Tagged: Stephanie Ellis

Epeolatry Book Review: Winter’s Ghosts by Alyson Faye, Stephanie Ellis, Charlotte Riddell & Edith Wharton

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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: Winter’s Ghosts
Author: Alyson Faye, Stephanie Ellis, Charlotte Riddell, Edith Wharton
Genre: Ghost Stories, Gothic
Publisher: Independent
Release Date: 29th November, 2023

Synopsis:Winter is traditionally the time for a ghost story. Alyson Faye and Stephanie Ellis continue this custom with their short stories, ‘Chilled to the Bone’ and ‘Dead Man’s Fair’ where, in both gothic mansion and remote hills, blizzards close in and the dead walk. Pairing with these modern day writers are Charlotte Riddell and Edith Wharton, both known for their skill in weaving a ghostly tale but whose stories are in danger of being forgotten. Their inclusion here is intended to help prevent this and honour those female authors who paved the way for the rest of us.

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Epeolatry Book Review: Lilith Rising by Stephanie Ellis & Shane Douglas Keene

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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.

Alien: Inferno's Fall

Title: Lilith Rising
Author: Stephanie Ellis & Shane Douglas Keene
Publisher:  Independent
Genre: Dark Poetry
Release Date: 14th October, 2022

Synopsis: Like evolution itself, nothing about the story in these pages was born of a plan. It’s a collection of “What ifs.” The authors didn’t discuss the story in advance, they simply performed it.

The penultimate premise?

What if the biblical progenitors of humanity were bent on its eventual destruction?

The answer is here between these covers, in the form of a heavy-metal armageddon meltdown fueled by rage, passion, firepower, and hellfire. This is epic poetry like you’ve never read before—irreverent, gruesome, horrifying, heartrending. It will make you think, and it will clarify the meaning of the phrase:

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

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Epeolatry Book Review: Metallurgy by Stephanie Ellis

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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: Metallurgy: Of Love and Death and Metal
Author: Stephanie Ellis
Genre: Poetry
Release Date: June 16th, 2022

Synopsis:Metallurgy is an homage to the world of heavy metal and its related genres.

In these pages are 100 dark found poems created from the lyrics of bands as varied as Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Korn, Behemoth and many more.

Although all poems are completely original works, the sources have been fully acknowledged and it is hoped that after reading the poems, the reader will then go on to listen to the artists who inspired them. 

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WIHM 2022: An Interview With Stephanie Ellis

In celebration of Women in Horror Month, we are continuing to highlight some of the amazing work that women have been doing compiling and editing magazines and anthologies in the horror industry. We’re continuing our Women Who Edit Interview series with Stephanie Ellis.

Could you introduce yourself, and tell us a little about you?

Hi Holley, thanks for inviting me here! I’m Steph, author of the novel The Five Turns of the Wheel and the novellas Paused and Bottled with Silver Shamrock. I’m also a poet and have recently published the found poetry collection Foundlings, co-written with Cindy O’Quinn based on the works of Alessandro Manzetti and Linda D. Addison. I’ve self-published a folk horror collection, As the Wheel Turns, and a non-themed collection, The Reckoning. I am co-editor of Horror Tree’s weekly online flash zine, Trembling With Fear, and its associated anthologies and have been co-editor of anthologies from the Infernal Clock (Infernal Clock, DeadCades, CalenDark and Inferno) and Black Angel Press’ Daughter of Darkness I and II with Alyson Faye. As well as editing these books, I was also responsible for formatting and in some cases, cover creation. I am a member of the Dark Fusion podcast with Beverley Lee and Shane Douglas Keene and an active member of the HWA where I have joined their mentorship programme to support other writers.

With my family all grown-up(!), I’ve been able to move into the world of ‘full-time’ writing, with the support of my husband, although sometimes this means more time to procrastinate! 

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Trembling With Fear 01/02/22

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to the first Trembling With Fear of 2022. It’s that time for both looking back and then fixing our sights firmly on the year ahead. I sincerely hope that we finally start putting the pandemic behind us. I’ve been jabbed and boosted, though with talk of the possibility of a 4th jab, I am beginning to feel like a human pincushion! I haven’t made any resolutions although I have a mental list of things to do and I’m trying to bring a bit of discipline back to my writing, it all went a bit AWOL over Christmas. The main decision has been to try and restructure my day so that I’m not working in the evening as well – a habit grown into when I was working the day job and which has continued, resulting in little ‘free’ time. Not sure how well that’ll go!

My Christmas Day book this year was The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers, and I can’t rate his work high enough. I’ve read two of his books now and I’ll be collecting the rest. He has a wonderful way with language and he is also a poet which feeds into his fiction. I love finding a new author and collecting them. I also finished Winterset Hollow recently by John Edward Durham. Plenty of whimsy but also plenty of horror alongside the fantasy. Now I have to start a new goodreads challenge! If you want to see what I read last year, go here.

The first story of 2022 in Trembling with Fear is Pitched Terror by Bernardo Villela takes you into that dreaded realm of sleep paralysis and the tricks the mind plays. When the visions overlap into a supposed reality, the effects can be horrific.

Conspiracy by RJ Meldrum delves into the world of conspiracy theories, some of which were bizarrely shared on social media in recent times, and turns them to good effect.

The remaining drabbles are offerings from myself and Stuart. We hope you enjoy them!

Steph

 

Stephanie Ellis

Editor, Trembling With Fear

Happy New Year my friends!
I don’t have too much to add this week. With the holiday season, not much new has happened. I’ve been spending my time with my family and have been trying to relax. The one thing I did do, as we lost about 300 subscribers when switching from Mailchimp to Sendfox is to add an opt in form on the main HorrorTree page again (top right if you’re in desktop mode or under the “more” section if you scroll down quite a ways on mobile. I’ve also added one to our contact page AND you can also subscribe directly to our newsletter right here. Our newsletter is compiled weekly by the extremely talented Holley Cornetto and contains our favorite posts from the week, more original free fiction from around the web, and any site news we have to share with you!

I will say that for those who enjoy writing drabble, we’re once again a bit short on them and could use more! For those of you who already max the amount of drabble we will print from an author each year, we will also be adding another opportunity! That is one a month and one for each of our four specials to those who keep count and there are a couple who do fill them up and we’ve got something growing to share with you soon!

We also have a new perk coming to our Patreons soon which Steph is putting together.

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

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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.