Brandon Nolta

These Shadowed Stars Brandon Nolta

In this collection of stories, dreaded futures come to pass, and joyous possibilities become real. A vampire hunter gains a new partner, a living weapon against the dark. Two Mesoamerican deities find a new purpose in their age-old charges. During a visit from a former colleague, an office worker finds that being a state-sanctioned Outlaw isn't as fun as it sounds. And on a lonely night on an isolated desert highway, a young driver confronts a darkness he doesn't fully understand and may never be ready to face. Wonder, magic, lunacy, and a couple of apocalypses for good measure; there are all sorts of treasures to be found in these shadows.

"After reading only a few stories in this finely welded, riveted, galvanized ark of a collection, anyone can see that Nolta is up there with Bradbury, Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison, and Thomas M. Disch."

Connor de Bruler, author of Tree Black and Return of the Death God

"Throughout my reading of this collection, my unconscious played me a song by They Might Be Giants called 'Where Your Eyes Don't Go'. The tune used my skull as an echo chamber as I happily progressed through the author's clean prose and his tales of the unexpected. However, the common ground with Brandon Nolta's work is not only the band's choppy riffs; nor even the clarity of line and diction. In both artistic expressions, there is a shared recognition of that which cannot be seen - or can only be glimpsed momentarily. Indeed, in one of Nolta's stories, people themselves can disappear from the face of the earth in vast numbers. Sometimes they reappear. Meanwhile the band tells us that where your eyes don't go, a part of you is hovering... Here we are in Nolta's well-drawn galaxy of beautiful titles, believing we are safe as houses in an environment where houses are not safe; where nothing is safe; where polar extremes and the putative existence of the fantastic are no guarantee of stability either."

David Mathew, author of Panic Soup and The Parry and the Lunge