JIMMY STU LIVES! By Kent McDaniel. Penumbra Publishing. 2012. Cover by Joe Staton.

Jimmy Stu Sloan is a succesful preacher who has a thriving mega church and a loyal flock of believers. But all is not well with the reverend. He has health problems and isn’t as strong of a believer as most of his flock.

One night he surprises everyone by announcing because of his heart problems, he will have himself frozen so he can be awakened when a cure is available. It will also allow him to continue preaching the gospel in the future.

Well, Jimmy Stu achieves his cryogenic prophecy and finds himself alive in the future and off on a series of adventures not even he could have imagined.

Kent McDaniel weaves a strong story here. I like his set up and how he takes his main character off on a romp through the future. He…

The latest issue issue of JOMP features an essay by Rich Dengrove about the Sixties counterculture and its effect on his life, entitled “The Hippies”. He credits my short story mini-collection, Through Their Strange Hours, with inspiring the essay and begins it with a review of the stories. I’m reprinting that portion of the essay below:

THE HIPPIES

I recently read a book by a Kent McDaniel, Through Their Strange Hours (2013). It is a collection of tales; and three out of four of them concern The Hippies. Kent, I suspect, lived through the Hippy Era. So did I. It is true that he lived in Illinois and I lived it in Massacchusetts. Still, while, in Boston, the atmosphere was more Liberal and the Vietnam war less popular, I doubt that what went on in our brains differed that much.

One of Kent’s stories showed this in the youth…

Windy City Reviews recently posted a review of my e-book, Through Their Strange Hours, and I’m pasting it in below:

Book Review:Through Their Strange Hours

Through Their Strange Hours. Kent McDaniel. 52 pgs. The e-book is $0.99 and available at B&N.com, iBooks, The Kobo Store, Smashwords, and Amazon.

Reviewed by Mike O’Meary.

Storytelling that conveys warmth and humor, and transports you to another time and place.

Through Their Strange Hours by Kent McDaniel is a collection of four interconnected short stories that hang together nicely and give this collection the feeling of a novella. The stories also provide a compellingly realistic portrayal of life in southern Illinois in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a place and time where the biggest challenge was finding ways to ward off apathy and the tedium of everyday life. Accordingly, McDaniel’s characters drop in and out of school, in and out…

Book Review: One Less Elvis (and Other Stories)

One Less Elvis (& Other Stories). Kent McDaniel. Amazon Digital Services, Inc., December 20, 2013, Kindle E-Book, 64 pages.

Reviewed by David Laipple.

Chicago author Kent McDaniel shows us how to have fun with short stories, starting with a novelette, who-done-it murder mystery. The title story, One Less Elvis, is a story about Elvis impersonators prodding a reluctant police detective to find the murderer of one of their own. Kent McDaniel’s hero sleuth—retired school teacher, “white-haired geezer,” and Elvis impersonator, Brendan Culhane—weaves through the evidence and the private lives of a baker’s dozen of suspects, solving the mystery of who killed Larry “Hound Dog” Vasquez and letting the reader wonder if Elvis still drives a pick-up truck.

The first of Kent’s four other stories, Or Someplace Shining, relates how the not-very Reverend McDermott creatively resolves an adolescent’s issue…

“Up On The Roof” appaeared originally in M-Brane SF #6

         Here and there Watchdogs roll on their caterpillar tracks, looking like miniature tanks, except for the steel jaws. At the edge of the grounds a wall of azure light shimmers, and on an acre of lawn, several fruit trees stand at various points. Jackson Kane stands by a ladder under the apple tree. Atop the ladder perches Vern, an android, and Jackson points out the three apples he deems most delectable. Vern picks them and climbs down, a straw basket on one palm. He proffers the basket, which also contains pears and peaches. 

            Jackson scrutinizes it, as though judging a still life, and nods. He looks at Vern, who wears coveralls and work boots. Jackson wears shorts and tank top; otherwise Vern is his mirror image: the exact same young face with full lips and a wide forehead above…

I’m posting video of Rudy Negrete sitting in with our band. The song we were playing is classic roots rock, but Rudy pretty much stole the show. Which is no real surprise, I guess. For my money Rudy Negrete is the most exciting roots rocker currently working out of Chicago’s south side. The real thing. Of course, I could be biased. Way back when, I was Rudy’s fifth grade teacher.

Around seven years back, he saw some comment I put on Stevie Ray Vaughn’s My Space page and sent me an email inviting me to catch his trio. I did and was amazed. The rhythm section was rock solid, and Rudy’s guitar work and vocals were something to behold. He just keeps getting better, too.

Anyway, I was playing with Alpha Stewart on drums and my wife Dorothy on bass that night. The show was going pretty good already. But…

I’m going to post video here of the song “If You Need Somebody,” the lyrics to which I scribbled down one night long, long ago in PKs down in Carbondale, before a show. A few months later, that summer up at my sister Linda’s place in Naperville, I got around to putting the words to music, and maybe fifteen years later, I got around to recording it for my About Time album.

Like the lord, I work in mysterious ways. Especially to me.

l-r: Dorothy, Kent, Paul

The video was recorded around a decade later at The Glenwood Arts Fest in Chicago’s cosmic Rogers Park neighborhood. Our show that day was a  family affair. My wife Dorothy was on bass. Our son Paul was on drums. And our buddy Josh Davis was on harp. That’s me on guitar. We were all feeling pretty good that afternoon and having a good…

The live version of Zombies Stink (& Vampires Suck) below was recorded Saturday, April 19–the night before Easter–at Silvies on Chicago’s north side. Alpha Stewart is on drums, Dorothy McDaniel on bass, John Temmerman on Sax, and that’s me on guitar. It was a fantastic night.

If you’d like to  compare the live version with the studio version, just click on the icon below, which will play the studio recording:

“cover” which we provided the various mp3 download sites.