(If you're unfamiliar with my book reviews, then check out my review of Mary the Summoning here you've been warned.) (Disclaimer: the success of a writer is wholly dependent on the internet critic prognosticating about said writer, and has remotely nothing to do with the talent, work ethic, long hours, determination, years spent honing their craft, or intelligence of the writer. Obviously.) I supported Hillary Monahan from the moment Mary the Summoning hit shelves. While all other YA horror kept walking itself off a cliff from either outright stupidity, heavy-h[...]
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Cemeteries
4 Just within the past fifteen years boardgames got interesting, and then promptly entered a golden age. No more was there the blandy McBlanderson choices of Monopoly, Sorry, and Candyland (Clue, of course is amazing) of the past eighty years, and no longer did you need a math degree if you wanted to get into the more obscure stuff. Then came 2005, when the great Fantasy Flight Games released a cleaned-up second edition of an obscure Lovecraftian game from the '80s called Arkham Horror. Arkham Horror is a cooperative game for 1 to 8 players. It's the 1920s, an[...]
For the past several years I've partaken in AudioFile's Sync summer program. What is it? AudioFile's Sync program basically connects you (the reader) with fantastic and free audiobooks over summer. Each week two ebooks are up on their site and you can download them for free. They always pair one YA novel with a classic novel. They do this to promote reading, literacy, and listening in young people across the nation. Straight from their website: SYNC gives away 2 FREE audiobook downloads every week each summer. In 2014, 26 titles were given away over 13 weeks. I[...]
Critics have little love for horror, but after such rave reviews for It Follows and The Babadook recently, the genre isn't dead to them. They're looking for films that nudge genre--any genre--forward. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) accomplished this. Mad Max is considered a post-apocalyptic action franchise. I'm not going to reclaim it for horror, but on its genealogical tree, horror is definitely there, that great aunt everyone pretends is dead. Of course, then she would haunt you just to be spiteful, so invite her to your wedding already! Anyway, the original Mad Ma[...]
The first 4 Silent Hill games are an astounding mix of terror, great characters, heartbreaking feels, searing honesty, and beautifully grotesque atmosphere. One through Three three are utter masterpieces that transcend their medium and should be recognized as art (the originals, not the terrible HD rerelease), while SH 4: The Room is just really, really good. If you only know Silent Hill through the movies, be warned. They resemble the games in the same way I resemble my cat that died a few years ago. If you ask the average SH fan which one is the best[...]
There are few things I love more than slasher movies---they're horror stripped down to it's barest, dumbest essentials, and it's wonderful in all of it's confused, faux-morality tale wackiness. I also love board gaming, and in the past fifteen years tabletop gaming has exploded as hobby. In fact, the most interesting work in horror today is coming from game designers. If you want atmosphere, great art, and fun, horror games is the place right now. If you've never played any recent board games, I can't recommend it enough. The thing that makes it great is th[...]
When we discuss folklore, the stuff of legends particular to certain areas, we're not always discussing the story itself -- we talk about the hype that surrounds it; makes it bigger than it probably is. The fact is, a lot of the pop culture we get our hands on today lies roots in stories that were told a couple of centuries ago. I can't say that this suggests that there's no original horror stories anymore, far from it; it's interesting, however, that the origin points for the things we find scary now might actually have kernels of truth to them because they're so[...]
So, I'm sitting in the theater, innocently waiting to see The Mockingjay (late, because I was too busy when it first came out. But on the plus side, I got to see it in the dollar theater. Anyway, back to the story...) and this trailer comes on: And I'm like, whoa. And trembling a little. And totally trying to act cool about it because my hubs is staring at me to see if this is the one. The horror movie that will actually scare me. Because there are none. I love horror, but to me it's more like suspense. I don't actually get scared. I might jump at bats flying o[...]
Skulls! Not necessarily that creepy, (they've got nothing on hearts) I mean when we talk about skulls we're usually talking about clean ones, so no blood or guts, and yet when you see one, you definitely don't think Sunday brunch at the Country Club, now, do you? Let's celebrate their creepiness a bit. Noah Scalin definitely did that with his art book, Skull-A-Day... Skull-A-Day by Noah Scalin Skull-A-Day began in June 2007 when Scalin, at a creative crossroads, decided he would make a skull every day for the next year. He went to his studio, cut th[...]