Thanks again for all the wonderful commentary and kind words.
Just an update:
As of today, my book has become available in audio format via
Audible,
Amazon and iTunes.
The collection is also available in
trade paperback and
Kindle editions.
The Secret of Ventriloquism was selected last week as the Best Fiction Book of 2016 by Rue Morgue Magazine and is the winner of the 2016 Golden Ghoul Award for Fiction (Foreign).
The book has also gotten quite a number of reviews, all of them (thus far) favorable ones. Here are some highlights:
"The Secret of Ventriloquism is horror with a capital H. Some of Padgett's lines raised the hair on my neck."
--Laird Barron, author of
Swift to Chase"Padgett proves with his stunning debut collection to be a worthy successor to Thomas Ligotti. There's no gristle, no bone, no dilly-dallying here: only pure meat whose terrors seamlessly grow into the metaphysical. This volume is jam-packed with the stuff that nightmares are made of."
--Dejan Ognjanovic,
Rue Morgue Magazine"...Greater Ventriloquism is the fictional philosophy cutting through all of the stories in this collection, giving them a much appreciated spine of intent and eerie energy. When we understand that we are no better than dummies--when we see the strings that move us and hear the voice that animates us--we become the uncanny object, as opposed to the dummy. Our own embodiment thus becomes a vessel for great horrors."
--Adam Mills,
Weird Fiction Review"There's quite enough variety of tone, setting, and focus here to surprise and disconcert any reader, and leave preconceived expectations flopping and gasping in the cold black mud of Padgett's imagination...Padgett is a chilling master in his own right."
--
Paul StJohn Mackintosh, Associate Editor of
Teleread"...for those who enjoy fiction of a weird nature with a capital 'w' The Secret of Ventriloquism should not be missed."
--Kev Harrison,
This Is Horror"...Jon Padgett [is] one of the best writers you might not have heard of yet..."
--Kayleigh Marie Edwards,
Ginger Nuts of Horror"Jon Padgett's The Secret of Ventriloquism may very well be at the vanguard of a new movement in American Weird,where the lessons of Thomas Ligotti are recontextualized and used to birth something as frightening and bizarre as it is different."
--Simon Strantzas, author of
Burnt Black Suns