Category: The Art of Writing

2018 Horror Anthology KILL SWITCH / Edited by Dan Shaurette “The Future is Broken.” – Black Mirror What horrors will our technological hubris bring us in the future? When technology takes over more of our lives, what will it mean to be human, and will we fear what we have created? Artificial intelligence, robotics, bionics […]

via Submission Call: Tech Horror KILL SWITCH — HorrorAddicts.net

100+ Black Women in Horror 100+ Black Women in Horror contains the biographies of over one hundred black women who write horror, 100+ Black Women in Horror is a reference guide, a veritable who’s who of female horror writers from the African Diaspora. This volume is an expansion of the original 2014 book 60 Black […]

via Press Release: 100+ Black Women in Horror — HorrorAddicts.net

family mom, dad, son me, last born they waited nine years for me now they wait again mist hovers floats above their graves hushes sounds muffles grief head bowed, I know they miss me I whisper, not yet A shadorma written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Amaya is our host today and explains […]

via Shadorma in the Grave Yard — lillian the home poet

Review by Stephanie Ellis In Beyond Night, August Arminius, Decurion of the 9TH Legion leads his men under the command of General Malitus, their orders to claim Caledonia in the name of Emperor Hadrian. Expecting to face no more than Picts, savage though they are, the soldiers come across monsters-beastmen–who can rip a man apart […]

via Book Review: Beyond Night — HorrorAddicts.net

By djc84 It was times like these when he wished he’d gone camping more. Hoisting the stone back up, he struck again as hard as he could. After several more attempts, flames finally burst into life. He fell entranced watching them lick the air in greedy consumption. It wasn’t till he heard the thump coming […]

via Burning Issues —

(By Kevin Onuegbu, an avid reader and literary critic) “Francis Is Alive” by Moshood Adebayo is a detective story imbued with intrigue, horror, suspense, betrayals, love and the mystic. Francis Whyte, a professional and most wanted American assassin, showed up to the world after so many years of self-exile. He came to Nigeria to meet […]

via BOOK REVIEW – Francis Is Alive — eBayism School of Thought

Jack Thurston is a retired professor of medieval literature and history. He is also a widower and father and a retired sorcerer who has returned to the black arts to exact revenge for the death of his wife, daughter, and brother. He has an intriguing position in the universe at a focal point of life, the afterlife, logic and reason, anger and hatred, the ancient and the modern worlds, grief and his attempts to escape grief through self-destruction. Though he wants to have the peace he once found with his wife, Agatha, he is pulled in many directions by circumstance and by his powerful negative emotions.

I am a fan of the old school horror practiced by such authors as H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, Edward Lucas White, and Arthur Machen.  I endeavor to make a story as terrifying and suspenseful for the reader as possible without resorting to gratuitous blood and gore for a simple shock or quick feeling of disgust.

This collection of three short tales is perfect for those who have only a few short breaks to escape into the hidden world of horror, black magic, sorcery, and anger-fueled revenge.

You can find this and other works at my Amazon author’s page:  www.amazon.com/author/philslattery.

Currently, Jack has a Twitter account (@jthurston666), where he has attracted a small following and where it has only recently been revealed that he is fictional. Jack has his own blog at jackthurstonblog.wordpress.com (a work in progress) and his own e-mail at jackthurston666@gmail.com.

Information on more social media accounts and other characters (as they are developed) can be found at: philslattery.wordpress.com. Please interact with him at any of his social media accounts as you would with a real person.

The child lay unmoving as the two men paddled closer and closer. They seemed anxious and I wondered if the child needed medical help. The men gesticulated as did the crew on the huge liner they were now very close to. The crew was clearly telling the outrigger they were in danger and to move […]

via Crane: Six Sentence Stories — Reflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist)

SERENITY by Tanisha D. Jones He was a constant explorer and that was what brought him to the dingy alley in Chinatown. The smell of old fish and mooshoo pork wafted through the steaming grates in the ground as the late October air, whipped through his expensive Armani trench coat. Being one of the richest […]

via Free Fiction: Serenity by Tanisha D. Jones — HorrorAddicts.net

“Now you must answer my questions nine
Sing ninety-nine and ninety,
Or you aren’t God’s you are one of mine
And who is the weaver’s bonny.

What is whiter than milk?
Sing ninety-nine and ninety;
And what is softer than silk?
And who is the weaver’s bonny.”

Snow is whiter than milk,
Sing ninety-nine and ninety;
And down is softer than silk,
And I am the weaver’s bonny.”

What is louder than a horn?
Sing ninety-nine and ninety;
And what is sharper than a thorn?
And who is the weaver’s bonny?

Thunder’s louder than a horn,
Sing ninety-nine and ninety ;
And death is sharper than a thorn,
And I am the weaver’s bonny.

What is higher than a tree?
Sing ninety-nine and ninety;
And what is deeper than the sea?
And who is the weaver’s bonny?

Heaven is higher than a tree,
Sing ninety-nine and ninety;
And hell is deeper than the sea,
And I am the weaver’s bonny.

What’s more innocent than a lamb?
Sing ninety-nine and ninety;
What is meaner than woman kind?
And who is the weaver’s bonny.

A babe’s more innocent than a lamb,
Sing ninety-nine and ninety;
And the devil is meaner than woman kind,
And I am the weaver’s bonny.”

You have answered my questions nine,
Sing ninety-nine and ninety;
So you are God’s, you are none of mine,
And you are the weaver’s bonny.”

They hanged John Farrel in the dawn amid the marketplace;
At dusk came Adam Brand to him and spat upon his face.
“Ho neighbors all,” spake Adam Brand, “see ye John Farrel’s fate!
“Tis proven here a hempen noose is stronger than man’s hate!

For heard ye not John Farrel’s vow to be avenged upon me
Come life or death? See how he hangs high on the gallows tree!”
Yet never a word the people spoke, in fear and wild surprise-
For the grisly corpse raised up its head and stared with sightless eyes,

And with strange motions, slow and stiff, pointed at Adam Brand
And clambered down the gibbet tree, the noose within its hand.
With gaping mouth stood Adam Brand like a statue carved of stone,
Till the dead man laid a clammy hand hard on his shoulder bone.

Then Adam shrieked like a soul in hell; the red blood left his face
And he reeled away in a drunken run through the screaming market place;
And close behind, the dead man came with a face like a mummy’s mask,
And the dead joints cracked and the stiff legs creaked with their unwonted task.

Men fled before the flying twain or shrank with bated breath,
And they saw on the face of Adam Brand the seal set there by death.
He reeled on buckling legs that failed, yet on and on he fled;
So through the shuddering market-place, the dying fled the dead.

At the riverside fell Adam Brand with a scream that rent the skies;
Across him fell John Farrel’s corpse, nor ever the twain did rise.
There was no wound on Adam Brand but his brow was cold and damp,
For the fear of death had blown out his life as a witch blows out a lamp.

His lips were writhed in a horrid grin like a fiend’s on Satan’s coals,
And the men that looked on his face that day, his stare still haunts their souls.
Such was the fate of Adam Brand, a strange, unearthly fate;
For stronger than death or hempen noose are the fires of a dead man’s hate

I will repeat a subtle rune—
And thronging suns of Otherwhere
Shall blaze upon the blinded air,
And spectres terrible and fair
Shall wake the riven world at noon.

The star that was mine empery
In dust upon unwinnowed skies:
But primal dreams have made me wise,
And soon the shattered years shall rise
To my remembered sorcery.

To mantic mutterings, brief and low,
My palaces shall lift amain,
My bowers bloom; I will regain
The lips whereon my lips have lain
In rose-red twilights long ago.

Before my murmured exorcism
The world, a wispy wraith, shall flee:
A stranger earth, a weirder sea,
People with shapes of Fäery,
Shall swell upon the waste abysm.

The pantheons of darkened stars
Shall file athwart the crocus dawn;
Goddess and Gorgon, Lar and faun,
Shall tread the amaranthine lawn,
And giants fight their thunderous wars.

Like graven mountains of basalt,
Dark idols of my demons there
Shall tower through bright zones of air,
Fronting the sun with level stare;
And hell shall pave my deepest vault.

Phantom and fiend and sorceror
Shall serve me…till my term shall pass,
And I become no more, alas,
Than a frail shadow on the glass
Before some latter conjurer.

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you or I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair–
(Even as you or I!)

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste,
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand!
A fool there was and his goods he spent,
(Even as you or I!)

Honour and faith and a sure intent
(And it wasn’t the least what the lady meant),
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(Even as you or I!)
Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
And the excellent things we planned
Belong to the woman who didn’t know why
(And now we know that she never knew why)
And did not understand!

The fool was stripped to his foolish hide,
(Even as you or I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him aside–
(But it isn’t on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him died–
(Even as you or I!)

“And it isn’t the shame and it isn’t the blame
That stings like a white-hot brand–
It’s coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing, at last, she could never know why)
And never could understand!”