“Venturing into rural Florida, Scholz presents a coming-of-age tale with an unlikely duo facing a vicious serial killer.”
The Hillbilly Hammer has come to Sugar Bends. A deranged serial killer, Hillbilly Hammer leaves the small rural town with a lot more questions than answers.
Crime-scene clean-up tech, Theo Shortridge, hunts the serial killer, alongside the unlikely assistance of Letty Hardin, a twelve-year-old clairvoyant.
As they begin to close in on the killer, the two find themselves forced to rely more and more on the living … and the dead.
Why we’re excited about this book:
In just a few years, Kayli Scholz has made her mark on the horror fiction scene. The author of Saint Grit (Ghoulish Books), and the forthcoming Yeehaw Junction (Moonstruck Books, 2025), Scholz has short fiction appearing in such publications as A Formal Invitation, Dark Moon Digest, and Nightmare Diaries. Venturing into rural Florida, Scholz presents a coming-of-age tale with an unlikely duo facing a vicious serial killer. Sonora Taylor (Little Paranoias: Stories) says: “If Stephen King’s best coming-of-age work took place in Florida, you’d have Black Rain Season. Excellent, fast-paced story featuring heartfelt characters and an exceptionally creepy killer. I loved this book and know you will too.”, Wendy Dalrymple (Parasocial) says: In the Sunshine State, the weather is hot and the people are shady. Kayli Scholz’s Black Rain Season drips with dark, southern gothic goodness in a slow burn mystery that unravels deliciously with each horrific turn of the page.”, and Johnny Compton (The Spite House, Devils Kill Devils) calls Black Rain Season “Grim, heartfelt, eerie, and hopeful. An evocative dream of Halloween.”
Why Kayli’s excited about the book:
“I wrote the bulk of Black Rain Season in the early months of the pandemic. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was writing from a place of isolation and despair. I think that cold fear generated into writing characters that were in my same headspace, only instead of Covid-19, it’s the boogeyman. I love throwing blue collar characters into a nightmare and watching them navigate through that terror, which was especially rewarding in the coming-of-age angle, during Halloween, no less. This is the atmospheric, unsettling, yet heartfelt horror novel I’ve always wanted to write.”
Releasing from Curious Corvid Publishing 20 September 2024, Black Rain Season by Kayli Scholz is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA
