Richard Leis

Tag: horror

  • “[animal revolt]”

    Journal cover of Star*Line issue 45.4 (Fall 2022) with an abstract illustration of red, white, and black strokes that are jagged, perhaps resembling rivulets of blood. Cover illustration is "Untitled 8" by Adam Mars.

    Star*Linevol 45, no. 4Fall 2022 Description Three short lines, one ferocious attack. Background When I started reading Star*Line and other publications from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, I was bemused by the shortest poems, those one or two or three line wonders that offer a quick punchline or pithy speculative thought. It wasn’t…

  • Black Tide by KC Jones

    Book cover for Black Tide by KC Jones, with a car on the beach with scattered small impact craters, next to a dark ocean.

    Black Tide by K.C. Jones My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Oregon Coast becomes the site for a spectacular and unexpected meteor shower, followed by a grueling struggle to survive by two people already struggling to survive their day-to-day lives. I grew to care about these characters as their story unfolds over an action-packed…

  • Girls From the County by Donna Lynch

    Girls from the County by Donna Lynch poetry collection on black tabletop with sticker

    Girls From the County by Donna Lynch My rating: 5 of 5 stars Haunting, heartbreaking, and highly accomplished. The razor-sharp poems in Donna Lynch’s latest collection mix the real and all-too-common with folklore as powerful commentary about the dangers women face, most often from men, but occasionally from themselves, too, especially while dealing with the…

  • Cradleland of Parasites by Sara Tantlinger

    tempImage97E9Rb Cradleland of Parasites by Sara Tantlinger, paperback and hardcover editions on bookshelf

    Cradleland of Parasites might be Sara Tantlinger’s best collection yet, a sequence of frightening, gruesome, breathtakingly beautiful poems about the Black Plague and other very real pestilence horrors up through modern times.

  • House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 3

    House of Zolo's Journal of Speculative Literature Volume 3 book cover

    The future is frightening, often radically different, sometimes bleak, sometimes hopeful, sometimes both in the beautiful poems and short fiction included in the latest volume of House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature.

  • “From Them Prostrate I Flee”

    Book cover for Stories We Tell After Midnight Volume Three with list of authors, title, edited by Rachel A. Brune and an image of a skull and skeleton fading into the black background

    “I don’t have any trouble remembering my dad, though. I have no trouble remembering his rage, my fear, and the way the ground opened up and it was the only way out that April night in 1987.”

  • Reviewing & Ranking the Scream Franchise

    My favorite horror franchise gets a fifth entry, so here is a quick ranking of the previous movies.

  • Review: Final Destination (Film Franchise)

    I resisted watching the films in the Final Destination franchise for a long time because I was afraid of how extreme the gore might be. I’m getting a little braver and I kept hearing good things about the first one, so I finally watched the first film last night. And then binge-watched the other four…

  • Nightmare, Issue 93 (June 2020)

    Nightmare Issue 93 June 2020 cover art by Grandfailure / Fotolia with character in full face mask and red digital eyes, surrounded by haze and pixelated rectangles of various colors. Text: Nightmare Horror & Dark Fantasy, list of included authors G.V. Anderson, Laird Barron, Ashley Deng, and Robert Shearman, Issue 93 | June 2020, Edited by John Joseph Adams

    I really love every story in this issue. Everything had the right amount of tension, chills, and ambiguity. There’s an image of attendees at a party after the party is over in “Girls Without Their Faces On” by Laird Barron that will haunt me forever. As will the Dorset Ooser from “We, the Folk” by…

  • Review: Friday the 13th (Film Franchise)

    Friday the 13th (1980) theatrical poster.jpg

    Know that this franchise is mostly awful and an embarrassment to horror. I honestly don’t know why this franchise is popular. Terrible. Just terrible.

  • Flash Monster 2020 Short List

    My flash fiction story “A Bird Watcher’s Guide to Malformed and Buzzing Things” earned a spot on the close-but-no-cigar shortlist shout-outs for the annual Flash Monster contest from The Molotov Cocktail!

  • Autumncrow by Cameron Chaney

    Book cover for Autumncrow by Cameron Chaney with farmer's skeleton holding a carved pumpkin on Halloween with the town of Autumncrow Valley and a full moon in the background

    I truly love Autumncrow by Cameron Chaney, a perfect-for-October and Autumn book, with fun and wicked, but frequently dark and troubling, stories that whisper to me about my own trauma and personal history, suggesting dark and light new ways for me to look at things. Chaney has a knack for seeing right into the soul.

  • Stories We Tell After Midnight Edited by Rachel A. Brune

    A mix of flash and short fiction, Stories We Tell After Midnight from Crone Girls Press and editor Rachel A. Brune is an uneven mix, with several gems.

  • True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik

    True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik is a difficult book to read, for sure, but what’s so remarkable about it and why I continued reading is how the author navigates this brutal material.

  • Coppice & Brake Edited by Rachel A. Brune

    Coppice & Brake book cover with illustrated crows standing on top of an illustrated doorway open to a picture of trees stand stark and tall in the snow

    One of the most exciting and enjoyable reading experiences I’ve had this year. I’m enthusiastic because in a year of great anthologies, Coppice & Brake from Crone Girls Press and Editor Rachel A. Brune is an absolute favorite. I love every single story, which I cannot say about most anthologies.

  • “In a Mirror, Dimming”

    Screen shot of table of contents of Issue 37 of online journal Eye to the Telescope

    “Beyond the scarred surface, I saw the bones of the Moon, / the geology of a crime. He would not speak of it.”

  • Submission Opportunity: 2020 SFPA Poetry Contest

    2020 SFPA Poetry Contest announcement poster with painting of a golden dragon flying below a huge statue of a woman holding up two figures in her hands over a rocky landscape

    The 2020 SFPA Poetry Contest runs from June 1 through August 31, 2020 and is open to both non-members and members.

  • Flashpocalypse Short List

    My flash fiction story “The Canal” was shortlisted for The Molotov Cocktail’s latest quarterly flash contest: Flashpocalypse!

  • In the Scrape by James Newman and Mark Steensland

    At 94 pages, In the Scrape by James Newman and Mark Steensland is a quick read, but be warned that the mounting tension might require an occasional break to catch your breath. You’re going to need the oxygen: the final third of the book, when the breathless pace escalates and characters become even more desperate,…

  • Cricket Hunters by Jeremy Hepler

    Cricket Hunters subverts the usual tropes and nostalgia of coming-of-age horror by reaching for something even darker in this tale of friendship and rivalry