Tag archives for horror
Babylon Falls [Flash Fiction]
An abandoned warehouse in the US (photo: lburgan via pixabay) I wrote Babylon Falls as short story for the NYC Flash Fiction Challenge round 2 back in September. The prompt was to write a horror story set in a warehouse and including a kids lunch box in under a thousand words. The premise I went with was something strange happened in Babylon in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. Ten years on some mysterious entity is getting its revenge on some of the US troops involved in thwarting it's nefarious activities. The title is a twin clue, Babylon Falls directly referring to the capture of the site of the ancient city. It also refers to the location of the warehouse. I wasn't entirely happy with Babylon Falls at the time, which is why I didn't post it sooner. I've had…
Horror Movies – What Makes Them Properly Scary?
The Blair Witch Project (Photo credit: Wikipedia) On the way to school this morning Alexander was asking me what makes the Blair Witch Project a scary horror movie. He hasn't seen Blair Witch, but he has read the article on the sequel in the current Empire magazine. Ever since he has been obsessed about knowing how the Blair Witch Project went. Horror or Splatter? One of the things we talked about was whether or not you really need lots of blood and gore in a horror movie. There's certainly a visceral horror in seeing injured or dismembered people. But it is quite hard to get it right. We're good at understanding that it isn't real. If we don't think it is real then we cannot be truly terrified. Gore in a horror movie is like slapstick in a comedy. It…
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Book Review – Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Pretty Monsters: Stories by Kelly Link My rating: 4 of 5 stars A collection of nine short stories with a sort of urban fantasy/horror theme, although low key theme horror rather than scare you into changing your pants horror. What they do is make you think about things. Almost all of the stories could be very normal, with a slightly mentally off kilter protagonist, or there could be something else there that you cannot quite see. A couple are straight fantasy, the Wizards of Perfil, being a good fantasy story about wizards that buy children for a nefarious hidden purpose. All of the stories are well crafted, and they all have a good premise that is well executed. I didn't feel that any of them were there just to make up the numbers. There was a level of variety about them…
Author Interview – Peter Bailey
This week's interview is with Peter Bailey, a British based author of horror stories. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I wrote my first ‘story’ way back in March 2011, and story is in quotes because it was a completely factual report of a disastrous trip to Las Vegas – but written in a deliberately comic style loosely based on Dave Barry (And if you’ve never read Mr Barry, please do!) The review is still online at and has gathered over a hundred replies. Now this was very surprising , It had never occurred to me that anyone might be interested in what I had to say, and once the idea had formed there was no turning back. The review became a short story, later stories were printed online and in ‘real’ books…
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The Atrocity Archives
A friend put me onto this book, saying that he was sure I'd like it. So I sneaked a copy of Charles Stross's The Atrocity Archives into one of my orders of Christmas presents. My only regret is that I didn't know about these stories before. Charles Stross has taken some lovecraftian horror, added geekery and then put it into a British civil service context for the conspiracy cover-up, although it is much more a case of hiding the cock ups as on a low The basic premise is that magic is just about doing mathematics, which makes using computers a serious occult capability. It sort of puts the sysadmin up there with sorcery, which given the jokes about getting SCSI to work needing black candles and a blood sacrifice makes some sort of sense. I certainly could identify a…