Death Brood

By Tony Monchinski

A horror unimaginable.

A nightmare that wakes every seventeen years. To feed and mate. To kill. To rape.

The only thing standing between it and us is a small, dedicated band of warriors sworn to protect humanity at any cost: The Order of the Cross.

 

When they save his life, Percy is unwittingly recruited by the Order as a teenager. Enlisted to fight, and possibly, to die. Percy may have no idea what he has gotten into, but finds himself part of a battle that has dragged on through the centuries. 

 

Seventeen years pass. The battle resumes. In a war that is about to come to a head.

 

Death Brood is the latest novella by Tony Monchinski, author of Killers of Men and Yeren.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Monchinski
• Release date: Aug 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393990512

Book preview

Author’s Note

I’ve always liked to write and read and I’ve always liked horror. I was the kid in elementary school who would write adventure stories on loose-leaf, stories where me and my friends were battling monsters and maniacs. We’d pass the stories around under our desks and read them, hoping the teachers didn’t catch us. My friends were always very encouraging and couldn’t wait for the next installment.

At the same time (elementary school age), I was watching whatever horror movies I could find. A lot of them were on TV. It’s worth noting there were a lot of good, made-for-TV horror movies back in the 70s and 80s, before cable: from Gargoyles to the first Trilogy of Terror, from Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark to Drive. As a little boy, I’d stay up late to catch viewings of The Exorcist, Jaws, and episodic television shows like Kolchak the Nightstalker or Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected (The Man From the South still stands out to me all these years later).

I would scour weekly black-and-white tabloid newspaper advertisements for newly released horror movies, marveling over the promised grotesqueries of the films. These ads bore caveats such as: Be Warned: You Will Actually See a Man Turned Inside Out (Screamers); The shocking nature of the subject matter prohibits revealing the frightening transformation that occurs in the film (The Beast Within); There is no explicit sex in this picture. However, there are scenes of violence which may be considered shocking. No one under 17 will be admitted (Dawn of the Dead). That last one is worth commenting on. 1978’s Dawn of the Dead went from an X-rating to being released without a rating in the United States; either way, no one under 17 could see the film in a theater. This only added to its allure for me. I was too young to see these movies in theaters and had to catch them later on videotape and WHT (Wometco Home Theater, an early pay television service where I grew up), but the warnings and the artwork sparked my imagination. 

My youth is gone, but I’m still writing. I have a day time job (teaching high school) which I am lucky enough to love after all these years I’ve been doing it. I don’t expect to ever make it as a successful writer as far as accolades or money goes, which isn’t a complaint or a fatalistic acceptance. I have fans I hear from who enjoy what I do, so I’d say by one measure I am successful. I write because I enjoy it, because, like Charles Bukowski, I feel I have to get it out of me, and because enough people have read what I’ve written and enjoyed it enough to encourage me to keep going. Thing is, I’d keep going anyway. Bukowski would have understood. When I write horror, I try to write what I’d want to read. Which means things tend to move fast, the horror itself is visceral when it’s not understated (there is a time and a place for both), and the characters are people I want you to care about.

In the last couple of years, I’ve started to publish directly to e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s NOOK, and Kobo. I’ve been lucky to have major publishing houses publish me, without ever having an agent I should point out, but (waa, waa!) I’ve never felt they’ve promoted my work the way they could have, and I find the sticker price on my novels with them unconscionable. Last year I published three works for free. I gave them away, not because I don’t think they have value, but because I’m fortunate enough to not be doing this for the money. That said, I priced this novella at less than a dollar. I want to see if people would read it. Good news all around I’d think: if you enjoy it, you can easily find more of my stuff out there that won’t cost you a dime; on the other hand, if you don’t like it, you’re only out a buck.

So thank you in advance for giving this a try. If you do happen to