Chumpy Walnut and Other Stories by Will Viharo

(pb; 2016: story anthology)

Overall review

This excellent story twelve-story anthology shows Viharo’s range as a writer. There’s the sweet “Chumpy Walnut,” as well as atmospheric, existential vignette-plays (“Night Notes,” “The Inbetweeners,” etc.) and straightforward horror-pulp hybrids (“People Bug Me,” “Short and Choppy,” etc.). Whether you are a longtime Viharo fan, or just coming into his prolific, penned world, this a diverse story collection worth owning.

Standout stories

“Chumpy Walnut”: A young man as tall as a ruler─the kind one measures with─goes on a wild adventure in a big city where sexy dames, gangsters, kind-hearted hustlers and musically inclined adolescents run rampant. Lots of wordplay, colorful characters and dizzying action in this ultimately warm and funny novella─this brings to mind elements and characters from Hollywood films, circa 1930s to early 1950s.

“A Wrong Turn at Albuquerque”: In this one-act play, a writer gives a beautiful hitchhiker a ride, a passenger who may change his life in ways he does not expect. Entertaining, clever-conversation and smile-inducing piece.

“Night Notes”: Mood-effective story about a hotel night clerk (who wants to be a sax player) and could-be poet in the a.m. hours. Haunting, great finish.

“Coffee Shop Goddess”: Sweet, melancholic story spanning most of the 1980s. In it, a young man befriends a funny, smart woman appropriately named Lightbulbs (for the previously stated reason). This being a Viharo story, there’s plenty of era-centric pop music and film references as well as clever banter.

“People Bug Me”: An on-the-lam reporter interviews a small town shrink for an article after the shrink has been attacked by one of his patients─a teenage “lycanthrope,” according to the doctor. Then things get really weird. . . this quick-blast, fun and excellent story has a 1950s film feel: it’s a conjoining of two 1957 films─Sweet Smell of Success and I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

This story has been published twice before this. In March 2014, it was published in the fifth issue of Nightmares Illustrated. Its second time-around was in the Spring 2015 issue of Dark Corners magazine.

“Short and Choppy”: Grisly, sexually explicit tale about a dwarf (Cameron) whose hatred for his writing teacher (Sean) and lust for Sean’s wife (Sabrina) leads Cameron toward fantastic, violent acts. Excellent, black-hearted and pulpy laugh-out-loud piece.

This work appeared in the Fall 2014 issue of Dark Corners magazine.

“The Lost Sock”: Mood-effective desperation, dread, eroticism and surrealism highlight this pop culture-savvy and lust-crusty work about a down-on-his-luck man tried to locate a missing sock. Excellent, Twilight Zone-esque tale, this.

This story was originally published in the Winter 2014 issue of Dark Corners magazine.