Title: Gothic
Author: Philip Fracassi
Publication Date: 3rd February 2023
About the Book
On his 59th birthday, Tyson Parks—a famous, but struggling, horror writer—receives an antique desk from his girlfriend in the hopes it will rekindle his creative juices, perhaps inspire him to write another bestselling novel and prove his best years aren’t behind him.
A continent away, a mysterious woman investigates the whereabouts of an artifact her family has hunted for centuries. With the help of a New York City detective, she finally finds what she’s been looking for.
It’s in the home of Tyson Parks.
Meanwhile, as Tyson uses the desk, he begins acting… strange. Violent. His writing more disturbing than anything he’s done before. But publishers are paying top dollar, convinced his new work will be a hit, and Tyson will do whatever it takes to protect his newfound success.
Even if it means the destruction of the ones he loves.
Even if it means his own sanity.
Website | Cemetery Dance | Amazon
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip Fracassi’s is the award-winning author of the story collection Beneath a Pale Sky, which received a starred review from Library Journal, was named “Best Collection of the Year” by Rue Morgue Magazine and was nominated for a Bram Stoker award.
Philip’s debut story collection, Behold the Void, won “Best Collection of the Year” from both This Is Horror and Strange Aeons Magazine.
His current and upcoming novels include A Child Alone with Strangers, Gothic, and Boys in the Valley.
Philip’s books have been translated into multiple languages and his stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, Southwest Review, and Interzone.
The New York Times calls his work “terrifically scary.”
What the author is saying about Gothic
Gothic is more than a horror novel, it’s a love letter to every horror novel ever written, and every writer who’s sat at a desk and stared a blank sheet of paper, waiting for the muse to kick in. When describing Gothic, I usually say that it has the dark humor of a Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell and the dark horror of Stephen King’s The Shining. I wrote this novel with the full intention of showing the reader a good time, with some insane moments, some fun winks to the genre, and some of the darkest, most brutal scenes you’ll ever find in a horror novel. I hope folks enjoy the ride.
What people are saying about Gothic
GOTHIC is the literary equivalent of the abyss gazing right back at you from the hellish depths of its pages. Don’t lean in too close, lest you fall into this nightmarish novel and never find your way out again.
– CLAY MACLEOD CHAPMAN, author of Ghost Eaters
Stylish, atmospheric, and chilling, GOTHIC is an affectionate ode to the horror greats, and an effective reminder that Philip Fracassi is destined to become one of them. One of my favorite reads of the year so far.
– KEALAN PATRICK BURKE, author of Kin and Sour Candy
Not since The Shining has the descent of a writer into madness been so masterfully rendered on the page.
– ROSS JEFFERY, Bram Stoker-nominated author of Tome
A high creep factor chiller with a sinister edge that had me reading well past my bedtime. Frightening and fun, and deliciously original!
— JAMES A. MOORE, author of the Blood Red trilogy and Cherry Hill
Excerpt
As 2 a.m. approaches, Tyson feels neither fatigued nor complacent. He makes a drink and paces the living room. He wishes he had remodeled the roof when he’d had the means, sitting in the cool night and watching the stars on a sleepless night would have suited him fine.
After his second drink, he pours a third and, after a momentary hesitation, finally musters the courage to follow the pattern of dripping blood to the office, deathly afraid of what he will find there.
Once inside, he flips the switch by the door, which turns on a rarely used overhead light. The blood is less obvious in here, blending with the dark hardwood and deep reds of the rugs. He follows the spotted trail to the desk.
And finds… nothing.
It’s as if she’d walked to the desk and vanished. There’s no blood on the desktop, nothing on the floor. He wipes a thumb across a few red specks on his laptop and sees a fine mist of scarlet on the top page of his manuscript, but those things are easily taken care of. He sticks his thumb in his mouth, sucks the flesh clean, the tang of blood on his tongue quickly swallowed away. He crumples the top page from the stack of papers, the only one that appears to have been soiled, into a scrunched ball and thrown it into the waste basket.
After checking it for blood, he settles into his chair, runs his fingers along the wood lip of the desk. He inspects everything closely and pauses only when he comes to the top-left drawer, which is not fully closed.
Frowning, he pulls it open, not surprised that it slides out smoothly and easily, as if it were greased. Along the edges of the rectangular cutout where the drawer meets the desk, he notices filaments of pale pink skin; tiny pieces stuck along the edge of the wood, a few no bigger than a flake of dandruff, and none bigger than a fingernail.
Speaking of fingernails, he thinks, and gently removes one (slightly mangled) rose-colored fingernail from the bottom of the open drawer. He thinks it looks like a pinky nail, but it’s hard to tell. All her fingers are fairly small.
Humming an old Ramones tune he can’t recall the name of, Tyson cleans away the skin fragments with a tissue and tosses it into the lined trashcan, where it falls alongside the crumpled, blood-sprayed page.
“What happened to the blood?” he says, and waits, as if the desk might reply. Then he lies his head flat against the cool surface of the stone desktop. The voices whisper again, except this time he has no problem understanding exactly what they are saying.
“Uh-huh,” he says, and chuckles like a schoolboy whose feet are being gently tickled. “That makes sense, all right. And yes, I like it. I really do.”
As he listens, a thin and exceptionally sharp tendril of wood uncoils near the bottom of one of the desk’s legs. It slips up his pant cuff and gently pierces the skin, inserting itself into the meat of his calf with the expertise of a well-tuned junkie tapping a vein.
Tyson doesn’t notice or, at least, doesn’t mind. What is writing if not the metaphorical giving of one’s blood, after all? Isn’t this just more of the same?
Meanwhile, the voices continue to whisper, frantically telling Tyson everything he needs to know, everything he wants to hear, and he can’t be more thrilled.
And oh, by God!
It’s fascinating stuff…
They’re telling him a new story.
