Reads of 2016 - The Atomic Blood-Stained Bus
One of the dark holes you can fall into as a writer is research and one of the biggest traps is TV Tropes. One minute you're looking at a particular genre concept and an hour later you have bounced from one related topic to the next while perusing multiple examples of each, all the while getting absolutely no writing done whatsoever. The bright side is that sometimes, buried within all of those multiple examples, is something you have never heard of before that sounds amazing.
Which is how I found out about Michael J. Ritchie's debut novel, The Atomic Blood-Stained Bus.
According to the author, this started out as a Nanowrimo exercise, and when he was done, he ended up with a novel about a journalist investigating a series of bizarre murders, an immortal druid looking for his lost love while feeding on the flesh of his victims, and the former God of Spring (among other things) who comes along for the ride. It's sort of a comedic-horror-fantasy kind of thing, which makes it a hard one to put a genre label on, which is probably why it is only available in digital form instead of hard copy.
Actually, there is a perfectly good genre label for it- The Kind Of Thing Thom Marrion Loves To Read. Unfortunately, that only has a guarentied audiance of one. I downloaded this on my iPhone and had the interesting experience of reading an entire novel through a little handheld device. Not too bad, though I still prefer the good-old fashioned method of holding tattooed dead trees in my hands. Yeah, I'm old. Kids today, with their not-getting-off-my lawn etc etc.
I loved this book. Granted, I'm a sucker for dark comedies about mythical beings. I'm currently writing a dark comedy about mythical beings. But still, if anything about that appeals to you, go download this now. It's a damn fine first novel, especially when you take into account that the first draft was knocked out in a month. See the good things that can come out of Nanowrimo?