Voice
By: Joseph Garraty
Paperback: 354 pages (Kindle) (Nook)
- Publisher: Ragman Press LLC (June 22, 2011)
Genre: Horror
Kick a*s, motherf*ckin rock n roll! Okay, sorry. Just finished reading Voice and am feeling all psyched and rammy now. With a blend of horror, rock and roll, no-holds-barred attitude and black evil, all rolled into one not-so-pretty package (well, okay, the cover is pretty awesome), Voice is a story that will entrap you within it's pages from start to finish. Just to give you an idea, here is a taste from the Prologue:
The voice that comes out is nothing like a human voice, singing nothing like human words. It's vast and deep, oily and ravenous, and it pounds into your brain like a meat hammer. The pressure is crushing, mounting, thunderous, and you forget that this is a recording and you can turn it off at any time, you forget everything except that your brain is being pulped by a godawful, godless sound that shouldn't even exist, a sound like tectonic plates grinding corpses into fields of broken glass, and then, incredibly, the sound gets worse, and you open your mouth to scream, and -
How's that for an opening?! Voice is the story of a band whose lead singer, John, will do anything to get his name in lights. For over a year, he has been pounding away at small gigs with little to nothing to show for it. It is when he sees lead guitarist Case at work, he knows he must bring her over to his side. Once he does, John feels a bit closer to reaching the high life, but not quite there yet. One night, after a less than stellar gig, John meets Douglas. Douglas knows John's deepest desires, more importantly, Douglas knows how to give John all of his dreams on a blood encrusted platter. No price is to high for John to pay. Once the deal is sealed, lives will change forever, screams will ring eternal and blood will flow. All of this, the day Johnny Tango was born...
Have I mentioned that I absolutely loved Voice?! If you haven't caught that vibe yet, I am screaming it out now. It is not often that I come across a book that combines elements of horror and hard-hitting rock and roll. This story takes the reader on a journey from the band, Ragman's, very beginning until it's very end. It was incredibly intriguing to get a glimpse into the hard work and sweat that goes into getting a band out there and heard. Of course with Voice, there is plenty more than hard work and sweat that goes into the band.
I loved Case. She is a take-no-crap woman who knows what she wants and isn't afraid of anything. She can also play a mean guitar. Danny is John's brother and the band's drummer. I loved his character as well - for me he seemed very "human". Quentin, the bass player grew on me and probably left me the most emotional. John? What can I say about John...
I am going to honestly say that Voice by Joseph Garraty is one of my favorite reads thus far this year. Mr. Garraty emits eerie and creepy horror all over the place with his story. He also achieves this without overplaying the "gore" card, which for me is a HUGE plus. Yes, there are a few graphic scenes, but mildly so and not over-the-top like many horror stories can go. Also, just to give you an idea of how much I loved this book, I received a copy of it for free for the Pump Up Your Book! tour, in exchange for my review. However, I found myself purchasing a copy for my Nook Color just so that I could read it in bed. Yes, I was that hooked!!
In any case, I cannot wait to read more by Joseph Garraty. He is an amazing talent with an amazing writing voice. I cannot recommend Voice enough to those who love a good horror or just plain eerie/edge-of-your-seat reading!
About Voice:
Local rock band Ragman is finally taking off. Stephanie Case's flamboyant performances and scorching guitar work have started attracting crowds, and singer John Tsiboukas--aka Johnny Tango--is delivering the best performances of his life. After months of playing to dead rooms, it looks like success is at hand.
The thing is, there's something wrong with Johnny's voice. Until just a few weeks ago, he couldn't hit the right pitch if you painted a target on it and let him stand real close. Now he sounds amazing. . . and strange things happen every time he sings. Lights burn out. Whole rooms become cold and hushed. People get violent.
For Johnny and Case, Ragman is a ticket out of a life of meaningless, dead-end jobs and one lousy gig after another, but as the weirdness surrounding Johnny begins to turn into outright nightmare, they find that the price of stardom might be higher than either of them could ever have imagined.
Excerpt:
“Get in,” Douglas said.
John stared, openly gawking at the sleek black car parked at the curb. He didn’t know from cars, but this one was forty years old if it was a day, and yet it was so pristine it glistened in the moonlight. It had a hungry look to it, poised to leap though it wasn’t even running yet. “This is your ride?”
“Yeah. Nineteen-seventy Charger. They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Get in.”
The car started with a throaty growl, and John barely got in before Douglas peeled away from the curb. The lights of Wichita Falls, Texas, faded in the rearview mirror, and in a surprisingly short period of time, they were in the middle of nowhere. No streetlights, no house lights, no lights of any kind other than the stars and a fat, pale moon. This country seemed somehow slippery in time. Away from the road and the power lines, it could have been yesterday, or a hundred years ago. Maybe two hundred. Perhaps the illusion would disappear in the daylight—there’d be a tractor in the fields, airplanes overhead, something—but right now he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had invaded an earlier era. The few houses they passed with their electric porch lights seemed to shrink against the surrounding darkness.
John’s cell phone rang, and he jumped. He took it from his pocket, looked at the small screen. Danny. John turned the phone off.
“Where are we going?” he asked at last.
Douglas’s face was ghostly in the light from the dash. “You’ve heard of Robert Johnson?”
“Yeah. Blues guy.”
“The blues guy. He inspired Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix—all those guys. You know the story they tell about him?”
“Sure. Everybody knows that one. He went down to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil.” John tried to laugh, but it died in his throat.
Douglas nodded. “He was nobody once, just like everybody else. Just a kid living on a plantation who wanted to play the blues more than anything else. He worked like hell, but it came slow.” His mouth twitched in a smile that was gone a second later. “You know how it is.
“He heard stories, though. If you wanted something bad enough, you went down to a certain crossroads at night, and you waited. There was a price to pay, of course, but there’s always a price to pay.”
“Nobody gets out alive,” John muttered.
“Yeah.” Douglas pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, separated one from the pack, and stuck it in his mouth. He offered the pack to John, but John waved him off. Douglas pushed the round knob of the car’s cigarette lighter into the dash. Wow, John thought. You don’t see those anymore.
Douglas continued, his hoarse voice sharp over the rumble of the engine. “So, one night, Robert put his guitar in the case and went for a long walk. Down to the crossroads. He waited around, and before too long he heard the sound of footsteps on the packed dirt behind him.
“He turned around, and there was a man there—a big man, in a black suit. The man didn’t say anything. He simply held out his hand. Robert put the case on the ground and took out his guitar. He looked from the guitar to the big man’s hand and back, and then he handed the guitar over.
“The man in the black suit tuned the guitar. He played just six notes, one for each string, and twisted the tuning pegs until each string seemed to sing all by itself. Then he handed the guitar back and walked off down the road.”
The lighter popped out of the dash, and Douglas lit his cigarette. The tip glowed redly in the darkness.
“When Robert woke up the next morning, he was the best blues player the world had ever known.”
“Cute,” John said. “He didn’t exactly live happily ever after, though.”
“Nope. He died when he was twenty-seven.”
“Like Kurt Cobain,” John said.
“And Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.”
“And Jim Morrison.”
The man grinned. John shuddered and stared out the window. A possum glared up at him from the side of the road, its eyes reflecting an eerie, baleful yellow-green, its thick, grotesque rat tail curling around behind it. What the hell am I doing here? he asked himself without much conviction. This guy’s nuts.
The possum slipped off into the ditch. The car streaked by, and Johnny tried not to look into the darkness after the creature. He was suddenly convinced there would be other things out there looking back.
“So we’re going to Mississippi,” John said. The sarcasm tasted like dust in his mouth.
“No. There are other places where the world is thin. I think I know all of them by now.” Douglas stared forward still, his eyes shrouded and blank. “But we are going to the crossroads. How’s that grab you, Johnny?”
John turned back to the window. Douglas was nuts, he knew. But suppose John took him seriously. Suppose they were headed to the crossroads. How did that grab him?
The coffin was inevitable. Even at twenty-two, John knew that. You lived your allotted span and then they dumped you into a hole. And after that? He found it difficult to credit an eternity full of harps and angels and hosannahs. Nothing in the world he’d seen suggested that such was likely, while the alternative seemed evident in every headline, every atrocity, and every petty act of duplicity around him every day. John had never believed much in God, and he didn’t see any reason to start now. The devil, though? That guy had his hand in everything. Might as well take it when it was offered and get the most you could out of your threescore and ten.
Or even one score and seven?
Yeah. Even that.
“Just drive,” John said.
About Joseph Garraty:
Joseph Garraty is an author of dark fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He has worked as a construction worker, rocket test engineer, environmental consultant, technical writer, and deadbeat musician. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
His latest book is the horror novel, Voice.
You can visit his website at www.josephgarraty.com.
Connect with Joseph at Twitter atwww.twitter.com/JosephGarraty.
Okay, I admit, I had never even heard of Emotobooks before Ron Gavalik asked me if I
would be interested in checking them out. Now, I am extremely excited about this form of literature and am thrilled to be able to introduce my readers to it as well. Ron was also kind enough to provide me with a copy of his magazine to check out for myself. I have to admit that I am loving it so far. I will have a full and complete review on it when I finish, so please be on the lookout for that later this week. For right now, I would like to say a huge thank you to Ron for taking the time to write a guest post for me to share on Cafe of Dreams. Please sit back, relax, and learn about the world of Emotobooks!
Shut Your Eyes Tight
Voice
by Deborah Lawrenson. I received this yesterday for a tour stop/review for TLC Book Tours and I cannot wait to get started. The cover is gorgeous and the story sounds magnificent. Here's a bit of info about it:
The Final Victim
, available in paperback from Comfort Publishing. In addition to One with Trestle Press, Miller has participated in the Author’s Lab series. His turn with Giovanni Gelati, 
, received high praise as a family-friendly story. Miller is also the author of Trestle’s upcoming release Daniel’s Lot. Daniel’s Lot is a novel adaptation of the faith-based movie of the same name starring Emmy Award winner Gary Burghoff (Radar on M*A*S*H). The movie is available on DVD from Bridgestone Multimedia and will soon be appearing on syndicated cable.
