Nasty and Brutish Shorts: Reading & Writing Short Horror Fiction

                                                                                                                  All good things come to an end and so it is the case with Charlie Grant’s shared-world anthology series The Chronicles of Greystone Bay. This strange New England town came to be in the fog centuries ago, and now—after a few hundred years of mystery and misery—is about to vanish back into the fog. Lucky for us we have an all star cast to see the town off. Let’s take a moment to marvel at David Schleinkofer’s incredible, beautiful, horrifying cover art. Easily the high point of the series in that regard, and one of my all-time favorite pieces ...

                                                                                                                Here's another early-90s obscurity I've been curious about--Tim Sullivan's Cold Shocks . This is the companion volume to his Tropical Chills , which interests me less as it has 1) an ugly cover and 2) a lot of reprints that seem more like pulp SF than proper horror. These are all new stories, though, and it has an exciting lineup. And, while the moon on the cover looks more distressed than either scared or scary, I really like it. Each story has a bonus ranking by how cold it makes you feel; this isn't necessarily an indicator of quality one way or...

                                                                                                                Back for another visit to Greystone Bay, and this time we're staying in the swanky accommodations of the SeaHarp Hotel. This is the best of the books so far--you can read my reviews of volume 1 here and here , and of volume 2 here .  Introduction by Charles L. Grant Synopsis : A series of letters, following the SeaHarp Hotel through its changes of ownership. And what's with that mysterious room? Thoughts : Grant's "introductions" to the series aren't the usual forewords; instead, they're appetizers which get you in the mood for the quiet, mood...

                                                                                                 We're back on the Darker Side today with the back half of John Pelan's second "Darkside" anthology. This is a low floor, high ceiling situation, with some masterpieces and some gravely flawed trifles, and everything in between. I like these Pelan books , and I'm going to keep reviewing them, but the quality is really all over the place. That's exacerbated by the fact that the first half of the book is the stronger half by far, although we have some heavy hitters here who bring up the average.  Also--it's been a while since I've added one of these content warnings (and overall this book is much tamer th...