‘Oddities & Entities’ is a surreal, provocative anthology of six tales within the supernatural/ paranormal/horror genres, exploring a definition of life beyond the fragile vessel of the human body. The stories are: ‘Boneview’, in which a young woman struggles to balance her ability to see through people with the presence of a supernatural creature in her life; ‘Shift/Change’, in which a hospital worker struggles to regain his memory as he is confronted by a series of desperate people; ‘My Other Me’, in which a lonely college student finds himself displaced from his body by his alter ego; ‘Gray’, in which a frustrated man is stunned to discover a little creature has been living in his head; ‘Elmer Phelps’, in which a brother and sister find themselves linked in a strange reality by a bat bite in their youth; and lastly, ‘Appendage’, in which a cynical mercenary is hired by his son to protect a research lab on the verge of a stunning discovery.
Read excerpt here.
My Review:
This is a paranormal book with 6 different stories. They all freaked me out a little bit!
~Boneview is about a girl who befriends a strange creature. She is also to sense certain things when sh looks at people. The ending surprised me, and I hope the main character does what she needs to do to keep her loved ones safe.
~Shift/Change is about the strange things that happen in a hospital. Between having sex with the dead, and drugs, this book really was creepy.
~My Other Me describes what would happen if an evil entity took over your body. The really messed up part was that the entity was an alter ego. This made me think that there is evil in everyone (not to this extreme I hope), and that freaked me out.
~Gray was about a real creature living in the main characters head. I guess the voices in your head can be deadly.
~Elmer Phelps scared me because my sister just had a bat in her house. Bats are real, and what the bat did to these siblings made me want to bat proof my house.
~Appendage was about a father and son that are so far apart they only got together because the son hired his father. A research lab is going to discover something big, and time is running out on an antidote.
All in all I really liked these stories. They not only got into my head, but they also freaked me out. Roland is a great story teller and knows how to scare his readers at the right time. I definitely could not read this book at night. I am giving this book a 5/5 because I loved the writing style, and there were many frights!
Awards:
Award Winner-Finalist, Fiction/Horror, 2012 USA Book News Best Book Awards
Award Winner-Finalist, Fiction/Anthology, 2012 USA Book News Best Book Awards
Bronze Medal, Horror, 2012 Readers Favorite Book of the Year Awards
Finalist, Paranormal, 2012 Readers Favorite Book of the Year Awards
You can visit Roland Allnach’s website at www.rolandallnach.com.
ABOUT ROLAND ALLNACH
Roland Allnach has been writing since his early teens, first as a hobby, but as the years passed, more as a serious creative pursuit. He is an avid reader, with his main interests residing in history, mythology, and literary classics, along with some fantasy and science fiction in his earlier years. Although his college years were focused on a technical education, he always fostered his interest in literature, and has sought to fill every gap on his bookshelves.
By nature a do-it-yourself type of personality, his creative inclinations started with art and evolved to the written word. The process of creativity is a source of fascination for him, and the notion of bringing something to being that would not exist without personal effort and commitment serves not only as inspiration but as fulfillment as well. So whether it is writing, woodwork, or landscaping, his hands and mind are not often at rest.
Over the years he accumulated a dust laden catalog of his written works, with his reading audience limited to family and friends. After deciding to approach his writing as a profession, and not a hobby, the first glimmers of success came along. Since making the decision to move forward, he has secured publication for a number of short stories, has received a nomination for inclusion in the Pushcart Anthology, built his own website, and in November 2010 realized publication for an anthology of three novellas, titled Remnant, from All Things That Matter Press. Remnant has gone on to favorable critical review and placed as Finalist/Sci-fi, 2011 National Indie Excellence Awards; Bronze Medalist, Sci-Fi, 2012 Readers Favorite Book of the Year Awards; and Award Winner-Finalist, Sci-Fi, 2012 USA Book News Best Book Awards. Roland’s second publication, Oddities & Entities, also from All Things That Matter Press, followed in March 2012. It, too, has received favorable critical review, and is the recipient of four awards: Bronze Medalist, Horror, and Finalist, Paranormal, 2012 Readers Favorite Book of the Year Awards; Award Winner-Finalist, Fiction/Horror and Fiction/Anthologies, 2012 USA Book News Best Book Awards.
His writing can best be described as depicting strange people involved in perhaps stranger situations. He is not devoted to any one genre of writing. Instead, he prefers to let his stories follow their own path. Classification can follow after the fact, but if one is looking for labels, one would find his stories in several categories. Sometimes speculative, other times supernatural, at times horror, with journeys into mainstream fiction, and even some humor- or perhaps the bizarre. Despite the category, he aims to depict characters as real on the page as they are in his head, with prose of literary quality. His literary inspirations are as eclectic as his written works- from Poe to Kate Chopin, from Homer to Tolkien, from Flaubert to William Gibson, from Shakespeare to Tolstoy, as long as a piece is true to itself, he is willing to go along for the ride. He hopes to bring the same to his own fiction.
Read questions and answers with Roland here: http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/2013/02/24/pump-up-your-book-chats-with-oddities-entities-roland-allnach/
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