A Horror Novelette Double Feature
Praise for Volume One
Content Warnings
Featuring: Carson Winter & Scott J. Moses
Cover Illustrations: Evangeline Gallagher
Interior Illustrations: Marisa Bruno
Release Date: September 27, 2022
Print ISBN: 978-1-7379740-2-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7379740-3-1
Goodreads Page
“The Guts of Myth” – Carson Winter
It’s 1973. British-American thug Byron is tasked with finding the occultist Allosaurus D’Ambrosere, given only handwritten instructions and two hateful associates. Where they’re going, they’ll find blood red skies, obsidian towers, and a deep thirst for violence. But will they find the man who calls himself the Golden King? “The Guts of Myth” is Weird horror that snaps like hardboiled noir with vistas lifted straight from Beksinski.
“The Mourner Across the Flames” – Scott J. Moses
The world is a salt-ridden dystopia. Bharath, an exile given to hallucinations, is ordered to escort an emaciated mourner across the barren flats. The journey reveals the existence of a monster, evolved to live in the After among the remaining humans. But which is worse—the monster new to Bharath, or the humans who robbed him of his love? “The Mourner Across the Flames” is a grief-stricken tale of spiraling delusion held afloat by enduring love.
PRAISE FOR “SPLIT SCREAM VOLUME ONE”
“I devoured ACE doubles back in the day, and SPLIT SCREAM feels like a sleek, bullet-sized iteration of those beauties. Winter and Moses go hard with transdimensional Lovecraftian body horror and far-future pulp evocative of Vance, Brackett, and the like. Excellent.”
—Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase
“SPLIT SCREAM VOLUME ONE is an experience I can whole-heartedly recommend. The two works have distinct flavors but work well together, and you’d be right to expect to settle in for a bloody weird, but bloody good time with this duo. Just be sure to keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times.”
—Alex Woodroe, editor at Tenebrous Press
Dread Stone Press’s SPLIT SCREAM series is off to a wonderfully disturbing start with this double feature. I was immersed in Carson Winter’s weird noir…then chilled by Scott J. Moses’ stark dystopian.”
—Christi Nogle, author of Beulah
PRAISE FOR “THE GUTS OF MYTH” by CARSON WINTER
“If you’ve never read a Winter, you’re in for such a treat and I envy you the chance to experience this author for the first time. The Guts of Myth needs no blurb, no presentation; just read the first page and you’ll be steeped in the smell of smog and cigarette smoke, in off-English accents and out of tune pub music, in Byron’s dark melancholy voice. You can’t help but want more. And then, just when you think you’ve got a handle on this charismatic hard-boiled noir? Then it gets really, excitingly weird.”
—Alex Woodroe, editor at Tenebrous Press
“While seeming to start by answering the question ‘What if Guy Ritchie got his hands on the Necronomicon?’, Carson Winter’s The Guts of Myth peels back its layers to reveal a vulnerable, sensitive emotional core beneath the weird and horrific. Like its tough-talking, ‘perma-chip on his shoulder’ protagonist, The Guts of Myth offers glimpses of its true nature throughout while keeping its darkest secrets until the end.”
—Patrick Barb, author of The Nut House and Gargantuana’s Ghost
“[A] tour-de-force of cosmic weirdness, full of imagination and verve, that will leave you both bewildered and hungry for more. Winter is an exciting new talent in horror and once you cut into The Guts of Myth, you won’t be able to put it down until the last strange bite.”
—Evelyn Freeling, author and editor
PRAISE FOR “THE MOURNER ACROSS THE FLAMES” by SCOTT J. MOSES
“Once again Scott J. Moses has decided to rip out my heart, pummel it with grief, and leave it desiccated like a cheap valentine blowing in the wind across a nuclear wasteland. What a glorious story.”
—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands
“By the end of the first chapter, I could taste salt, feel salt on my fingers, even hear the salt. Profoundly strange and unsettling from the start, the surreal setting serves as a perfect vehicle by which to deliver these profoundly human emotions and profoundly human pains, in a world where you never feel safe and hardly ever feel human. I am left feeling not only touched, but scrubbed raw, inside and out, in the most satisfying way.”
—Alex Woodroe, editor at Tenebrous Press
“Scott J. Moses blends the emotional turmoil of loss, grief, and a desperate search for meaning after the unthinkable occurs, with as sure a talent as he does when bringing together dark fantasy, horror, and the post-apocalyptic narrative. Impossible to classify, this unforgettable novelette showcases Moses’s uncanny skill at creating grand, awe-inspiring otherworld landscapes populated with complex characters who come alive in the moral gray areas.”
—Patrick Barb, author of The Nut House and Gargantuana’s Ghost
“Moses delivers a hallucinatory spiral of emotive horror that stuck to me like radiation.”
—Eric Raglin, author of Nightmare Yearnings
CONTENT WARNINGS
These stories are works of horror fiction which contain dark content that may be triggering to some individuals. In addition to instances of graphic violence, death, and gore, there is an instance of homophobic violence in “The Guts of Myth.” Please read with caution.