7/16/26
I noticed yesterday that George (read yesterday’s Blog if you don’t know who I’m talking about) seemed pretty content, despite the scorching heat. Nothing else moved outside. No deer. No cars. No boats or jet skis. No birds. Seriously, even the bald eagles were absent, and those things are seemingly always out, observing if not hunting. But while all the other humans, animals, and birds along the Susquehanna River were hiding in air conditioning or a patch of shade, George was out there in the yard, just chilling, and munching on grass and clover. Then I noticed that he kept darting between my house and our neighbors house. I switched windows, as did Mary’s cat, Spike, who is fascinated by George. And when we got to the other window, we saw George happily drinking from a pool of water in the spot where my sump pump usually drains.
And there was a lot of water. Like, a lot lot.
I hurried down to the basement to see where all the water was coming from, and that’s how I found out our water heater had blown, probably earlier that day, and was giving the sump pump a workout.
So George has, in fact, been good luck so far. For the plumber, at least, and the manufacturer or the new replacement water heater.
~
Women In Horror Year: Day 84
To Be Devoured by Sara Tantlinger
What does carrion taste like? Andi has to know. The vultures circling outside her home taunt and invite her to come understand the secrets hiding in their banquet of decay. Fascination morphs into an obsessive need to know what the vultures know. Andi turns to Dr. Fawning, but even the therapist cannot help her comprehend the secrets she’s buried beneath anger-induced blackouts.
Her girlfriend, Luna, tries to help Andi battle her inner darkness and infatuation with the vultures. However, the desire to taste dead flesh, to stitch together wings of her own and become one with the flock sends Andi down a twisted, unforgivable path. Once she understands the secrets the vultures conceal, she must decide between abandoning the birds of prey or risk turning her loved ones into nothing more than meals to be devoured.
Maybe it’s bad form to reveal this and maybe it’s not. I’ve never been one to follow the rules, mostly because I’m often unsure what the rules are. Which presents a problem because what I’m unsure if I’m allowed to talk about involves the Splatterpunk Awards, and I’m one of the three people who wrote the rules for the damn things. So fuck it.
To Be Devoured somehow completely missed my radar until I began seeing Splatterpunk Award recommendations for it from readers. So I bought a copy. And while it ultimately didn’t have enough of them to make the final ballot, I do remember that it was very, very close, which was great, because it meant another author who was not one of the usual suspects had finally landed on readers radars. And it also made me move that copy I’d purchased up on my TBR pile.
And I’m glad I did, because this was a great read — enough so that writing this now, a few years later, I’ve got the gross-out shivers just remembering it. Not gross-out in the way of Edward Lee or Jeff Strand or the annual Gross-Out Contest, but rather a sort of stomach-clenching, teeth grinding shudder at the transgressive, barrier-breaking stuff playing out on the page, and the meticulous way it was crafted and written. I don’t know anything about Sara’s creative process, but I suspect she lingers with every sentence before moving on to the next, because EVERY SENTENCE is a perfect little work of art, and when put together as a whole, they create a masterpiece. It was much the same for her poetry collection, The Devil’s Dreamland, and while To Be Devoured is prose, there is a lyrical quality to it that — as a writer — I am deeply envious of. There is a stark bleakness here in this tale of insanity and obsession, and when Sara hits the reader, you feel it. It is uncomfortable and disturbing and wonderfully fucked up.
To Be Devoured will appeal to fans of Gerard Houarner, Charlee Jacob, and Clive Barker, and is available in paperback and eBook from Apocalypse Party.
