Ghost Heart Review Roundup

Remember when you were younger and you read Something Wicked This Way Comes or The Thief of Always or The Traveling Vampire Show and you felt a certain magic in the words, a certain tug at your soul, a warm summer wind through your nostalgia? This is what Yvonne Navarro and I have tried to create. We want a story of troubled youth to be pan-generational. We want a book adults and teens can read with equal pleasure. Most of all, we wanted to write a book that could be read aloud, the reader lending substance and

gravitas to the work.

So far it looks like we've succeeded.

Here are what some are saying about Ghost Heart.

Horrornews.net - "Comparison to Something Wicked This Way Comes immediately comes to mind, as Yvonne and Weston bring in that same comforting yet engaging style of prose that his the eyes and ears like the rumbling voice of Grampa in his rocking chair on a slow twilight eve. They had me full-on from the first paragraph and I dug every second of it. It’s hard to come across people who can mimic the feel of the oral tradition, but these two do it admirably."  Read more here. 

Reading Bites - "What to say about Ghost Heart? It’s so hard to review a book that’s genuinely more of an experience than a read. It’s the story of Matt, a boy facing the break up of his parents and watching his friend’s ghostly guardian spirit fade as she grows up, as he tries desperately to stop time and make it all somehow not happen." Read more here.

Frank Errington - "Husband and wife writing team, Weston Ochse and Yvonne Navarro, have produced something very special with Ghost Heart.  At the center of the story is a very cool kid, a couple of ghost/imaginary friends and his German Shepherd, Kubla Khan." Read more here. 

Don D'Amassa - "A collaboration between two authors of whom I don't see enough. It's also a very unusual novel that is as much fantasy as horror...The story is episodic but the individual encounters are wrapped around the central plot quite nicely. For some reason this reminded me of the early Dark Tower books by Stephen King, although with a darker coloration. It's more a coming of age story with weird overtones than a suspenseful horror novel despite some quite creepy things that happen along the way." Read more here.

Also with cover art from the vastly talented Vincent Chong.

Do you have your copy? Want it in a special edition? Here's the info.

Deluxe Hardcover pricing: $80 USD 

Trade Paperback pricing: $14.95 

USD Ebook pricing: $3.99 USD - 

See more at: http://www.darkregions.com/books/ghost-heart-by-weston-ochse-and-yvonne-navarro#sthash.geYtW816.dpuf

The Art of Evacuating from Fires

The Art of Evacuating from Fires.

I should be good at this. I've done it now four times.

My Parent's Home

The first was during my wedding reception to the incomparable Yvonne. We were married in Deadwood, S.D. beside the graves of Wild Bill and Calamity on a scorching hot dry day in June 2002. An hour later, after we'd changed and almost had a dance, fire sprung up in Grizzly Gulch, causing the evacuation of about 30,000 people, including everyone at my wedding. We never did have the reception. We left all the food and booze behind. I know. Tragic.

My second evacuation came a year later. It was October in 2003. Reggie Bannister, friend and acclaimed star of the Phantasm Movie franchise, had invited me to participate in a horror extravaganza he and Gigi (his wife) had planned. Myself, Brinke Stevens, Angus Scrimm, and several others traveled up past Twin Peaks to Crestline. The local bookstore had dozens of copies of Appalachian Galapagos. We were in for a great weekend. We had drinks and dinner that evening and woke up to a conflagration. The two fires, Grand Prix and Old, converged into one raging firestorm with a cloud as big as Kansas rising above the pine forest. We evacuated along a highway called The Rim of the World.  Fire actually licked at the wheels of my car as it sped between hungry flames and a thousand foot drop above San Bernardino. That was scary.

And now this.

The Monument Fire.

Compilation of great photos

Compilation of some stunning videos

We evacuated once after seeing the line of smoke and burning homes march our direction, then thought everything was okay and de-evacuated. That's a new word, by the way. De-evacuate: To naively return to your residence when you think the fire is no longer a danger.

Yeah. And we packed for a day and a half. Yvonne, using tetris algorithms, packed two carloads into each car and we sped away. Then we returned Saturday night, woke up Father's Day morning and unpacked the car. The mountain chain beside us known as the Huachucas was barely smoking. It just had to be over.

By 1:30 the mountain had exploded. We walked out of the grocery store with Father's Day dinner fixin's in hand and rushed home. Had we been ten minutes later, we would have had to leave the dogs for four days, including our blind one in the crate. She wouldn't have survived it. Ashes were falling on our home. 40 mile an hour winds pushed a yellow cloud over our home. Sheriff cars with loudspeakers begged us to leave or else burn. We decided to Re-evacuate. That's a new word too. Re-evacuate: To frantically flee after de-evacuating prematurely.

Monument Fire Father's Day Night

So what does one take when re-evacuating? Here's a short list.

• Comic Book Collection
• Tax Records
• Eleven socks
• Fourteen T-shirts
• Two Pair jeans
• Seven Pair underwear
• Elvis Jacket
• Elvis Blanket
• Vitamins
• Blowdryer
• Bram Stoker Award
• Blackhawk .357 Magnum single action long barrel
• Computer
• Miscellaneus box of books including my own and those I couldn't live without which included Joe Haldeman's War Stories and Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine (Latter personalized)
• Sunglasses (Not my Elvis ones)
• Can of tuna
• Box of Bling (Jewelry)
• Dop Kit
• Netbook
• Four bottles of wine
• Two hats
• Family Photo album
• And that's about it...

So that's four times now. Four. FOUR! I've had to do it three times more than most people ever have to do it. For many of you, I just took your turn. I've now done it so that you don't have to. So if you ever think you have to evacuate, think about it for a moment. You might find that I've already done it for you. So kick back, relax and watch other people's stuff burn.

Special thanks to my parents for letting us take over their home and for allowing our dogs to sleep in comfort and coolness. And thanks to my father in law for protecting my comic book collection. As Brian Keene will attest, I have some seriously rare books.

And most of all, thanks to the firefighters for saving our home.