9/15/26
Would love to see one of publishing’s trade bodies do something like this for digital book sales: ‘The IFPI, the international trade body that represents the recorded music business, has launched a new initiative through which participants commit to baseline practices to prevent, detect and respond to streaming fraud…’
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Speaking of book sales, both Vortex’s online bookstore and our eBay storefront are temporarily closed, as we take advantage of the move to do a thorough inventory. We expect to open both back up again by early November, if not sooner.
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My pal Lex Quinn did some voice acting for Broken Arrow’s forthcoming horror video game, Alyssa. Check out the trailer here.
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Women In Horror Year: Day 124
Suffer the Flesh by Monica J. O’Rourke
Zoey Masterson didn't know what pain was before, but she's learning fast. Kidnapped off the Manhattan streets and whisked away from the safe, normal world she once knew, she finds herself the victim of one reprehensible man's vision. Forced to witness the depravities of the seedy underworld where lust, rape, torture and mutilation are a way of life, stripped of clothing, pride, and spirit, Zoey must play their games, bear their torture—but for how long? Somehow she must learn to survive the daily perversions … but how can Zoey survive? How could anyone? Somewhere between ecstasy and pain—learn to SUFFER THE FLESH.
First published in 2002 (a year before THE RISING), and later reprinted over the decades by Deadite Press and Crossroad Press, Suffer the Flesh is as much a seminal part of extreme horror history as Lee’s The Bighead, Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door, and Gonzalez’s Survivor. This was a game changer — a book that combined Lee’s gift for wondrously detailed and vile descriptions with Ketchum’s absolute unflinching emotional ruthlessness. A review in Cemetery Dance at the time called it “Uncompromisingly grim and disturbingly erotic, Suffer the Flesh is as harsh as horror fiction gets.” That’s pretty apt.
But something a lot of critics missed at the time is that the book wasn’t just an evolution in extreme horror — it was a sea change for erotic horror, as well. She took what peers like Lucy Taylor was doing, and added a layer of visceral bluntness to it that was shocking for the time. Today there is a multimillion dollar per year genre dealing with all the themes presented in Suffer the Flesh, and such novels dominate entire sections of bookstores and Amazon sales rankings. Monica blurs the line between titillation and depravity, between pleasure and pain, between sensuality and cruelty, and it makes for an unbalancing and uncomfortable read.
Monica J. O’Rourke, Lucy Taylor, and Charlee Jacob paved the way for the women of this generation such as Christine Morgan, CJ Leede, Judith Sonnett, and RJ Joseph. If you’ve not yet read anything by Monica yet, this debut novel is a great starting point. Suffer the Flesh is available in paperback and eBook from Crossroad Press.
