Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Dark Pathways1 Comment on Dark Pathways: Through the Monster’s Eyes 
One of the short-listed nominees for the Bram Stoker Award in Short Fiction caught my eye this week: “That’s What Friends are For” by Larry Hinkle, published in volume 16 of Dark Recesses Press. I really liked it. Sometimes, when you’re in a good reading groove you can lose yourself in a short story, eschewing all distractions (and never once checking Twitter!) “That’s What Friends Are For” did that for me.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Lone Women by Victor LaValle 
Lone Women by Victor LaValle
One World (March 28, 2023)
304 pages; $27 hardback; $13.99 e-book
Reviewed by Dave Simms
Some books, special books, have a narrative style that grab the reader by the throat while whispering the words of angels in the ear. When that writing connects with a story so mesmerizing, the result is a reading experience that whisks away the hours.
When attempting to explain the plot of Lone Women, one might find themselves a bit tangled. Victor LaValle has been know to accomplish this before. The Changeling, The Ballad of Black Tom, and The Devil in Silver all exemplify this in stories that meld genres, the fantastic with the grotesque, the beautiful with the grittiest of settings.Continue Reading
Scream Vol. 1: Curse of Carnage by Clay McCleod Chapman
Marvel (August 25, 2020)
120 pages; $15.99 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
For those unaware of the Marvel Universe, specifically Earth-616, the Klyntar are a race of conscious symbiotes. While Klyntar are fully sentient creatures, in their natural state they are predators who feed on the darkest emotions of their hosts, compelling their hosts to violence and corrupting them. Scream: Curse of Carnage, written by Clay McCleod Chapman and illustrated by Chris Mooneyham, focuses on one of these symbiotes, Scream, and its host, Andi Benton. For fans of the Marvel Universe, this is a really compelling tale, and for fans of horror, the allusions to classical myth and horror will be entertaining as well.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Del Rey (Hardcover – July 2022) (Paperback – April 11, 2023)
320 pages; $16.60 hardcover; $18 paperback
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Horror icon Vincent Price once said, “Science is frighteningly impersonal.”
What if the scientist’s work becomes his family, his children, in a way? Some argue this is evolution, a matrimony of a creator and his work. Others argue ethics.
But in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s reimagination of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, Carlota, the doctor’s only daughter, lives in a static and balanced world in the jungles of Yucatan alongside the human-animal hybrids. She is happy to assist her father with his research and befriends most hybrids, but despite the idyllic scope Moreno-Garcia introduces, there’s a lingering dread. Dr. Moreau punishes the hybrids for “losing control,” yet Carola believes her father would never truly harm anyone. He is reclusive and sometimes spends days mourning a lost love. This emotional side, however, is kept behind closed doors and never relayed to others.Continue Reading
Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of Criminal Profiling by Ron Franscell
Berkley (March 2022)
304 pages; $23.19 hardcover; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
“Assertive, confident women unnerved the UnSub– (…) his emotional reaction had shown, a strong woman might disarm him.” – Ron Franscell
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Cries to Kill the Corpse Flower by Ronald J. Murray 
Cries to Kill the Corpse Flower by Ronald J. Murray
Bizarro Pulp Press (June 2020)
64 pages; $12.95 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Ronald J. Murray is a fiction writer and poet living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His short fiction has appeared in various anthologies. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association. When he is not writing, he can be found drinking entirely too much coffee and staying awake far too late. His newest dark poetry collection is Cries to Kill the Corpse Flower, a collection of visceral mythic and grisly body horror poetry.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Exhumed3 Comments on Exhumed: “Night Game” and “Orange Grove Court” 
Hi there. I’m Keith… or “K. Edwin” if you prefer. I’m a middle school English teacher, a writer, and like any perfectly normal fan of horror these days, another random guy who is totally obsessed with Cemetery Dance Magazine. Ok, maybe I take it a bit further than most… I actually own every single copy (but that’s a story for another post).
Exhumed is my humble attempt to read and review every short story and novel excerpt ever published by CD. In their 34+ years of publication, there have been 577 (and counting!) pieces spread out over 77 issues. Since each Exhumed post covers just two stories (one “old” and one “new”), I think I’m going to be doing this for a while. I sure hope you’ll join me along the way, whether that means reading each piece as I review it (assuming you can find them all) or just taking it all in while I do the hard work and wax poetic with my observations. Either way, grab your shovel and dig in. There’s no telling what we’ll unearth together. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Video VisionsLeave a comment on Video Visions: It’s Bloody Valen-Time 
Ah, February. Where love is in the air, or in many cases, a desperate need to find love by Valentine’s Day. Maybe we let up on the horror gas for a spell, and let the heart run free.
Or, maybe love and death are meant to go hand in hand. Look at the phrase, la petite mort, aka, the little death, that blissful moment after you’ve achieved the BIG-O and everything goes numb and still. To love is to die a little, bit by bit, orgasm by orgasm, heartbreak by heartbreak. It’s a wonder we don’t have a treasure trove of V-day themed horror movies. Maybe we’re looking at this special day all wrong.
I think I need to start with a love story and how it’s bound to a very popular movie this time of year. That story would be mine. Now, if Cupid would aim that arrow somewhere else, I can get rolling. Continue Reading
Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones
Gallery/Saga Press (February 2023)
464 pages; $23.99 hardcover; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Gabriel Hart
The slasher flick genre, and perhaps horror literature in general, isn’t likely to be the same after Stephen Graham Jones concludes his Indian Lake Trilogy; the way he’s blown it apart and reassembled it, using its well-worn tropes as trap doors to cavernous and kaleidoscopic subplots, rubbing its masked face in its own fake blood without disrespecting its vital primitive idiocy we’re unabashedly attracted to. In fact, Jones has intellectualized a genre many attempt to dismiss as trash, begging the question why so many of us intelligent, inquisitive people can’t stay away from it? The answer is simple: we cannot survive unless we go through something.Continue Reading
Founder of Gauntlet Press Magazine, which dealt with many controversial topics of its time, Barry Hoffman is also the Bram Stoker Award-winning publisher of Gauntlet Press, a specialty publication focused on signed, limited books both classic and modern. Through Gauntlet Press, Hoffman has published some of the most acclaimed writers in dark culture such as Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Jack Ketchum, Ray Bradbury and so many others.
Most recently, Gauntlet Press published a massive book titled Phoenix 451 by Ray Bradbury, available in three collectable editions. Weighing in at over eight-hundred pages, the publisher has claimed this could be their last signed Bradbury title. If so, what a way to go considering the enormous effort and amount of content which went into this book, including various drafts of Bradbury’s timeless classic novel, Fahrenheit 451, various scripts and plays of the novel, personal letters to and from Bradbury, plus several of Bradbury’s drawing and photos from his home presented here for the first time.
A literary treasure, a celebratory work of art, an important achievement in culture and entertainment; all these and so much more, this is a book I was eager to sit down and discuss with Barry Hoffman, who was kind enough to open up about his time publishing the work of Bradbury and getting to know the man behind the words we’ve all come to cherish.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: Delevan House by Ruthann Jagge and Natasha Sinclair 
Delevan House by Ruthann Jagge and Natasha Sinclair
Independently Published (February 2023)
240 pages; $21.95 hardcover; $14.95 paperback; $3.99 e-book
Reviewed by Dave Simms
Folk horror tends to be an intriguing subgenre. It runs deep in our veins and roots in our DNA, no matter what the setting. Collaborative novels are always a mixed bag as the stylistic mix between two minds walks the artistic tightrope.
Yet these two authors forge something special here, as Ruthann Jagge and Natasha Sinclair — the former a Texan/NY hybrid, and the latter hailing from Scotland — have produced a story that is both gorgeous and vicious. The mystery surrounding the story is intoxicating as the question is posed: what is Delevan House? The answer to that is labyrinthine in construction.Continue Reading
Skull Cat and the Curious Castle by Norman Shurtliff
IDW Publishing (February 21, 2023)
112 pages; $14.99 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Scully the Cat’s father was injured hunting gold on a mountain, so Scully has to get a job with a local garden crew. His first job is at Le Dark Chateau, a haunted mansion rumored to have a hidden treasure, but it’s protected by unknown evil. When Scully’s new crew goes missing and he catches the lady of the manor drinking red liquid from a mug, surely she has murdered everyone and is drinking their blood! Will he have the same courage as his father? Will he find the treasure of Le Dark Chateau, or will he find a different type of treasure, instead?Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Dark PathwaysLeave a comment on Dark Pathways: In the Dead of Winter
For those looking for a great collection of horror stories, please for the love of God look no further than Bleak Midwinter: The Darkest Night. Editors Damon Barret and Cassandra L. Thompson just knocked this collection out of the park. It’s fantastic. It’s scary. And the stories are of an exceptional quality. I want to talk up one in particular for this post, because I just re-read it while delayed at the airport and I’m more convinced than ever that I’m in love. There are few things scarier than missing a flight … and this particular story is one of them.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: This Is Where We Talk Things Out by Caitlin Marceau 
This Is Where We Talk Things Out by Caitlin Marceau
Dark Lit Press (September 2022)
114 pages; paperback $13.00; $2.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin
Imagine that every event in your life is unwound, beaten down to bones, and restructured from top to bottom. The funereal routine repeats again and again until you can’t tell your truth from the rescript. That’s how life was for Miller — growing up with a narcissistic mother who was MIA most of the time and emotionally manipulative whenever present. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Drift by C.J. Tudor 
The Drift by C.J. Tudor
Ballantine Books (January 31, 2023)
352 pages; $28 hardcover; $13.99 e-book
Reviewed by Dave Simms
Copyright © 1988 - 2025 Cemetery Dance Publications / Performance Website by 2C
