​For the most part, Netflix's Centaurworld is the animated equivalent of getting pocket money as a child and spending it all on the sweetest, sharpest, most artifically-coloured confections you can imagine. It's a giant bag of Skittles, sherbert and chewy, soft, synthetic sweetness that bypasses all reason and goes straight for the childhood soul. A zany cartoon of elastic characters whose antics aren't a million miles away from those of classic Looney Tunes, Centaurworld is a breathless comedy that barely pauses before cramming more sugary insanity into the audience's eyes. From frequent musical numbers to expressions of earnest affection, the show is a great, big visual hug that won't be satisfied until you are bursting at the seams with confections, singing along with its endlessly endearing cast and weeping rainbows with laughter.


So, why the hell are we discussing it here?


Well, as the opening sequence demonstrates, the show is a masterwork of contrasting tones and atmospheres; far from the cotton-candy and rainbow-coloured carnival that comprises the majority of its runtime, the opening is a dour, dark and despairing look at a world ravaged by war, desolated by a conflict that has left little-to-no survivors. Even the animation style and character designs are different here; sharper, sterner, more angular. We are introduced to our protagonist Horse as they bear their Rider through barren wastelands and burning villages, engaging in conflicts with faceless and disturbing creatures whose entire demeanour is one of murderous violence.


This is the first time the show pulls a particular trick that will become quite familiar to the audience before its conclusion: every beat of the opening is designed to bluff the audience into making certain assumptions, i.e. that this is a dark fantasy series in the vein of Avatar: The Last Airbender, that's going to lead the viewer through the wartorn history of a world on the brink of devastation.


However, this sequence is less than five minutes long; it establishes the core relationship between Horse and Rider, which becomes the driving imperative of the narrative, then violently pulls the rug out from under us.


Delivered into another world by magical accident, Horse finds herself in the eponymous Centaurworld: a transition not unlike that Eddie Valiant experiences in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when he travels from waking reality to Toon Town; a world that runs on cartoon physics and logic. Taken in by a rag-tag band of centaurs (all of whom are familiar cartoon archetypes), she embarks on a journey to open the gateway between worlds and reunite with her Rider; a quest that carries her across the face of Centaurworld and introduces her to the various offbeat and zany cultures, creatures and settings it hosts in the manner of Dorothy's journey through Oz (which it echoes in many key ways; Horse follows a rainbow road in contrast to Dorothy's yellow-brick variety) or Alice's descent into Wonderland.


Throughout, the show shifts between tones and states of emotion in the blink of an eye, one moment engaging in Looney Tune slapstick, the next diving deep into its character's emotional traumas and neuroses. Fantastical threats and looming dangers are part and parcel; the first time we get a taste of how dangerous Centaurworld can be is when a storm in the party's path mutates into a giant, sentient “Taur-nado;” a Centaur made of hurricane winds. At this point, the tone of the show shifts, even its colour palette growing mute and dismal. Part of the show's peculiar strength is its ability to seamlessly marry different tones and conditions without seeming patchwork or contradictory; Horse's desperate yearning to be back with her Rider, in her own world, combined with the various conflicts she shares with her allies, the enmities and connections she makes along the way, form a surprisingly various and compelling back story, contrasting significantly with the light and frothy tone that is the most consistent, but also a mask for underlying depths.


Moments of portent and omen are rare but occur as a means of lending weight and intrigue to the confection; from the beginning, there is a growing sense that, like Alice, what Horse is experiencing may not be entirely literal, but a by-product of some trauma or descent into herself. Rarely, the show cuts away from Horse and her “herd” to introduce moments of cryptic backstory; there is another visitor in Centaurworld; a ragged and bitter-seeming human, who follows them along their path and makes ominous portents as to what disaster might occur should they succeed in opening the way home.


A strange nursery-rhyme/lullaby occurs at the conclusion of an early episode; sentient plants and flowers lining the rainbow-road sing of The Nowehere King, a creature or entity we have yet to encounter (though Horse has the somewhat cryptic line: “I know this song,” suggesting developments to come).


This is the first instance of suggestive dread in the show; the song has the superficial quality of a nursery rhyme or lullaby, but a tainted one: it becomes clear upon listening to the lyrics that, like all the best nursery rhymes, it describes something rather disturbing, and entirely at odds with the candy-coated shenanigans that comprise most of the episode:

In a land filled with whimsy, hope and endless optimism, The Nowhere King is a breath of despair and desolation whose influence we already feel: whilst superficially frothy and fun, there is an abiding quality to Centaurworld that something has already happened; some history or calamity that preceded Horse's coming and our own introduction to it: something that has rendered the various cultures and creatures of the world apart and paranoid of one another, where once they might have been more. For all of its contrast to the world we find in the opening sequence, there is also a sense that it has more in common with Centaurworld than we initially understand:


Fragmentary references to a forgotten history reveal that the Centaurs once fought against the same creatures that bedevil Horse's reality. For all their clownish antics, it's hard to shake an underlying dread and despair that escalates as the show reaches its final chapters.


Then, we meet The Nowhere King. ​

​In the nowehere between realms, Horse is reunited with Rider, but also trapped by the interference of the anonymous human who has been following them the entire way. As the Centaurs plead with her to open the way again, she snarls: “You know what's trapped in there.” And soon, so do we:


This is the moment in which Centaurworld reveals its horror chops: in a sequence rendered all the more stark and disturbing by the colour and frolics that surround it, The Nowhere King reveals himself: an entity of black, sentient muck and manifest despair, he rises from an expanding pool of his own effluent, his body shaping and forming into a groteque chimera of elk, wasp and reptile. An antlered skull is all that remains of his face, its eye-sockets burning with green light as it regards Horse and Rider with malevolent curiosity.


For those who haven't seen the show or are not expecting it, this moment is one of breathless shock: there is nothing prior that even begins to approach the dread and disturbia of it, nothing that has the same bleak weight and dire import of The Nowhere King. The creators of the show have succeeded in capturing an entity that is not merely a physical threat, but also a spiritual one; The Nowhere King, as his name implies, is utter despair, in stark contrast to Horse and her “Herd,” who are light and colour and conviviality. Even at this early stage, the writers cleverly pepper in suggestions of a backstory that has yet to be unravelled (upon seeing Horse and Rider for the first time, the creature cocks its skull-head in curiosity and proclaims “You,” as though it recognises one or both of them).

The conflict that follows is rendered all the more weighty by the incredible sense of threat pervading it; The Nowhere King has been trapped between worlds for so long, it doesn't care which world it escapes into, only that it does, and that it might begin to spread its corrupting despair as soon as possible. The show also takes great pains to emphasise the raw power of this entity; for all of the magics and miracles that the Centaurs evince (even the various Shamans that Horse meets) are nothing against it; it sweeps away every effort to fight against it, ultimately coming to fill and consume the nowhere it presides over with its own glutinous, polluted body.


Even more than the overt horror of The Nowhere King (which is more than a little Lovecraftian), there is what the entity implies: as it faces off against the anonymous human that attempted to contain it, the creature bows its head to her, inviting the deathblow, but she can't bring herself to do it. As one of the core cast comments, there is clearly a backstory here that we do not learn in this first season, but the dynamic between the anonymous human and The Nowhere King is eerily similar to that between Horse and Rider.


As to where the show will go from here, who can say? But it's clear that, in the style of Steven Universe, Adventure Time and others whose DNA it shares, Centaurworld's superficial cartoonishness is exactly that: aesthetic only. Beneath are numerous, troubling depths and it's clear we've seen very little of the various shades of darkness it has to offer.

THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING

The Dark Half by Stephen King. I was not impressed by it. I was 14 at the time and had read better horror novels. A dear friend recommended I read IT and it was love at first sight.

THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING

The original Halloween. I was seven-years-old and it scared the daylights out of me! It was on very late at night, so my parents were asleep. The next day, I told my mother about the film and that I would never go trick-or-treating because I could get killed by “the bad man wearing a mask.” My mother said, “No more horror movies!” Yeah, that lasted about a month. I begged her and she gave in. Ha!

THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 


Oh, wow! That’s a hard one to answer. I’ll try. For me? It’s a tie between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, The October Country by Ray Bradbury, Stephen King’s IT, and Clive Barker’s The Books of Blood.


If you put a gun to my head, I would have to say Mary Shelley wins. She captured a magic that no one else has. She’s the best. But each novel mentioned really pushed the envelope forward, in its own way. I don’t think horror would be the same if you removed just one of those books.

THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME 


Of all time? Wow! A tie between Psycho, Alien, The Devil’s Backbone, Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, and Night of The Living Dead. All these films were ground-breaking and, for the time, unique. And all of them were directed by some of the most talented directors of all time… except Romero. He’s good, but nowhere near Kubrick, Scott, or Palanski.

THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

Have you guessed yet? It’s a tie! Ha! Hemingway, Steinbeck, Harper Lee, Dalton Trumbo, Truman Capote, Poe, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Shirley Jackson, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Stephen King, Carson McCullers, and Cormac McCarthy. Each for different reasons, but if you remove one, literature will never be the same.

THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME

IT. The cover says it all, yet nothing at all. I think it’s the best impression of a novel. Also, I’m quite partial to A Clockwork Orange, for the same reasons.

THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME


I’m quite partial to the early Universal horror film posters. That process of creating posters is dead, and good luck trying to re-create that magic. It looks real… yet not and conveys so much with so little. A lost art, for sure.

THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN


My latest horror novella, Hollow Heart.

THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN


The first novella I tried to write and failed, so I deleted it. I think the title was, Ill Children. It took me two years of writing crap to finally write something good, which was my first published horror novella, Cracked Sky. Like any writer, I’m quite capable of writing crap on a daily basis. Ha!

THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME


Let The Right One In, and The Exorcist 3. Both are powerhouses, full of amazing suspense. Personally, I still think the latter is far better than Silence of the Lambs. But that’s just me.

THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME


Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne. The former because it’s almost as if it’s been forgotten. Sadly, time has a way of doing that. Coppola turned it into a good film… but lacking the immense power of the novel. The latter because it was one of the first King novels that wasn’t straight-up-horror. I think it, and a few other King novels that are not horror, flew under everyone’s radar. I remember the kids in High School saying, “It’s not horror! It’s crap! Why is he writing this?” I read it, and thought it was wonderful. And yes, it’s pretty dark.

THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME


Robert Walser and Carson McCullers. Trust me, you will love reading these authors. Especially Carson McCullers. I think she may be one of the best writers ever. Also, can we get some love for Philip K. Dick? It’s like time is erasing him too.

THE BOOK / FILM THAT SACRED ME THE MOST


Film? Hellraiser. Any eight-year-old should NOT watch this film. But I did! It took me multiple tries, and covering my eyes when Frank comes back into the flesh.
Book? Stephen King’s IT and Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. IT has almost everything in it. Derry is full of---or has been, at some point—hate, racism, homophobia, abuse, etc… But there’s also a creature… one of the most unique in some time. It was like King was trying very, very hard to write the best creature story ever. Also, a great coming of age story, too. The Girl Next Door is a book that was very, very hard for me to read, only because of the pure 100% human horror on full display. And it’s based on a true story. Ketchum at his best.

THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT


I’m currently working on my first novel. I’m only a few chapters in, so no spoilers! Ha! All I will say is: It’s horror.


THE BOOK I WOULD LIKE TO PROMOTE THE MOST


My horror novella, Hollow Heart, out from the Bram Stoker Award® winning press, Crystal Lake Publishing.

Welcome to Shady Hills, Florida, where death is the beginning and pain is the only true Art…

Harold Stoe was a proud Marine until an insurgent’s bullet relegated him to a wheelchair. Now the only things he’s proud of are quitting alcohol and raising his sixteen-year-old son, Dale.

But there is an infernal rhythm, beating like a diseased heart from the hollow behind his home. An aberration known as The Architect has finished his masterpiece: A god which slumbers beneath the hollow, hell-bent on changing the world into its own image.

As the body count rises and the neighborhood residents change into mindless, shambling horrors, Harold and his former lover, Mary, begin their harrowing journey into the world within the hollow. If they fail, the hollow will expand to infinity. Every living being will be stripped of flesh and muscle, their nerves wrapped tightly around ribcages, so The Architect can play his sick music through them loud enough to swallow what gives them life: The last vestiges of a dying star.

In Darkness, Delight: Fear the Future anthology from Corpus Press, which features my story, “Daddy’s Girl.”


Corpus Press Anthology In Darkness, Delight: Fear the Future –


In Darkness, Delight: Fear the Future, edited by Andrew Lennon and Evans Light, and a cover by Mikio Murakami, delivers twenty-two strikingly original tales of terror from Bram Stoker Award® winners, best-selling authors, and rising talent in the genre – even a world-renowned celebrity is part of the lineup – in the third volume of its ongoing In Darkness, Delight horror anthology series.

Be warned: these are not science fiction stories with a dash of dread. These are visions of the horrifying futures that may await us all.

Fans of television’s Black Mirror are sure to enjoy Emmy winning and New York Times best-selling author Penn Jillette’s (of Penn & Teller fame) delightfully wicked short story “The Pain Doctor,” which was adapted for the Netflix hit series and is available here exclusively for the first time in book format.

Lisa Morton, six-time Bram Stoker Award® winner, gets things off to a strong start with the chilling “Airborne,” while Max Booth III (whose film We Need to Do Something is set for theatrical release later this year) shines a light on the madness of modern technology with the ever-escalating “Noise.” Two-time Bram Stoker Award® winner Eric J. Guignard creates magic of his own with shimmering prose in the dreamlike “If I Drive Before I Wake.”

Michael Laimo, author of the bestsellers Deep in the Darkness and Lost Souls, turns the wonders of childbirth inside-out with the grotesque “Err.” Joanna Koch, Shirley Jackson Award finalist and rising star of all things bizarre, delivers the goods in their unique style with “Schroedinger’s Head.” Stories by Tim Curran and William Miekle show the genre favorites at the top of their game, and the list goes on, even including some first-publication authors so talented you won’t be able to pick them out from the more established.

These stories have been selected by the editors from over two million words worth of prose submitted from authors all over the world, enough stories to fill twenty-five volumes. These tales were specifically chosen for inclusion because, together, they offer a perfectly balanced blend of style, substance and diversity of themes. In Darkness, Delight: Fear the Future is a collection you don’t want to miss.


​

​Ben Eads lives within the semi-tropical suburbs of Central Florida. A true horror writer by heart, he wrote his first story at the tender age of seven. The look on the teacher’s face when she read it was priceless. However, his classmates loved it!


Ben’s short fiction has appeared in magazines or anthologies by: Corpus Press, Crystal Lake Publishing, Shroud Magazine, and Seventh Star Press. His first novella, Cracked Sky, was published in 2015 by the Bram Stoker Award® Winning press Omnium Gatherum. His latest book, Hollow Heart, is now available from Crystal Lake Publishing.

Arriving this winter, from multiple-award-winning author Alan Baxter, is the third chapter of the Eli Carver Supernatural Thriller Series. Baxter’s anti-hero Eli Carver, a mob hitman haunted by a checkered past, returns for the third installment in the author’s second fiction franchise when book three, Ghost Recall, is released on December 8, 2021, by Chicago-based independent publisher Grey Matter Press (GMP).


Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase, says of the novella: “Ghost Recall bottles the essence of impending doom that drives the most powerful noir. Vintage Baxter: fast, sleek, and bloody-minded.”

Vampires have been around since the beginning of time. Cain was the first recorded account of vampirism. Cain's biography began in Genesis as Adam's first son. He and his brother Abel gave God their offerings. Abel was a shepherd, and he gave God a sheep. Cain was a farmer, and he offered God the fruits of his crop. God made it known that He favored Abel's offering. Cain took his brother to a field, and then killed him. Some believed Cain killed him with a rock, while others claimed he killed him with a knife that was used for disemboweling animals. Regardless of the "how", Cain lied to God when asked about Abel's whereabouts. The famous quote "Am I my brother's keeper?" came from this story.    

Most believed Cain's motive was jealousy. Cain did not like how God seemed to favor Abel. But in the Muslim faith, Cain and Abel were in love with the same woman, Aclima. She was also Adam's daughter which made her at the very least their half-sister, maybe even their full sister. The offering to God was not about God, but rather using God's favorite gift as a way to determine who would get the girl as a wife.     Furthermore, Ancient Jewish philosophers claimed that Cain was not Adam's son, but Sammael's son, suggesting that Eve was an adultress. Sammael was an angel who was linked with Satan, or even Satan himself. This made Abel his half-brother. This also meant that Cain was a nephilim.
     
But Cain's biography continued. God sentenced Cain to a life of wandering, and he wandered for over seven hundred years. Cain fathered six children, 2 daughters and 4 sons. He was possibly killed by stones when his house collapsed on top of him (Jubilees), a neat and convenient poetic justice from those who believed he killed his brother with a stone. He could have also been killed by Lamech, his great-grandson, who mistook him for a wild beast, which adds further ammunition to the vampire theory.     

Somewhere before Cain's death and after he murdered his brother, God put a mark on Cain that cursed him indefinitely. Part of the curse involved an immunity from death. It was written that anyone who tried to kill Cain would suffer a sevenfold vengeance. The type of mark was unknown. Ancient scholar Rav stated that Cain was cursed with horns protruding from his head. Rashi, another ancient scholar, believed the letter of God was etched into Cain's skull.
     
Cain wandered away from his family and eventually met Lillith, the first wife of Adam, his father. They had an affair, and she seduced him with ancient witchcraft. She held a ceremony and cut herself open for blood which was collected into a bowl. Cain drank it. This story echoed a pre-anti-Christ Last Supper with the unholy grail.     

At some point during Cain's wanderings, three angels independently visited him and offered a chance to repent for his brother's murder. He refused all of them. They further cursed him with a weakness to fire, aversion to sunlight, and an insatiable desire for blood (Talmud, Book of Adam and Eve, and historiolas).

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeacockPedestal
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DinaRaeBooks
website: http://conspiracycrackpot.com/
Blog: https://conspiracycrackpot.home.blog/
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Watchers: The term originated in the Book of Enoch. They were fallen angels who fornicated with human women.
Nephilim: Offspring of female humans and fallen angels.
And there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough. And they lost their place in heaven. Revelation 12:7-8
The Bible and other sacred writings of Jubilees and Enoch reference a great war in Heaven waged by Satan. After his defeat, Satan was ousted from Heaven, but he was not alone in his betrayal. One third of all angels took his side in a feeble attempt to overthrow God. When these traitors were cast down to their new kingdom commonly known as Hell, Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna, Satan became their king. Determined to battle God on every front, he assigned his most talented warriors an earthly mission of collecting souls for his expanding army.

This is a story about Armaros, one of Satan's Fallen. He once deceived God, and now that he lives on earth with a plan on deceiving Satan.

BIO
Conor Metz grew up in Kent, Washington. From a young age, he was drawn to genre stories. His parents exposed him to a variety of outlandish films and as he grew older those interests led him to many novels and comics books of a similar nature. These stories have shaped him into a writer who loves composing compelling narratives that contain interesting characters and catchy dialogue.

WEBSITE LINKS
https://www.amazon.com/Conor-Metz/e/B08KJ18XDN?ref_=dbs_p_pbk_r00_abau_000000
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17998183.Conor_Metz

CHILDHOOD FEARS
As a child, I always found it interesting that the things that frightened me were always different than my older brother. While he had what I felt was an irrational fear of movie monsters, I always was more afraid of things that either really existed like serial killers, or things I felt could exist like ghosts, witches, or other supernatural forces. To me things that had no real place in history were strictly fantasy, my brain could assure me there was nothing to worry about from the things I’d see on TV, they could never hurt me in the real world. But when it came to things that had a real place in history, whether through superstition or first-hand accounts claiming to have seen or dealt with these things, I found the thought of coming face to face with any of them bone-chilling.

I had the blessing and curse of growing up in a small community that felt very secluded from the cities which surrounded it. My house was directly in front of dense woods that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. Looking now on Google Maps, I think it was probably only a few hundred feet till the woods ended at other houses, but when you’re a kid things seem bigger, scarier even. The road I lived on seemed massive to me, this wide asphalt threat where any speeding car could be my end. Now having revisited this old neighborhood as an adult, that road is only about twenty feet wide. The steep, scary hill which could prove death if I rode my skateboard down? It’s at an incline of maybe 30 degrees. So yeah, I guess things are just generally scarier when you’re a child. And I was one who always had an overactive imagination.

Ever since I could walk, I wanted to adventure to lands unknown and the woods behind my house gave me that opportunity time and again, but the problem with woods is they can let a young imagination run wild and this started making me think unimaginable terrors could be lurking in those woods. Which occurred in no small part due to the things I grew up watching.

My mother loved movies, she got that from her mother, and our TV always seemed to be playing movies of some kind. Usually my parents kept things kid friendly, but through the fault of comic books, my brother and I discovered Predator when we were way too young and my parents relented to letting us watch the climax of the first film since it didn’t have the violence that preceded those twenty or so minutes, nor too much of the swearing (apart from the classic one ugly mother line). Of course, being the belligerent child I was, I wore my dad down one day when I was five and he was home alone with me. He ended up letting me watch the whole film, and Predator became not only the first R-rated film I saw, but the first monster movie too.

So, while Predator wasn’t the first true horror film I watched, it was the one I can pinpoint as starting my love for monster movies. Part of what I loved was that the designs of monsters could be so cool, but never too scary—unlike some of the other things I was afraid of. Unfortunately, my love of monsters opened the door to things that did scare me.

The first time I can remember being scared by a film, like really scared to the point I couldn’t sleep and had a string of nightmares was Pet Semetary. By this point I was in fourth grade and had watched a whole slew of horror films, not to the extent I dove into them a few years later, but I’d seen a lot of the bigger hits. I figured Pet Semetary was no big deal.

I was wrong.

This film scared the crap out of me and it was so bad that apparently, I’d blocked the worst offender, Zelda, from my mind until somebody brought her up when I was college and the horrific depiction of that character came flooding back. But again, this came down to what I felt could be real. Stuff like ghosts, I’d heard stories about, so maybe they possibly existed. The visions the main character had of the dead student with his brains hanging out stuck with me to the point where I’d be scared he’d pop out of the woods on my walks home from the bus stop every day after school. This was, as I look back on it now, completely irrational, but at the time seemed a very reasonable assumption.

The things we’re scared of as children inform our adult lives as much as anything we experience back then, but I do find that there’s something about experiencing these fears and facing them which fuels the fire in any horror-lover’s heart. My brother was terrified of The Thing as a child ever since he walked in on my parent’s watching it during the infamous dog transformation scene. Years later, he built up the courage to watch it and now it’s his favorite film.
​
I can’t say I have a story exactly the same as my brother, I am still freaked out by Pet Semetary, probably no thanks to its bleak ending, but I do still love a good scare. Probably two of my favorite movies, The Shining and Suspiria, I watch every year not just because they’re brilliant horror films, but they unsettle me so much and I love the experience. I guess when it comes down to it, the fears we carry as a child we either overcome and become addicted to, or we run from, never to look back. Maybe that’s why horror is a genre people either love or hate.

Maddie Durant is trying to enjoy a snow day in December when she finds herself suddenly trapped in a world of endless, inescapable nightmares. Unfortunately for the small community of Edgewood, she's not the only one. As four other young girls go missing in the span of a few hours, the Wakefield Police have their hands full trying to find out who took them.
And things aren't looking good.
The lone detective on the police force has few clues and little hope of locating the girls, but Maddie’s brother thinks he may know where she's hidden. With the help of her best friend, the pair aren't going to let their parents or the police stop them from finding the missing girls.
Meanwhile, the girls will have to work together and summon their courage if they hope to escape a horrible fate. But without any answers to who took them and why, it's anyone's guess who will make their way out of the Edgewood nightmare.

Artist Luke Spooner, Biography –


Luke Spooner, a.k.a. ‘Carrion House,’ currently lives and works in the South of England. Having graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first-class degree, he is now a full-time illustrator for just about any project that piques his interest. Despite regular forays into children’s books and fairy tales, his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy, or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility, as well as being something he truly treasures. You can visit his Carrion House website HERE.


Pre-Order Available Now –


Raw Dog Screaming Press: http://rawdogscreaming.com/books/attack-from-the-80s/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Attack-80s-Eugene-Johnson/dp/1735664448/
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/attack-from-the-80s-eugene-johnson/1140155862


What’s the Anthology Have on Rewind?


Modern technology has brought some new twists and turns to horror. Found footage, cell phone-based viruses, literal ghosts in the machines but maybe it’s time for a throwback. It’s time for some new tales of slumber party horrors, VCR monsters, and problems that can’t be solved with a smart phone. We want tales of unstoppable monsters, sewer-dwelling creatures, looming threats of cold-war chaos. Give us fear under the neon lights of an arcade, people fighting for their lives against the backdrop of a hot city night and a cheesy sax solo. Take us back to a time when latchkey kids had to fend for themselves and the only thing left to stop an unspeakable horror was a plucky band of high school kids. Make it bloody. Make it gnarly. Make it 80s!


Johnson’s enthusiasm for the decade and the theme, as well as the process of putting this anthology together, shines through. “I grew up in the 80’s, having been raised off and on by my grandparents,” Johnson said. “My grandma passed on her lover of horror and creativity to me. Because of this, the 1980s have always had a special place in my heart. I’ve been wanting to create this book and others like it for a very long time. It’s a passion project.”




Table of Contents -


Introduction “Yin and Yang: The Eighties” by Mick Garris
“Top Guns of the Frontier” by Weston Ochse
“Snapshot” by Joe R. Lansdale and Kasey Lansdale
“The Devil in the Details” by Ben Monroe
“Return of the Reanimated Nightmare” by Linda Addison
“Taking the Night Train” by Thomas F. Monteleone
“Catastrophe Queens” by Jess Landry
“Your Picture Here” by John Skipp
“Permanent Damage” by Lee Murray
“Slashbacks” by Tim Waggoner
“Munchies” by Lucy A. Snyder
“Ten Miles of Bad Road” by Stephen Graham Jones
“Epoch, Rewound” by Vince A. Liaguno
“Demonic Denizens” by Cullen Bunn
“The White Room” by Rena Mason
“Ghetto Blaster” by Jeff Strand
“Haddonfield, New Jersey 1980” by Cindy O’Quinn
“When He Was Fab” by F. Paul Wilson
“Welcome to Hell” by Christina Sng
“Perspective: Journal of a 1980s Mad Man” by Mort Castle
“Mother Knows Best” by Stephanie M. Wytovich
“Stranger Danger” by Grady Hendrix
“The Garden of Dr. Moreau” by Lisa Morton


Advanced Praise for Attack from the ‘80s -
“Attack from the '80s sends us rollicking back into the pop culture madness of that genre, and does it with creeps, fun, and great storytelling from today's top horror writers!” —Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of Ink and Rot & Ruin

“Deliriously, deliciously gruesome, Attack from the '80s is a treat for horror fans looking for the hard stuff. An all-star lineup of writers inspired by that gnarliest of decades. Rad!" —David Wellington, Marvel Zombies, Monster Island


“Reading Attack from the '80s brings on a nostalgia tinged with blood. It's like being impaled on a time machine and dragged through sickly houses haunted by serial killers, spooky fairgrounds where kids vanish, woodlands stalked by unnameable beasts ... and it is wonderful. I'm in my teens again, and the horrors are more terrifying than ever."
—Tim Lebbon, author of Eden


About the Editor, Eugene Johnson -


Bram Stoker Award®-winner Eugene Johnson is a best-selling editor, author, and columnist. He has written as well as edited in various genres, and created anthologies such as the Fantastic Tales of Terror, Drive in Creature Feature with Charles Day, the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated nonfiction anthology Where Nightmares Come From: The Art of Storytelling in the Horror Genre and many more. As a filmmaker, Eugene Johnson worked on various movies, including the Requiem, starring Tony Todd and directed by Paul Moore. His short film Leftovers, a collaboration with director Paul Moore, was featured at the Screamfest Film Festival in Los Angeles as well as Dragoncon. Eugene is currently a member of the Horror Writers Association. He resides in West Virginia with his partner Angela, daughter, and two sons.


About the Publisher, Raw Dog Screaming Press –

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Media –


Digital review copies can be obtained upon request, and interview and podcast inquiries with the anthology editor can be coordinated, through Erin Al-Mehairi, publicist, at hookofabook@hotmail.com or twitter (@erinalmehairi).