​TALES OF THE LOST – VOLUME 1 EDITED BY EUGENE JOHNSON & STEVE DILLON, WITH AN INTRO BY S.G. BROWNE

I always think you’ve got to be pretty brave to put together an anthology. They are, by their nature, a somewhat personal selection, and there’s the almost inevitable factor of not being able to please all of the people, all of the time.

To some extent, I guess an editor can be confident about appealing to most of the readers if they include stories from well-known authors. Names like Time Waggoner, Yvonne Navarro, Jeff Strand, etc., are all welcome contributors to this collection, but there are also names here that I, and I guess others, have not come across. So it hasn’t all been about taking the safe option.

For me, there’s also the composition of short stories. I love a good one, but I’ll admit to being a bit of a traditionalist. I want a beginning, middle, and end — even in this condensed format. It doesn’t always happen. I read a collection of shorts recently that were all middle. I felt like I was being plunged in, halfway through, then ripped away before the story was finished or questions were answered. Some might call it experimental, or artistic. I’m not one of them. It’s called a ‘story’, not a chapter, and I expect the writer to deliver the whole thing, not an excerpt.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached this anthology, but for the most part I was delighted to have picked it up. I’m not a big fan of poetry, but I thoroughly enjoyed the single inclusion in this book. I was in for a number of pleasant surprises, and an honest to goodness revelation. There’s one of those stories in here that really goes just about nowhere. All middle. The kind that usually drives me nuts. You know what? It’s flat out the best of its kind I’ve ever read.

Am I going to tell you which one? What, and spoil the surprise?

The challenge I have with reviewing this collection of short stores is that it would be way too easy to reveal spoilers. The brevity of each tale means that just one or two pertinent comments risk giving away the plot.

What I can tell you is that I think it’s a very good compilation. An excellent mix. There are what I would call ‘traditional’ ghost stories, and there are weird takes. There’s horror for all tastes from freaky to darkly humorous. OK, there are one or two where the link to ‘loss’ is a bit tenuous, but to be honest if the stories were good I didn’t really care. And yes, there were a couple that didn’t really do it for me (like I said, almost inevitable). Having said that, there weren’t any I thought were ‘bad’. There wasn’t a single one I got part way through and didn’t want to finish.

One of the joys of being a reviewer is that you get books to read for free. So I guess one way to give an overall impression would be to ask me if I’d actually be prepared to fork over my hard earned for it. Absolutely. I’m looking forward to Volume Two.

Robert Fael 

Tales of the Lost Volume 1: We all Lose Something! 

We all lose something… We lose many things during our time in this universe. From the moment we are born we start losing time, and loss becomes a part of our life from the beginning. We lose friends (both imaginary and real), loved ones, pets, and family. We gain stuff and lose stuff, from our socks to our money. We can lose our hope, sanity, passions, our mind, and perhaps even our soul! In the end when death finds us, we end up losing everything... Don’t we?

Tales of the Lost takes a dark look at the things we lose and the ghosts we struggle with.Featuring haunting stories from critically acclaimed masters of horror F. Paul Wilson, Tim Waggoner, Lisa Morton, Yvonne Navarro, David Wellington, Lee Murray, Stephen Graham Jones, Jess Landry, John Palisano, Chris Mason, Paul Moore, Eric J. Guignard, Jeff Strand, Ben Monroe, Christina Sng, and Kevin J. Anderson. With an introduction by S.G. Browne and a specially commissioned cover by Francois Vaillancourt. Also featuring interior artwork from horror master Luke Spooner!

"Johnson and Dillon have curated a meditative literary journey into the land of the lost – both in the literal and metaphorical sense. From the toll of personal failures and the enduring scars of unprocessed grief to the ravages of time and all it takes in its merciless wake, the assemblage of writers gathered for this deeply affecting and chilling collection of tales brings with them their finest interpretations of what it means to lose – and how easy it is to become lost ourselves!” –Vince A. Liaguno, Bram Stoker Award™ -winning editor of Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet

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