Daydreams and Night Screams
Short Story Collection (literary mainstream, science fiction fantasy, horror)
Nightbird Publishing 2013
Deluxe Trade Paperback, 294 pages
(also available in eBook formats ... Kindle, Nook, iPad)
ISBN: 978-0-9819572-9-6
The Stories . . .
17 short stories and a novella that traverse the spectrum of mainstream literary fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Many of these bizarre tales previously appeared in small press magazines and anthologies. Author notes describing the origin of, and inspiration behind, each story add a special dimension to the collection.
After reading Daydreams and Night Screams, you will never view our world (and beyond) the same way again.
Contents (Stories):
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All I Want For Christmas
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Murdering the American Dream
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When Mighty Methuselah Falls
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Himalayan Rainbow
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Last Call
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The Good Old Days
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Wombstone
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Déjà Voodoo
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Rendezvous at Waldrop Manor (novella)
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Hologram Sam
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East of Hades
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Insomniacs Anonymous
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The Fjords of Vankosh
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Hobo Harvest
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Maricopa Chameleons
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The River of No Return
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Sin and Salvation
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Listening To The Dead
Story Excerpts:
I've stumbled into some kind of weird wonderland, Brad thought. This Reggie character is the Mad Hatter and somewhere in the crowd lurks the March Hare and the Dormouse.
— from “Last Call”
. . . we were visited by a force of evil darker than any moonless night, personified by creatures surely spawned from a bottomless black cauldron of depravity.
— from “East of Hades”
Soon, red and blue lights danced along the treetops far to the east, swirling at first, then consolidating into discernible objects as they moved toward Waldrop Manor at impossible speeds. The objects darted and weaved in gyroscopic patterns—sharp, drastic movements Rita would have thought impossible. The saucer-shaped glows jerked through the Georgia night skies, silent in their approach, making severe ninety-degree turns, then looping back around, all the while maintaining a loose-knit formation. The enormity of it all struck her. Rita was witnessing the approach of alien spacecraft.
— from “Rendezvous at Waldrop Manor”
“With these stories Jeff Dennis proves he's a writer who can wear many hats; from the battered fedora to the astronaut's helmet to the bloodied ski mask. A richly varied mix of fantasy and phantasmagoria, dream, and dementia from a writer who cares about his characters and his readers.”
- Jeffrey Thomas, author of more than 30 novels and collections, including science fiction/horror novels Deadstock (finalist for the John W. Campbell Award) and Monstrocity (finalist for the Bram Stoker Award) -
“I knew from a very young age that I didn’t want to be a corporate drone. I saw what those nasty implants did to my parents . . . eventually drove my mother to the sanitarium, and my father . . . well, he committed suicide trying to burn the damn chip out of his neck with a laser iron.”
— from “Insomniacs Anonymous”
John Russo, Author of Indian Givers, The Vandenberg Diamonds, Murder on the Coral Queen, and Driscoll's Eye
“Just when I thought I had read the best of Jeff Dennis, (The Wisdom of Loons, King of the Hobos) I must say that Daydreams and Night Screams kept me reading in almost one sitting. This collection continues to keep me as one of his true fans. His character development and plotting are so detailed and intense that you become enveloped in his talent to intrigue you on each page. As a writer myself I can only wish I could conjure up the depth and quality of his storytelling.”
Katherine Crowe, Amazon book reviewer
“If you love well-written, imaginative original fiction that is far from the ordinary, you’ll love this book! I received Daydreams and Night Screams as a Christmas gift, and from the beginning found each story to be a delightful surprise waiting to be opened! I’m a big fan of short story compilations, and I know from my amateur experience how difficult they are to write. They have to be extremely concise and to the point to be any good. I’ve always loved Stephen King’s stories, but to some extent, once you read one you have a pretty good general idea where the others in the collection are going. Not so with this one! The first set of stories, which the writer describes as A Walk Down Main Street, are pretty normal compared to the last three sections, but they still took me places I never expected to go. I was sure I knew where the first one would end based on my extensive reading experience, and the author’s own foreshadowing, but I never got there! From the first story, I was hooked and read the rest almost non-stop in about a day; O’Henry’s got nothing on Jeff Dennis in the ending department! Every story got straight to the point, and is delightfully refreshing and original. "Rendezvous at Waldrop Manor" is an absolute riot, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, I read "Insomniacs Anonymous," which is so original and thought provoking that it blew my mind. For those of us over 50, "The Good Old Days" is entirely appealing, as much for the ride down memory lane as for the kid’s running commentary of the culture we shared. And "Wombstone" is a twisted hoot! I cannot genre-ize this book, despite the writer’s grouping of the stories by genre; it just goes where it goes, and what a ride it is. "Hologram Sam" creates a tactile-sensory motion hologram to stand in for a husband murderer at her trial, but he turns out to be …. I can’t tell you the rest; you’ve got to read it for yourself. If you love well-written, imaginative original fiction that is far from the ordinary, you’ll love this book!”