Showing results by author "Kevin Candela" in All Categories

Take a freakishly harrowing journey with an ordinary person who comes to realize that his nightmares have manifested as a power of sorts...though his "gift" is anything but welcome as it stalks and murders at will. The powers of the mind and the campfire scare stories of childhood merge in Tickles: A Little Bedtime Horror Story, creating a monstrous darkness

Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy, Frankenstein. You've lived with the stories your whole life. You've read the tales. You've watched the films. But what if the stories were different? What if the things you read about these monsters were warped and twisted? Here lie stories you may not have heard. Stories both weird and shocking. Bizarre and grotesque. Alternate versions of your favorite classic monsters you've never read and never will again. Featuring 13 stories by Jonathan Moon, The Sisters of Slaughter, Tom Lucas and more! 

Picture an Oz straight out of pulp detective fiction, one featuring a trio of hilariously overcompensating heroes: the No Longer Cowardly Lion, the Too Much Heart Tin Man and the Brainy If Still Not Wise Scarecrow. Put them on the trail of a mystery so twisted and deep that they're in way over their heads before they've even set foot outside the Wizard's palace.

In search of the ferocious truth, some would call trying to channel the spirit of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson a fool’s errand. But these are desperate times. So settle in for this trilogy of uppers, downers, screamers, laughers from John Bruni (Tales of Questionable Taste), Kent Hill (Hercules with a Shotgun) and Kevin Candela (Weedeaters: The Complete Acropalypse) as they bring you just what the doctor ordered.

The ghosts were there the day it opened for business. The Leeward Hotel is a mirror. From the moment its first stone was laid, it has reflected the mysteries of the restless and the restless Atlantic Ocean over which it looms atop a stark cliff in Cornwall, with guests frequently seeing the highly eccentric owners walking around the halls while they were supposedly locked in their private haven upstairs.

You won’t find the place on any map. It’s somewhere else, hidden away in a wondrous parallel reality of mystery, awe, and terror. This both is and isn’t the “Old West”. They share the same stark and unforgiving terrain and exist in the same timeframe, primarily the 1800s. But there the similarities cease. In Spirit County, for example, death is often not the end, but the beginning. Sometimes even the middle. Mythological creatures prove real...and deadly. Towns can disappear by daylight and return with the setting sun.

John Bruni, Kevin Candela, and Kent Hill reteam for a second adventure, roaring down the Hunter S. Thompson highway to Gonzo nirvana. Following the success of the trio's The Doctor Is...In!, this group of humble seekers reignites Thompson's joint and takes you to places real and otherwise...as per the Doctor's orders. This second amazing tribute to the man who epitomized rebelliousness seeks once again to bring Hunter back from the grave for yet another wild adventure while fearing and loathing in the dissection of the American dream.

Stepping up the horror considerably from previous installments in the Krakenstein saga, this fifth tale, and the second in the The Next Regeneration trilogy, sees the return of first trilogy heroes Jeremiah Savage, Key Sharlayne, and even Key's brilliant scientist half-sister, Dr. Deanna Sharlayne, who have just been evicted from the ancient facility that is Emerald Island by its hardly cordial creators.

With great power comes great responsibility. And on modern day Earth, if great power doesn’t play nice with greater powers it gets something else too: Deadly persecution. After all, the stakes are no less than absolute control of every living being on the planet. Roman Novato and Chalice Rayne can communicate telepathically, sense imminent danger, and more now, but when those accidentally inherited talents are set against shape-shifting alien assassins, invisible drones, devastating particle beam satellites, and the world’s hidden ruling elite the game isn’t exactly fair.

Aurora Hayes is probably the most agreeable and least judgmental of the Roads Unlimited driving team, but even she has her limits. When something that sure looks like the scary bipedal "myth" called the chupacabra races in out of the darkness in North Texas and jumps aboard her rig, Aurora finds herself stuck with the edgy, bug-eyed little monster on a long haul across the South to Florida. But dealing with the freakish creature, which appears to have no language and seems determined to stay with the truck, is just the warm-up: The thing's master arrives.

Just like their new home of Sunder Creek, set in the shadow of Blood Ridge, young Ronnie Carpenter and her shy ward Essa Hale harbor strange secrets. In fact, their arrival seems to bring the town’s dark and unspoken terror to light, as it affects Essa in mysterious ways. Soon, inexplicable events all point to an ancient legend being all too real. What does the dreaded ilé nagí, the fiery spirit of the woods, want with the girl? Ronnie must find out before it’s too late.

It’s that time of year again. In the shadows, otherworldly creatures lurk, under the gravestones, the dead begin to rise, and in that old house down the lane, ghosts rattle their chains. For once more, Trick or Treat Thrillers brings you our pick of the best Indie-paranormal short stories for 2020! Before you begin listening to our selection of 13 stories, however, we recommend you first check under your bed, in your closet, and outside of your window. You never know what may be coming your way.

Months have passed, the trail has grown cold, and ZC has all but given up when out of the blue, a back road diversion leads him to the mystical, but apparently not mythical Bizarre - a place where all kinds of beings want all kinds of things...and barter and gamble to get them. He's about to meet some utterly strange new friends, including a dogman named Ekos, a human-like woman with a nest of serpents for a head, and a gigantic bat-dragon that doesn't like being referred to as either.

On far distant Gavelin, Leks and Quinara - scrappy human survivors of a demonic plague that has all but wiped out their civilization - race against time in a perilous journey to the perceived safety of the cradle of their society: the great coastal city of Amaline on the Sandarine Sea. Along the way, they meet horrifying carnivorous mud monsters, sentient human-hunting thunderstorms and an outcast bio-alchemist with a warped sense of humor whose bizarre menagerie features a panther-like beast made of living metal.

The sixth "drive-in double feature" in the Super SF Double Feature series spotlights alien invasion in both directions - coming and going - with two thrilling tales of science-fiction culture shock.

A Year in the Borderlands writer Kevin Candela's wild second excursion into alternate realities includes 17 tales, twelve of which have appeared in previously released anthologies and are collected here for the first time. These short stories combine with five never before released works, including the novella It's Only Funny if You Laugh, to produce a wide-ranging panoramic view of the worlds and realities that exist beyond our own. Playing With Reality is another vividly detailed page in the Atlas of the Unknown.

The big squidheaded guy who's not Cthulhu is back - and this time, it's really, really personal, because the monster who's out to destroy him is his own brother! Twenty years after Krakenstein and Magenti saved humanity from itself, the giant monster battles are still going on. Towering "bug lady" Magenti may have disappeared of late, but Krakey is still patrolling the world. Tailed by the Moray 2 stealth sub, which is captained by none other than longtime Krakenstein "human friend" Shea Sanders, the titan isn't able to stop the latest problem by himself.

In Ghost in the Sky, the first installment in the Bob the Interdimensional Trucker series, Sam Gage has picked up an enigmatic motorist whose mere presence, it seems, is making Gage hear the sound of a small propeller-driven passenger airplane...or maybe even a crop duster. But whatever is really making the sound, which his rider can't hear, is not only keeping pace with Gage's truck at an impossibly slow speed for airplane flight - it's also invisible.

Grayson Lone Feather loves to wander the woods behind his stepdad's property. He finds all kinds of things out there, chief among them typically being peace of mind. But when Gray comes upon a barrel-sized egg exposed by the collapse of a short limestone bluff, and what's inside it turns out to be alive and more than kicking, he finds himself at the center of action far beyond his wildest imaginings. Soon a gigantic "something" is roaming the Illinois skies, and Gray and his friend Jaleen are off to find it.

Rada Dunn is used to the solitary life of the arid valley north of the little town of Peace. Nothing much happens there, and her bean and wheat crops provide her with just enough to keep her away from the rest of her kind...which is how she's come to like it. But when she comes upon human remains that have recently been burned so intensely that they are merely sticky black bones, her serenity is shattered.