These stories take us to the crowded subway platforms and red-light districts of Tokyo, where he has lived and worked since 2003. In the humid days of the interminable rainy season, in the hideous rites at forgotten temples in the hinterland, and in the humdrum lives of bored and desperate salarymen, Pastula locates a unique blend of cosmic horror and urban paranoia. These are the nightmares a great metropolis whispers to itself, the uncanny dread behind the high-tech and prosperous facade.

Heralding the arrival of an exciting new voice in weird horror, these stories will burrow deep into your nightmares, and leave you unsettled and uneasy long after you’ve closed the book …

“As unique and masterful a collection as I’ve seen in some time. It’s messing with my dreams.” – Matthew M. Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination and Creeping Waves

Available now in Print

or eBook

Oh brother, it’s been forever since we talked at you, but the winter was long and we were busy with this beauty: four tales of the horror that clings to the agonizing process of interview for jobs, by some of the most distinctive new writers in the horror business. Snap this bad boy up right now!

Dang! Them Orford boys have done it again!

Folks, you aren’t going to believe it, but Orford Parish Books has served up another tasty treat: this chapbook includes three tales of weird horror set amidst the blood-soaked art form of professional wrestling.

Matthew M. Bartlett, author of “Gateways to Abomination,” “Creeping Waves,” and “Rangel,” which is included in this year’s “Year’s Best Weird Fiction,” opens up the bleeding with “The Dark Match,” a tale of mortal dread and surreal woe set in the dingy wrestling venue of a seaside town.

Joseph Pastula applies the submission hold of “A Severance of Roots,” a cautionary tale to collectors of all stripes about what happens when you find what you’re looking for, in this case the story of a dimly remembered wrestler famed for brutality.

And Tom Breen gets the sneaky roll-up with “The Vision of James Lee Dawson, King of the Deathmatches,” which is a glimpse at what might happen if a thumbtacks and barbed wire match were the venue for theodicy.

Plus: fun interior art! Easter eggs! Not literal ones, like, little jokes inserted in interstitial content. Look, just buy the book.

 

Just a heads up that Tom Breen will be at Readercon in beautiful Quincy, Mass. on Friday, July 8 and Saturday, July 9. He won’t be there in any official capacity, and tells us he finds most conventions a little bougie for his tastes, but you’ll easily spot him as a giant fat man in a Montreal Canadiens cap drinking cider and handing out Orford Parish buttons like they were Pez. If he goes to anything, it’ll be the Gemma Files reading on Friday, because Gemma Files rules. Otherwise, hit him up at the hotel bar.

Hot dang! Our compadres at Muzzleland Press have an interview up as part of their “Faithful Frighteners” series with Orford Parish Books’ own Tom Breen. Here’s an excerpt:

The conflict that most people see between Christianity and horror is usually rooted in a simplistic understanding of either, or both. Dante’s Inferno is simultaneously a work of profound religious devotion and a catalog of grotesque horrors. The contradiction only exists for people with a shallow, unreflective Christianity or a simplistic notion that horror is primarily concerned with freaking out the squares. There are plenty of both kinds of people, which is why there’s a strong notion that horror is incompatible with Christianity, but I see the reality as the opposite: horror is much more germane to Christianity than the limp materialism of most contemporary “literary” fiction, say.

Go ahead and read the rest!