#Horror – Nicholas Day

I found myself re-reading Jim Thompson’s SAVAGE NIGHT, this week. May be my third time, but it is a slim volume and it never fails to pack a punch. I mean, you are set up from the get-go for violence and you wait and wait and when it finally hits… holy hell. The last handful of chapters are a goddamned ride, man. Straight to Hell.

Jim Thompson is a beast. I see other books of his recommended more often, but SAVAGE NIGHT is the one I always come back to. Lyrical and, at times, surreal. And violence that just punches off the page.

And then, that got me thinking how much I probably owe noir, like SAVAGE NIGHT, for its inspirations throughout GRIND YOUR BONES TO DUST. I always jokingly referred to GRIND as “Magic Nihilism” but I think, in hindsight, you could just as easily call it a “Horror Noir” and not be too far off the mark. Continue reading “Little Revelations While Reading Jim Thompson’s SAVAGE NIGHT (and a bit about how The Iliad Bookshop is the best place on Earth)” →

“Never The Ghost You Want” was written on Christmas morning in 2020. Getting all that misery down on paper served as an exorcism. Cemetery Gates picked it up for inclusion in their anthology, PARANORMAL CONTACT, which felt a bit like last rites. And then, I moved on.

I never even bothered re-reading the story. I couldn’t, then. I have trouble, even now, though I’ve had enough private correspondence regarding the story to make me believe “Never The Ghost You Want” may, in fact, be very good. Readers seem to like it, seem to connect, and those are the notes a writer hopes to hit.

“Never The Ghost You Want” is a non-fiction piece. Now, I have written non-fic in the past, but most all of that has been squarely within the field of journalism (once upon a time, I used to cover the film circuit in Los Angeles). I’d never really written anything terribly personal.

Here’s a few snippets from “Never The Ghost You Want”:

Continue reading “Do you like ghosts? Do you like being depressed? Oh boy, do I have something for YOU.” →