First of all I really appreciate all the recommendations. I'm enjoying diving into this genre that is relatively new to me.
This guy is a terrible writer. The plot and story are good but all his characters are cliches. You have a soulful native American quaker who speaks as if he's reciting parables. At one point he says "I have violence in my hands but peace in my heart".
And Wendig writes like a 14 year old girl. I had to check to see if "Chuck" Wendig was a young woman, but no he's a middle aged dude. It's like if "how do you do fellow kids" were an author.
And he does this thing where he writes people's secret thoughts in parentheses. It's annoying and amateurish.
Regardless, there's sufficient gore and the story is good. It's a unique concept about evil apples affecting the people who eat them and the repercussions. If you can power through the cringe, and there's a lot of cringe, it's not bad.
He's a much better writer than Wendig. Still, I found the characters were sort of weak. I think that's normal for genre fiction. Not scary but really creepy. It's a great concept, a guy retelling stories from his childhood. Each chapter you think you're reading a normal story until you get to the last couples sentence and it sheds new light on the memory that makes it extremely creepy. It's well executed.
Next I'm gonna try to get my hands on Between Two Fires.