Matthew Jon Smith

We review this book this week!   3/23/2025 3:33 PM CST Dear Reader, I just released a book this weekend. It’s a short called “ Killer Mike and the Blood Slugs – A Night on the Town .” I am super tired of promoting it right this second so go buy it or something, LOL. I’ve included the ‘zon link. Just because I know that is where most people will shop. But it is available in all sorts of places, including bookshop.org and even Barnes and Noble. You can also get it at Exploitation Media , but that’s only the digital version, and it is currently the most expensive, and I am still only making $0.35 per eBook. Here is the thing, though, if you just go to Exploitation Media , you will see most of your purchase options there. For a brief second, the story was number #32 in American Horror on the ‘zon and that was like a little crack hit for me. The highest I could catch its picture on the charts was at #53, and just below a book I have seen floating around. I have seen people saying ...

  3/16/2025 9:44 AM CST Dear Reader, I know you missed me last Sunday. You probably did not know what to do with yourself when I left you without the healing power of my golden words for more than a week. I would apologize for leaving you so weak, but I would like to restate my former informal promise: I am only committing to three blogs a month. Furthermore, I must emphasize that this stated promise is informal , as it is a soft commitment on my part. Ok, for real though, I can only commit to 3 blogs a month right now, and as we get into this week’s subject, maybe you will understand why. No, this week, you will not be getting the INLAND EMPIRE analysis essay, nor will you be getting the “Street Fighter and the Art of Craft” essay. I know it probably seems like a running joke by now, but maybe this week’s topic will clear that up too. Today, we are going to talk about what the hell I have been up to for the last three months and what you can expect to see from me in the y...

  3/2/2025 10:50 AM CST Dear Reader, I swear to you. I SWEAR. I have not abandoned INLAND EMPIRE (I have, but I’m still committed) nor my Street Fighter and the Art of Craft blog (same as previous case) but they are both going to be long reads and will require a lot of time and effort that I have had to spend on other things. Namely, I have some quick announcements. You can get yourself a copy of The Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe with a foreword by me. It is a production of Exploitation Media. I handpicked all the stories because they meant a lot to me growing up. Picking yourself up a copy will help support me and all my future writing (hopefully, other authors as well). On that same note, I want to make the second soft announcement of the release of my short story, “Killer Mike and the Blood Slugs – A Night on the Town ,” also through Exploitation Media. The official release date is 3/21 and you can pre-order it now , so that it shows up immediately to your digital book...

2/23/2025 2:33 PM CST Dear Reader, I have all the same blogs brewing on the back burner that I have promised before. But this week we get a review of Osgood Perkins’s The Monkey , a reimagining of the Stephen King short story of the same name. Enjoy! The Monkey is a Campy Final Destination with a Family Curse The Monkey (2025) Written and Directed by Osgood Perkins My Verdict: Over the top, campy fun, Mixed tone doesn’t always land The monkey looks almost exactly like I imagined. After what felt like an hour of studio logos, The Monkey ’s opening scene wasted no time setting the tone. Adam Scott is devilish in his cameo as Petey Shelburn, airline pilot and the deadbeat dad extraordinaire, who is trying to get rid of the titular monkey at a pawn shop. Scott’s character explains the premise, what the monkey is, and what it does. The pawn shop owner does not believe him, and then we get an immediate payoff to prove said premise. It was extremely gruesome. To the point that I...

  2/16/2025 5:06 PM CST Dear Reader, This week we are doing another book review. This one is a doozy. In the meantime just know that I still have my two mammoth blogs in the works, one about Street Fighter, and one about David Lynch’s film INLAND EMPIRE. (The INLAND EMPIRE essay is promising to be so long that people are urging me to publish it as its own stand alone work. We will see. I have to finish it first.) I already have my next review lined up because I read a wonderful short story called, “Lucifer Rising” by Torres Cascado and I would love to tell you more about that. Today, it is my treat to tell you about one of the nastiest stories I have ever read. Without further ado:   A Relentless Story of Madness, Sickness, and Disgust Review: Piñata – Tory Favro My Verdict: Utter Madness. Not for the Faint of Heart. Nasty Good Time. A short, brutal read. Yet again, I want to talk to you all about a book I found through Books of Horror (the wonderful Facebook...

  2/9/2025 8:33 PM CST Dear Reader, I don’t know why I am starting this so late. Probably because I started to feel guilty that I was going to skip my blog this week like I did last week. I know the informal promise is down to a blog three Sundays out of every month, but I wasn’t even going to do that. I must be honest, social media has been a total party ever since I met a bunch of other David Lynch fans, and it has been hell trying to tear me away from anything that isn’t in some way tacitly David Lynch related. I feel I owe you a blog. I am working on two huge blogs in the background: my Street Fighter blog and my INLAND EMPIRE blog. (Hell, there is one cooking on The Killing of a Sacred Deer as well, and that one is going to be controversial.) So today, tonight (What time is it?), I am going to do a little compromise with myself and try to keep it brief with a little blog that is inspired by a question from a scene in David Lynch’s The Return ( Twin Peaks Season 3). ...