Posts Tagged ‘mayhem’

Freakin Fridays!

Freakin Fridays is my own little meme. I’ll be posting about books, movies, and all things scary.

Feel free to join in and do your own Freakin Fridays posts!

Tune in every Friday. Get your scare on!

Let’s have some fun!

Last week I needed some help choosing which book to review for this weeks Freakin Friday post.

I showed you some covers and descriptions and which ever book got the most votes, I’d post my review this Friday!

It looks like the winner is #4 ~ BEDBUGS by LA Taylor

BEDBUGS (Can you see them?)

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SYNOPSIS OF ‘BEDBUGS – CAN YOU SEE THEM?’

‘NIGHT, NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT AND DON’T LET THE BEDBUGS BITE’ In 1977, an alien spaceship crashed down to earth, landing deep within the soil in a small County called ‘Lemonsville’. During the night people were slaughtered, but the next day the killers disappeared. In 2020, the area where the spaceship landed was levelled off and new houses were built over it. Many foreigners were now living in the UK, and so more houses needed building. A small earthquake shook Lemonsville in the year 2050. This was the opening needed for the new creatures of the night to attack the living. Deep, deep down beneath the ground, the alien queen had given birth to a new killer. The earth tremor had produced an escape route for her new babies to hunt for food. Human food…

My Review

I love horror and especially horror stories with creepy creatures.

Most horror stories have large, menacing monsters or creatures, which I do love.

With Bedbugs, you get these teeny-tiny critters that are almost invisible to the naked eye. But wait, there’s more. These aren’t your ordinary pesky bedbugs. These bugs are from outer space, alien sentient beings. They work like a fine-tuned military unit, going about their mission.

Their mission is to collect food, which is us, and take it back to their queen. Being so tiny, they can’t collect the food by themselves, so they attack us in numbers, silently plotting and attacking. They are vicious and determined, chewing our bodies into sizable pieces with the precision of a surgeon.

Take a close look at the cover art for Bedbugs. It doesn’t matter that these bugs are tiny. They are nasty and their very design is for the purpose of rending and eating.

I loved this story. What a great idea and well plotted out.

It starts with an atmosphere of anticipation and quickly captures your full attention.

The first chapter is grisly and horrifying. What’s great is, the author lays out the plot for the story throughout the first attack, giving you an idea of what and why the bugs are here.

A surprise is their mode of traveling from one scene of attack to another. Never would have expected it and it really made me take these bugs seriously.

It just keeps getting better and I only stopped reading for the night when my kindle fell in my lap and woke me up. I had drifted off as it was late. Glad I woke up and had to move around a bit. Maybe that’s what kept me from dreaming about these bugs!

5 Stars for BEDBUGS

I gave this my high rating because I know I will be reading it again. It also made me curious about our terrestrial bedbugs.

bed bugs photo: Bed Bug Guide CropperCapture3_zpsc8c43e00.jpg

Some interesting facts

Bedbug feeding physiology

A bed bug pierces the skin of its host with what is called a stylet fascicle, rostrum, or “beak”. This is a unit composed of the maxillae and mandibles, which have been modified into elongated shapes from a basic, ancestral style. The right and left maxillary stylets are connected at their midline and a section at the centerline forms a large food canal and a smaller salivary canal. The entire maxillary and mandibular bundle penetrates the skin.[5]

The mandibular stylet tips have small teeth and through alternately moving these stylets back and forth, the insect cuts a path through tissue for the maxillary bundle to reach an appropriately sized blood vessel. Pressure from the blood vessel itself fills the insect with blood in three to five minutes. The bug then withdraws the stylet bundle from the feeding position and retracts it back into the labial groove, folds the entire unit back under the head, and returns to its hiding place.[5] It takes between five and ten minutes for a bed bug to become completely engorged with blood.[25] In all, the insect may have spent less than 20 minutes in physical contact with its host, and will not attempt to feed again until it has either completed a molt or, if an adult, has thoroughly digested the meal.

Pretty nasty, eh?

I was also reminded of an extended story from Outer Limits starring Beau Bridges.

Maybe you’ve seen it?

Sandkings

Check out this video.

Trailer from Sandkings – OuterLimits

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGmLOji73B0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]

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About the author and where to find him.

L.A.  Taylor

My name is Lee Taylor, I was born on March 19th 1969, at ‘George Eliot Hospital’, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England…
I suppose I was always into writing from when I was a child. I remember writing children’s stories aged 10, which were read to younger children, & even at age 13-16, I would write school essays which were 10 pages longer than needed…..This would result in a no mark because of its length, but writer’s can’t help writing…
When I was 17 I bought a movie camera. I suppose I wanted to be the next ‘Spielberg’……lol….I would write ideas down & get the family over to make short films…
But it wasn’t until I was 24 that I dabbled in actual serious writing.
It was then that my first novel came to light – A story which I’m now re-writing for its 20th Anniversary release in 2013…
In 1999, my zombie novel idea came to light, but it took many, many years before it was passed around to the World. That novel has seen its title change 3 times in the past 10 years, but CLIFTON FALLS is now staying put as that name…..No more name changes……lol
I’ve now released 2 novels so far, with both available on amazon kindle…

http://www.amazon.com/CLIFTON-FALLS-e…

http://www.amazon.com/BEDBUGS-Can-you…

BEDBUGS (CAN YOU SEE THEM?) – Is based on man-eating insects from outer space…

My website gives more info on me, my stories, & what I am doing now..

Website

Twitter

Goodreads

Available Books and upcoming releases.

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A zombie story! Available now.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF THE TOWN YOU LIVED IN WAS INVADED BY FLESH EATING ZOMBIES?

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF A LOVED ONE TURNED OUT TO BE ONE OF THEM?

An experimental fertilizer used to improve the food grown on a local farm in CLIFTON FALLS is now the reason behind why the dead are rising to feast on the living.
Within a day bodies are piling up, but no one can work out how it’s happened.
The police force struggle to maintain the horde of “blood crazed” killers as they
battle the un-dead in the local HOSPITAL.
Three months before the zombie outbreak the local bank was robbed, leaving one victim dead. The robbers worked at the hospital and so buried the cash inside the victim’s coffin. Now they are back to dig up the cash before the police snoop around.
Unknown to them, the living dead are rising from their graves, including the victim from the bank. Now the police have to fight the zombies before they cause havoc at the local holiday village.
Can the Chief Inspector find a way of eliminating them before the virus spreads into the CITY and BEYOND?

This novel contains strong language & graphic violence….

Coming later this year. Can’t wait.

Rampaging killer rats that cause havoc in the farming town of Aaronsville.

Sounds like another winner.

I hear the author is working on the next book about these Bedbugs!

~

WWW Wednesday

looking out a window photo: girl looking out the window girl-looking-out-the-window.jpg

Hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you’ll read next

~

What are you currently reading?

What Lies Beneath

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Description

When Blair Lewis is left for dead in a freezing lake, she can’t get over the fact that her boyfriend tried to kill her. And when she begins to receive disturbing gifts and letters from her supposed dead boyfriend, she attempts to figure out what is going on before the darkness consumes her. Nothing is as it seems and the startling truth is going to rip Blair right out of this world. Is Blair simply losing her mind? Or is something vicious and dark after her sanity and soul?

~

What did you recently finish reading?

Four Tales for Midnight

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Description

Four tales of extreme suspense and mystery aimed at getting the heart pumping. Hard. A soldier on D-Day finds an enemy soldier acting very strangely indeed; a jilted husband creates a grisly scavenger hunt; a marriage reconciliation service ABSOLUTELY guarantees positive results—the question is, how? And more!

Turn out the lights and enter a bizarre world, but remember—don’t go in the basement!

Look for my review on Friday, April 5th!

~

What do you think you’ll read next?

The Clearing of Travis Coble

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Description

Travis Coble didn’t kill and eat his family. At least that’s what a jury decided twenty years ago. But like Lizzie Borden, Travis Coble was branded guilty by an angry public and consigned to a life of suspicious whispers and sidelong stares. Now, Professor Dick Myers wants to clear Travis’s name once and for all. An interview with the reclusive mountain man would not only bring Myers fame—it could save his job.

But Myers will find more than a good story in Coble’s isolated shack in the Smoky Mountains. He will find the truth about what happened twenty years ago…and the true meaning of horror.

A new work of terror from the author of the worldwide bestseller Old Order.

~

So, whatcha readin?

question mark photo: Question Mark Question-1.jpg

I’ve got another scary one for ya!  Plus another Giveaway!

Faithful Shadow

by Kevin J. Howard

Faithful Shadow

ADD to Goodreads

Yellowstone National Park is on fire. The skies are smudged with smoke and the air is filled with the pungent scent of burning brush.

Underneath Yellowstone, the creatures maze of tunnels are filling up with smoke. It has to find a safe place until the fires are put out.  One unlucky fireman gives it that opportunity.

For Joseph Rand, a park ranger, things are heating up, and not only because of the fire. People are disappearing mysteriously. They seem to just vanish, leaving no trace.

Taking advantage of the lack of business at the Old Faithful Inn, a landmark in the park, some of the summer employees head up to the hotsprings to soak in the warm waters and camp out for the night, and do a little partying.  When they wake up the next morning, two of their group are missing. Their belongings are still there but there’s no trace of their friends. After much searching, it’s decided they need to head back and notify the park rangers.

Joseph is nursing a bad hangover when the kids rush in, talking over each other, claiming their friends are missing. He doesn’t see it as an emergency and patronizes them, saying maybe they went off to be together. This infuriates the group. They can see his shaking hands and smell the reek of stale booze on him.

When Joseph tells them he’ll go check it out they leave to report to work. What he finds isn’t much.  No trail to follow, but a few drops of blood are on the ground. Perhaps he was too hasty in writing this one off as young people having fun. Another call pulls him away from the hot springs, it’ll have to wait.

Now a fireman has gone missing. One second he was standing by his supervisor, the next he was gone. With the fire line close by, there’s no time to waste and the firemen and Joseph spread out to look for anything he could have fallen into. There are plenty of sinkholes in the park.

They find one and when they holler down, the fireman answers. It’s a ways down, so they rig a harness and lower a man down to get him. Strangely, he is now farther down the tunnel and in bad shape, too weak to help himself. When they finally get him topside, he’s so weak they have to take him back to the Inn. One man notices the injured man’s jacket is bulging in the back, like somethings underneath, but then he’s distracted and thinks of it no more .

What piggybacks the fireman is now a guest in the Inn. It’s cunning, malicious and hungry. Always hungry. And it gets a devilish delight in terrorizing its prey.

Hell has come to Yellowstone and it’s just getting started.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbDBOKgYzts]

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Creature stories are my favorite reads. Whether they’re on land, under the sea, or on another planet doesn’t matter. As long as there’s carnage and terror I’m happy.

I know, “I ain’t right.” Can’t help it.

Faithful Shadow has all the carnage you could ever want, and once it starts it doesn’t stop.

I could take or leave the young group of friends. I found most of them shallow and self-centered. Probably a good thing I didn’t warm to them, as many meet bloody ends.

Joseph, the park ranger, has a huge drinking problem and a lot of baggage. It took a while, but I started to get him and was really pulling for him by the end.

There are a couple other characters I really liked, you’ll know who I’m talking about when you read the book. They added depth with their own stories.

Now, the creature! It’s something else. I kept trying to picture what it looked like and never really got an image in my mind. Maybe it was too dark:) Anyway, I shopped around and this is kind of what it looks like in my mind.

spooky forest photo: Spooky Green Forest SpookyForest.jpg

Do you see it? Oh, well I guess it’s too dark. But it’s in there, looking right back at you, edging closer. Can you hear it?

If a story makes me rub my hands together, chuckling with evil delight, it gets 5 Stars!

       

Congratulations Kevin. Your debut novel gave me shivers!  I’m first in line for your next one.

And now for the giveaway.

Kevin is giving away 5 e-books of Faithful Shadow.

To enter, please leave your email address and answer this question, “If you’re cornered by the creature would you faint, fight, or run?”

Contest ends December 15th. Good luck everyone.

About the author

Kevin Howard lives with his family in Washington.  He worked in Yellowstone National Park for the summer season as part of a family tradition.  Kevin, his wife Melissa, and his two young children enjoy spending summers there. 

Contacts

Facebook

Goodreads

Website

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/faithful-shadow-kevin-howard/1112436638?ean=9781432794354

Faithful Shadow will be offered for $0.99 from now until Christmas for the
Holiday Season. A great price to celebrate the holidays and the coming release
of my second novel, Precipice: The Beginning. Voted the Scariest Author of 2012
by Outskirts Press for Faithful Shadow.

Click on the cover image below to purchase.