SOFT TARGETS - a novella by Carson Winter (print + eBook)

Wonderland Award Nominee for Best Novel, 2023

You know that office bromance: two of a kind, always taking their lunch together, always wearing the same sly grin. Only ever a hair away from a cold joke about how spreadsheets are a living hell; about taking a bullet if it means going home early on Friday. Sometimes in these fantasies, they’re heroes being hauled out on a stretcher. 

Sometimes they’re the ones pulling the trigger. 

Now, say these guys discover a loophole that makes some days less real than others—less permanent—and start to act out their violent fantasies without fear of reprisal. Why shouldn’t they? Tomorrow, everything will go back to normal, with no one the wiser but them. 

They’ll always remember what it felt like to act on their basest impulses. They’ll know how it could feel to do it again. 

Maybe you don’t know these guys. Maybe you don’t want to. 

SOFT TARGETS is a reality-bending novella about malignant malaise; the surrender to violence; and the addictive appeal of tragedy as entertainment.

Cover and interior art by Blacky Shepherd.

"A hell of a story…and damned funny—one of the most difficult things to pull off in a horror story, let alone one with such grim and taboo subject matter. I already knew Carson Winter was one of the best newer writers of the Weird, but with Soft Targets my admiration and expectations of his work have skyrocketed. Read this book." 

• Jon Padgett, THE SECRET OF VENTRILOQUISM

“SOFT TARGETS is a story about the power of friendship—a sickly force unmoored from reality. Steeped in alienation and despair, Winter skillfully details this diseased folie à deux until it finally ruptures.” 

• Andrew F. Sullivan, THE MARIGOLD and THE HANDYMAN METHOD

“Truly transgressive—shocking because it reveals something fundamentally wrong with reality, a level of normalized sickness and violence that we put out of our minds to function in the day-to-day. The result is a story that is haunting, stomach churning, and will sit with you for a long, long time when you're done.”

• Jolie Toomajan, Posthaste Manor, editor of Cosmic Horror Monthly

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