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REVIEW: Robert E. Dunn - Motorman

Genre: Horror / Sci-Fi

Publisher: Necro Publications

Publication Date: 15^th May 2016

Pages: 105

MY REVIEW:

A copy of Motorman by Robert E. Dunn was sent to Confessions of a Reviewer by the author via Hook of a Book, in exchange for an honest review. This is said review. This book is published by Necro Publications.

This is one of those occasions where I get a chance at reviewing a new book coming out after connecting with the author on Facebook and Twitter and discovering he is one of the good guys. Robert E Dunn and I connected a few months ago and I have to say it has been a pleasure getting to know him. We did the cover reveal for Motorman a couple of months back, and what a cover it is.

This of course brings in the normal disclaimer that just because we connect on social media, this does not gain any favours from me when it comes to reviewing.

This is my first experience of reading Mr Dunn. This is what I thought.

Johnny Burris is a mechanic. A very good one by all accounts. After his latest job goes wrong due to a murder in which he was involved, he is on the run.

He ends up hiding out in a small town where no one knows him. He manages to get a job as a mechanic again. He tries to keep himself to himself but cannot help but be charmed by two sisters. Their daddy is a strange type of doctor that notices Johnny’s good hands and wants him to take over his work when he is gone. Work not on cars, but creating monsters from severely injured humans.

Johnny has a choice to make. Put his hands to good use or start running again.

This is a story that I cannot give you too much detail on it for fear of spoiling it for you. In terms of our characters, Johnny is the main man. He seems to be a decent sort of a fella. Not too smart but not the dumbest around and he certainly has a flare for working with his hands. He has found himself in his current situation more by bad luck than anything else. He really just wants to disappear and work on cars. The two women he is torn between, Emma and Bella are sisters. Not your normal sisters though. They are dedicated to the work of their daddy, a weird doctor with even weirder methods of looking after his patients.

The plot is really in two parts. You have Johnny on the run and trying to make a life where no one knows him then you have the surreal world he has entered where the doctor and the sisters live a secret life involving keeping people alive at all costs.

Surreal is the main word that stuck in my mind both while reading this one and for a few hours after I had finished it. Robert Dunn has created a strange town with even stranger inhabitants living an even stranger again life. Trying to describe the atmosphere that this book exudes is not easy. It’s sort of like Frankenstein meets Westworld.

There are a few elements within the story that still have me wondering what they were about. There is a constant reference to a blue light and blue gunge but you never really find out where this has come from or who introduced it. I don’t know if there are plans to expand on this novella any but a bit more of an explanation about that would be good.

The one thing that really blew my mind was the idea behind the doctor’s creations. What Mr Dunn has done in this part of the book is create something that is both mesmerising but horrific at the same time. Again I cannot give you details for fear of spoiling the book for you but when you read it you will totally understand. As I mentioned before it is like a modern day Frankenstein utilising todays modern technology and the images this presents to you are fascinating and creepy as hell. The final couple of chapters of this story are exceptional for having you on the edge of your seat with your jaw hanging open wondering just what the hell is going on.

This is a fairly quick read being a novella. I would love to see it expanded on and either further novellas using the same main story line or a full novel. I think the idea behind the story has a lot of mileage left in it and could make a wonderfully gruesome story. Robert Dunn certainly has the imagination and the writing skills to pull it off.

To summarise: a story that is hard to pin down to a specific genre. A bit of sci-fi with a bit of horror with a bit of stuff that is impossible to categorise. A quick read that has some of the best imaginative writing I have read for a while. Puts a new perspective on how much people love their cars!

General rating:

★★★★ enjoyable first read of Mr Dunn

Horror rating:

★★★★ scary weird.

If you would like to help support Confessions of a Reviewer, then please consider using the links below to buy Motorman or any other books from Robert. This not only supports me but also lets me know how many people actually like to buy books after reading my reviews.

Thanks.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Book Synopsis:

Running from a night of humiliation and murder, Johnny Burris leaves the city and his junkyard home, fleeing into the Ozarks countryside. While on the road, mysterious streaks of blue light in the night sky drive him into a forgotten bit of nowhere lost in the hills. Johnny thinks he’s found home and good work in an odd little gas station from another time.

Johnny quickly gets pulled into a world where the cars aren’t the only things all chromed out and everything seems touched with the energy of the flying blue streaks that led Johnny there.

Enticed and torn between two sisters, one an outcast for her normality, the other a beautiful monster, Johnny becomes the pawn of their father. The old man is both the town’s mechanic and its Doctor. He’s looking for a replacement and Johnny Burris is the man with just the right skills.

When Johnny learns the truth behind the doctor’s plans, he runs, taking one of the “normal” sisters with him. But the town, and the girl, turn out to be even more than he imagined. And his whole world comes down to just one choice, live as a monster, making monsters or die like a man. If he chooses to die, who will he take with him?

Robert Dunn (1960) was an Army brat born in Alabama and finally settled in Nixa, Missouri. A graduate of Drury College with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communications/Film he also earned a second major in Philosophy with a minor in Religion and carried an emphasis in Theatre. This course of study left him qualified only to be a televangelist.

An award winning film/video producer and writer, he has written scripts for or directed every kind of production from local 30-second television commercial spots to documentary productions and travelogues.

A writer of blognovels and contributor to various fiction websites his work has also included the book length prose poem, Uncle Sam, the collection of short stories, Motorman and Other Stories and novel, Behind the Darkness.

Mr. Dunn now resides in Kansas City where he continues to write genre fiction and experiment with mixed media art projects using hand drawn and painted elements combined through digital paint and compositing.

And for more about Robert, visit his site or find him on social media:

Website – Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads – Amazon Page

The Red Highway

GUEST POST: Confessions of my Past, Present and Future #30 - Robert E. Dunn 17/04/2016

Confessions of my Past, Present and Future

Robert E. Dunn

The Past

The question everyone gets when talking about the book’s they’ve written is, who were your influences? That’s a question, both casual and serious. Casually speaking, it’s basic curiosity to wonder who we think about when we try to be our best. Every author can give you a list of the people that inspired them. All writers are readers by nature. In fact, it is from that nature that the desire to tell our own stories come. An honest list from any of us would give a few surprises, like hearing that your favorite rocker also has a thing for Yo-Yo Ma.

I’ve admitted many times that I grew up on comic books. I had hundreds of copies of 1960’s and early 1970’s comics. They were mostly DC and the old horror comics from Warren like Eerieand Creepy. A lot of us kids on military bases could not come up with the change for all the comics we wanted so we used to trade. That created both an opportunity for more reading and a community within which to share. That’s is an amazing incubator for any writer.

Casually, I will tell you that my influences are kind of obvious for a writer of horror or spec fiction. Aside from the comics, I read a lot of classics by Poe, Lovecraft, Burroughs, Robert Lewis Stevenson, that kind of thing. Later I discovered Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and the hundreds of authors in those orbits. The book that most defined me and my reading at the time was a copy of Adventures In Time And Space that I kept, with a duct taped spine, until it was lost in a house fire in 2009.

Later, after discovering William Peter Blatty and the nightmare The Exorcist inspired, I began seeking out the horrible more than anything else. That, of course, led to Stephen King. My first exposure and forever my favorite was Salem’s Lot.

Seriously though, the other side of the, who influenced you, question is really, who laid the path you hope to walk? There are so many writers that I read and wish I could match in skill or out-put. But, in the 1970’s, Stephen King started something. He, his books anyway, made it okay to be known as a horror writer. Before him, there was acceptable literary horror that was not so scary or pulp horror that was usually, well, pulpy. Horror had not yet developed the kind of geek culture that it has now. You had Universal horror monsters and Japanese big stompy things, or Vampirella and Aurora, glow in the dark models defining horror.

King said, horror is just another kind of good story and he defined it by writing well, not by what he wrote. There were others, yes but he was the name that was on everyone’s radar. He was our poster-boy just like Lucas/Spielberg became the touchstones for the movie geeks out there.

By writing a series of books that were called horror, but were really just good books and good stories, King and the other big names, Straub, Matheson, Barker, Koontz, Herbert and others created a market that has bloomed into the most prolific, and exciting niche in publishing. Horror has the largest, most active small publishing community out there. It has the most diverse readership that supports everything from, weird western to splatter horror, cryptids to sparkly vampires. I believe that would all be there without those big names but I also believe it would still be fringe instead of the commercial force it is. And the one thing those reader groups have in common is Stephen King. We all read him. We may not worship, some do, but I bet we can all tell you a favorite of his.

The Present

I can give you a list of the writers I read. I have shared my list with pretty much everyone many times. In fact, that has become most of my social media presence, finding the writers I enjoy and basically saying thank you. I make a pest of myself sometimes just expressing how much the work of other author’s means to me. I’ve never met or talked with Stephen King. I don’t expect to. But he made the path so many of us have started out on. We all add our own trails but when we say, I write horror, someone will always ask, Like Stephen King? No, not like King but, in a small part, because of him. Thanks, Mr. King.

These days I don’t actually read King as much. The new stuff that is. He’s gone his direction and I’ve gone mine. These days I’m reading Richard Kadrey’s books, Jonathan Maberry, Nick Cutter, Joe Lansdale, Chuck Wendig and of course Hunter Shea.

Yeah I like monsters and I like the monstrous. There are so many others it’s impossible to simply list the authors we read. I imagine it will be the same in the future. I have turned my daughters into geeks. They remind me of this every chance they get. One is more into Tudor history than she is into zombies but she’ll go to any monster movie with dad. The other two are D&D loving, ghost hunting, chips off the ol’ block. So that’s really my future.

The Future

There is another future though, more in the realm of hopes than expectation. I hope to see the horror I love become the horror everyone can relate to. It does that by inclusion. I don’t think my daughters have any interest in becoming horror writers but if they ever express any, I’ll be right there cheering them on. To any other women who want to write a scary, or gory, or just plain creepy book, I say go for it. Actually I’m asking, please go for it. Everything is changing, publishing, marketing, reading. Finding new voices is the only way the most exciting of genres stays relevant and expands.

To the writers I know, most of us white guys writing white guy characters, we can help the future unfold in the best of ways. Support a woman who wants to write the same way we support the guy’s. Support the writers of color with your interest in their point of view and experiences. Step out of your comfort zone and write a character that is very different from you, female main characters, gay heroes, African antagonists. Then treat them the way you do every other character, put them through hell and kick their butts while you make them grow. I think it will be good for us all.

In 2045 I will turn 85, with any luck. I started novel writing late in life after having made my living writing for corporations and more than anything else, video programming. It was probably the day to day making a living thing that made me need to write a novel. Then the next one and the next one after that. Life builds on itself I think. In that sense we’re all these walking bits of coral reef.

I hope I’m still writing so close to the center of this century. I hope a few people know my name and one or two buy a book. If nothing else, as long as I breathe I know I will be reading. I can’t wait to see what scares the books have in store for me.

You can buy The Red Highway here.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

You can buy any of Robert’s other books here.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

If you would like to help support Confessions of a Reviewer, then please consider using the links below to buy any of the books mentioned in this feature. This not only supports me but also lets me know how many people actually like to buy books after reading my reviews.

Thanks.

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Robert E. Dunn was born an army brat and grew up in the Missouri Ozarks. He wrote his first book at age eleven, stealing, or novelizing, as he called it at the time, the storyline of a Jack Kirby comic book.

His college course of study, philosophy, religion, theatre, and film/TV communications, left him qualified only to be a televangelist. When that didn’t work out, he turned to them mostly, honest work of video production. Over several years he produced everything from documentaries, to training films and his favorite, travelogues. Still always writing for the joy of it he returned to writing horror and fantasy fiction for publication after the turn of the century. It seemed like a good time for change even if the changes were not always his choice.

He lives in Kansas City with three daughters, a young grandson, and an old dog.

He is the author of the horror novels, The Dead Ground and Behind The Darkness: Alien Invasion, from Severed Press as well as The Red Highway from Necro Publications. In 2016 he will be releasing Motormanand The Harrowing from Necro, and A Living Grave from Kensington/Lyrical. In addition, he is the author of romantic/erotic suspense novels written under a pen name. He dares you to find out that name.

And for more about Robert, visit his site or find him on social media:

Website – Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads – Amazon Page

Robert E. Dunn

COVER REVEAL: Motorman - Robert E. Dunn

One of the many things that I love about having Confessions of a Reviewer is getting the opportunity to meet and interact with new people in the writing world.

This happened very recently when I made a new acquaintance in writer, Robert E. Dunn. Now, I am sorry to admit, I didn’t know much about Robert before we virtually met but things have changed quite dramatically in that department over this past few months.

Robert has been a tireless supporter of Confessions, retweeting every single one of my Tweets on Twitter and sharing all the posts on Facebook. For this, I thank you sir. Support like yours means a lot to me.

So, time to give something back? Well, yeah, but I don’t really think of this as giving something back to Robert. I feel like he is giving to Confessions once again.

He asked if I would like to involved in the cover reveal for his new novella coming out in May. He won the stupid question of the day award that day.

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I present to you the cover for the new novella from Robert E. Dunn, Motorman.

I have to admit to falling in love with this cover the very first time I opened the picture that was sent to me. The artwork is fantastic.

If you want to know more about the artist, Erik Wilson you can find him here:

Erik Wilson

This new novella will be released on 21^stMay by Necro Publications so make sure you note that in your diary. I will hopefully have a review up around that time as well but watch out for more details coming on a book tour.

Book Synopsis:

MOTORMAN is a fun and gruesome little novella. Think of it as a Frankenstein story with V8 power. Then add aliens and a few murders.

After running from some terrible actions that left his junkyard home destroyed and two people dead, Johnny Burris ends up in the Ozark hills looking for refuge. When mysterious, blue glowing objects in the night sky lead him into a community of automotive obsessed misfits, he thinks he's found home. In the little bit of nowhere, Missouri, the cars are all chromed and the engines built to race. So are the people.

Johnny slowly discovers that everyone in his new home has been altered with machine parts and the energy of the flying blue streaks that led him there. When it becomes clear that he is being groomed to become the new Dr./mechanic to the community, Johnny rebels and tries to run taking the one, unaltered girl with him. But the people, and the girl, turn out to be even more than he imagined. When he crashes in his escape, he becomes one of them by being bonded with a 1969 Camaro. The constant hum of the engine is the only thing that keeps him alive. His whole world becomes the one choice, live as a monster, making monsters, or die like a man. If he chooses to die, who will he take with him?