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J.M.Lamoreux

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PRESS RELEASE KIT
for J.M.Lamoreux publications

This is the press kit (1). Included here are a PDF of the book cover (2), a pres release in "Word" (3)an email addres to request a review copy in PDF or printed (4) and an author biography (5).

#1 Entire Kit in PDF With Photos #2 Press Release in "Word" #3 Review copy upon request Review Copy #4 Author Biography   Reviews PATIENT 444 AND OTHER SHORT STORIES J.M. Lamoreux Self-published 2005 E-book 92pgs ISBN 1-4116-3770-4

Self-published work can often be of erratic quality, but happily this is an exception, and in fact is a well-polished product of laudable quality. The book contains some nice illustrations, also designed by Lamoreux. It is generally good work that adds to the stories, enhancing the atmosphere and helping to support the tone throughout the book, something that can be disrupted by the transition between short stories. The stories themselves are mostly horror with a touch of the supernatural; _The Helmet_ and _The Egg_ do not fall into any genre category at all, and _The Killing Tree_ would probably have been more effective without the distracting supernatural elements. The rest contain a mix of familiar horror and ghost story tropes, such as the mad, the broken and betrayed, both living and dead. We are also treated to slightly more weird entities, such as a phantasmal wolf pack and a spectre which is touching rather than terrifying. Stand-out tales are _The Water Master_, _The Shed_ , and the titular _Patient 444_. The latter is flawed and its component parts sometimes only loosely connected, but it works. _The Water Master_ is perhaps my favourite story in the collection, with the slightly King-esque _The Shed_ a close second. The weaker stories are _The Ghost of the Mall Bathroom_, which suffers from some of the problems I will describe shortly, and _Apartment 235_, which ends weakly. Lamoreux's writing style is fluid and well-paced, with some excellent imagery and descriptive work. He has also penned one of my favourite lines of recent times: "no light dancing on the cones and rods of those dead eyes", in _The Shed_). Characterisation is mostly solid. Some characters are shallow 'bad guys' without redeeming features, which is a shame, but they fit their parts well enough. The book would have been helped by some outside editing - typos are rare but there is some occasional odd grammar, and instead of a "Foreword" we get a "Forward". My main issue with many of the stories in this collection is that too much is explained, and too little is left open for the reader to interpret, or left unsaid to simply unsettle and disturb. In horror fiction, and its predecessor, the ghost story, what is often most terrifying is that which is not explained. Darkness is terrifying. Mystery is unsettling. To some extent, we all still fear what we cannot see, or understand. Stories like _The Shed_ capture this well. Others fail to induce horror because we, the reader, are told what occurred to generate some horror or spectre, or are granted the omniscience of the narrator. This leads on to another recurrent issue: the narrator is often overly intrusive, and often inconsistent within one story. A story might utilise a third-person perspective, only to switch to a chatty style as the narrator intrudes into the story to explain things to us. This can to some extent be understood, as many of these stories arise out of Lamoreux's local folklore, but this intrusion hurts the stories more than it helps. Also, I found the constant enclosure of certain colloquialisms and brand names in quote marks a little tiresome. Overall, although flawed, this is a good collection of stories, and despite my gripes makes for enjoyable reading. Anyone interested in some honest horror stories steeped in Americana and folklore should investigate this. J.M. Lamoreux's _Patient 444 and other short stories_ is available for download from his website, www.jmlamoreux.com, for a very reasonable $3, or alternatively in print for $10.

Shaun Green, UK