Nasty and Brutish Shorts: Reading & Writing Short Horror Fiction

                                                                                                 We're back for more women in horror with round two of Kathy Ptacek's Women of Darkness anthologies. Something I think is interesting about this book compared to the last one is there's more of a lack of catharsis. Many of the stories seem to set up rape-revenge or similar scenarios, but the revenge doesn't come, or does in a way that's not exactly satisfying. So that will require talking about spoilers in a few elements, so you should just go get a copy of this book and read it and then come back and we can chat about it all, okay?  Assuming you've done that. . . The Co-op by Melanie Tem Synopsis : A g...

                                                                                                     Happy Women in Horror Month! We're going to look at two collections by the great Kathy Ptacek this month-- Women of Darkness , and Women of Darkness II .  Ptacek explains in the introduction that, although there were a number of anthologies of classic female horror writers, there wasn't anything contemporary. So she set out to rectify that, beginning with this anthology. We're still in high floor/high ceiling territory with this one. All the stories are of high quality, and there are several that are all-time greats. Baby by Kit Reed Synopsis : Beauty-obsessed Elva wants nothing to do wit...

                                                                                                                  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...