Musings of Two Creative Minds

REVIEW BY ALLAN KRUMMENACKER 5 - STARS "What price for sanity?"     Waverly Hills Sanatorium is an actual place in Louisville Kentucky that the author visited as part of a paranormal investigative team. By the author's own admission their paranormal experiences where 'minimal', I feel the setting and strangeness of exploring an abandoned place with so much history lent a great deal to the creation of this novel.       Ben Clausen has landed a job teaching English over at the U of L, and is now searching for a place to live. His search has brought him to the most unlikely place to find an apartment, one half of the old Waverly Hills Sanatorium a place famous for its tragedies and ghostly legends. Only one half of the place has been converted into apartments, while the remaining half is still in severe disrepair and is kept off-limits, perhaps for very good reasons.     But beggars can't be choosers, and with the rent priced just right Ben m

REVIEW BY ALLAN KRUMMENACKER 4 - STARS "An Eerie Blend To Satisfy Horror Enthusiasts..." Mix one part voodoo, one part devil worship, three parts the darker side of human nature and you get "The Haunting of Gospall". The author does a wondrous job of blending these three elements into a intricate yarn that transcends the high seas. He starts us off with a brilliant opening scene upon the SS Gospall in the 1800's, showing a keen insight of what sailors and captains faced on the open waters during one of the more contentious periods between England and France.  We're introduced to characters we come to admire and care deeply for, both in the 1800's and the present, as the tale unfolds and a mystery that links the two time periods slowly unfolds. We meet Sean, who is blessed unwillingly with psychic talents that has led him down a dark path once before.  The author also introduces us to his beloved Sophie who not only listens to him whe

And I'm back, sort of. Okay, I'm still a bit unwell, but finally on the mend. In the meantime let's continue with that discussion about some of the things I learned putting together our first anthology. First off it was somewhat easier than creating an entire novel. With a novel you have to keep track of so many things like character development, interactions, subplots, pace of the story, etc.  Now with an anthology, you still have a lot of stories to contend with but each one is self-contained and has its own beginning and end. You don't have to be worried about how they fit into the main tale. Plus you can have a greater variety of characters and give each tale a flavor all its own. Sounds pretty easy so far right? Well, here's where things started to get a little more complicated for me.              Like a novel, an anthology does need to have a certain feeling of cohesiveness to it. There must be some facet or factor that makes the read