Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

 (2011, Burning Bulb Publishing, ISBN:9780615535791, BurningBulbPublishing.com) By Joey Madia There are lots of West Virginias. To some it’s the redneck, backwards in-bred core of Appalachia. To others it is home to the powerhouse football and basketball teams of WVU (Go Mountaineers!), while, to legions of John Denver fans, it is “Almost Heaven,” an outdoor mecca of whitewater rafting, biking, and hiking. In the five years I’ve been here I’ve seen a little bit of all of these pictures of West Virginia, and many more. The frontier spirit is alive and well, as are lots of examples of innovation and the ongoing controversy over coal, natural gas, and “fracking.” I’ve also noticed in my time here that West Virginia fascinates writers, whether natives or transplants like myself. Sooner or later, you just have to write about the place. Rich Bottles Jr., a Pennsylvania native and “bizarro” author, is one of those whose fascination with all things West Virginia manifests...

(Burning Bulb Publishing, 2011, ISBN: 9780615527222) In this sequel to Darkened Hills (2010), which I recently reviewed, Gary Lee Vincent begins to hit his stride as both a storyteller and an integrator of the culture and communities of West Virginia into the vampire genre. Over the first quarter or so of the novel, Vincent fills in the gaps in the story told in the previous book, an interesting technique that he handles with craft. Through narrative supported by fictional newspaper articles, court transcripts, and other devices, he gives the reader a broader understanding of the events that transpired in the fictional WV town of Melas (that’s Salem, spelled backwards) in the prequel. As I eluded to at the onset, this novel in many ways surpasses its predecessor, delving deeper into both vampire/demon mythology and two main staples of West Virginia—the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (the fiction Weston Lunatic Asylum in the novel) and the coal mine. A standout section of the book is ch...

(Burning Bulb Publishing, 2010, ISBN: 9781453844854) I’ve always enjoyed just a little more works of fiction that take place in locales with which I am familiar. It adds something special when I can not only visualize a place, but have actually been there. Having lived and traveled extensively in the northern half of West Virginia since moving here a little over four years ago, I found the locales in which Vincent places his vampires to be perfectly suited to both their peculiar sensibilities and those of their typical victims. Darkened Hills is the first installment of Darkened—The West Virginia Vampire Series (the second book, Darkened Hallow, is now available. It’s sitting on my shelf, ready to be read). It is the 2010 Book of the Year Winner from ForeWord Reviews Magazine and shares a publisher, Burning Bulb, with The Big Book of Bizarro, which I also recently reviewed. Vincent was a contributing editor. He has published several non-fiction books as well as the novel Passageway and...