Horror - Weird Horror Genre

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Summary: The Fright Factory is here to help you as you labor in the control room, on the assembly line, or mixing the chemicals of inspiration and imagination in huge vats that give off dark and eerie vapors. Here you'll find guidance in drawing up the blueprints of your story along with a selection of tools to help you customize your design. The elements of horror include the setting, the tingle of suspense building into genuine fear, and of course the Monster. Those are the basics. From there horror can become ghost stories, tales of suspense, splatter and/or gross-out horror, and what might be called the O. Henry approach (twist endings). Cross-genre writing mixes in police procedurals, P.I. stories, and medical horror. Romance with monsters has become popular. You can also throw in the weird western, the Elder Gods, and Joe R. Lansdale - a category unto himself. Whether you're telling a weird tale in the classic tradition of Clark Ashton Smith or creating cutting edge steampunk frights, the long and venerable history of the horror story has also spawned a set of clichés you'll want to avoid. Now the whistle shrieks, signalling the beginning of a new shift. Time to set the machinery of the factory in motion as we explore the art and craft of building better horror.

Word Count: Click here to reveal24,074 (Click here to hide)

Summary: While Sacrum Umbra showed us the darkness of our own shadow, and In Ventre Tuo the guts of our inner monster, The Lesser Apocrypha is still another beast altogether. Meant to gather together the stranger stories, it contains some of the more surreal and ephemeral stories, the ones that just are without much rhyme or reason. Stories like an odd moment in the park, the strange child who won't stop haunting you, an alien invasion that gets very personal, an AI born of a lolcat, monsters in the woods, and a spell gone terribly wrong.

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Summary: WILL YOU BE ONE OF THE INVITED? A forbidden midnight market is coming to town. The Night Bazaar isn't new. In fact, it's as old as civilization. Its first recorded appearance was in Sana'a, around 700 B.C.E. with secretive merchants from the East who presented covered stalls of exotic goods and arcane services. Various mentions appear in obscure and controversial works from around the world. The only common element is that the market opens at midnight, closes before sunrise, and may appear for up to a week in the same city . . . Paris, 1796 . . . London, 1888 . . . Berlin, 1936 . . . San Francisco, 1906 . . . but never in the same venue each night. And never again in the same city. There's just one catch: In order to find it, you must be Invited. Tonight, The Night Bazaar opens in a parking garage somewhere in Manhattan. A whole subterranean city full of antique costumes, alchemical treatments, magical dentistry, palmistry, Tarot, tea leaf-reading, and water-, glass-, and crystal-gazing, oddities and objets d’art, medical curiosities and surgical instruments. Other lost arts and body alterations are offered in certain alcoves. Through the narrow aisles throng jongleurs, freaks, charlatans, mountebanks, faeries, prostitutes, and acrobats. The scents of opium, perfume, tobacco, greasepaint, incense, plastic explosive, alcohol, and sex permeate the air. But each object or service comes with a gift, a curse, or a haunting. (This is the summary of volume one. However, The Night Bazaar anthologies need not be read in any particular order; they are all designed to stand alone as well.) The Bazaar sells that which cannot be had elsewhere. Everything you’ve read about but thought had passed away, or perhaps never existed. How wrong you were! Your guide is Madame Vera, a tall, thin woman of uncertain age, ethnicity, and trustworthiness. The stories within are your invitation to join us. It seems you have already spotted something you desire . . . but don’t head off that way, not just yet. You have all night . . . but not a moment more.

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Summary: Welcome, Gentle Stranger. The Night Bazaar is open to you, once more. But this mysterious midnight gathering isn’t the usual marketplace. It’s a vendor's faire not constrained by geography or time. One week it appears in present-day New York, the next in . . . well, let’s say 14th century Venice, shall we? For this time, Madame Vera and the other peripatetic denizens of The Night Bazaar return to the Bazaar’s roots. Its origin story and inaugural appearance, as the exotic marketplace pitches its colorful tents in La Serenissima, the city of a hundred canals, host to fancy glassworks, masked revelries, and singing gondoliers. And – you guessed it. Unfortunately, in 1348, to the Black Death. The market's aisles are still crowded with vendors of the rare and unusual, exotic dancers, assorted faeries, jongleurs, acrobats, mountebanks, courtesans, and purveyors of curious objets d’art. Booths feature medical oddities and strange instruments of all sorts. Tents offer passersby unusual, uncanny services. But this time, the Plague threatens the complacent citizens of Venice. Who will survive, and at what cost? The Bazaar always sells that which cannot be had elsewhere, at any price. Everything you’ve read about, but thought had passed away, or perhaps never existed. How wrong you were! For Madame Vera and her staff can take you anywhere, and anytime. You need only be Invited . . . and now you have been. (Volumes of The Night Bazaar can be read in any order; each anthology is designed to stand alone as well. Time is relative, after all!)

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Summary: There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community. These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, and some from other worlds, and others that have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us. These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales. *** Life and Death and Family Secrets... Sheridan Cascaden faces more than memories when she receives a call in the darkest hours summoning her home. Sent away five years prior to safeguard her from the evil that claimed her mother, Sheridan hasn't been back since. She returns to find her home in a disturbing state and her father straddling the Veil, with no explanation of what happened. Not only must she deal with her own demons, but she will have to delve into his if she is to unlock the mystery and save Papa's life. But where lies the line between truth and madness among the shifting shadows? And can Sheridan navigate it before it's too late... for both of them?

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Summary: Beware the Gray People Each Seeking, the magic that protects the town of Carra must be renewed, which means the children of the Exalted Family must go into hiding. Whether through disguise or bribe, through trusted friends or perfect hiding places, every child of the Priest family must avoid capture for the full day of The Seeking. When things go wrong with the renewal, it’s up to seventeen-year-old Dahlia, the middle child of the Priest family, and her girlfriend, Bisa, to escape Carra and find the magical beings responsible for the protection. They must learn who would require such a cruel game every year and if the protection of the Gray People is really worth such a price. What they will discover is far worse.

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Summary: Ray Bradbury wrote, "...this book is wonderful!" in his review of War Eagles. A disgraced pilot, world against him, takes the only job he can get - to circumnavigate the globe to test a new plane. Crashing in a volcanic garden on an uncharted island over the arctic, he encounters a tribe of Vikings who ride giant eagles, treacherous prehistoric creatures and a secret Nazi airbase. When the Nazis attack America, the humiliated pilot bravely sets out with a small ragtag group to save his country. FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS! "Wonderful story. War Eagles is a really good adventure story." amazon reader "WW2 with a dash of fantasy! I really enjoyed stepping back in time as the race for air travel was developing. One could truly feel the passion these pilots and engineers had for these magnificent machines. The twist of stepping back into a land of Vikings and dinosaurs was very well executed." amazon reader Inspired by a concept by Merian C. Cooper - the creator of King Kong.Just prior to the start of WWII a publicly humiliated Army Air Corps test pilot, court-martialed for an unauthorized flight that endangered the life of President Roosevelt, takes the only job he can get - flying an experimental airplane around the world from South to North poles. When his plane is attacked and crashes in the Arctic, he finds himself in an undiscovered land inhabited by a lost tribe of Norsemen who ride giant eagles and, in a surprising turn of events, becomes America's only hope against a devastating sneak attack by the Nazis and their powerful new electromagnetic weapon. Review excerpt: "... Debbie Bishop and Carl Macek 's War Eagles delivers a pulse-pounding adventure that blends historical fiction, fantasy, and aerial combat into an exhilarating story. The novel introduces us to court-martialed test pilot Court Bannister, who finds himself thrust into a lost world teeming with Viking warriors riding giant eagles and prehistoric beasts. From the moment his experimental aircraft is attacked over the Arctic, the story launches into a gripping tale of survival, discovery, and redemption. Bishop’s vivid descriptions of aerial maneuvers and intense dogfights immediately immerse the reader in the action, making the high-stakes battles feel incredibly real. What makes War Eagles so captivating is its seamless fusion of historical elements with fantastical concepts. The world-building is particularly strong, as Bishop and Macek bring to life an ancient civilization that has thrived in isolation for centuries, untouched by modern warfare."

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Summary: A man arrives at his new job. A woman lets one last customer into her shop. Two teens sneak away to a party. These all sound normal. But these simple actions are on worlds that it's unlikely you've seen before. Twenty short stories bring you twenty weird worlds you won't soon forget.