01/21/2026 Guest Review: Craig Brownlie
- Candace Nola
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
It’s Been A Year, Part 6
Reviews and thoughts on writing with Craig Brownlie
Such big britches, but it’s been a minute since I’ve done any reviews because 2025 has been a worse year than even 2024, which is saying something on a personal level. But I have kept reading and writing! Let’s just agree this is madness.
Fountain of Youth R.V. Park by R.J. Benetti
Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals I & II by Bitter Karella
Haunt of Southern Fried Fear by Ronald Kelly
Have you ever really thought about humor in horror? Seriously? We are talking about a genre which allows a great deal of latitude regarding content. If you can skewer someone through the neck while feeding them fondue, what do we make of a pratfall off a banana skin? How does witty repartee mix with exploding skulls?
Obviously, every genre has its challenges with provoking laughter (or at least a chuckle). Raised eyebrows from James Bond or Austin Powers are meant to signal vastly different shifts in tone, though I would argue only in degree. The starting point in Dr. No is rather different from The Spy Who Shagged Me. So, what to do with the horrific?
Benetti, Karella, and Kelly take different routes, but they all arrive at a sense of humor. I don’t want to imply that any of them fail to send a chill up the spine, but the covers of the three volumes under consideration all bear images which suggest they seek something more- shall we call it a crack of the funny bone?
Haunt of Southern Fried promises trembling ala classic tales from pre-Code horror comics. Without question, Kelly knows his inspiration and his love for a certain piquant stew of dread, morbidity, and body horror deliver tales which shine like fresh bait for the unwary. Unbelievably, I’m too young for the original publication of EC Comics, but as a member in good standing of the neighborhood future felons society, I was entitled to swap Marvel comics for Eerie comics as well as the bizarre reprints which found their way into Mad magazine. Kelly delivers a mainline of the good stuff here for anyone with a love for Black Mirror or the Twilight Zone in an ode to the creators of the latter and the inspiration for the former.
What can I say about R.J. Benetti that hasn’t been written before? That he writes with a quill ripped from the cloaca region of a New Zealand Kākāpō during mating season filled with ink scented with the gaseous emissions of a dozen sperm whales recently resurfaced from gorging themselves on deep sea giant squids? But I dare not. Instead let us focus on this fine beast of a short work before us, Fountain of Youth R.V. Park. Truly, it would fit beautifully inside Kelly’s Haunt or any other classic horror twist story.
And Karella’s Midnight Pals… Publish the collected series of posts (still continuing on BlueSky, by the way) about a campfire of teenaged writers makes for Kickstarter heaven in a genre-reader’s heart. Add bonus features like tales from youthful versions of Mary Shelley, Eddy Poe, Steve King et al, and you will make that telltale heart beat loud enough to wake the neighbors.
Let us not depart this fair island of horrific humor without noting that all three of these volumes are beautiful to have and to hold.
Moonflow by Bitter Karella
The outlier among these other books reviewed today because it is, if anything, a commentary on the classic horror novel. (And also, it is by the author of the above Midnight Pals.) Take every aspect of the enduring lost-in-the-woods situation and leaven in with updated goodness in the form of satire, drugs, and… I want to say a Mother Nature death cult?? If you’re in a reading rut, here’s your way out.
Odds and Gods by Tom Holt
Tom Holt has made my life incrementally better ever since I ran out of Terry Pratchett books to read. (See previous postings about leaving at least one book by each beloved author to read later… well… best laid plans.) Holt makes me happy as he skewers fantasy tropes in the same way Wodehouse brings me joy as he punctures social mores. Odds and Gods brought a tear or two and carried a few deep thoughts about religion. That’s a lot to accomplish in a humor book.
What’s driving Craig apeshit: Genres!
Seriously, The Dante Club is Splatterpunk. Let’s stop acting like the need to build fences in the arts was invented in any of our lifetimes. You do not need to abide the barricades. Your work is actually going to be compared to Shakespeare and Dickens and Tuchman and Jackson and Conan Doyle. That’s okay. Their appeal does not have to be your appeal. But you probably ought to have read those folks. Go read Nabokov or build up to it by reading Arthur Byron Cover. Read Orwell about working in restaurants in Paris and hunting elephants in Burma. Genres exist so publicity people can boil down two years of your exertion into a single paragraph. If you don’t know why people bother with romance or mystery or non-fiction or journalism, then you’re missing out on a lot of shit you can use in your work. Because the artistic goals of communication and connection are intertwined and have nothing to do with genre.
Check the bolt on your door before reading these highly recommended books
Bio: Craig recently edited the anthology Five Raging Hearts: Splatterpunk for the Soul. Look for Craig's recent work in Hotel of Haunts, Demons and Death Drops, Wands: Year of the Tarot, and Unspeakable Horrors 3. He has three books out in his Little Books of Pain series: Hammer, Nail, Foot; Thick As A Brick; and A Book of Practical Monsters. These are in addition to the re-release of his middle-grade novel Comic Book Summer. He also has a surprise zombie novel dropping early in 2026. It has an awesome cover from Christy Aldridge.
