Fiction
Christmas Eve Nightmare
Dark the Halls
Bramwell Finch, once the toast of 1930s Hollywood, is now a desperate man. His empire of lights-camera-action, and the glittering nights of champagne toasts and Laurel Awards slip further from reach. But on Christmas Eve, an invitation arrives, summoning him to a forgotten corner of his own studio lot and to a screening room that should not exist.What unfolds there is a nightmare.Reels spin by unseen hands, but they do not flicker out old Hollywood glamor. The departed have waited in the wings far too long. And here in this spectral late-night feature, Finch finds himself imprisoned in a nightmare of his own making. Blood. Betrayals. Dark secrets he thought safe in shadow. Every one of them a sin upon which he built his celluloid kingdom.The house is full tonight. And every tormented soul demands the price of admission.
Praise for:
Dark the Halls
“Timothy Roderick’s haunting book Dark the Halls bridges the gap between old Hollywood and Dickens’s supernatural fable of holiday regret, with a dastardly dash of Citizen Kane thrown in for good measure. But this is not some fond, faint-hearted recasting—with whip-smart dialogue and mordant humor, Roderick paints a vivid picture of early cinematic ambition and sly cruelty. It’s all here: the glitz, the glamour, the goats and the ghosts, but Roderick brings a mad screwball energy to this surefooted, surprisingly terrifying tale. Dark the Halls is for everyone who feels like the holidays need a bit more … blood.”
~~ Polly Schattel, author of Shadowdays
“Dark the Halls casts a spell as eerie as it is unforgettable…. Gothic storytelling at its finest—haunting and stylish.”
~~ Shavaun Scott, author of Nightbird: A Memoir“…A richly textured tale of deceit, greed, and betrayal that weaves together the glamorous and the foul, the living and the dead, brittle illusion and harsh reality…. Read on if you dare.”
~~ Laura Perry, author of The Bed and The Last Priestess of Malia“Gripping, gritty, and deeply haunting. Roderick takes us on a journey through time in this novel about the consequences of ambition and silence…. A deeply moving and intimate portrayal….”
~~ Benjamin Stimpson, author of Ancestral Whispers and Of Doves and Ravens
Folk Horror
Cornbones
If you take from it, it will take from you...Henry Rustin’s luck has run out, perhaps for the last time. Little does he know his troubles have only begun. When a last-chance horse bet goes awry, he skips town to outpace the mob, heading to yet another easy-money opportunity. It’s in a place where they’ll never find him—a tiny Pennsylvania farming town named Harveston. But the longer he stays, the more he realizes the townsfolk, with their strange customs and superstitions, live in fear of something hidden and deadly—a vengeful presence that hunts for blood amid the lonely, dried-up cornfields. “If you take from it, it will take from you,” the townsfolk warn. When Henry tries to sell an inherited farmhouse to pay off the mob and start his life over, he learns that there’s no going back. No one has ever left the forgotten little town without paying the ultimate price.December 2024: Best of Horror, Malevolent Dark Magazine
Praise for
Cornbones
"Timothy Roderick's Cornbones is a superb novel of folk horror, with a very strong cast, an absolutely creepy supernatural threat, almost all transpiring in a claustrophobic 1930s setting, from the LA underworld to a ghostly strange town from which no one can leave... it's a true pleasure that the writing is cinematic and everything can be visualized with ease and great satisfaction! ...[With] totally sudden and surprising turns, tension keeps increasing and the story never stops being utterly engrossing and captivating; how does that even happen? Great storytelling skills - that's how!" ★★★★★
--Goodreads Book Reviewer"In the grand, uncanny genre of folk horror, Cornbones by Timothy Roderick stands out as a modern classic. With pagan trappings reminiscent of The Wicker Man, the story lures the reader to the early twentieth century rural town of Harveston, an eerie place where people enter but are never seen to return. Those who seek to escape their fate in the larger world by fleeing to Harveston soon find that there is no escape from certain dark forces.... Once you have gazed into the town's dark secrets, there's no going back!" ★★★★★
--Laura Perry, author of The Bed and The Last Priestess of Malia"Cornbones made me realize the way in which 1930s America has a mythic quality. This is a gripping, creepy tale that I found hard to put down. Apparently, you don't need deep roots in the soil for something malevolent to grow there. Corn roots go plenty deep enough." ★★★★★
--Numue Brown, author of Hopeless, Maine"The deliciously claustrophobic Cornbones by Timothy Roderick is set in the remote rural town of Harveston during the 1930s, a place which readily welcomes the visitor, but is slightly more reluctant to let them go. The genres of faery lore and horror are seamlessly blended in this tense, dark, page-turning ride into the unknown." ★★★★★
--Carole Carlton, author of the Mrs. Darley series of Pagan books."Timothy Roderick, in his novel Cornbones, creates a modern folk tale of horror that will leave you gasping for breath until the very last page. A page turner with unsettling themes, Cornbones transports the reader to 1930s Harveston, a town of dark secrets, most of which are hidden away in the surrounding cornfields. I suggest checking the map, then locking the car doors before venturing offroad into this chiller." ★★★★★
--Chris Allaun, author of Whispers from the CovenDecember 2024: Best of Horror, Malevolent Dark Magazine
Psychological and Occult Thriller
Nine Zero One Three
They're dead. They're gone. How far would you go to bring them back?After witnessing her parents' death, nothing is the same for Rachel. Her sister abandons her to the lonely halls of Saint Cyprian's Psychiatric Hospital, never suspecting what might come of this desperate act. It was for the child's own good, after all. But lurking in those isolated passages came spirits of the damned, bearing gifts to forsaken children: a book of prayer summoning unimaginable evil, whispering unspeakable promises.Nearly two decades on, terror grips the sleepy island community of Catalina when its residents go missing one by one. But Rachel knows the secrets behind those who find themselves vanished. She knows the past can never be forgotten; it can only be appeased.A chilling novel of secrets, lies, and diabolical revelations.
Praise for
Nine Zero One Three
"Nine Zero One Three has the same sort of claustrophobic dread to it that a particularly gruesome locked-room mystery would have. ...Is it good? Yes! Mr. Roderick knows his way around the English language and he uses it evocatively... the occult portions of the story feature prominently, and here the author's decades of experience learning and writing about a variety of practices served him well...I can attest to being quite creeped out at many sections, morbidly curious by what was coming next..." ★★★★★
--Facing North"There's a dark side to sunny 1970s Catalina Island, and in Nine Zero One Three Tim Roderick lures the reader straight into those shadows. This chilling journey through the tangled threads of the living, the dead, and those who are neither leads to the questions: What do certain people really want, who can they trust to help them get it, and who wants to stop them? The answers are definitely not what you expect. What you can expect is an intricately woven plot that grips you and takes you on a deep, dark journey. You've been warned." ★★★★★
~~Laura Perry, author of The Bed, Jaguar Sky, and The Last Priestess of Malia"The dark holds many secrets. In 1970's California, a time of sun and sexual revolution, no one expected the evil that lurked in the shadows of a small island town. Timothy Roderick's chilling new work Nine Zero One Three takes us into a dark world that mixes madness and the supernatural. Thrilling and unsettling, you won't want to put this story down. Timothy's nerve-shredding premise is that evil shows up in the least likely forms--in the innocuous, in the everyday. Nine Zero One Three will leave you looking over your shoulder." ★★★★★
~~Chris Allaun, author of The Black Book of Johnathan Knotbrisle
Mystery and Occult Thriller
One Crooked Thing
What you don't know can kill you.Something sinister has followed Ren Larson home through the dark winding roads of Los Angeles. Since he began investigating a series of murders, it has made its presence known. It murmurs in shadowed hallways. It watches from mirrors and whispers to his six-year-old child. It waits. His doctor says he's got a case of war nerves. His housekeeper warns of a malevolent spirit, maybe only folklore from her Caribbean childhood. But no one can stop the foul thing, she says, until it devours the soul for which it hungers--a soul that has ripened with a secret sin.
Praise for
One Crooked Thing
"Crooked doesn't begin to describe the depth, texture, and complexity of the story line in One Crooked Thing. What's real? What's imagined? And what's beyond imagining, but must be believed anyway? In this intricately developed tale of the psychological and the supernatural, Timothy Roderick has woven together strands from Renaissance Germany, the timeless Caribbean, and mid-20th-century America into a novel that will leave the reader breathless, wondering what might creep out of their own closet, basement, or mind." ~Laura Perry, author of The Last Priestess of Malia, The Bed, and Jaguar Sky ★★★★★"One Crooked Thing captures the reader's imagination right from the first page and maintains the suspense up until the last. This is a skillfully woven together tale that moves back and forth in time and looks at the unfolding story from many points of view. Who is telling the truth and which characters can be trusted? It is the search for those answers that makes the book so very hard to put down. A gripping read." ~Carole Carlton, author of the Mrs. Darley series of Pagan books ★★★★★"I couldn't put One Crooked Thing down! Timothy Roderick tells a story of dark forces that blurs the line between fear of the dark and magic. Each page takes us deeper into a mystery of a shadowy world of mayhem and terror. This book magnificently combines a story of crime, the occult, and fear leaving you to keep a light on at night." ~Chris Allaun, author of Otherworld: Ecstatic Witchcraft for the Spirits of the Land ★★★★★
Dark Fantasy
Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales
Briar Blackwood can't fit in anywhere. She’s living a not-so-fairytale life with a drunkard foster mother and her two detestable daughters. Meanwhile, the kids at school laugh her off as a crack-pot wanna-be ghoul. When an old iron key that she wears unexpectedly opens a secret doorway, she’s drawn into a hidden and bloodthirsty world of curses, dark magic and twisted tales-within-tales. Now she must find her way back and save her friends along the way before she vanishes forever in those lost Realms. But a dark and unstoppable power growing within Briar just might help her go toe to toe with dragons, voracious elves, big-bad-wolves, and a wicked queen bent on her destruction.
Praise for
Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales
"A suspenseful, dark, coming of age tale of a teenager who must learn to navigate between the worlds of everyday life and of Fairy. The language is rich and the enjoyable twists of plot will keep you guessing." --Ellen Evert Hopman, author of The Priestess of the Forest trilogy of Druid novels ★★★★★"Timothy Roderick has fashioned an imaginative mashup of plots and characters .... Breathing new life into those old tales, Roderick drops characters such as Sleeping Beauty and the Big Bad Wolf ... right into the middle of modern America, then draws us back into his own magical and amusingly inverted version of the fairy tale world along with them.... Full of wit and irony and with nary a damsel-in-distress in sight." --Laura Perry, author of Ariadne's Thread: Awakening the Wonders of the Ancient Minoans in Our Modern Lives ★★★★★"Take a journey with Briar Blackwood in this unique and entertaining story written by renowned Wiccan author Timothy Roderick. This debut novel -- the first in a series -- will undoubtedly appeal to adults of all ages whose hearts have a fondness for magic, fantasy, and a dash of darkness." -- Raven Digitalis, author of Shadow Magick Compendium & Goth Craft ★★★★★"...Ugly Ducklings, Cinderellas, wide-awake Sleeping Beauties, Magical Godparents, and Handsome Princes in disguise will all love Briar's adventures." --Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. (barbaraardinger.com), author of Secret Lives, Pagan Every Day, and other books ★★★★★"Ancient smashes head on into modern in Timothy Roderick's strangely clever and enchanting debut young adult/fantasy ...packed with plenty of extraordinary twists and turns, Roderick has retooled such fairytales as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella into a suspenseful, wry, modern magical mystery.... Reminiscent of and just as entertaining as Mary Janice Davidson... Roderick leaves the door open for more wildly wonderful Briar Blackwood Magic!"--Sirona Knight, author of Faery Magick and the Shapeshifter Tarot ★★★★★
