For the first time ever writing legend Richard Thomas will be hosting his world leading online course "Contemporary Dark Fiction" at a European friendly time slot.  

Are you ready to take your writing to the next level? It’s important to not only write and read on a regular basis, but to understand the genres that you write in, and how you fit in. This class will talk at length about many different genres that contribute to the current dark fiction landscape (fantasy, science fiction, horror, Southern gothic, crime, neo-noir, transgressive, magical realism, and literary fiction) while simultaneously learning techniques, mechanics, structure, and essential elements that can be applied to ALL writing.

This course is reading and writing intensive. You will read four books in four months—one novel per month.

Each week you will complete the weekly assigned reading:

1. One instructional column from Richard’s Storyville series at LitReactor.
2. At least one short story which relates to the column.
3. A portion of a novel.

Discussion will surround how to apply the elements and the column and topic to your own writing and you will complete a writing assignment—200 to 1,000 words—utilizing what you’ve learned.

The weekly Skype call lasts 1.5 hours and will cover that week’s short story, the column and subject, and the novel.

Additional discussion will occur in a private Facebook group.

At the end of the month, you will turn in an original short story, up to 4,000 words, based on whatever inspired you over the course of our studies. Richard will read, edit, and critique each story, and return it to you with advice on what to do next (keep editing, drop it, polish it up, send it out). You are also responsible for providing feedback on the stories workshopped each month, in a timely basis.

At the end of the semester you will get one hour of private Skype time with Richard to talk about anything you like—your work in class, other projects, the industry in general, markets, query letters, how to get an agent, what to do next, etc.
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TRIGGER WARNING: We will read stories and novels that contain sex, violence, and other potentially upsetting material.

Week One: Dynamic Settings “Wilderness” by Letitia Trent (Exigencies)

Week Two: Revealing Character “When I Make Love to the Bug Man by Laura Benedict (The Lineup)

Week Three: Innovating genres “The Last Manuscript” by Usman T. Malik (Exigencies)

Week Four: Shifting Sympathies “Cat Calls” by Rebecca Jones-Howe (Exigencies)

Week Five: Love Instead of Death—Writing With Heart “That Baby” by Lindsay Hunter (The New Black)

Week Six: Making Relationships Feel Real in Your Fiction “See You Later, Fry-o-Lator” by Monica Drake (The Lineup)

Week Seven: Avoiding Tropes in Horror “Windeye” by Brian Evenson (The New Black)

Week Eight: Supernatural & Speculative Fiction—Getting Weird Without Losing Your Audience “Second Chances” by Stephen Graham Jones (After the People Lights Have Gone Off)

Week Nine: Manipulating Your Readers “Rust and Bone” by Craig Davidson (The New Black)

Week Ten: Dramatic Structure and Freytag’s Triangle “It’s Against the Law to Feed the Ducks” by Paul Tremblay (The New Black)

Week Eleven: What is Neo-Noir Fiction? “Dial Tone” by Benjamin Percy (The New Black)

Week Twelve: Ten Ways to Avoid Cliches and Stereotypes “Twenty Reasons to Stay and One to Leave,” “Asking for Forgiveness,” and “Splintered” by Richard Thomas

Week Thirteen: Writing the Grotesque “Ceremony of the White Dog” by Kevin Catalano (Exigencies)

Week Fourteen: Breaking Hearts “Parts” by Holly Goddard Jones (The Lineup)

Week Fifteen: Endings, Twisted and Otherwise “Father, Son, Holy Rabbit” by Stephen Graham Jones (The New Black)

Week Sixteen: Writing Horror Stories “The Familiars” by Micaela Morrissette (The New Black)

Summer: Class meets every Tuesday at 8:00 PM, Greenwich Mean Time beginning May 4th.
Select this option to enroll in the Contemporary Dark Fiction Class with a twelve-month payment plan.
If you’re a returning student, you’ll pay $90 each month for 12 months. If you’re a new student, you’ll pay $100 a month for 12 months.
5 seats available.
We make every effort to make sure our seating availability stays up to date, but because we want to be able to offer payment plans, making the classes more accessible, we are unable to automate our inventory at this time. If you purchase a class for a semester that’s full, we will offer a full refund, or work with you to get you into a different class. We thank you for your understanding and patience.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out led to a welcome resurgence in African American created horror movies, giving us Antebellum, the Hoodoo-heavy Spell, the criminally underrated and underseen Bad Hair, as well as Peele’s own Us and forthcoming Candyman revisit.


70’s black cinema is often characterized in popular culture as an era of strutting, jive-talking pimps, kung fu toughs, natural-haired ladies, hustlers, and larger than life gun-toting black P.I.’s stomping through the Nixon era ghettos, sticking it to whitey and rolling over adversity in chromed-out Cadillacs to the funky tunes of Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, and Bobby Womack.


But as Shudder’s indispensable documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror explores, in the long shadows cast by indisputable blaxploitation classics like Shaft, Superfly, Black Caesar and Foxy Brown, the golden age of black horror cinema quietly arose.


They varied wildly in quality and execution, from the innovative pinnacle of Blacula and the arthouse classic Ganja and Hess, to the mostly atrocious failures of Blackenstein and various Filipino-produced Marlene Clark excursions like Night of The Cobra Woman. Solid entries like J.D.’s Revenge and Sugar Hill never quite arrested the wider public’s imagination in ways the Universal Horror films of the 30’s and 40’s did, or attained mass crossover appeal, but the waves they made continue to be felt in popular entertainment, detected or not.


Above them all, there stand two exemplary entries, both directed by the same black filmmaker, an unsung master of horror, William Crain.

​William Crain followed up Blacula with Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, a Blaxploitation take on Robert Louis Stevenson, starring Bernie Casey as an accomplished African American physician working to develop a cure for liver cirrhosis which has the unfortunate side-effect of turning him into a bestial, unstoppable albino maniac with a penchant for murdering prostitutes and pimps.


Like Blacula, this movie is anchored by a fantastic performance by Bernie Casey. Ji-Tu Cumbuka shows up again, here as a tough talking police lieutenant. Respected cinematographer Tak Fujimoto brings his artful expertise to bear as well.


On a surface read, this may come off on paper as silly. It certainly has all the funk, gratuitous nudity, and violence Blaxploitation audiences expected. However, a closer look at its themes of black sense of self and pride (Dr. Pride is the name of the central character) reveals a deeper, more nuanced work.


Pride is a self-made man. Born in a brothel to an alcoholic mother, he has fought his way up to attain professional, wealthy status, yet is seen as a sell-out by Linda, one of his patients (who accuses him of dressing and thinking ‘white’). Pride, desperate to cure the pervading ills of the community from which he stemmed, tries to compel his low-income patients to submit to his experiments, and when his murderous id takes over, he takes the form of a white man. The age old symbolism of black as evil and white as good is cleverly reversed. The racist tropes of King Kong are also homaged and subverted when, in the climactic scene, he scales Rodia’s Watts Towers in apparent anguish and self-loathing and is assailed by circling police helicopters.


By all rights, for these two landmark Blaxploitation horror films, William Crain should be remembered and lauded as a grandmaster of African American horror cinema and included in the pantheon of James Wale, Todd Browning, and Robert Siodmak in terms of his contribution to the horror genre as a whole.

Edward M. Erdelac is the author of thirteen novels, including Andersonville, The Knight With Two Swords, and The Merkabah Rider series. His stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies and magazines, including Star Wars Insider Magazine.


His latest book, a collection of supernatural stories starring an occult detective in 1976 Harlem, Conquer, inspired by his love of Blaxploitation, Brother Voodoo, and Ernest Tidyman novels, is now available at

                                                        https://smarturl.it/4rp54d

Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he now lives in the Los Angeles area with his family. News and excerpts from his work can be found at

Written and directed by Michael Shlain, In a Foreign Town premieres on Film Shortage. Based on the works of Thomas Ligotti, this short brings the author’s signature ‘philosophical horror’ to an expanded audience.

Michael Shlain’s short horror film, In a Foreign Town, makes its online premiere on Film Shortage. In a Foreign Town takes viewers to a surreal place that blurs old memories with something far sinister. The film stars Yuri Lowenthal (Spider-man Ps4, Love, Death + Robots, Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Tony Amendola (Annabelle, Stargate SG-1). Produced by Shlain, Jason B. Milligan and Travis Stevens at Butcher Bird Studios with Thomas Ligotti brought on board as a consultant and music by Current 93 and Nodding God. The short – which serves as a proof-of-concept for a three-part limited series in active development – is the first major film adaptation of Ligotti’s influential work.

Thomas Ligotti, says “Strange atmospheres being what I seek in my writing and those of others, I felt Foreign Town wholly admirable in making me feel at home.” 

Michael Shlain, In a Foreign Town’s director, says, “Ligotti’s stories speak to an experience of dread, alienation and nameless anxiety that I believe many of us can relate to today. They describe my inner world when I’ve been at my most hopeless, depressed, and fearful – a place of emotional darkness, mental fog and distorted reality. In bringing In a Foreign Town to life, we have an opportunity to create a point of connection and dialogue around our shared terror and collective darkness.”  
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Silver Salt Films is pleased to offer a first-look image from Prano Bailey-Bond's Sundance 2021 Official Selection CENSOR. The Welsh director's debut feature stars multiple-IFTA-winning actor Niamh Algar as the film’s lead ‘Enid’, and will open the Festival's Midnight strand. Protagonist Pictures is handling world sales.

Britain, 1985. When film censor Enid discovers an eerie horror that speaks directly to her sister’s mysterious disappearance, she resolves to unravel the puzzle behind the film and its enigmatic director – a quest that will blur the lines between fiction and reality in terrifying ways. Steeped in glorious 1980s aesthetics, CENSOR is a bloody love letter to the VHS ‘video nasty’ horror classics of the past.

The film stars Niamh Algar (Raised by Wolves, The Virtues, Calm With Horses) alongside Michael Smiley (Jawbone, Kill List), Vincent Franklin (Gentleman Jack, Bodyguard), Nicholas Burns (Ghost Stories, Nathan Barley), Adrian Schiller (Victoria, The Last Kingdom) and Sophia La Porta (Hulu’s Four Weddings and a Funeral, Been So Long).

CENSOR was developed by the BFI, Film4, Creative England via the BFI NETWORK and Ffilm Cymru Wales, and was funded by the BFI and Ffilm Cymru Wales, both awarding National Lottery funding, and by Film4, with support from Kodak Motion Picture and Cinelab London.

​The original Amnesia: The Dark Descent was an epoch-making work in horror video games. Arriving during the latter days of the declining “survival horror” sub-genre (in which iconic franchises such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill dominated), it blew the assumptions and parameters thereof wide open. 

Gone were the faintly hokey, B-movie derivative plots, settings and familiar set pieces, along with any capacity the player had to defend themselves against the various entities and situations into which they were thrown. Whereas survival horror had a tendency to focus on external threats to the player (be it in the form of abhuman monstrosities created by science gone mad or supernatural interference or actively hostile situations to the protagonist's wellbeing), Amnesia turned the focus inward, to the distorted perceptions and psychology of the player character (and, by extension, the player themselves). 

Rather than utilising traditional cinematic horror tropes and techniques, Amnesia was arguably amongst the first video games to utilise its own format as an interactive experience to evoke a sense of disturbance and discomfort in the player: 

Early in the game's narrative, it becomes apparent that our protagonist is largely unreliable, both in terms of what he assumes of himself and the perceptions through which our own engagement with the environment is filtered. This allows for some excessively disturbing moments in which settings warp and twist, in which we as the player are uncertain of what is real and what isn't. 

This almost unique aspect of Amnesia made it a much emulated -but rarely bettered- work in the years to come, with the likes of the superlative Layers of Fear, not to mention SOMA (similarly by Frictional Games), a work that foregoes the gothic and Lovecraftian stylings of its predecessor in favour of a science fiction, existential nightmare. The DNA of Amnesia is now as much sincerely a part of horror video games as the more pervasively remembered Resident Evil or Silent Hill, its influence so profound, the original has become somewhat buried beneath its many descendents and immitators. 

The announcement of a new game in the franchise, therefore, was met with as much trepidation as it was enthusiasm: 

In order to warrant its own legacy, it would have to be something sincerely spectacular. However, how could a work bearing the Amnesia title still boast all the hallmarks thereof without itself coming off as by-the-numbers or derivative? ​

An extremely difficult exercise and a sincerely frightening one for any studio to attempt. 

Reviews for Amnesia: Rebirth have generally been. . .lukewarm. Not in any way derisive or denigrating; the game has generally impressed with its narrative, its technical elements, its well-written characters, but has left the gaming world cold in terms of its lack of originality and the fact that it is, technically speaking, very much an Amnesia title in the vein of its predecessor' its mechanics left largely unchanged, barring a few refinements and additions here and there. Even the dynamic of its horror is vaguely similar, with protagonist Tasi Trianon finding herself in a world that warps and shifts around her as her perceptions are distorted by fear (not to mention the many seemingly-supernatural phenomena occurring around her). 

It was therefore with some misgivings that I sat down to the experience the game for myself. 

And yes, whilst I understand some of the criticisms that it has received (it is certainly VERY much a member of the Amnesia family, and does little on a technical level to prove anywhere near as epoch-making as its antecedents), I also cannot deny that it is an extremely atmospheric, superbly-paced and conceived, well-rendered, beautifully-written and engaging story of existential horror. 

It might not be epoch-making or zeitgeist defining, but it isn't trying to be. The team behind it clearly understood that the “lightning in the bottle” success of the original can't by synthetically recreated, and so set out to tell the best story they could with the tools at hand. 

First and foremost, the setting of the game is somewhat startling, especially for fans of the original: whereas -as one might expect- The Dark Descent took place in a realm of almost perpetual murk and darkness -crumbling, gothic mansions, ill-lit caverns and subterannean temple-complexes-, Rebirth initially does a volte face and situates the player in wide-open desert, in the midst of glaring sunlight (that, ironically, proves as deleterious as the shadows and darkness of pevious games). The colour and light and sheer expanse of the desolation is the antithesis of the previous game's claustrophobic corridors, tunnels and chambers; a deliberate characteristic designed to impress upon the player that: this is not your Mother's Amnesia, but an entirely new story and situation (though tangential links to the original's Lovecraftian mythology do start to occur later in the narrative). 

Here, there's immediately more of an emotional through-line and anchorage; whereas The Dark Descent revolved around the mystery of its protagonist and his eponymous condition, Rebirth provides solid and immediate background for Tasi and her companions, some subtle suggestions about her own recent history and domestic upheavals, as well as an opening that is more than a little redolent of games such as BioShock (which it also echoes thematically, in a number of ways) and others that the original game directly inspired (such as Outlast 2). 

That's not to say there's no mystery around Tasi Trianon herself; quite the opposite. Oblique references to a recent trauma, to a child whose fate is alluded to but not revealed until much later, to a life that is detailed specifically by Tasi herself in the numerous sketches and journals she keeps, all conspire to create an impression of our avatar that, in classic Amnesia fashion, may or may not be as certain as it initially appears. . .

The hook here isn't necessarily in uncovering who Tasi is. Rather, it's in disabusing her -and, by extension, ourselves- of assumptions and certainties that, ultimately, reveal themselves to be flawed. From the initial crash site in the desert to the network of caves and caverns where she and her erstwhile companions made their temporary sanctuary, it becomes apparent that something very strange has happened to Tasi; something far beyond an incidental plane crash, of which her memories are patchwork and hazy, but that reveal themselves the more and more she questions, the deeper she delves. 

Further, it becomes clear that something truly terrible occurred in those caverns: Tasi herself finds that she has a strange, watch-like device around her wrist that, in the presence of certain other-worldly phenomena, glows and revolves and pulsates, even opening doorways into a realm of Lovecraftian insanity; a post-apocalyptic waste from which the ruins of an ancient, alien culture rise. 

All the while, because we are experiencing this through Tasi's clearly traumatised and uncertain perceptions, we aren't entirely sure what's actual and what isn't. As in The Dark Descent (and a slew of horror games subsequently), finding oneself in stressful circumstances, witnessing disturbing things or simply finding oneself lost in the dark, has the effect of diminishing Tasi's grip on reality, resulting in phantom sounds, visual distortions and hallucinations and ultimately, in her losing her sanity altogether. As such, the game contains in an in-built mechanism that throws the central character's reliability as narrator out of the window. 

Mysteries and uncertainty begin to swell as it becomes apparent that Tasi has already followed the route she leads the player down, that we're experiencing the story in media res, which slowly reveals itself as she wends her way through the caverns, discovering strange artefacts and sites that resemble ancient temples, before inadvertantly stumbling into another reality altogether. 

Whilst Amnesia: Rebirth might have its detractors, and the game certainly does very little in technical terms to distinguish itself from the original (not to mention the subsequent slew of immitators), its strength lies solidly in its writing, characters and plot, which are easily the strongest of all the Amnesia series. Whereas the original boasted superb atmosphere and a fantastically Lovecraftian mythology, the isolated and uncertain nature of the player character left them strangely anonymous and distant from the player throughout the plot. Here, Tasi Trianon is well-rounded, sympathetic and intriguing from the first instant, the -ostensibly- supernatural and other-worldly events occurring around her counter-pointed by personal dramas and tragedies that make her far more rounded and endearing than the vast majority of horror game protagonists. 

The game also doesn't stint on its tragedy; despite everything Tasi appears to have suffered, it very quickly begins to pile on more and more, events that most plots would leave for their climaxes occurring within the first hour of play, which have the effect or reorienting Tasi's trajectory and motivations in a manner that is distressing and despairing, a certain cruel nihilism creeping into the game that contrasts wildly with the nature of the player character (the later revelation that Tasi appears to be pregnant makes her feel all the more vulnerable and desperate, cleverly emphasising the threats she faces as, now she and the player both have an entirely innocent party to protect). 

Even this aspect isn't without its ambiguities; following her first trip to the desolate other-reality (that recurs at various points throughout the game), Tasi discovers that her amnesiac state may be linked to a more profound condition; a sickness that visibly spreads through her arms and body like black threads beneath her skin, that seems to affect her mental state and emotional stability in profound and distressing ways. Beyond the numerous examples of human death and by-gone violence she encounters (the discovery of a French Foreign Legion fort provides no hoped-for sanctuary, only a story of escalating madness, horror and atrocity), certain other-worldly elements familiar to Amnesia players begin to occur, most notably in the form of an inhuman stalker; a creature that seems to move through walls and appear at the edges of sight, that Tasi rarely sees clearly, but whose occurrence is never anything less than horrifying. 

Whether or not the creature is “real” or a matter of hallucination is up to the player to discover (needless to say, given the metaphysics of the game, such matters inevitably aren't quite so clear cut). 

In technical terms, the game marries first-person horror elements with adventure game, “point and click” style puzzles in which environmental factors must be utilised in order to open new paths, bar the ways of pursuing atrocities or uncover mysteries relating to the plot. The slower moments of puzzle solving are leant spice by the omnipresent sense of threat the game builds from its first instance: not only is it almost impossible to tell when the unseen stalker will crop up around the next corner or behind the next door, factors such as darkness, disturbing imagery etc all affect Tasi's mental state, resulting in a mad scrabble for matches, lantern oil and safe spaces in which sunlight spills through. Even in those small oases, the player is often harassed by bangings at the doors, scrapings inside the walls and phantom whispers at Tasi's ear. 

The game deliberately overlaps psychological horror with supernatural, making one a reflection of the other and using them to feed doubt of one another. It's a sincerely beautiful balance the game achieves in this regard, as it becomes apparent Tasi isn't in the best frame of mind from the first instance, before any apparently supernatural shenanigans occur, meaning that we as the player could very well be trapped in a realm of her own hallucinating (a la Layers of Fear). 

Whilst some may find its slow burn and deliberately cautious pace somewhat tedious in comparison to more immediate or action-oriented horror titles, the sumptuous atmosphere, sense of place and connection to its characters the game builds is sublime, especially if one achieves that most essential of all states: of allowing oneself a degree of immersion in the gaming world. Connection with Tasi is determined by her eminently -and escalatingly- vulnerable nature. Along with most of the characters in her party (whose fates we discover by and by), she is extremely affable, charming and a character we grow to care about a great deal, especially given the expanding back-story that occurs simultaneously with the main plot (at various points, we are hurtled into an American McGee's Alice style dreamscape in which Tasi confronts the demons of her past, the tragedies and traumas that have led her to her current predicament, all of which begin in a fairly sedate, domestic vein, but quickly escalate to some of the most surreal and disturbing set-pieces in the game). 

In technical terms, there is very little new here, and very little that won't be familiar to fans of horror video games since the original Amnesia's release, but for those starved of solid storytelling in their interactive media, this delivers an intriguing and beautifully crafted experience with some sincere surprises along the way. 

A quiet but notable work of psychological, Lovecraftian horror, and a worthy addition to the Amnesia legacy. 

Review by George Daniel Lea 

Clara and her younger brother Stephen are taken by their father to stay with their aunt and uncle in a remote house in the hills as their mother recovers from an accident. At first, they see it as a summer to explore. There's the train set in the basement, the walled garden with its secret graves and beyond it all the silent loch, steady and waiting.  
 
Auntie has wanted them for so long - real children with hair to brush and arms to slip into the clothes made just for them. All those hours washing, polishing, preparing beds and pickling fruit and now Clara and Stephen are here, like a miracle, on her doorstep.
 
But the reality of two children – their noise, their mess, their casual cruelties – begins to overwhelm Auntie. The children begin to uncover things Auntie had thought left buried, and Clara can feel her brother slipping away from her. This hastily created new family finds itse?lf falling apart, with terrifying consequences for them all.


Such Pretty Things is a deeply chilling and haunting story about the slow shattering nature of grief, displacement, jealousy and an overwhelming desire to love and be loved.