The Nightmarchers is a “bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman’s past and future.” We start in the past, circa 1939, via journal entries from Irene Greer. We learn that her fall from a waterfall is to try and join her husband and daughter who she believes have “joined the nightmarchers — ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights.”Continue Reading
Welcome to pregnancy. As you grow your bundle of joy, you’ll experience discomfort. That’s just part of it.
But why?
In Delicate Condition, Danielle Valentine mounds a tower of dread with every dismissive doctor and sacrifice Anna makes for her child, all before she’s pregnant. Early on, this book reminded me of Ira Levine’s Rosemary’s Baby, where the spouse, neighbors, and doctors view the woman more as a vessel than a person. There’s a simplicity in how Valentine conveys this, so familiar, yet still so horrific. Misogyny needs no ghost. Gaslighting needs no demon.Continue Reading
Cassandra Khaw is known for their evocative prose, intensely dark and stunning worlds, masterful acts blending genres and lines of reality and fiction, and humans and monsters. In their fantasy-horror novella, The Salt Grows Heavy, a mermaid’s daughters unleash death upon the kingdom. Bodies line the streets, stacked in towering piles. They’ve gorged themselves on townspeople.Continue Reading
I don’t even know where to start with this one! I decided to go with audio on this one and I’m glad I did as the narrator, Gabby Beans, was FANTASTIC. As the first sentence of the synopsis states: “Welcome to Rivers Solomon’s dark and wondrous Model Home, a new kind of haunted-house novel.” And that, it surely is!
“Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.”Continue Reading
Red Lagoe’s Bloodstains by Gaslight comes with numerous trigger warnings, including intimate partner violence and sexual assault. I was warned. I assured Lagoe I would not be triggered. I think I said something like, “I’m okay.”
Two hundred and some odd pages later, I am decidedly not okay. “Emotionally shell-shocked” comes closest. Bloodstains by Gaslight is a propulsive read — I finished it in one sitting — but a hard one. That’s not a weak point; the novel is a devastating and realistic look at the horrors of domestic abuse, told slant, as Lagoe turns the vampire trope into a metaphor for partner violence. Continue Reading
Doesn’t this cover just call to you? In this book we meet Mina who is still grieving the death of her brother. In a bereavement group, she meets Sam, a journalist, who thinks she should investigate Alice Webber. Alice is a teen who says she is being haunted by a witch. As her behavior becomes more and more disturbing, they delve into the town’s history and evil traditions. Exploring grief, loss and faith, this book also explores whether or not supernatural things are actually real or just a reflection of our own human darkness. This is a great read for those who love folk horror mixed with cults, curses and of course, witchcraft. Continue Reading
All horror is political (Gabino Igelias says it, so it must be true). The best authors hand us stories alongside their politics; it’s only after we’re wowed by their words that we stand back and marvel at the message. And if the author is very lucky, their message hits at the right cultural moment. Their theme becomes not important, but culturally vital. We need their voice. We need them to speak up and speak out. In the midst of this moment, Pedro Iniguez pulls this off with panache in Fever Dreams of a Parasite. Continue Reading
Blood Type, which will be hitting stores this summer from Oni Press, is the first time the EC Comics line is offering a standalone, serialized horror series. Its seed was the short story “Blood Type” in Epitaphs from the Abyss, and now writer Corinna Bechko has the opportunity to expand on what she created. Cemetery Dance spoke with Bechko about how Blood Type is getting its own series, why she feels at home in horror, and what it’s like working on an EC property.Continue Reading
County Road 951. Not exactly a name that evokes chills, is it? Maybe not, but go ahead and spend a little time on this 15-mile stretch of road, this “two-lane scar across the Cascade foothills of Central Oregon,” and let KC Jones show you why it’s better known as “The Devil’s Driveway.”Continue Reading
Levi Cory is a new graphic novelist fresh off the farm. With a degree in Playwriting and studies in film and theater, Levi brings a deep understanding of narrative structure and character development to their work. They have written and directed films and TV shows such as Living… and Snakemagic.com. In addition to their work in film and TV, Levi has authored several written works, including The Comfort of The Womb, Robbing Stupidity, and The Sick Rose. Their playwriting has earned significant recognition, including a Texas Playwright Award. Known for blending deep thematic exploration with innovative narrative structures, Levi continues to captivate audiences across both written and visual media, pushing creative boundaries with each new project. Cory’s newest book, The Order of The Circle, is available on Dead Sky Publishing.Continue Reading
Through in-depth conversation with authors this column explores the night time part of stories, the strange and uncanny in horror and dark fiction, and more.
My short story collection with Cemetery Dance is titled The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales in homage to Aickman and his kind of stories that operate this way. It can be found here.
I spoke with New York Times Bestselling Author Tod Goldberg about his work, including the recently released anthology Eight Very Bad Nights from Soho Press.
We began our conversation about the relationship between horror and noir fiction.Continue Reading
Vince A. Liaguno is an award-winning writer, anthologist, critic, and poet. He is the Bram Stoker Award®-winning editor of Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (co-edited with Chad Helder) and the acclaimed Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology (co-edited with Rena Mason), which was a finalist for both the prestigious Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Awards. His debut novel, 2006’s The Literary Six, was a tribute to the slasher films of the eighties and won an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY). His newest collection is Demo Reels and Arthouse Madness, a collection of narrative poetry.Continue Reading
Recipient of the (Lagos Comic Con 2023) Fist Award for Writer of the Decade, Murewa Ayodele is the writer of the Nommo-nominated comic book series New Men, the critically acclaimed webcomic series My Grandfather Was a God, and several Marvel comics. He is also the co-founder of Collectible Comics NG, a Nigerian comic book studio founded with artist Dotun Akande that was nominated in the Comic Studio of the Year category at the 2018 Fist Awards. Dotun Akande is an award-winning comic book cover artist and graphics designer who has worked with some of the biggest brands in Nigeria. He was the recipient of the (Lagos Comic Con 2018) Fist Award for Best Cover Artist and has created comic covers for comic book series like I Am Iron Man, Vengeance of the Moon Knight, Black Panther, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, and Heirs of Apocalypse. Their newest collaboration is the mythic adventure tale, Akogun: Brutalizer of Gods.Continue Reading
As constant visitors to Cemetery Dance’s site, anyone reading this conversation (you are reading this aren’t you?) are unlikely to need much of an introduction to one Wrath James White. So, I’ll keep it brief so you can get what you came for and delve into what makes the man of extreme storytelling tick the way he does.
Wrath is the founder and showrunner for the KillerCon horror author’s convention in Texas, which is home to the annual Splatterpunk Awards. An accomplished professional MMA fighter and trainer, Wrath is a splatterpunk and extreme horror novelist with such critically acclaimed titles as The Resurrectionist, Succulent Prey, The Ecstasy of Agony, and his collection of poetry, If You Died Tomorrow I would Eat Your Corpse.
On the heels of the recently published Rabbit Hunt, Voracious, and The Bug Collector, Wrath took some time out from taking names and kicking ass to reflect on his life since being forced to shut down his gym while shedding some much needed light on the future of our genre, his writing process, and why being true to yourself and your stories matter most despite what the uninformed haters try to tell us. Continue Reading
Plague House, a new comic from writer Michael W. Conrad and artist Dave Chisholm, will drop its first issue on April 2, and it’s described as “a deep and disorienting reinvention of the haunted house genre.” Cemetery Dance spoke to both writer and artist about their work on this comic, what Conrad discovered about himself while writing, and Chisholm’s longtime love of horror.Continue Reading
The Nightmarchers by J.Lincoln Fenn
