The act of reading is an act of quiet defiance.

Books are weird.

Used to be, books were just paper things you bought at a bookstore. They still are, of course, and that’s wonderful, because all of us at Hellbender Media are avid readers, and by “avid,” what I actually mean is “voracious to the point of sometimes needing medication.”

But then, who isn’t?

But now, books are weird. Books are paper things. Books are digital things. Books are online story blogs, where everything is constantly shifting and unfolding.

And by “weird,” what I actually mean is “awesome – I love living in the future!”

Our Books

The Violet Furnace

Bobbi is a life-flight pilot with nerves of steel and a history of punching her way out of problems. But this particular medical delivery promises to test that theory.

After sending her charge into the depths of Cooper Center hospital, a partially-built half-functioning hospital in the middle of downtown, Bobbi is ready for a night of rest and tequila. But that ain’t gonna happen today.

Something has oozed from the hospital and is spreading across the roof, foaming and rolling.

Bobbi is trapped and the only way out is down through the building, directly into the heart of danger.

With her paramedic, Glen, and Catalina, a PA, she retreats into the building, mere steps ahead of an ever-growing and spreading poisonous mat of purple fungus.

The Blood-Red Night of Hatchet Valley

In this fast-paced page-turner, a group of strangers are driven down a dead-end valley to a single cabin, where they not only fight off monsters from the outside, but monsters from their own secrets as well.

The Blood-Red Night of Hatchet Valley is a terrifying thirteen-hour journey into horror, violence, bravery, and triumph.

Terror Stories from the Territories

Follow the journals of Jack Harlowe as he travels the world and brings you to stories he hears.

These aren’t ordinary stories, either. For every place on Earth, there is a dark corner, a terrifying turn, a weird non-Euclidean angle, and it is these strange places that Jack has gone to and returned from, with rich new stories.

Terror Stories from the Territories is a monthly collection of strange and weird stories, coming soon!

Close Your Eyes: Tales from the Blinkspace

A compelling mix of horror, fantasy, and the deeper kinds of emotions that are most often jangled hard when the world spins awry.

Close Your Eyes was written as part of a competition to write a new story every week for a year. Over the course of 52 weeks, it produced 55 stories, each of which offers a unique glimpse into a twisted landscape of dark fantasy.

Through the Night

In this fast-paced page-turner, a group of strangers are driven down a dead-end valley to a single cabin, where they not only fight off monsters from the outside, but monsters from their own secrets as well.

Through the Night is a terrifying thirteen-hour journey into horror, violence, bravery, and triumph.

Fully Functional: A Cross-Cultural Collaboration Reaching out to Organics

Take an AI — amazing, powerful, immortal, modular, and new to human emotions.

Add a human being — fragile, short-lived, emotional, and yet intensely alive.

Fully Functional is just how such an AI might respond, might woo, might romance, and might delight such a person. Would that we all have a partner so devoted to us that they would watch suns burn out before forgetting our faces.

Fully Functional is a collection of poetry from such a creature, a nigh-immortal AI, to its ephemeral beloved. Who says love can’t stand the test of time maybe has not known what it is to be loved by a vast AI.

Tooth, Claw & Heart: Exalting the Lupine Rampant

The world is filled with howling creatures of the night — werewolves. Most of what we know of werewolves are that they are “vicious,” how to become one, and how to kill them. But what about their point of view?

So many werewolves are just starting out, and they may be confused and upset. This is the guide to help them find their way. This is the advice every new werewolf needs (and a few older ones), on how to be the best werewolf they can be.

Written in a non-linear format, this book’s magic happens when you open it to a page at random. Chances are, that’s exactly the page you needed!

Other Books

Bizarre Tales of Horror

A collection of short horror stories written by some of the very best horror writers.

Keep the lights on as you read these stories.

The stories are awesome! …a great book to add to any collection if you love horror!

Amazon reader

The Boneyard

What goes on in the Boneyard? Does the night watchman stumble across an unearthed atrocity? Does a gravedigger find a relic that threatens mankind?

Maybe even worse.

And what happens to those who find out?

Broken Worlds

This book is about broken worlds, from families to a multiverse, where things are not what they seem or seem to be what they are: utterly broken from the top down and vice versa.

This book is also about hope, and how even in the middle of these broken worlds, even in the middle of the darkness, light may still shine brightly.

Challenge from Beyond – 2018

The 2017 round robin story by Nathan Carson, Cody Goodfellow, Dominique Lamssies, Orrin Grey, and Chad Michael Ward is on one side.

Flip it over and the winners of the Lovecraftian Micro Fiction Contest are on the other side!

2018 Challenge From Beyond contains the rare short story Call of the Needle.

Challenge from Beyond – 2021

It’s two books in one!

The 2021 Challenge From Beyond book is on one side, flip it over for the winners of the 2021 Lovecraftian Micro Fiction Contest.

This limited edition book was produced by Forbidden Futures specially for the 2021 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival Kickstarter fundraiser.

Only 200 copies were printed.

Easy Reading for Difficult Devils: An Anthology of Dark Fiction

Strange things come down from the heavens.

A medical ward is full of patients who explode. A man must dispose of a corpse for his idiot brother. A little boy finds himself trapped beneath an outhouse.

These, and others, are the strange tales contained within Easy Reading for Difficult Devils, fast stories that leave your heart and body breathless.

Finding Home

These eighteen post-apocalyptic tales focus on the phoenix, not the ashes.

After the death of a world, you start to consider the things that really matter: making the best of new worlds.

Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling

Welcome back to Fossil Lake, where the water is dark, and deep, and strange.

Fossil Lake is where wonderful mysteries and abhorrent monsters dwell together, lurking far beyond the shadowed reach of reality.

Gears and Levers 1

Twenty amazing tales set in steampunk lands by masterful storytellers including:

  • David D. Levine
  • Brenda Clough
  • Mark J. Ferrari
  • Irene Radford
  • K.L. Townsend
  • David Lee Summers
  • Shannon Page
  • Bruce Taylor
  • and more!

Happy Little Horrors II: Alienated

Happy Little Horrors is an anthology produced by editor Monique Happy.

Some of the best authors in the horror genre are represented, including David Reuben Aslin, Steven G. Bynum, Otis Carlisle, Ricky Cooper, Timothy J. Cooper, Brandon Cracraft, Stephen DeMarino, Tony Dews, Paul Du Jat, Allen Gamboa, Kenneth Goldman, Shane Gregory, Sherrie L. James, William Kingsley, Edward Martin III, Russell Proctor, Randy D. Rubin, Brandon Ryals, Amanda Shore, & Maryann Weston

Harbinger

A son encounters a strange bird while selling his mother’s house. A man goes out on a ledge to save his brother. A grieving mother is comforted by signs from the beyond. A widower receives a warning of impending doom. A garden offers a young wife hope. A visitor brings news of change.

Harbinger, the 2023 NIWA anthology, is a captivating collection of nineteen tales that revolve around the central theme of anticipation and foreboding.

The stories represent various genres, from contemporary to mind-bending science fiction to bone-chilling horror.

People Eating People

Come feast on a buffet of fiction!

In these pages you’ll find superheroes, fantasy, steampunk, corporate whistle-blowing, and a grandma passing down her ‘secret family recipe.’

But most importantly, you will discover a very special taste for people.

Stomping Grounds

Seventeen stories, seventeen monsters, all here to delight and disgust you as they return to their Stomping Grounds!

Big, sweeping, and apocalyptic in scope, or small yet insistent. Monsters here be.

Trigger Warning: Curses

Sometimes, you’re warned. Sometimes, you should know better. Sometimes, you do know better and still do it anyway. Sometimes, you just piss off the wrong person. Maybe you’ve got it coming, or maybe you don’t deserve it.

The word curse evokes many things: folk horror and witches, cursed items or places, a cycle of familial abuse, hate, and violence.

These stories delve into a myriad of visions brought to life by some of the most twisted and brilliant minds in horror today.

Undiscovered

Fifteen amazing tales from fifteen talented authors — all exploring what no one has seen before… or discovered!

In this anthology, the map and the territory are the same, and your adventure starts on page 1!

Villainy

Anger, jealousy, obsession, hatred, and murder.

Villainy comes in all shapes and sizes.

Explore the darkness of the human — and inhuman — soul.