Scares on the Shelf

Twice the Terror is a second collection of material from The Horror Zine, Jeani Rector's Sacramento-based webzine of dark-themed fiction, art and poetry.

The previous print collection, And Now the Nightmare Begins, featured a range of contributors, from the newly-launched to the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Simon Clark, and Joe R Lansdale.

I have to come clean and say that I have a dog in this fight - volume two includes my short story Not Here, Not Now.

From the book's Amazon entry:

The Horror Zine presents its second in-print anthology, a wicked brew of stories with relentless suspense that ride side-by-side with haunting poetry and eye-popping artwork. Volume 2 from The Horror Zine unveils a fresh approach to basic fears and has twisted, unexpected endings. “Twice the Terror: THE HORROR ZINE” contains contributions from such famous writers such as Graham Masterton, Bentley Little, Joe R. Lansdale, Deborah LeBlanc, Ed Gorman, Stephen Gallagher, Terence Faherty, and Hugh Fox. But it also contains deliciously dark delights from morbidly creative people who have not yet made the big time… but they will soon.

Mainstream publishing falls in and out of love with dark fiction, whereas it seems to me that the core readership's appetite remains fairly steady. Kudos to The Horror Zine for giving a platform to new writing in a context of the genre's more recent traditions.

Here are a couple of random picks from the quality artwork on the site. This one's Mercy by Isiah Stephens:


While these strange dolls are the creations of Beth Robinson.