POPLAR GROVE, Ill. - s4story -- In the upcoming novella "The Homestead," a group of criminals break into a mansion hoping for a haul of epic proportions. What they get is something very different, and they find themselves struggling to just get out aliv. Coming from Northern Illinois author Gary Hill's "The Homestead" is set to be published by Tales of Wonder and Dread Publishing on September 4th. It follows Hill's March release "Wizard Song," but the two are very different. One could almost look at them as a Yin and Yang relationship of light and dark.

"Wizard Song" is a science fiction tale. It has some dark and violent events, but is overall an action adventure that involves space travel. The setting is expansive, taking place on various planets and on ships travelling between them.  It has humor, inspiring heroism and positive tones. While there are a few "swear words," it's actually not completely unsuitable for teen or young adult readers.

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"The Homestead," on the other hand, is much darker and grittier. If it were a film it would be rated "R" for violence and language. There are some silver linings to the story, but it is dark, and the setting, in comparison, is claustrophobic. The tale has elements of a heist adventure, but rapidly turns darker and more horror-based.

Gary Hill has been publishing "Music Street Journal" (musicstreetjournal.com) since 1998. In August of 2006 his first book "The Strange Sound of Cthulhu: Music Inspired by the Writings of H.P. Lovecraft" was published. Since then several other books in  addition to "Wizard Song" ("The Concert Photography of Gary Hill," "Strange Realities: Collected Short Stories and More by Gary Hill Expanded and Revised Edition," "Poetry of the Air: A Collection of Love Letters from Musicians to Music" and "The Suite Music World of Gary Hill" and a series of three books "The Dark Starr Files") have been released. He launched Tale of Wonder and Dread Publishing to release science fiction and horror books in 2018, but published a collection of those types of stories in 2017 titled "Dark Dreams and Worlds." Hill launched Spooky Ventures in 2019 and has been doing video interviews, Spooky News segments and more for the Spooky Ventures YouTube Channel since then. Since 2018 Hill has published Music Street Journal simultaneously on-line and in book form. He also published all the article archives as a collection of books. In 2019 Hill began a series of books under the Music Street Journal banner focused on the Rockford, Illinois music scene titled, "Music Street Journal Local: Rockford Area Music Makers.

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"The Homestead" will be available in paperback and hardcover at lulu.com/spotlight/strangesound. A paperback distribution edition will be at Amazon and other book retailers soon after publication.