cover the lower portion of his face with his handkerchief to combat the stench.

A handful of flies buzzed lazily at the periphery of the light’s reach.

“For the love of God,” Deputy Miller said from behind him. There was a crashing sound in the underbrush, then a retching noise as Miller was absolved of his dinner.

Dandridge studied the recess with the flashlight. A fully-articulated skeleton had been posed to face the center of the medicine wheel. Its palms had been drawn together and placed against the left side of its skull, its head canted slightly toward them in a twisted mockery of a peacefully sleeping child. There was a depressed fracture slightly anterior to the coronal suture, from which a spider web of cracks expanded. And based upon the size of the bones and the presence of the epiphyseal growth plate lines, he estimated she couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Rusted lengths of barbed wire had been wound around and through the skeleton to hold the remains in place. Tangles of hair and tattered skin still adorned the barbs. Clumps of blackened flesh clung to the bones at random intervals, while the rest had turned the color of rust and were crusted with flaking scales of dried blood. Frayed tendons had retracted and pulled away from their moorings, where the gristle of muscle attachments reminded him of the nubs at the ends of gnawed drumsticks. The cartilaginous joints were ebon and rotted, yet somehow managed to hold the appendages together. Flies crawled on the dirt, which was slimy and lumpy with the foul dissolution of the tissues that had sloughed from the body as it decomposed.

“All of the teeth are still intact,” Dandridge said, sweeping the beam across the small face. “It shouldn’t take long to provide a positive ID from dental records.”

“If we’re right, it might be even easier than that,” Stewart said. “We were waiting for you before we watched the disks. There are tins buried halfway between the central and outer cairns, just like the professor said. We’re still carefully digging them out of the ground. So far, the samples we’ve loaded all confirm the presence of a video file in the neighborhood of half a gigabyte.”

“How long is that?”

“Depending upon resolution, somewhere between twenty and forty minutes.”

“And you haven’t watched them yet?”

“We took samples of the blood smears and dusted for prints, but no, we saved that honor just for you.”

Dandridge glanced at the remains one final time. He only hoped she hadn’t suffered too badly. His gut, however, insisted otherwise.

“We have the disk that corresponds with this cairn loaded and waiting on a laptop,” Stewart said. He paused. “Are you ready to do this?”

Dandridge nodded and rose to his feet. The last thing in the world he wanted to do right now was watch that infernal disk. He already had a pretty good idea of what it contained.

Stewart nodded toward the nearest overhead light, which had been mounted in the upper reaches of one of those sickly pines. An evidence tech he hadn’t worked with before sat on a level portion of the twisted trunk, computer in his lap, a stack of tins in plastic evidence bags to his right. He looked up when Dandridge approached, quickly stood, and handed over the laptop. Dandridge sat on the tech’s former perch and the others gathered around to watch. The tech offered one of the bagged tins from the pile, upon which several numbers and letters had been scratched.

“We suspect the top number is the victim’s chronological order,” the tech said. “The numbers below it are the month and day. No year. And there’s still some debate, but I’m pretty sure the letters on the bottom line are abbreviations for vernal and autumnal equinox, and summer and winter solstice.”

“How do I make this thing play?” Dandridge asked.

“It’s already primed. You just have to double-click the file name.”

Ordinarily, this was where the tech would not-so-discreetly mock his inferior technical skills, but tonight, no one envied him the task at hand.

Dandridge did as he was instructed and the media player opened. After a moment, a gray rectangle with a control bar beneath it appeared.

He drew a deep breath to steady his nerves, aligned the cursor with the PLAY button, and tapped the mouse.

The video began to roll.

PURCHASE ONE OF THE REMAINING COPIES

Immun3 Sold Out!

Quick update on Delirium’s latest hardcover chapbook releases.  Immun3 by Michael McBride, which was just announced late last week, is now SOLD OUT!

We’re still waiting on a payment from a bookseller and a few DB hardcover subscribers, so if you’re interested in Immun3, it can’t hurt to put your name on the reservation / stock notify list in case we have unpaid copies at the end of this week.  You can do this by going to the following link and submitting your name and e-mail address:

http://www.horror-mall.com/stock_notify.php?productid=20944

Creeptych by John Everson, the previous Delirium chapbook, is down to only 4 copies left in stock.  You can order one of the final copies at the following URL:

http://www.horror-mall.com/CREEPTYCH-by-John-Everson-Mini-HC-Chapbook-p-20629.html

Immun3 by Michael McBride Shipping

Delirium Books’ new and improved limited edition mini-hardcover line has bulked up to focusing on novella / novelette length works.  Immun3 by Michael McBride is now shipping, the latest production which features a side-sewn mini-hardcover with graphical wrapround cover (on the boards).  One hell of a great story and book production combined for under $20.  It’s an unbeatable deal. But with only 150 copies produced, it won’t be available long.

The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved. An amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King. The Gulf War is over. Nirvana releases the album Nevermind. The Soviet Union collapses.

The year is 1991, and the world is changing.

For Landon Crane, the future couldn’t look brighter. He’s madly in love with a beautiful girl who’ll be leaving with him for college in just over a month. The small mountain town of Mineral Springs will be hosting the largest Independence Day celebration in its history to welcome home war hero Travis James, highlighting the ultimate summer of freedom.

The year is 1991, and nothing will ever be the same.

Travis has returned with more than the Medal of Honor. He’s brought something else with him, something capable of inflicting unimaginable pain and suffering. Before the night is through, Landon and the rest of the residents of Mineral Springs will be forced to answer the most terrifying question of all.

Who among them will survive?

Immun3 is a mini-hardcover (4.5 inches by 6.25 inches) novella side-sewn with a graphic wraparound cover on the boards.

If you are a Delirium hardcover subscriber and want to match this book to your subscription, you must submit this request in your order notes or else books will be randomly distributed.

ORDER NOW

Michael McBride’s Innocents Lost Limited Hardcover Shipping

Delirium Books has just released its 3rd hardcover first edition novel of the year. It is available and has already began shipping to hardcover subscribers.  Only 150 hardcover copies being produced! Here’s more about this title…

A young girl vanishes in broad daylight on her tenth birthday. Her father, FBI Special Agent Phil Preston of the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, devotes his life to finding her and discovers a pattern in a recent string of abductions.

Dr. Les Grant leads a group of graduate students into the Wyoming wilderness in search of an unidentified Native American medicine wheel photographed by an anonymous hiker. Instead, they stumble upon a macabre tableau of suffering.

Fremont County Sheriff Keith Dandridge finds himself right at the heart of the mystery when twenty-seven bodies are disinterred in the Wind River Range at the westernmost edge of his jurisdiction, with the promise of more to come.

All the while, an unknown evil is summoning the men to its killing grounds, where the remains of the lost innocents are left to rot…and a fate far worse than death awaits them.

Note: Delirium Hardcover subscribers have been sent an e-mail with a link to order to get the discount associated with your subscription.

Non-hardcover subscribers can order their copies HERE.

Delirium Quick Notes

There’s a number of things going on behind the scenes.  I’ve noticed for the first time in more than a year, that the small press horror market seems to be growing once again.  The demand for books is picking up slowly and hopefully the economy will begin to work again for small businesses and us everyday joes out there.  With this in mind, there’s a good chance that I’ll be moving up Michael McBride’s Innocents Lost from a fall release to a late spring release.  The cover art has been turned in by Zach MCain which I’ve posted here.

The new production of Delirium limiteds has been a big hit.  Overall, I’ve received major cheers from Delirium readers and collectors. Long After Dark by Greg F. Gifune has sold out in limited and lettered and now the digital has been released.  You can download it HERE.

Delirium 2009 slipcases (vol. 2) have all shipped as of today.  This completes the Delirium set for 2009.  I’ll be posting another slipcase for the 4 titles released this year around October.

The limited edition of Clickers 3 by J. F. Gonzalez & Brian Keene will begin shipping the first week of April.  This was a tough title to handle in design due to the fact that I wanted to both match the book with the Clickers series, but also match it with Delirium’s new vision of its volumes displayed in a yearly series. You’ll find that the dust jacket and foil stamp has been designed to look like the other two books in the Clickers series, but the cover material will match the rest of this year’s books in the Delirium series. Plus, there will be the new Delirium logo stamped on the back cover. The book turned out great, so I’m confident both sides will be pleased.