Columns

Storyville: Activities to Feed Your Dark Creative Soul Around Halloween

October 20th, 2017

Wander your local graveyard after dark. Sit near the most decorative mausoleum you can find. Or the oldest one. Perhaps the most ornate. Talk to the resident of that tomb, and ask it questions. Offer it forgiveness. Say you’ll keep its secrets. Leave a flower, or maybe spill a bit of wine into the earth. Sprinkle breadcrumbs around the edges of the tombstone. Recite incantations to the moon. Light a stick of incense, or a candle, and close your eyes. Rest your hands on your knees, palms up, and slowly smile.

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Library Love: I Left My Heart in the Book Drop

October 19th, 2017

I never thought so seriously about book drops until I led a renovation of my library.  So many things fell into place: the student study rooms, the comfortable furniture, the staff break room facing the mountains. But the one thing that went wrong, seriously wrong, was the book drop. I blamed myself, for a while. How did I not catch this when I looked at the drawings? Had I not been clear enough in the planning meetings? They had asked, "Do you really need a book drop?" and I had said, "Yes, absolutely.

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The 18 Most Egregious Art Replacements From 'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark'

October 18th, 2017

It's been a few years since the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark trilogy got a major facelift, replacing Stephen Gammell's art/living nightmares with Brett Helquist's tamer take on the urban legends, folktales, and general creepiness collected by Alvin Schwartz. People were incensed, but now that some time's passed, we should be able to evaluate it objectively. Was the change a good one? No. It was not. Usually I wait until the end of a column to make a judgment, but screw that, this was a terrible idea.

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5 Bizarro Books That Should Be Movies

October 16th, 2017

I’m very excited to see the horror movie Happy Death Day, due in large part to its similarities to a cool Bizarro book by Tiffany Scandal that came out this year called Shit Luck. But that's not the only recent movie that makes me think of Bizarro. There are some similarities between the Purge films and cult favorite Murderland by Garrett Cook, and I can’t give you a rational reason why Mother! brings to mind Kevin Donihe.

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Anatomy of a Mini Flash Novel Experiment: Angel Dust

October 13th, 2017

Photo: Seaview, WA, in November (Alex Behr) At a flash fiction class at The Attic in Portland, OR, poet/screenwriter/overall godhead David Ciminello led us through prompts. He creates trust through guidelines on how to receive and give feedback (example: “Be prepared to ask for the kind of feedback you want”) and his easygoing demeanor, but this night, I was wary. Directed writing makes me feel uneasy, as if a “real” writer doesn’t need external motivation. But I loved these prompts.

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Voices of the Dead: In Memories and Literary Prose

October 13th, 2017

When the family reserve has been let down by the indie publishing, I go back to the daily security grind which takes me here and there, until the coffers are no longer on life support. So, there I was, at 4:30 a.m., shuffling into the Holiday Inn dining nook in Warrenton, Virginia—preparing my bolstering dose of English breakfast tea—when I noticed the woman I had exchanged pleasantries with the previous morning was unhinged. "Be careful out there," she warned. "There's been a murder at the CVS and the police told us to lock the doors.

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Blood, Parasites, and Mutilation: Celebrating 10 Masters of Body Horror

October 12th, 2017

You know what? Body horror is infinitely richer and far more complicated than most people imagine. Body horror, a subgenre of horror that is also called biological horror or organic horror, refers to stories (yes, I also mean comics, film, and television narratives) in which the horror comes from or is based on the human body. Yeah, that's a hell of a loose description. Mutilation, mutation, parasites, degeneration, and all other types of physical pain/torture/transformation/etc fall under this subgenre.

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13 Reasons Charles Addams is an Unsung Master of Horror

October 11th, 2017

When we mention masters of horror: the King's, the Matheson's, Tobe Hooper, George Romero, Wes Craven— When we talk about The Mount Rushmore of horror heroes, we tend to skip one who brought the morbid and the macabre to so many. I'm talking about Charles Addams.

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How to Finish Your Novel Using Math

October 11th, 2017

Have you ever written a short story? A long story? A novella? Now you want to write a novel? Cool, lean in real close. Listen to me as I whisper in your ear.  **Screams incoherently**

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Season of the Witch: Six Dark Fairy Tales Everyone Should Read

October 10th, 2017

The term fairy tale is often deployed for things that seem too good to be true (say, a fairy tale romance). But of course that's misleading; real fairy tales are as dark as stories come. The term has also been deployed to diminish the weird work of female authors—who, in eschewing the cold, hard truths of realism, it has been assumed, must be writing for the nursery. 

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