9/21/26
You may have guessed, given the lack of updates here or the missing Sunday newsletter, that the move is still in progress. You would be right. I also took the weekend to visit my youngest up at college. But I’m back here at the Pennsylvania house for the next few days, so let’s get right back into it.
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Women In Horror Year: Day 125
Blue Hell by Sandy DeLuca (with Greg Gifune)
A homeless man plagued by hideous nightmares awakens in a hospital with no knowledge of how he came to be there. When he accepts the help of an organization that assists the downtrodden, he finds himself in a strange apartment building that may very well hold the key to his terrifying visions and forgotten past…
A pregnant woman on the run, haunted by her own bleak dreams and an out of control drug problem, speeds down a highway in the dead of night, only to crash when she sees something terrifying on the side of the road. Charged with driving drunk and drug possession, she reports to a mysterious halfway house rather than face jail time, unaware of the horrifying fate that awaits her.
After unexpectedly losing his job, a carefree young salesman agrees to a drunken night on the town with an enigmatic older man he barely knows, unaware that it will soon lead to the terrible truth behind not only his own life, but those lost souls that came before him.
In the bowels of a haunted apartment building, along the dark and lonely highways to Hell, in a city of night, foggy streets and shadow-filled alleys, their stories and lives merge in a fever dream of profane hunger, sex, savagery, blood and endless fire.
These are the passengers of night.
This is Blue Hell.
There are a unique, exclusive set of challenges, anxieties, and uncertainties that are involved when an author collaborates on something with a romantic partner. Like Melanie and Steve Tem — the genre’s masters of couples collaboration — Sandy DeLuca and Greg Gifune overcome those challenges for this, the first of several books they’ve written together, resulting in an excellent short horror novel that’s an entrancing hybrid of surrealism, psychological horror, and crime.
The narrative entwines the stories of three main characters — a charming young salesman, a pregnant addict, and a homeless person woth amnesia. But the setting and background become a main character, as well, as Sandy and Greg engage in some epic world-building on a scale not often seen in a horror novel, particularly not in a short one like this. The shadowed city streets, the fog, the sparse light… all of these become part of a living, breathing character just as important as the other three.
To say more about the plot would involve major spoilers. Suffice to say, if you are a fan of such surreal fare as Jacob’s Ladder (the original rather than the remake), Dark City, or Lost Highway, then you’ll love this.
Blue Hell is available in paperback and eBook from JournalStone.
