Columns

The 10 Scariest Horror Books of 2021 — Ranked!

October 22nd, 2021

Goodbye, Mexican Gothic! Goodbye, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires! Say hello to 2021 and our new crop of horror books, fresh off the press! As usual, horror authors didn’t disappoint this year, delivering a flood of haunted houses, creepy coincidences, brilliant re-imaginings, and lingering mysteries that will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

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Stick the Landing: How to End a Horror Story

October 20th, 2021

Too many horror story endings unravel like a half-assed mummy, fall apart like the chunks of a chainsawed traveler who gassed up in the wrong Texas town, or confuse the hell out of everyone like a Blair Witch Project remake that’s totally unnecessary, but I guess someone felt like a drone would really bring a lot to Blair Witch lore. How can you avoid the most common slip-ups? What do readers hate? How can you stick the landing in your horror story? 

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5 Nonfiction Books to Get Spooky with This Fall

October 19th, 2021

If there’s anything I like more than disappearing into a good horror novel, it’s diving into the history of things that go bump in the night. And sure, I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for research and history, but when that first chill of autumn air hits my face, I suddenly feel reinvigorated to learn about all things witchy, occult, and monstrous.

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The Three Seasons of Stephen King

October 18th, 2021

In 2014 I decided to reread all of Stephen King’s books in the order they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had started the Stephen King Revisited project that November, and invited others to join in. Grady Hendrix did something similar with his Great Stephen King Reread over at Tor.com.

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Storyville: How to Write a Massive, Multi-Pronged Hook

October 14th, 2021

If you think the only hook to your story or novel is the first line, then boy do I have some news for you. In order to engage the reader you need to hook them not just once, but as many times as you can, so there is no way they can escape. How do you do that? It starts with the title, and then expands to the first line, the first paragraph, the first page, the first scene, and the first chapter (if writing a novel). Let’s get into this, so we can figure out how best to hook YOUR readers, no matter what genre or style you might have.

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Red Flag Books

October 13th, 2021

A few weeks ago I saw someone on Twitter refer to Fight Club as a “red flag” movie. You can see the tweet in question here. 

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How Pitch Wars Showed Me Where I Need to Grow - As A Person

October 12th, 2021

This was supposed to be a positive article, an uplifting look at the benefits of Pitch Wars outside of just getting selected. I was going to talk about how the deadline of the submission period forced me to put my head down and work, and crank out a book when I might have otherwise dilly-dallied endlessly. I wanted to shine a light on the community-building aspects of Pitch Wars, which are honestly great.

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Candyman: A Monster Named 5 Times

October 11th, 2021

We had Clive Barker’s short story: Candyman Then we had a trilogy of movies: Candyman Candyman Candyman And now, with Candyman (2021), we’ve said his name for the fifth time: Candyman

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Lessons from 10 Years of Writing About Grammar

October 8th, 2021

10 years ago, I made my LitReactor debut with an article about brainstorming story ideas for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). I find this hilarious now since I only ever did NaNoWriMo once—in 2010—and I’ve never done one since. Not because it’s not a great idea, but because I had my first kid in early 2012 and I haven’t had 2 minutes to myself ever since.

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LURID: Moral Panic in Poetry — A Quilt for David

October 5th, 2021

Quilt image via the Smithsonian, Author Photo via Twitter As a culture, we’re obsessed with news. We doom scroll through repeated facts and conjecture, absorbing the shrieks of the chorus, constructing a hierarchy of information based on whoever shouts loudest, and first. Then we move onto the next novelty, leaving the old one to rot, often uncorroborated, half-told, sometimes outright wrong.

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