From a man having a conversation with the shadow of a human being blasted into a wall by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, to a pastor giving shelter to the most bizarre individual to ever walk the Earth; from a secret group at war with the physical manifestations of disease that have run rampant for ages, to a pair of detectives trying to solve the mystery of a deadly otherworldly drug that legend says holds the power to open the gates to Paradise. These, and other dark and weird tales...
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These stories play out like an R-rated Twilight Zone; grittily thrusting life’s toughest questions at readers with unabashed confrontation, and in the strangest of places.
Ahlissa Eichhorn, FANGORIA
A master of his craft…Another highly, highly, highly recommended book that should be on the shelves of anyone who reads modern dark fiction/weird/strange tales; it's also a lesson for aspiring writers as to how it should be done. I seriously don't know what can possibly top this book over the next eleven months…In Blacker Against the Deep Dark, Zelenyj takes contemporary concerns, anxieties and worldly ills to their absolute edge, and then goes even further.”
Oddly Weird Fiction
There are no holds barred in these stories, just a rawness that underpins his soaring talent. Alexander Zelenyj is a poet. His work is detailed, descriptive and devastating…The reader is swept into worlds of possibility where nothing is as it seems…In this latest collection he conveys desire, agony and horror with the ease of a master craftsman. His work is subtle yet brutal. It changes as quickly and unexpectedly as his imagination.
Trevor Denyer, Editor-in-Chief of Midnight Street Press, from his introduction
This collection is like a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes dancing on a minefield. Highly recommended.
Alessandro Manzetti, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Eden Underground, No Mercy, and The Garden of Delight
The best and most captivating short story collection of the year, Alexander Zelenyj's Blacker Against the Deep Dark is an outstanding achievement in literary strange fiction. A bold and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition, it offers readers an incredibly original feast of beautiful storytelling, haunting darkness and seducing strangeness. If you're a devoted reader of literary speculative fiction and love dark stories, you simply can't afford to miss this collection. Very highly recommended!
Rising Shadow
Like a nightmare waltz of innocence and violence, Alexander Zelenyj’s newest collection weaves together terrifying melodies, counterbalanced by the distant note of a better world.
Brittni Brinn, author of The Patch Project
“Why are you here? I mouth the same words straightforwardly while confronting this book itself. And I answer the question myself by saying ‘you are here because you describe things within your pages that need confronting’…This book is a sheer experience…And, sincerely, a book by a writer to add to the inner canon of fiction writers I watch. A book that can be defined as being pre- or post-Discovery.”
Des Lewis, author of Nemonymous Night and Weirdmonger, inventor of gestalt real-time reviewing since 2008
“Incendiary is the adjective that best describes Zelenyj’s third collection since, in so many of his tales, it is destruction which leads, in one form or another, to personal realisation for some, salvation for others. Some from a place of madness; others from love…To Zelenyj’s credit, he sustains interest through the majority of its thirty-one tales through breadth of emotion and sheer bravado.”
Mark Andresen, The Pan Review
“Superb genre-defying anthology threaded with a deep sense of melancholy. If you read fifty single author anthologies in 2019 you’re unlikely to come across any as varied and as difficult to classify as “Blacker against the Deep Dark”...Simply put there is a massive range of high-quality stories on offer in “Blacker against the Deep Dark” and you’ll truly be spoilt for choice if you enjoy weird fiction beyond the boundaries of traditional horror…Experimental, off-the-wall, trippy, melancholic, bizarre and unique are all ways of describing Alexander Zelenyj’s mammoth anthology.”
Tony Jones, The Ginger Nuts of Horror
Alexander Zelenyj is the author of the books Songs for the Lost, Experiments At 3 Billion A.M., Black Sunshine, and Ballads to the Burning Twins: The Complete Song Lyrics of the Deathray Bradburys.
He lives in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, with his wife Elizabeth, and their three creatures, Callie, Daisy, and Dune.
Visit him online at: alexanderzelenyj.com