#BlogTour ‘The Forever House’ by Tim Waggoner

About the book…

“Bram Stoker Award-winner Tim Waggoner consistently delivers the goods when it comes to hard-hitting horror fiction, with compelling characters and dangerous horrors at every turn.” – This is Horror

In Rockridge, Ohio, a sinister family moves into a sleepy cul de sac. The Eldreds feed on the negative emotions of humans, creating nightmarish realms within their house to entrap their prey. Neighbors are lured into the Eldreds’ home and faced with challenges designed to heighten their darkest emotions so their inhuman captors can feed and feed well. If the humans are to have any hope of survival, they’ll have to learn to overcome their prejudices and resentments toward one another and work together. But which will prove more deadly in the end, the Eldred . . . or each other?

Huge thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things and Flame Tree Press for the blogtour invite and gifted review copy of ‘The Forever House’ by Tim Waggoner

Horror fiction is suppoed to evince feelings of dread, discomfort, fear or sheer, outright nausea at what the story is protraying. Some writers go in for the slow burn, other, like Tim Waggoner, set their stalls out from the very first page , with an aim to twist and turn your stomach into a grotesque balloon animal of disgust and loathing.

The Eldred roll into town like a macabre Addams Family and Family Of Blood, murdering as they go. From the beginning, this werd collection of beings are signposted as being elemental beings who feed off fear, they are drawn to places where they can settle, create their very own univers and then have at the humans who inhabit it.

And the cul de sac that they move into, the house they purchase, is perfect for that purpose-an unsellable ‘murder house’ where an entire family died at the hands of a deranged parent who then killed themselves as a finale. Many moved out of the area, unable to tolerate the bloodsoaked history of their neighbours, the ones who stayed…..they have their reasons.

As the Eldred are introduced and settled in their new habitat, the sacrifice that accompanies their moving day seems like a ritual akin to the arrival of Richard Throckett Straker in ‘Salem’s Lot-in a veil of blood they arrive, and proceed to wreak havoc on an unsettled and divided community.

I love horror fiction, it is supposed to unease and unsettle you, but the more I read about the people who lived in this Rockbridge cul de sac-not sure if Rockbridge is a real place but that name, given the context of the story, really suits!-the more I wanted the Eldred to take them. Covetous, secretive, perverted desires and all, I am no shrinking violet but as a parent I found the details of the children who were murdered in the Forever House disturbing and the predilections of one of the humans towards the child of their neighbour deeply unsettling.

The humans moan, and whinge and behave appallingly with little regard to the feelings of others-I am unsure if that is the intention of the author to have a reader rooting for the Eldred but that was the effect on me. They may have been brutally sadistic killers, but they were being true to their nature whilst the humans obfuscate, deceive and mistreat their loved ones. As they set up a miniature universe in their back garden in which to ensnare their prey, like the world’s most violent reality tv show, I found it hard to care who would survive the oncoming wave of death.

This is the first novel I have read by Tim Waggoner, what I enjoyed about it was the sense that he was creating something very different, he had an entire world in which the Eldred inhabited completely mapped out yet made totally accessible to the reader. Horrific, gory and stomach clenching by turns, if you visit the ‘Forever House’, make sure you have a strong disposition and leave your inhibitions on the doorstep as you wipe your feet on the Welcome mat. The Eldred will be pleased to invite you in and lend you a cup of sugar….

About the author…

Tim Waggoner has published nearly fifty novels and seven short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal, among others.

He’s won the Bram Stoker Award and has been a finalist for both the Shirley Jackson Award and the Scribe Award.

He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

Twitter @timwaggoner @FlameTreePress @annecater

Links-http://www.timwaggoner.com/