Tim Curran

Can I please get a slow clap started? I seriously believe that Blackout deserves one, because I loved this story. So very, very much. I adore when perfectly normal citizens are suddenly thrown into tense survival situations. No special training. No understanding of what's going. These people are running off pure instinct which, more often than not, leads to one emotional story. I felt for these characters. I understood their terror and their hopelessness. Tim Curran places a simple question show more in front of the reader. When there is nothing but desolation and destruction on the horizon, do you give in or do you fight back?

Massive points go to Curran for making me feel so connected to these characters, even though this was only a novella length story. I cringed. I cheered. I felt the pit of my stomach drop to my knees as the full understanding of what was going on came crashing down around me. Each time I read a story like this, I'm reminded that it doesn't matter how long a story is. It only matters how hard the writer works to get you involved. I felt like I was a part of Blackout, and it was one harrowing experience.

Five, black as night stars to this story. I want more. show less

Charlie Petty is a man known for having ice water in his veins. He never backs down and is never shaken but unfortunately has stirred up the wrong crowd. As a degenerate gambler, his luck has run out, and his debt has now come due. Charlie is offered a chance to clear his debt: simply stay alone on a ship overnight to prove to its owner and potential crew that it’s not cursed or haunted. Never mind the ship’s history of suicide, violence, mutiny and murder. Or how the ship’s past crews show more have all gone missing or insane. The fact that no one has set foot on deck in the darkness for years doesn’t faze Charlie one bit. It sounds like easy money to bust up a superstition or two. Charlie thinks his luck is returning. Little does he know it’s about to run out completely.
Charlie is a gambling addict as well as a womanizer, He finds himself deeply in debt to a loan shark, and to make matters worse, he's secretly sleeping with the loan shark's girlfriend. It seems, at least for now, that the "cheating" appears to have slipped under the loan shark's radar. The shark, Arturo, is only concerned with the fifty-thousand dollars. Actually, he's ready to forgive and forget the entire lump sum, if Charlie will agree to spend the night in the haunted captain's cabin of the Yvonne Addams. Oh ...did I mention that the cursed ship is has been sitting at anchor for the last year? I thought there had to be a good reason for that and Charlie might be better off with the loan shark:)

The ship's history would make a "best seller" by itself. Can you say, "spooky night around the campfire"? The Yvonne Addams is full of holes and also filled with "assumptions" about the long since dead, or missing crew members...100% creepy. However, our Charlie believes that fifty-thousand dollars just to survive one night on board seemed "too good to be true", and this reader totally shared Charlie's doubts...and wondered what Arturo really knows, and what his true intentions might be. That question results in a clever little "flourish" at the stories end, but it has been very successful in at least getting Charlie to at least wonder if he has made the wrong decision and again setting him yet again adrift on the sea of doubt. Charlie says on the sea a lot in this story,

On board the Yvonne Addams, along with Charlie, we encounter the dim, gloomy, cold, claustrophobic atmosphere. Even if this ship wasn't said to be haunted, Charlie's below decks exploration would be unsettling all by itself. Sneaky author Tim Curran now begins messing with our minds almost immediately with the suggestion of things heard, seen, and felt . . . and the intimation of what those things might actually be. Very carefully he builds up the fear and horror, escalating the story to the point where we're prepared to accept Charlie's strange, bloody dreams as memories of what has happened before. By the time Charlie starts to explore the ship, challenging those dreams, we know in our very hearts that things are not going to end well.

There's a monster at the heart of this story. A monster worse than any mere spook or poltergeist, and it's exciting to watch as it's ever so slowly revealed. This is the type of story that leaves the reader picking at invisible spiderwebs as you creep across the room to turn on just one more light. This is not a story that is in anyway subtle. It's so chillingly methodical as it builds and then explodes in intensity. A fantastic read...but best not done in the dark:) show less

One would think that juicy, tender, succulent, meat raining down free from the sky would be a good thing. But no, this flavorful, perfectly seasoned, filet and well marbled shank is not a gift from heaven, and the people of Birch Street are not blessed on this day. When Bria comes home for a visit to her mother's house in the ultimate dysfunctional relationship she is not expecting a peaceful good time, but she never expected the entire neighborhood to go to hell.

You'll need a strong stomach show more for this one! Bad Girl in the box is a raunchy, gruesome, and gory read full of open festering sores and gallons of pus. It is beyond dark and twisted and definitely not something to be read on a lunch break, or even while snacking, unless you have a stomach made of steel and nonexistent gag reflex. I may need to go vegetarian for a while after reading this.


I received a complimentary copy. show less

If you don’t have a lot of time, but need a quick scare, Tim Curran’s Corpse Rider is a great read and definitely fits into the horror genre. When I first picked this one up, which I received as a gift, I was a little dismayed at its length: a paltry 108 pages total. Given my reading speed, that’s about two hours of my time and I tend to find that short works leave something to be desired by the time I finish them. In this case, Curran stunned me: he not only brings into existence a show more creature so disturbing as to give me the willies, but also wraps it up beautifully: there is nothing left to wonder after the story has concluded.

Christina is your average woman, nearing the age of thirty with no husband, no children, and a job that, though boring, pays the bills. Her days are spent at work, spending time with her friend and co-worker, Nancy, and visiting her mother’s grave. One day, while at the cemetery paying her respects, Christina decides that to do something good and selfless: clear the neglected grave of a tombstone that clearly hasn’t received any visitors in years. From there, Christina finds herself caught up in a nightmare that she cannot free herself from.

Charles Slick was, in life, an unfortunate man. Doomed to bear his family’s curse, he gained unsavory attention from those around him. As he descended into his own personal madness, things around him began to go wrong, and in the end, he was never given the eternal rest that we are promised.

Curran visits upon Christina horrors of the worst sort: ones that, as a young woman haunted by what her mother wanted for her, succeeded in making my skin crawl. In this short work, Curran has woven the dark history of a family that is so hauntingly detailed that, if he wanted to, he could easily expand it into something much, much longer. In fact, I’d watch a movie based on Corpse Rider. show less