Tag Archives: Neil Shooter

March 19, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of The Visitor

 

Book cover for The Visitor by Neil Shooter. Image on cover is a photo taken of a one-story ranch-style house after dusk. You can see the road bend in front of the house, some trees on the left, and the house itself sitting quietly, but all of this is shrouded in the darkness of night that obscures most details about any of them.

Title: The Visitor

Author: Neil Shooter

Publisher:  Self-Published

Publication Date: January 6, 2016

Genres: Science Fiction, LGBTQ+, Historical, Contemporary

Length: 11 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

On an ordinary blustery British night an extraordinary visitor comes, a time traveller, with a paradox. But time is relative.

Content Warning: References to alcoholism and mild homophobia.

Review:

How far would you go to correct the past?

The conversational structure of this short story kept my interest levels high. It takes effort to include necessary details about character and plot development while still making sure both characters are speaking to each other in ways that feel natural. Mr. Shooter did a good job balancing these needs while pushing the storyline forward with every reply. It felt like I truly was listening in on someone else’s conversation.

I had some trouble understanding the significance of the final scene due to how vague it was. While I have a theory about what it probably meant, I wasn’t sure if that was what the author was trying to convey or if I’d misunderstood something along the way. It would have been helpful to have a few more hints about what was happening and if my interpretation of it was the correct one (or one of the correct ones). This is something I’m saying as a reader who normally enjoys

It was also entertaining to see how Dean, the protagonist, explained how time travel works and why he decided to go back so many years. While I can’t share a lot of details about these aspects of the tale for spoiler reasons, they were reasonable and helped to answer several questions I had about how certain details were meant to fit together. It was also fun to get to know Dean a little better as his personality was a little bit of a mystery to me at first. Honestly, I would have made the same choice he did if such things were possible.

This was my first experience with this author’s work, and I will be coming back for more.

The Visitor was thought provoking.

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February 26, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Five Miles Out Of Black Creek

Book cover for Five Miles Out Of Black Creek by Neil Shooter. Image on cover shows a dry, dusty country road that has no one travelling on it. It shoots straight ahead and, in the far distance, turns up over a hill. There are mountains even further in the distance. The trees on either side of the road and brown and leafless as it appears to be late autumn in this scene. The sky overhead is hazy and blue. Title: Five Miles Out Of Black Creek

Author: Neil Shooter

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: December 30, 2016

Genres: Horror, LGBTQ+, Contemporary

Length:13 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Dean Rand is in a bit of a slump, and needs to sell a story fast. Can this one save his bacon? Dr. Chang’s dirty white farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? Well, in the middle of Hamilton County, five miles out of Black Creek. Sure, the view is great, but it’s so isolated. Why would a scientist want to live here? Or work here?

Content Warning: Blood.

Review:

Not every farm is a tranquil getaway from city life.

Let’s see how much I can say about the antagonists of this piece without giving away too many clues about who or what they are. This means that my review may feel a little mysterious, but I’d rather allow other readers to discover for themselves what’s going on than to know ahead of time what to expect. What I can say about the antagonists is that they had good reasons for behaving the way that they did and that they provided plenty of conflict for Dean to work through during his visit. There’s  definitely something to be said for that! I also appreciated how unusual some of them were. That is to say, they didn’t exactly conform to mainstream ideas of what should be attempting to harm the protagonist in this genre, and that’s a good thing.

It would have been more helpful to have additional plot development. I knew what the twist in the end probably would be by the time I read the first scene, and unfortunately this was the sort of tale that, in my opinion, works better if one doesn’t know what to expect in advance. The character development was sufficient for something of this length, so it was really just the depth of the plot that held me back from choosing a higher rating.

With that being said, I do enjoy rural horror. Sometimes other genres glamorize this setting in ways that make me uncomfortable as someone who grew up in various rural places and intimately knows both the negative and positive aspects of that environment, so it was refreshing to see a character drive out to the middle of nowhere and be genuinely taken aback by what he found there. I also appreciated the way the story played around with the trope of a highly educated city slicker arriving at a farm and realizing there are still things about life he doesn’t know. This is something that happens to all sorts of people when they find themselves in cultures or places they’re unfamiliar with, after all, and it was well used here.

Five Miles Out Of Black Creek made me shudder.

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January 15, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of Homeless

Book cover for Homeless by Neal Shooter. Image on cover shows a black and white sketch of someone walking through a forest on a cold winter day. The ground is covered in snow, the trees are bare, and the person is so bundled up you can’t tell what they look like. Title: Homeless

Author: Neil Shooter

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: November 9, 2013

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 15 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Winter didn’t end, but his world has. Is he completely alone? In a world gone cold, what can keep the spark of life shining?

Content Warning: Animal attack. Murder. A character who eats a dead, raw rat. Possible mental health problems depending on how one interprets certain scenes.

Review:

Sometimes the world ends with a whisper, not a bang.

The first half of this tale was an excellent example of what the post-apocalyptic genre can be like. The unnamed protagonist has somehow survived a catastrophe that killed the vast majority of humans and should have killed him, too. His limited information about what happened only made his struggle to survive even more poignant as I had no idea what else might await him after the months of hardship he had already endured. I loved the fact that the reader was limited to what this character knew about the world and could only make rough guesses about the things he had yet to discover.

Unfortunately, I struggled with the second half of this tale due to how unbelievable I found certain scenes. Their themes were so exaggerated when compared to what happened earlier that I kept wondering if there was a piece of the puzzle I was missing. Was the narrator holding something back from the audience? Was he unaware of an important detail that would make later scenes feel more logical? There were answers to these questions that I thought made sense, but I kept wishing that Mr. Shooter would give us a few more hints about which direction he intended his audience to go.

With that being said, my ultimate conclusion about what happened was an interesting one and did help me to find some closure for this character. Whether or not it was what the author intended, it made sense given what I knew about the protagonist early on as well as some of the clues about his personality that were revealed later on. If my interpretation was correct, this was a more realistic assessment of what this catastrophe would actually be like for the surivors than many books in this genre tend to create.

Homeless was a wild ride.

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January 1, 2026 · 1:00 am

A Review of New Year

 

Book cover for “New Year” by Neal Shooter. Image on cover is a very bright yellow background that reminds me of the glow of a lightbulb. It’s so bright it all but obscures the title and author.

Title: New Year

Author: Neil Shooter

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: November 26, 2019

Genres: Science Fiction

Length: 12 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Life on Mars is a constant struggle, and not at all what Naamah expected. The Mission backers melted away, and the four new Martians are alone. To survive Mars, she must come to terms with her past, her present, and her future.

Content Warning: Religion, pregnancy, miscarriage, and stillbirth. I will be discussing these topics in my review.

Review:

Nothing is more important than hope.

It’s uncommon for me to find stories with this setting that talk about the challenges of trying to become and stay pregnant in such a hostile environment, so I was excited to see what Mr. Shooter was planning to do with these topics given how important they were for the characters and their fledgling community. While this meant that some scenes were sad ones, I thought the author handled the topic nicely and realistically given the characters’ circumstances and the tragedies they’d already endured. If only i could read a few more instalments to find out what happened next.

I’ve struggled with the ambiguous nature of some of Mr. Shooter’s other stories, but in this case it worked out beautifully. Life on Mars would rarely if ever be straightforward, especially for couples who are attempting to bear children but have little if any medical assistance with pregnancy or birth. When combined with the many dangers that would be present for a new colony on that planet, of course Naamah and her companions would struggle to know what the future brings and what they should do to make it as pleasant as possible.

The religious themes in this short story were strong and critical in order to understand the ending, but I wouldn’t classify this as belonging to the inspirational genre due to the protagonist’s misgivings about that topic at times. This is something I’d recommend to people who are interested in religion from an academic or philosophical point of view as it did sometimes take a critical approach to certain negative consequences of believing that one is the messenger of God and that feelings always should be taken more seriously than concrete evidence. Readers who are able to step into Naamah’s shoes may find rewarding themes and messages, though! Just don’t go into this expecting a Sunday School lesson.

New Year made me yearn for more.

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