Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Dark PathwaysLeave a comment on Dark Pathways: From A Certain Point of View 
Horror fans, I have a terrible confession to make. I read Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars books and decided he wasn’t an author for me. The books were good, but I got the sense that Wendig’s writing style didn’t hit the right notes for me to continue with his other stories. So I passed on Wanderers. I passed on The Book of Accidents.
Holy smokes, am I an idiot. I am a giant, foolish idiot who made a horrible mistake.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories How I Spend My HalloweenLeave a comment on How I Spend My Halloween: Cynthia “Cina” Pelayo 
If you know anything about Cemetery Dance, you know that the arrival of October…The Spooky Season…is a very special time of year for us. To celebrate, we’ve invited some of our favorite spinners of spooky tales to share their favorite Halloween traditions and memories with us.
Today we’re joined by Cynthia “Cina” Pelayo, the Chicago-based, award-winning author and poet. Apple cider donuts and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are just some of her Halloween traditions — read on to learn more!
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So, yeah, I have a bigfoot costume in my attic. And I may have donned it during a multi-author book signing at a New Jersey brewery and run amok, startling every day drinker in my path. On Halloween, I quite possibly made some small children cry as I offered them treats from my hairy hand (see the author in his glory below). For shits and giggles, wearing the squatch mask at random doesn’t seem all that strange to me, even as I sit in my belfry and write this column.
I know, I have a problem. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Dead TreesLeave a comment on Dead Trees: Bite by Richard Laymon 
Richard Laymon is one of the most controversial authors in the horror genre. I don’t see him discussed so much anymore, but at one time his work was hotly debated.
Many called Laymon one of the greatest writers we had. Others derided him as a hack and a sexist. Me, I think it’s just as ludicrous to cite Richard Laymon as one of the best as it is to claim he was a bad writer. He knew how to pace a novel, and his plots are always complicated and surprising. Laymon spent time developing his characters before he threw them into the maelstrom.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories How I Spend My HalloweenLeave a comment on How I Spend My Halloween: Stephen Graham Jones
If you know anything about Cemetery Dance, you know that the arrival of October…The Spooky Season…is a very special time of year for us. To celebrate, we’ve invited some of our favorite spinners of spooky tales to share their favorite Halloween traditions and memories with us.
Today we’re joined by Stephen Graham Jones, whose novel My Heart is a Chainsaw took the horror genre by storm last year and will, in true slasher tradition, be followed by at least two sequels.
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Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Night Time LogicLeave a comment on Night Time Logic with Rudi Dornemann 
Night Time Logic is the part or parts of a story that are felt but not consciously processed. Those that operate below the conscious surface. Those that are processed somewhere, somehow, and in some way other than… overtly and consciously. The deep-down scares. The scares that find their way to our core and unsettle us in ways we rarely see coming…
Hello and welcome. My name is Daniel Braum, I am an author of strange tales, a term used by Robert Aickman to describe his unique brand of stories. Many of Aickman’s stories were what we now may call “quiet horror.” Often it was ambiguous as to what if any supernatural elements were present and in play. Aickman’s strange tales operated with “Night Time Logic,” the kind of scares and elements that were felt but not consciously processed. In this column, which shares a name with my New York based reading series, I explore the phenomenon of Night Time Logic and other aspects of horror fiction by diving deep into the stories from authors ranging from award winning favorites to emerging new voices.
My previous column with Gwendolyn Kiste explored her latest book, Reluctant Immortals, a fresh take on some very well-known characters in a time and setting we haven’t seen them before: California during the Summer of Love. Today I talk with author Rudi Dornemann about his settings-based fiction and more. Dornemann’s work is filled with alternate worlds ranging from those just a little bit different than ours to those strange, horrific, and not familiar. We begin our conversation with a look into his cover story from the August 2022 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a publication that has delivered to us many horror classics over the decades.Continue Reading
Author Bev VincentPosted on Categories Stephen King News from the Dead Zone1 Comment on Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #230 
Time for another Stephen King news update, don’t you think? Recently we saw the publication of King’s latest novel, Fairy Tale, and I have news about the next adaptation, which launches this week. In addition to those items, I’m going to talk about two associational projects, one of which involves yours truly and the other that involves someone from New Brunswick in Canada—and it’s not me!
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Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Night Time LogicLeave a comment on Night Time Logic with Gwendolyn Kiste
Night Time Logic is the part or parts of a story that are felt but not consciously processed. Those that operate below the conscious surface. Those that are processed somewhere, somehow, and in some way other than… overtly and consciously. The deep-down scares. The scares that find their way to our core and unsettle us in ways we rarely see coming…
Hello and welcome. My name is Daniel Braum, I am an author of strange tales, a term coined by Robert Aickman to describe his unique brand of stories. Aickman’s stories were often what we now may call “quiet horror” and often it was ambiguous as to what if any supernatural elements were present and in play. Aickman’s strange tales operated with “Night Time Logic” — the kind of scares and elements that were felt but not consciously processed. In this column, which shares a name with my New York based reading series, I explore the phenomenon of Night Time Logic and other notions of what makes horror and good fiction by looking at the stories of my favorite authors along with the work of new voices.
My previous column with author Brenda Tolian explored her collection of stories relating to a setting specific supernatural phenomenon. Gwendolyn Kiste’s latest book Reluctant Immortals is also set in a very distinct place and time in addition to presenting a fresh take on some very well-known characters. Gwendolyn has been a guest of the series both in person in New York and online. You can find one of her appearances here. We begin our conversation with the character of Lucy Westenra from Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews, The Comic VaultLeave a comment on Review: Dreams Factory by Jérôme Hamon and Suheb Zako 
Dreams Factory written by Jérôme Hamon, art by Suheb Zako
Magnetic Press (September 13, 2022)
136 pages; $24.99 hardcover
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Following his studies at an American university and at business school, French author Jérôme Hamon began his professional life in New York as a financial analyst. Convinced that the life he wanted was elsewhere, he left the field two years later to travel around the world. Back in France, Hamon strung together a number of jobs in the movies, video games, and television. In parallel, he began to write his first comic book and graphic novel scripts. In 2008, Hamon went to Angouleme to present his first completed scripts, and it was there that he met artist Marc Van Straceele. The two would go on to collaborate on Yokozuna, a graphic novel on sumo wrestling in Japan (Kana, 2013). Following that, Hamon worked with artist Antoine Carrion on Nils, a saga halfway between Nordic mythology and the works of Miyazaki (Soleil, 2016). His newest graphic novel, in collaboration with freelance artist Suheb Zako, is Dreams Factory, a dark steampunk tale about mines, kidnapped children, and mechanical beasts.Continue Reading
He Who Fights with Monsters by Francesco Artibani and Werther Dell’Edera
Ablaze (August 30, 2022)
144 pages; $24.99 hardcover
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Francesco Artibani has long worked for the Walt Disney Company Italia, where he writes many tales for Topolino, PK, and W.I.T.C.H., of which he’s been a scriptwriter and story editor for three years, and has created the science fiction series Kylion. Werther Dell’Edera is an Italian comic book artist who provided interior art for the unreleased comic Aliens: Colonial Marines – Rising Threat for Dark Horse Comics, as well as Marvel Comics, and BOOM! Studios hit Something is Killing the Children. Their newest collaboration is the WWII graphic novel He Who Fights With Monsters. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: Happy 40th Birthday to Creepshow!
Hard to believe that one of the greatest horror anthologies of all time hit theaters forty years ago. In that span of time, I’ve had two dogs, three cats, two turtles, at least seventeen hamsters, three hundred goldfish and beta fish (most of them lasting two days), one salamander and one dwarf rabbit that grew to be the size of Gunnar Hansen. A big fuck you to the pet store clerk who sold me that bill of goods. Dwarf my ass. Oh, and I went from a virgin to way not a virgin, got married and had two amazing children.
And now back to the real story. When I watched the coming attraction for Creepshow on TV and saw that it was the love child of Stephen King and George Romero, I believe I had a Bob Rossian happy accident in my skivvies. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead had rewired my brain a few years earlier and King was feeding me nightmare fuel every night before I hit the lights. His cocaine and booze years made for my caviar and champagne days and nights. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Reviews, The Comic VaultLeave a comment on Review: Over My Dead Body by Sweeney Boo
Over My Dead Body by Sweeney Boo
HarperAlley (August 30, 2022)
240 pages; $24.99 hardcover
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Sweeney Boo is a comic artist and illustrator living in Montreal, Canada.
When she’s not busy drawing witchy girls and hairless cats, she works with various publishers including BOOM! Studios, Archie Comics, IDW, Marvel, Image Comics and DC Comics. She is also the author and illustrator of graphic novel Eat, & Love Yourself. Her newest graphic novel is Over My Dead Body.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Dark PathwaysLeave a comment on Dark Pathways: The Stories That Linger
I just finished reading Cynthia Pelayo’s Children of Chicago, another of this year’s Stoker Award nominees for Superior Achievement in a Novel. I want more. I want ten more books. I want Pelayo to go comb through every single fairy tale she’s ever read and mine each one for the horror lingering between the words and turn each one into a story.
OK, I might be a little biased. I did, after all, write The Grimm Chronicles, so I have a little experience with modern-day fairy tales. But Pelayo is playing with a story that I entirely forgot about: The Pied Piper. From the book’s description:
Chicago detective Lauren Medina’s latest call brings her to investigate a brutally murdered teenager in Humboldt Park—a crime eerily similar to the murder of her sister decades before. Unlike her straight-laced partner, she recognizes the crime, and the new graffiti popping up all over the city, for what it really means: the Pied Piper has returned.
Part horror story, part murder mystery, Children of Chicago expertly weaves the tale of the Pied Piper into something truly horrifying. I know what you’re thinking: OK, the original story was already horrifying … after all, the guy just took a bunch of people’s kids! Yes, point taken. But incorporating any sort of myth or fairy tale into an original story can be an absolute disaster. It requires an understanding of culture, history, and, yes, meaning.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Night Time LogicLeave a comment on Night Time Logic with Brenda Tolian
Night Time Logic is the part or parts of a story that are felt but not consciously processed. Those that operate below the conscious surface. Those that are processed somewhere, somehow, and in some way other than… overtly and consciously. The deep-down scares. The scares that find their way to our core and unsettle us in ways we rarely see coming…
Hello and welcome. My name is Daniel Braum, I am an author of strange tales, a term I use for stories written in the spirit of Robert Aickman, stories which explore the tension between the psychological and supernatural. These stories are often but not always of the quiet or literary kind. In this column, which shares a name with my New York based reading series, I explore the phenomenon of Night Time Logic and other notions of what makes horror and good fiction by looking at the stories of my favorite authors along with the work of new voices.
My previous column with author Venita Coehlo explored ghosts and folklore specific to India. Brenda Tolian’s stories are also setting specific all of them intersect with a place called Blood Mountain which you will learn about in our conversation. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Dead TreesLeave a comment on Dead Trees: The Making of a Monster by Gail Petersen
Horror was in a time of transformation in 1994. John Skipp and Craig Spector’s final novel, Animals, had been published the previous year. The original Splatterpunk era was over. Necro Publications and the underground hardcore horror fiction wave was a couple of years ahead. Cemetery Dance had spearheaded the small press revolution, but it was still gaining momentum. The biggest thing in the genre, other than King and Barker of course, was the Dell/Abyss line of postmodern horror paperbacks.
I liked some of the Abyss titles and authors. Poppy Z. Brite and Kathe Koja were and are favorites. I liked Brian Hodge and Dennis Etchison. However, the books began to wear on me after a while. It seemed like some of the writers were trying too hard to be hip. I didn’t care for novels by Tanith Lee, Nancy Holder, and Jessica Amanda Salmonson. I lost faith in the Dell/Abyss brand and stopped buying the books.Continue Reading
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