I’ll never forget what I saw. Blood splattered the books and dripped from the shelves. Chunks of –something- globbed the carpet. “What is that?” I whispered. “Looks like an ears,” the Colonel replied, staring at the globby thing by his foot. “No, not specifically, Colonel.” I swallowed and swayed. “What is that, in general?” “A dead body.” The Colonel snorted. …

MazeI know only one prayer. Whatever gods are in this maze, may you suffer as we have suffered. May our prayers leave you ill and dying, as you have left us. I like bizarre, complicated stories. The kind that warp and wrap themselves into intricate designs of opaque obscurity and leave you scratching your head and rereading the same paragraph …

I usually have some snarky lead in, but could not come up with one here that did not come across as completely dickish. Make up one of your own, then place it here in your mind. The Drunken Exorcist is the incredibly short tale of Father Schnitt, an exorcist who is drunk. I know, who could have seen that coming, …

Princesses are not meant to pickup slimy, spit covered things from an animal’s mouth, especially if that animal is a scary ghost-demon wearing a crown of smoldering napalm. -“Diary of a Ghost’s Mistress” Before anything else is said, please note that both the title and cover art are at best uninspired and are not particularly representative of the contents. Remember …

They hadn’t played the Wide Game. They had been played. He’d been a pawn on a chessboard, a toy soldier in a war fought for the amusement of obscene fates. So many books and films have been made about high school reunions that it is hard to minimize their importance in the general culture of the United States. It’s almost …

If Dr. Cale was telling the truth about what she’d been able to do –and I had no reason to doubt her, even if Nathan wasn’t quite so sure- I was talking to a tapeworm that had been given full control of its very own human body. And that same tapeworm had been watching me sleep, just in case I …

We, as a people, carry a bizarre obsession with serial and spree killers. My wife has a rather large section of our library dedicated to the subject and she is, by no means, alone in her focus. They seem to be a part of the American mythic collective, where we tend to view them as something significantly more, or less, …

I’m starting to wonder what will happen if I keep staring at these words, what will happen if I keep reading them, what will happen to them, to me? Will they slide down onto the scuffed Formica tabletop, slither over to my hand, melt into my skin, ride my blood to my brain and burn themselves forever there? Gary Braunbeck, …

A phlegmatic gentleman by nature, some mistook Sleepy’s somnambulant Demeanor for muddle-mindedness. Given nuanced consideration, this was rather true after a fashion. -“Pimp My Airship”  I’ve made my distrust and general dislike of sci-fi and steampunk known in the past. I’m not into the fine details of your gew-gaws and widgets so much as I am into people. I want …

  Okay, folks, I’m going to try something here. I hope you’ve seen The World’s End by this point. You have, haven’t you? The last entry in Edgard Wright and Simon Pegg’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy? You really should see it. It’s a good time. Also, I’m about to spoil the ever loving shit out of it in a moment …

“He’d been waiting for the chance to cut somebody, to chop somebody up, to move up from steak and veal and pork ribs. Killer for morality, murderer for God, vicious for middle class America. Everybody just wanted the self-righteous excuse to maul somebody else, to threaten, to scare somebody the way they’d been scared their entire lives.” I remember a …

“Look around you. You’re on a military vehicle. They said it themselves- they fight people. That seems to run counter to keeping you safe and my blood inside of my body.” I’m not a good cook. It took me far too long to learn that, no matter how awesome chorizo, oregano, cabbage and mangos are, they shouldn’t go in my …

To paraphrase a high pitched nutcase from a rather rowdy clan, I tend to enjoy getting a bit f*cked up, then partaking in actions and events that are of an equal condition. Okay, maybe more than just a bit. Why am I telling you this? More importantly, why should you care? Because, if you’re like me, then you should be …

At this year’s Mo*Con, I had a chance to meet and chat with writer, editor and one time reader for Clarkesworld Magazine, Nayad A. Monroe. What struck me at the time was the passion and excitement that poured from her when discussion literary matters. Over the course of the discussion, it became clear to me that this is a lady …

By and large, fantasy bores me. The biggest issue I have is that there so rarely appears to be any actual fantasizing involved anymore. For every shinning jewel of Abarat, there is some trite tales of elves, dwarves, dragons and wizards. Plus, I could not give the slightest fart in the wind about the maneuverings and machinations of the great. …