Winner of the 2021 Splatterpunk Award for Best Collection
In the foul and fetid darkness, it awakens.
Vile, unstable, brimming with ill intent, like pus on the verge of eruption. Repulsive to gaze upon and even more disturbing to comprehend. It reaches out and discovers that the others?its siblings?have abandoned this cancerous womb long ago. Angry and alone, it thrashes violently...tearing, clawing its way from dormancy into daylight...and onto the dark playground of your bookshelf.
Amid these pages, Southern horror master Ronald Kelly has brought together a loathsome assemblage of stories that cut deeply and expose the raw nerves of fright and revulsion. Joining his extreme horror collections, The Sick Stuff and More Sick Stuff, is a third installment of yarns both new and old...Even Sicker Stuff. Combined, they meld and morph, forming The Essential Sick Stuff. Twenty-three abhorrent tales to tantalize and torture the fragile psyche; to cause the stomach to revolt and gooseflesh to crawl as though something, visceral and alive, lurks just beneath the surface...
Autorentext
Ronald Kelly was born November 20, 1959 in Nashville, Tennessee where he was raised a Southern Baptist. He attended Pegram Elementary School and Cheatham County Central High School (both in Ashland City, Tennessee) before starting his writing career.
Ronald Kelly began his writing career in 1986 and quickly sold his first short story, "Breakfast Serial," to Terror Time Again magazine. His first novel, Hindsight was released by Zebra Books in 1990. His audiobook collection, Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror, was on the nominating ballot of the 1992 Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album. Zebra published seven of Ronald Kelly's novels from 1990 to 1996. Ronald's short fiction work has been published by Cemetery Dance, Borderlands 3, Deathrealm, Dark at Heart, Hot Blood: Seeds of Fear, and many more. After selling hundreds of thousands of books, the bottom dropped out of the horror market in 1996. So, when Zebra dropped their horror line in October 1996, Ronald Kelly stopped writing for almost ten years and worked various jobs including welder, factory worker, production manager, drugstore manager, and custodian.