Tag Archives: Anton Cancre

She is perched high above the ground on a tree branch near the top of a weeping willow, swaying in the chilling riverside breeze. She watches the watcher through shimmering leaves, a set of hidden eyes participating in a feast of perversity. -“For the Sake of Pleasing” I had high hopes for Irredeemable. Sizemore has proven himself a man of …

You probably know Greg Hall. He’s the Friday night piggy-petter and grand poobah of the no-pants zone who gives out 80’s headshots with the, ahem, personalized inscription stating that you are indeed his favorite writer. He gets some of the biggest names in horror on his podcast, the Funky Werepig, but never forgets to leave room for those writers struggling …

From the depths of night, the thing creeps along the ocean of imagination, pulling itself with talons jagged from too much murder. Hunger fuels the hunt as it searches for the light. Its hiss drowned out by the rock and roll music that thunders from man-sized speakers. A Human throng sways to the primal rhythms. Here and there are the …

I wasn’t particularly sure about reviewing this one. After all, it’s a short, cheap oneshot to draw in an audience for the followup novel (The Red Eye) and I already reviewed that one. But, due to the huge difference in tone, structure and effect between the two, I decided that it warranted me chiming in on. Sam Brody is a …

Meet Sam Brody, skeptic extraordinaire and late night host of The Red Eye, a radio show where he debunks myths of supernatural, psychic and otherworldly goofiness. So what does he do when he finds himself thrust neck deep into the same sort of stuff he professionally calls bullshit on? Say, for instance, items start exploding or flying around when he …

It’s everything you never wanted to hear or that perhaps you or somebody you knew suffered through, whether from the human misery of this universe or a criminality intruding from the supernatural.   -from Essay I: The Myth of Falling  I’ve been known to mutter that one of the best reason to create art, to spin the patently unreal out of …

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. …

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 …

“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 …