Thank you, NetGalley, for this book. I’ve been reading tons of horror these days, mostly in preparation for my first trip to StokerCon. And this book is on the final ballot for “Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.” I’m trying to read as many nominated books as possible but this was my first in the category. I’m also new to Keisling, but I have others of his on my radar to read.

I enjoyed this story collection, which isn’t usually my go-to book. However, most of these stories were excellent. I only skimmed a couple, which is to be expected since not every story will land with every reader. None were over-the-top gory, but most of them were captivating.

Short stories are a great way to introduce new readers to horror, and I think this collection would be a great place to start.

Favorite short stories in this great collection from horror great Todd Keisling: The Happytown Yuletide Massacre, Black Friday, and Holes in the Fabric!

Keisling is a wonderful short story author and knows how to make your skin crawl. Loved it!

This is sadly a DNF @ 36%. I really struggled to get into the short stories, they felt incomplete and mere ideas jotted down rather than full stories. (only rated on Netgalley as it won't allow no star rating - GR review is not rated.)

My thoughts and star ratings for the stories I read in the book are below:

Midnight in the Southland - 3 stars
An interesting nostalgic style story with very little creep factor. Kind of cozy. A warm intro but hardly Cold, black or infinite.

2:45 to New Xebico - 2 stars
While there’s nothing really wrong with this story it feels more of a writing prompt for an English class. The story barely fleshed out and no real story.

The Happytown Yuletide Massacre - 3 stars
Initial thoughts were pretty average but the twist was what saved this story. Overall, I liked the concept but wanted more gore and horror.

14% - instance of ax instead of axe
… charmed the hell out of here (should be her.)

Y2K - 2 stars
Kinda light touch, set up as an interview transcript. Felt very removed from the story.

Black Friday - 2 stars
Stock standard zombie story. Offers nothing new. Boring.

TOMMY THE DESTRUCTO-BOT VS. THE BULLIES FROM FUTURE STREET - 3 stars
Interesting premise, but the story lacks meat. There’s a substantial lead up that is meant to endear the reader to Tommy, but it falls flat.
Characters read like extreme caricatures instead of realistic people, this removes the chance for the reader to relate to them.

*Note: I received an electronic copy of this book via NetGalley*

Thank you Netgalley and Kevin Lucia cemetery dance publications for this amazing book.

First of all, I'm now a fan of Todd Keisling. This was my first work of his and it is amaaazzzzing. I always say that some people are born to write. I consider Neil Gaiman, Donna Tartt as those authors and now will count Keisling in that list too.

This is an amazing collection of short stories. # Cold, black and infinite

As per the name of the book, there are several stories belonging to every word in the title like 5 stories in cold, 5 in black and 6 stories in infinite.

**Cold**

- **Midnight in the Southland**

" “We’re all lonely travelers,” he used to say, “wandering empty roads under a weight of cosmic indifference.” it's a story of a man who has been influenced by a Radio Jockey named Gus. His show was about strange things that happened with people. And protagonist has waited so long for something to happen with him and it does in the end of the story."
A man who used to be a fan of RJ is on verge of rediscovering himself again.


- **2.45 to New Xebico**

> “the universe is chaos you can count on. We’re all slaves to entropy, everything rots, and even reality runs threadbare in places.”
>
A story of a terminal security who comes across a weird passenger, something that he craved to witness whole his life and yet when it happened he was not ready to witness it.


- **The happytown Yuletide Massacre**

Angela finds a horrible act has played out in her small town. This was a fun read, a take on all those vacation horror movies.
> They’re always tall, handsome, rugged, the sort of guys who can kill a bear with their hands and then cook you a candlelit dinners and they’re always flawed, too.
>

- **Y2K**

Story of an agent interviewing a suspect but who is the actual villain here? Is suspect paranoid or everything he is saying is actually true?

- **Black Friday**

A zombie apocalypse. One of the cliched stories but I liked it.

> Maybe if people survive this plague, Black Friday will become a day remembered for all the right reasons & day when humanity’s excess came tumbling down around its ears.
>




**Black**

- **TOMMY THE DESTRUCTO-BOT VS. THE BULLIES FROM FUTURE STREET**

Tommy is bullied so he decides to take revenge on his bullies with help of next door neighbour old lady Mercedes Future.

> War came to Future Street one crisp autumn day, dressed in tinfoil and copper tubing, with pneumatic pistons driven by the steam of one child’s bloodlust.
>

- **Afterbirth**

This is not explainable in simple words. Karen kills children and doing something weird in the basement. The creature is alive but not exactly but it is in the end. A biting satire aimed at pro life fanatics. It's also a author's take on Jonathan Swift’s “a modest proposal” instead of eating children to cure famine, it's killing children to grow your own. And I loved how author said he is with women, a woman has right to choose. Full stop.


- **Annie's heart is a haunted house**

> “Cruelty comes so easily to us at this age but without the understanding of what it truly does to others.”
>
6 teenagers wake up in a weird place and realise they are in dream of another girl whom they all bullied.

- **The Gods of our fathers**

The girl who's grandpa and mom is dead who worshipped an old God is left to live with physically abusive father and sexually abusing brother. One of the darkest stories in the series and it takes a while to finish it because it is too painful.

> Her daddy’s god scared her. Everything she knew of Daddy’s god was jealousy and retribution, fire and brimstone, the sort of faceless creature that turned people into salt and laid waste to whole cities.
>

- **Solve for X**

Becky let's a kid Nextdoor into the house. But is it really a kid?

**Infinite**

- **We've all gone to crooked town**

A child meets up with a crooked man who gives him a coin to make a wish come true.

> His anxieties are written in the language of a nightmare in a script too ancient to be known from a thousand other derelict little towns across a derelict little world, each one swallowed and forgotten in a moment of appetite and bliss.
>
- **We don't talk about Marty Godot**

This story had a 1984 vibes. Everyone wears a mask. Marty has been working for Benefactors for God knows how long and he has been loyal. He is going to get promoted but Marty removes his mask before he is promoted which is the worst crime possible. An allegorical story about how a daily job changes us, often in the worst ways.

> “Glory be to boid. Glory be to the many.”
>

> The Benefactors turned a mirror on the human race, forcing us to see ourselves for the first time in our existence, and the truth was too much. The entire human race was drunk when the Benefactors arrived. The Acquisition forced sobriety on us all, and none of us could deal with it.
>


- **The holes in the fabric**

Norma is trying to make the end meet. She has taken up a job to clear bodies and give them proper burial. There in those bodies lies body of her close friend Martha as well
Martha was a part of cult. Norma experience something beyond words.

- **Happy pills**

Marcus Taylor is depressed and considers a new drug trial. Surprise surprise “glory be to the many”. The society is built and operated by neuro typical people and neuro divergent are expected to follow in their paths. It mirrors author's own struggle with depression and anxiety and the treatment balance.

> You can only force a smile for so long before it starts to weigh on you. Sooner or later, those cracks will show, and they’ll know you were lying to them.
>



- **Gethsemane**

A wonderful take on Judas and Jesus's story. It was mind-blowing. Blasphemous and even scandalous if staunch catholic reads it.

> A murderous hunger in a supposed savior was no more a threat than one who preaches salvation for the poor.
>

- **We've all gone to the magic show**

The whole town people are getting replaced with mannequins one by one.

> Some histories, we learned, were meant to remain entombed, their shadows and dust and wood shavings forever closed away from time and memory.
>



Some quotes worth mentioning

> A million shoppers ravenous for a deal. Maybe this is what humanity’s death rattle sounds like. Maybe we’ve been hearing it for a while and just didn’t notice.
>


> It’s no secret the Benefactors exposed our base nature, revealing us to ourselves as the sophisticated animals we truly are. Sanity doesn’t last when faced with the truth: that we’re terrified creatures playing dress-up, pretending that we’re safe, that everything’s okay, and that life is something to be enjoyed. We need the illusion of happiness to survive.
>

> Acceptance of their ways and regulations is the least we can do to honor them and their continued benevolence. Were it not for them, we would have destroyed ourselves in the onslaught following the merger of realities.
Our masks exist to hide the truth from each other, however thinly veiled it might be, because we humans are fragile things. The Benefactors learned this the hard way.
>

> There’s power in someone’s actions, especially when those actions run contrary to their nature, or when they come at a cost, and in the name of something far greater than themselves.
>

> Living brings madness brings mortality; working brings immortality brings misery. That’s the cycle. Get used to it.
>

> Something most people don’t understand is that a day at the Smile Factory isn’t a respite from the agony of living.
>

> for all their brainwashing and crossbreeding, we’re still somewhat human. Some of us, anyway. And what’s more human than telling a story,
>

> It’s hard to explain to someone that you’re incapable of feeling happiness or anger or anything else for that matter. How do you explain to someone that the act of smiling is like lifting the heaviest weight on the planet? I just can’t.
>

Cold, Black, & infinite is a collection of sixteen short stories including three stories that were never previously published. The stories were all very well written and compulsively readable.The stories are separated into three sections Cold, Black, and Infinite.

The Cold section includes five stories that take place in cold settings including The Happytown Yuletide Massacre a Christmas slasher story and Black Friday which is a brilliant zombie story.

The Black section includes five stories that are very dark or deal with black magic. These are the stories that will really make your skin crawl.

In the Infinite section there are six stories that are on the strange side and most are cosmic horror. The story Holes in the Fabric was based in the same town as Keisling's novel Devil's Creek and has a connection to his novella The Final Reconciliation. It occurs after the events of the novel so it may be advisable to read it before the short story. I had no problem understanding without reading Devil's Creek, but I am not sure the extent of the spoilers.

The collection was really great overall. I would recommend the short story collection to seasoned fans of horror who are not easily offended. The author has included content warnings in the back of the book for each story and they are plentiful. You have been warned.

Thank you so very much to Todd Keisling, Cemetery Dance, and Netgalley for the advanced copy of this read. I cannot tell you how excited I was to receive it!

I love all things Todd; he has yet to write anything that I haven't loved and this was no different. The snarky, sassy way he approaches his writing makes things so relatable, enjoyable, and despairing - I wouldn't have it any other way. I would call the stories in this collection more medium sized than short. They expand more than your average short story and give the reader more time to sink into the world that's been created for them.

I greatly appreciate that the title of the collection is the categories that each of the stories fall under. I loved that some of the stories take place in the same universe as Devil's Creek (please, I beg you: read this!). I loved that there was stereotypical haunted house stories, and then horror stories of the modern day employee. I loved each story individually and I loved how it all wrapped up as a whole.

There are even some holiday horrors in here, so it is absolutely the time to grab ahold of this one and give it a spin. I recommend it to basically all horror fans - it's worthy of your time and then some!

I thought this collection of short stories was just okay. I like Todd Keisling's writing but I just couldn't get into the stories.

Cold, Black, & Infinite is a collection of stories unlike any other I have read. There are some reoccurring themes, but enough variety that each story is fresh and the collection doesn't get stale. Keisling has a very distinctive author voice and it shines through in each and every story. My personal favorite was The Smile Factory, but I also enjoyed the various holiday horror stories. I am definitely finding that to be a horror niche I greatly enjoy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Cemetery Dance Publications for this ARC. I am leaving this review voluntarily and all views expressed are my own.

i was first introduced to Todd Keisling via his excellent novel Devil's Creek, which if you haven't read, by all means, drop everything you're doing and run right out and get a copy. so when i discovered that a collection of his short stories was on the horizon, i was stoked.
Cold, Black & Infinite: Stories of the Horrific & Strange are indeed horrific and strange. they're also brutal and tender, graphic and full of whimsy. Keisling has written an amazing collection of short stories and i savored each one.
Midnight In The Southland was a special treat for me since it was set in my neck of the woods, making the tale that much more meaningful. The God of our Fathers struck a chord. i may never look at those stray churches that dot the southern landscape the same way again. but my favorite tale was Gethsemane, a horrible and touching profane work of lost faith. this could've been so wrong in the hands of a lesser writer, but Keisling hit perfection.
to sum up:
Cold, Black & Infinite:Stories of the Horrific & Strange is highly recommended
5 stars out of 5

“We’re all lonely travelers,” he used to say, “wandering empty roads under a weight of cosmic indifference.”

Todd Keisling knows how to write a damn good tale. This collection is no exception, they all hit the ball out of the park.

I loved each one, and it’s truly impossible to pick a favourite, I’m just so so happy to have read more stories by him!

If you love the weird, the unexplainable, the gruesome, the cosmic, the strange, and the bizarre, you’ll find something that appeals to you on these pages.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, Kevin Lucia, & Cemetery Dance Publications for a copy.

Available now

An anthology series comprised of 16 short stories, this book has incredible range. Each story is substantive, confronting subjects from capitalism to religion and revenge.

Absolutely worth a read, but be warned that some of the stories can be on the gory side if that’s not your thing.

These stories were excellent. They infested my brain, rooted there, and refused to let go. I even had nightmares after reading a story before bed. I’m looking forward to reading more from this author.

Really enjoyed most of the stories, particularly the ones featuring zombies and mannequins, but there were a few that I skipped.

Cold, Black & Infinite (light spoilers!)
By Todd Keisling

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I received this title in exchange for a review from NetGalley.

Disclaimer: Historically speaking, I am not the biggest fan of short story collections. I AM, however, a big fan of slow burns and I don’t think you can appropriately chip away at one’s sanity and resolve when you’re trying to keep your chapters under 3 pages.

I wasn’t even going to request this book the first time I saw it on NetGalley. I already knew it was a collection of shorts, and given my stance that I alerted you, dear reader, to earlier, I had already decided that I’d be better off looking for something else.

That was until I read Devil’s Creek.

Todd Keisling, in my opinion, is one of the top 5 writers in the game today. And I don’t just mean horror; I mean all of it. His command of the English language and his ability to write some of the most beautiful and poetic scenes of pure chaos is astounding.

It’s been a few months now, but I want to say it’s chapter 16(?)of Devil’s Creek, remains the best piece of writing I’ve had the pleasure of consuming all year.

With that in mind, I re-examined my want of this title and sent my request to NetGalley.

I dove in immediately upon receipt and I was not let down at all.

While I don’t find all of the stories herein to be all that “scary”, they do all fall under the broader “horror” umbrella.

Again, the real star here is Keisling’s writing.

Opener “Midnight in Southland” lands nicely and showcases Keisling’s outstanding, and, at times lyrical, writing.

Further standouts include “The Happytown Yuletide Massacre” which imagines what would happen if a Hallmark Christmas movie went postal.

Y2K - a trippy, new-age Twilight Zone (which is a reference I feel is beginning to date me).

Black Friday - probably my favorite zombie tale of the last 2 years.

Holes in the Fabric - another beautifully written cosmic horror tale involving our favorite Kentucky town.

Gethsemane - a wildly original retelling of the account of Judas. This one came out of left field and became one of my favorites in the whole collection.

The Gods of Our Fathers - an occulty, rapey jaunt into the occult that, though it resolves in an unexpected and ultimately rad way, left me feeling gross.

But if I had to pick one that stood above the rest it would have to be The Smile Factory. Anyone who’s worked a job that they don’t care for, for someone or some company that they liked even less, this story should resonate loudly.

My biggest takeaway from this collection is that Keisling manages to take my primary criticism of short stories (that they inherently can’t be scary as they’re too short to truly build terror) and throws it clear out the window.

Keisling consistently lands “scary” and “creepy” punches, regardless of the length of his chapters or sections, while never losing the almost lyrical flow of his writing.

Cold, Black & Infinite gets a solid 4 out of 5.

“What brings you out tonight, Lonely Traveler?” Todd Keisling’s short story collection, Cold, Black, & Infinite, brings a shared experience to horror fans. For short story collections, you might love, like or dislike a story. My favorites are “Annie’s Heart Is A Haunted House” and “Gethsemane”. For the time you’re reading it, you won’t feel alone and that might be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what ideas follow you into your nightmares. Thanks to Todd Keisling, Kevin Lucia, Cemetery Dance Publications and NetGalley for the ARC. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Once again I've found an author that I'm going to look out for from now on as this collection of short horror stories was a fantastic journey into a weird and wonderful mind!

The collection is divided in three parts reflected by the title: Cold, Black and Infinite. Each of the 19 stories gave me very strong feelings, either chills, a sense of real dread and discomfort, despair or horror. It struck me that there isn't gore or lots of blood but I'd label some of the scenes pretty horrific in terms of the emotions evoked. There are zombies, eldritch creatures, cosmic horror, slasher, revenge, mental health.. Everything but with a unique perspective!

Todd Keisling's writing style is one that I really liked, straightforward and searched at the same time, but I can't stress enough the ability to really make you feel inside the stories. In addition, although rationally fictitious, when transported solely by the writing, I could honestly believe those worlds could exist and that I could wake up in one of them and it would feel absolutely normal, albeit terrifying!

I loved that some of the stories are connected and either depict the before or after, without feeling repetitive or without boring the reader, actually always surprising!
This is another great example of how short stories can really show the skills of a writer, being able to create something special in a handful of pages!

Thank you to Todd Keisling and Netgalley for the opportunity to read it and this is my honest review.

If you haven't read anything by Todd Keisling, this collection is a great place to start.  And if you're already a fan, be sure to add this to your reading list!  This is one of those collections where every story shines in its own way.  I was invested in the characters, instantly drawn into the stories and settings.  There were some pretty dark topics so be sure to check out the content warnings at the back of the book.  A very strong and varied collection, highly recommend.

The horror genre runs the scale from "yucky" to "spooky" to "creepy" to "fantastical" with so many adjectives in between. Todd Keisling manages to touch each one of them briefly in these short stories. Short stories give readers an excellent view of a writer's skills as they start and end in a few pages what normally would take many chapters, flexing their abilities to scare us along the way. Keisling has proven he's a master, you will NOT forget these stories quickly. I for one am sharing with my reading group. Why should I be the only one with nightmares?

Todd Keisling is an auto buy for me!

I don’t always love short stories. For me, they either leave me hanging or don’t have enough detail to keep me engaged.

Keisling’s collection sucked me in and never let up. The stories are wildly different but interesting.

I won’t go through each one but the standouts-
Midnights in the Southland - so moody and the perfect story to kick off spooky season reading.
Annie’s Heart is a Haunted House - I had some of the worst nightmares of my adult life. This one really hit me.
The Happytown Yuletide Massacre - this is a fun one!

Overall, a solid collection that left me spooked and satisfied!

Cold, Black, & Infinite by Todd Keisling is a collection of sixteen short stories. They are not disappointing or quick stories but rather have some depth to them to satisfy the reader. I enjoyed nearly all of them. Some are heavier horror than some readers may be accustomed to, so I’d recommend this anthology to fans of horror/dark horror.

Thank you to Cemetery Dance Publishing for supplying me with a copy to read & review.