One loser, one talking cockroach, and one karate-chopping bombshell are all that stand between YOU and hell on earth.Lloyd Wallace is the most clueless crossing guard the intersection of hell and earth has ever seen. So clueless, that he doesn’t even realize the beer cave in the corner store where he works is the gateway to hell. The gate needs a hero, but Lloyd’s a zero, a loser with a capital … zero, a loser with a capital L. He’s ten thousand dollars in debt and lives with his parents. He’s been fired from every job he’s ever had. He was the first thing his ex-girlfriend tossed to the curb when she upgraded her life. He had no money and no prospects until the night he accidentally slayed a one-eyed tentacle monster hellbent on world domination. And, impressed by his pure heart and bravery, the suave but devilish owner of the 24/7 Dairy Mart gave Lloyd a job.
His coworkers—a karate-chopping bombshell and a talking roach with a really bad attitude—need Lloyd’s help to keep the demons in line. Can he man up and become a world-saving hero? Or, will he remain a couch-surfing zero? The fate of the world is on the line. What could go wrong?
24/7 Demon Mart is a new horror-comedy / comic fantasy series for fans of A. Lee Martinez (Gil’s All-fright Diner), David Wong (John Dies at the End), Rick Gualtieri (Bill the Vampire), Christopher Moore (Practical Demonkeeping), Mark Cain (Circles in Hell series), and Heide Goody (Clovenhoof). If you love Exorcist-level demon vomit, brooding Lovecraftian hell monsters, and plenty of laughs, this novel is for you. The Graveyard Shift is the first book in the 24/7 Demon Mart universe, A frightfully funny series for horror comedy and comic fantasy fans.
Welcome to the 24/7 Demon Mart Universe! Two series, one hilarious adventure.
24/7 Demon Mart (Main series)
The Graveyard Shift: A Horror Comedy (Book 1)
Monster Burger: This one has zombies in it (Book 2)
Angel Trouble: A grim reaper comedy (Book 3)
24/7 Demon Mart Stories (read anytime after The Graveyard Shift)
Hell for the Holidays: A 24/7 Demon Mart Christmas Special
Critters from the Poo Lagoon: A 24/7 Demon Mart Creature Feature
24/7 Demon Mart Short Reads
Kevin vs The Mothman
more
The Graveyard Shift, from the 24/7 Demon Mart series, is a model of what horror comedy should be. A lovable loser named Lloyd who is amusingly self-aware of his loserdom, a hot goth chick named Dee Dee, a night manager who’s a cockroach, and a host of other characters both human and supernatural battle over a gate to Hell that happens to be in the beer cave of a convenience store. This hilarious novel has a taste of Kafka, a large helping of Christopher Moore, and a whole lotta Lovecraft. Plus tons of pop-culture references. There’s non-stop action, but somehow Ms. Guay peppers every inch with jokes and satire. This book is a blast! Fans of Christopher Moore and Mark Cain will love this.
D. M. Guay has hit a home run with this book! The characters are hilarious and well-defined. The situations will have you holding your breath and laughing all the way to the end!
You have to be in a whatever weird over the top, kooky, tongue in cheek humor, gross humor and a heavy Men In Black type of mood or you will not like this book.
Lloyd is having a pinch me this can’t be real existence after his inadvertent save of the planet. After all his life before this consisted of him being dumped by his girlfriend, dropping out of college and living with his parents and being pretty much unemployable for anything more than minimum wages.
As he’s coming to grips with his new reality he finds himself growing up and actually giving a crap about things other than his boring existence. It also doesn’t hurt that his co-worker looks like Marilyn Monroe and he gets to drink as many slurpees as he wishes.
A lot of the humor is very self-decrypting and somewhat gross at times. There are a few times where things lagged but there was enough happening that kept the momentum going.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Whilst this author’s style is similar to many authors in this comedy horror genre (she lists some in his overview David Wong, Tom Holt, Christopher Moore &, Mark Cain) and you can see glimpses of this coming through in the storyline and humour yet retains her own autonomy, Guay has added her own unique take to this genre
From the moment you start reading this book it is funny, dark, but funny. I could go on and give you in depth detailed synopsis of the book but what’s the point? you don’t want to hear about Lloyds 137 flavour slushie choice, or the smokin hot Marilyn Monroe look alike DeeDee the security guard (who is his future girlfriend. she doesn’t know that yet!) Or his moral dilemma when he realises that he is short a few cent and decides to wing it and leave. without paying. Nor do you want to hear about DeeDee yelling and karate chopping thin air, while the other clerk Carl is on his knees praying. You don’t want to know what happens when Lloyd drops his slushie and slips over, and picks up the hastily departing Carl’;s name tag. You don’t want to know what happens when Lloyd turns around to see that DeeDee may NOT fighting with fresh air, and you REALLY don’t want to know about the impossibly handsome man who knows things, and can make Lloyd say all manner of embarrassing things ,The mopping cockroach! and then there is the job offer, you really don’t want to know what happens then… Do you?
Well I did and I loved it, this book is refreshing it is funny and is not frightened to take potshots at itself, I really did enjoy it, at times reading paragraphs outloud to my husband, bemused because I had been laughing uproariously at this book. who then read it for himself.
I would highly recommend you read this now, right now, stop putting it off and reading the reviews, go, go download it now,
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I have a confession to make. While I read a fair number of books that are supposed to be comedic at least in part, the comedy often escapes me for most of the novel. That wasn’t the case here in The Graveyard Shift. I was laughing very early in the book and sharing the jokes with my son who would laugh uproariously at them second hand. Guay has a gift for the absurd and it really works in this first book of his 24/7 Demon Mart series.
The hero (Lloyd) is a loser. It’s not nice to say, but even he recognizes it. His major problem would appear to be pure laziness coupled with a remarkable lack of even a modicum of ambition. He seems essentially happy living in his parents’ house, playing video games, and going every night to a convenience store to sample one of their 100+ varieties of slushies. Oh, and I should also mention, that he is really, really, stupid. I’m not saying he has a low IQ, just that he’s really amazingly dumb—but weirdly enough, in a totally believable way.
So here’s the set up. Lloyd goes into the convenience store where he has a schoolboy crush on one of the attendants who probably doesn’t know he exists and while he’s there a demonic snake creature appears and tries to escape the store and he helps his fantasy crush stop this from happening. In addition to the snake creature, genuine magic is displayed. Keep this in mind for later.
Long and the short of it is that the store owner arrives and offers our hero a job at an extraordinarily good hourly rate. Since he is in desperate debt, and it will let him be near his crush, our hero accepts. It is very clear to the reader, and in all fairness, the demon hiring Lloyd tells him, that this store is not a normal place. There are genuine threats to life and limb here. There are demons involved. But Lloyd immediately zones out on the training video and never does get around to reading his employee handbook which tells him how to survive these dangers. He also has a really hard time accepting that the supernatural is in play in this store. All of which produces hilarious situation after hilarious situation. It’s as if he just can’t process magic and the supernatural even when he keeps seeing it.
The author also manages to show Lloyd growing as a person without having him overcome the qualities that have made him basically unsuccessful so far in life. So it’s sweet when his mother’s sheer joy that he has gotten a job keeps him from quitting. And it’s also nice to see him starting to want the things that other adults around him desire. Oh, and I should mention that even though Lloyd thinks he is a coward, he’s actually intensely brave and steps up when he has to. And again, credit to the author, this is done in a very believable way.
So, to sum up this review, I really enjoyed this book and am seriously looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
Considering the rep of so many independent 24/7 stores (and some locations) the premise is logical. The story of Lloyd, who is a hero in spite of himself, is amusing enough that I’m moving on to the sequel. And for $66.60/hr, who wouldn’t at least consider a job guarding a Portal to Hell?
Good book interesting story line
It was not a book that interested me. It had humor but not my style
I loved this book! The characters were well-drawn and realistic, barring the monsters. For me, it was a real page-turner; I finished it in 2 sections. I wholeheartedly recommend it!
A fun read. The plot is outlandish so if you can’t suspend belief and activate your imagination this book might not be for you
male adolescent audience . do not recommend
Very good. No drag, just complete story.
Preamble
I had been meaning to read The Graveryard Shift for several months now. For one reason or another it kept getting pushed down my list. Whilst playing some of the wacky horror comedy Dead Rising 2, I took another look at the Lucifer-looking MFer on the cover and decided that it was time. And boy was I glad I took said time.
A note about my reviews: I consider myself an appreciator, not a critic. I know first-hand what goes into the creation of art – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the risk. I also know that art appreciation is subjective and lernt good what mama tell’t me – if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I’m not a school marm grading a spelling test – I’m a reader who enjoys reading. If a book is entertaining, well-written, and I get absorbed into it, five out of five. I have gone as low as three stars – anything less than that and I will not review a book (chances are I DNFed anyway). Regardless, I wouldn’t even put a star rating system on my reviews but for the reality of storefronts like Amazon.
Take from that what you will.
Review – 5/5
There’s this meme that’s been floating around the ‘net for a while, called ‘Men Writing Women.’ I think there’s a subreddit for it. It’s a pile-on wherein alleged chauvinists, swinish types, sex-starved dehumanizers and what-not get publicly shamed and excoriated for their inability to write women in a way that is not gratuitous and perverse, however one defines that. I pondered this as I read D.M. Guay’s The Graveyard Shift, though the notion would have to be reversed, as this was a woman writing a man.
But in this case, it features first-person mental décor that at times seems like it was placed there by a valley girl with ADHD. Having identified with the main character a little too deeply based on my past experience, I smirked at the sheer… femininity of some of it.
D.M. Guay’s The Graveyard Shift is the story of a young ineffectual man on the cusp of personal disaster, having failed in most of what I would call the ‘normie benchmarks of success.’ His name is Lloyd, for one, which is up there with Melvin and Eugene in terms of trope-y nerd names. Hell, they even called the unassuming nerd Eugene in The Walking Dead, so naming a guy Lloyd in a horror comedy paints the scene for what’s to come: kicking demon ass in what seems to be a fictionalized version of the itself fictional Simpsons Kwik-E-Mart. But we need a raison d’etre, an inciting event for Lloyd’s participation in the macabre demonic blood bath… and we find it in the almighty dollar.
Yes, Lloyd is a (Jim Carrey voice) lu-hu-zuh-her, at least on paper. He can’t hold a job, he flunked out of community college, is living in Mom’s basement, and he owes several thousand dollars in debt. Given that he is unemployed, the situation is untenable – he needs to repay what he owes. Somehow, he wanders into said riff on the Kwik-E-Mart: the 24/7 Dairy Mart. At least, it’s the Dairy Mart for a little while, and then it becomes the 24/7 Demon Mart once Lloyd gets sucked in by the fell magics that protect the place and joins the night shift crew.
The story is ridiculous and fun. It involves Faustian bargains with a demon named… Faust, a fun relationship with Lloyd’s dream girl who becomes his partner in crime (a bad-ass B named Dee-Dee), a fellow cockroach employee who loves Dio, a 90s wrestling-loving insectile demon who also happens to be a sweetie, a Chef with a decaying secret, among other hilarious characters and scenarios that play out as Lloyd starts earning mad scrilla from his extremely dangerous job.
See, here’s the rub: Lloyd has to protect a rift to Hell (only allowing the ‘right’ demons through the beer cooler in back) and he gets paid well beyond the minimum wage for his work. A natural coward, as he begins to realize the danger of his job, Lloyd keeps trying to talk himself into quitting. He also forgets to check his prejudice against demons at the door, as there is more to Heaven and Hell than what literalist interpretations might have you believe.
It doesn’t stop him from dressing up like a corny version of a dutiful Protestant boy in an effort to ‘be good’ at one point.
I enjoyed the discussion of free will and destiny and all of that good philosophical stuff that makes my personal clock tick, but it was a light dusting on top of a pink-frosted donut that happens to bear significant eldritch power (also a plot device). This story is pure ridiculous fun, and it also has some heart and made me smile and laugh throughout. D.M. Guay created something really special with this one, and you can tell by its reception in the community that I’m not the only one who thinks it’s better than a pair of Twinkies and a Big Gulp.
If you have an appetite for the fantastic and ridiculous, look no further than The Graveyard Shift.