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The Half-Freaks

cover art: The Half-Freaks, by Harry 0. Morris

The Half-Freaks

Author: Nicole Cushing, Bram Stoker Award Winner
Cover Artist:Harry 0. Morris
Publication Date: November 13, 2019
Published by: Grimscribe Press
106 pp.



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Synopsis

Harry Meyers is ill-equipped to handle funeral planning of any sort. If he had a goldfish and that goldfish died, he would probably find a way to bungle the flushing. But when Harry’s mother passes away without having made any arrangements, and he’s the only surviving next of kin, Harry is called on to navigate a grimly hilarious, half-real world of morgues, morticians, fetishes, and cosmic disaster. Transgressive and bleakly funny, terrifying but surprisingly humane, The Half-Freaks showcases Nicole Cushing’s ever-evolving take on the Weird.



About the Author

Nicole Cushing is the Bram Stoker Award® winning author of Mr. Suicide and a two-time nominee for the Shirley Jackson Award. Various reviewers have described her work as “brutal”, “cerebral”, “transgressive”, “taboo”, “groundbreaking” and “mind-bending”. This Is Horror has said that she is “quickly becoming a household name for horror fans”. She has also garnered praise from Jack Ketchum, Rue Morgue Magazine, Thomas Ligotti, and Poppy Z. Brite. Visit her online at nicolecushing.wordpress.com.



Awards

Winner of the 2015 Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a First Novel for Mr. Suicide

Nominee for the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award (Novella category, for The Sadist’s Bible)

Nominee for the 2016 Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction for The Sadist’s Bible

Nominee for the 2015 Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection for The Mirrors

Nominee for the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award (Novella category, for Children of No One)



Praise

“Nicole Cushing comes in smart and hard, skilled and strange times three. Many aspire. But you can’t fake this kind of weird.” — New York Times Bestselling Author John Skipp

“…an intense and uncompromising literary voice..”  — Rue Morgue , in naming Nicole one of thirteen “Wicked Women to Watch”

“…a work of brutal and extreme horror…disturbingly graphic content…” — Publishers Weekly, in reference to Mr. Suicide

“Cushing doesn’t give us an all-out splatterfest, aiming more for a narrative that unsettles its readers psychologically, disarming them from time to time with bursts of graphic violence. She handles this more cerebral approach deftly; and yet, her pages still seem to bleed, or at least to writhe with rotten blood itching to get loose.” —LitReactor, in reference to Mr. Suicide

“‘Like everyone else in the world, you’ve wanted to do things people say you shouldn’t do.’…Thus begins Nicole Cushing’s extraordinary work of extreme horror Mr. Suicide, which took home Best First Novel at this year’s Bram Stoker Awards. The book is impressive not just for its tale of a young man who hears voices in his head and gradually begins to separate himself from reality, resulting in bloody, eviscerating violence, but because it’s written entirely in the second person.”  — Rue Morgue (August, 2016)

“Novels don’t come much more transgressive than this one, folks. Got a taboo? Watch Nicole Cushing grin while she dances all over it. In other hands that might be reason enough for the witty Mr. Suicide to exist. But this is more and better than that — a truly nightmare world, richly imagined, told to us in a canny, subversive second-person voice that makes you, the reader, the hero of this tale, like it or not. That it also manages to be ultimately life-affirming is yet another wonder.” — Jack Ketchum , in reference to Mr. Suicide

“With several groundbreaking works under her belt…Nicole Cushing is making huge waves in the horror community, taking readers and critics alike by surprise with her daring and unique brand of weird cosmic horror. The Sadist’s Bible takes that brand of weird to previously unimagined levels. Cushing is quickly becoming a household name for horror fans, and for good reason. Her voice is evocative of an unholy marriage between Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite, with a few dashes of Dante Alighieri tossed in for good measure, and her style is all her own, darkly erotic, wickedly unapologetic, and often ferociously violent…Nicole Cushing is a star that rises a little higher with each work she produces, using strong measures with daring and unapologetic subject matter to up her game and set the bar a little higher for other authors in the business of making high quality horror stories. If you haven’t read her work, you’re depriving yourself of a treat.” — This is Horror (review by Shane Douglas Keene)

“This tale of a damaged and murderous child is the most original horror novel I’ve read in years. Cushing’s prose is rapid-fire, grisly, and passionate.”
–Poppy Z. Brite, author of Exquisite Corpse and Lost Souls, in reference to Mr. Suicide

“The confidence and expertise so blatantly evident in Nicole Cushing’s writing is astonishing.”– Thomas Ligotti, in reference to Children of No One

“Nicole Cushing’s stories grab you by the throat — and don’t let go until they have slapped you around a bit. I know of few writers of contemporary weird fiction whose stories pack the raw emotional power that hers do…”  — S.T. Joshi, in reference to The Mirrors

“Nicole Cushing uses her sharp and confident prose like a surgical instrument to dissect both her characters and our emotions.  MR. SUICIDE is horrifying and harrowing, but just as much for the emotional devastation it causes in the reader as for the violence and depravity — as well as the twisted humor — it portrays.  This is horror fiction that leaves marks.” —Ray Garton, in reference to Mr. Suicide

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