And Now the Nightmare Begins:
THE HORROR ZINE (Vol. 1, 2010)
Edited by Jeani Rector
BearManor Media
ISBN 978-1-59393-507-8
Nicely printed and bound in softback, with an appropriately creepy cover, And Now the Nightmare Begins starts with the look and feel of a professional publication, and largely manages to maintain that feel throughout. Edited by Jeani Rector, and with fiction and poetry by the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Simon Clark, plus 69FoP alumni Kyle Hemmings, Lawrence Barker and Terry Grimwood (whose "Demons and Demons" is part of our Current Menu), I was eager to crack the spine and start sucking at the bloody fluids...
It starts with five eerily bizarre pictures interspersed between the title, copyright, table of contents pages, etc., giving me the impression that I would be in for plenty of visual treats along with some stimulating fiction. The stimulating fiction I got, but disappointingly, most of the remaining artwork was relegated to just a few pages toward the back, save for Tom Mattel's unsettling piece on page 162, which leads off the poetry section.
(While I'm griping and lingering near the thought of poetry, I might as well say that I tend to enjoy verse as a nice segue between stories--much like artwork, a refreshing nib to clear the palate between what I consider to be the main courses--and not relegated to its own section. Of course, that's just my opinion.)
But enough bitching! Overall, the meat n' potatoes are well done--thick n' juicy, only slightly gamy, with many stories creating a burning afterthought that lights up the mind like heartburn.
I hate to be nepotistic (well, maybe not...) but I felt Grimwood's "What the Dead Are For" and Hemmings' "The Man with the Crocodile Eyes" were two of the standouts in this volume. Others stories that stuck to my ribs were "Ghost of Roses" by Debra Young, "My Mother's Knives" by Christina Hoag, and "The Demon Smiles" by Rick McQuiston.
If you haven't found The Horror Zine yet (http://www.thehorrorzine.com/), And Now the Nightmare Begins is a bloody fine way to make yourself acquainted with their morbid delights.
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