Video Visions: The Twelve Assholes of Christmas

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 17, 2021December 12, 2021Video VisionsBurgermeister Meisterburger, Charlie Brown, Columns, Grinch, Hunter Shea, Video VisionsLeave a comment

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Whether you’re a ho-ho or a humbug, it’s impossible to ignore the holiday season. I know I can’t. As I write this, the threat of having to string up lights outside is looming, which is why I just might take my sweet time getting this done.

After subjecting my wife to watching at least one horror movie a day in October (we hit 55 this year), when December first rolls around, it’s my turn to get the water torture. Yes, we have to watch at least one Christmas movie or cartoon a day until Christmas Eve, when A Christmas Story goes on repeat mode all through the next day. Mind you, I’m not complaining (not loud enough so the wife can hear). First, she never makes me watch any of those insipid Lifetime or Hallmark pieces of dreck. Second, we do throw in some horror movies like Black Christmas, Red Christmas, Better Watch Out, Anna and the Apocalypse, and this year, thanks to Shudder, Silent Night, Deadly Night parts three through five. I never saw them before, and my limbo stick is set on low. Continue Reading

Revelations: A. R. Morlan’s Ewerton Cycle

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 10, 2021November 26, 2021RevelationsA.R. Morlan, Columns, Kevin Lucia, RevelationsLeave a comment

Banner for Revelations, the column written by Kevin Lucia for Cemetery Dance

Around 2012, after a life-changing night with F. Paul Wilson, Tom Monteleone and Stuart David Schiff, I began searching used bookstores far and wide for seminal works of horror I’d missed out on. I came to the horror genre late — both as a reader and a writer — so all I knew of horror was Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub. There’s nothing wrong with these writers, of course. But after that night, my head spun with the names of the dozens of writers I’d never heard of before. I decided that to be the kind of writer I aspired to be, I needed to widen my reading palate.Continue Reading

Dead Trees: The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 3, 2021November 21, 2021Dead TreesColumns, Dead Trees, Mark Sieber, Ramsey Campbell, The Doll Who Ate His MotherLeave a comment

banner reading Dead Trees by Mark Sieber

Who is the best living horror writer?

The obvious, and most popular answer, is of course Stephen King. I almost agree, but King has done too many different types of fiction to be stigmatized as merely a horror writer. A lot of it can even be construed as science fiction. Especially when one considers how psi talents were an SF staple for years and years.

Despite my love of his work my answer is not Stephen King. I’d have to go with the inimitable Ramsey Campbell.Continue Reading

Night Time Logic with Inna Effress

Cemetery Dance OnlineNovember 19, 2021November 14, 2021Night Time LogicColumns, Daniel Braum, Inna Effress, Night Time LogicLeave a comment

Night Time Logic with Daniel Braum

photo of author Inna Effress — Author Inna Effress

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…

“The veil of the eye” is a line from a poem that inspired one of guest Inna Effress’ recent stories. In today’s conversation we speak about what Inna calls “the fog of uncertainty” and more.Continue Reading

Dead Trees: The Fates by Thomas Tessier

Cemetery Dance OnlineOctober 29, 2021October 24, 2021Dead TreesColumns, Dead Trees, Mark Sieber, The Fates, Thomas TessierLeave a comment

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I read all kinds of fiction. Horror new and old, classic science fiction, modern domestic suspense, mainstream, whatever suits my fancy. There’s a special place in my heart of hearts for small town horror. The good stuff from the late seventies and early eighties. Charles L. Grant and his Oxrun Station stories come most immediately to mind. There’s Rick Hautala’s Maine. Matthew J. Costello and his early paperbacks. Peter Straub and the Chowder Society. Alan Ryan, Lisa Tuttle, Chet Williamson, A.R. Morlan, Al Sarrantonio, and T.M. Wright all set stories in cozy small towns. Let’s not forget Mr. King and his Castle Rock fiction.Continue Reading

Video Visions: The 21st Century’s Baddest Badass Final Girls

Cemetery Dance OnlineOctober 18, 2021October 17, 2021Video VisionsColumns, Hunter Shea, Video VisionsLeave a comment

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I love the smell of burning candy corns in the morning. It smells like…Halloween!

If you’re like me, you’ve entered into the all-horror, all-the time-zone. I know I watch and read a ton of all things creepy throughout the year, but October (or as I call it, Horrortober) is when folks like us take it up to thirteen. Fuck eleven. That’s for poseur rock bands. Continue Reading

Review: Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald and Jose Pimienta

Cemetery Dance OnlineOctober 5, 2021October 4, 2021Reviews, The Comic VaultColumns, Iron Circus Comics, Jose Pimienta, Joshua Gage, Kel McDonald, Reviews, Stars Hide Your Fire, The Comic VaultLeave a comment

Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald and Jose Pimienta
Iron Circus Comics (October 5, 2021)
162 pages; paperback $15; $9.99 e-book
Reviewed by Joshua Gage

Andrea and Darra live in a dead-end Massachusetts town, making their way through high school with hopeful (but slim) dreams of escape. Everything’s going according to plan until a chance encounter with an otherworldly spirit named Carmen changes everything! Carmen promises Andrea eternal life, but a mysterious young boy named Liam shows up claiming he had also made a deal with Carmen, and it didn’t go well . . . 100 years ago. Liam must convince his new friends of Carmen’s evil nature before Andrea is tricked into a supernatural bargain that will upend her new life before it even starts in Stars, Hide Your Fire written by Kel McDonald and illustrated by Joe Pimienta.Continue Reading

Night Time Logic with Sarah Langan

Cemetery Dance OnlineSeptember 24, 2021September 19, 2021Night Time LogicColumns, Daniel Braum, Night Time Logic, Sarah LanganLeave a comment

Night Time Logic with Daniel Braum

In this column, which shares a name with my New York-based reading series, I explore this phenomenon, other notions of what makes horror tick, and my favorite authors and stories, new and old with you. Today in my conversation with Sarah Langan we go “beyond the door” and into the “void”… an abyss that could be the darkest of them all and might not be the one you were initially expecting. Continue Reading

We Thought We’d Always Have the Drive-In

Cemetery Dance OnlineSeptember 3, 2021August 29, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

banner reading Horror Drive-In by Mark Sieber

If you had asked me if I knew that life was constant change, and that none of the things I loved would last forever, I’d have surely shrugged and said, Sure, everyone knows that. But when you get right down here, where it counts, I believed it all was permanent.Continue Reading

Night Time Logic with Jeffrey Ford

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 27, 2021August 15, 2021Night Time LogicColumns, Daniel Braum, Jeffery Ford, Night Time LogicLeave a comment

Night Time Logic with Daniel Braum

Welcome to Night Time Logic, my new column for Cemetery Dance Online. Thanks to Norman Prentiss, Richard Chizmar, Blu Gilliand, Kevin Lucia, and the entire Cemetery Dance team. Cemetery Dance played a pivotal role in my education and exploration of horror so it is a thrill to be able to participate and share in the fun, the wonder, and the horror of it all in this forum.

While anything and everything goes, the main focus here will be interviews and conversations with the creative minds that bring us the dark fiction we love. I expect reviews and essays to come along with those conversations. I also expect a good deal of the authors and books we’ll explore will be those that we call the strange, the weird, the uncanny, and the interstitial.Continue Reading

A Preview of Chapelwaite on Epix by Bev Vincent

Bev VincentAugust 16, 2021August 14, 2021Stephen King News from the Dead Zone'Salem's Lot, Bev Vincent, Chapelwaite, Columns, Glenn Chadbourne, Jerusalem's Lot, News from the Dead Zone, Night Shift, Secretary of Dreams, Stephen King, The StandLeave a comment

Preview: Chapelwaite on Epix

“Blood Calls Blood”

I must confess that when I first heard that Epix was turning Stephen King’s early short story “Jerusalem’s Lot” into a ten-episode TV series, I wasn’t terribly excited. I don’t subscribe to that service, so I planned to give the show a miss. I thought it would turn out to be like the TV series The Mist, which bears little resemblance to the source material beyond the general concept. I’m here to tell you I was wrong, and this show is worth checking out. There is horror a-plenty here if you have plenty of patience for the show’s somewhat measured pace.

Revelations: The Short Fiction of Charles Beaumont

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 13, 2021August 10, 2021RevelationsCharles Beaumont, Columns, Kevin Lucia, Revelations1 Comment

Banner for Revelations, the column written by Kevin Lucia for Cemetery Dance

photo of author Charles Beaumont — Charles Beaumont

Just as I’ve discovered writers who only wrote a handful of stories and then, for a variety of reasons, didn’t write anymore, I’ve also discovered writers whose careers — and lives — were sadly cut short before they could reach their fullest potential. On one hand, I’m eminently grateful for the work they produced; on the other hand, I can only imagine what they could’ve accomplished if they’d lived longer. One of those writers is the inimitable Charles Beaumont.Continue Reading

Video Visions: A Humongous Lawsuit

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 23, 2021July 11, 2021Video VisionsColumns, Humongous, Hunter Shea, Video VisionsLeave a comment

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I’ve only been sued one time in my life, and it was for an overdue movie.

This is one time the video store was not my friend.

The movie in question is the Canadian slasher, Humongous. Not exactly Citizen Kane…or The Burning. In fact, it was considered such a schlocky piece of shit, I was surprised the video store didn’t pay me to take if off the shelves. Continue Reading

Revelations: Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 16, 2021July 11, 2021RevelationsColumns, Kevin Lucia, Manly Wade Wellman, RevelationsLeave a comment

Banner for Revelations, the column written by Kevin Lucia for Cemetery Dance

photo of author Manly Wade Wellman — Manly Wade Wellman

One of the absolute delights of digging through the horror genre’s past is discovering stories and characters which pre-date and pre-figure contemporary stories and characters I’ve enjoyed. In The Philosophy of Horror, Noel Carroll posits that horror is one of the few literary genres which consistently builds upon its past, in that its practitioners not only consciously pay their respects to their history in the form of homages and pastiches, but they also attempt to create something new out of the old, in some cases reinventing a trope, subverting it, or, in the case of Paul Tremblay’s Head Full of Ghosts or Kristi DeMeester’s Beneath, reinventing, subverting, and paying homage all at once.Continue Reading

Horror Drive-In: Reflections of a Sixty-Year-Old Horror Fan

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 25, 2021June 7, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

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We all have our number of days in this world. Stick around long enough and you become the old guy. I certainly miss being young, but I could not be happier about the time of my life in the horror genre.Continue Reading

Preview: Chapelwaite on Epix

“Blood Calls Blood”

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