Come What May by Lindsey Goddard and Suzie Lockhart
Independently Published (July 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Convinced she was destined to be an artist, Suzie Lockhart attended The Art Institute of Pittsburgh after graduating high school, but the gnawing urge to write continued to challenge her. Originally, her desire was to write romance novels, but after discovering the innate ability to tell chilling tales, Suzie embraced her inner creepiness. Her middle son, Bruce, realized the same passion for the macabre, so it was a natural progression to team up. Over a decade later, they have published enough short stories that they can no longer remember all of them! Co-author Lindsey Goddard is an author of dark fiction, poetry, and true crime, living in Missouri, whose short stories have been published in e-zines such as Gamut Magazine and Carnage House, as well as in anthologies such as Error Code (Riverfolk Books). Her work has been performed on popular podcasts like Creepy Podcast and Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. She is the author of four short story collections, two poetry books, and a novel, Ashes of Another Life. Their newest collection is Come What May, a collection of short stories and poems.
This collection is actually two shorter collections combined into one. Starting with Goddard and proceeding to Lockhart, each author has about half the book to present their poems and stories. The short stories are steeped in horror, whether it be the soft folk horror of a mysterious lover in the woods (“Ghost Dance,” Goddard) or the brooding gothic horror of a centuries-old vampire dealing with memories of his past (“The Last Temptation,” Lockhart), there is some spooky subgenre in this collection sure to appeal to any reader. Furthermore, the poems are suitably gothic and ominous, from the body horror of Goddard’s “Smile More” to the dark mermaid fantasy of “Disenchanted” by Lockhart, the narratives buried in the poems are equally imaginative and eerie.
Come What May is exactly what it presents itself as. This is a collection of stories and poems, independently published, by two horror writers. The stories and poems, like any anthology or miscellany, will be hit or miss depending on the reader, but the range of horror genres and tropes means that there is something in this collection for every horror reader. Considering that readers are getting two books worth of poems and stories for the price of one, this book should be seen as a literary bargain that horror readers will want to purchase for their shelves.
