Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video Visions1 Comment on Video Visions: The Drive-In 
Over the thousand years I’ve been writing Video Visions, I’ve waxed poetic about my days walking those aisles crammed with garish VHS boxes, the smell of popcorn wafting in the air. This time around, I’m going to do something of an evolution chart, only with a surprise ending and no missing links, so there’s no questioning my impeccable logic.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby 
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
Flatiron Books (June 6, 2023)
352 pages; $23.79 hardcover; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
Blending social issues, unforgettable characters, and razor-sharp prose, S.A. Cosby has muscled his way to the front of the crime fiction genre. Cosby’s newest, All the Sinners Bleed, showcases his horror/thriller roots in a way we haven’t seen since his debut novel, My Darkest Prayer, and stands poised to cement the author’s position as the new king of the crime hill.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Mouth Full of Ashes by Briana Morgan 
Mouth Full of Ashes by Briana Morgan
Independently Published (October 2021)
158 pages; $9.99; $2.99 ebook; $14.95 audiobook
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
“Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count.” – Heathers
I’m not typically into vampire stories, except for Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and Bela Lugosi’s performance in Dracula.
However, Briana Morgan’s Mouth Full of Ashes dismembers supernatural horror and dark, campy teen film to conjure something scheming and bloody. Continue Reading
Grendel, Kentucky by Jeff McComsey and Tommy Lee Edwards
Upshot (March 2021)
96 pages; $9.99 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Grendel, Kentucky by Jeff McComsey is an incredible graphic novel that takes the Beowulf saga and modernizes it. The story focuses on Marnie, who leads the all-women biker gang The Harlots. She’s called back to her hometown of Grendel for the funeral of her adoptive father, Clyde, who was supposedly killed by a bear. When she finds out the truth, which is much worse, she seeks vengeance for her father and learns about what it means to be a family and what it means to hold on to family secrets.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Whatever Remains Of Us In The End by Brandon Baker 
Whatever Remains Of Us In The End by Brandon Baker
Independently Published (March 2023)
132 pages; $10.99 paperback; $2.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Power comes at a price in Brandon Baker’s Whatever Remains Of Us In The End, a supernatural thriller looming with feverish occult practices, the classic horror trope of “how far will you go to save those you love,” and lucid imagery reminiscent of the pulp horror era. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories InterviewsLeave a comment on Philip Fracassi talks GOTHIC on Citywide Blackout Philip Fracassi recently appeared on the Citywide Blackout podcast to talk about his novel Gothic, available now from Cemetery Dance. Host Max Bowen introduces the interview, which you can listen to below:
A haunted item is a familiar element in horror novels, but a haunted desk? That’s a new one to me and I am here for it! Continuing our series of interviews with authors on Cemetery Dance, Philip Fracassi joins me to talk about his recent novel Gothic.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Night Time LogicLeave a comment on Night Time Logic with Justin Burnett 
“Horror and weird fiction is the labyrinth.”
Night Time Logic is the part of a story that is felt but not consciously processed.
In this column, which shares a name with my New York based reading and discussion series, I explore the phenomenon of Night Time Logic and other aspects of horror fiction by diving deep into the stories from award winning authors to emerging new voices.
I have an interest in strange tales, the kind of story one might call “Aickman-esqe” and like to discuss them here and look at stories through that lens when I can. My first short story collection is titled The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales in homage to the lineage of Robert Aickman’s strange tales. The new Cemetery Dance Publications trade paper back edition of the book can be found here. It discusses strange tales in the all-new story notes and features a full essay on one of Aickman’s tales.
In my previous column I spoke with Ray Cluely about ghost stories, settings in his fiction, his strange tales and more. In today’s column I speak with Justin Burnett about “leaving knots tied,” the uncanny, doppelgangers, music, labyrinths and more.
We begin with a discussion about his debut fiction collection The Puppet King and Other Atonements.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: In Memory of Exoskeletons by Rebecca Cuthbert 
In Memory of Exoskeletons by Rebecca Cuthbert
Alien Buddha Press (January 2023)
53 pages; $10.99 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Rebecca Cuthbert is a speculative, slipstream, and dark fiction and poetry writer living in Western New York. She is an Affiliate Member of the Horror Writers Association. She loves ghost stories, folklore, witchy women, and anything that involves nature getting revenge. Her debut poetry collection, In Memory of Exoskeletons, is out now with Alien Buddha Press. In Memory of Exoskeletons is a book that teeters between the personal and the horrific, memoir and terror, and takes the reader through the shifts and shudders eloquently. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Every Woman Knows This by Laurel Hightower 
Every Woman Knows This by Laurel Hightower
Death Knell Press (March 2023)
189 pages; $14.98 paperback; $4.49 e-book
Reviewed by Anton Cancre
Every Woman Knows This is a very personal, very pointed collection of stories that reflect Laurel Hightower’s experience of the world as a woman. Experiences that are common enough she can comfortably state that commonality in the title (and yes, she is explicit in her belief that this stands for all women, so please step aside with any gender essentialism). These stories hit on everything from dealing with stalkers to the perils of motherhood to always having to clean up after some manchild that never listens to reason and climbs down into an abandoned submarine just to poke around for a bit BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DID, and every one of them hits right in the gut.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories InterviewsLeave a comment on The Cemetery Dance Interview: Revisiting Richard Chizmar 
On the heels of reading Cemetery Dance’s recent publication of Stephen King: Revisited Volume One, I was loaded up with tons of questions, the first of which was who would be daring enough to go back in time and re-read every Stephen King book in order of publication? Richard Chizmar, that’s who. As a best selling author and publisher of Cemetery Dance, Chizmar has published several King stories and books over the years and would not only become a friend of King’s but also a collaborator who’s written books with King — the Gwendy trilogy. So yes, I was curious to chat with Rich about his take on King over the years given his unique perspective.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: All The Living And The Dead by Hayley Campbell 
All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life’s Work by Hayley Campbell
St. Martin’s Press (August 2022)
288 pages; $21.49; $19.00 paperback; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
None of us are born with the knowledge of death. We have to stumble upon a fallen bird fluttering its wings, desperate to live. Or we lose a grandparent, a sibling, a classmate, and someone breaks the news: the deceased, those “in a better place,” won’t, can’t, ever come back.
The author of All the Living and the Dead, Hayley Campbell, couldn’t pinpoint the moment she learned of death. She tells readers she can’t recall a time before death, stating, “Death was just there, everywhere, always.”Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Weird Fiction Quarterly 
Weird Fiction Quarterly edited by Russell Smeaton
Independently Published (Winter 2022 | Spring 2023)
120 pages; $10.00 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Weird Fiction Quarterly is a quarterly anthology series that deserves some attention. What makes this series intriguing is that each story must be five-hundred words exactly. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Dark PathwaysLeave a comment on Dark Pathways: That Special Scary Friend 
Christi Nogle’s Beulah is an absolute banger of a horror novel. The Stoker Award nominee for Best First Novel puts a classic ghost story inside an old schoolhouse being renovated by a family desiring a new start, and it’s narrated by a young woman named Georgie. Narrated incredibly well. Georgie is perceptive and intelligent, clearly at qualms with her mother, distant around others, protective of her little sister Stevie. And she’s deeply honest with us, the readers, allowing us inside her thoughts. All this comes through in the tight prose:Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: A Lovely Girl by Deborah Holt Larkin 
A Lovely Girl: The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of One of California’s Most Notorious Killers by Deborah Holt Larkin
Pegasus Crime (October 2022)
528 pages; $21.60 hardcover; $18.99 ebook
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
From the iconic mothers in horror fiction, like Norman Bates’ tormenting, ever-invasive mother, Norma, and Stephen King’s evangelically evil Margaret White from Carrie, to real-world terrifying tales of mommy dearests, motherhood captivates audiences. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Insatiable Volt Sisters by Rachel Eve Moulton 
The Insatiable Volt Sisters by Rachel Eve Moulton
MCD x FSG Orginals (April 2023)
464 pages: $16.20 paperback; $12.99 e-book
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
Rachel Eve Moulton mixes familial drama and supernatural horror in The Insatiable Volt Sisters, a long, eerie novel that lulls you in but never lets you get too comfortable.Continue Reading
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