I’m delighted to welcome author Nick Kolakowski to Kendall Reviews. Nick is a writer of noir thrillers and has contributed a tale to the excellent anthology Lost Highways: Dark Fictions From The Road. His tale ‘Your Pound Of Flesh’ involves a staple of the road trip story, the hitchhiker.
It’s dangerous out there…on the road.
The highways, byways and backroads of America are teeming day and night with regular folks. Moms and dads making long commutes. Teenagers headed to the beach. Bands on their way to the next gig. Truckers pulling long hauls. Families driving cross country to visit their kin.
But there are others, too. The desperate and the lost. The cruel and the criminal.
Theirs is a world of roadside honky-tonks, truck stops, motels, and the empty miles between destinations. The unseen spaces.
And there are even stranger things. Places that aren’t on any map. Wayfaring terrors and haunted legends about which seasoned and road-weary travelers only whisper.
But those are just stories. Aren’t they?
Find out for yourself as you get behind the wheel with some of today’s finest authors of the dark and horrific as they bring you these harrowing tales from the road.
Tales that could only be spawned by the endless miles of America’s lost highways.
So go ahead and hop in. Let’s take a ride.
Nick Kolakowski is the author of the noir thrillers “Boise Longpig Hunting Club”, “Slaughterhouse Blues” and “A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps.” His fiction and poetry have appeared in the North American Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Thuglit, Cleaver Magazine, and various anthologies. Lost Highways, from Crystal Lake Publishing, is one. He lives and writes in New York City, and hates to drive.
KR: Coffee?
KR: Could you tell me a little about yourself please?
I’m a writer of crime and horror fiction, living in New York City. My work’s appeared in magazines such as Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, and the North American Review, as well as various anthologies. I’m also the author of “Boise Longpig Hunting Club” and “A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps,” which are a pair of noir thrillers.
KR: What do you like to do when not writing?
I run long distances. I find it clears the head. I like to imagine that something big is chasing me.
KR: What is your favourite childhood book?
The Little Engine That Could (Watty Piper)
KR: What is your favourite album, and does music play any role in your writing?
I always listen to music when writing fiction. My favorite album is Tom Waits’ “Rain Dogs,” and I’ve written more than one story to it—it really sets a mood.
KR: Do you have a favourite horror movie/director?
For a long time, my favorite horror flick was “Angel Heart,” with Mickey Rourke. Lately, though, I’d have to say that “It Follows” tops my list. It’s such a primal movie, in many ways—the most terrifying campfire story you ever heard come to life.
KR: What are you reading now?
“Baghdad Noir,” a collection of crime-fiction short stories by Iraqi writers.
KR: Who were the authors that inspired you to write?
Raymond Chandler and Stephen King probably had the biggest influences on me, growing up.
KR: Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer to just see where an idea takes you?
I usually assemble a rough outline, but it’s very malleable and subject to change as I write.
KR: What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
I spend quite a bit of time researching—I don’t like my characters to engage in anything that I haven’t engaged in myself (short of things like murder, of course!), so in addition to reading and watching footage, I’ll also do things like go to a shooting range to fire whatever weapon my characters use.
KR: Describe your usual writing day?
I have a day job, so I write at night—usually from 8-11 PM. On weekends, I’ll devote some mornings to fiction.
KR: Do you have a favourite story/short that you’ve written (published or not)?
I’m really quite proud of “Boise Longpig Hunting Club,” my most recent book. It took quite some time to write and research—at one point, I even put it aside for a couple months because I couldn’t quite figure out the ending. I’m glad that I stuck with it.
When you want someone found, you call bounty hunter Jake Halligan. He’s smart, tough, and best of all, careful on the job. But none of those skills seem to help him when a shadowy group starts taking his life apart piece by piece.
First Jake comes home to find a dead body in his gun safe. He thinks it’s a warning—and when you drag people back to jail for a living, the list of people who want to send that kind of message is very long indeed. With backup from his sister Frankie, an arms dealer and dapper criminal, Jake plunges into the Idaho underworld, confronting everyone from brutal Aryan assassins to cops who want his whole family in jail.
But as Jake soon discovers, those threats are small-time compared to the group that’s really after him. And nothing—not bounty hunting, not even all his years in Iraq—can prepare him for what’s coming next. Jake’s about to become a player in the most dangerous game ever invented…
Boise Longpig Hunting Club is a wild ride into the dark heart of the American dream, where even the most brutal desires can be fulfilled for a price, and nobody is safe from the rich and powerful.
You can buy Boise Longpig Hunting Club from Amazon UK & Amazon US
KR: Do you read your book reviews?
Of course. I’m a masochist like that.
KR: Any advice for a fledgling author?
Write early, write often—there are no shortcuts to becoming a better writer.
KR: What scares you?
The unknown. That faint sense that things are going wrong, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. The boogeyman doesn’t frighten me; it’s the hint that the boogeyman might be lurking that really freaks me out.
KR: E-Book, Paperback or Hardback?
I love hardbacks. Once you’re done reading them, you can use them for propping up end-tables, for example. The household applications are endless!
KR: Can you tell me about your latest release please?
My short story in Lost Highways, titled “Your Pound of Flesh,” is an exploration of that age-old myth of the vanishing hitchhiker. What if you accidentally gave a ghost a ride? How would you react once you discovered it was a ghost. What if the ghost asked you to do something very, very bad? The story explores those questions.
KR: What are you working on now?
I’m working on a sequel to my novel “Boise Longpig Hunting Club.” It’s called “Voodoo Potato” and it takes place in New Orleans. There are no supernatural elements, although there is a creepy killer in a mask lurking around.
KR: You find yourself on a desert island, which three people would you wish to be deserted with you and why?
You can choose…
a) One fictional character from your writing.
b) One fictional character from any other book.
c) One real life person that is not a family member or friend.
I would choose to be stranded with my character Frankie, who is a survivalist badass, the President of the U.S., and Robinson Crusoe. That way, I know that the world would never, ever, ever stop searching for us, and we’d probably survive until rescue.
KR: Thank you very much Nick.
You can find out more about Nick by visiting his official website www.nickkolakowski.com
You can follow Nick on Twitter @nkolakowski
Nick’s author page can found found here
It’s dangerous out there…on the road.
The highways, byways and backroads of America are teeming day and night with regular folks. Moms and dads making long commutes. Teenagers headed to the beach. Bands on their way to the next gig. Truckers pulling long hauls. Families driving cross country to visit their kin.
But there are others, too. The desperate and the lost. The cruel and the criminal.
Theirs is a world of roadside honky-tonks, truck stops, motels, and the empty miles between destinations. The unseen spaces.
And there are even stranger things. Places that aren’t on any map. Wayfaring terrors and haunted legends about which seasoned and road-weary travelers only whisper.
But those are just stories. Aren’t they?
Find out for yourself as you get behind the wheel with some of today’s finest authors of the dark and horrific as they bring you these harrowing tales from the road.
Tales that could only be spawned by the endless miles of America’s lost highways.
So go ahead and hop in. Let’s take a ride.
You can buy Lost Highways: Dark Fictions From The Road from Amazon UK & Amazon US
About the Editor
D. Alexander Ward is an author and editor of horror and dark fiction.
Both his Gothic thriller, Beneath Ash & Bone, and his Southern-flavored action-horror, Blood Savages, are available from Necro Publications and Bedlam Press wherever books are sold.
As an editor, he co-edited the acclaimed and Bram Stoker Award-nominated GUTTED: Beautiful Horror Stories. He also co-edited the Lovecraftian horror anthologies, Shadows Over Main Street, Volumes 1 and 2.
Along with his family and the haints in the woods, he lives outside of Richmond near the farm where he grew up in what used to be rural Virginia, where his love for the people, passions, and folklore of the South was nurtured. There, he spends his nights penning and collecting tales of the dark, strange and fantastic.
About the Authors and Artists of Lost Highways
Michael Bailey
Michael Bailey is a freelance writer, editor and book designer, and the recipient of over two dozen literary accolades, such as the Bram Stoker Award and Benjamin Franklin Award. His novels include Palindrome Hannah, Phoenix Rose, and Psychotropic Dragon, and he has published two short story and poetry collections, Scales and Petals, and Inkblots and Blood Spots, as well as a children’s book, Enso. Edited anthologies include Pellucid Lunacy, Qualia Nous, The Library of the Dead, You Human, Adam’s Ladder, Prisms, and four volumes of Chiral Mad. His most recent publications are three standalone novelettes: SAD Face, Darkroom, and Our Children, Our Teachers.
Christopher Buehlman
Christopher Buehlman is a writer and comedian from St. Petersburg, Florida. He spends most of the year performing as a professional insultor, touring the renaissance festival circuit with his acrobat wife, his blind cat and his one-eyed dog. His first novel, Those Across the River, was a finalist for best novel in the 2012 World Fantasy Awards and has been optioned for film by Phoenix pictures. His fourth novel, The Lesser Dead, was the RUSA reading selection for horror in 2015, was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award, and has been optioned for television development by Global Road. He is the winner of the 2007 Bridport Prize for poetry.
Cullen Bunn
Cullen Bunn is the writer of creator-owned comic book series such as Harrow County, The Sixth Gun, The Damned, Regression, Bone Parish, and many others. He has also written numerous comics for Marvel and DC, including Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, Deadpool: Assassin, Star Wars, X-Men Blue, Sinestro, and Suicide Squad. He also writes prose, including a serialized action-horror novel, Shadowcage, on Patreon.
Rachel Autumn Deering
Rachel Autumn Deering is an Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated writer, editor, and book designer from the hills of Appalachia. Her debut prose novella, HUSK, was published in 2016 and drew praise from many critics and fellow writers. Her upcoming novel, Wytchwood Hollow, is set for publication in 2018.
She has also written, edited, lettered, designed, and published comics and short prose for DC/Vertigo Comics, Blizzard Entertainment, Dark Horse Comics, IDW, Cartoon Network, and more. Deering is a rock ‘n’ roll witch with a heart of slime. She lives with a bunch of monster masks in rural Ohio.
Kristi DeMeester
Kristi DeMeester is the author of Beneath, a novel published by Word Horde, and the author of Everything That’s Underneath, a short fiction collection published by Apex Publications. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year Volume 9, Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volumes 1 and 3, Black Static, The Dark, Apex Magazine, and several others. She is currently at work on her fourth novel and seeking representation. Learn more at kristidemeester.com.
Robert Ford
Robert Ford fills his days handling marketing and design projects and considering ripping the phone lines from the wall. He is author of the novel The Compound, the novellas Samson and Denial, Ring of Fire, and The Last Firefly of Summer, and has a collection of his short fiction The God Beneath my Garden. He can confirm the grass really is greener on the other side, but it’s only because of the bodies buried there.
Wes Freed
Wes Freed (b.1964) grew up on a cattle farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, a place that still informs his work. He received a painting and printmaking degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in the eighties. In the late 20th century he met the Drive-By Truckers, and has been making art for the band ever since. He lives in Richmond Virginia’s beautiful Fan district, where he can be seen scouring the alleys for paintable wood with his girlfriend Jackie, and a Schnauzer mix named Betsy whose moods run hot and cold.
doungjai gam
doungjai gam’s short fiction has appeared in LampLight, Distant Dying Ember, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, Wicked Haunted, and the Necon E-Books Best of Flash Fiction Anthology series since 2011. Her debut collection, glass slipper dreams, shattered, came out in July. She is a member of the New England Horror Writers. Born in Thailand, she currently resides in Connecticut.
Orrin Grey
Orrin Grey is a skeleton who likes monsters, as well as a writer, editor, and amateur film scholar who was born on the night before Halloween. His stories of monsters, ghosts, and sometimes the ghosts of monsters have appeared in dozens of anthologies and three collections, including Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts and Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales. He resides in the suburbs of Kansas City, and has driven along I-70 many, many times.
Matt Hayward
Matt Hayward is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author and musician from Ireland. His books include Brain Dead Blues, What Do Monsters Fear?, Practitoners (with Patrick Lacey), and the upcoming The Faithful. He curated the anthology Welcome To The Show, and is currently writing a novel with Bryan Smith. Matt wrote the comic book This Is How It Ends with the band Walking Papers and received a nomination for Irish short story of the year from Penguin Books in 2017.
Jonathan Janz
Jonathan Janz is the author of more than a dozen novels and numerous short stories. His work has been championed by authors like Joe R. Lansdale, Brian Keene, and Jack Ketchum; he has also been lauded by Publishers Weekly, the Library Journal, and the School Library Journal. His novel Children of the Dark was chosen by Booklist as a Top Ten Horror Book of the Year. Jonathan’s main interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children. You can sign up for his newsletter, and you can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads.
Tyler Jenkins
Tyler is an illustrator based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Brian Keene
Brian Keene writes novels, comic books, short fiction, and occasional journalism for money. He is the author of over forty books, mostly in the horror, crime, and dark fantasy genres and also hosts the popular podcast The Horror Show with Brian Keene.
Keene’s work has been praised in such diverse places as The New York Times, The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN.com, Publisher’s Weekly, Media Bistro, Fangoria Magazine, and Rue Morgue Magazine.
Keene serves on the Board of Directors for the Scares That Care 501c charity organization.
The father of two sons, Keene lives in rural Pennsylvania.
Nick Kolakowski
Nick Kolakowski is the author of the noir thrillers “Boise Longpig Hunting Club,” “Slaughterhouse Blues,” and “A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps.” His fiction and poetry have appeared in the North American Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Thuglit, Cleaver Magazine, and various anthologies. He lives and writes in New York City, and hates to drive.
Lisa Kröger
Lisa Kröger is a writer and host of the Know Fear podcast. She has a Ph.D. in English; her interests include Gothic and horror literature, particularly women writers of the genre. She’s edited two books: Shirley Jackson: Influences and Confluences (Routledge, 2016) and Spectral Identities: Essays on Ghosting in Literature and Film (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). In addition, she’s also contributed to EcoGothic (Manchester University Press, 2013), The Encyclopedia of the Vampire (Greenwood Press, 2010), and Horror Literature through History (ABC-CLIO, forthcoming). Her newest fiction is forthcoming in Cemetery Dance. You can find out more about her at www.lisakroger.com.
Ed Kurtz
Ed Kurtz is the author of The Rib from Which I Remake the World, Bleed, Nausea, and other novels. Ed’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and has been honored in both Best American Mystery Stories and Best Gay Stories. He lives in Connecticut.
Jess Landry
Since picking up a pen a few years ago, Jess Landry’s fiction has appeared in Crystal Lake Publishing’s Where Nightmares Come From and Fantastic Tales of Terror, Unnerving’s Alligators in the Sewers, Stitched Smile’s Primogen, and DFP’s Killing It Softly, among others.
She currently works as Managing Editor for JournalStone and its imprint, Trepidatio Publishing, where her goal is to publish diverse stories from diverse writers.
Joe R. Lansdale
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and four hundred short pieces, including essays, stories, introductions, and articles. He has written for television and film, as well as comics, and has received numerous recognitions for his work. Among them, The Edgar, ten Bram Stokers, The Spur Award, The Grinzani Cavour Prize, and many others. Bubba Hotep and Cold In July were both made into films, and his series of novels about Hap and Leonard became a television series. Several novels, stories, films and comics, are in the works. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife and Pitbull, Nicky.
Bracken MacLeod
Bracken MacLeod has survived car crashes, a near drowning, being shot at, a parachute malfunction, and the bar exam. So far, the only incident that has resulted in persistent nightmares is the bar exam. He is the author of the novels Mountain Home, Come to Dust, and Stranded, which was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, and a collection of short fiction, 13 Views of the Suicide Woods. He lives outside of Boston with his wife and son, where he is at work on his next novel.
Josh Malerman
Josh Malerman is an American author and also one of two singer/songwriters for the rock band The High Strung, whose song “The Luck You Got” can be heard as the theme song to the Showtime show Shameless. His book Bird Box is also currently being filmed as a feature film starring Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, and Sarah Paulson. Bird Box was also nominated for the Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the James Herbert Award. His books Black Mad Wheel and Goblin have also been nominated for Stoker Awards. His latest release is Unbury Carol: A Novel.
Kelli Owen
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Kelli Owen now lives in Pennsylvania. She’s attended countless writing conventions, participated on dozens of panels, and has spoken at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA regarding both her writing and the field in general. Her works include Six Days, Floaters, Waiting Out Winter as well as other novels and novellas, and the collection Black Bubbles. Visit her website at kelliowen.com for more information.
Matthew Revert
Matthew Revert is a writer, musician and designer from Melbourne, Australia.
Luke Spooner
Luke Spooner is a freelance illustrator from the South of England. As ‘Carrion House’ he creates dark, melancholy and macabre illustrations and designs for a variety of projects and publishers.
Richard Thomas
Richard Thomas is the award-winning author of seven books—Disintegration, Breaker, Transubstantiate, Herniated Roots, Staring into the Abyss, Tribulations, and The Soul Standard. He has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller awards. His over 140 stories in print include Cemetery Dance (twice), Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders (Bram Stoker Winner), Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad (numbers 2-4), and Shivers VI. He was also the editor of four anthologies: The New Black, Exigencies, The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers, and Burnt Tongues.
François Vaillancourt
François Vaillancourt is a French-Canadian illustrator living in Montreal. He works with a variety of techniques, which he blends digitally. His illustrations are mostly of the horror and dark fantasy genre, with some science fiction thrown in for good measure.
Damien Angelica Walters
Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Cry Your Way Home, Paper Tigers, and Sing Me Your Scars, winner of This is Horror’s Short Story Collection of the Year. Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Autumn Cthulhu and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda’s Song, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and Apex Magazine. Until the magazine’s closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two rescued pit bulls and is represented by Heather Flaherty of The Bent Agency.
Rio Youers
Rio Youers is the British Fantasy Award–nominated author of Old Man Scratch and Point Hollow. His short fiction has been published in many notable anthologies, and his novel, Westlake Soul, was nominated for Canada’s prestigious Sunburst Award. He has been favorably reviewed in such venues as Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and The National Post. His recent novels include The Forgotten Girl and the upcoming Halcyon. Rio lives in southwestern Ontario with his wife, Emily, and their children, Lily and Charlie.
You can buy Lost Highways: Dark Fictions From The Road from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Praise for Lost Highways
“Lost Highways is a great collection of stories. The emotions in them don’t feel cheesy or hackneyed. They feel real and in many cases are raw.” – Sci-Fi and Scary
“Editor D. Alexander Ward has brought together some fantastic pieces of horror fiction to craft a deeply enjoyable and often incredibly haunting anthology based around the theme of travelling along the highways and byways of the world. Another brilliant anthology from Crystal Lake Publishing, Lost Highways: Dark Fictions From The Road is a title that the publisher, editor, illustrators and authors should be extremely proud to be involved in, and deserves to be on the shelf of every horror fan. There are some truly brilliant stories in this anthology, along with stunning internal illustrations to accompany them, and it’s a credit to the publisher that they’ve yet again published such a high-quality title.” – Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Reviews
“This is an amazing collection of stories each with its own unique voice and feel and no two stories are alike. It’s a rollercoaster of a read with lots of cool tales and very few duds. This is an amazing collection of stories each with its own unique voice and feel and no two stories are alike. It’s a rollercoaster of a read with lots of cool tales and very few duds.” – HorrorTalk
“LOST HIGHWAYS rates five big stars glowing like those huge illuminated signs beckoning from the roadside. Gas, Eats, and Fun between the sheets! All available for a price. This is a GREAT collection to read while travelling or when you can’t and wish you were, like me.” – HellNotes
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