Trust and Other Nightmares

From time to time when I take a break from researching and writing my thrillers, I write short stories such as the ones collected for the first time in this new anthology, Trust and Other Nightmares. Each of these stories has its germination in nights when my sleep was suddenly savaged by ethereal visions and sounds sufficiently disturbing to wrench me from tangled, sweat-drenched sheets. Some of them have seen a bit of daylight before now, and the last two debut here. All of them are spawned of the dancing skeletons and reanimated corpses that plague the bleakest, blackest hours preceding my blessed dawns. They include Trust, without which a murder-suicide pact is merely revenge’s favorite recipe; Rougarou, where a terrified boy learns it’s never easy to tell monsters from saviors in a desolate Louisiana swamp; Frankie’s Last Affair, where we’re taught that if a thing is truly art, someone has to suffer for it; Canis, a post-apocalyptic tale where the wolves in sheep’s clothing have no lock on cross-dressing, and Showtime, in which a famous television psychic medium’s dirty secret is he knows there’s no such thing as ghosts.

I hope you enjoy this collection. If it scares you enough to keep you up a night or two, I know just how you feel. As this anthology demonstrates, I sleep well rarely.

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CANIS

(an excerpt)

Like so many damned things, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now in my time of dying, my faith wavers. The Hand of Fate’s wrapped tight round my gulping throat in the guise of rough rope. The only friends in sight are this splintered gallows pole creaking over my head, and the spent weapon lying uselessly at my bleeding feet that hardly touch the creaking wooden slats below me. Against the exposed flesh of my ankles, I feel the hot, foul breath of the furious wolf. They’ve shackled the animal to a stump by a shard of rope just long enough to keep his snapping jaws barely an arm’s length from my legs. The rope round the wolf’s neck is thinner than the rope clenching mine.

Everything’s going to plan.

Oil, Intrigue,and Deception

Blood of the Moon is set during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The world is engulfed in wars over ever-dwindling oil reserves. Gas riots rip the streets of American cities from Washington D.C., to Portland, Oregon. Tanks rumble on Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues to protect the White House. But Michael Rivers, the last Apollo astronaut to walk on the moon, brought something back to earth in 1972 that proves conventional wisdom about oil is a deliberate lie.

Now Michael is confined to an assisted living facility, his mind slowly succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease, as his son David is pulled into a deadly race to uncover Michael’s long-hidden secret. An ancient shadowy society of ruthless men does everything in its monstrous power to stop them, while a corrupted presidential election teeters in the balance.

Relevant Today

“If your life is touched in any way by the oil economy, which it inescapably is, then you’ll find “Blood of the Moon” very relevant in the current economic, social and political climate. For example, that oil and gas supplies and prices remained pretty static during the entire recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is fascinating. The book’s central message is there’s an incessant conflict between perception and truth in every significant human endeavor. It behooves us all to embrace this fact, ask hard questions, and then scrutinize the sources and biases behind the answers we’re given or denied.” Richard in an interview with The Eerie Digest. Read the fulll interview...

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“A stunning debut. Well-researched, tightly plotted, and teeming with vividly-drawn characters. Gazala has a great voice, as well as a clear gift for breakneck pacing and narrative drive. A rich and rewarding read.” Raymond Khoury,
NYT Bestselling Author of The Sign