Terra Desmarais’s success as the next big artist in NYC is absolutely inevitable. Her patrons, the associates, Mr. Black, Mr. Silver, and Mr. Green, can practically taste the raw talent dripping from the enigmatic trailer park prodigy’s dollar store paints.
Up and coming pastel artist Cedric Fleck is a lucky discovery of the associates. Rescued from oblivion by Mr Green, put up in a studio by Mr. Silver and paraded around on the arm of Mr. Black should be the dream. But within the steady stream of great press and even better parties, Cedric can’t shake the sense that something is very wrong. He wants to hate Terra for her overnight success, but he’s taken by her earnest love of art.
As the artists around them crash and burn, and Cedric struggles to break free from the toxic seduction of Mr. Black, Terra is only concerned with her strange and compelling paintings. She seems to want nothing of the fame, the money, the sex or the drugs. As greed exposes the true colors of the associates, and Terra is too lost in her art to notice the danger, Cedric discovers that inspiration is a living thing, and it is hungry.
Dark bleatings, my wonderful tribe! Today I have the pleasure of reviewing a novella (I really really love reading novellas!), called Muse. We have Bernard Black, Scott Silver, and Garret Green, three rich art dealers (or agents, talent scouts?), who each have an artist under their wings. They’re those kind of rich assholes who get richer off the talent of the artists they discover. Garret seems different to the other two in that he’s a little less greedy and seems to have a conscience.
The thing to know about these guys is that they’re old… and I’m not talking a streak of silver fox, I’m talking “making a pact in a French swamp hundreds of years ago” old. Through the artists, they retain their youth, their wealth, and whatever else they’re clinging on to.
It’s when Garret takes on Terra, a poverty-stricken but insanely talented artists, that things take a turn for the group. Terra is not quite what they first think.
Thematically, I’d say this novella is a creative comment on the rich and the disparity between the people with the most money, and the talent they actually leach off. It’s also a story about abundance (of everything) for the sake of it, deception, manipulation, and most of all, creation.
It loops around in a wonderful way towards the end, and things draw to a rather satisfying close. I’d recommend this to people looking for a little mysticism mixed in with their horror. If you’d like to get a copy or check out the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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