It’s almost midnight as Peter Haskins, security guard and nearly rehabilitated gambling addict keeps a lonely vigil in a rundown Atlantic City inn that is scheduled for a last minute renovation/resurrection. Can’t you smell Rod Serling’s tattle-tale pipe tobacco and cologne?

You In? is a haunting eerie haunted house tale, (with a polite nod and tug of the forelock to the original Wicker Man), that scuttles and creeps into your imagination and lingers there like the smell of must on an old man’s jacket. It’s a damn creepy tale that is guaranteed to haunt you. It’s a chill wrapped in a book jacket, and demands a second reading almost immediately following the first.

I can’t tell you a lot more about this story without giving things away but there’s a lot that goes on between the lines here. It’s a subtle, suggestive little tale that leaves you with an image that is guaranteed to keep you up for some time to come.

Kealan Patrick Burke is a soft spoken young Irish dreamer; a Bram Stoker award winning author of such marvellous novels and novellas as The Turtle Boy, The Hides, Vessels and Midlisters. He's not the writer for all-of-you fans of the slam-the-cleaver-in-and-twist-it school of pulpy gratuitous horror. His stuff is far more thoughtful than that.

You see his name on a story and you damn well ought to pick that up.

yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon

PS: I have twisted and snapped off more than a few cleavers in my time. I am not saying there is anything wrong with the chainsaw-scrapple style of storytelling - I"m just saying that this dude writes a little more thoughtfully than that.

Now pass me that meat axe, would you? ( )

"The Wickerwood is being renovated, so tonight Peter will watch over the machinery. And he will soon discover that there is something else in the hotel with him, something that has never died. And never will."

Peter Haskins is trying to get his act together. A recovering gambler who takes the job with Abigail Point Securicorp on a 12-6 shift to keep an eye on the place. Sure he's heard the history of Wickerwood, but he doesn't much believe all the stories.

You in? is a smartly written ghost story of a man already haunted by personal demons. Completely enjoyable read, with a fun little hook.

You in? is now available in e-book format from a variety of sources. ( )