Tim Lucas

In a fading old porno theater in a town called Friendship, a mild-mannered young advertising writer watches a movie called Throat Sprockets and is never the same again. As he becomes increasingly obsessed with the film, it infects him with a new erotic aesthetic that finds expression through his advertising work, spreading its vampiric influence on a local, national, and eventually international level. As his old life crumbles and a new one begins to take shape, he sets out on a quest to discover the secrets of the film's creation and the identity of its mysterious creator. Tim Lucas's genre-defying cult classic was featured in Stephen Jones and Kim Newman's Horror: 100 Best Books series and chosen by Rue Morgue as one of the Best Alt Horror Novels. This special 30th Anniversary Edition includes an introduction by Tananarive Due and a brand-new, novella-length penultimate chapter, filling in the past three decades of the protagonist's misadventure." Throat Sprockets, a dark, brilliant crow in the literary sky, is terrifying and euphoric both in its portrayal of obsession. Lucas is a first-rate writer." - Alexander Theroux"To read Throat Sprockets is to understand that every vampire story before now has missed the mark." - Cosmopolitan"Genuinely kinky and perverse and smart." - Bret Easton Ellis"Witty and thoughtful and consistently surprising and above all deeply unsettling." - Ramsey Campbell"A chic and darkly humorous study of sexual obsession ... a witty reworking of the Dracula myth starched stiff with irony ... a stylish, provocative debut novel." - The Times"A brilliant novel." - Maxim"Be warned: this is no ordinary novel. I searched my bookshelves for apt comparisons, and soon realized that I could only invent them: Dracula rewritten by J. G. Ballard, Last Year at Marienbad directed by Mario Bava.... Here, at last, is what readers have been waiting for: a new, and very dark vision ... This is the most original and unnerving first novel that I've read in years. Stunning." - Douglas E. Winter

In a fading old porno theater in a town called Friendship, a mild-mannered young advertising writer watches a movie called Throat Sprockets and is never the same again. As he becomes increasingly obsessed with the film, it infects him with a new erotic aesthetic that finds expression through his advertising work, spreading its vampiric influence on a local, national, and eventually international level. As his old life crumbles and a new one begins to take shape, he sets out on a quest to discover the secrets of the film's creation and the identity of its mysterious creator. Tim Lucas's genre-defying cult classic was featured in Stephen Jones and Kim Newman's Horror: 100 Best Books series and chosen by Rue Morgue as one of the Best Alt Horror Novels. This special 30th Anniversary Edition includes an introduction by Tananarive Due and a brand-new, novella-length penultimate chapter, filling in the past three decades of the protagonist's misadventure." Throat Sprockets, a dark, brilliant crow in the literary sky, is terrifying and euphoric both in its portrayal of obsession. Lucas is a first-rate writer." - Alexander Theroux"To read Throat Sprockets is to understand that every vampire story before now has missed the mark." - Cosmopolitan"Genuinely kinky and perverse and smart." - Bret Easton Ellis"Witty and thoughtful and consistently surprising and above all deeply unsettling." - Ramsey Campbell"A chic and darkly humorous study of sexual obsession ... a witty reworking of the Dracula myth starched stiff with irony ... a stylish, provocative debut novel." - The Times"A brilliant novel." - Maxim"Be warned: this is no ordinary novel. I searched my bookshelves for apt comparisons, and soon realized that I could only invent them: Dracula rewritten by J. G. Ballard, Last Year at Marienbad directed by Mario Bava.... Here, at last, is what readers have been waiting for: a new, and very dark vision ... This is the most original and unnerving first novel that I've read in years. Stunning." - Douglas E. Winter

Once upon a time, in a world otherwise much like our own, there is only one source of evil, torment and crime in the entire world. He is known as The Only Criminal. By extension, he is also the only source of interesting information in print and televisual news. All movies, all TV shows, are made about him. He is also responsible for all the recorded music in the world, brought into being under the influence of illegal drugs. The Only Criminal is also the only source of fascination for a brilliant young psychologist, Dr. Paul Vaguely - a man driven by his obsession with this one subject, which fills him with fear and fuels his boundless curiosity and imagination. The good Dr. Vaguely is developing a new branch of psychiatric care, specializing in the treatment of patients whose lives were touched by the peril and plunder of The Only Criminal, but his plans are upset by two things: the discovery of the only known survivor of an Only Criminal attack to have actually seen him and lived; and The Only Criminal's most fiendish coup of all, which steers the world at large toward a collective nervous breakdown. Decades in preparation, The Only Criminal is many things: a Kafkaesque comic book on the theme of Original Sin; a never-more-relevant love story between two isolated characters fearful of risking human contact; even a fanciful alternative history of how our world may have ended up in such a catastrophic mess. Dark, humorous, erotic and charged with danger, The Only Criminal may be its author's definitive journey into the depths of dark obsession." Compulsively, enviably superb. THE ONLY CRIMINAL is a marvel Tim Lucas brilliantly weaves wit, romance and glorious wisdoms with maestro cool." - R. C. Matheson (Dystopia)"It's brilliant... one of the most interesting and entertaining things I've read - Kelley Jones, (Batman, The Sandman)"This is a wonderful, droll, witty book-a real joy for people with eclectic cinematic and reading tastes. A bedtime book to savor, just like one of the hero's vanilla-flavored cigarettes." - Joan Hawkins (Cutting Edge: Art Horror & the Horrific Avant-Garde)

"Lucas mimics Stoker's style so well that it's hard to distinguish his own writing from passages interpolated from Dracula. A fully humanized character study." - Publishers Weekly Perhaps the most infamous supporting character in all of Gothic Horror is R. M. Renfield, the unstable patient under observation at Dr. Seward's Carfax Asylum in Bram Stoker's Dracula-a pathetic wretch who prophesies the imminent arrival of "the Master" while covertly feeding on spiders and flies. Yet Stoker's 1887 classic tells us almost nothing about him. Why-and how-was such an unsavory figure chosen to be the Un-dead Count's groveling envoy? In this remarkable harbinger of the "mash-up" novel, author Tim Lucas-with the help of Stoker himself-takes us on an illuminating, magical, sometimes strangely erotic investigation into Renfield's origin, fitted seamlessly within the language and the flurry of correspondence and other documentation found in Dracula. THE BOOK OF RENFIELD reinvigorates Stoker's seminal horror masterpiece with numerous, uncanny stories within stories-alternately ghastly, marvelous, and hauntingly tender, framing DRACULA's robust blood-and-thunder with a flair for meta and modernity. This Newly Revised Edition is extensively reworded and restructured, incorporating many paragraphs of content deleted from the original 2005 text. Also included is a contextualizing new Foreword by horror expert Stephen R. Bissette and a substantial Afterword by the author.

"Lucas mimics Stoker's style so well that it's hard to distinguish his own writing from passages interpolated from Dracula. A fully humanized character study." - Publishers Weekly Perhaps the most infamous supporting character in all of Gothic Horror is R. M. Renfield, the unstable patient under observation at Dr. Seward's Carfax Asylum in Bram Stoker's Dracula-a pathetic wretch who prophesies the imminent arrival of "the Master" while covertly feeding on spiders and flies. Yet Stoker's 1887 classic tells us almost nothing about him. Why-and how-was such an unsavory figure chosen to be the Un-dead Count's groveling envoy? In this remarkable harbinger of the "mash-up" novel, author Tim Lucas-with the help of Stoker himself-takes us on an illuminating, magical, sometimes strangely erotic investigation into Renfield's origin, fitted seamlessly within the language and the flurry of correspondence and other documentation found in Dracula. THE BOOK OF RENFIELD reinvigorates Stoker's seminal horror masterpiece with numerous, uncanny stories within stories-alternately ghastly, marvelous, and hauntingly tender, framing DRACULA's robust blood-and-thunder with a flair for meta and modernity. This Newly Revised Edition is extensively reworded and restructured, incorporating many paragraphs of content deleted from the original 2005 text. Also included is a contextualizing new Foreword by horror expert Stephen R. Bissette and a substantial Afterword by the author.

In today's fluid culture, many churches are adrift--longing to reach spiritually thirsty people, but failing to make an impact. Have you noticed? Congregations are stuck or declining. Millennials and Gen Z are walking away. Volunteers and their generosity are drying up. Is your city, town, or neighborhood spiritually dry? Do you long to see more of the living water of Jesus flowing freely through your community, generating a fresh wave of ministry momentum? Buckle up: you're in for a whitewater ride! Liquid Church tells the fascinating story of a New Jersey church that began "on accident" and grew into one of America's 100 Fastest-Growing Churches, with over 5,000 in weekly attendance and more than 2,400 baptisms to date. Their secret? They harnessed the power of six powerful ministry currents sweeping across North America including: special needs, creative communication, ministry mergers, compassionate cause, radical generosity, and leadership development. With powerful stories and scriptural insights, backed by national research, Tim Lucas and Warren Bird describe dozens of fresh ideas, new ministry wineskins, and hard-won leadership learnings that resonate with rising generations in today's "show-then-tell" culture. Each chapter includes practical tools, real-life examples, and links to "Other Churches Making Waves" with cutting-edge ministry ideas designed to help saturate your city for Christ. Ready to dive deeper? Whether you serve a brand-new church plant, fast-growing congregation, or an aging ministry ready for reinvention, Liquid Church is an inspiring and practical guide for leaders ready to reach their spiritually thirsty neighbors--those who have given up on church, but haven't given up on God.