OPB001

Orford Parish Murder Houses (February 2016)

Tom Breen

The local tour guidebook everyone needs when visiting this quaint New England town! From a cannibal bloodbath at a hippie commune to a beheading amidst the glamour of Old Hollywood, this chap book will provide you with all the information you need to make your next trip to Orford Parish a memorable one.

Jonathan Raab, author of The Hillbilly Moonshine Massacre, calls it “first-rate weird fiction,” while Timothy Jarvis, author of The Wanderer, says “It disarms with sly humour and whimsy, but slowly builds an atmosphere of suffocating dread.”

Don’t be the last on your block to finally understand why no one seems to own the old Lathrop place for very long! Buy Orford Parish Murder Houses here.

OPB002

Little Oren and the Noises (May 2016)

Joseph Pastula

Little Oren, resident of Orford Parish, has a straightforward problem: the town is much too noisy. How to address this problem? If you said “Build a series of smaller and smaller dwellings while perched on top of a pillar,” you’re more than ready for the uniquely disturbing atmosphere of this gorgeously illustrated volume.

Full color illustrations from the pen of Tokyo-based writer and artist Joseph Pastula capture the surreal, unsettling atmosphere of this tale, perched halfway between a bedtime story and Thomas Ligotti. The subtitle says it’s for “weird kids,” but in reality it’s for the weirdo in all of us who suspects that getting away from our problems isn’t as easy as we’d like to think.

If you’d like to have the unnerving experience of reading this book, you can buy it on Amazon here.

OPB003

Old Gory: Two Tales of Flag Horror (June 2016)

Tom Breen and Joseph Pastula

Who doesn’t love the American flag? Symbol of freedom and patriotism, flapping free in the breeze in God’s country. What a great thing the flag is!

But what if there were another side to the flag? What if there were a decidedly…sinister aspect of the ubiquity with which it appears in shop windows, front yards, utility poles, and stuck to the back of every other passing car?

In this “split book,” an homage to the punk EPs split between two groups that the authors cherished as youthful ne’er-do-wells, Pastula and Breen ask those questions, and find answers that may disturb and perplex you. A nephew returns to his aunt’s home after years in a foreign country, to find her rural New England town has seemingly been caught in a patriotic mania embodied by flags that mysteriously appear on his property overnight. Meanwhile, in Orford Parish, a secret society of flag-bearers tries to initiate a skeptical suburban dad into an age-old struggle against witches.

Stacey Longo, author of Ordinary Boy and editor of Wicked Seasons, calls it “A fun and scary glimpse into Orford Parish, a tiny Connecticut community where the simple act of putting a flag on your lawn might mean the difference between life and death.”

Be a patriot and bring red-white-and-blue horror into your home here!

OPB004

3 Moves of Doom: Weird Horror from Inside the Squared Circle (September 2016)

Matthew M. Bartlett, Joseph Pastula, Tom Breen

Far from the glitz and glory of the world of televised professional wrestling, there lurks a dimly-lit version of the oldest sport: men and women brawling, bleeding, and sweating in small rooms for tiny crowds of people who work with their hands, sitting on folding chairs or standing on floors sticky with beer.

That’s the version of wrestling explored in these three tales, from Matthew M. Bartlett (author of Gateways to Abomination, Creeping Waves, and “Rangel,” which is included in Vol. 3 of The Year’s Best Weird Fiction), Joseph Pastula, and Tom Breen.

An old photograph in a yellowing wrestling magazine; a chance encounter at a faded seaside amusement venue; a veteran of countless bouts who may be wrestling his final “deathmatch”; all of these provide fertile ground for unsettling explorations of the grunt and groan game.

Available on Kindle or in paperback here.

OPB005

Letters of Decline: Four Tales of Job Interview Horror (May 2017)

Edited by Tom Breen

Everyone who’s been a finalist for a job has felt it: the sweaty brow, the nervous catch in the voice, the panic when asked a question you can’t answer …

Job interviews are the hopelessly flawed method industrial society employs to select willing participants in the soul-crushing monotony of wage labor, a process governed by bias, guesswork, and the arbitrary whims of bored, resentful hiring managers.

This bleak netherworld is examined in this volume by four of the most distinctive new voices in horror fiction today: a new company in a decrepit mill town seems to offer the promise of upward mobility, if you can just pass the interview … a woman learns exactly what she’s willing to do to land a job in a place with a good dental plan … an out-of-work recluse comes face-to-face with his own past in an unspeakable showdown with a mysterious interrogator … and one baffled man sits on the other end of the hiring desk as a parade of horribles shambles before him.

Sit down. Relax. Bring your references and samples of your work. We’ll leave time at the end for questions and hopeless prayers.

Available in paperback here and Kindle here.

OPB006

All Lights Will Forever After Be Dim (July 2018)

by Joseph Pastula

foreword by Matthew M. Bartlett

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 façade.

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.

Available in paperback here and Kindle here.