Matias Travieso-Diaz
Matias Travieso-Diaz is a former engineer and attorney who, following retirement, redirected his efforts towards fiction writing. A widower, he lives with his daughter and two dogs in the Washington, D.C. area. He describes himself as an “Animal Farm’s goat, Packers and Barça fan, and lover of opera, classical theater, jazz, Italian food, and vino.”
He is the author of over two hundred and sixty published stories.
The Satchel and Other Terrors was his first published collection of his short stories. He’s also written four novels: The Taíno Women, set in Cuba’s early colonial period; Lázaro Serrano, set in 1762-63; and Cubans Go to War and The Last War of Independence, both set in the last half of the Nineteenth Century.
"The author has tucked a burr into our souls and left us itching and squirming.
And that is as it should be."
~ Stephen Kimmerling, peer review
“We have to be careful when we walk in the open.”
So begins the title story, and so begins this ominous collection of tales from settings around the world and times both close and long past. We are taken into realms terror, dragged by the hand into haunted places and minds, meeting characters whose fates could be our own if we aren’t careful.
A lonely woman on a cruise will not find what she’s looking for
until she realizes why she is on this ocean voyage.
A man visits a remote village in Africa to learn that some monsters
aren’t quite what he expected them to be.
An unfinished opera becomes a man’s obsession to find those lost notes,
no matter the means by which they are found.
A clumsy but meaningful art piece by a blind girl becomes the bane of
the art examiner who interviews candidates for a prestigious art school.
A portal is opened, a poker game is played, a mine is operated, and dolls are fabricated. Each story opens a new conflict, a new strife, a new view of both the extraordinary and the banal elements of our world. You will be mystified and intrigued, terrified and horrified, all as you turn the pages and discover these stories of dark imaginings.
This book is appropriate for teenagers on up.
"Mr. Travieso-Diaz continues to distinguish himself as one of the
leading short story writers in the United States."
~ Alex Ferrate
"Would you give up your mind and perhaps your freedom
to add more months to your life?"
This is the ultimate question posed in the title story of this collection of dark tales with settings around the world and times from the distant past to the terrifying future. We are taken to realms as remote as a bloody afternoon of games in the Roman Colosseum and as close as the addled mind of a drug addict, with characters and situations made more dreadful by being entirely plausible.
A warrior watches his captors appease the gods with human sacrifices during a solar eclipse; a man trades his smile for a night of pleasure during Venice's Carnival and tries to recover it; a pre-Columbian man from a city threatened by Aztec conquest seeks assistance from a cryptid, who offers help at a steep cost.
We'll learn that no matter the time period or the location, horror is a part of every culture and is universal. It reminds us that anyone's life can be at risk, whether by accident, by chance, or personally chosen.
So perhaps the question changes:
What would you give up to survive these horrors?
Or would you want to survive at all?
This book is appropriate for teenagers on up.
Praise for The Satchel and Other Terrors
"The Satchel and Other Terrors by Matias Travieso-Diaz is an array of nouvelle forays into the darkness, ameliorated by exotic ambiances, the presence of equanimous narrators and the ever-soothing balm of elegant prose.
Bravo!"
~ Eloy Gonzalez, organic review
"In The Satchel and Other Terrors, author Matias Travieso-Diaz takes the reader on an engrossing tour of the darkest corners of this world and others, the past, present, dark futures, and even other planes of conscience and reality. No matter how bizarre, strange, or twisted the story, Travieso-Diaz's living, breathing characters are the life's blood of the tale. 'Liebestod' is my personal favorite of the collection, but there's more than enough wonder and dread for any fan of horror and dark fantasy. A must-read for lovers of these genres."
~ Jason J. McCuiston,
author of Project Notebook
and the Last Star Warden series
"Mr. Travieso-Diaz's short stories in The Satchel and
Other Terrors are like the bloody news photograph that you know you should not look at, but click on anyway. However, there is more in them than the terrifying places to which he leads you with his elegant black pen, and towards which you continue to follow even after you realize how cruel they are, like Old World fairy tales. There is a great diversity of time and geography in them, narratives that turn and then turn again with surprise,
and exotic characters who gradually become familiar because they plumb archetypes moved by fear, greed, and love. More importantly, Mr. Travieso-Diaz leads you to the realization that terror begins in the familiar places, the hearth, the school, and the office, metastasizes into the terrors that haunt us collectively, and transforms banal, complacent souls into monsters."
~ Alex Ferrate, peer review
"Using a passel of classic story formats, Matias Travieso-Diaz has given us nineteen delightfully varied macabre, grotesque or somewhat perverse tales. He delights in diverse artistic forms, indicating his inspiration with a quote at the top of each story. His influences range from fairy tales to operatic standards, from folk legends to literary myths. There is no shortage of psychological overtones to these stories.
"The reader will enjoy Travieso-Diaz's wide-ranging knowledge, reflected in the subject matters of these tales. If you like Faustian bargains, there's a story for you. If your taste runs to Dantean Purgatory, you'll find something to please. Readers who seek ethnic and historic scope, with a large dose of the gruesome, will no doubt be satisfied. Some tales are definitely morbid, some merely ending in an ironic twist.
There is a grim tale for everyone!"
~ Roxanne Greenstein, peer review
"Matias Travieso-Diaz takes you on a worldwide thrill-ride int his collection of creepy tales. He weaves macabre ideas with well-researched geographical and historical details. His stories remind readers the world can be a very scary place indeed. Best read from the comfort (and safety) of home!"
~ Adrian Ludens,
author of The Tension of a Coming Storm
and Bottled Spirits & Other Dark Tales
"Matias uses the tone and feel of age-old tales to illustrate the distorting, often tragic effects of human weakness. With a nod to Poe, Grimm, O. Henry, and even Stephen King, the author holds up human greed, jealousy, bloodlust, avarice, fear, bigotry, and other 'deadly sins' to a kind of funhouse mirror and reveals how much the distortion we see reflected back is more realistic than we might care to admit. Though often set in some faraway land or undetermined, mythical past, these stories reverberate with an anxiety and spiritual unease that very much speak to today's world. The author has tucked a burr in our souls and left us itching and squirming.
And that is as it should be."
~ Stephen Kimmerling, peer review
"The imagination, wide diversity of stories, and surprise endings are what make The Satchel and Other Terrors by Matias Travieso-Diaz such a delight to read. The imagination that Matias brings to us through his stories is a treasure worth savoring. I find the storylines for 'Slug' and 'Dummies' to be mind boggling. Where in the world did Matias come up with the ideas for these imaginative tales? I have never read anything like them. There are many other similarly imaginative and unique tales to be found in The Satchel and Other Terrors. Matias's imaginative stories never cease to amaze me.
"And the stories cover a wide range of themes in diverse settings. Stories of death, revenge, greed, mystery, fantasy, criminal investigation, science fiction in settings of every stripe. Stories in the past, the future, the afterlife, the wild west, medieval ages, as well as pure fantasy. It is impossible to become bored reading tales of such imagination and wide ranging storylines and settings.
"Finally, one never knows how the stories will end. The reader is captured in suspense. What is going to happen? How is this going to end? One of my favorites is 'Rosalba.' The reader will never guess the ending of this story revealed only in the last paragraph of three sentences. Similarly, nearly all the other tales have endings that will escape the reader until virtually
the end of the story.
"So The Satchel and Other Terrors is a treat for all readers, the young, the old, the fun loving, and the serious. Everyone should find something to love in these imaginative, wildly diverse, and suspenseful tales."
~ Paul Gaukler, peer review
Praise for The Potion and Other Perilous Libations
"The Potion and Other Perilous Libations, a selection of some of the best of Matias Travieso-Diaz's over one hundred and sixty published short stories, is the thinking person's collection of fantasy, horror, and science fiction tales. Reminiscent of Isak Dinesen's Seven Gothic Tales with its Old World fairy tale charm and unexpected twists, it also takes the reader into the silvery future, and sometimes with a humorous wink.
"Many of the stories, like 'The Potion' and 'The Honey Cake,' force their characters to test the commitments they have made in life, to their art or their lovers for example, against their fear of a painful death. The results sometimes are unexpected, and the crisp pace of Travieso-Diaz's writing keeps you turning the pages to learn the fate of many interesting characters who also could be your neighbors, colleagues, and friends, today or two centuries ago.
"It can take a reader a lifetime to progress through a famous writer's canon and feel as if they have learned profound truths about the human condition. Like starting with Hemingway's Three Stories and Ten Poems and reaching The Old Man and the Sea like a pilgrim on El Camino arriving at Santiago de Compostela a hardened but still hopeful soul. In The Potion and Other Perilous Libations, the reader achieves a similarly profound feeling, but traveling much faster through twenty-two stories that can be finished on a rainy afternoon.
"Matias Travieso-Diaz continues to distinguish himself as one of the leading short story writers in the United States. Although these stories sometimes can be frightening, their reflections and arabesque details also make them thoughtful and unique. I highly recommend The Potion and Other Perilous Libations, either as a well-earned treat for oneself or as a present for a sophisticated friend."
~ Alex Ferrate, peer review