Atavar Speaks

Review A deft blend of crime novel, occult thriller, and unspeakable Lovecraftian horror. An impressive debut. -- Stanley Wiater, author of Dark Visions and Dark DreamersA tense, fast-paced scorcher of a horror novel that blistered my fingers turning the pages...a terrific read! -- Joseph A. Citro, author of The Gore and Dark TwilightJohn McCarty is going to make you start sleeping with the light on again! A fine, fun, eerie horror novel! -- Ed Gorman, author of The Day the Music Died and Cold Blue MidnightMcCarty's compulsive page-turner is a big screen movie waiting to happen. -- Scott E. Schwimer, Entertainment Attorny at LawSlickly written, vivid in language and snappily paced. If you're into demons, you'll like this just fine. -- The Times-Union, Albany, New York Product Description A GRUESOME KILLER. Brutal death stalks the quiet streets of Carswell, Massachusetts. More viciously depraved than even London’s “Saucy Jack,” the Carswell Ripper leaves behind no clues. A MOTHER’S LOVE. Julie and Peter Hauser had come to Carswell to start anew after their young son’s murder – a tragedy her dreams foretold. Now, to bring him back, Julie will resort to any means necessary – even the most forbidden. A POWER FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. Julie’s only hope is to summon a creature of the ancient occult, a dreadful ally long absent from this world. But hope soon turns to terror when Julie confronts the Ripper’s savage thirst…and calls forth an ageless, infernal power whose reign would crush the world. ATAVAR SPEAKS From the Publisher John McCarty is the man who coined the term "splatter movie." His book Splatter Movies: Breaking the Last Taboo of the Screen is a cult classic. With Atavar Speaks, he now brings his uniquely horrific visions to fiction in a dazzling tale of murder, pre-vision, and powers from beyond the grave. From the Author The idea for Atavar Speaks occurred to me more than 30 years ago when I began working on a pilot script for an anthology horror series. The pilot script came to nothing. In 1978, I began re-working it as a novel. As I fleshed it out, I found myself thinking of William March's classic novel The Bad Seed in which March put forth the opinion that as modern man is descended from primitive man it is likely that we occasionally inherit a primitive gene -- the "bad seed" -- which takes root. March doesn't say that primitive man was necessarily evil but that he just lived by an atavistic set of rules that no longer apply, taking what he wanted, often killing to get it, and doing whatever was necessary to meet his needs. Such behavior in modern terms is deemed not just antisocial but, in the extreme, pathological, and, perhaps, evil. March's thesis became the central theme of Atavar Speaks, and over the years I wrote several more drafts of the book to bring that theme mor! e shaprly into focus. The demon itself stands as a metaphor for the "bad seed." "Evil was too banal and inaccurate a word to describe it," one of the characters says of Atavar, the name of the demon. "It was...a thing of raw, unbridled instinct and soulless, conscienceless might. [It] heralded from the dawn of time itself. It was the first being -- the brute -- the source of his own lesser self." In the final draft, my modern Pandora's routing of the demon thus became an opportunity to do what March hadn't done in his book -- banish the source of mankind's lesser self, thus concluding Atavar Speaks on a far more hopeful note than The Bad Seed. From the Inside Flap Brutal death stalks the quiet streets of Carswell, Massachusetts. More viciously depraved than even London's "Saucy Jack," the Carswell Ripper leaves behind no clues. Julie and Peter Hauser had come to Carswell to start life anew after their young son's murder -- a tragedy her dreams foretold. Now, to bring him back, Julie will resport to any means necessary -- even the most forbidden. Julie's only hope is to summon a creature of the ancient