Aamis is Still a Better Love Story than Twilight [Tribeca Review]

Aamis (Ravening) opens with a meet cute and a Meat Club. PhD student studying meat-eating habits in Northeastern India Sumon (Arghadeep Baruah) needs a doctor for his friend. The neighborhood pediatrician Nirmali (Lima Das) agrees to help Sumon’s adult friend despite it being her day off, saying, “Perfect. Just what I needed Sunday morning.” She refuses traditional payment, but when Sumon tells her about his “Meat Club” that slaughters and cooks their own animals, she can’t resist trying some.

He brings rabbit to her clinic. Soon they’re talking about all the different meats they want to try — dog, cat, bat, a bug that needs to have the hallucinogenic juices squeezed out before consumption — and finding the weirdest one they can. It’s oddly romantic, but it wouldn’t be a story without a catch: Nirmali is married.

Nirmali’s sister Jumi (Neetali Das) is having a more illicit affair. She and Sumon’s best friend Elias (Sagar Saurabh) keep asking the lovers if they’re having sex but they aren’t. They’ve replaced carnal pleasures with carnivorous ones.

Keep reading at Wicked Horror!

The Gasoline Thieves Will Steal Your Heart [Tribeca Review]

When I was in eighth grade, I asked my friend Mike to ask our friend Liz if she would be my girlfriend. She said yes. I was elated. I didn’t do anything to change my behavior — I didn’t sit with her at lunch, I didn’t call her to talk, I didn’t actually see her outside of art class during the day, though I could’ve. At thirteen years old, I didn’t know I was supposed to do those things. Lalito (Eduardo Banda), the protagonist of The Gasoline Thieves (Huachicolero), doesn’t either.

He’s an awkward middle schooler, who asks out Ana (Regina Reynoso) early in the film. Her friends laugh at him, and mock him, “Haven’t you seen a soap opera?” They tell him if he want’s Ana to go out with him that he needs to be spontaneous, to act like a gentleman, and give her gifts. Specifically, an iPhone.

Read more at Wicked Horror!

Transparency in Writing (Podcast)

How much should you tell your readers? Find out what we think here!

When the Sirens Have Faded (Call for Submissions)

I’m very excited to be editing this anthology! (Cross-posted from A Murder of Storytellers.)

When the Sirens Have Faded

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre famously asked viewers, “Who will survive, and what will be left of them?” The film itself focused much more on the first half of the question. With the anthology When the Sirens Have Faded, A Murder of Storytellers wants you to dig into the other: “What will be left of them?” When the sirens have faded, and the police are gone, where do the final girls go? What does the child do after they’ve been exorcised, when the demons have stopped bumping in the night? Is the past ever the past? Does horror and the trauma it brings with it ever actually die?

We’re looking for short fiction (under 6,000 words) that dives into the lives of people who live through the horror movie. We want to see how it’s changed them. We want to see if the monsters are ever actually ever gone. We’re looking for the intergenerational effects it has. Think Halloween 2018, Scream 2. The horror should still be there, but we want to know if healing can take place alongside or beside it.

All submissions should be in Shunn Manuscript formatting.

All submissions should be previously unpublished.

Submissions will be open until July 13th, 2019.

Payment is $15 and a contributor copy upon publication.

GO TO SUBMITTABLE

Death of the Author (Podcast)

I got together with the Merry Murderers to discuss the “Death of the Author” school of thinking. Listen here!

She Could Fly: The Lost Pilot #1 (Review)

She Could Fly is back with it’s second arc, The Lost Pilot. It was the best comic series I covered last year, and I’m pumped to get back into it.

The series picks up two semesters of in-patient care from where it left off, showing Luna’s meeting with three different mental health professionals. She describes a recurring dream she has where she’s walking on a stone bridge over lava. It narrows as she progresses. No matter how hard she tries, she eventually falls in but, “it doesn’t [burn] her. [She] turn[s] into glass. Like — perfect beautiful glass” instead. It’s the kind of creepy imagery that series artist Martín Morazzo excelled at in the first arc. It’s on full display throughout the issues. As always, Luna’s anxieties are the center of the story and that artwork really brings them out.

Continue reading at Wicked Horror!

Swearing (Podcast)

The Merry Murderers and I discussed swearing in fiction!

Obviously this isn’t safe for work.

Endings (Podcast)

I got together with the Merry Murderers and we talked about how to end stories. There’s a bonus clip of me singing if you listen through to the end!

Check it out!