The Influence

Stephen King calls him "A master of the macabre!"

The Influence: A New Novel
by Bentley Little

Collector's Note: This will be the World's First Publication of this new novel, which is a Cemetery Dance Publications exclusive!

About the Book:
Everything is about to change...

When Ross Lowry moves into his cousin's guest house in the small community of Magdalena, Arizona, he expects nothing more than breathing room and a brief respite from his economic woes.

But something is not right in the desert.

After a raucous party on New Year's Eve, the luck of the attendees undergoes an immediate U-turn. The rich and successful suddenly find themselves facing catastrophic failure while the less well-off are unexpectedly flush with good fortune.

This is only the beginning...

Soon the citizens of Magdalena are experiencing unnatural desires.

Next their children begin to disappear and freakish creatures emerge from the surrounding wilderness.

The community is unraveling at a frightening pace.

But these are merely the early warning signs of a showdown with a powerful force of darkness that could obliterate the world forever, and only Ross Lowry sees the danger that lurks ahead...

"Laid off from his engineering job, down-on-his-luck Ross accepts an invitation to live in his cousin Lita's guest shack in the microscopic desert burg of Magdalena, Arizona. There he finds a simpler life that appeals to him, a girl he's crazy about, and some hideous miniature kangaroos with rat faces. Okay, let's back up. It was during local bigwig Cameron Holt's New Year's Eve party that the entire assemblage celebrated at midnight by shooting their guns into the air. The problem? Their bullets hit something. Something god-awful. Right now it's stored inside Holt's smokehouse. And its influence is bringing some people fantastically good luck and others bad—very bad. It's also turning Magdalena into a jungle of mutated creatures that would make Dr. Moreau proud: gigantic chickens, zombie dogs, living cookies, animate scarecrows, whistling flowers, and oh-so-much more. Yes, the criminally overlooked Little might go a little too crazy here, but his small-town-loses-its-shit recalls his masterful The Mailman, and that should be all the recommendation fans need."
— Booklist, Daniel Kraus

Bentley Little was born in Arizona a month after his mother attended the world premiere of Psycho. He received his BA in Communications and MA in English and Comparative Literature at California State University Fullerton. His Master's thesis was the novel The Revelation, which was later published and won the Bram Stoker Award in 1991. Since then, he has written many more novels and his work has been translated into seven different languages. Several of his novels have been optioned for film.

His work has appeared in many issues of Cemetery Dance magazine, including Cemetery Dance #64, which was the Bentley Little Special Issue and featured an original interview with him and two of his brand new short stories.

When asked in that issue why he writes horror, he answered: "I write horror because I have to. That's the way my mind works. Those are the ideas that come to me. I've never felt limited by the genre. How could I? Horror fiction offers an author the broadest possible canvas on which to work. I have all of the real-world subjects at my disposal that a mainstream writer does—plus the infinite realm of the supernatural. Creatively, there's nothing else that comes close to this sort of scope, which is why there is nothing I would rather be than a horror writer."

Published in three states:
• Trade Hardcover Edition with full color dust jacket ($25)
• Hardcover Limited Edition of 750 signed and hand-numbered copies bound in full-cloth and Smyth sewn ($50)
• Deluxe Hardcover Lettered Edition of 52 signed and hand-lettered copies bound in leather, Smyth sewn with a satin ribbon page marker, raised hubs on the spine, custom gilded page edges dipped by hand, and featuring full-color endpapers ($250)

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