It’s 1986, and in the Gulf Coast town of Harbor Bluff, school’s out for summer. Rampage is all the rage at the arcade, Maximum Overdrive is the movie to see at the theater, and the only rule for the kids is be home in time for supper. Things couldn’t be simpler, or better.
But when the kids start playing a children’s game called Two Minutes with the Devil, they begin to disappear.
A group of kids go from riding their bikes, building treehouses, even their first crushes, to facing off against an unimaginable horror. In the tradition of Stand by Me and Stranger Things, Two Minutes with the Devil is a thrilling throwback to a time when things were good … and evil.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Hailing from New Braunfels, TX, Matt Micheli has been writing in the horror fiction field for several years now. The author of Smut, Scratched, A Halloween Story, and The White, Micheli’s short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in such publications as Night Terrors, Vol. 18, Executive Dread: Tales of Office Horror, Horror Sleaze Trash, Horror Tree, and This Is Horror among others. With his latest, Micheli takes us back to the 1980’s with a supernatural tale of a group of kids who gamble with a nightmarish children’s game that plays for keeps.
Laurel Hightower (Crossroads, Below) calls the book “A bittersweet and dark coming-of-age tale, Matt Micheli’s Two Minutes with the Devil weaves creeping fear through a tale of friendships, insidious urban legends, and the dread of a lurking danger that will have the reader asking is it the impending loss of innocence of a close-minded small town, or something much older? Ignore the eyes that watch from the shadows, get on your bike, and hope you can pedal fast enough to survive-can you last two minutes with the Devil?”, and Ronald Kelly (Fear, The Essential Sick Stuff) says: “Matt Micheli continues to stake his claim in the horror genre with his latest book, Two Minutes with the Devil. This gripping coming of age tale set in the 1980s has all the chills and thrills you could ask for! Equal parts horror and heart, it could very well stand its ground next to classics like King’s IT and McCammon’s Boy’s Life.”
Why Matt’s excited about this book:
“Two Minutes with the Devil is by far my favorite piece of writing I’ve done. The cast of youngsters are friends I grew up with (and friends you probably grew up with if you’re a child of the 80s), the setting loosely based on my childhood environment growing up. It has all the things you’d expect from a coming-of-age thriller set in the 80s: the mischief, the adventure, the salty language, the innocence and excitement of a confusing first love, summer days spent sharing Mountain Dews full of backwash and looking at magazines that were way too mature for our developing brains in a treehouse made from scrap lumber and rusty nails. As local kids begin vanishing while playing a game called Two Minutes with the Devil (paying tribute to games like Bloody Mary), their youthful innocence turns to fear when the horror strikes a little too close to home. The early praise has been phenomenal, garnering flattering comparisons to King’s IT,Stranger Things, and The Goonies, which I’ll take 7 days a week and twice on Sunday.“
Forthcoming June 2023 from D&T Publishing LLC, Two Minutes with the Devil by Matt Micheli is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA