Double Dose by F. Paul Wilson Gordian Knot Books (September 2023) 382 pages; $16.99 paperback; $4.99 e-book Reviewed by Dave Simms
The world of legend F. Paul Wilson continues to grow in this second installment of the Duad series. Is it the finale or just another chapter? Read on to decide but if one is familiar with Wilson’s storytelling, the mystery is always afoot. One thing is sure, however. The man seems incapable of penning a bad — or boring — book.Continue Reading
Thirsty for Love is a clever monster graphic novel written by David Ocampo and illustrated by Carmen Pizarro. When Emily goes missing, her friend Josie thinks she knows what happens. She’s aware of the new girl, Charlotte Smith, and suspects she’s responsible for Emily’s disappearance. When she confronts Charlotte, Josie discovers that her suspicions are not only wrong, but that the truth is far worse than she could ever imagine. Continue Reading
Get ready to leave the path and dance beneath the full moon because Steve Wedel’s pack is back with a vengeance as his Werewolf Saga continues its reign with First Born. A former English teacher and machine shop operator, Wedel has written some of the most terrifying, bold, and unforgettable tales such as Amara’s Prayer, Light At The End, Mother, and several others. He also dabbles in the YA category, occasionally with New York Times best-selling author Carrie Jones. He’s also applied his writing chops to scribing westerns and even romance novels under an alias. Suffice it to say writing is not a choice for Steve Wedel, a fact his fans have no choice but to be grateful for.Continue Reading
Pluto In Furs 2 is the follow up volume to the 2019 anthology Pluto In Furs: Tales of Diseased Desires and Seductive Horrors edited by Scott Dwyer from his Plutonian Press. It is an anthology of themed short stories with the theme of erotic horror.Continue Reading
Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas edited by Carina Bissett, Hillary Dodge, and Joshua Viola Hex Publishers (November 30, 2021) 461 pages; $26.99 hardcover Reviewed by Joshua Gage
The Shadow Atlas is a really clever concept for an anthology. It is described as follows: “Ancient peoples knew there were lands given over to shadow and spirit. The world is full of haunted places that exact a terrible toll on trespassers. Our forebears paid a heavy price to earn the wisdom and the warning they bequeathed to future generations. Their stories are maps revealing the topography and contours of landscapes unimaginable and dark. The Shadow Atlas collects their adventures.” This idea, that authors and writers will be looking at various locations and landscapes throughout the Americas and writing the horror specific to those locales is intriguing, and while this is a mixed bag (as any anthology is going to be), it’s a really strong showing of thematic writing that horror fans will enjoy. Continue Reading
Sometimes I bring up slasher movies to people of my age group. I’m talking fifties and early sixties. I often see a glint in their eyes. A recognition of something magical. A recollection of a time of youthful fun and rebelliousness. When our hearts were still untamed. Before the soul-crippling drudgery of work. When our bodies were young and strong, our minds and hearts untamed.
I see traces of mournful regret. Regret about growing old and predictable. Sadness about obsession with politics. Disappointment at falling into the comfort zone of mediocrity. Superheroes, Star Wars, the latest streaming trends.
Many young people loved the slasher movies of the early eighties, but few loved them as much as I did. I saw as many as I could. In walk-in movie houses and in the glorious outdoor splendor of the drive-ins. My best friend and I were huge fans. He’s gone now, and I miss him as much as I miss the bloody innocence of the time.Continue Reading
These annual sets of ghost stories from cartoonist Seth and publisher Biblioasis has, over the last few years, become one of my favorite holiday traditions. The 2023 set arrives bearing three creepy stories and an armload of stark, atmospheric illustrations that perfectly capture and bolster them to chilling effect.Continue Reading
Eisner Award-nominated writer Cullen Bunn is no stranger to horror, but he says his new comic, Invasive, haunts him and signals a signpost on the road to his approach to the genre. Invasive, which is published by Oni Press and illustrated by Jesús Hervás, has a debut date of December 13. Bunn spoke to Cemetery Dance about how a nightmare influenced this work, why Invasive is different from previous projects, and what else he has going on. Continue Reading
Raised on ’80s slasher horror, Red Lagoe is the author of three horror collections: Lucid Screams, Dismal Dreams and, the reason for our conversation, Impulses Of A Necrotic Heart. Revving up her engines, she has also penned the forthcoming novella, In Excess Of Dark and the novel Bloodstains By Gaslight, both due to hit the ground running in 2024. Red is also the editor of the anthology Nightmare Sky: Stories Of Astronomical Horror and is the owner of Death Knell Press. As an amateur astrologer, this fearless woman may have her dark muse nestled in the darkest reaches of the universe but keeps us all well grounded with stories of loss, grief, trauma and suffering most of us can relate to in some way, though perhaps not quite as balls-to-the-wall insane as some of her more unfortunate victims, er, characters inevitably do.
On top of it all, Red is a formidable artist who lends her impactful drawings to each of the stories we are about to dive into with Impulses Of A Necrotic Heart. But be warned: while Red is as sweet and kind as they come, don’t let her demeaner fool you. A promising voice worth paying attention to, Red creates a web of haunted ruins from which we can expect to never fully escape from unchanged while our appetite for what’s to come grows more insatiable story by story, book by book.
Without further ado, it’s time to dig in and find out exactly what Red’s necrotic little heart is made of.Continue Reading
Split Scream Vol. 4 by D. Matthew Urban and Holly Lyn Walrath Tenebrous Press (October 2023) 152 pages; $13 paperback; $3.99 e-book Reviewed by Joshua Gage
This book begins with an introduction by the series editor Alex Ebenstein regarding the novelette. He describes it as “longer than a short story and shorter than a novella,” or between ten to twenty thousand words. As such, the book is presented as a “double feature” of sorts, pairing “Nonsense Words” by D. Matthew Urban with “Bone Light” by Holly Lyn Walrath. The stories have nothing to do with each other beyond being well written and scary, and the whole concept of this book is really quite clever and appealing. Continue Reading
When I first began reading horror fiction, most of it was populated by educated, successful characters. Writers were a popular choice. I was fine with it, and I still am, but by the mid-eighties the genre needed a jolt from a different demographic. John Skipp and Craig Spector gave it to us.
With the publication of The Light at the End we had characters from another class and fiction designated for a different demographic. Those who barely made it through high school. Or didn’t get a diploma at all. The disenfranchised, the ones who were dealt a bad hand from the start. People like me and my friends, in other words.
Many of the people I grew up with had ideals, but most lost sight of them. Bitter disappointment after disappointment hardened our hearts. We partied to celebrate our youth and to be free of the constraints of society, but the partying quickly began to take a toll, and burnout set in. We were more concerned with the next beer, the next gore movie, the next gorge-out buffet than bettering the world or ourselves.
From the pages of Devil’s Reject (by Dark Pine Publishing) comes Miguel Goncalves’s short story, “The Scarecrow Man,” where the line between reality and nightmare blurs into a devilish dance of psychological horror and crime fiction. As I devoured this debut, I couldn’t shake the echoes of Robert Bloch’s Psycho and A24’s cinematic masterpiece Pearl. Continue Reading
My grandmother makes beautiful things from the tiny, bleached bones of her children—the fourteen who died in childbirth or while they were still little. So many children died in that country then, and still do. They die from disease, or hunger, or violence, often at the hands of men and older children and, sometimes, even women, ones who’ve gone insane in a world where fear and rage have taken the place of love.Continue Reading
In her introduction, Regina Yau writes “The Pixel Project is a global virtual volunteer-run 501c3 anti-violence against women non-profit whose mission is to raise awareness, funds, and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women (VAW) through activism and advocacy at the intersection of social media, new technologies, and popular culture/the Arts. In 2022, Black Spot Books proposed putting together a poetry collection in benefit of The Pixel Project’s anti-VAW work. Co-editors Lindy Ryan and Lee Murray rallied 112 female and non-binary poets from across the world to contribute poems to the collection that would become Under Her Eye.”
This book is, unfortunately, a necessary collection on the shelf of every horror reader, not just because of its cause, but also because of its message.
Brooms, a new graphic novel written by Jasmine Walls and illustrated by Teo DuVall, takes place in an alternative 1930s where only some people are allowed to use magic, and unsanctioned broom racing is forbidden. Walls and DuVall spoke to Cemetery Dance about their backgrounds in graphic novels, the research that went into Brooms’ creation, and what they hope readers take away.Continue Reading