The Burkshelf

Home of Authors Mandy and G.D. Burkhead

2019

Top Shelf: News

Anthology Announcement

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The Monsters We Forgot Vol. 3 is now available for purchase. In this horror anthology, you can find lots of creepy tales about monsters, demons, and cryptids, including Mandy’s short story “The Cursed Isle.”

Purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/MONSTERS-WE-FORGOT-3/dp/1671299620

This story is set is set in the year 1709 and follows a monk and priest who visit the French town of Brouillard to investigate claims of witchcraft and demonic possession. The townspeople believe that the source of their troubles is a cursed island just off the shores of the lake that the town is built on. Brother Dominique is a man of science and is not certain that he believes in demonic possession, witchcraft, or hauntings, but he soon begins to experience unexplainable phenomena.

This story was partly inspired by Le Grand Hiver (the Great Winter) of 1709, which was the coldest European winter on record in the past 500 years. “The Cursed Isle” offers a supernatural and demonic origin for this devastating cold spell that killed tens of thousands of people.

Shelf Life: Book Reviews

Shelf Life — The True Bastards is More Bacon-Flavored Goodness

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This is kind of a hard review to write, just because I’ve already written it once already, so now I have to try not to repeat myself. Part of me just wants to drop a link here to my review of the first book in the series, The Grey Bastards, and leave it at that. And while I won’t actually be that lazy, I will go ahead and link that first review — check it out here, if you’ve a mind.

The True Bastards

Honestly, I’m not sure at first what to say here besides: Did you read The Grey Bastards? Did you like it? Because this is more The Grey Bastards: more sprawling storylines weaving together in unexpected ways; more tough-as-nails, foul-mouthed, badass characters with flexible moral compasses; more unapologetic grit and grime and gut-strewing; more peeks into the nooks and crannies of a unique and beautifully built but cruelly unforgiving world; more sex; more violence; and more robust bacon flavor.

Also, to lift another similarity from the first review, more quick notes worth disclosing. First off, spoilers for the first Bastards book, obviously, so go read that if you haven’t yet before you read this. Second, for the sake of transparency, Jonathan French is still a friend of ours — someone we thanked as a mentor figure in our own debut self-published novel, and someone whose work we’ve been promoting at conventions and on social media and such as Bastards ambassadors (aka “ambastards”). We got advanced reader copies of The True Bastards about a month before the book goes/went on sale to the public, depending on when you’re reading this.

Take all of that into consideration if you want — but also know that, like The Grey Bastards before it, we don’t need no incentives to tell people that this book is damn good. This shit is my jam, and I was gonna read it and love it whether or not the author knows what my face looks like. The fact that I got to do it a month ahead of most other people was just a nice bonus and an incidental early birthday present.

Got all that? Cool, back the fun part.

Read to the end, ya bastard!
Shelf Life: Book Reviews

Shelf Life — Dragon Apocalypse: The Complete Collection Burns with the Fires of Imagination

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Judge this book by its cover. I did, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Dragon Apocalypse: The Complete Collection by James MaxeyDragon Apocalypse: The Complete Collection by James Maxey is a thick-as-a-brick compilation of four hack-n-slash action fantasy novels (plus the original short story that inspired them): Greatshadow, Hush, Witchbreaker, and Cinder (plus “Greatshadow: Origins”).

Just to be thorough, I did a quick image search of each individual novel’s cover art, and my initial thesis still holds up. Badass lady jumping down a dragon’s throat, small woman with big hammer versus ice dragon in a frozen wasteland, dragon attacking ship on a storm-wracked sea, they all check out. And they’re all pretty good indicators of what kinds of stories to expect on the following pages.

Read to the end (of the world)

Shelf Life: Book Reviews

Shelf Life — Come Sail Away with Avast, Ye Airships!

Mandy No Comments

Avast, Ye Airships! is a wonderful little gem of steampunk airship fantasy. All of the stories in it are well-written and intriguing. While they all have the same premise, a steampunk story set on an airship, each author contributes a story that is completely original and different from the others. While some are more “traditional” steampunk (Victorian England), there are others that are romance, adventure, scifi, horror, and even Southern steampunk. The stories are varied in length and style.

My personal top five were “Maiden Voyage,” in which a lesbian couple must outwit the pirates seizing their ship, “Captain Wexford’s Dilemma,” in which a captain suddenly finds her airship has been possessed by ghosts after mooring near a cemetery, “Hooked,” in which a young lady, on her first airship adventure, finds the ship under attack by a dashing rogue, “A Steampunk Garden,” in which a clever mechanic must outwit her captors, and “Lotus of Albion,” in which an airship captain falls for a beautiful woman whom he believes to be a damsel in distress.

What I really appreciated was the careful attention to diversity. The stories in this book included people of color, queer characters, those with disabilities, and strong female characters. This one is well-worth the read.