Reviews!!

Some reviews are in for MOTORMAN

Nev Murray from Confessions of a Reviewer said, "A quick read that has some of the best imaginative writing I have read for a while. Puts a new perspective on how much people love their cars!"

Read the Confessions review here-

Shane Keene from Shotgun Logic said "His characters are quirky, eccentric, and darkly twisted, yet oddly endearing in spite of–or maybe because of–their brokenness."

Read the Shotgun Logic review here-

Adrian Shotbolt from BevistheBookhead, "This book has a lot going for it and will appeal to a wide variety of readers. It has a bit of sci-fi, some body horror but overall it’s a great, fun thriller."

Read the entire BevistheBookhead review-

Angela Crawford, the amazing Horror Maiden said, "With the feel of a grindhouse movie that you would have watched at the drive-in and some truly disturbing body horror this story had me hooked right from the start."

Get the entire Horror Maiden review here-

A great start-

This has been a great start for a book that I was worried about because of it's length and general themes. I had often thought would people relate to car culture, bizzaro, V8 powered monster, horror as much as I did? Some do and some don't has been the answer. More seem to get it and like it than don't, and that's all you can ask. I am certainly proud of the reviews and the response to this book. I'm wondering- how would a follow-up go? Maybe MOTORMAN - EL CAMINO.

I'll keep you posted.

ANOTHER COVER TO SHOW OFF

The official reveal of the cover for MOTORMAN took place on Nev Murray's Confessions of a Reviewer Blog. It is a great site and I recommend it for all the horror reviews you will find there. This is more of an unofficial reveal. That's to say I just like showing off the great work of the artist Erik W. Wilson and my book cover so...

Running from a night of humiliation and murder, Johnny Burris leaves his home in an urban junkyard fleeing into the Ozarks countryside. While he flees, mysterious streaks of blue light in the night sky drive him into a forgotten bit of nowhere lost in the hills. Johnny thinks he’s found home and good work in an odd little gas station from another time. The station isn’t the only thing strange and Johnny quickly gets pulled into a world where the cars are all chromed with engines built to run, and the people are the same. Over generations the community has been slowly altered with machine parts and the energy of the flying blue streaks that led him there.

Enticed and torn between two sisters, one with gleaming metal body parts, the other outcast for her normality, Johnny becomes the pawn of their father. The old doctor is looking for a replacement and Johnny Burris is the man with just the right skills.

When it becomes clear that he is being groomed to become the new Dr. to the community, Johnny rebels and tries to run, taking the one, unaltered girl with him. But the people, and the girl, turn out to be even more than he imagined. When he crashes in his escape, he wakes to find himself bonded into the machinery of a 1969 Camaro. His whole world becomes the one choice, live as a monster, making monsters or die like a man. If he chooses to die, who will he take with him?

MOTORMAN is a novella about what happens when you surrender humanity, when you run from things that can't be left behind.

It is releasing from Necro Publications 5/20/16 the first of my two Necro titles in 2016.

Cover Reveal - A LIVING GRAVE

It's official, actually a lot of things have recently become official, so... The first official thing to announce is that my novel, written as The End of Summer, some of you have heard me talk about it, has been re-titled. It is now A LIVING GRAVE.

Also official is the release date, 9/13/16 from Lyrical Press, and imprint of Kensington Publications.

Now, take a look at the amazing cover. I'm so proud to share this.

Katrina “Hurricane” Williams is not a good cop. In fact she’s just hanging on to her job as a Sheriff’s Detective in the rural Ozarks. Ten years after a horrible and life changing assault by fellow soldiers in Iraq, Katrina is prone to drinking and violence.


When two cases converge, a bizarre child murder and modern day bootlegging, Katrina meets fellow veteran turned artist, Nelson Solomon. When an Army investigator shows up pulling the strings of her past, she's forced to confront her own secrets even as she works the cases.


Spiraling and barely under control she follows the child murder into a place of utter darkness. At the same time, she begins uncovering connections between Solomon, bikers, mobsters, and murder. Dragged down by death, guilt, and uncontrolled anger, Katrina hits bottom. Then, In one long night of loss and violence, she pushes aside secrets to save Solomon from his own dangerous choices.


A LIVING GRAVE is the first book in my Katrina "Hurricane" Williams series.

THE TOUR IS OVER BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

The publicity tour for THE RED HIGHWAY managed by my lovely friend, Erin Al-Mehairi of Hook of Book Media and Publicity, is over but never forgotten.

Through the tour I met some great new friends and readers. I wanted to say thanks to all the bloggers and reviewers that hosted and had so many great things to say about the book. I want all of them to know that their efforts are what make small publishing possible. Authors, small presses, and reviewers, form a structure where each leg supports the other. I know I own them so much.

If you haven't seen the reviews, interviews, or guest posts, take a chance and look them over. Then stay and read some of the other great content on each of the sites. I'm adding the links so you don't have any excuse.

https://zdubbzattmom.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/zakk-reviews-the-red-highway-by-robert-e-dunn/

http://thescaryreviews.com/news-guest-posts/guest-post-the-red-highway-by-robert-dunn/

http://horrormaiden.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-red-highway-by-robert-e-dunn-45.html

http://huntershea.com/2015/12/08/robert-e-dunns-highway-to-hell-the-red-highway/

http://archiestandwoodsreviewsandwritings.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-red-highway-by-robert-e-dunntour.html

http://etjenmatlock.tumblr.com/post/135008465555/book-worm-review-the-red-highway

https://shotgunlogic.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/guest-post-by-robert-e-dunn/

https://shotgunlogic.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/review-the-red-highway-by-robert-e-dunn/

http://waggingthefox.blogspot.com/2015/12/raising-hell-in-city-of-angels.html

http://castlemacabre.blogspot.com/2015/12/robert-e-dunns-red-highway-guest-post.html

http://thehorrorbookshelf.com/2015/12/21/robert-e-dunn-the-red-highway-review/

http://matthewscottbaker.com/blog/2016/01/book-review-the-red-highway-by-robert-e-dunn/

http://www.2bookloversreviews.com/the-red-highway.html

http://the-gal-in-the-blue-mask.blogspot.com/2016/02/review-red-highway.html

http://www.examiner.com/article/author-robert-dunn-discusses-his-latest-novel-the-red-highway

Thank you to everyone and by the way, there will be a new book coming soon. Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge

Reviews We Have Reviews Here

I am so bad at the blogging thing that this page is easily forgotten. In fact the only reason I'm here today is that a friend posted a link to the blog on Twitter and I don't want people coming and being mad at him.

I wanted to share some of the reviews that my novel, THE RED HIGHWAY has gotten recently.

Check out a few:

http://horrormaiden.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-red-highway-by-robert-e-dunn-45.html

http://archiestandwoodsreviewsandwritings.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-red-highway-by-robert-e-dunntour.html

http://www.2bookloversreviews.com/the-red-highway.html

http://etjenmatlock.tumblr.com/post/135008465555/book-worm-review-the-red-highway

These are just a few and this is just a lazy guy's blog post. I'll try harder next time, I promise.

THE RED HIGHWAY cover

I've been neglecting this blog for quite some time. It is an easy thing to ignore. The blog just sits there waiting--without demands, without even life or liveliness. All the life of my writing goes to the novels I hammer away at day by day.

An Update: THE RED HIGHWAY is coming soon. The book is in final proofing and I am having a hard time combing through it without going cross eyed. Here is the cover art if you have not caught it on Twitter.

This amazing cover was created by my new friend, Erik Wilson. Look him up at http://www.erikwilsonart.com/ THE RED HGHWAY is about outsiders who have no choice but to fight the evil they are drawn to.

Here is the full art that will become the wrap around for the hard back book.

I can't help but be proud to have this art on my book. Thanks of course goes to the publisher that hooked me up with Mr. Wilson. If you love other horror and not just mine, take a look at the fine company I am keeping now at http://www.necropublications.com/

Here is the descriptive copy that will be on the back of the jacket-

In 1992, as Los Angeles begins to simmer in the heat of racial injustices, one dark man appears everywhere, spreading his message of race war. At the same time, Paul Souther, a homeless, drunk joins a strange group of outsiders. Some black and some white, they all carry the weight of broken lives and lost faith. They are all drawn to LA, for the arrival of a child, impossibly carried by Mary Prince, a sterile porn star.

Through back roads and freeways everyone is pulled into LA and Mary's side just as the baby is born. None of them have any idea that the city is a ticking bomb of anger. As riots explode, the mysterious man reveals himself to be an ancient, dark spirit using the rage of the people to stoke his own, literal, fires. He demands Mary’s child as sacrifice to keep the city, and perhaps the nation from burning. It falls to Paul, a faithless man, and a drunk with blood on his own hands, to make the impossible choice between the child and the city, and to save the people he has come to care about.

 

 

More Things More Important Than Writing-Hurdles



This past month my family lost people important to us. That made me think as those things will do. When I thought I created a post about things that are more important than writing. The thing about writing and life is that writing can pause. You can stop to think, make changes. You can even go back and change what is not working. Life... Well we all know life has its own schedule to keep.

Writing is a poor imitation of life but it is the best one I have. It is what I always turn to--words can be rosary beads for a troubled mind. The sad thing is that writing to set aside the world is rarely good writing, at least for me. So I've been writing and rewriting and changing and wondering about so many things. Some questions are unanswerable by even the best stories.

I'm not a Why Me? person. Things happen. I deal. People that know me know about the infection that got into my brain and changed my life. There is always pain and sometimes worse things. We all have hurdles to get our asses over and that's the thing today. Sometimes, when getting ourselves over we lose sight of the other people and their hurdles.

I write because I have always done it, needed it in some way. More than that, for a long time I made a good living writing scripts for everything you could imagine. That was when I realized that what I was writing was important to some deeper part of me. I had to write MORE. Not quantity but something, more. I wanted to tell the stories that boiled in my brain late at night or that took up a long, silent car ride. MORE. I wanted to write so the people in my life would be proud. I want to write to touch in some way other people.

Writing is both one of my joys and one of my hurdles. I have to do it. It connects me to other people in a way that nothing else will for me. BUT. But I have to be careful that the very connection I seek does not become an insulator.

Things more important than writing--those are the people for whom I write. Family, friends, readers I may never meet. In the last few days I have become aware of a hole in things. A blind spot like the gap between your mirror's view and the turn of your head while driving. There are places through which we cannot write. Broken hurdles we may get over but leave a bit of blood for our passing. One of the people lost last month was a wonderful man but he had a long life full of the things long lives are full of. He is missed but his passing was more natural than tragic. Since then though, his granddaughter, my great niece, took her own life.

I had been close to her when she was a child then the blind spot crept in. She made her own life and choices. She tackled her own hurdles while I tackled mine. I was unaware that she was having troubles. Not completely unaware, more just unaware of the height of her hurdles. I don't flatter myself to imagine that I could have saved her from the darkness at the end of the race. Only that I could have worked harder to see into the blind spot. Maybe I could have lowered one hurdle for one person I care about. Maybe that is as much fantasy as some of the stories I write but it is a thought every bit as important to me as anything I might ever write.

So, while I haven't been writing as hard as I might like lately I console myself with the knowledge that my time right now is being spent trying to lower some hurdles for some other people. I will be back in town soon and back to my routine but I'll be a little more careful about blind spots.