Horror author Russell James and I have shared a number of publishers and I love his work. His latest - Monsters in the Clouds - is no exception. Thrilling horror, with some truly terrifying creatures. He is my guest today and he's brught some of his friends with him...
I’ve written some sci-fi horror stories
about giant monsters. Enormous scorpions, killer fish, giant bats, dinosaurs. I
try to make these creatures as scary as possible. But in doing my research, I
keep finding that I can’t touch Mother Nature and her passion for the macabre.
My latest release, Monsters in the Clouds
from Severed Press has giant ants, pterosaurs, and an Ankylosaurus. In my
research I found some creepies that put dinosaurs to shame.
The mind-controlling larvae I created in
the book are based several real examples.
The emerald cockroach wasp is exceptionally
creepy. It stings a cockroach into submission with venom, then steers it with
the cockroach’s own antennae into its burrow. Then it bites a hole in the
roach, inserts an egg, and buries them both. Junior munches on living roach for
a few weeks, goes larval, and emerges as a wasp. Ah, circle of life.
Then there’s the Costa Rican wasp. The
adult female wasp temporarily paralyzes a spider and lays an egg on its
abdomen. The hatched larva sucks the spider's blood for the next two weeks. Then
the larva injects a chemical into the spider which compels it to first build a unique
web, and then to sit still in its center. The wasp larva then molts, kills the
spider with a poison, and spins a cocoon in the middle of the web. Eventually a
new wasp emerges and a new spider starts saying its prayers.
And don’t miss hairworms. They infect dry
land crickets when the cricket swallows a larva. The larva then grows and lives
inside the cricket. When it is time to emerge, the hairworm drives the cricket
into water, where the cricket drowns. But the hairworm can emerge and live on
to find a wife, raise a larva, and find a cricket the kid can call home.
Given all that real-life grossness, some
fictional horror is just what you need to cleanse the mental pallet. I
recommend Monsters in the Clouds, a fun B-movie romp through the Amazon jungle.
Paleontologist Grant Coleman and activist
Janaina Silva are recruited by Thana Katsoros for a top secret expedition, one
in search of a live Apatosaurus on a plateau deep in the Amazonian rain forest.
But their plane crashes short of their destination, and the entire group faces
a terrifying fight for survival. This isolated area hosts unknown animals more
fearsome than they’d expected, including giant ants and flesh-eating
pterosaurs. Even worse, Katsoros’ agenda has more to it than meets the eye, and
Grant soon fears that it doesn’t include all of them getting back alive. Will
any expedition members survive to be rescued, or will they be devoured by the
creatures indigenous peoples call the monsters in the clouds?
Russell James grew up on Long Island, New
York and spent too much time watching Chiller,
Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and The Twilight Zone, despite his parents'
warnings. Bookshelves full of Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe didn't make
things better. He graduated from Cornell University and the University of
Central Florida.
After a tour flying helicopters with the
U.S. Army, he now spins twisted tales best read in daylight. He has written the
paranormal thrillers Dark Inspiration,
Sacrifice, Black Magic, Dark Vengeance,
Dreamwalker, Q Island, and Cavern of the Damned. He has four short
story collections, Tales from Beyond,
Outer Rim, Forever Out of Time, and Deeper
into Darkness.
His wife reads what he writes, rolls her
eyes, and says "There is something seriously wrong with you." They
live in Florida with two untrainable cats.
Visit his website at
Russell James and read some free short stories.
Follow on Twitter @RRJames14, Facebook as
Russell R. James, or drop a line complaining about his writing to rrj@russellrjames.com.
