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![“[animal revolt]”](https://richardleis.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/StarLine454-1024.jpg)
“[animal revolt]”
Three short lines, one ferocious attack.
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Black Tide by KC Jones
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…
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Girls From the County by Donna Lynch
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…
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Cradleland of Parasites by Sara Tantlinger
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.
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House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 3
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.
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“From Them Prostrate I Flee”
A teenager finds an unexpected escape from trauma in the garage, and it will haunt him the rest of his life.
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Reviewing & Ranking the Scream Franchise
My favorite horror franchise gets a fifth entry, so here is a quick ranking of the previous movies.
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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…
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Nightmare, Issue 93 (June 2020)
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…
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Review: Friday the 13th (Film Franchise)
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.
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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!
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Autumncrow by Cameron Chaney
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.
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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.
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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.
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Coppice & Brake Edited by Rachel A. Brune
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.
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“In a Mirror, Dimming”
“Beyond the scarred surface, I saw the bones of the Moon, / the geology of a crime. He would not speak of it.”
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SFPA Poetry Contest
The 2020 SFPA Poetry Contest runs from June 1 through August 31, 2020 and is open to both non-members and members.
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Flashpocalypse Short List
My flash fiction story “The Canal” was shortlisted for The Molotov Cocktail’s latest quarterly flash contest: Flashpocalypse!
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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,…
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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
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Midnight in the Graveyard Edited by Kenneth W. Cain
I have definitely been in the mood for ghost stories, and Midnight in the Graveyard, the first anthology from Silver Shamrock Publishing, delivers the ghostly goods!
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How We Broke by Bracken MacLeod and Paul Michael Anderson
This little novella full of big revelations and emotions really got to me.
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Snow by Ronald Malfi
The rapid pace doesn’t get in the way of good details and atmosphere; I felt the cold, eeriness, and rising tension along the way. What they encounter is creepy as hell and led to heart-pounding horror and heartbreaking deaths.
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We Are Monsters by Brian Kirk
It took me several pages to adjust to the direction Kirk takes later in the novel, but I was rewarded with an unexpectedly humane, emotional, and satisfying ending. Despite its challenges, We Are Monsters left me with a lot to enjoy and think about.
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“Witch House”
“Little girls in white dresses skipping rope / & chanting singsong in slow motion we stole / from an 80’s horror film.”
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Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors Edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey
So this is what today’s pro-level horror looks like.
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Ghosters 3: Secrets of the Bloody Tower by Diane Corbitt
What I like the most about Ghosters 3 are the characters and their personality quirks and other details that make them individual and interesting.
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Learning to Horror
After years of focusing on literary poetry and fiction, including completing my undergraduate education in creative writing and taking writing workshops, I’m finally embracing my original genre aspirations.
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Upcoming: UNREAL at Antigone Books
I’m joining the other Writers Studio Tucson teachers at Antigone Books for a public reading from our latest works that focus on “the unusual, the dark, and the unreal.”
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Shadow Award 2019 Short List
In the 2019 Shadow Award from The Molotov Cocktail, one of my entries landed me on the short list.
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“Crafting Fantastic & Imaginative Worlds” at The Writers Studio!
I’m teaching a new 6-week workshop titled “Crafting Fantastic & Imaginative Worlds” and it uses The Writers Studio method of persona writing and critiquing. It begins Saturday, July 27, 2019.
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Movie Review: Assimilate (2019)
Assimilate isn’t the cheap and nauseating found-footage film the trailer led me to believe it would be, but instead an effective low-budget thriller that relies too much on jump scares but tempers these with earned emotions and suspense.
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Horror 101: The Way Forward edited by Joe Mynhardt
Horror 101: The Way Forward edited by Joe Mynhardt explores a tremendous territory of information, advice, and experience with essays written by many different creatives who work in the genre.
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Nightmare Magazine, Issue 10
The highlight of this issue is most definitely the interview with Joe Hill. I haven’t read any of his work yet, but I’m really interested now that I’ve read this interview.
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The 2018 Rhysling Anthology
Neil Gaiman’s “The Mushroom Hunters” was my personal favorite in the collection, along with Mary Soon Lee’s “Advice to a Six-Year-Old” and all her other poems, Linda D. Addison’s “Sycorax’s Daughters Unveiled”, Cislyn Smith’s “Hot”, and Shannon Connor Winward’s “The Raven’s Hallowe’en.”
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Book and Movie Reviews: Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Comparing the movies and the book. The novel has more room for exposition than the film, and in general this additional information is really interesting.
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Beyond the Gates (2016)
Beyond the Gates is one of those slow-burn horror films that may bore some viewers but the nostalgia and character building are going to make fans of the rest.
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Nightmare Magazine, Issue 46
I found some of the stories in Issue 46 of Nightmare Magazine to be a little opaque, making for interesting reading and leaving me to think about possible meanings.
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The Year’s Best Fantasy First Annual Collection
I’m rating this 5 stars for a very good reason: nearly ever story in the collection are themselves 5-star worthy.
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Nightmare Magazine Issue 1 October 2012
I’m reading the most recent issues of Nightmare Magazine and also going back to the beginning to read every issue. Fantastic issue!
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Nightmare Magazine Issue 45 June 2016
Oh, wow, this is a great issue. I haven’t read a lot of horror short fiction in recent decades and I’ve been curious to see what writers are writing about. Thus, I’m a new subscriber; it has already been rewarding.
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Phobos Magazine Issue Three: Troublemake
The poems and flash fiction in this issue tend to feature ornery characters, leading to lots of humor and dark twists.
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Phobos Magazine Issue Two: Emergence
Several absolutely fantastic and often chilling flash horror, fairy tale, and science fiction stories.
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Phobos Magazine Issue One: Zugzwang
Promising first issue.
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The Years of Fantasy and Horror
I remember fondly buying a few editions of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling in the 1990s. I was in my twenties and while many of the stories and their level of craft were opaque to me at the time, I felt I had stumbled onto a…
Richard Leis
Horror Writer & Poet
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