Purgatory is said to be a place where dying souls go to be punished for sins. For the superstitious, the number 13 symbolizes suffering and death. When the two are combined, it leaves us with this question: Is death the end or is it only the beginning?In the spirit of the dark masters of horror, King, Laymon, Little, and Keene, comes a collection of short stories of the bizarre and the macabre.One story begins in the name of research when a world-famous horror author spends the night in one of the most notorious haunted houses in America - Ritter House - only to discover that reality is much more horrific than fiction.In Road Trip, a man must travel across state lines to identify his brother's dead body and drive him home in the back of his car to a mortuary run by a dead man.In Tic Toc, a man has two hours to prevent a catastrophe in the building where his wife works, only he can't recall how or why. His only clue is the nightmare he had hours earlier.Christmas will never be the same for a little boy in Santa Claws, and an old wooden box in a warehouse carries a story all its own in The Crate.Each tale will hold each person accountable for their actions and ultimately lead them to a dark and unforgiving place much worse than the bounds of Purgatory.If reading dark and twisted horror with a touch of the Twilight Zone is your thing, you're invited to take a trip into Purgatory and open the door to these stories and more . . . Get your copy today! Born and raised in Texas and now residing in Arizona. I am an avid reader and big Houston Sports Fan. I play chess everyday when I'm not squeezing in a little time for writing. I published my first work Purgatory - 13 Tales of the Macabre and Floor Four - A Novella of Horror, an Amazon Bestseller in Occult Horror. Also completed is Night Dreams, an episodic series in seven parts that can be read separately or in one complete novel. My column, 'Ask AJ', appeared in All Authors Magazine online and I have had short stories published on Dark River Press, The Sirens Call eZine Issue #14 and the anthologies, State of Horror Illinois published by Charon Coin Press and Concordant Vibrancy published by All Authors Publishing. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and my website, alopezjr.com.
