Published in 2024
200 pages
6 hours and 42 minutes
Candace Nola is a multiple award-winning author, editor, and publisher. She writes poetry, horror, dark fantasy, and extreme horror content. Books include Breach, Beyond the Breach, Hank Flynn, Bishop, Earth vs The Lava Spiders, The Unicorn Killer, Unmasked, The Vet, and Desperate Wishes. Her short stories can be found in The Baker’ s Dozen anthology, Secondhand Creeps, American Cannibal, Just A Girl, The Horror Collection: Lost Edition, Exactly the Wrong Things, and many more. Demons in my Bloodstream is her first short story collection.
What is this book about?
Award-winning Author Candace Nola’ s debut collection, Demons in my Bloodstream, is a fiendishly woven tapestry of short fiction. These nightmarish tales include a mobsters bucket list, a neighborhood gardening competition gone wrong, a serial killer patiently waiting for one last kill, and a colorblind man that finally cures what ails him. Seven blood-soaked tales of terror for your own demon to feast upon.
Demons in My Bloodstream- We are welcomed into this collection by a pain-filled poem. Beautiful words shine a light on some agonizing emotions.
It’s So Pretty- Stanley Thompson leads a dull life. Not only is he extremely introverted, making his actual life dull, he is color blind, making his visual life muted as well. His mother removes all color from their home in a misguided attempt at solidarity with her only child. He is kept in seclusion and homeschooled, making him scholarly and friendless. Highly adept at numbers, he makes life very comfortable monetarily for himself and his parents. But he yearns to cure himself of his inability to see color. After buying a colorful home in paradise for his parents and buying their house for himself, Stanley uses his superior intellect to perform experiments on himself to try and cure his ailment. His desire becomes an obsession and this tale becomes darker and darker as Stanley finds a small success in his quest. “It’s so pretty.” Indeed.
Roxie’s List- Joe has lost his dear wife Roxie unexpectedly. He is devastated. Finding her diary brings the suffering man even more sorrow. It seems that sweet Roxie wanted to travel the globe more than anything. Not one to complain, she wrote her desires in her diary instead of bothering her husband with her dream vacations. Feeling incredibly guilty, Joe decides to visit the places his Roxie longed to see in her honor. But tourist destinations weren’t the only things in Roxie’s list. Even while this story became brutal AF, the background emotion was so sweet and sad. I felt very strongly for Joe and his grief and cheered him on as he traveled throughout Europe for his late wife. Beautiful and intense.
The Best Puppet Show in Town- I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the experience of going into this story blind and enduring the bizarre, yet beautifully written, absurdity of this tale. The juxtaposition between grotesque and sexy hits hard with this one. WTF, Candace?! I loved it!
In the Garden- A neighborhood gardening competition goes off the rails when some truly heinous characters do battle for the nicest yard. This is not a lovely gardening story, but an extremely cruel one. The cast includes some undesirable characters, one being one of the most unlikeable humans I’ve read about in many years. An overbearing and entitled shrew, I couldn’t stand her! A highly entertaining story, with some moments that are so horrendous that they made me sad.
All in Due Time- This story read like an intense thriller that gets super gory from time to time. We begin by going back and forth between two POVs. Grant, a vicious killer, and Sterling, an uber-successful stockbroker. Incredibly twisty, this one had me literally flipping pages back and forth after reveals saying, “wait, what?!” over and over!
Corpse in the Corn- A slasher/ period piece set in 1912. A farming family’s peace is shattered when murders start happening nearby. Can the small community come together and solve the mystery? I really liked this one.
