In Memory of Exoskeletons by Rebecca Cuthbert Alien Buddha Press (January 2023) 53 pages; $10.99 paperback Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Rebecca Cuthbert is a speculative, slipstream, and dark fiction and poetry writer living in Western New York. She is an Affiliate Member of the Horror Writers Association. She loves ghost stories, folklore, witchy women, and anything that involves nature getting revenge. Her debut poetry collection, In Memory of Exoskeletons, is out now with Alien Buddha Press. In Memory of Exoskeletons is a book that teeters between the personal and the horrific, memoir and terror, and takes the reader through the shifts and shudders eloquently. Continue Reading
Every Woman Knows This is a very personal, very pointed collection of stories that reflect Laurel Hightower’s experience of the world as a woman. Experiences that are common enough she can comfortably state that commonality in the title (and yes, she is explicit in her belief that this stands for all women, so please step aside with any gender essentialism). These stories hit on everything from dealing with stalkers to the perils of motherhood to always having to clean up after some manchild that never listens to reason and climbs down into an abandoned submarine just to poke around for a bit BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DID, and every one of them hits right in the gut.Continue Reading
On the heels of reading Cemetery Dance’s recent publication of Stephen King: Revisited Volume One, I was loaded up with tons of questions, the first of which was who would be daring enough to go back in time and re-read every Stephen King book in order of publication? Richard Chizmar, that’s who. As a best selling author and publisher of Cemetery Dance, Chizmar has published several King stories and books over the years and would not only become a friend of King’s but also a collaborator who’s written books with King — the Gwendy trilogy. So yes, I was curious to chat with Rich about his take on King over the years given his unique perspective.Continue Reading
All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life’s Work by Hayley Campbell St. Martin’s Press (August 2022) 288 pages; $21.49; $19.00 paperback; $14.99 e-book Reviewed by Haley Newlin
None of us are born with the knowledge of death. We have to stumble upon a fallen bird fluttering its wings, desperate to live. Or we lose a grandparent, a sibling, a classmate, and someone breaks the news: the deceased, those “in a better place,” won’t, can’t, ever come back.
The author of All the Living and the Dead, Hayley Campbell, couldn’t pinpoint the moment she learned of death. She tells readers she can’t recall a time before death, stating, “Death was just there, everywhere, always.”Continue Reading
Weird Fiction Quarterly editedby Russell Smeaton Independently Published (Winter 2022 | Spring 2023) 120 pages; $10.00 paperback Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Weird Fiction Quarterly is a quarterly anthology series that deserves some attention. What makes this series intriguing is that each story must be five-hundred words exactly. Continue Reading
Christi Nogle’s Beulah is an absolute banger of a horror novel. The Stoker Award nominee for Best First Novel puts a classic ghost story inside an old schoolhouse being renovated by a family desiring a new start, and it’s narrated by a young woman named Georgie. Narrated incredibly well. Georgie is perceptive and intelligent, clearly at qualms with her mother, distant around others, protective of her little sister Stevie. And she’s deeply honest with us, the readers, allowing us inside her thoughts. All this comes through in the tight prose:Continue Reading
From the iconic mothers in horror fiction, like Norman Bates’ tormenting, ever-invasive mother, Norma, and Stephen King’s evangelically evil Margaret White from Carrie, to real-world terrifying tales of mommy dearests, motherhood captivates audiences. Continue Reading
Rachel Eve Moulton mixes familial drama and supernatural horror in The Insatiable Volt Sisters, a long, eerie novel that lulls you in but never lets you get too comfortable.Continue Reading
Tobe Hooper was not a man. He was a God who walked the Earth for too few years.
Hooper did a lot of things in his time here, but he will always be remembered, be cherished, for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. TCM is a strong candidate for the greatest horror movie ever made. It’s the Crown Jewel of the 70’s exploitation era. No other film can touch it.Continue Reading
Michael Bailey is a freelance writer, editor and book designer, and the recipient of over two dozen literary accolades, such as the Bram Stoker Award and Benjamin Franklin Award. Composite novels include Palindrome Hannah, Phoenix Rose, and Psychotropic Dragon, and he has published two short story and poetry collections, Scales and Petals, and Inkblots and Blood Spots, as well as a children’s book, Enso.
Marge Simon lives in Ocala, FL, City of Trees with her husband, poet/writer Bruce Boston and the ghosts of two cats. She edits a column for the HWA Newsletter, “Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side.”A multiple Bram Stoker award winner, Marge is the second woman to be acknowledged by the SF &F Poetry Association with a Grand Master Award. She received the HWA Lifetime Achievement award in 2021.
Their recent post-apocalyptic horror prose and poetry collection is Sifting the Ashes.Continue Reading
Numinous Stones is a collection of speculative pantoums, a form derived from the Malay verse pantun berkait, which is a form of interwoven verses of alternating lines. This is a difficult form to accomplish, as the repeated lines need to seem fresh each time the reader encounters them, but also echo back to the previous stanza. The tightly entwined stanzas, when executed well, create a rhythmic and incantatory experience for the audience, hypnotizing them in a sonic spell.
Readers, if you read Numinous Stones, be prepared to be hypnotized. Continue Reading
“Ghosts of the Sea. Strange Tales. And Coping With Loss.”
Night Time Logic is the part of a story that is felt but not consciously processed.
In this column, which shares a name with my New York based reading and discussion series, I explore the phenomenon of Night Time Logic and other aspects of horror fiction by diving deep into the stories from award winning authors to emerging new voices.
I have an interest in strange tales, the kind of story one might call “Aickman-esqe” and like to discuss them here and look at stories through that lens when I can. My first short story collection is titled The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales in homage to the lineage of Robert Aickman’s strange tales. The new Cemetery Dance Publications trade paper back edition of the book can be found here. It discusses strange tales in the all-new story notes and features a full essay on one of Aickman’s tales.
Ricardo Delgado’s illustrated novel Dracula of Transylvania is not only full of blood, guts, monsters and gore, but chock-full of history and references to art. It’s a great addition to the Dracula lore. Continue Reading
This is what’s needed right now: a wonderfully brutal anthology about cannibalism in American history. At first, readers may feel a touch of reluctance due to the subject matter. My advice? DO NOT HESITATE.
These stories, chosen with exquisite taste by editor Rebecca Rowland, are all about the story and characters as the history of this country frames some truly unique tales. I’m not one for gore and this anthology, again, focuses on the true horror: human behavior and the awful acts people inflict on each other before the blood begins to spill.Continue Reading
From the award-winning author of Our Lady of the Inferno comes another tale of New York in the Bad Old Days: A saga of murder, bloodshed, and betrayal set against the backdrop of Times Square at the height of its decadence and depravity.
In the kingdom of the damned that is 42nd Street, there’s no lowlier subject than Andy Lew. An unrepentant junkie, voyeur, and degenerate, he’s only tolerated by the more dangerous men around him because he keeps the projectors at the Colossus theater running on time, entertaining them with the most extreme horror cinema money can buy.
There’s something unique about Andy, though. He owns a movie. It’s the only one of its kind. No one knows who made it. Only he knows where it came from. The woman it stars is beautiful beyond imagination—and the images it depicts are more nightmarish than the darkest depths of Hell. The beasts of 42nd Street will do anything to possess it, but there’s something they don’t understand. Andy loves the woman in the movie—and he’ll go to any lengths to protect her…
A savage love letter to 70s exploitation cinema and a biting satire of toxic fan culture, Beasts of 42nd Street makes horror dangerous again as it ventures into the mind of a psychopath like no other— one that will have readers recoiling even as they keep coming back for more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Preston Fassel is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue, Screem, and on The Daily Grindhouse, Dread Central, and Cinedump.com. He is the author of the first published biography of British horror actress Vanessa Howard, Remembering Vanessa, which appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Screem. His debut novel, Our Lady of the Inferno, won the 2019 Independent Publisher’s Gold Medal for Horror and was named one of the ten best books of the year by Bloody Disgusting. He currently serves as the Managing Editor for The Daily Grindhouse.
In Memory of Exoskeletons by Rebecca Cuthbert
All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life’s Work by Hayley Campbell 
Weird Fiction Quarterly edited by Russell Smeaton
Christi Nogle’s 
Night Time Logic is the part of a story that is felt but not consciously processed. 
