The Cemetery Dance Interview: The Little Hurts of Aaron Dries

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photo of author Aaron Dries
Aaron Dries

Aaron Dries, Australian phenom, youth addiction counselor, pervasive author of dark fiction and all-around superhero, dissects his collection of little hurts: Cut To Care

Each story in this book hammers home polarizing lessons in caring, whether by choice or by circumstance, and provides a stark look at the terrors of both caring too much and too little.

Tune in as we discuss the finer points of the realities within from a man who lives life on the front lines and has seen the faces that breed there, and those which become the culmination of its tragic circumstances.Continue Reading

The Cemetery Dance .99 Summer Kindle Sale!

Hi Folks!

We wanted to let you know about our summer eBook sale! The following five titles are on a Kindle Countdown Sale which ends August 7! We plan to make these eBook sales a quarterly event, to highlight our impressive eBook backlist, and raise more awareness for these fine works of horror and dark fiction!

Voices At Midnight: Tales of Horror and Madness by Christopher W. Clark

Voices at midnight can be unsettling, especially if you didn’t think someone else was in the room, or if it’s a dreaded phone call that wakes you from a peaceful sleep. In this debut collection from Christopher W. Clark, disturbing voices will tell you:

  • how to make offerings (of a sort) to lake monsters
  • or, directions to strange old churches and their weird congregations
  • or, what you must do to avoid the gaze of Black-Eyed Susan
  • or even, about the secrets of old roads and their evil hitchhikers.

Listen to Voices at Midnight at your peril…

cover of Voices at Midnight

And the Night Growled Back by Aaron Dries

They shouldn’t have run.

There are three of them, Sam, Lila and Paul—young travelers with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and yet, everything to lose. Their visit to Iceland has invigorated their senses…until the carnival. There, a single punch is thrown. A man lies dead on the ground. Blood speckles Sam’s bruised knuckles. In a blind panic, they flee the scene and disappear down an unpaved road, winding through the barren landscape.

Soon they find an empty cabin, the perfect place to hide. Twilight turns to night. All is still. It is then that the travelers realize they are not alone. Something is lurking out there. In the dark. They can hear its growls. And to the creature, the guilty and the innocent taste exactly the same.

“Like [The Fallen Boys], this new piece takes relatable actions and emotion – in this case anger, jealousy and panic – and spins them into horror that is as tragic and effective as anything based in the supernatural… And then, just about the time we’re locked in to thinking this is a straightforward piece about how a moment of anger and aggression can change everything, Dries flips the story upside down, turning it into a shocking and violent siege story that kick starts an adrenaline-fueled finale.” – FearNet.com

cover of And the Night Growled Back

Midnight Rain by James Newman

Midnight Rain is a dark coming-of-age novel in the vein of Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life and Stephen King’s “The Body” (Stand By Me). It is a tale of growing up in the South, a reflection of boyhood and all its wonders, and the story of how one boy deals with a terrible secret that threatens to tear apart both his family and hometown.

1977… In a small town called Midnight, North Carolina, twelve-year-old Kyle Mackey ventures toward a strange new world called manhood… Kyle’s older brother Dan is going away to college. The night before Dan’s flight leaves for Florida, Kyle visits what he calls his “Secret Place” — an old shack in the woods bordering Midnight.

But Kyle stumbles upon something that proves his favorite spot in the world is neither as private nor as innocent as he once thought…

It begins with the naked, battered corpse of a young woman. And, standing over her, a man Kyle knows…

“A smashing dark debut that kept me turning pages.” – Ed Gorman

cover of Midnight Rain

Head Space & Other Uncomfortable Surroundings by James Cooper

The dark space inside our head, where reality mutates, where the people and places we trust no longer exist. This is the landscape of eternal terror, inhabited by creatures we can’t even name. It is the place we fear, and the place we belong, where our private horrors endure…

James Cooper has rapidly developed into one of the most distinguished writers of contemporary horror fiction of his generation. His stories possess a rare insight into human nature and capture the voices of those who feel at odds with the world, their strange tales resonating long into the night, leaving the reader profoundly moved. The stories collected here offer a unique view of the family dynamic and are frequently disturbing. Don’t say you haven’t been warned…

cover of Head SpaceThis House by Benjamin Kane Etheridge

What makes a haunted house? The unsettled spirits of the dead? Or the unsettled spirits of the living?

When Joey Lodge sustains a severe brain trauma, his delusions take the form of an alien spirit that guides him in the creation of a haunted house. He begins to populate the house with ghosts of his choosing, from family members to criminals, until the line between fantasy and reality blurs and even his delusions start fighting back. As terror in the house ratchets up to a maddening pitch, the alien spirit has one shocking revelation still in store…

cover of This House

As always, thank you for your support!

The Cemetery Dance Interview: Feeding the Ending with Aaron Dries

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Aaron Dries
Aaron Dries

Aaron Dries is an Australian powerhouse of an author and filmmaker. His debut novel, House of Sighs, was first published with the title Disunity for Leisure Books/Rue Morgue/Chizine Publications’ FRESH BLOOD Contest and had been influenced by a local murder that took place in Aaron’s teen years.

Aaron has been compared to the late great Jack Ketchum and, considering the intricate beauty laced throughout the grotesque underbelly of the human condition explored in both men’s work, this is not an unfair comparison.

Other titles from Aaron Dries include The Fallen Boys, No Place For Sinners and Where the Dead Go To Die (with Mark Allan Gunnels) among others.

In this conversation, we discuss the correlation of Aaron’s writing and his background as a youth addictions counselor, his newest coming-of-age novella, Dirty Heads, his upcoming collection of short stories, Cut To Care, and a whole lot more to convince you that Aaron Dries is here to influence your nightmares long into the night. Sit back and enjoy as we peel back the layers of humanity at it’s most horrific and redeeming levels.Continue Reading

Review: A Place for Sinners by Aaron Dries

Cover of A Place for Sinners by Aaron DriesA Place for Sinners by Aaron Dries
Poltergeist Press (July 2019)

394 pages; $21.95 hardcover; $14.56 paperback; $5.39 e-book
Reviewed by Sadie “Mother Horror” Hartmann

Sometimes, in the genre of horror, a reviewer stumbles upon a dark, glistening vein in the granite of horror. Maybe the reviewer reads a book from a specific indie press and enjoys it so much, they find themselves reading other books they have to offer. Or maybe the reviewer finds an author and they run in a circle of like-minded authors who do collaborative work—so the reviewer finds not just one new favorite author, but several!

I found Aaron Dries in one of the aforementioned dark veins in the granite. Being the excitable and curious reader that I am, I bought myself some of his books. A Place for Sinners entices you with an intriguing premise; boiled down it amounts to the simplest of tropes: A traveling experience to the jungles of Thailand goes terribly wrong.Continue Reading

Review: ‘Where the Dead Go to Die’ by Aaron Dries and Mark Allan Gunnells

wherethedeadgoWhere the Dead Go to Die by Aaron Dries and Mark Allan Gunnells
Crystal Lake Publishing (November 2016)
197 pages; $14.99 paperback; $4.99 e-book
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington

Been a while since I’ve read a great opening line, but this one drew me right in: The dead roam those halls.

Emily Samuels is starting new job and the protesters are out in force, complete with signs reading, “LIFE IS 4 THE LIVING”,“BRING OUT UR DED”,  “NO TOLERRENCE FOR BONE EATERS”, “LET’S FINISH THE JOB”.Continue Reading