"Life is horror and fantasy, not necessarily in that order."
(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is a column where I review short stories from horror anthologies.) "The Painting My Husband Keeps" is the quietly menacing opener to the horror collection titled Under Your Bed by Blair Daniels. The well-paced short story is narrated by a recently married woman named Tara who's unnerved by a painting owned …
Continue reading SHORT SHOTS: ‘The Painting My Husband Keeps’
(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is a column where I review horror short stories.) "Slashbacks" by Bram Stoker Award-winning author Tim Waggoner is a vicious little wish-fulfillment tale of vengeance set inside a horror movie lover's dream video store. The short story appears in the 2022 anthology Attack from the '80s edited by Eugene Johnson and …
(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is a column where I review horror short stories.) “Quiet Embers” opens with the heart-wrenching line, “My neighbors house burned down six months ago with their children inside.” The tale then gently explores how the now empty lot haunts the narrator, a new resident of the neighborhood. “Quiet Embers” is one …
(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is a column where I review horror short stories.) From the disturbing image in the first sentence to the unsettling realization in the final two lines, Lisa Quigley’s “Birth” takes the “sometimes dead is better” theme of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary to the next grim level. Released in 2018, “Birth” is …
(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is a column where I review short stories from horror anthologies.) “Still Life” by Kelli Owen is one of sixteen stories in the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthology titled Arterial Bloom. Released in 2020 by Crystal Lake Publishing, Arterial Bloom was edited by Mercedes M. Yardley and includes a foreword by Linda …
(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is a column where I review short stories from horror anthologies.) "Complex" by Jason Parent appears in the 2020 anthology by Silver Shamrock Publishing titled Midnight in the Pentagram, edited by Kenneth W. Cain. Told from the point of view of a distraught wife, "Complex" starts with a paragraph packed with …
(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is a column where I review short stories from horror anthologies.) "Cabin Twelve" by Daphne Strasert won the Next Great Horror Writer Campfire Horror Story Challenge, and "The Face" by Naching T. Kassa finished runner-up. The tales are featured in the flash fiction anthology, Horror Bites: Campfire Tales, edited by Emerian …
On Monday, I released my sixth short story on Amazon Kindle. Titled "Dead of Winter," the story is a super-quick read about a man in a van who happens upon a stranded female motorist on a country road during a wintry afternoon. "Dead of Winter" dramatizes the sometimes nerve-racking game played between a man and …
I released my short story "Peace of Mind" on Amazon Kindle over the weekend. It's a horror story, but more on the psychological side of the spectrum. I'm not a fan of psychological horror. I'm a meat-and-potatoes horror fan formed in the womb of the books and films of the 1970s and 1980s. What can …
Continue reading ‘Peace of Mind’ is a thriller inside a twisted mind
My latest short story is titled Tap, and it's one that's been riding around in my head for a while. If I had to categorize it, I'd say Tap is psychological horror, which means no gore but still dark and disturbing. Tap is about road rage and how a driver named Stephen handles an encounter …
Continue reading My new short story ‘Tap’ is about road rage
The Official Website of Horror and Fantasy Writer Lionel Ray Green 