David Dubrow

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The Print Version of Appalling Stories Is Live

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I’m pleased to announce that the print version of Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice is live on Amazon!

Now’s your chance to get a physical copy of the book that Benjamin Wilhelm, Staff Writer for NOQReport and noted advocate for veterans and Second Amendment issues called “A must-read for every patriotic American!”

Appalling Stories isn’t controversial for its own sake; it’s controversial because it tackles themes, characters, and situations that have suddenly become counter-cultural in a society marinating in politically correct agitprop. We use social issues as the setting, not the theme, bringing you entertainment first and foremost. The kind of entertainment that would send the Social Justice crowd screaming for a safe space.

Get your copy now before it’s banned for content!

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Book Review: Wrestle Maniacs

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More a treat for horror/dark crime fans than true devotees of professional wrestling, Wrestle Maniacs, unlike the sport it’s based upon, pulls no punches in its all-out brutality. Funny, disgusting, and over the top, when it hits it mirrors its subject matter in a way few short story anthologies can hope to emulate, and when it misses you’re left with the sweaty, sticky spectacle of a Montreal Screwjob.

The book begins with a foreword by Jeff Strand that’s blessedly brief and leads into Tom Leins’s terrific Real Americans, a hard-core tale of drugs, crime, and former wrestling professionals with names like Gringo Starr and Fingerfuck Flanagan. This story really sets the tone for the remainder of the book.

Nick Bullman, the protagonist of James Newman’s Ugly as Sin, returns in the offering A Fiend in Need, though you don’t have to have read the former to be entertained by the latter. This theme of returning characters continues with Joseph Hirsch’s Three Finger Bolo, a gut-wrenching tale of dirty, bloody fighting featuring “Bam-Bam” Abruzzi, the father of Hirsch’s Ritchie “Redrum” Abruzzi in the novel My Tired Shadow.

Fans of lucha libre aren’t left out of the wrestling spectrum with Hector Acosta’s From Parts Unknown, an arresting, bizarre tale of homecoming, and Gabino Iglesias’s revenge story El Nuevo Santo’s Last Fight. You might be forgiven if you thought that David James Keaton’s El Kabong was also a story of luchadores, but it’s not: it starts with the unforgettable line, “While I was still stumbling around trying to figure out why my pants suddenly didn’t seem to have any leg holes, police officers were pounding on my door eager to tell me my wife was found dead in a guitar case.”

Eryk Pruitt twists up the reader like a fish in a Boston Crab in his Last of the High-Flying Van Alstynes, a tale of loss, family, and mental illness. We travel back to pro wrestling’s pre-television days in Ed Kurtz’s Duluth, and Duncan P. Bradshaw’s Glassjaw, another story with a single word as a title, takes place in dialogue rather than action.

Patrick Lacey’s Kill to Be You is not only out there, but way on the other side of the galaxy. The universe, even. And you’ll definitely want to skip lunch before reading Jason Parent’s Canadian Donkey Punch. Just…just trust me on that.

The editor of the anthology, Adam Howe, has the funniest offering in the book (natch) with a Reggie Levine Clusterfuck (sic) titled Rassle Hassle. This time, Reggie finds himself in the wild and wacky world of wrestling, where his unique willingness to do almost anything to help a friend (or a casual acquaintance calling himself a friend) comes in quite handy. I only threw up once reading it, so that’s good.

You don’t have to like professional wrestling to enjoy this collection, particularly if you’re a pseudo-intellectual like me who looks down his nose at such low-brow fare. All you have to remember is the words of wrestling great Ric Flair: “Whether you like it or not, learn to love it, because it’s the best thing going. Woooooo!”

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Stranger Things Season 2: Review

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In this piece I’ll be spoiling the hell out of Stranger Things season 2, so if you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, now would be the time to read one of the other articles on this site, or, better yet, read a good book written by a fine writer.

This was the season where nothing happened. None of the principal characters changed in any significant way, and many of the same events from the first season repeated themselves in this one. Just like in season one, a new girl (Max) enters the friend group and causes chaos among the pre-adolescent protagonists. Will Byers is once again held prisoner by a horrific, otherworldly force, and is freed only at the very end. Once again Will’s mom trashes the whole house to solve Will’s terrible mystery. Nobody died except for characters introduced in this season, so it was a wash (I was kind of hoping that Bob Newby would turn out to be Soviet spy, but that didn’t happen). We learned very little about the main monster, the smoke-thing looming menacingly over the town like a post-Christmas credit card statement. Apparently it’s referred to by the writers as The Sentient, which is about as silly a name for something as The Situation.

It took an entire plot-miring episode, The Lost Sister, to give Eleven a badly-needed makeover. Why does Eleven’s left nostril bleed when she uses her powers? Because both nostrils bleed when she really, really uses her powers, that’s why. John Byers and Nancy Wheeler finally hook up despite a lack of chemistry that I can’t believe isn’t deliberate. The introduction of Max (a diversity pick? I ask, you decide) diluted the friend group (“the party”) such that Mike Wheeler ended up becoming entirely unnecessary the entire season, which was a shame: the show needed his vulnerability and childish stubbornness. Mr. Clarke, one of the only grown-ups in the show who wasn’t full of shit, was pretty much written out of the season, replaced by moderately-amusing conspiracy nut Murray Bauman.

Steve Harrington stepped up as a decent, even heroic character, even if he had to be saved by a little girl from being beaten to death by Billy, the unnecessary antagonist. (Note that Billy is the only human bad guy in the show; Paul Reiser’s ineffectual, uninteresting replacement of Matthew Modine eliminated all major human antagonists.) Dustin turned out a bit more likable than expected. Lucas wasn’t tested enough in this season to make him interesting, though his little sister was hysterical.

So what’s next for season 3? More teenage psychics, no doubt. #8’s Shadow-like powers were very neat, if not terribly well thought-out. What is the Upside-Down, anyway? It can’t just be a whole other universe that just happens to have its own rules and ecosystem; it’s clearly a horrific reflection of our own. What does The Sentient/Situation want? Will Hopper and Dustin suffer ill effects from breathing in the demonic farts of the disgusting tunnel-anuses? Will the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who this show is clearly aimed at get their fill of 80’s nostalgia in depictions of old-style candy bar wrappers and coin-op arcade games?

We’ll find out late this year, I suspect. I’ll be there. Will you?

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2017 in Review: Top Five Books

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Despite my writing proclivities I read across genres, and not just because I occasionally intend to review what I read. Most of what I’ve read this year I haven’t reviewed. Pleasantly, this year I’ve mostly figured out the trick of being a book author and a book reviewer: it’s reviewing the stuff you like and not reviewing the stuff you don’t like. Make no promises and you’ll alienate no one. Win-win.

Here are the top five books I’ve read this year.

  • 5: Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons and Dragons by Gary Witwer: One of the most transformative moments of my younger days was joining the high school’s D&D club and playing the RPGs I’d collected since age ten. There will always be a special place in my heart for Dungeons and Dragons, and this biography of Gary Gygax, D&D’s creator, unveils so much I didn’t know about the early days of the game. It gets a bit silly in parts with the dramatizations of moments in Gygax’s life, but overall it’s a must-read for D&D fans.
  • 4: The Assyrian by Nicholas Guild: Not dissimilar to Mika Waltari’s The Egyptian and Gary Jennings’s Aztec, Guild’s two novels about the life and times of Tiglath Ashur are riveting reading. Published in 1987, they’re as relevant today as when they were written, focusing on universal themes and unforgettable characters.
  • 3: My Tired Shadow by Joseph Hirsch: What can I say about this book that I haven’t already said in my review? The rise and fall and further descent of Ritchie “Redrum” Abruzzi is a classic story, well told. Full of brutal ugliness and intense pathos, it’s the kind of book you don’t see coming, like a shovel hook to the liver.
  • 2: Night of the Furies by David Angsten: The sequel to Angsten’s amazing Dark Gold, it continues the adventures of Jack Duran, who is once again plunged into terrifying adventures by his scholarly but irresponsible brother Dan. This time the action moves to the Greek isles, where the old gods are still in charge. Once I got to the last third, the titular Night, I could not put the book down. Fast-reading and mind-ripping, it rekindled that sense of Hellenic magic and danger I remember from Mary Renault’s The King Must Die.
  • 1: Tough Guys by Adrian Cole: I wasn’t half-finished reading Tough Guys when I knew that it was likely going to be my favorite book of the year. In every story in the collection the writing is sharp, the plotting is tight, and every scene builds on the next, tightening the nerves until the conclusion. Characters like Oil-Gun Eddy and Razorjack echo in the imagination long after the book’s done. I can only compare Cole’s work to writers like Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock with the highest respect and admiration. If you read nothing else this or any other year, read Tough Guys. I can’t believe Cole isn’t a household name in every fantasy/horror fan’s lexicon.

Only one horror book in the favorites pack this year, though it was the top one. What surprises does 2018 have in store?

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2017 in Review: Top Five Movies

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I’ve watched fewer movies this year than in previous; between writing, spending time with family, and the occasional television program, there hasn’t been time for it. Also, my overall discontent with Hollywood and its emphasis on empty, worthless franchise projects makes finding a movie worth seeing a difficult prospect at best.

And yet I did see stuff I liked. Here are my top five movies of 2017:

  • 5: The Theta Girl: Trippy and bizarre in all the right ways, The Theta Girl proved that a low budget doesn’t automatically equal low quality in filmmaking. When it wasn’t funny it was grotesque, and despite the uneven acting it had some unforgettable scenes. If you have the opportunity to see it, pop some Lemonheads and put your peepers on the screen.
  • 4: Wichita: A movie I dug despite a draggy middle section, it was full of pleasant surprises. Trevor Peterson as Jeb was the stand-out, and if you’re going to hang your movie on a single actor’s performance, he was the perfect pick. Creepy but vulnerable, he made the film.
  • 3: They Call Me Jeeg: This year I’ve made my disgust with superhero films crystal clear, but They Call Me Jeeg turns the entire genre inside-out, making it fresh and worth paying attention to. Enzo, the protagonist, goes from being kind of disgusting to sympathetic to heroic, which is movie magic the likes of which James Cameron has never achieved. Check it out.
  • 2: Burn: It’s a short film, and in the interest of full disclosure was written and produced by Chris Barnes, proprietor of The Slaughtered Bird. Putting aside my biases, I really liked this movie. Punchy, disquieting, and extremely well-done despite the minimal budget, it takes Michael Keaton’s My Life and eviscerates it with a meat hook.
  • 1: Deep in the Wood: When considering my favorite films of the year, there was never any question that Deep in the Wood was going to sit at the top of the list. We use terms like “affecting” and “unforgettable” a lot in movie reviewing, but this one takes the cake for intensity. Every scene is meticulously planned, portrayed, and produced for maximum effect. I loved it.

Next year, I may switch from movies to Top Five TV Shows of 2017, but we’ll see.

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Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice

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I’m pleased to announce that my newest book is available for download at Amazon!

Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice is an anthology of short stories written with authors Paul Hair and Ray Zacek, spanning several genres and points of view. It also features a foreword by R.M. Huffman, author of Leviathan and Fallen, books 1 and 2 of The Antediluvian Legacy, so you know it’s good. Here’s a peek at the back cover copy:

With political correctness gobbling up the culture like a fat kid on his sister’s quinceañera cake, where do you go for quality, old-school entertainment?

Appalling Stories focuses on themes and characters you’re just not supposed to read about anymore, using social issues as the setting, not the plot. Inside, you’ll read about a disturbing erotic resort that caters to an exclusive clientele, a violent Antifa group biting off much more than they can chew, a serial killer with a furious inch, and a lot more.

The authors find message fiction as tedious as you do, and traditional publishing seems intent on shoving favored narratives down readers’ throats. This anthology pushes back against PC moralizing, bringing you story above all else. Are you going to let Social Justice Warriors dictate what you can and can’t read?

Consider this your trigger warning.

Ben Wilhelm, Staff Writer for NOQReport and noted advocate for veterans and Second Amendment issues, said of it, “Ripped from the headlines, Appalling Stories is brilliant satire that illustrates the downfall of American society in the realms of culture, morality, religion, and even military policy. It is a must read for every patriotic American!”

Heck, even if you’re not a patriotic American, you’ll dig it.

Kristin Devine, a contributing author of GenderDreaming, the atomic feminist, and Ordinary Times, says of Appalling Stories, “While reading Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice you’ll find yourself in a rapidly deflating lifeboat afloat in a dark and dank sea of forbidden ideas. You won’t feel safe in these waters. Dive in anyway!”

All the stories within are terrific, but the best story in the book isn’t even mine! So what’re you waiting for? Get clicking and get reading!

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