If you have yet to read Ronald Malfi, I can't stress enough that you should start now. From his haunting novel of loss, Come With Me, to his newly released horror novel, Black Mouth, his star is rising and he shows no signs of letting up.
His second outing this year is arriving on October 4th and it shows his proficiency in the genre extends to shorter stories as well.
Ghostwritten is a book of four novellas that are connected through themes and certain characters. Each one could be read as a standalone story and you would be satisfied and frightened by any of them. However, reading them from start to finish makes this feel almost like a novel due to the nature of each novella.
The themes are all about the written word, whether that be a manuscript, scribbling on a wall, an internet story, or even a pop-up book.
In the first novella, a novel written by a famous author isn't cursed... but the story itself is. And this curse will go to great bloody lengths to not be altered or changed in any way (as a screenwriter horrifically finds out).
The second offering follows two brothers who are tasked with a job to deliver a book that's in a briefcase with extremely specific instructions. This novella has the feel of an episode of The Twilight Zone as things don't go as planned and their lives start unraveling along the way.
A creepy lonely kid with no friends adds to the terror of our third story. He's trying to make friends and invites other kids to his birthday party. But he has a pop-up book that can shift reality and, once he's found "friends", he has no intention of letting them go.
The final entry finds a man trying to figure out why an ex co-worker commited suicide. This leads him to places he's never thought possible with a dark web choose your own adventure type game that has frightening real world consequences.
Ronald Malfi is one of those authors that keeps on giving and this book proves he's just as adept with shorter stories as well as his novels. Be sure to pre-order Ghostwritten and, for my full review, check out my Horror Reads
YouTube channel.
I hope to pick up Black Mouth soon!