06/25/2025 The Greatest Puppet Show in Town from the EXACTLY THE WRONG THINGS chapbook from Joe Monks.
- Candace Nola
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
This story was part of a three-story tribute chapbook published by Joe Monks, featuring stories by Joe, Franklin Wales, and myself. The tribute was to TRIAGE, a book written by Ed Lee, Jack Ketchum, and Richard Laymon. In their book, all three authors had to begin their story using the same opening paragraph then go from there, however they saw fit. The result was 3 wildly different tales, all extremely violent and graphic.
For our version, we were given the opening line by Ed Lee himself, using the first line of THE BIGHEAD, then extreme horror author Christine Morgan, also gave us a line that we had to use. Once we had those, the three of us were off to the races. our results, were vastly different much like the original TRIAGE stories.
Interestingly enough, Joe and Frank both went deep into graphic sex, violence, and gore for their stories, while I delved into something more akin to bizarro horror. This was my first story of the sort and probably remains one of my most bizarre tales to date.
The story focuses on the life of a few carnival workers, the oddities often found within such traveling shows, and the tragic story of its resident puppeteers. There’s a voodoo priestess involved, the “freak show” workers, and a level of weird absurdity that even I had not planned for. I really loved how this story turned out and so did Ed Lee, as evidenced by the blurb he sent us to use. Laymon and Ketchum are sadly no longer with us.
As a side note, Franklin Wales later disassociated himself from the project as he received quite a bit of backlash from his readers over the content of his story. As a result, I do not tag him when I post about this project, nor is the chapbook signed by him. Sadly, Joe Monks passed away last summer, making this one of the last projects he ever worked on.
The 'Red' image is my illustration for my story in the book, while the 'Blue' image is the actual cover of the chapbook.
It’s available as a signed chapbook on my website, signed by myself and Joe Monks. There are maybe 3 dozen copies left.
It can also be found in my DEMONS IN MY BLOODSTREAM collection.
