Mark Edward Hall

Invisible Toothpicks:

An Introduction to The Holocaust Opera

By, Vince A. Liaguno

Music and horror have always shared a symbiotic relationship. Think of a scary movie and, inevitably, some ominous snippet of soundtrack accompanies the memory. Try and imagine Halloween and not hear the synthesized notes of John Carpenter’s score, or The Exorcist without Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Or the menacing chords of composer John Williams’ two-note title theme to Jaws or the screeching violins of Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho score that ushered in Janet Leigh’s showery demise. Music is an essential element to the horror experience, helping to create mood, enhance atmosphere, and foreshadow the imminent terror lurking around every dark corner. It’s as fundamental a sound to horror as the scream itself. Read more…

Chapter 36

The sound of a ringtone nearly jumped Doug out of his seat. He had been totally unaware that there was a cell phone in the car until that very moment. He searched around and found it beneath the seat, tried to see who was calling but the numbers were blurred. Doug realized that he was weaving on the road. He was in no condition to drive and figured it would be only a matter of time before a cop spotted him. Behind him headlights approached, a horn blared and the car pulled around him, the driver shaking his fist in the air. Read more…

My latest book in the Kindle chapbook series has just gone live. It is an 11,000 word novelette entitled The Breath of Life. Hope you check it out. The buyers link in the left-hand column will be active within twenty-four hours.

Here’s a synopsis:

1939, deep in the heart of the Egyptian desert archeologist Winston Smith has made the discovery of a lifetime. An old kingdom Mastaba tomb. But Smith suspects, from the markings on the door, that this tomb contains relics from the period of the new kingdom, the eighteenth dynasty. So begins an adventure that takes Smith deep beneath the Egyptian desert, while on the surface a storm is kicking up and a child is about to be born. As each adventure unfolds simultaneously and at breakneck speed the reader is taken along on a dizzying thrill ride of wonders and horrors, while elsewhere the architects of the future are making plans for an important arrival.

The Breath of Life is a fun, fast paced thriller steeped heavily in the tradition of the pulp novels of the early twentieth century.