Articles by Chris Haught
Tips for creating beautiful painted wood floors
For painted wood floors, first clean and isolate the area to be painted. The last thing you want is for the family pet to wander through the area. Next scuff the existing floor. This is very important and serves two purposes. First, it dulls the sheen of the floor, which facilitates the adhesion or bonding of the paint you’ll apply. And second, the scuff sand removes any cosmetic imperfections and smooths the floor surface.
REVIEW: Death’s Beating Heart by Rob J. Hayes
Picking up just moments after the ending of Sins of the Mother, Death’s Beating Heart brings us at last to the conclusion to The Eternal War. Eskara Helsene has come out of retirement to help fix the mess that her daughter has caused. Sirileth has brought down one of the moons in order to prevent The Maker from entering their world. While this event saved Ovaeris from that terrible fate, slamming a moon down onto the planet tends to bring catastrophic results to most of it.
REVIEW: An End to Sorrow by Michael R. Fletcher
Last Updated on July 3, 2024 An End to Sorrow is the concluding novel in the Obsidian Path series by Michael R. Fletcher. Black Stone Heart was a finalist in the 2021 Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO), and with good reason as it’s an excellent book. The follow up novel, She Dreams in Blood, continued Khraen’s quest to piece together his fractured obsidian heart.
REVIEW: Sins of the Mother by Rob J. Hayes
Last Updated on July 3, 2024 Two years ago, when I’d finished reading From Cold Ashes Risen, I thought I had finished a brilliant trilogy that would rank among the greats in the grimdark pantheon. I still hold to that belief, but I was pleasantly surprised early this year when Rob J. Hayes released a continuation of Eska’s story in Sins of the Mother. It seems she wasn’t finished with the world just yet. Ten years retired from ruling her kingdom, Eskara Helsene is enjoying her life away from it all.
An Interview with Jesse Teller
Jesse Teller is the prolific author of many connected (but separate) works in the fantasy world of Perilisc, including the Manhunters trilogy and the standalone novels Liefdom, Chaste, and Mestlven. He has also written several short stories in this world across a span of time that goes back thousands of years. His latest work is Fate of Madness, the epic fourth and concluding book of The Madness Wars.
REVIEW: Skin by Peter Fugazzotto
Last Updated on June 30, 2024 Skin is a novella with a creepy cover image of a human skeleton with its skin removed. The blurb is equally creepy, giving us the promise of a horror tale set in a fantasy world. It suggests a story in the vein of John Carpenter’s The Thing, with a setting similar to the realms of Game of Thrones. With this in mind, of course I wanted to snatch it up and read it right away.
REVIEW: Fate of Madness by Jesse Teller
Last Updated on June 30, 2024 Here we go, the final doorstop of a volume in the massive tetralogy by Jesse Teller, Fate of Madness. After the first three tomes, Onslaught of Madness, Wrath of Madness, and Plight of Madness, the reader is definitely invested and past the point of backing down. We’re in it to win it, or to be crushed into pulp by the Drine war machine. Rextur is still leading the Drine forces in their conquest of Tienne, but it’s taking too long.
REVIEW: Norylska Groans by Michael R. Fletcher and Clayton W. Snyder
Last Updated on June 30, 2024 Grimdark steampunk Russian influenced fantasy set within an industrial city in a Russian flavored fantasy world with mob families competing over magical memory stones? I’m in! Norylska Groans is a fine fantasy collaboration between Snyder and Fletcher, mixing these great story elements together and creating a story that’s unique. “The city moaned, the creak of shrinking wood. Off to the north the furnaces rumbled like sleeping dragons. Never silent.
REVIEW: She Dreams in Blood by Michael R. Fletcher
Last Updated on June 30, 2024 She Dreams in Blood is the sequel to the excellent Black Stone Heart, book one of the Obsidian Path. The first novel is a finalist in the 2021 Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off (SPFBO), and with good reason as it’s an excellent book. The sequel continues the first-person narrative of Khraen, once and (future?) Demonist Emperor. He has a few more shards of his obsidian heart and the memories that come with each piece, but still searches for the remaining pieces.
REVIEW: The Part About the Dragon Was (Mostly) True by Sean Gibson
Last Updated on June 30, 2024 A bard’s job is to tell a story. Beyond that, whether the story is true or not is relative. While most good bards will want some element of truth in the tales to give them legitimacy and garner respect, a learned tale spinner also understands that a little bit of spice will sometimes make the difference between a story and a tale to be remembered.
REVIEW: The Sandman (Audible) by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs
Last Updated on January 17, 2025 Neil Gaiman is one of today’s most beloved and well-known fantasy authors, with good reason. Dirk Maggs is a force in the industry too, having developed many popular properties from comics and prose and movie universe tie-ins into successful audiobooks. Bring these two creators together for The Sandman, and you’ve got a recipe for a successful and entertaining few hours of listening.
REVIEW: Widdershins by Alex Alexander
Last Updated on June 27, 2024 Widdershins begins in the slums, where we meet our protagonist Niclas. It’s difficult to call him hero, as he’s a pretty simple lad and if we’re being honest, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. He means well and tries to do the right thing, but he’s just not cut out for great heroics. What’s unfortunate for Niclas is that he’s thrust into a series of situations where if he can’t be heroic, at least he is around others that can.
REVIEW: Plight of Madness by Jesse Teller
Last Updated on June 27, 2024 Plight of Madness is Book Three of The Madness Wars, the penultimate volume of this epic sprawl covering a massive military conquest of the warrior nation Drine over its refined and cultured neighbor, Tienne. Continuing on the previous reviews of Onslaught of Madness, and Wrath of Madness, I found myself immersed in the struggle not only between these two nations, but a resulting series of conflict within each.
REVIEW: Ink by Jonathan Maberry
Last Updated on February 17, 2025 The concept of a dream thief, or a stealer of memories is fascinating. A creepy villain with the ability to sneak in and access the mind of victims, especially in such a way as to be unnoticed, is quite scary. What Jonathan Maberry does in Ink is that, but he takes it to a higher level. In Ink, the method of the villain’s access is as intriguing as the theft itself. He gets in by way of the victim’s tattoos.
REVIEW: From Cold Ashes Risen by Rob J. Hayes
Last Updated on June 25, 2024 All good trilogies come to an end. It’s something that we are sad to see, yet we can’t turn away from that final entry in a series even if we wanted to. From Cold Ashes Risen is no different. We’ve come a long way in the saga of Eskara Helsene and while we can’t wait to see how it turns out, it’s a bit bittersweet that it will be over soon. And in the case of our narrator, Eska, a little scary too.
REVIEW: Ash and Bones by Michael R. Fletcher
Last Updated on June 25, 2024 Smoke to Ashes, and Stone to Bones… Here we go again, continuing the saga where Fletcher introduced us to the world of Bastion in Smoke and Stone. Ash and Bones is the second novel in his City of Sacrifice series, and here we start to see a little more of the sacrifice part of the series title. In my review for Smoke and Stone I went into how intrigued I was with the unique worldbuilding and magic system employed by Fletcher.
REVIEW: The Lessons Never Learned by Rob J. Hayes
Last Updated on June 25, 2024 The Lessons Never Learned is Book Two of the War Eternal trilogy, that began with the fantastic Along the Razor’s Edge. “Opinions are like children. Those who have them want them to be special, rarely realizing they are just as dumb and ugly as all the others.” With this in mind, I’ll go forth with my review.
MUSIC REVIEW: Dreaming City by Glass Hammer
Last Updated on June 27, 2024 It wasn’t long ago that I was listening to some of my classic rock bands and I found myself wishing that there was something out there today that had a similar feel. Sure, there are a lot of classic bands still touring and putting out music, but most of them don’t have the same power or passion of their glory days. Then I was given the opportunity to listen to the new album by a band called Glass Hammer, who I’d never heard of. Sure, I’ll give it a listen.
MOVIE REVIEW: All Hail The Popcorn King
All Hail the Popcorn King, a documentary about Joe R. Lansdale directed by Hansi Oppenheimer, was intriguing to me as a fan of horror and western fiction and movies of all types. Though I haven’t read a lot of Lansdale’s work, he’s a name I’ve been seeing in anthologies for years as I’ve made my way through the different genres. It didn’t seem to matter which one I was getting into, Joe’s stories seemed to be there. And they’ve always seemed to be among the best in the book.
REVIEW: Black Stone Heart by Michael R. Fletcher
Last Updated on June 23, 2024 Black Stone Heart is the latest grimdark novel by Michael R. Fletcher. This is a brand-new series, The Obsidian Path which is set in a bizarre new world unlike those of Fletcher’s other work. There were a couple of stories in A Collection of Obsessions, his short story collection, but this is the first full length novel. As with all of Fletcher’s work, Black Stone Heart does not shy away from a steady diet of comfort food for the grimdark appetite.
REVIEW: Crisis of Fate by Jesse Teller
Last Updated on June 22, 2024 Crisis of Fate is the latest book from Jesse Teller, who seems to have a knack for telling character-driven tales set in a world that’s often brutal and unforgiving. Perilisc isn’t a land for the fragile, that’s for sure. While a standalone story at its foundation, Crisis of Fate also serves as a companion novel to the Madness Wars series, the events of the story occurring after the first book in the main series. Raendal is having a bad day.
REVIEW: Onslaught of Madness by Jesse Teller
Last Updated on July 11, 2024 Onslaught of Madness was my second foray into the world of Perilisc, as told by the gifted author Jesse Teller. I’ve also reviewed Song by the same author for Grimdark Magazine. While Song introduced us to a marvelous and mysterious world full of magic and intrigue, we only got a snapshot of the workings of the near-immortal beings that steer the course of humanity across the continent.
REVIEW: The God King’s Legacy by Richard Nell
Last Updated on June 22, 2024 Not so much a novel as a collection of two novellas that are only distantly related, The God King’s Legacy serves as an excellent introduction into the as yet unreleased God-King’s Chronicles series. Rebellion of the Black Militia, the first novella, is about an apprentice Scribe that is being assigned to work with a legendary Knight to weed out a rebellion that seems to have a demon behind it.
REVIEW: Limited Wish by Mark Lawrence
Last Updated on June 22, 2024 I read One Word Kill a few weeks ago and was thrilled to get hold of an eARC of the sequel, Limited Wish. If you liked book one, prepare to be just as entertained an engrossed with book two. The good news is that this book doesn’t suffer at all from “middle book syndrome” where the bridge from beginning to end of a trilogy often becomes the weakest link. Indeed, this is just as good if not better than the first book.
REVIEW: One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence
Last Updated on June 22, 2024 Though I often read more than one book at a time, I generally keep to a rule that I have for myself which prevents me from reading multiple books by the same author. With One Word Kill, I made an exception. My current audiobook is Holy Sister, also by Mark Lawrence, but since it is such a different genre and setting, I didn’t think it would be a problem. I was correct, as the only thing that carried over into this book was Lawrence’s great storytelling.
REVIEW: Beyond the Shadows Volume One - A Grimdark Anthology
Last Updated on June 22, 2024 It’s always an exciting thing to see a new anthology of grimdark stories when it’s released. Great artwork typically pulls me in along with a list of stories promising lots of grit, swords, and dismemberment. Beyond the Shadows Volume One – A Grimdark Anthology was no exception, even though it was a compilation of indie authors. No problem, as anthologies are a great way to discover new voices in fantasy.
How to Paint a Vaulted Ceiling
Understanding the surfaces, dynamics and accessibility are key to painting a vaulted ceiling. By Chris Haught Staining or painting a vaulted ceiling presents painters with a set of unique challenges, beginning with access to the job. Since a vaulted ceiling often can be more than 20 feet high, the best approach to painting a vaulted ceiling is to use scaffolding. Once up there, you may face another complication: Vaulted ceilings are not always paint grade.
Painting drywall with water damage
If you try to apply paint over surfaces that have been compromised by water damage, the water in the paint only worsens the problem. Before painting drywall with water damage, the damage has to be repaired first. When you see a water stain on a wall or ceiling, it’s usually a fraction of the actual amount of damage. Finding and correcting the source of that damage is first. Once that’s done, it’s time to assess and repair the water damage.
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