Jeff Strand continues to exhibit his trademark brand of Horror and black comedy in 2023. In January, he released Demonic, a darkly humorous novel about a Satanic cult on the loose. However, it's his April release, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, where Strand gets meta and stretches his comedic chops to the limit using the 1978 B movie as inspiration. The Bram Stoker Award-winning author is not slowing down, either. Strand wrote a third novel for 2023, the psychological thriller Veiled, and has a pair of middle grade Horror novels from Sourcebooks set for release in 2024. Read the full interview in Horror Curated: Halloween.
"My Favorite Halloween Memory" by Jeff Strand
My favorite Halloween memory? Oh, wow, that's a tough one. So many... One year, I think it was in the fifth grade, my friends and I were doing that "Trick or treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!" thing, and this sweaty, obese guy grinned and said, "I'd love to smell your feet!" and we ran. Obviously that's not my favorite Halloween memory—it's just one that came to mind. A few years later the guy died of a heart attack, and we tried to spread the rumor that it was autoerotic asphyxiation, but unfortunately we couldn't quite make the rumor stick. Read the full excerpt in Horror Curated: Halloween.
Read full reviews of books in Horror Curated: Halloween.
Amanda DeWees is the author of the award-winning Victorian Gothic romantic suspense novels With This Curse and Sea of Secrets. A resident of Atlanta, Georgia, DeWees grew up loving the traditional Gothic romances of Victoria Holt and Daphne du Maurier, and the Victorian romantic suspense novels of Barbara Michaels. Read the full interview in Horror Curated: Bloody Tea.
When Sybil returns to her London roots, the past comes back to haunt her. Sybil's homecoming is chilly. Even worse is her reunion with her former mentor, Gerhardt Atherton, who is still falsely claiming that Sybil embezzled from the theater troupe. When Atherton is found dead, his business partner, Ivor Treherne, is arrested for murder. But Sybil isn't satisfied that the police have unearthed the whole story. Matters reach a crisis when the drama in her family takes a supernatural form. As she turns to a fellow medium to help her banish a poltergeist and determine who really killed Atherton, Sybil soon realizes that someone is trying to silence her...perhaps for good. Read the full excerpt of A Haunting Reprise in Horror Curated: Bloody Tea.
Read full reviews of books in Horror Curated: Bloody Tea.
The creators of A Winter's Tale, Cliff Biggers, Charles R. Rutledge, and James R. Tuck, were inspired to create their anthology of Yuletide Horror because they enjoyed reading the super Valancourt collections of Victorian Christmas ghost stories. They called on some of the talented writers they know to contribute and bring the tradition back. I got to discuss the book, his favorite horror esthetic, and Edgar Allan Poe with Cliff, one of the editors and the author of our featured story this month, "Who Wouldn’t Go."
Cliff Biggers has been a writer of comics, Fantasy, Horror, and nonfiction for almost fifty years, beginning with his work with Jim Steranko's Mediascene in the 1970s. His Horror fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines. Read the full interview with Cliff in Horror Curated.
Andrew missed Grandma Bess's voice. The Christmas songs had never been the same after he broke her three years ago. It was an accident, of course. The delicate glass ornaments seemed to become more fragile with each passing year, and hers was one of the oldest. Metallized blue finish with a flocked white snowflake pattern stenciled on front and back. He remembered seeing it on his grandmother's tree when he was five years old. When she died and the family was laying claim to various belongings of hers, he spent an hour rummaging around idly, disinterested in the furnishings and silverware and jewelry that so fascinated the others. When he saw the box labeled "Christmas," he knew what his choice would be.
The next Christmas, he placed her ornament in a position of prominence. It helped him to remember Grandma Bess the way she had been before old age and dementia had taken her away little by little. By the end, she couldn’t carry on a conversation. What she could do, though, was sing. Her memory of names and events may have been taken from her, but those songs were so anchored in her mind that every time she heard a song she liked, she would sing in her beautiful voice. And Christmas songs were her favorite. Read the full excerpt of A Winter's Tale in Horror Curated.
Read full reviews of books in Horror Curated.
