Newborn Pink

Midland Tales, Book 1

By: Shawn Wayne Langhans

Narrated by: Sean Lester

Paulie Galamb is the hapless hero of this story, no matter if he likes it or not. The unattractive, unassuming divorcee was good at his job as a taste-tester of lab-grown meats, until his body turned against him.

All Paulie ever wanted was to live his boring life inside the We-Store storage facility. Now that dream is tossed out of the window after a simple dental procedure takes a turn for the weird, and he notices a strange growth in his throat. What's even weirder is that the tumor can speak.

While Paulie tries to sort out the absurd, cancerous situation, he finds out that the corporation he works for is prepared to go to any lengths to silence him before he reveals their secrets. What those secrets are is unclear to Paulie.

Embracing his own mortality, Paulie has to navigate a maze of off-beat neighbors, homeless teenage bullies, evil middle managers, and a mysterious man who might or might not be who he claims to be. But can he find his way through and live to tell the tall tale?

©2021 Shawn Wayne Langhans (P)2023 Shawn Wayne Langhans

Great book!

The book is reminiscent of my favorite 80’s horror comedies and I love that. Sometimes my stomach was squeamish and I had to stop listening when I was making potato soup and there was a particularly grotesque part. And I had to listen with headphones at work, for sure. But the story was highly entertaining. The only down side was the voice took some getting used to, and there were quite a few words read in odd ways, and parts the narrator made mistakes. Over all, worth the ride.

Great book but could use edits

I really enjoyed the book and the story. I liked the build up a lot. However,there were some things that could’ve been left out just because they weren’t necessary. But mostly for me, the big thing that needs changed is that the narrator misreads multiple times and rather than removing the messed up passage it was left in. Multiple times he misreads lines, repeats lines, or mispronounces words and they’re just left in the story. Quite a few times I was enjoying the story and was taken out of it by the repeats.

Wild, weird ride

This story was a bit of a wild trip. Some of the narrative devices were hard to grasp, like I was never quite sure who the first person narrator was that kept breaking into the story with some meta commentary. Was that the novel's author? Or one of the bar patrons? Also, a lot of the sentences held redundant words and phrases, which didn't seem to be on purpose, so that distracted me a bit too.

Overall though, the story itself, after it really got rolling, was very engaging and unique. I enjoyed the characters, I enjoyed the humor, I enjoyed the strangeness. I liked how it all tied together in the end. For my tastes, the gross body horror elements could have been taken further. And the violence felt a little too subdued for the carnage taking place.

The resolution felt earned, and I like that there may be a sequel on the way. All in all, I was entertained, though it did take some convincing to get me there.

The story is amazing, the audio needs work.

I absolutely loved the story. It was so strange, so descriptive, it made me feel all kinds of things, and it was just simply amazing. The audio however did a great disservice to the story and I’m very disappointed in that. There was many times I got completely confused and thrown off due to skipping parts or repeating. Towards the end the edits were clearly non existent as there were so many errors. This story deserves an audio that matches its greatness. But seriously, give this book a read/listen. Shawn is so creative and this book will take you for a wild ride.