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first communions:
a collection of dark fiction
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Collected, for the first time,
are sixteen of Geoffrey Girard's best, and darkest, tales...
The man who collects chips of bone from his willing victims... A
legendary evil is adopted by a small, and thankful, village... The
doomed girl invited to take part in a deliberate tragedy... A
horrific church choir assembled after the zombie apocalypse... The
boy who harvests spiders for a shadowy woman of magic... A fearsome
town where the children’s nightmares are all real... The pain, price
and beauty of blood and first loves...
From the curse of
ancient evils to futuristic retirement homes where the dead still
rule, haunted graveyards, planets of torture where all are equal,
hockey-playing demon hunters, dark sorcerers battling in Algeria,
and even voodoo-cursed pirates. Explore the darkest, and most
majestic, extremes of us all in sixteen unique tales that will
entertain, horrify and keep you thinking long after the last page is
turned.
Let the communion begin…
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
Also
Available...
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"Not Fade Away" in Among the Shadows
anthology
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"I'm sorry. What's
that, Mr. Kurtz?"
"Therr goonda burnittuda grrownd."
"Is that
right?" Beth still hasn't really heard him yet. But his tone sounds
like a declaration of some kind and a reassuring 'Is-That-Right'
usually does the trick. It suggests she's listening, open to
learning something new. Old people like that. "All done, Mr.
Kurtz?" she asks.
He looks away and waves his hand at the plate
with some kind of accompanying 'Bah' straight out of Ebenezer
Scrooge. She freezes. Flushes. Almost four months at Heritage
Springs and it still makes her nervous when they get angry. Always a
jolt. Most of the time, they don't get, well, anything. Just kinda
sit there. Waiting.
Amazon - Kindle
Amazon - paperback
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"Unto the Lord a New Song" in Mountain Dead
anthology
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Let me take you back. Queen Arlene in there had
heard all about this church from one of the other holy hens who
tells her all about this pastor's kid, 'you gotta go see this
pastor's kid,' and this choir thing he's got going on out there and
all. And then she, Arlene, well, she wouldn't just stop talking
about it, I mean, with all those heads and all and what that kid was
doing with 'em.
On Amazon [kindle]
On Smashwords
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"For
Restful Death I Cry" in
Dark
Futures
anthology
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A four-story
C3 still inhabited by dozens of the undead. You’ve wandered each floor
to make a quick head count, double checked their number before hauling
in any equipment. Enough cloth to wrap all the bodies, canisters for
the old fuel cells. Charges and nitroglycerin for the building. Other
teams have already been through to strip out the copper wire, op
fibers, and any viraglass. Now it's your turn. In two weeks,
the crushers will roll in to recycle whatever worthwhile concrete and
timber remain above, then flatten the rest to finish burying the
recently departed. Not many here. One hundred and six. You've
taken a couple days. There’s no real rush. They’ve
been here some three hundred years...
"Fascinating to see how different authors go in a different
direction from the same starting point. There's certainly enough
variety here to keep the various dystopias from becoming too
oppressive." -- Analog
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"First
Communions" in
Dark
Faith
anthology
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After, the blood stains
remained on the driveway for years. Two lopsided blotches joined in the
middle that, depending on who said, looked like big butterfly wings or
the head of a mouse or two mushroom clouds exploding or maybe
someone’s balls. They never really looked like a big
misshapen heart. And as the stains grew smaller and fainter over time,
you had to really imagine the mouse or balls or heart to really see
them anymore. Or, even to see the stains. They’d been darker,
of course, when it first happened, on the newly soaked concrete. When
you could still see the smallest drops frozen in orbit just outside the
two main spheres. When everyone, everyone, took turns riding bikes or
walking the dog past the West’s house for another quick look
to see where some girl had killed herself.
"Although the
horror genre naturally lends itself to up close and personal examination of
good and very nasty evil, little writing in that genre is faith
inflected. This anthology addresses that gap." —
Publishers Weekly
“Faith.
Light and dark. Terrible beauty and mind-shattering horror. It’s
all here, in what’s sure to be one of the year’s
best anthologies.” —Shroud
Magazine
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2010 Stoker Award
Nominee
for Superior Achievement in an Anthology
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"Psychomachia"
in
Harlan
County Horrors anthology
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Each
night, except Sundays, the boy nests in one of two porch chairs and
quietly watches his father and brother clean up at an old barrel filled
with rain water from the roof. Mother won’t ever let either
back into the house for dinner until they have. Always says Cleanliness
is next to Godliness and that a man can’t root with pigs and
still keep a clean nose. And so, soiled work clothes always stack up
again for the next day. And weary hands scrub away another
day’s dark labor. And the barrel water always turns black.
“In Geoffrey Girard's
excellent
Psychomachia, coal miners go mad
after encountering an ancient evil deep in a coal mine. Utterly
terrifying, and the imagery is so vivid that I felt as if I was there.
I reread it twice just for the luxury of the language. (The Lexington
Herald-Leader)
“Harlan
County Horrors is a breathtaking thrill ride into the nightmarish backwoods of
America’s Heartland. Visceral and imaginative, Mari Adkins
invites you into the darkest recesses of the Appalachian landscape,
navigating through the malefic folklore of a timeless place where the
roots of horror run deep (Bob Freeman, author of Descendant)
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"What
You Know" in
Courting
Morpheus
anthology
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| It might have stopped
with the lists they’d made.
But, she’d
only glanced at them. Had they filled the page? Kept within the lines?
Had Tess Barber put down anything at all? Was Brendon
McCarty’s writing still hopelessly illegible? She
hadn’t really looked at what they’d really put down.
She pressed back deeper into the kitchen’s shadows, body
trembling. Buster barked again somewhere outside, but the
dog’s voice sounded empty and distant. Like a ghost dog. She
eyed the counter above and thought again of grabbing one of the many
knives there, one of the really big ones.
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"Collecting
James" in
Murky
Depths
Issue
#8
(may/2009)
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| Two dozen seemingly
identical chips rested atop small black stands, displayed on the
shelves like treasure. James reached into the wide rosewood cabinet to
inspect one of the pieces. It was the size of a thick poker chip. An
almost perfect circle of bone. He took it off its stand and
ran his fingers along the edge. Felt where the chip had been carefully,
tenderly smoothed. He clutched it tightly, and suddenly heard the faint
sound of strings. An abrupt rush of violins. A growing rhythm that
quickly raced through his entire body. He heard notes, chord voicings
moving...
"A dark and
emotive story... The story's three characters were all disturbing in their own
ways and made this a starkly potent piece." (SF Crowsnest)
"A well written
little chiller." (SFRevu)
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"Translatio"
in the anthology Gratia
Placenti
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| It hung in the grey
sunless sky like an enormous black balloon, bloated and dull, with a
dozen rutted tendrils dangling loosely just beneath. Had Keller not
been looking for one, he probably would have missed it completely. It
would have become only another dark cloud or treetop lurking at the far
corner of his eye. Every city had them by now. Hundreds. Some no bigger
than a minivan. Others, he’d heard, were as large as
stadiums. The creatures hovered in one spot for hours, days sometimes,
drifting almost imperceptibly on some terrible unseen current. As if
they were only sleeping. Watching. Waiting. Every so often, they
“woke” and someone was killed.
"A twisted tale of
servitude that starts dark and dives, without hesitation, for darker.
Oppressively dark and daringly delivered, "Translatio" is likely to
leave readers wondering if this anthology might be more than they can
handle." (Dark Scribe
Magazine)
"A
post-apocalyptic
tale of mood, despair and purpose. A gripping tale..." (FearZone)
"...very effective,
dark and terrifying." (Horror World)
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"The
Twelve Year Bog" in The
Rocking Chair Reader: Family Gatherings
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This
bog was smaller than the others, not much more than a dozen acres, but
dense with the fattest and tastiest blueberries I’d ever
picked. It was framed awkwardly in the tall dark trees of the New
Jersey Pine Barrens, which surrounded the bushes on all sides and cast
a mixture of wraithlike shadows and radiant sunlight over the deep-set
field. Its boundaries were uneven and crooked, the dams built many
years before.
My fingers were already stained blue in berry wax, collecting a hundred
pounds a day. My grandfather, who’d worked the same fields
for sixty years, watched us work and helped where he could. Though, he
often just played his guitar. We slept on the porch each night with
half a dozen other cousins. We ate our aunts’ various
deep-dish cobblers and we all played penny poker until the first
whippoorwill’s hoot. I was thirteen. |
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"Dark Harvest"
in
Writers
of the Future XIX |
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No one knew what it was
at first, the black thing lying in Tomas Walker’s barley
field, and guesses and opinion collected for three days before anyone
even dared touch it. On that third day, surrounded by hushed
words of both encouragement and warning, Leo Barth carefully used his
longest walking stick to roll the thing to its side so they could all
get a better look. Then, though none of them had ever seen
one before, they somehow knew exactly what it was. A
crow-black hooded cloak hid most of the long body, its legs and arms
limp and twisted in peculiar directions, broken, looking just as if one
of the girls had dropped her cloth moppet....
( Geoffrey
Girard )
"The 19th installment contains
more
top-notch stories than last year's volume and is likely to satisfy
science fiction and fantasy aficionados looking for fresh ideas and new
twists on old conventions. Should be required reading for aspiring
sci-fi and fantasy writers." (Publishers Weekly)
"Dark Harvest will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout. One that
will keep you thinking long after you've read it." (SFReader.com)
"Geoffrey Girard brings us a
story about what happens when you find your worst nightmare dying in a field, and
it becomes a tourist attraction. Excellent writing, and a wonderful
story." (Amazon.com)
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| Geoffrey Girard |
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"Wizards' Encore" reprinted
in the
anthology PRIME CODEX
[ Originally
appeared in Beyond Centauri
magazine (4/2005)
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After
he’d defeated their kingdom, the French wizard came to speak
to Kabir’s father. The
Frenchman wore a burnous, the traditional desert robe dark and long, a
camel’s-hair cord wrapped tight around his fat and large
forehead. He had dead, white skin, his face bare and corpselike with
hard sharp eyes of a stone, blue as the sky, gazing lewdly about the
tent from under his robe’s hood. Djenoum, Kabir thought again. A
demon.
"Prime
Codex can stand next to any
'Best of' in the field. Full of fresh thinking, innovative writing, and
outbreaks of staggering beauty, Prime
Codex should be at the top of
your to-be-read pile." (Jay Lake, Winner of the 2004 John W. Campbell
Award)
"I enjoyed 'Wizards' Encore' by Geoffrey Girard for the same reason
that I liked The Prestige: the relentless and sometimes over-the-top
rivalry that seems to exist between magicians. There's some lovely imagery
here, especially when the showmanship of Robert-Houdin takes full form.
Plus, you know, bugs are pretty creepy in general but Girard takes them
to a whole new level. Very engaging, and definitely one worth checking out." (Wistful Writings)
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
Out of Print
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Cain XP11 in Apex Magazine (2007)
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The
novella thriller Cain Xp11
was serialized in Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest,
appearing in four installments in 2007.
CAIN XP11 was rewritten as the novel CAIN'S BLOOD and sold to Touchstone Books
(a division of Simon & Schuster) in 2012. A teen version of the novel was also sold to Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
Both books will be published in Fall, 2013.
Part 1: “The
Voice of Your Brother's Blood” -
Issue 9
Part 2: “Henry Lee Lucas Memorial Highway”
- Issue 10
Part 3: “Sorry About the Blood”
- Issue
11
Part 4: “The Wicked King”
- Issue 12
Review:
"Part one of
Geoffrey Girard's serial, Cain XP11, is a must-read. Excellent
storytelling and dialogue carry this first installment along
at a clip... The last line is one of the strongest single lines I've
ever read in any story, and I've never come across a writer who can
deliver such an impact of both horror and humor in six simple words."
(from Whispers of Wickedness)
Review:
"The best I can personally hope for out of horror nowadays is to be
vaguely creeped out, and even those thrills are becoming fewer and
farther between for jaded old me. Then something like "The Henry Lee
Lucas Memorial Highway" by Geoffrey Girard comes along. Part two of a four-part piece, but this
piece standing alone makes for an excellent story." (from TangetOnline.com)
Review: "Gets pretty grisly but it has a heart, too." (from SFRevu)
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"Where
the Shadow Ended" in The
Willows
magazine (September
'07)
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| Tom was familiar to the
darkness, an adopted son. He woke to it each morning
and scurried over its dim empty streets, then immediately climbed back
into it again to work in pitch black flues for hours. Wedged in endless
shadow, reaching tiny hands into the dark unknown to scrape clean the
insides of London’s chimneys. His skin, hair and clothes were
soot-dyed and black. It was rumored to be bad luck to step on a chimney
sweep’s shadow, and Tom supposed that was because it was
never really clear where the shadow ended and the boy began. |
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"H.
E. Double Hockey Stick" in the anthology Damned
Nation
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| Everyone
on the team hated the twins. And not just the other players. Anyone who
had anything even remotely to do with the Red Raiders hated them too. The
coaches, all of the parents, refs, the kids they played against, the
Zamboni guy, even the little old grandma who volunteered in the
rink’s snack shop. The two boys were frail, pink-faced
halfwits. Even for ten-year-olds who’d clearly never played
hockey before, they stunk at everything from stick handling to shooting
and, if possible, skated even worse. They didn’t know the
rules or pay attention during practice. They couldn’t
remember plays or formations. They didn’t even lace their
stupid skates right. To make matters worse, Cory also suspected they
were both demons straight from the pits of hell.
( Geoffrey
Girard )
"Geoffrey Girard is my
favorite! Hilarious and horrific. I need to read more of this guy's
stuff." (Shocklines.com)
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
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"Universal
Adaptor" in Aoife's
Kiss
magazine (Issue
21)
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“Please
don’t,” Paul said, then treated 45-23b with another
thousand directed beams of hyper-radiation. The man’s mind
punched back at it, betrayed and angry, and Paul ended up taking some
of the jolt himself. The new pods they shared didn’t burn
like the older models, but the rest was still there. A flash of loss,
despair and defeat. Floating, hollow. Paul was only getting a taste of
what his patient got, and it was terrible. But he didn’t try
shaking it off because he knew that only time could make it go away and
that it hurt like hell to rush the process. He relaxed and simply let
the computer-driven despair settle in. Then he reminded himself it was
just part of the job.
(
Geoffrey Girard )
Review:
"A story that could
have gone to a much darker place, but the writer knew enough not to
underestimate his audience. Just the hint at how dark it can go can be
enough to send shivers of fear up your spine." (PuttPutt
Productions)
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| .Geoffrey Girard |
©
GeoffreyGirard.com
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