Reviewing short stories is always tricky because sometimes I enjoy one of the stories while being eh about the rest. And sometimes they're all varying degrees of okay. However, in this story collection, I had more stories I enjoyed than not. One story that spooked me was that of Anne’s Heart is a haunted house. The gore was there from the beginning, and the use of the phrase “grisly piñata” made me laugh.

Cold, Black, & Infinite was a perfect collection of stories overall, and I’m excited to see what the author puts out next!

I really enjoyed this book of stories. It had a variety, from sci-fi to horror.
I love to read both so I liked how the stories changed from one to the next. I will definitely be reading his previous collection. This was very well written and had plenty unique ideas.

Cold, Black, and Infinite by is a new horror anthology by Todd Keisling. Midnight in the Southland really sets the mood as the book opens with its mysterious feeling, driving at night listening to voices on the radio discussing the otherworldly, a total mood. Familiar but entertaining ground is covered with stories like Solve For X and also more unique fare such as The Smile Factory and Happy Pills. The Happy Town Massacre was also darkly humorous and a great deal of fun. A hallmark style slasher? Yes please. Will definitely read that one again over the holiday season. Speaking of the holiday season, Black Friday, a zombie story that takes place on Black Friday was a fun idea. I also loved Afterbirth and that it’s told from the perspective of the otherworldly creature being brought into the world. The Gods of Our Fathers was an exception within these stories for me, I probably should have checked the content warnings however. Overall I enjoyed almost all of the stories.

Dark and entertaining this is a great read for horror fans that want a good variety of stories from the author’s takes on fan favorite genres and urban legends to the more unfamiliar and otherworldly.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A chilling anthology of stories that masterfully intertwine the commonplace with the uncanny. The collection, while occasionally leaning into an almost excessive darkness, showcases Keisling's ability to create dread and tension from everyday situations, Despite its grim themes, the anthology never loses its grip on the reader, its haunting narratives serving as a testament to Keisling's skillful storytelling in the realm of contemporary indie horror.

Sixteen devilish twisted and engrossing stories to entertain the masses.
Each story devours your attention and time and you make your way through every word.
Parts cut you deep while other parts play the healer.
One of those rare collection where pretty much every story is a hit.
I enjoyed how some of the stories seemed to start off with us wondering what happened ahead of time to get us in this particular situation.

A great variety of short horrors ranging from the strange but pleasant, to the awful and the ick. Zombies, slashers, religion, office jobs: all things dreadful! This is my first Keisling read and I'm officially interested in reading more from this author. As I understand it, this compilation would be even more fun if you've read previous works, as there are tie-ins throughout these short stories.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC!

I've attempted this review three times. I get distracted by what I read in this collection. I've thought about it for the last week.

First, I've read Todd's book, Devil's Creek and Scanlines, and loved them. I was happy to see one story tied into Devil's and another with the same theme. As someone who dealt with suicidal ideation, Scanlines was difficult, but I was better for reading it.

So, let's get into it.

Midnight in the Southland is one of my favorite stories in this collection. I listened to Art Bell driving home from work when I lived in Las Vegas. It was late at night, and I worked graveyards and swings. I loved Art Bell. The people who came on that show were off the wall sometimes, but they believed their stories, and Art believed them.

This story reminded me of those nights. I would have known who it was for if Todd hadn't put that dedication to Art Bell at the beginning. All those late nights driving home from work made me and my girlfriend(now wife) go out to Rachel, NV. We have our own stories about those trips.

2:45 to Mexico had Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, and Tales from the Darkside feels, and it was a fantastic story. I've traveled by bus a couple of times. There are those people in stops that you're not sure about. You keep your distance from them. There's something off, even if you can't grasp it.

HappyTown, man, this story was a lot of fun to read. It was a change from the other stories but fit into the collection.

Y2K: I remember the stress of working the night of Y2K. I was bartending on the Las Vegas strip. We were told to prepare for our computers to go down. For hysteria to eclipse the festivities of New Year's Eve, but none of that happened. I've come up with a story idea after reading this one. I'll have to spend some time with it, but this could have happened anywhere.

Black Friday: What's better than zombies? A black Friday with zombies. I've worked retail a lot in my life. I worked at Blockbuster in the late 90s. We had some crazy nights, but our store had haunting issues, not zombies. I think about that store a lot. It's where I met my future wife.

Tommy: This was one of those stories that felt out of place from the others. It feels that way with some collections. I'm sure it was added for levity. Who hasn't wanted to get rid of their bullies? I had a couple in junior high that I would have done anything to eliminate.

Afterbirth: This was a story that struck a nerve with me. Having fertility issues early on, my wife and I considered many things, but this was not one of them. I liked this story and the tragedy of the MC, who only wants to have a child, but goes about it in a way that no one should ever do.

Annie's Heart Is A Haunted House: Feels of Poe, Beast House By Richard Laymon, Sleeping Beauty, and Urban Gothic by Brian Keene. I liked this story a lot. The way the house takes its victims and moves them into the house was genius, and I loved watching them fall. Brian Keene's Urban Gothic was my introduction to Extreme Horror and holds a special place. I saw instances of that book in this story.

The Gods Of Ours Fathers: Todd says this story was challenging to write. I understand the reasons. The brutality of the father and Mary's brother overtakes my stomach. The writing brings it together in a way that could have faltered had it not been for Todd's writing. The imagery within the story of Mary at the stones, of her asking for help from the Gods of her grandfather, of the blood on the rocks, and Mary's blood from what her brother did, gave the story a resolution I hadn't expected.

Solve For X: The black-eyed children have come for your kids. The imagery of this story and the ending with the eyeless child was great. While this is the shortest in the collection, it hangs in the air, and I would have liked it to be longer.

We've All Gone to Crooked Town: If you've ever been to a town on life support or lived in one of them, this story will hit home. I've done both. The little town of Granger, WY, where I lived during my Junior and Senior year of high school, is only a dot on the map, but I always wondered if the Green River that flowed through it would take the town one day, or the winter storms would. Neither happened, and the town is still there.

Granger was smaller than that town. Full of oil riggers and people working during the summer months, then returning to their families. I know what it feels like to wake up and hope the town you were in would vanish. I liked this story for those reasons.

Smile Factory: The Eldritch have you. They're making you smile for what they want. This was an exciting story that left me guessing what was happening. It felt like a descent into madness at times. Having dealt with depression and those conditions myself, having to put on a smile to make my way through life is constant. This is what that felt like. Wearing a smile so no one thinks something is wrong is what you do when you're depressed. It keeps the questions away.

Holes in the Fabric: Devil's Creek is a favorite novel of mine. Seeing into the past of one of that novel's characters was a great escape. I wondered about how she got where she was in Devil's Creek. It was a fleshing-out of the character's story that I enjoyed.

Happy Pills: We've all wanted that pill to make us feel normal. If you've dealt with depression, you have. I wouldn't want to go as far as this story, though it does have its rewards.

Gethsemane: I read the title for this story and wondered how that could be turned into a horror story. It's done well. I won't give anything away with this one. You have to read it with an open mind. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We've All Gone To The Magic House: It felt like a Twilight Zone episode or an episode of Doctor Who. I wasn't sure where it would end, but it tied everything together. I remember a place like the Magic House in my hometown. People remembered it being open, but no one could say what lay inside. Even now, I forget what the place was called.

I hope you enjoyed this review. I enjoyed reading the collection. It comes out on September 1, 2023. I will buy a copy of it and put it next to Scanlines.

On a side note, the choice of title and how each section was broken up was great. I am a huge Nine Inch Nails fan and have seen them 10 times. I knew I'd like this collection from the title.

When an author puts out a collection like this you can expect your standard ghosts, ghouls, and terror but this one really sets itself apart from that. Where else can you get a pretty humorous Hallmark movie turned slasher story and a gore-soaked, stomach turning story about the last days of Jesus?

Keisling's stories are all over the place. From its opening about a mysterious radio show, you feel a sense of calm but by the end you're shook. The only downside I could find is the variety in the stories means there may be a few that aren't your cup or tea (sci-fi leaning isn't usually mine but I enjoyed the one here). There also is some triggering material, but content warnings are available at the end.

Overall, I've been a fan of Keisling for awhile and this collection is a great introduction. He can write "splatter" in a way that doesn't seem exploiting and does a great job of building tension.

Welcome to Todd Keisling's The Twilight Zone. Here, you will find a bus that goes beyond the scope of time, a corporation feeding on its employees, a girl whose heart is a haunted house, a zombie outbreak during Black Friday, and more.

Keisling expertly embeds social commentary within each and every story, shining a light on the dark side of humanity and watching as it twists and contorts into various versions of what we fear the most: ourselves.

Each story is vastly different with unique characters and storylines held together by a consistent tension and sense of dread that bury deep in your chest until you too feel the cold, the black, and the infinite,

If you enjoy stories that often end in despair/destruction and force you not to look away, this is a collection for you.

The author generously provides trigger warnings for each story at the end of the collection. One I would add for "Tommy the Destructo-Bot" is the "disability cure" trope that is used.

Thank you NetGalley and Cemetery Dance Publications for an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

An entire book full of bangers. I wasn't bored with a single story in this collection - and that usually never happens with single author collections. Todd Keisling is an instant purchase for me and I will read anything and everything he writes!

Good writing and an interesting premise, just didn't strike a chord for me.
Thanks for the chance to read and review!

Short stories enveloped into one category, mystery & horror. If you let your imagination feel the stories some are creepy and some are making you feel numb. Its good the author included at the end of the book the content warnings because there were lots. Each word from the title has its own stories related to it. Overall the read is average for me.

Thank you Netgalley and Cemetery Dance Publications for the ARC and in return for my honest review.

3.5/5 stars

This is my second time reading Todd Keisling, and although I liked the writing style and a few of the stories, the overall concepts and ideas presented here were rather cliche as well as badly overwritten (similar to the problems I had with his other work.)

There were a couple stories that kept me interested, but mostly they had an omnipresent feeling of being uninspired, like a majority of this collection was written for a deadline or to satisfy a word count instead of occurring spontaneously. (Yeah, yeah, I know all writers have deadlines, but these stories really make you painfully aware of that fact.) “Phoned-in” is my adjective for this collection, as most of these stories involved overdone tropes that were overly-extrapolated on.

Cold, Black, & Infinite
by Todd Keisling

I have been a Todd Keisling fan since I read Scanlines, which was a fantastically disturbing #horrornovella
When Net Galley offered a chance to read his new collection of short stories I JUMPED ON IT.

Cold, Black & Infinite is dark. 16 stories that examine evil men’s intentions and the hopelessness of those lost. I completely enjoyed every story but some really shook me. Shook me in the way that readers of horror search for in all our books.

In Afterbirth, Karen dabbles in necromancy and my eyes were bulging as I followed her into the basement.

In The Gods of Our Fathers, I cried with Mary in the barn and reveled in her bloody revenge.

Solve for X, was harrowing! I was whispering “…don’t…don’t…don’t” when she opened that door.

If you like short stories and love the discomfort of truly frightening tales, GET. THIS. BOOK.

Review Copy

Todd Keisling seems to be in every anthology I own. Let me rephrase that - in every GOOD anthology I own. Dude can write and every story is different.

Yeah, there were a couple of stories that got three star, they were ok, ratings, but hey! I can get really grumpy at times.

One story in particular deserves a shout-out for making me LOL. If you're a working stiff for a large company, SMILE! and look forward to a great read. I actually did something similar when I worked for a state out west. I, um, recreated some of the State's forms and distributed them to my section. As the office manager I was asked more than once if it was real. *head thunk* those that asked were the people who got promoted rather than the hard workers in Todd's story.

Go wave your money at your favorite place to buy books and put COLD, BLACK, & INFINITE in your collection asap.

'Cold, Black, & Infinite' is truly everything you want in a horror short story collection. It's dark, fun, and at times utterly disturbingly grim.

But mostly it's just pretty much perfect. There's something for everyone in this collection, and that's what makes it so enjoyable. I only skipped one story in the collection (a very religious based cosmic horror), and that was just due to personal preference and nothing to do with the story itself.

I also really enjoyed reading the 'behind the scenes' inspiration for each story at the end of the book! It's really interesting to get peak inside the authors brain and see how all these ideas came to fruition. The trigger warning list at the end was also awesome to see included.

Overall, I loved this so so so so very much and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for this author in the future.

Thanks to Cemetery Dance Publications and NetGalley for sending this ARC of Cold, Black, & Infinite by Todd Keisling for review.

I hadn't read any of Todd's books before but having read this collection will go back and discover others.

Some of these are really stellar - 'Midnight in the Southland,' 'Gethsemane' (which is so blasphemous it'll drive the evangelicals berserk!), '2:45 to New Xebico,' and 'The Happytown Yuletide Massacre' spring immediately to mind. They're weird and they're wonderful and have inspiration in everything from pure Stephen King to Ramsay Campbell and from George Orwell to Hallmark Christmas movies (and the bible as mentioned above)!

Some of these are dark and tough reads - 'Afterbirth' especially is *rough* as is 'Happy Pills in a different way - but all are entertaining.

Highly recommended.

This was my first proper dive into a short story collection, and my first time reading one of Todd Keisling’s works. Though the structure of a short story anthology was odd to me at first, I quickly warmed up to it and really found myself enjoying the stories.
It’s hard for me to pick one favourite from the collection, but if I had to pick one, it would probably be “The Smile Factory”. I’ve always been a fan of cosmic horror, and there was something so intriguing about a capitalist society built by eldritch entities. “The Gods of Our Fathers” is probably close second. It was dark and disturbing, but also touching in a weird sort of way.
This collection leans heavily into themes of religion and cults, but there are also quite a few stories with other themes, such as one fun story of a Hallmark movie Christmas gone terribly wrong!

I definitely recommend Cold Black Infinite for those looking for a varied and interesting short story collection. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for my review.

4.5 rounded up.
This collection was my first Keisling and from the first page I knew I had found a literary voice that I would enjoy, some authors are very upfront about what you're getting into with their book, Keisling is one of them.

A few of the stories came across as "the capitalist deity will eat your soul" kind of tales, The Smile Factory chief among them, to my great delight. Speaking of Smile Factory, that story contained some absolutely magnificent lines for the office worker soul such as (view spoiler) and (view spoiler). That being said, it's not an aggressively in your face thing so if that kind of criticism isn't your jam you'll still be able to enjoy the stories.

There's a couple revenge fantasies and a couple of stories that confront religious trauma and religiosity in general.

A few of the stories felt very familiar to the point where I wondered where I might have read them before and in one instance, I was absolutely certain that the story was in another anthology, by a different author. In my reading notes I also marked 2 of the stories as "I'm sure this one was an SCP story at some point" (the strange radio station one and the magic show one). Considering that I've encountered Keisling's name in author notes/dedications I think that this sense of familiarity is proof that I have seen his shadow and influence in other people's work.

The variety of themes made for a consistently engaging read and while some stories seemed to be part of a larger narrative every story came across as a completed work.

When this book started, I was a little skeptical about the book. I thought it would not deliver on the reviews given to it but boy was I wrong. Everyone who has reviewed this book has said great things about it. And there is a reason why. It just delivers exceptionally on all the tropes it writes and adds an entry worthy of rereading in a genre that is loved by many. If you haven't read it, instead of going to goodreads or amazon to read a prompt, just start reading. You will get a much better experience of the book if you go into it without knowing anything about it. Believe me. I went into it without knowing much and I loved it. So, listen to me and just start reading it.

*Got the book arc through Netgalley. Not in association with the author or the publisher. My own honest review.