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The Flexible Bullet of Madness

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 25, 2017August 19, 2017What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, What I Learned from Stephen KingLeave a comment

“This is a story about the genesis of insanity.” – Stephen King, The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet

PROLOGUE: LOADING THE GUN

If I try really hard, I can remember it all.

If I close my eyes and really concentrate, it’s almost like I’m right there. I can nearly smell the smells, and hear the sounds of what it was like. The soft elevator music that played in the lobby, and those halls that reeked of aged bodies. I can see myself as a 12 year old boy, visiting my great-grandmother in the old folk’s home. I can recall how she thought my mother was her daughter, or that it was December in the heat of June. Continue Reading

“In Loving Memory” and “A Wiggle of Maggot, a Curl of Bacon”

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 18, 2017September 27, 2017Exhumed"A Wiggle of Maggot, "In Loving Memory", A Curl of Bacon", Columns, Exhumed, K. Edwin Fritz, Steve Vernon4 Comments

In its illustrious 29*-year print run, Cemetery Dance magazine has published no less than 560 short stories and novel excerpts in 73** individual issues. As the super fan that I am, Exhumed is my humble attempt to read and review them all in monthly double reviews.

*and counting!

**there were also two “double issues” (#17/18 in 1993 and #74/75 in 2016), each of which squeezed twice as much content into a single magazine.

Last time I reviewed two Norman Partridge stories:

“Save the Last Dance for Me” from Cemetery Dance #2 (1989), and
“Slippin’ Into Darkness” (a novel excerpt) from Cemetery Dance #17/18 (1993).

If you missed it, you missed a particularly complex story (and a particularly “colorful” review).

This month is the 10th installment of Exhumed and, as promised, I present to you two Steve Vernon stories.

Let’s get to it… Continue Reading

Where Have all the Freak Shows Gone?

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 28, 2017July 24, 2017Video VisionsColumns, Hunter Shea, The Funhouse, Video Visions1 Comment

Growing up, humid days and warm nights meant the Westchester County Fair was rolling into town. The fair took over Yonkers Raceway for a couple of weeks, a real hoedown for us city folk. Along with shaky, suspect rides, there were carnival games, artery clogging fried foods, livestock shows, performing monkeys, a demolition derby and my favorite, the freak show. Continue Reading

Discovering Alan Peter Ryan

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 14, 2017July 10, 2017RevelationsAlan Peter Ryan, Columns, Kevin Lucia, Revelations5 Comments

I can’t remember where I read it—one of his blog posts, or in one of his now out-of-print blog collections—but Brian Keene once recounted the story of how he and some fellow writers, early in their career, visited a used bookstore while at a convention (maybe World Horror; I can’t remember). Excited at their own writing futures, while browsing the stacks, looking for their favorite classic authors, they discovered, with a rising sense of unease, a number of authors they had never heard of before. Writers who had at least ascended to paperback fame (of a kind) only to descend once again beneath the waters of obscurity, with barely a ripple. Continue Reading

The Endgame of an Era

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 7, 2017July 6, 2017Horror Drive-InBill Pronzini, Columns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber, Nameless DetectiveLeave a comment

Me and the Nameless Detective go way back. I’ve been reading these books since, oh wow, probably 1983? My Lord, that’s a long time.

I was never a mystery/suspense/noir reader in my youth. Science fiction, mostly, and what horror there was to be found. Which, honestly, wasn’t very much. SF won most of my reading time by default.

Yet by the early eighties I was getting very tired of the weary clichés of science fiction. Continue Reading

Witchboard of the Dead

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 23, 2017June 20, 2017Video VisionsColumns, Hunter Shea, Tawny Kitaen, Video Visions, WitchboardLeave a comment

Tawny Kitaen is completely to blame for my messing with dead people.

In lieu of today’s penchant to never take personal responsibility, I’m quite comfortable laying all of this at Tawny’s lovely feet. Mind you, I’ve never met the woman. However, I feel as if she’s an old friend with wild and wonderful scarlet hair thanks to Bachelor Party, writhing on the hood of a car in Whitesnake’s video for “Here I Go Again,” and last but not least, 1986’s Ouija horror film, Witchboard.Continue Reading

“The Hounds of Hell to Pay” and “Martyr and Pesty”

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 16, 2017June 16, 2017Exhumed"Martyr and Pesty", "The Hounds of Hell to Pay", Columns, David A. Lindschmidt, Exhumed, Jonathan Lethem, K. Edwin Fritz4 Comments

My First Fright featuring Mercedes M. Yardley

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 9, 2017June 4, 2017My First FrightColumns, John Brhel, Mercedes M. Yardley, My First Fright, Unico in the Island of MagicLeave a comment

Merc3edes M. Yardley — Mercedes M. Yardley

Mercedes M. Yardley was only eight years old when she read her father’s copy of Stephen King’s It. Pretty intense material for someone so young, wouldn’t you say? But years earlier, Yardley had been introduced to what i09 referred to as “The Most Horrifying Children’s Movie Ever Made.” Perhaps she was better prepared to handle the horrors of Pennywise the Clown after repeatedly watching a scary movie starring….a pink-haired unicorn?

Yardley is a Bram Stoker Award-winning writer residing in Las Vegas, Nevada. A self-described dark fantasist, she is the author of multiple books and short stories, including 2013’s Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love and 2014’s Pretty Little Dead Girls. We had a video chat about her first fright, and her choice was unexpected, to say the least.Continue Reading

The Horror Bust (That Didn’t Seem Like a Bust)

Cemetery Dance OnlineMay 26, 2017May 23, 2017Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber1 Comment

We were talking about the great horror boom of the 1980s at the Horror Drive-In message boards the other day. Most seem to think that it was the greatest era in the history of the genre. I happen to agree. I was there, and as big a fan of all things horror as you’d have been likely to find. It was an exciting time, for movies and for horror fiction. I could go on about it indefinitely, but I have something else on my mind today.Continue Reading

“The Officer’s Club” and “The Phone Call”

Cemetery Dance OnlineMay 19, 2017May 18, 2017Exhumed" "The Phone Call", "The Officer's Club, Columns, Exhumed, K. Edwin Fritz, Roman A. Ranieri6 Comments

Hello again, fans of the Dance. This is the seventh installment of monthly double reviews studying the structure of great horror fiction published in our beloved Cemetery Dance.

Last time I reviewed two Barry Hoffman stories: “An Island Unto Herself” from Cemetery Dance #1 (1988) and “Vicious Cycle” from Cemetery Dance #26 (1997). If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do so and let me know what you think.

In keeping with the popular notion of reviewing two stories by the same author separated by time, this month I’m going to dive into a pair of Roman A. Ranieri stories. The first, once again from Cemetery Dance #1, was published in 1988. The second, from Cemetery Dance #23, was published in 1996.

Let’s see what eight years of separation did for ole’ Roman’s skill set… Continue Reading

Cutting Class for a Higher Education

Cemetery Dance OnlineMay 12, 2017Video VisionsColumns, Hunter Shea, Video Visions7 Comments

Here’s a little public service announcement that you’ll never get on TV.

Nothing helped foster my career as a horror writer more than cutting entire days of class when I was in college. Not only that, it also provided the foundation of my marriage.

Now there’s a one-two punch I never would have gotten from another psych or communications class. Continue Reading

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #198

Bev VincentMay 3, 2017May 3, 2017Breaking News, Stephen King News from the Dead ZoneBev Vincent, Columns, idris elba, Jake Chambers, Matthew McConaughey, Mid-World, News, News from the Dead Zone, Pennywise, Randall Flagg, Roland, Stephen King, Stephen King News, Taheen, The Dark Tower, The Shining8 Comments

The Dark Tower trailer we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. Let’s get that out of the way straight off:

However, before the trailer showed up at 9:19 am Keystone Earth Time today, we were treated yesterday to some Twitter banter between Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey as they laid the groundwork for a couple of teaser trailers that contain some footage not found in the official trailer.Continue Reading

Al Sarrantonio: The Weird King of Halloween

Cemetery Dance OnlineApril 28, 2017April 23, 2017RevelationsAl Sarrantonio, Columns, Kevin Lucia, RevelationsLeave a comment

I first encountered Al Sarrantonio the same way others most likely did; in his Orangefield Cycle, which regales the tale of the strange Pumpkin Capitol of Orangefield, New York, through the novels Halloweenland, Hallows Eve, Horrorween and the novellas The Pumpkin Boy and Hornets. In Orangefield, strange things happen around Halloween. People die mysteriously, create suicide pacts, conduct pagan rituals, and see strange things from other worlds. Like the mythical Pumpkin Boy, a robot with a pumpkin for a head. Or Samhain himself, trying to take advantage of Halloween’s thin dimensional walls in his repeated attempts to sneak into our world as the advance scout of an unholy army lead by something far worse. Continue Reading

‘Thinner’ and the Blame Game

Cemetery Dance OnlineApril 21, 2017April 12, 2017What I Learned from Stephen KingColumns, Jason Sechrest, Stephen King, Thinner, What I Learned from Stephen KingLeave a comment

What I Learned from Stephen King by Jason Sechrest

“There are no curses, only mirrors you hold up to the souls of men and women.” – Stephen King, Thinner

A disclaimer before we begin: As is the case with most of these doo-dads, there are spoilers ahead for those who have not read Thinner. More spoilers than usual in fact, as I found it necessary to employ the book’s end in my final analysis. If you, Constant Reader, should wish to check out now, we will hold no grudge, nor lay the blame. For if there is anything to be learned from Thinner (and I believe there is, or I would not have written said doo-dad), it is that blame is like a spinning wheel. Round and round and round she goes… Continue Reading

“An Island Unto Herself” and “Vicious Cycle”

Cemetery Dance OnlineApril 14, 2017April 12, 2017Exhumed"An Island Unto Herself", "Vicious Cycle", Barry Hoffman, Cemetery Dance #1, Cemetery Dance #26, Columns, Exhumed, K. Edwin Fritz5 Comments

Hello again, folks. This is the 6th installment of monthly double reviews studying the structure of great horror fiction published in our beloved Cemetery Dance.

Last time I reviewed two Bentley Little titles: “The Janitor” from Cemetery Dance #1 (1988) and “We” from Cemetery Dance #64 (2010). This marked the 2nd time my little column compared an older and a newer story from the same author. I know I liked it, and readers seemed to as well.

Fortunately, I get to do this again this month with a pair of Barry Hoffman stories. His two pieces were published in Cemetery Dance in 1988 and 1997. And while they may not be separated by the two full decades like we saw with Mr. Little, Mr. Hoffman’s stories nevertheless show both growth over this span of time as well as a certain, unique thematic element.

Let’s see if you can figure it out before I connect those dots…Continue Reading

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