At one time, T. M. Wright was like Alan Peter Ryan, Charles L. Grant and so many others—just another name I’d heard here and there, most often in a quote from Ramsey Campbell (also, at that point, just another name), which said: “T. M. Wright is a one-man definition of quiet horror.”Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: ‘Stephen King and Philosophy’ edited by Jacob Held 
Stephen King and Philosophy edited by Jacob Held
Rowman & Littlefield (August 2016)
328 pages; $13.56 paperback; $9.99 e-book
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia
In a documentary filmed many years ago, bestselling author Peter Straub lamented the fact that, ever tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating, Stephen King once referred to his own work as the equivalent of a “Big Mac and fries.” Straub considered it an unfortunate comparison which didn’t do King justice, that his work was far more substantial than mere intellectual junk food. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Revelations2 Comments on Revelations: Paul F. Olson
For the most part, this column travels in semi-chronological order, chronicling the writers I’ve discovered the last few years who’ve had an impact on me as a writer. I will, however, occasionally stray from this chronological path, simply because, well, I feel like it. This is one of those cases, as we discuss writer Paul F. Olson.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories InterviewsLeave a comment on Creating Strange Stories: An Interview with Kevin Lucia 
Kevin Lucia has been creating strange stories for a long time. It’s a passion project for him, borne out of a love for reading and an overwhelming desire to share the people, places and things that dominate his dreams and nightmares. His work has appeared alongside many genre greats in numerous anthologies and magazines, and now he’s looking to take his efforts to the next level with the pursuit of his very own Patreon. Recently I swapped a few emails with Kevin about his latest project (among other things—he is, after all, the Reviews Editor for Cemetery Dance magazine and Cemetery Dance Online). Enjoy!Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Revelations1 Comment on Revelations: Gary A. Braunbeck
I see the sentiment expressed in horror circles often: “I read and write horror, but I don’t often read anything which actually scares me.” Of course, the word to consider here is “scare.” I have this discussion with my English classes every year when we read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. They always ask, as I’m handing out Jackson’s seminal haunted house novel, “Will this be scary?” I always answer, “Let’s talk about that word and what it means.” We discuss the differences between the adrenaline-based reaction they refer to as “scary”—what they experience while watching a horror movie in the theaters—and the nature of “horror” and being “horrified.”Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: ‘Bone White’ by Ronald Malfi 
Bone White by Ronald Malfi
Kensington (July 2017)
384 pages; $10.17 paperback; $7.99 e-book
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia
Seven years ago I was sent an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) for a novel called Snow by some author named Ronald Malfi. I’d not read anything by him then, and at first the novel looked pretty pedestrian. Monsters devastate a town during a blizzard. The initial setup seemed to point in that direction: a flight is cancelled because of the snowstorm, so several folks set out in a rental car to try for home the long way, and come upon a town cut off by the storm. It looked like a fairly simple paint-by-the-numbers affair, albeit written very well.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Revelations5 Comments on Discovering Alan Peter Ryan
I can’t remember where I read it—one of his blog posts, or in one of his now out-of-print blog collections—but Brian Keene once recounted the story of how he and some fellow writers, early in their career, visited a used bookstore while at a convention (maybe World Horror; I can’t remember). Excited at their own writing futures, while browsing the stacks, looking for their favorite classic authors, they discovered, with a rising sense of unease, a number of authors they had never heard of before. Writers who had at least ascended to paperback fame (of a kind) only to descend once again beneath the waters of obscurity, with barely a ripple. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: ‘Life in a Haunted House’ by Norman Prentiss 
Life in a Haunted House by Norman Prentiss
Amazon Digital Services (May 2017)
175 pages; $0.99 e-book
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia
I absolutely love coming of age stories. I don’t know why. Maybe because I’m an overgrown kid myself. Maybe there’s something inside me which looks back on those years fondly, but also remembers how hard it was to be a kid. Everyone expects you to “grow up” and figure out what it is you want to do with your life, all before your sixteenth birthday. I remember those years well, and as a high school teacher, I see it enacted before me, in living color, every single day. So I’m always a sucker for a well-told, engrossing coming of age tale. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories RevelationsLeave a comment on Al Sarrantonio: The Weird King of Halloween
I first encountered Al Sarrantonio the same way others most likely did; in his Orangefield Cycle, which regales the tale of the strange Pumpkin Capitol of Orangefield, New York, through the novels Halloweenland, Hallows Eve, Horrorween and the novellas The Pumpkin Boy and Hornets. In Orangefield, strange things happen around Halloween. People die mysteriously, create suicide pacts, conduct pagan rituals, and see strange things from other worlds. Like the mythical Pumpkin Boy, a robot with a pumpkin for a head. Or Samhain himself, trying to take advantage of Halloween’s thin dimensional walls in his repeated attempts to sneak into our world as the advance scout of an unholy army lead by something far worse. Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Revelations5 Comments on Charles L. Grant, Part 2: The Short Stories
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.
This sentiment haunts me. It has since I first heard it quoted by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. The quote in its entirety, by Henry David Thoreau, is even more chilling:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.
The implications make me shiver. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Most of us are gripped by worry, anxiety, fear, and a crippling helplessness. But it’s repressed deeply inside; quiet, restrained, shackled, bringing us to the brink of madness without ever quite plunging us over the edge. And in the end, we go to the grave with the song still in us, never able to express what we wanted to—needed to—while shuffling through this numbing thing called “life.”Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories Revelations2 Comments on Charles L. Grant, Part 1: The Novels and Collections
It was his Oxrun Station quartets which first drew me in.
It was March, 2011. We were spending Spring Break with family in Michigan. We’d visited the year before, and I’d wanted to visit a used bookstore there but hadn’t gotten the chance to because of our schedule. Fresh off my experience with Paul Wilson, Tom Monteleone and Stuart David Schiff, hitting Jellybean’s Used Books was a high priority on our next trip, to be sure. When I had some free time in our schedule, I scooted over to Jelly Bean’s, clutching cash in my grubby little fingers. To my delight, I found a sprawling bookcase full of horror. Wasn’t long before I was sitting on the floor next to a teetering stack of books.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: ‘The Progeny’ by Tosca Lee 
The Progeny by Tosca Lee
Howard Books (May 2016)
336 pages; $17.10 hardcover; $15.99 paperback; $13.99 e-book
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia
I first encountered Tosca Lee’s work in her debut novel, Demon: A Memoir. A moody, tense, gripping story about a down-on-his-luck literary agent and his encounter with a demon who demands he tell Its story told to the world, Memoir predicted big things for Tosca, big things which have come to pass. Continue Reading
Over the span of my thus far short writing career, I’ve been fortunate to experience several moments of clarity; moments which have changed me as a writer and a person. One of them came in the form of my first actual critique from an editor, regarding the first short story I ever submitted. The critique stung with its stark, unflinching truthfulness, but it forced me to face my writing weaknesses head on, and showed me the immeasurable value of honest feedback. It set the tone for how I approach editorial critique, to this day.Continue Reading
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on Categories ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: ‘The Last Firefly of Summer’ by Robert Ford 
The Last Firefly of Summer by Robert Ford
CreateSpace (July 2016)
64 pages; $5.95 paperback; $1.99 e-book
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia
Over the past few years, Robert Ford has become the go-to writer when it comes to emotionally-wrenching fiction. Give him a little bit of your time and eventually, without fail, he’ll have your heart on a platter. The Last Firefly of Summer is no exception. With lean prose and and a powerful voice, Ford spins a tale about summer love gone wrong, and a vengeful adoration which must be satisfied. Continue Reading
Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith edited by Donald S. Crankshaw and Kristin Janz
Enigmatic Mirror Press (July 2016)
300 pages; $16.99 paperback; $9.99 e-book
Reviewed by Kevin Lucia
Writers grappling with faith through the trappings of speculative fiction isn’t new. George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien, Madeleine L’Engle, Russell Kirk, William Peter Blatty and others did it long before now. There are many industry greats—such as Dean Koontz, Anne Rice and Stephen King, only to name a few—who have also written powerful works which address both the inspirational and also terrifying aspects of the Christian faith.
It’s a tricky balance, however, honestly grappling with these questions without proselytizing in the fashion of a preachy “Sunday School Lesson Wrapped Up in a Story.” All too often, “Christian” fiction errs too much on the side of “doctrinal correctness,” “proper theology” and an almost Puritanical “cleanliness,” completely missing out on the transformational power fiction has to impact humanity by sharing deep tales of the human experience and what it means to believe, hope, grieve, sacrifice, and trust in a higher power. Continue Reading
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