Nasty and Brutish Shorts: Reading & Writing Short Horror Fiction

                                                                                                           Yup, it's MORE early '90s TOR anthologies! I'll switch it up at some point, but I've been meaning to read this for a bit. Bloch did two anthologies for TOR in this time period--this one and Psycho-Paths ; both cashed in on his most famous creations, Psycho and Norman Bates, and focused on psychological horror and human evil. This is a good one.  Snow Man by John Coyne Synopsis : A Peace Corps teacher in Ethiopia finds himself at odds with his students. Thoughts : This is a difficult story to evaluate because I think it's very well-written but also found it almost...

                                                                                                 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...