Night Frights Issue #1

Night Frights #1

by Lori Michelle (Editor), Max Booth III (Editor), Madison McSweeney

Scares for readers of all ages, Night Frights is Dark Moon Digest’s magazine designed for the Young Adult.

In this inaugural edition of our annual young adult magazine, monsters take revenge on a school board who cancels Halloween; a kid and some teens try to get a balloon out of a tree; witches recruit a little girl; a father will get a babysitter by any means necessary; a teenager is harassed by a strange creature only she can see; a housesitter gets an unexpected guest; a unique meme goes viral with malicious intent; a couple at a drive-in experience something sinister; a familiar fairy tale gets reimagined; and a boy claims to have met a mummy. With fiction by Madison McSweeney, Nick Manzolillo, Donna J.W. Munro, Priya Sridhar, Brenna Harvey, Amadin Ogbewe, Christopher R. Muscato, Angela Sylvaine, Joti Bilku and Jeff Strand, and an exclusive interview with Adam Cesare.

96 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2020

About the author

I am the managing editor for Dark Moon Digest Horror Quarterly and Dark Eclipse: The Dark Moon Digest monthly e-magazine. I also help to edit their special anthologies and help convert most of their publications to e-publications. I am the single mother of two wonderful children and work full time as a bookkeeper for a real estate company, where I am also the IT tech, human resources, sales processing, coffeemaker and general gopher. During my spare time (I really have some?) I own a dance studio and performance group. I also dabble in graphic art and use that knowledge to make business cards for people who need something more creative than the norm. I like to write short stories and have been published in several anthologies. My erotic thriller is now available, so go check out Dual Harvest here on Amazon and order it. I have also decided that I am now cool enough for a blog. www.lorimichelleauthor.com. In case you can't tell, my favorite color is purple. :)

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great curation of well-developed horror stories featuring teenaged protagonists. Adults of all ages would appreciate this magazine, despite its YA classification, and it's an excellent choice for parents who are looking for clean and creepy stories for their tween or teen. The nice thing about horror in general is that it can fall under the PG category and still be incredibly unnerving, which described most of the stories in this book. (There are a couple of humorous horror stories included to lighten the mood.)

Like another reviewer, I'm sad that this is only an annual publication, but it's quite a standout in the YA field so the next issue will be highly anticipated.

I would also like to comment on the formatting of the book, which was professionally done in such a way that the book reads just as easily and elegantly on a phone screen as it does on a full-screen tablet. It's not often you can actually sync your reading experience without having formatting or page magnification issues, but I had no problems at all with this one.

[Anatoly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Riddle by Ogbewe Amadin belongs to the genre of flash fiction. It is short and it has an unexpected ending. In the beginning, a mother said to her little daughter that her aunt is a witch.

According to her mother, it is bad, but the girl becomes less and less sure as the story goes on. The story also presents the moment of childhood when children realize that their parents may hold views of which they don't always agree.

However, the reader doesn't have enough facts to conclude if the aunt is a good or bad person, the main character only made her assumptions, which gives the reader space for interpretation.

This is a link to the text of the story:
https://firesidefiction.com/riddle

[J.W. Surface · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this was a fun issue! I enjoyed the attempt at reaching a younger audience, and for the most part, I think this first issue was quite successful. There were a few pieces that I thought were...not up to par with the others I guess you could say, but I'll stick with the good ones.

- When Helium Isn't Enough by Nick Manzolillo: This one was so strange it was good. I don't know what else to say about it...just...strange.
- The Last-Minute Babysitter by Priya Sridhar: Somehow this one felt so classic. It was fun, cool, and kept me turning the pages. Great read!
- Mr. Staples by Brenna Harvey: Such a unique/fresh story. Crazy, but in a good way. Creepy, but in the best way.
- We Don't Need Another Hero by Angela Sylvaine: This one was just plain fun. I'd love to see a follow up story to this one.
- The Mummy's Bite by Jeff Strand: Not my favorite of this issue, but I am a sucker for the classic monsters; can't get enough. And, the author put a little twist on a classic, so for that, I really appreciated this story.

Overall this was a good read. I will certainly be checking out issue 2, and if I ever have kids, I will no doubt push this their way.