Nasty and Brutish Shorts: Reading & Writing Short Horror Fiction

                                                                                                                                                                                                       We're back with the best of the Oxrun Quartet. The only quibble I have here is that the ostensible throughline (the mysterious music) doesn't quite work; it sets up a neat stinger at the end but that's it. H...

                                                                                            The Orchard was the first of the Oxrun Quartet I read, based on Will Errickson's coverage of it. It's also, unfortunately, the weakest.  Weak is a relative term when talking about Grant's work; some of the stuff here is as strong as ever, but the issue is consistency. There are exciting set-ups, terrifying middles, and all-star endings in The Orchard , but never all three in the same story. But still. . .let's go apple-picking! Prologue  Synopsis : Oxrun Station's police chief, the venerable Abe Stockton, is dying. He takes his friend (Grant?) out to the titular orchard and hands him some documents to read, all rela...

                                                                                                      October is time for quiet and atmospheric horror, and while many people have done, are doing, and will do it well, there's only one Charles L. Grant. Among the man's many atmospheric horror books are four collections of linked novellas (sometimes closely linked, sometimes much less so) which fall somewhere between "collection of stories" and "paste-up novel": Nightmare Seasons, Dialing the Wind, The Orchard , and The Black Carousel .  All of these are set in Grant's haunted, affluent enclave of Oxrun Station, Connecticut, and each consists of four novellas, along with framing prolog...

                                                                                                         Being a critic of horror anthologies in a world where Ellen Datlow is as active as she is...well, it's a curse, and a blessing.  A curse, because no sooner have you tackled one of her books than another one hits your shelves, leaving you in the literary equivalent of the situation in "Something to Tide You Over." A blessing, because Datlow consistently assembles, whether in reprints or originals, some of the highest caliber writing in the dark fantastic.  This time it's Halloween, although there's a slight twist: As Lisa Morton points out in her foreword, while Hal...

                                                                                                      I've been excited about this one for a while, in no small part based on that cover. It looks exactly like I love about the Ramsey Campbell school of British horror, so when I saw Frank was giving out review ARCs, I snatched one up. I'm glad I did, because this is an entertaining and spooky collection.  Also, do yourself a favor, and read my last review somewhere in the middle. I'm saying that for a specific reason. I really don't like the last story here at all, but I also really liked this book and I feel bad about ending on a down note. I mean it. Don't read it first, either--it'l...

                                                                                                      We're back with Part II, and even more meaty stories to sink our teeth and tentacles into. I'm going to throw a blanket spoiler warning over all of these. Even when I spoil things, I try not to give away every little secret these tales have to offer, but  discussing what's good (and sometimes not so good) about these stories requires getting under the hood. "The Note" by Paul Tremblay Synopsis : A writer's life is shattered after his wife stops to read a note on the door of an abandoned house. Thoughts : SPOILERS FOR JACK KETCHUM'S "THE BOX" WHICH IDEALLY YOU'D HAVE ALREADY READ BY...