Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories InterviewsLeave a comment on Interview: Ania Ahlborn 
An Interview with Ania Ahlborn
Ania Ahlborn is the bestselling author of the horror thrillers Brother, Within These Walls, The Bird Eater, The Shuddering, The Neighbors, and Seed, and the novella The Pretty Ones. Her latest release is The Devil Crept In, out now from Gallery Books. Recently, Ania was kind enough to take time out from exploring the dark corners of her imagination to share a few words with us.
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: ‘Universal Harvester’ by John Darnielle 
Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (February 7, 2017)
224 pages; $15.00 hardcover; $11.99 e-book
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
When you work at Cemetery Dance, you tend to make certain assumptions about the books publishers send to you for review. Sometimes, those assumptions are way off. John Darnielle’s Universal Harvester proved to be one of those instances….in the best possible way.
When I got the book (cleverly packaged in a plastic clamshell case like an old VHS tape, for reasons that would become clear when I read it) and scanned its press sheet, a few things jumped out at me: mentions of the “haunted, open landscape of middle-America;” “ominous and disturbing footage” spliced into a video store’s rental tapes; an investigation into “the origins of these unsettling scenes.” I took these tidbits and began to splice together my own version of the book.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews2 Comments on Review: ‘The Devil Crept In’ by Ania Ahlborn 
The Devil Crept In by Ania Ahlborn
Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (February 7, 2017)
374 pages; $11.04 paperback; $11.99 e-book
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
The Devil Crept In is the second people-go-into-the-woods-and-bad-things-happen book I’ve read this year (after Nick Cutter’s excellent Little Heaven), and the third in recent memory (including Paul Tremblay’s excellent Disappearance at Devil’s Rock). Ania Ahlborn’s latest novel stands shoulder-to-shoulder with those two—not just because of the premise, but because of the excellence of its execution. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews1 Comment on Review: ‘Little Heaven’ by Nick Cutter 
Little Heaven by Nick Cutter
Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (January 10, 2017)
496 pages; $19.87 hardcover; $9.99 e-book
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
Little Heaven is the first major horror novel of 2017, and it’s going to take a monumental deluge of quality horror to keep it off of those end-of-year best-of lists that will start popping up 11 months from now.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: ‘Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire’ by Joe R. Lansdale 
Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire by Joe R. Lansdale
Subterranean Press (December 2016)
296 pages; $40.00 hardcover
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
“I was living in a pulp writer fury, a storm of imagination.”
That’s how author Joe R. Lansdale describes his early years, that delicate time when a steady diet of television shows, comic books and Edgar Rice Burroughs novels cemented his desire to become a writer. Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire is full of stories in which Lansdale seeks to honor those early influences that have given him—and, in turn, his readers—so much.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: ‘Slipping’ by Lauren Beukes 
Slipping: Stories, Essays & Other Writing by Lauren Beukes
Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror edited by Ellen Datlow
Tachyon Publications (November 2016)
432 pages; $12.79 paperback; $7.99 e-book
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand
Ellen Datlow has been charting the course of horror fiction for over 35 years. In that time, she has maintained a balanced perspective in her numerous anthologies and collections, always casting an appreciative eye toward the established masters of horror while shining a light on the talent tasked with carrying the genre forward.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories A Halloween Thing A Day1 Comment on A Halloween Thing A Day: ‘Season’s Greetings’ 
In 1996, Michael Dougherty released a short animated film called “Season’s Greetings,” which introduced a creepy, child-like character with a burlap mask and a love for Halloween. That character was named Sam, and you can see his introduction to the world below:Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories A Halloween Thing A DayLeave a comment on A Halloween Thing A Day: ‘Monster Problems’ 
Monsters in the closet….monsters under the bed….I think we all, at some point in life, believed in these things. We also believed that certain things would protect us from such creatures: keeping your feet under the covers…night lights…Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories A Halloween Thing A DayLeave a comment on A Halloween Thing A Day: Silver Shamrock!
Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween
Happy, happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock!
If you’re a fan of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, you might be
cursing me right now. That little ditty (from the Halloween countdown
commercials that play a huge part in the movie’s plot) is one of the
hardest-to-ditch earworms in earworm history, and I’ve just infected you.Continue Reading
1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is neither the most beloved nor the most reviled entry in the franchise. It’s a bit on the bland side for me (Michael’s mask, in particular, lacks any personality whatsoever), but man—I do love these opening credits.Continue Reading
Earlier this month, we featured Neil Gaiman, in a graveyard, talking about All Hallow’s Eve. Now, with Halloween peeking around the corner, we return to Mr. Gaiman, broadcasting from the woods on Halloween 2015, reading a poem called “Witch Work.”Continue Reading
Among the top Halloween urban legends that circulate each year is the idea that the candy your child accepts from strangers while trick-or-treating could be poisoned.
It was in wide circulation when I was of trick-or-treating age; I vividly remember my parents inspecting my candy haul piece-by-piece while I stood by impatiently. Of course, this was back in the ’70s, which means we didn’t have the Internet and we didn’t have Snopes.Continue Reading
Hip hop music and horror movies go way back. Sometimes the two came together as a promotional gimmick (see Freddy Krueger’s collaborations with Will Smith and The Fat Boys), sometimes it was a case of an artist paying homage to (or making fun of) the horror icons of their time.Continue Reading
Is it a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? I know several people who struggle with that distinction, but for me it’s easy: The Nightmare Before Christmas is a straight-up Halloween move, and a very good one at that.Continue Reading
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