Malasz

Well, that could’ve gone better. Saru had found the blue-eyed girl alright, but she’d blown up half of Philadelphia in the process. Whoops. Now she was a fugitive, robbed of her implants, relying on her "wits," hunted by aliens, Gods, and the monstrous spawn of fornicating universes. It was a crap deal, but it wasn’t all bad. She’d stolen a plane, a luxury model with a fully stocked minibar. And she had company, a rogue Gaesporan named John. And there was something strangely liberating about having screwed up so badly you couldn’t really do worse. Cloud Country is the sequel to No Dogs in Philly and picks up within hours of its end. The story reads a bit like a bad acid trip version of Alice in Wonderland —I don't mean that as a complement. It's all about Saru wandering around aimlessly in real and imagined landscapes, encountering people, aliens, and monsters who want to do her harm. It isn't until about three-quarters of the way through that the point of it al...

I first heard about Jeremy Robert Johnson (JRJ) from Girl on Demand's POD-dy Mouth blog back in 2006. Her enthusiastic review of his short story collection, Angel Dust Apocalypse , led me to my first indie book purchase. I was not disappointed . After writing two short novels, Siren Promised (co-written with Alan Clark and nominated for a Bram Stoker award) and The Extinction Journals , he focused on his publishing company, Swallowdown Press. Unlike most indie authors who form a publishing company under false pretense of being anything other than a vehicle for the author's own work, JRJ actually publishes the work of other indie authors that he enjoys (Forrest Armstrong, J. David Osborne, and Cody Goodfellow to name a few). We Live Inside You is JRJ's second short story collection, featuring his work published between 2006 and 2011. When I found out that JRJ finally got around to publishing another collection of his short stories, I had to pick up a copy. From the cover...