Sometimes You Just Want to be Silly

#1 Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson is known for his grand science fiction sagas, his epic fantasies, his fast-paced adventures, or his steampunk Clockwork chronicles.

But Kevin J. Anderson also has a lighter side. You’ll laugh so hard, brains will come out your nose.

What happens when—

A wimpy, henpecked man finds an enchanted loincloth that turns him into a real jungle Ape Man?

A stranded alien uses his advanced technology to fool audiences as a stage magician?

A frustrated monster-movie actor uses a gypsy witch’s special makeup to turn into a real werewolf when the cameras start to roll?

A group of heavy-metal fans finds a spell on the Internet to raise their favorite dead rock star from the grave for a final encore?

A vampire, just minding his own business, wakes from his coffin to find he’s being stalked through his own castle by an over-enthusiastic vampire hunter?

A futuristic law firm uses time travel as a legal loophole to win their client’s case?

Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. takes on the Boogeyman for a client, or is hired out to save a sacrificial Aztec Christmas turkey?

These twenty stories cover a range of slapstick, subtle, short-short, and groaner humor. The Funny Business also includes for the very first time the scripts of the hilarious comic miniseries Grumpy Old Monsters, never before published.

Beware—silliness ahead. Open the book, and prepare to snicker!

CAN KILLING BE PASSED ON FROM FATHER TO SON?

Like high cholesterol, male pattern baldness, or a career in confections?

It’s something Bobby Blessing worries about a lot. He’s not just the owner of an ice cream parlor. Bobby is also the son of the Brittle Butcher—a serial killer marking time on Florida’s Death Row.

For years, Bobby has kept to himself, leaving his nightmares and his hometown far behind, while working hard to keep his family’s disturbing past at bay. (Yeah, his mom is quite the treat, too.)

Then, one snowy night, the enigmatic Cori Widdoes turns up with a craving for ice cream, and Bobby’s life takes an abrupt turn. For the better. Love and marriage soon follow. Bobby is happier than he has ever been.

Problem is, nothing good in his life lasts for long. Ignoring history is one thing, forgetting it another.

When rumor, hearsay, and mistaken identity target his life, his wife, and their livelihoods, ultimately escalating into violence, Bobby chooses to confront his demons head-on—both the real and the imagined.

He and Cori return to the town that had shunned him years earlier. And, almost immediately, idyllic Hillsdale degenerates into batshit crazy Hellsdale with a body count to match.

Watch your back. Lock your doors. Be courteous to everyone, no matter who, no matter what. Yes, everyone.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Join former scamp Cullin and his merry band of confidence men (and one liberated princess) as they put The Sting in the Middle Ages. With dreams of being a hero, or at least a storyteller, Cullin travels with Sir Dalbry, a washed-up knight in shining armor; Reeger, ready and eager for any part of the dirty work; and Affonyl, former princess, who wanted to study science and alchemy, rather than embroidery.

Together, they cross the land with one scam after another, concocting their own heroic deeds, preparing mock dragon heads, or selling kraken tusks and mermaid scales.

But when attempting to con King Longjohn, whose castle is supposedly bursting at the seams with treasure, the caper turns sour. The powerful Wizard-Mage Ugnarok and his army of ugly and muscular (if not too bright) orcs takes over Longjohn’s castle, imprisoning the king, pillaging the halls, and carrying on with typical orclike mayhem.

Cullin and his friends are trapped in the castle’s labyrinth of secret passages, just trying to survive . . .  or is this the opportunity for a grander scam than they have ever attempted before?

Orcs are terribly superstitious—you can’t bash a ghost, after all—and it’s like Die Hard in a castle, as Cullin, Affonyl, Reeger, and Dalbry set up a grand haunting that will scare off even the scariest orc army.

A fusion of Shirley Jackson and Gillian Flynn, Passing Through Veils is a gripping psychological thriller about Kathryn Fields who moves into a rundown Georgetown, DC townhouse in hopes that restoring it will be a metaphor for her own rehabilitation from the recent nervous breakdown that derailed her promising career. But when she discovers a forgotten vanity behind a false wall in her bedroom and the secrets hidden there, the veil between the real and the surreal is abruptly pierced, and the ghost of a beautiful woman who was murdered in this very townhouse escapes to seek revenge.

Is this simply a fantasy of Katherine’s damaged psyche?

Or have her own demons finally escaped to torment her?