Goodreads 384 Best Horror Anthos (First 100) Plus Post Death Review
It hasn’t been an exactly zippy last few days, but here’s something that has come a bit serendipitously, although with help from THE SMART RHINO PUBLICATIONS MISCHIEF-MAKING SYNDICATE (which has some books on the list as well) on Facebook, or, every little bit of notice counts no matter how second-hand. The item: Goodreads’ LISTOPIA BEST HORROR ANTHOLOGIES with, by their count, 384 multi-author collections of dark short fiction. So 384 is a pretty big number, but I did skim through the first one hundred and, the news of the day, I have work in at least three titles, numbers 24, 50, and 97. More specifically these are THE BEST OF CEMETERY DANCE VOLUME 1 & 2 OMNIBUS (CD Publications, 1998) with “A Christmas Story,” SLICES OF FLESH (Dark Moon Books, 2012) with “Bones, Bones, the Musical Fruit,” and AFTER DEATH (Dark Moon Books, 2013) with “Mall Rats,” the first two of these reprints and the third an original publication. One may note also that the farther down on the list, the more recent the publication is, which may make some sense if the [image error]positions are based on Goodreads member recommendations, the oldest thus having been on the “ballot” longer.
But now, one extra: the titles are “live” in that one can click them to go to their Goodreads pages (and thence to Amazon et al. should one wish to) and, checking to confirm their contents, I ran across a review of AFTER DEATH with a flattering mention of my story, “Mall Rats,” that I hadn’t seen before. Thus, from Goodreads reviewer Kenneth Cain (well, it is flattering): After reading the anthology Guignard edited last year, I simply could not pass on this one. And the theme for this one appealed to me, so much so that I wish I would have sent something in. The stories are fantastic, a wide range of interpretations of death or what lies beyond or otherwise. Fantastic stories that leave you wondering, which is why the theme alone is so wonderful. The opening two stories pack a punch. “Someone to Remember” offers a beautiful detailing of love everlasting and “Boy 7” comes back at us with a brutal story of hope. I’m also quite fond of “I Will Remain,” and especially “Mall Rats” which had a spooky feel throughout. But all of the stories were good, and those fascinated with the after life will thoroughly enjoy this effort.
To check out the Goodreads list in its entirety, one can press here. (“Bones, Bones, the Musical Fruit,” incidentally, is also reprinted in my own collection THE TEARS OF ISIS.)
