“It is as if the entire film is set in a graveyard in the middle of the night.”

That quote is from Troy Howarth who was, at the time, writing about Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby … Kill! for his intimidating coffee table tome The Haunted World of Mario Bava. The quote, alas, probably can’t be as freely applied to my story “Marcella,” which is inspired more by the lesbian vampire films of the late-era Hammer studios than by the delightfully lurid continental films that I was supposed to be sampling from when I wrote a story for Jonathan Raab’s Euroschlock Nightmares, which is now available for preorder from Muzzleland Press.

Here’s the thing, though: It’s a quote that I hope could be applied to some of my other stories, and a quote that could certainly be applied to some of my favorite movies and stories, both old and new. And, knowing Jonathan as I do, I can pretty much guarantee you that it’s a quote that could easily be applied to some of the other stories in Euroschlock Nightmares, even if my story in particular is more overgrown gardens and Rococo paintings, decadent manses and towns with burgomasters.

As so many of us are, I’m a busy person, and I don’t write (or publish) as much fiction as I used to, though the dearth there is at least somewhat ameliorated (again, I hope) by an abundance of nonfiction of various stripes. But I do still love a good scary story, and I still write them whenver I can. And I’m happy whenever one of my tales finds its way into print. While “Marcella” may be one of the first to do so in 2024, it won’t be the last, and I’m hoping to have some more specific news on that front very soon.

I thought that “Marcella” was going to be the first of my stories to see print this year, but I had forgotten a small thing – literally, in this case. As part of their recurring Flash on the Borderlands series, Pseudopod recently republished one of my (very) short pieces.

“Masks” originally appeared in an issue of Forbidden Futures back in 2018, where it was written to accompany an illustration of monstrous faces by Mike Dubisch. It was later reprinted in my most recent collection, How to See Ghosts & Other Figments. Like a lot of my stories, it sits at least somewhat in the shadow of a faded version of old Hollywood, although in this case that shadow is faded quite a lot indeed.

Besides the illustration it was written to accompany, the story had as its inspiration a number of images of masks made by photographer William Mortensen, some of them for old movies such as the 1928 Lon Chaney/Tod Browning joint West of Zanzibar. Astute readers may recognize Mortensen as, among other things, the model for my story “Mortensen’s Muse,” which appeared in Ellen Datlow’s Children of Lovecraft, behind a Mike Mignola cover.

Neither of these stories necessarily feel like they take place entirely in a graveyard at night, but I hope they give you a pleasant sort of frisson nonetheless. And don’t worry, there’ll be something more graveyard-y coming down the pike sooner or later. This is me, after all. There’s bound to be.