Showing results by author "Peter Joseph Swanson" in All Categories

Joan Crawford returns to MGM in 1953. Her comeback to her alma mater is to make the garish musical Torch Song. Joan suspects that it’s hokum, and that she’s getting too old for such parts, but she is desperate to make it work. That includes living at the studio in her dressing room during production. All the while, a psycho killer Joan Crawford drag queen stalks Hollywood to eliminate other Joan Crawford drag queens, and Joan is so strung out on vodka and super strength diet pills that she isn’t sure if she has taken up murder herself. Her gay best friend is poised ready to help her ...

In this outrageous sequel to The Joan Crawford Murders it is now 1969 and Joan is in England at Bray Studios to film her 80th movie, Trog. Bray is also where Hammer Films made many of their masters of horror. Joan finds that she begins to suspect that a suicide in the village was really a murder. Monsters, ghosts and the studio’s past come back to life. And she might have just saved the life of Queen Elizabeth II at nearby Windsor Castle from a greedy mummy in the nick of time.

At a large group home for adult women who are mentally ill/retarded, a client has fallen from an attic window. Was it murder, suicide or an accident? Will the disparate staff prove to be the ones who are really nuts?

Is food mostly just what we think it is? In this silly version of Hansel and Gretel, a serious story is still suggested about children wanting candy. The adventure goes beyond the candy house, even to a mountaintop castle, with 16 colorful illustrations (also by the author).

In this sensational short story, sex, drugs and murder interrupt the filming of a Frankenstein movie in the swinging '60s. Will the killer be found and brought to justice? Will the movie even get finished?

At a pizza place in uptown Minneapolis, scenesters and a psychic try very hard to find the next cool party and a pure state of punk living in the summating year of 1989. Their overripe imaginations (and beer) bring out bizarre fatal accidents, memories of once being devil possessed, and a vengeful ghost of a hippie who had overdosed.

In this epic dark fantasy novella, in a whirlwind around the ancient Mediterranean Sea, Egypt fights Rome for world power. Cleopatra and her brother fight for the throne of Egypt. Mark Antony and Octavian fight for Caesar. Witches are their secret weapons. Love and war play out in a ruthless magical and material world above and below the shifting desert sands.

Michael is a 20-something theatrical gay man living in a river town in 1984. He worries that life is passing him by even though he’s a busy witty beautiful drag queen. Snake Girl is his pet name since he’d once played one in a carnival sideshow after running away from home. When he returns to the family farm, when his parents are killed, he uncovers more secrets than just the KKK, who have already killed a friend. Michael and his small band of friends become Druid warriors to conquer the legendary horror that is after them… as they also just work to get ahead in life, dreaming of ...

Helen is at her first year in science at Culver-Stockton College at the small river town of Canton Missouri, a college and town with an occult past. Her boyfriend tries to help her make sense of the strange happenings at the Mississippi River, and in the skies... as he tries not to be outshone by her handsome science teacher.

In medieval England a traveling witch and her dwarf brother help a small village fight a primitive vampire that lives in a nearby pond. And magic is used for malice. The two travelers find they have to battle a prosperous member of the village, a comely bad witch who makes the town’s coffins and shoes, as she seduces as many of the menfolk as she can. All the while the cursed abbey and milldam threaten to collapse; a green man ghost chases a green martyr monk into town from Ireland; druid visions begin to instruct the traveling witch so old legends reenact pre-Celtic history; and the true...

Return to Arthurian romance, magic, secrets, surprises and danger. In this bawdy sequel to Merlin’s Charge, in Camelot (a land where they say lovers can turn into swans) new horrors befall as shapeshifting chaos unleashes a violent werewolf monster into the wintry land. Will order be restored and the curse lifted in time for King Arthur to stop the invading Saxons? Or is the real danger entirely a family affair.

Enter the strange and fantastic world of the fairy tale. Read about what happens when two daughters of the king are rewarded or punished by the fairy heads in the well. Three Heads in the Well (or The King of Colchester’s Daughters) is a tale hundreds of years old, now retold by Peter Joseph Swanson, adding a bit of this and that, including the classic Diamonds & Toads. The author also did the illustrations.

This is a colorful children's book that adults can enjoy, too. A magic glass castle sits on a mermaid ocean. Why is it there? It could be a shelter or a prison. A teddy bear gets tired of winter and wants a summer picnic so takes an odd trip. There is a dinosaur circus at the center of the earth! The fun begins, and ends! Grandma saves the day! Enjoy three stories, just for fantasy fun. And there’s two poems too, just because.

In this spooky kid's tale with lots of pictures, when a boy feeds the crows, he is rewarded with a jewel and a key. That sends him on an adventure that includes a ghost story. Along the way, mistakes are made but a new furry friend is found.

In 16th century Rome, young Giotto gradually remembers how he became a vampire and how his new life became magically entangled with history and two of the world's most ancient kings. Memories surface, bringing insight about his own lost family. And all the while, he drinks free blood at the underground tavern and befriends a gallant barmaid, both of them destined to discover the blood's true wicked purpose and source.

In the wasteland of Britain in the year 500, a cranky Merlin tutors a teenage Arthur. Missing the comfort of the Realm of Dragons, Merlin amuses himself with two simultaneous sneaky marriages to the feuding witches, Nimm and Mother Hubbard. With the help of young Parsifal, they all begin the search for the holy grail, their town's communal cauldron, which was stolen by a Pict witch to make a demon bell. Recovering the cauldron will end the drought in time for Arthur to be King. Along the way they meet a host of colorful characters and face obstacles of a most phenomenal nature. Classic ...

After global disaster, a dysfunctional family rules inside an underground mountain city that is crumbling. When it blows up, the daughter takes the survivors to her new outpost away from the mountain…right in the path of the attacking Vagabond army and her double-crossing brother.

Thorn thinks he’s a cop keeping thoughts legal in his city. But when he messes up his elevator ride to heaven, which is actually supposed to kill him and recycle him as food, he finds out he’s just one clone out of millions in research labs in a prison in the asteroid belt. For revenge, he helps the elderly lab workers who want eternal life, as they think their scientist bosses have cloned it and their labor union has negotiated it for them. Thorn falls in love with a young hippie woman who is too often only a hologram when he wishes she was flesh, and adopts a son whose psycho killer ...

This sleeping beauty is more than she seems. And just because everybody in the kingdom has their own magic mirror on their wall shouldn’t replace the importance of everybody still thinking for themselves. A fun fairy tale mash-up with 25 colorful illustrations (also by the author). Includes the bonus story, Snow White and the Frankenstein Monster.

In the mid-70s, Jill, a sex-change in denial, buses west with the hope of becoming a star. She meets an aspiring gay photographer, Andernach, who instigates her discovery at a pool party. She pratfalls into a frenzy of tacky guerrilla film making, leaves her bonehead nudist boyfriend (who thought he was her manager) to live with a grand sex-change—not in denial—but dying of liver cancer. Jilly's cult fame finally allows her to save an elderly reclusive silent-movie glamour-queen from her hallucinations. A drag queen sewing circle gets her to a big gay bar, and her ensuing stand-up ...