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    Odds and Ends: An Assortment of Sorts
    Odds and Ends: An Assortment of Sorts
    Odds and Ends: An Assortment of Sorts
    Ebook71 pages28 minutes

    Odds and Ends: An Assortment of Sorts

    By Dustin LaValley

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    About this ebook

    Prepare to be ferried to an unfamiliar realm on the bony back of despair. Author Dustin LaValley takes us down face first with rapid-fire flash fiction in the form of Odds and Ends: An Assortment of Sorts. Already associated with the dark and bizarre, LaValley expands his repertoire to experiment with form and literary introspection. These harrowing meditations on the nature of the world--and the very purpose of humanity--not only provide chills, but strangely the effect of this read is vastly disproportionate to its length, leaving us with scars to contemplate for a long time to come.

    "Extraordinary. Hauntingly poignant."
    --Thomas Ligotti, author of My Work Is Not Yet Done

    "As a reader I'm tired of the formulaic nature of modern horror, sick of monsters-of-the-week and moral absolutes. Dustin LaValley is trying to create an antidote to tradition, and by eschewing conventional storytelling methods and popular horror tropes he does just that. Check out Odds and Ends if you're feeling jaded by the relentless onslaught of the undead; you'll find a refreshingly modern alternative."
    --Starburst Magazine

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisherrawdogscreaming
    Release dateMar 23, 2013
    Odds and Ends: An Assortment of Sorts
    Author

    Dustin LaValley

    Dustin LaValley is a multiple award-winning author of dark, genre-crossing fiction. Born in upstate New York to a corrections officer and nurse, LaValley was raised in a foster home with his two birth sisters and two adopted brothers surrounded by ten to twelve older boys at any given time. As a teenager he was involved with boxing and BMX. He rode professionally for a short period before falling ill to Ulcerative Colitis and Colon Cancer. As an adult he has had several surgeries including the total removal of his large intestine. LaValley is heavily influenced by the hardcore and heavy metal music scene which is prominent in many of his works. He has been unofficially titled, "The Lone Wolf" and "The Fugazi meets Henry Rollins of Fiction" for his aggressive DIY anti-corporate, self-promotion and strong nature towards unity and togetherness within the independent presses. Outside of his writing, he is well known for extensive tattoos that cover his entire back and arms. Dustin LaValley is the author of the books, Lowlife Underdogs, Lawson Vs. LaValley, A Child's Guide to Death and Spinner. 2013 will see three new releases in hardcover, trade paperback and e-book. Although his work is classified as dark fiction, it forms to no one label or genre and has set itself aside peers as pushing the boundaries of what is known as formula and format. Crisscrossing and interweaving between literary, experiential, horror, thriller and alternative adult fiction, LaValley's work is a genre in itself.

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      Book preview

      Odds and Ends - Dustin LaValley

      Also by Dustin LaValley

      Novellas

      Spinner

      Collections

      Lawson vs. LaValley (with John Edward Lawson)

      Lowlife Underdogs

      The Bleeding

      Illustrated Books

      A Child’s Guide to Death (with John Edward Lawson, Darin Malfi, and Mark Sullivan)

      Sequenetial Art

      Go ta Sleep

      Hayseed’s Service Station

      Interference

      Screenplays

      Party Girl

      Terror Overload

      You’re Next 3: Pajama Party Massacre

      Rise of the Ghosts (with Robbie Ribspreader)

      Previous Publication Credits

      The following stories were previously published in Lawson vs. LaValley:

      A Midnight Drive

      Fariytale Ending

      For Her, Insomnia

      Humidity

      I-15

      Sheets

      Sleeping

      Sympathy or Selfishness?

      Temper, Red as Her Lips

      Winter In Season

      An Introduction to Odds and Ends

      by Michael A. Arnzen

      Like opening a junk drawer in a prison cell, or picking through a glove compartment in hell, LaValley’s Odds and Ends is full of assorted gritty musings and disturbingly noir micro-dramas that you’ll find yourself turning over and pawing through with fascination. This book gives us an offbeat collection of miscellany that I can only compare to the aphorisms of Camus or the prose poems of Baudelaire—tight little pieces of decadent existentialism—but it is contemporary in its brutality and guts.

      The best pieces in this book personify death and dramatize lost hope, raising some very dark questions about the human condition…and LaValley confronts them without a flinch. You’ll no doubt find yourself compelled to keep turning the pages as you read this, wondering just how deep it will go, just how dark it will go, just where the bottom of this drawer filled with an assortment of sorts really is…

      There are a lot of lessons in this book, and I really do think that it should speak for itself. But sometimes the most meaningful things in the world are the forgotten things, the stuff hidden by the dust in the corner, the stuff growing in the back of your refrigerator… and LaValley knows this. He wants to shine a light on all the little things we don’t pay much attention to, showing their true weight, or exposing what’s hiding in the darkness. You get the sense he’s lived in the drawer alongside all these things, like a man trapped or discarded like some bloody thimble or soiled matchbook in the back of the junk drawer. But he’s not… he’s

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