Night after night, death comes to a small Midwestern town. Young, old, rich, poor … all are targets. Townspeople hide in their homes praying they’ll be safe from the violent murderer lurking about. It’s not a question of if the night will take another victim, but how many!

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About the Author

Richard “Rich” Rumple currently resides in Indiana, with previous residences in New York, Chicago, Mobile, Baton Rouge, Lexington, and Europe.

With Pumpkins On The Road, he returns to the Thriller/Horror genre after a two-year writing hiatus due to the personal hardship of personally discovering his elderly father dead and then having to clean up and repair a hoarding disaster in that home. During his time away, only a couple of short stories in Horror anthologies could be managed as he experienced the real-life horror of concentrating on removing trash and expired food items, as well as having to repair the damage they had caused to the interior structure and such of the home.

Finally, with these tasks behind him, he was able to return to his writing. “Some of my fans think it strange that I go from performing stand-up to writing horror. Actually, the two compliment each other. Performing helped me to understand audience needs and expectations. Writing helps me take those to a new level.

People need an adrenaline rush from time to time, and creating that gives me one, too. It’s similar to when I did stand-up comedy and got the audience laughing–there is no better feeling than to be able to take their minds off of their daily problems and provide them an escape.”

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“No one knows the darkness that lives at the edge of town like D. Alexander Ward. POUND OF FLESH is an instant classic of rural horror. A dizzying descent into the blackest pits of the human heart and a revelatory journey that takes you to the pinnacle of resilience. Not to be missed.”
—S.A. Cosby, NYT best-selling author of RAZORBLADE TEARS and BLACKTOP WASTELAND

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“D. Alexander Ward is as fine a writer as any in the field today. There’s a complete confidence to his voice, teamed with an irrepressible red streak of humor, just visible beneath the horrors.”
—Josh Malerman, NYT best-selling author of BIRD BOX and MALORIE

Synopsis

When Noah Belton’s father loses his job, the young man’s roots are ripped from the ground as he’s forced to move away from everything and everyone he knows. His mother believes it will be a fresh start for their little family but everything about this new place fills Noah with a paralyzing dread. He soon finds his fears vindicated, for at this lonesome spot on the edge of the lake, with Cross Mountain looming in the distance, it’s terrifyingly clear that the dead are many and restless.

As his father’s violent temper worsens, they are plunged into a downward spiral of cruel punishments that become a beacon for something wicked; the Huntsman, a malignant presence that roams the lakeshore. Isolated, Noah’s mother strives to protect her son even as the Huntsman takes a terrible interest in her. But what if she could give the Huntsman what he wants and, in turn, be rid of her tyrant husband? Could she even trust such an unholy pact?

Soon, Noah finds himself pitted against a phantom become flesh, battling for his mother’s life and his own. They should never have come to this dark corner of the wilderness in the shadow of the mountain, where they have learned a hard lesson all too late: the Devil always gets his due.

About D. Alexander Ward

D. Alexander Ward is an author and anthologist of horror and dark fiction. In addition to his latest novel POUND OF FLESH, he is the author of numerous short stories and the novels BLOOD SAVAGES and BENEATH ASH & BONE.

As an anthologist, he edited the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthologies LOST HIGHWAYS: Dark Fictions From the Road and GUTTED: Beautiful Horror Stories (co-edited) from Crystal Lake publishing as well as the anthologies THE SEVEN DEADLIEST and SHADOWS OVER MAIN STREET, Volumes 1 and 2 (co-edited).

He is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and very involved in the small press publishing world of horror and dark fiction, where he runs Bleeding Edge Books.

His online footprints can be found everywhere and he can regularly be spotted on various and sundry social media outlets.

Along with his beloved wife and daughter and the haints in the woods, he lives near the farm where he grew up in what used to be rural Virginia, where his love for the people, passions, and folklore of the South was nurtured. There, he spends his nights penning, collecting, and publishing tales of the dark, strange, and fantastic.