Monday, March 5, 2018

Frozen Shadows And Other Chilling Stories by Gene O'Neill


Release date: March 2, 2018
Subgenre: Horror, short fiction collection

About Frozen Shadows And Other Chilling Stories

 

Hitch a ride with the master of setting as he blends and bends genres with science-rich, thought-provoking short stories. “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

“A maestro of the field, Gene O'Neill's stories are consistently well-executed. He writes with authority, depth, and loads of worldly and writerly experience, and delivers fascinating stuff.” – Darren Speegle

Along the way you will travel to the top of Mt. George, up and down Napa Valley, through Sacramento, and into the heart of the Bay Area, to the ‘Loin in San Francisco, Hotel Reo, Chapel of the Chimes, the back streets of Oakland, and other familiar dark places. The stories explore quantum entanglement, Visual Migraine Events, electro-shock treatment, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Tourette’s syndrome experimentally treated with Temporary Deep Brain Stimulation. And as you read you may start to notice all these stories are connected in a way.

Includes:
  • “Frozen Shadows” – Coming of age autobiographical
  • “The Algernon Effect” – A transgressive love story
  • “Transformations at the Inn of the Golden Pheasant” – A damaged vet describes a bizarre transformation
  • “On the Right Side of the Road” – An ex-con suffering from Visual Migraine Effects may just save the world
  • “Black Tar/Red Alien” – A heroin addict’s confrontation with a horrific alien
  • “Broken Lady” – An aging singer pays a terrible price for defending herself during a rape
  • “The Shaking Man” – An ex-con receives an experimental treatment for his Tourette’s Syndrome with unexpected results
  • “3-Dot People” – An amnesiac man drops literally into the Tenderloin of San Francisco
  • “A Faint Scent of Musky Lime” – A fan of the writer Tom Really finds himself experiencing one of Reamy’s horrific stories
  • “At the Lazy K” – A historic epic of a ghost plaguing a rehab clinic on an old ranch

Excerpt:

 

FROZEN SHADOWS


Part One
Northern California

1.

Mysterious Ailment in Mother Lode
        
A rare childhood disorder has reared its ugly head in Sutter Creek in the heart of Northern California, gold country. In the last year, seven youngsters, ranging in age from eight to twelve, have been stricken down by a disorder that is mystifying local medical experts. The youngsters have all been hospitalized at Sutter Amador Hospital in nearby Jackson, with very similar symptoms that include severe headache/anemia/malnutrition/ongoing blood loss/low white blood cell counts. But the underlying cause(s) of these symptoms stubbornly eludes hospital staff. A half dozen specialists have been consulted and are also stumped as to the exact nature of the ailment. Several think it may be an exotic virus(s), which has not been isolated by testing as yet. A pediatric oncologist feels it could be a rare form of childhood leukemia, but if so, specific cause(s) remain undetermined. Local press directs attention to the possible carcinogenic conditions remaining at several gold mines now abandoned near Sutter Creek, where all seven youngsters lived and played. In any event, two of the children have reached the critical life-threatening stage.
—Sacramento Bee, June 10, 1962

2.

When I was six-years-old, I went to live with my grandparents in Sutter Creek.
Shortly thereafter, I met a beautiful girl named, Bell. And together, Bell and I would confront an evil man who cast no shadow. These three interrelated events would significantly influence the course of my life…

3.

June 1956—

“You will love living in the country with them, Sean,” I remembered my mother saying when she visited me that last Saturday before I left Children’s Hospital in San Francisco. I had been there for over six months, recovering from polio, which I had unfortunately contracted just shortly before the Sabin vaccine became available.
“As soon as I’m on my feet financially I will come and collect you,” my single mother promised.
I never knew my father. He died—five months after I was born—in December of 1950 near the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, part of the famed General Chesty Puller led 1st Marine Division breakout.
My father left the standard $10,000 military life insurance policy and little else. At the time, Mother had been a housewife, uneducated with very few outside job skills. With the insurance money thinly stretched out and supplemented by Mom taking in other people’s ironing, we just barely struggled by for six years. Then, I got real sick and the medical bills began to pile up. The good news was that my mother had been offered an excellent opportunity to temporarily move in with her sister and brother-in-law in Sacramento and work full time at their rapidly growing family nursery—The Lone Oak Tree. She dearly loved gardening and tending plants. So, Mom was upbeat and joyful that Saturday afternoon, enthusiastically telling me all about her new job in a new town.
 

Amazon

Inside the e-book is a link for a huge giveaway of four signed Gene O'Neill titles and an artwork print signed by the artist.

Giveaway open until March 16, 2018

 

About Gene O'Neill: 

Gene has seen over 180 of his stories and novellas published, several reprinted in France, Spain, and Russia. Some of these stories have been collected in Ghost Spirits, Computers & World Machines, The Grand Struggle, In Dark Corners, Dance of the Blue Lady, The Hitchhiking Effect, and Lethal Birds. He has seen six novels published. Gene has been a Stoker finalist twelve times. In 2010 Taste of Tenderloin won the haunted house for collection; in 2012 The Blue Heron won for Long Fiction. Upcoming releases include the four TPBs in the Cal Wild Chronicles from Written Backwords Press, a number of short stories, and a novelette. A series of two novels in The White Plague Chronicles will come out in 2018—The Sarawak Virus in the summer, Pandemic in the winter. Also out in 2018, Entangled Soul, a collaborative novella, with Chris Marrs.
Gene lives in the Napa Valley with his wife Kay. He has two grown children, Gavin, who lives in Oakland, and Kaydee who lives in Carlsbad and rides herd on his two
g-kids, Fiona and TJ.
When he isn’t writing or visiting g-kids, Gene likes to read good fiction or watch sports—all of them, especially boxing.

 Crystal Lake Publishing

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