I picked up a habit of listening to short stories on my morning commute, but the risk in that is investing my time on a story without a payoff. I thought for this week, I’d share one story with definite payoff. “Chair,” by Martin Mundt is the first episode on a great new podcast called Tales to Terrify. I was a little surprised to find such a humorous story leading off the playlist for a horror podcast, but it does have terrifying elements, and is overall a tremendous story. The best part about this Saturday Spotlight, is you can listen to this story for free on iTunes or www.TalestoTerrify.com.
The main character of this story is a hopeless optimist, who is willing to sell whatever he can to put him on the investment track towards becoming the world’s next quadrillionairre. gutligpinkstink128 (couldn’t afford to pay for capitals) lives in a world where white-collar crime has been legalized and one man is CFO of Earth. One day as gutligpinkstink128 lies in a gutter, letting the toxic waters burn one of his remaining limbs (he sold the rest to help fund his celebrity bobblehead doll franchise), a hover limo pulls up and a man offers him a job working for the aforementioned CFO, Monly Slim. What he does for Mr. Slim, as well as what he discovers while working, is fascinating sci-fi and as humorous as it sad. Thankfully, gutligpinkstink128′s ceaseless optimism and dry humor keeps the tale fun and worth many relistens. I’ve heard it three times and laugh out loud every time, often to parts I didn’t notice in earlier listens. I’m tempted to share some of my favorite parts, but I don’t want to ruin them. I’m sure you’ll laugh and really enjoy this story.
Martin has a book just released from Creeping Hemlock Press, Reanimated Americans: A Zombie Novel. Tales to Terrify shares a little bit about this book in the second episode’s intro, and it sounds like if I enjoyed the humor of “Chair,” that I’ll enjoy the humor in this book. I will definitely check it out, and you should too.
Looking into Creeping Hemlock Press, I see they have quite a few zombie books newly released. Their new imprint, Print is Dead, has a sampler of the following three titles:
