protean depravity

The yearly StokerCon was last week, and the latest Bram Stoker Awards (BSA) have found their new owners. The BSA's are arguably the most important awards in horror fiction because they basically decide which books will enter the horror canon and which will not, and authors who have been granted the award, or even have been nominated, carry that title with a certain kind of honor - even though it's the books that make the authors, not the awards. Being a USA-based award, the lineup is usually heavily from there, which can be a shame as there's great horror from everywhere these days. It's always wonderful to see a name or two who made it despite being in translation, and this year there's Mariana Enriquez from Argentina and Sofia Ajram from Canada, but unfortunately nobody outside of the American continents. It is usual I don't always agree with the nominees or winners, as I think the same names keep on rotating and some fresh horror authors who do deserve to be ...

Every year in June, at the middle of the road, I turn back to take a look at the year in horror and the books I have read so far, and since time is nothing but a blur these days, we're there already. In order to do so I answer a series of questions that we use to sum up our reading year/half year over at the Shine and Shadow reading group on Goodreads. I feel like my reading considerably slowed down this year, and I indeed decided to read less fluff and more books that are of value to me. I still feel like chasing my own tail though, and I'm not achieving much of my reading goals. Let's break it down to how it went so far!

Finally did I collect enough short reviews to post here... I have been reading a lot of non-speculative fiction and the birthday week of the Hammett bookstore plus my regular day job finished my energy off, resulting in me not being able to read everything I wanted. But I'm still happy there were a couple of really good books amongst the ones I managed to read. So, here are the short reviews, I hope you enjoy them!

In the age of never-ending reinvention of the vampire trope (and frankly, of every other trope too), it is pretty damn hard to create something original, and more importantly, something meaningful out of this rusted, crusted, dusted motif. One way of achieving such originality is putting the vampire in all sorts of unconventional, unexpected, surprising, sometimes even silly or compromising situations, which, if we're being honest, isn't all that original anymore. Another way is to dive into the heart of what vampires are about, and use or maybe modify that foundation in order to suit your story and to make your point. Horror author Stephen Graham Jones makes exactly that in his latest novel, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter , and to make a meaningful point, as is well known, is his strong suit. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is the nested narrative of present-day academic Etsy Beaucarne who wants to write a book about the 1912 diary of her great great great grandfather Arthur after it wa...

Guys, I forgot to add two important things to my early summer blog post that you shouldn't miss if you can; This weekend, starting tomorrow and going on Sunday, it's time for the Final Girls Brain Binge again! I'm just pasting a picture of the program here, you'll need to subscribe as usual, and, of course, it is free as usual:

Even though the weather hasn't noticed it yet, the summer is supposed to be knocking on our doors, and that means more events, open air cinemas, new challenges and similar stuff. Let's take a look at what's up in Berlin and in my reading plans in the early summer 2025.

There's a reason that out of body experiences such as body swaps or astral projections are a staple of speculative fiction – the possibility of experiencing life in a different body, literally walking in the shoes of someone else, is EXCITING, it is the antidote of looking at the same old boring face in the mirror every single morning. But it is only when the experience is not a swap anymore, and becomes one sided, say like a possession or a haunting, then we're entering horror, uncanny territory. And if the bodies merged belong to people of backgrounds antithetical in nature, let's say the richest and most powerful white man of the world, the president of the USA, and an orphaned boy in Nigeria, you have pure social comedy, and that's what Nigerian-British author Nuzo Onoh explores in her latest book The Fake Ghost .

Slowly closing in on the final pages of King's debut short story collection The Night Shift , this penultimate look will be all about chain smokers ( Quitters, Inc. ), uncanny stalkers ( I Know What You Need ) and creepy kids ( Children of the Corn ), possibly even about creepy kids who smoke and stalk , who kows! Let's go! It would be good for you to read along the stories I'm discussing in this column, because I'll spoil everything!