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BAQWA Presents: Horror Show 2021
Curl up with your favorite warm beverage this fall and leave a light on. It's time for Horror Show 2021. The Bay Area Queer Writers Association is proud to present this inaugural collection of spooky tales featuring authors Wayne Goodman, M.D. Neu, Richard May, Liz Faraim, and R.L. Merrill. Sometimes writing about the things that frighten us helps us cope with real-life terror, and these stories are all a product of a scary time. **All proceeds from this limited-time anthology will be donated to the Billy DeFrank Center in San Jose, California. The Bay Area Queer Writers Association is a group of local writers who support and encourage each other.
The goal of the group is to create a strong visible writing community here in the Bay Area. They are based in Silicon Valley, but they have members from all over the Bay Area.
This group is open to anyone who loves to read and wants to help support area authors. You don't have to live in the Bay Area to be a member, you just have to love Queer books and enjoy reading.
Please visit //baqwawriters.wixsite.com/books for more information.
130 pages, Paperback
Published October 8, 2021
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 21, 2022
UNABASHEDLY WEIRD AND QUEER HORROR TALES
BAQWA Presents: Horror Show 2021 is the first collection to be published by the Bay Area Queer Writers Association. Five member writers each contribute two short stories. Wayne Goodman, M. D. Neu, Richard May, Liz Faraim, and R. L. Merrill may include a ghost or monster in their stories, but their stories are not your usual blood-curdling horror stories. These writers are more subtle, more cerebral, so to speak, in their approach to the horror genre. But every one of their tales is unabashedly weird and queer. One story is narrated by a cat.
In lieu of summarizing the contents of the ten stories and possibly spoiling the surprises these stories contain, I’d like to quote a line from each of them, out of context, of course, to give a hint of the flavor of the author’s writing and to pique readers’ interests in the stories.
Wayne Goodman, “The Turn of the James”: “But you had feelings toward other men, didn’t you?”
M. D. Neu, “Landsend”: “We didn’t survive that pandemic to give up.”
Richard May, “Resurrection”: “You should not have come, monsieur.”
Liz Faraim, “Bad Man”: “Little does the Bad Man know that Rufus is a retired military police dog and will protect our yard with a ferocity level set to kill.”
R. L. Merrill, “A Kept Woman”: “She possessed a combination of all the traits a person would find attractive on both a man or a woman at the same time, as if someone morphed Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron into one person, taking the best parts of each.”
Liz Faraim, “Entwined”: “During work, I kept getting chills up my spine and felt a bit feverish every time I reached into my pocket and touched the piece of twine.”
M. D. Neu, “The Old Road”: “Well, it’s Halloween, and they wanted to be scared, so let’s oblige them.”
R. L. Merrill, “Guerrilla Gardening during the Great Pause”: “Not even my neighbors and their attempts to disturb the sovereignty of my yard will keep me from victory…”
Richard May, “Inheritance”: “I was selling Enscombe and hoping to make a lot of money.”
Wayne Goodman, “About Midnight”: “Are those pictures of Midnight?”
Find a copy of Horror Show 2021 and have a scary old time with the writers from BAQWA.
BAQWA Presents: Horror Show 2021 is the first collection to be published by the Bay Area Queer Writers Association. Five member writers each contribute two short stories. Wayne Goodman, M. D. Neu, Richard May, Liz Faraim, and R. L. Merrill may include a ghost or monster in their stories, but their stories are not your usual blood-curdling horror stories. These writers are more subtle, more cerebral, so to speak, in their approach to the horror genre. But every one of their tales is unabashedly weird and queer. One story is narrated by a cat.
In lieu of summarizing the contents of the ten stories and possibly spoiling the surprises these stories contain, I’d like to quote a line from each of them, out of context, of course, to give a hint of the flavor of the author’s writing and to pique readers’ interests in the stories.
Wayne Goodman, “The Turn of the James”: “But you had feelings toward other men, didn’t you?”
M. D. Neu, “Landsend”: “We didn’t survive that pandemic to give up.”
Richard May, “Resurrection”: “You should not have come, monsieur.”
Liz Faraim, “Bad Man”: “Little does the Bad Man know that Rufus is a retired military police dog and will protect our yard with a ferocity level set to kill.”
R. L. Merrill, “A Kept Woman”: “She possessed a combination of all the traits a person would find attractive on both a man or a woman at the same time, as if someone morphed Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron into one person, taking the best parts of each.”
Liz Faraim, “Entwined”: “During work, I kept getting chills up my spine and felt a bit feverish every time I reached into my pocket and touched the piece of twine.”
M. D. Neu, “The Old Road”: “Well, it’s Halloween, and they wanted to be scared, so let’s oblige them.”
R. L. Merrill, “Guerrilla Gardening during the Great Pause”: “Not even my neighbors and their attempts to disturb the sovereignty of my yard will keep me from victory…”
Richard May, “Inheritance”: “I was selling Enscombe and hoping to make a lot of money.”
Wayne Goodman, “About Midnight”: “Are those pictures of Midnight?”
Find a copy of Horror Show 2021 and have a scary old time with the writers from BAQWA.
September 10, 2023
Some of theses stories were fun, unexpected, or darkly funny. A couple were genuinely good and I wish they would be continued in full length novels.
One of the stories is best described as an openly racist sex fantasy, so that was weird and distasteful. Maybe the open racism was intended to be part of the horror of the story; I abandoned it after the sentence, "I had never been with a black".
One of the stories is best described as an openly racist sex fantasy, so that was weird and distasteful. Maybe the open racism was intended to be part of the horror of the story; I abandoned it after the sentence, "I had never been with a black".
January 17, 2022
A great anthology
This was a really good read with a fun mix of stories. I hope there will be more as I would love another volume!
This was a really good read with a fun mix of stories. I hope there will be more as I would love another volume!
January 8, 2024
Great collection of short stories from talented authors in the Bay area. I enjoyed some stories more than others but all were great to read.
April 22, 2023
A delightful collection of tales of spook, survival, splatter, sexy zombies, grumpy ghosts, and crazy cat ladies not to be denied, gathered together by the collective tales of the Bay Area Queer Writers Association members who pull their talents together for this anthology. Wayne Goodman had me laughing my head off with his visitation by the ghost of Henry James, followed by being collared by a lonely witch looking for a new Midnight…literally. Equal hilarity ensued in one woman’s battle against the wildlife for her garden offered up by R.L. Merrill, plus a classic horror trope turned into a steamy story of romance in the morgue. Sadness mingles with splatter as the lonely descend into personal horror in a story offered by Liz Faraim while she shows that social workers and cops have back-up when the local dog and cat participate in the neighborhood watch. Richard May offers steamy menace and mystery in two tales evoking many a gothic trapping enshrouding the true horror lurking within. The collection is rounded out by M.D. Neu’s touching stories of heroism in a post-pandemic apocalypse where nothing is the same. I found myself curling up (and often wanting more) as I enjoyed this batch of autumn tales offered up by my fellow BAQWA writers. I encourage you to do the same.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews