Showing results by author "Kevin Candela" in All Categories

In 1972, the Red Bozos were the friendliest faces in frenetic Midlands Amusement Park. Flash forward four and a half decades: Midlands is a ghost park. Closed long ago and nearly forgotten, even by the locals, it sits shrouded in undergrowth and hill-topping forest surrounded by upscale new homes. Ringed with a decaying fence, hidden from sight, it presents a huge temptation to a group of bored, thrill-seeking youths who are about to learn that terror is, in fact, immortal. 

Take a freakishly harrowing journey with an ordinary person who comes to realize that his nightmares have manifested as a power of sorts...though his "gift" is anything but welcome as it stalks and murders at will. The powers of the mind and the campfire scare stories of childhood merge in Tickles: A Little Bedtime Horror Story, creating a monstrous darkness

In Ghost in the Sky, the first installment in the Bob the Interdimensional Trucker series, Sam Gage has picked up an enigmatic motorist whose mere presence, it seems, is making Gage hear the sound of a small propeller-driven passenger airplane...or maybe even a crop duster. But whatever is really making the sound, which his rider can't hear, is not only keeping pace with Gage's truck at an impossibly slow speed for airplane flight - it's also invisible. 

In Vapor, a man trying to collect his thoughts turns at the sound of screams to see other patrons dissolving right in front of his eyes. He makes a panicked escape, but that's only the beginning of his problems - because he's a witness to what happened, and that can't be allowed. Then in Chiller, an uneasy alliance of corporate-minded "pioneers" and scientists come across something impossible: a spot under the ice with a temperature reading of close to 200 degrees below zero. Tense debate ensues...until the anomaly vanishes. But it's not gone, it just moved. 

In his storied days, Sinbad travelled the world, charting its lands, experiencing the wonders, terrors, and treasures to be found across the Seven Seas. But there is an ocean that he has not yet touched, let alone explored: one so incredibly vast and daunting that to look upon its shores - as indeed he has done all his life - is to gaze into an infinity of possibility...and danger. In the wake of the cataclysmic Siege of Aderadad, having learned his father is alive “somewhere out there,” Sinbad is devoted to finding him.

The name actually means "greatest of sages," but let's face it: Sinbad is synonymous with adventure. His voyages are legendary, but only a few are really well-known. Here, then, are three consecutive tales brought to light for the first time, a trilogy of epic scope that spans not just the seven seas but the universe - and even time itself! Ride along with the sea captain as he heroically faces off against deadly sorcerers, fearsome creatures, and dark deities, most of them fiercely determined to either enslave humanity or destroy it. 

The saga of Krakenstein concludes in cataclysmic, mind-blowing action in the Next Regeneration trilogy. The former Dr. Max Shepperton, who long ago became a superhero daikaiju by default when he merged with an ancient marine creature and the mutated result grew to immense size, is still at it 20 years after the original trilogy. This time around, he takes on a shape-shifting titan made of nanobots and controlled by his vengeful brother, and battles a life-draining giant horror from the depths of outer space.

Time Weathers didn’t so much mind the car breakdown...just another hassle, albeit at an extremely inconvenient locale. But now reality itself is threatening to do the same, and she’s not quite as adaptable to that. Time was just minding her own business, ambling along on an old road under the blistering Nevada sun, hoping for the kind of road rescue help you aren’t typically going to find in the middle of the desert anyway, when the disconnected phone in the dusty booth outside the dilapidated gas station she was passing began to ring.

Here it is: the blood-and-sap-splattered epic of gritty, wisecracking survivors turned mutant warriors in a global apocalypse against gigantic man-eating...dandelions. One sunny morning, the world awoke to the revenge of their own well-manicured lawns: Seeded by chemtrails and radiated by black-ops satellites, innocent little weeds swelled to massive size and uprooted themselves from the broken earth and raced off hungrily toward their new menu - mankind!

Months have passed, the trail has grown cold, and ZC has all but given up when out of the blue, a back road diversion leads him to the mystical, but apparently not mythical Bizarre - a place where all kinds of beings want all kinds of things...and barter and gamble to get them. He's about to meet some utterly strange new friends, including a dogman named Ekos, a human-like woman with a nest of serpents for a head, and a gigantic bat-dragon that doesn't like being referred to as either.

A seven percent grasp of the infinite. The universe may be limitless, but our senses are not. Just as the human eye sees but a small percentage of the cosmic wave spectrum, in the same way, most of us are only able to perceive a similar sliver of what we brazenly term “reality”, even with the use of all five of our scientifically acknowledged senses. This month-by-month account of people-supernatural relations spans its own sci-fi/fantasy/horror/comedy spectrum, touring the weird side of the cosmos while leaving the passengers comfy and unscathed in their listening chairs.

John Bruni, Kevin Candela, and Kent Hill reteam for a second adventure, roaring down the Hunter S. Thompson highway to Gonzo nirvana. Following the success of the trio's The Doctor Is...In!, this group of humble seekers reignites Thompson's joint and takes you to places real and otherwise...as per the Doctor's orders. This second amazing tribute to the man who epitomized rebelliousness seeks once again to bring Hunter back from the grave for yet another wild adventure while fearing and loathing in the dissection of the American dream.

On far distant Gavelin, Leks and Quinara - scrappy human survivors of a demonic plague that has all but wiped out their civilization - race against time in a perilous journey to the perceived safety of the cradle of their society: the great coastal city of Amaline on the Sandarine Sea. Along the way, they meet horrifying carnivorous mud monsters, sentient human-hunting thunderstorms and an outcast bio-alchemist with a warped sense of humor whose bizarre menagerie features a panther-like beast made of living metal. 

Here, for the first time, is the complete saga of Krakenstein, the titanic mutant who's out to save the world, whether humanity likes it or not. Noble environmental scientist Dr. Max Shepperton's bizarre transformation from nerdy human being to a 300-foot-tall squid-headed monster seems a great tragedy, until the world realizes that his Godzilla-sized new form might be the one thing that can prevent the Earth's vengeance against greedy corporate profiteers from bringing about the extinction of Shepperton's former species - the human race. 

In this wildly imaginative and bullet-fast tale of advanced warrior legions eager to escape their banishment in a parallel dimension, an unlikely band of heroic women, bold and reckless enough to stand in their way, are humanity’s only hope against an impending incursion by a highly advanced army of invisible, disc-riding warriors.  

From the writer of Ghost Hunter, Little Women with Big Guns, and Krakenstein vs. Koalatron comes an unforgettable excursion into the depths of the unknown. Loaded end to end with chills, this terrifying narrative is loosely based on accounts of encounters with the legendary Pukwudgie, a cryptozoological "myth" originating in Massachusetts' mysterious Bridgewater Triangle.

The ghosts were there the day it opened for business. The Leeward Hotel is a mirror. From the moment its first stone was laid, it has reflected the mysteries of the restless and the restless Atlantic Ocean over which it looms atop a stark cliff in Cornwall, with guests frequently seeing the highly eccentric owners walking around the halls while they were supposedly locked in their private haven upstairs.

Aurora Hayes is probably the most agreeable and least judgmental of the Roads Unlimited driving team, but even she has her limits. When something that sure looks like the scary bipedal "myth" called the chupacabra races in out of the darkness in North Texas and jumps aboard her rig, Aurora finds herself stuck with the edgy, bug-eyed little monster on a long haul across the South to Florida. But dealing with the freakish creature, which appears to have no language and seems determined to stay with the truck, is just the warm-up: The thing's master arrives.

A Year in the Borderlands writer Kevin Candela's wild second excursion into alternate realities includes 17 tales, twelve of which have appeared in previously released anthologies and are collected here for the first time. These short stories combine with five never before released works, including the novella It's Only Funny if You Laugh, to produce a wide-ranging panoramic view of the worlds and realities that exist beyond our own. Playing With Reality is another vividly detailed page in the Atlas of the Unknown.

What if you had all kinds of superhero powers, but they only worked if you were stark naked? That's the world these days for Race Harleson, reluctant savior of humanity. One of Race's most unpleasant (and dangerous) nemeses, the shameless Space Invader, is at it again. But this time, the supervillain with the personal privacy issues has put everyone in an awkward position, for his terrifying misdeeds have awakened something deep beneath the ground - something so mighty and monstrous that even the arrogant baddie is in fear for his life.