Short Story Reviews and Mail Bag

My monthly survey of new short fiction is over at Black Gate as of today. As always, go read the magazines, drive up their traffic and let them know what you think. Got to keep whatever markets for short stories pumping.

Damn, all you bloggers, reviewers, and Amazon recommenders out there! I just keep buying stuff that I have no idea when I'll get around to actually reading. At least some of these are short story collections so I can dip into them for a tale or two before and move on to something else.

This one I bought because of Sue Granquist's article on Black Gate about the 2013 Stoker nominees. I read about each book and thought this sounded good. I've actually read it already and I liked its bloody, pulpy creepiness.

Another horror book. Keith's West review of the new novel in the series intrigued me, so I bought the original novel (with bonus stories attached).

For $2.99 apiece, Subterranean's made a whole bunch of Brian Lumley short fiction available in e-book form. I was only hooked on him when I picked up Singer of Strange Songs, the Lumley-inspired volume in the Chaosium Mythos Fiction series. Later I picked up the his great anthology, The Horror at Oakdeene and Others. I think simply because he's written so many huge books he gets short shrift sometimes from a critical perspective, but I stand by him and especially his short stories as being real solid spook stories.

One of the problems with going on a Brian Lumley binge is you will never run out of books to buy. How many Necroscope books are there actually? I've read a few of these S&S stories and figured, why not?

Finally, in the wake of reading the excellent Echoes of the Goddess and a solid recommendation from John Fultz, I got this one. Still astonished at my lack of significant contact with his work until last year. Got to love that cover just reeking of peyote and psilocybin.