Heralded by Blood and Other Tales

August 7, 2018 mdjackson 0

Jack Mackenzie’s collection of Dark Fantasy stories is now available from Rage Machine Books. From the book’s introduction: If you ever feel that you are doing well as a writer, I would recommend re-reading all of your old short stories. That will put a pin in any inflated sense of Read More

Weird Tales Classics: “The Tree-Men of M’Bwa”

July 19, 2018 GW Thomas 0

“The Tree-Men of M’Bwa” by Donald Wandrei is one of those wonderful Weird Tales gems that I love to happen upon. The story was published in February 1932. It has only been reprinted in Wandrei collections, which surprises me. The story is so good, so weird in the true Lovecraftian Read More

The Curse of the Monolith

July 14, 2018 GW Thomas 0

Howard purists may hate every word I am about to say. While I will always agree that Robert E. Howard’s stories were the best of the Conan canon (he wrote some potboilers too), I do have some favs amongst the Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp pastiches. One such Read More

The Children of Dracula – Part One: Brood of the Witch-Queen

July 14, 2018 GW Thomas 0

In “The Supernatural Horror in Literature” H. P. Lovecraft selects three novels as the offspring of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: “…Dracula evoked many similar novels of supernatural horror, among which the best are perhaps The Beetle, by Richard Marsh, Brood of the Witch-Queen, by “Sax Rohmer” (Arthur Sarsfield Ward), and The Read More

Why Write Horror?

January 26, 2018 GW Thomas 0

Why write horror? Why not the socially more accepted Science Fiction or Fantasy, in which the reader experiences wonder and the heights of imagination? Why not the even safer Mystery or Western? Literary forms so conventionalized you don’t have to worry about stepping on toes. Go to even greater lengths Read More

RAGE m a c h i n e Books: Wondrous and Terrifying

April 10, 2017 GW Thomas 0

RAGE m a c h i n e Books was originally created because of boredom. Not that I was bored and had nothing to do, but boredom with many of the books I was reading. Where was the action? The color? The mind-blowing ideas that made my skin crawl? The Read More