Monthly Archive: October 2021

Articles

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What‌ ‌Horror‌ ‌Writers‌ ‌Can‌ ‌Learn‌ ‌from‌ ‌Horror‌ ‌Films‌ ‌

What Horror Writers Can Learn from Horror Films

B.A. Kockaya

 

As the weather gets colder and Halloween gets closer, what better way to prepare for the season than catching up on new horror films and rewatching old favorites? Watching horror films is not only a relaxing way to spend a Friday evening in fall, but also a useful way for horror writers to hone their craft. Here are three things horror writers can learn from horror movies.

 

Let your protagonist run upstairs.

Then do something different. What if the pretty blonde cheerleader runs upstairs to escape the killer who interrupted her popcorn-making, only to turn around at the top and confront them? What if the wife whose husband snaps, in a season of isolation, snaps back? What if all the diverse characters didn’t die at the beginning, but brought their untold stories and unique points-of-view to the story to defeat evil and become the heroes?

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Anthology / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: Hex on the Beach

Deadline: November 15th, 2021
Payment: $25 US
Theme: 80’s slasher heavy in nostalgia.

Please read carefully. Submissions that don’t meet the guidelines may be rejected.

Submissions will be accepted until November 15th, 2021. Please submit to [email protected], ensuring ’Hex on the Beach’ is in the subject line.

What we are looking for:
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Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Lambs Among Wolves by Russell James

Disclosure:

Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Lambs Among Wolves
Author: Russell James
Genre: Catholic Horror/Thriller
Publisher: Silver Shamrock Publishing
Release Date: 6th July, 2021

Synopsis: Evil may soon consume mankind, if the demons have their way.

After the death of her father, young Cyndi Fisher travels to Paris to meet the grandfather she never knew. That man turns out to be Father Jack Cahill, a renegade exorcist who was unaware he’d fathered a child before taking his vows.

Cyndi is soon drawn into Father Jack’s world, where demons from Hell are possessing humans and robbing Europe’s churches of sacred relics. From the cathedrals of Paris, through the graveyards of France, and into the sewers of Rome, they confront the possessed, battle risen corpses, and fight gang members sent to stop them.

They uncover a plot to set Satan free upon the Earth, but stopping it seems impossible. Demons are always one step ahead of them, and each manifestation is more powerful than the last. Stopping Satan’s return will take courage and faith. Will an aged priest and an agnostic teen have enough of either?

I know this is a strange thing to say about a horror novel, but Lambs Among Wolves was a nice cozy read. You know, like something you’d spend an afternoon reading in a folding chair next to the lake.

Years ago, I read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. Sucked in by the history and religious intrigue mixed with a heavy dose of suspense, I absolutely loved it (don’t judge me!). Russell James’s Lambs Among Wolves tickled those same corners of my brain.

But there’s a taste of something extra here that Brown didn’t include—imagine if The DaVinci Code and The Exorcist had a baby. This would be it! Lambs Among Wolves combines two of my guilty pleasures: the pseudo history of National Treasure (that fun movie with Nic Cage) and Catholic/Possession based thriller.

I would’ve loved for the author to ramp up the horror aspects a touch more. Much of the story seemed fairly tame with only a hint of the absolute dread and shock that I look for in my favorite horror reading. But the heavily researched locations and Church history made up for this. James truly has a love for the milieu of the novel.

Overall, Lambs Among Wolves is fun ride that with a steady pace. Definitely check this one out.

out of 5 ravens.

Available from Amazon.

Trembling With Fear

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Trembling With Fear 10/10/21

Please note: We are temporarily closed to short flash stories (unless for one of the Specials) but open to drabbles, unholy trinities and serials. We hope to reopen later in the year once we have caught up with the publication of those already accepted. Please also remember to read our guidelines, especially on word counts!

Where has the time gone? Our supermarkets are full of Christmas goods and seem to have forgotten Halloween. In the UK, its popularity had grown for a while but it seems to be fading away again, and you will be hard-pressed to find much more than a few shelves of anything related to this celebration (in the areas I’ve experienced anyway). This is in stark contrast to our US cousins. When I was younger, Halloween meant carving turnip Jack-o-lanterns, reading ghost stories and shivering at the hoot of an owl. Being in a rural location, that was enough to create a spooky atmosphere and to this day made it feel more real to me than the modern version (in the UK) which focusses on slasher movie masks, cheap decorations, and sadly attracts some anti-social behaviour. Ho hum.

First this week in Trembling with Fear is Pink Balloon by James Rumpel. An accident brings trauma, but is it all just in the mind or is there something more diabolical afoot?

Do Not Enter by Sam Lesek brings to mind initiations, the tricks played on a novice employee. A nice twist to this trope.

Shrill by Steven Holding is a touching love story with a dash of darkness.

Space Scrap by Margarida Brei is an imaginative sci-fi which has you feeling sorry for the androids – which is no easy feat

Enjoy our stories and send in yours!

Steph

 

Stephanie Ellis

Editor, Trembling With Fear

Hey all! I hope you all had a great week. I’ve been slammed here between work, school, etc. Whew. Had a mini-hiccup. One of our Patreons left early this week. However, I love you all so much, within an hour of posting about it we had two new Patreons step up and surpass what we had lost getting us MUCH closer to our next goal level! THANK YOU!

A couple of reminders (this is the last week for one of them!):

  • Trembling With Fear is open for our Halloween Edition until October 13th, so be sure to get your stories in! Full details can be found here.
  • If you run a website and would like to write an article about Horror Tree or Trembling With Fear, we’d really appreciate that! Please reach out with any questions for facts in the article (who does what, when sections were started, etc), any promotional artwork, or with a link once it is live so we can feature it on the site and on our social media.

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

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Articles / Guest Post

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Guest Post: Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken Christina Sng’s Sneak Peek

  1. Guest Post: Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken Lee Murray’s Sneak Peek
  2. Guest Post: Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken Geneve Flynn’s Sneak Peek
  3. Guest Post: Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken Christina Sng’s Sneak Peek
  4. Guest Post: Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken Angela Yuriko Smith’s Sneak Peek

A preview of ‘Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken’

Christina Sng

 

Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken

Poetry by Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, Lee Murray, and Geneve Flynn

 

Tortured Willows is a collaborative collection comprising 60 poems expanding on the themes of otherness, expectation, and tradition that were introduced in our multi-award-winning anthology Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards). 

 

I am a fourth-generation Singaporean-Chinese. My paternal grandparents were Peranakan and Teochew-Cantonese, while my maternal grandparents were Hakka and Cantonese. In Tortured Willows, I write about the horror stories and mythologies I grew up with from a unique blend of multiculturalism, modernism, and tradition.

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Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Have You Seen Me? by Alexandrea Weis

Disclosure:

Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Have You Seen Me?
Author: Alexandrea Weis
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Publisher: Vesuvian Books
Release Date: 17th August, 2021

Synopsis: SOME SECRETS CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE … FOREVER.

Lindsey Gillett is missing.

And she’s not the first girl at Waverly Prep to vanish without a trace.

To help cope with the tragedy, new history teacher Aubrey LeRoux organizes a small student investigation team. But when the members start turning up dead across campus, Aubrey suspects there’s more going on than anyone is willing to admit.

The murdered students all had something in common with Lindsey. They shared a secret. And what they uncovered could threaten the future of the historic school.

At Waverly Prep, someone wants to keep the past buried—along with anyone who gets in their way.

A killer stalks the grounds of Waverly Prep, murdering students and anyone who get in the way. This novel is an excellent horror/slasher. The deaths are creative and just gruesome enough without being over the top. If you’re looking for classic horror/slasher movie fun, but in a novel, this is a good pick.

Unlike a typical slasher flick, none of the characters become throwaway victims. Each one shows motivation, personality, and complete rounding. Their deaths hit harder even though I saw their end coming—and I kept hoping for a last-minute rescue of my favourites.

However, as a mystery novel, this book falls short. The aforementioned creative murders often require characters to make illogical and reckless mistakes in order to establish isolation. I found it frustrating at several points, and almost amusing at others. I also felt the resolution to the mystery, while it made sense, wasn’t as creative as I would have liked.

Overall, the writing and pacing is well done, and I enjoyed this book.

 out of 5 ravens.

Available from Amazon and Bookshop.

Events / Magazine / Poetry / Semipro

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Taking Submissions: Eye to the Telescope #43

Deadline: December 15th, 2021
Payment: US 3¢/word rounded up to nearest dollar; minimum US $3, maximum $25
Theme: Light

Eye to the Telescope 43, Light, will be edited by Jordan Hirsch.

Light is so much more than meets the eye. It emanates from a lover’s smile as they walk into the room. It bleaches the bones of your enemies. It can be the minimal weight of a feather, its absence the heftiness of a black hole, eating matter and energy, regardless of wave or particle. It is the horror of a headlamp burning out miles underground; it is the nightmare of endless day, nary a shadow in sight.

Celebrate stars, whether their ancient light has travelled from time’s beginning or your ship has taken you to the birthplace of a new light-maker. Write the promise at the end of the tunnel or a sunrise of another time. Any iteration of this theme will do: as abstract as you can get or an ode to literal photons—I want to see it all. Short, long, formal, or free: just make sure it’s speculative.

Had a bulb go off? Send it my way!

Submission Guidelines

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
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Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Daughters of Darkness II, ed. Stephanie Ellis & Alyson Faye

Disclosure:

Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Daughters of Darkness II
Author: Various, ed. Stephanie Ellis & Alyson Faye
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Black Angel Press
Release Date: 1st Oct, 2021

Synopsis: The Daughters are back! This time with a new quartet of women horror writers to thrill and scare you, in the latest anthology, Daughters of Darkness II, from the women-run indie horror press, Black Angel.
Within these shadowed pages you will journey into the depths of the myth-rich Scottish countryside, into the horrors of suburban life, where beneath the skin of Hummingbird Academy true macabreness ferments. You will encounter haunted girls and young men, with dark and deadly secrets, and travel into the Gothic heartlands, culminating in the hell of WW1 and encounter who or what comes home from the trenches.
These are four women horror writers at the top of their game, conjuring stories of quiet, skin-creeping terror.

In the book’s Foreword, Faye and Ellis write that Daughters of Darkness was born of “difficulty in finding suitable outlets for our style of quiet, psychological horror and also the fact that many outstanding female writers just couldn’t seem to break through.” The Daughters of Darkness anthologies are designed specifically to showcase horror written by female authors. Daughters of Darkness II is the second installment, and it did not disappoint. 

The publisher broke down each author into sections. Authors had a certain wordcount, and their contribution varied. This collection included short stories, connected shorts, and novellas. 

First author up—Beverley Lee. I’ve read Lee’s work in the past, and she creeped me out with her sinister and atmospheric piece. Lee has presented us with a collection of four stories. Her lead story, “A Whiteness of Swans” opens her section, and the collection as a whole. By far, one of my favorites in the entire book. 

I had not read anything by Lynn Love prior, so I appreciated the chance to read a new (to me) author. Phenomenal, describes Love’s entry into this book. Each “part” of the story read different enough to feel fresh and interesting, but the connecting thread kept the reader grounded in the story world. Using Jack Sprat and life at home in a large house with an absent family gave the opening section both a fairy tale and gothic feel. By the end, I wondered how the sections would come together, and Love pulled it off with a finale demonstrating her mastery by seamlessly tying up the ending. 

Next up—Catherine McCarthy’s “The Spider and the Stag.” This novella-length tale combined elements of mystery and folk horror. McCarthy masterfully crafted her characters, and they felt like real people. She depicted a grieving widow in such a beautiful and poignant way, and yet somehow still managed to balance the fear, which made the story terrifying.

T.C. Parker is another new (to me) author in this collection. Parker’s entry comes in the form of two connected stories. I liked this approach, and the stories pleasantly surprised me. I preferred the tint of weirdness in the horror of the second tale, but the first did a great job at showing off Parker’s characterization skills. I felt an immediate connection with Jodie that sustained me until the story’s end.

This was an outstanding collection. Very rarely do I love all of the stories in an anthology, but for this one, I can wholeheartedly recommend every tale and author included.

out of 5 ravens.

Available from amazon.