#Spooktober ‘Johnny Halloween’ by Norman Partridge

About the book…

Norman Partridge’s Halloween novel, ‘Dark Harvest’, was chosen as one of Publishers Weekly’s 100 Best Books of 2006. A Bram Stoker Award winner and World Fantasy nominee, Partridge’s rapid-fire tale of a small town trapped by its own shadows welcomed a wholly original creation, the October Boy, earning the author comparisons to Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Shirley Jackson.

Now Partridge revisits Halloween with a collection featuring a half-dozen stories celebrating frights both past and present. In “The Jack o’ Lantern,” a brand new Dark Harvest novelette, the October Boy races against a remorseless döppelganger bent on carving a deadly path through the town’s annual ritual of death and rebirth. “Johnny Halloween” features a sheriff battling both a walking ghost and his own haunted conscience. In “Three Doors,” a scarred war hero hunts his past with the help of a magic prosthetic hand, while “Satan’s Army” is a real Partridge rarity previously available only in a long sold-out lettered edition from another press.

But there’s more to this holiday celebration besides fiction. “The Man Who Killed Halloween” is an extensive essay about growing up during the late sixties in the town where the Zodiac Killer began his murderous spree. In an introduction that explores monsters both fictional and real, Partridge recalls what it was like to live in a community menaced by a serial killer and examines how the Zodiac’s reign of terror shaped him as a writer.

Halloween night awaits. Join a master storyteller as he explores the layers of darkness that separate all-too-human evil from the supernatural. Let Norman Partridge lead you on seven journeys through the most dangerous night of the year, where no one is safe…and everyone is suspect.

If you happened to have read any of my #Spooktober posts from last year, you’ll see that Norman’s ‘Dark Harvest’ was a firm favourite, so I was stoked to see I had more Halloween themed treats to enjoy, in the shape of ‘Johnny Halloween:Tales Of The Dark Season’ published in e-book or hardcover formats by Cemetery Dance.

Boy, Norman sure packs a whole heap of story into this short collection of 6 stories and 1 essay, all based in, and around, Halloween.

And there is a welcome return to the world of the October Boy, which was incredibly satisfying, and yet left me wanting more.

The essay on the effect of the Zodiac killer on his small community of Vallejo, is placed in the middle of his fictional tales, leading you to reflect on the impact of real life, versus make believe horror. That it is called ‘The Man Who Killed Halloween’ is so impactful, reading how it side-lined a celebration of all things scary by a seemingly uncatchable human monster, who could be anyone in your neighbourhood, any at all, is properly terrifying.

This is a love letter to the season of scares, which takes the notion of trick or treat and turns it completely upside down, in a all too real tale where those who enjoy the spooky season are systematically oppressed, run down and even killed.

There are beasts, ghosts, and the Pumpkin headed October Boy, which gives a fresh spin on a night which tends to be based around re-telling of old tales, old myths and legends. In Wales, we have this tradition called the Mari Lwyd, which still goes on to this day, we believe in corpse candles, and black dogs, changeling beings and goddesses made from flowers. And don’t forget the dragons. So as a child brought up on the oral story telling tradition, I have absolutely no problem buying into the notion of other worlds, cracks in the fabric of it through which the wary viewer can spy all kinds of things.

Norman Partridge’s works are perfect for these darkening evenings, they make you wonder what is hiding behind the rustling of the leaves, what is lurking in the shadows. They are stories that leave you on tenterhooks, leave you wondering and in this reader’s humble opinion, that is a priceless gift that any writer can give a reader. They take up space in your mind and linger.

About the author…

Links-https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/revelations-norman-partridge/

https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-norman-partridge/