Columns

Blood and Cigarettes: Charlie Huston's Use of Time in the Joe Pitt Casebooks

November 5th, 2015

Charlie Huston has a talent of grabbing the reader and not letting go. This aptitude for immediacy is best demonstrated in the Joe Pitt Casebooks, five novels about the eponymous vampyre (Huston's spelling) hard case. Released between 2005 and 2009, these New York City-set throwbacks to 1970s crime fiction are told in first-person perspective present tense, a storytelling method Huston used with his first five published books. What's unique is Huston never cheats, having the reader experience the world as Pitt does.

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Dalton Trumbo: Who He Was And Why We Should Care

November 5th, 2015

If you have even a passing knowledge of cinema history, you know about the Hollywood Ten—a group of creatives who refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (or HUAC, an organization lead by J. Parnell Thomas) against fellow members of the Communist Party. The ten were subsequently blacklisted and barred from working on motion pictures, as well as imprisoned for one year for contempt of court.

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Storyville: How to Write Flash Fiction

November 4th, 2015

So you want to write flash fiction but don’t know where to start. Here are some tips and trick for writing excellent flash fiction. It’s not easy, somewhere between prose poetry and a short story, but it can certainly pack a wallop.

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6 Things You Should Never Write About for NaNoWriMo

November 2nd, 2015

Have you started yet? Has your word count crept from the tens to the hundreds? Is your initial hey-this-is-the-best-idea-ever enthusiasm already begun to curdle into this-is-crap-and-I-suck-at-writing despair?

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10 Spooky Horror Stories for Halloween Night

October 30th, 2015

It's Halloween night, you're all alone at home and it's too early to party or watch that horror flick you've got waiting for you. But you still want to be scared. Check out these spooktacular stories I've selected for you, available for free online, courtesy of some of the best horror short fiction magazines out there. Enjoy.

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UPDATED WITH WINNERS - LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: Kanye West—Reanimator Edition

October 30th, 2015

Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity Welcome to LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown, a monthly bout of writing prowess. How It Works We give you inspiration in the form of a picture, poem, video, or prompt. You write a flash fiction piece using the inspiration we gave you. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked and awarded a prize.

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Who is Jessica Jones?

October 29th, 2015

With the first full trailer finally available, the Internet has been abuzz about Marvel’s latest Netflix offering, Jessica Jones. Similar to their surprise hit Guardians of the Galaxy, the show centers around a character that is mostly unknown outside of the comics. It’s a pretty bold move, considering Jessica is even lesser-known than the Guardians once were, having rarely cameoed in other Marvel media. And even within the world of the comics, Jessica isn’t a big name in superheroism. So who is this Jessica Jones?

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The Top 10 Scariest Gothic Romances

October 29th, 2015

Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak has been in theaters since mid-October, and its mild box office is unworthy of the lush and wildly unusual film. It’s likely that Legendary and Universal were unsure what to do with this movie, singular as it is. It’s released in October, it’s a ghost story and it’s directed by the man behind such fright fare as The Devil’s Backbone and Cronos, so it makes sense to market Crimson Peak as a horror movie.

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13 Things Book Covers Can Learn From Horror VHS Covers

October 28th, 2015

Let's flash back to a young Pete as he browses the aisles of Blockbuster.  He walks the store's perimeter to check for new movies. Sees if there are any guaranteed-in-stock titles that are all rented out, just for the sake of getting a coupon to rent something for free later (not that he ever actually WANTED to see Hope Floats).  And then, he steels himself and heads for the horror section. Friends, THIS is what prompted this column:

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Bookshots: 'The Monstrous' edited by Ellen Datlow

October 28th, 2015

Bookshots: Pumping new life into the corpse of the book review Title: The Monstrous Who Wrote It? It's that perfect mix of sentiment and horror, violence and survival, the unavoidable and the unspeakable. Edited by Ellen Datlow, the queen of horror anthologies.

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