On the HahaFiction shelf
Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One
Tales from the Gas Station · Book 1 · 2018
Audiobook available · 8 hr 31 min
Jack works overnight at a gas station where creatures and sinister visitors keep interrupting the shift. He starts an online journal about the place, attracts unwanted attention and tries to stay clear of a growing supernatural threat to the town.
From the author’s blurb
“the charming phantom cowboy who lives in the bathroom”Read the full description at Author description, Jack Townsend
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What makes it funny?
Jack has a ghostly cowboy in the bathroom and mutant raccoons to deal with, yet treats fighting monsters as work beyond his pay grade. A cult’s plan to reduce suffering by destroying the world adds another absurd problem to the shift.
The comedy at work
Townsend puts impossible dangers inside the routines of a retail job. Jack’s unreliable account and reluctance to become a hero let him respond to cosmic threats with the priorities of someone who mainly wants to be comfortable.
Try this if…
Readers who enjoy supernatural strangeness delivered with a dry voice may find the combination appealing, especially when the narrator resists taking charge.
Good to know
Violence and a terminal insomnia condition give the jokes a darker context. The novel expands the original online stories, and the author says newcomers can follow it without reading the blog.
A few distinguishing details
- A gas-station clerk confronting cosmic horror on a retail wage
- An online journal that attracts the wrong attention
More funny cosmic horror
Sources & further reading
- Author publication notes
Author commentary
- Author book description
Author commentary
- Print edition information
Book information
- Cat Voleur review
Review
- Audiobook edition
Book information
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