Introducing our second flash novel: The Monster Opera by Nancy Stohlman, available now in print and e-book. Order your copy today.
A writer travels to Mexico City in search of a new story...but the monsters are already waiting for her. The more she writes, the more their whereabouts, as well as their desperation, are revealed. The Monster Opera is a gothic literary noir, a genre-bending novel-meets-libretto that combines recitative with dialogue, aria with prose, and ultimately asks the question: Who owns a story? The Monster Opera is a multi-genre extravaganza and the second flash novel available from Bartleby Snopes Press.
"What is most fascinating about Stohlman's work is how freely it shifts back and forth between different artistic forms, the whole package compressed into the length of a short story."
--Ian Chung (Read the full review at Sabotage Reviews)
"The Monster Opera is a brilliant and beautiful work, a rising crescendo of action in a haunting tale of love. Many authors strive for that perfect note, yet Stohlman does the unbelievable, turning words on the page into a truly operatic monster which comes alive in the very first scene."
--J.A. Kazimer, author of Dopesick: A Love Story and Shank
"At one point I found myself pledging my life and allegiance like an old Camelot knight to the life and the legacy of the Opera. If a dragon were to threaten it for some dragon reason, I would've totally put down this pint of whiskey and slain it. Because this Opera must live on! Its safety is more important than my own."
--Rob Geisen, author of The Aftermath, Etc.
"In a swell of lyrical prose that drips itself across the borders of music and literature, Nancy Stohlman delivers a self-aware story that sings out from the page like an opera trapped in the belly of an Old World curse. A love affair drunk on magical realism, somehow as ancient as it is avant-garde. "
--Kona Morris, author of Godless Comics
"I don't know shit about opera, and many would say less about literature. But I know plenty about these kind of monsters. And I know for damn sure you should be reading Nancy Stohlman."
-- Benjamin Whitmer, author of Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers