I have long had a love/hate relationship with zombies. When I was very young, I watched a movie that I wrote about in Octobers past called Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things. I was TOO young, really. But I had an old tiny tv and it was on the late night horror movie schedule. Later on, that impact of the dead returning to life impacted my real life enough that I used the trauma in a horror novella you might want to check out — The Blacksmith.
Continue readingFor Lucy and Annabelle
“Oh, look, a barn sale!” Shirley said, pointing to the side of the road.
“NOOOO,” said her 13-year-old daughter Louise, who was becoming more of a teenager by the day.
She covered her face in the passenger seat.
“I love these, mama. Let’s go!” her younger daughter, Alice, 11, said, her hazel eyes flashing with excitement.
Continue readingOk, first off, since I missed Oct. 5, we will remember the late Donald Pleasence of the Halloween franchise, as it would have been his 100th birthday. No great monster is without his equally legendary foe. Just as Dracula had Van Helsing, and Frankenstein’s monster had, appropriately so, Frankenstein, so Michael Myers had the inimitable Dr. Loomis. Ever questioned, ever correct in his theories -ever remembered for a line that is famous in any horror fan’s list of memorable moments. See below. Rest in peace, Dr. Loomis. Haddonfield and all of us are less safe out here without you.
Now…onto today…
Carol, that is not Avon calling.
I do not have a lot of time today to do a long post, but today i want to share what I without question believe is the scariest moment ever in a movie.
One of the things I both love and hate about horror movies is how women are treated and viewed. Often they are the dopes who trip themselves into a chainsaw after flashing all they’ve got for the camera. But just as often, they are kick-ass, brave, hilarious and occasionally sucked into a television.
Here are my top ten horror movie chics. Note I am not including science fiction otherwise Go Sigourney Weaver!
Would you settle for 30? Otherwise I promise to post something on Nov. 1 to make up for my lapse yesterday.
Inspired by Rob Adams’ project 365, in which he has committed to write every day for an entire year, (I am in awe at the dedication), I’ve decided to try to write something horror related for the entire month. (Try being the key word).
While I am not planning to do this in order of importance, I thought it would make sense to start where it all began. Technically, that could be Halloween, but even more so than that, and that’s a whole other post, one of my earliest memories of horror was a cheesy 70’s movie by anyone’s standards, including me.
This story was previously published by Spinetinglers U.K. in their 2008 anthology.
Ingrid had grown to hate those two words in the twenty years she had been writing obituaries for the Berkeley Bugle. When would these relatives get a grip? she thought. The dead didn’t “pass away.” They didn’t “drift peacefully to sleep.” They died. Croaked. Expired. Ceased to breathe. Choked on their own vomit. Or, drowned mercilessly in a boating accident. They died painful deaths due to cancer, and left loved ones to pay the bills. Gasped for their last breath in the dying throes of emphysema. Continue reading
Dedicated to where it all began, 16 Bailey Avenue — and its dumbwaiter.
“Shit!”
Reporter Rebecca Spettro had just crossed the street in downtown Green Valley when the deluge came pouring from the skies, drenching her hair and her designer boots.
It had not been her fucking day.
Ah, October. The leaves are changing. The temperatures are cooler in the morning, perfect during the day, and lovely for sleeping.
And it is the month of Halloween. Or, as I like to call it, the time of year when the shirts I wear all year round look normal.
“I’ve got one,” the old woman says.
She rocks in the corner, cramping my style, her knitting casting battling sabers of shadows in the firelight.
My friends mutter and chuckle to themselves.
Creative conjurings 
