Billie Sue Mosiman

A collection of three short stories: The Scream, The Lonely Walk, and Angelique. The Scream is a passable werewolf story, while Angelique is a rather long-winded story of fallen angels based on characters from the author's novel Banished. The best of the lot is The lonely Walk, which is a zombie story told from the point of view of that rarest of creatures, a self-aware zombie. Mosiman's writing is solid, but the stories tend to dwell on the more "romantic" aspects of the horror genre, which can result in these short stories feeling longer than they are.… (meer)

I consider myself more of a fan of novels then short stories but recently I read a great anthology called Someone Wicked which was edited by Weldon Burge and JM Reinbold and available from Smart Rhino Publications. This book is a collection of 21 tales by the Written Remains Writers Guild that cover such genres as horror, comedy, fantasy and mystery. This is one impressive anthology, every story here is well written and each story is different from the last.

One good story in Someone Wicked is Reckonings by Gail Husch. I loved how the main character describes herself in the beginning and then she gets into all the little things that she does to get vengeance on the people who annoy her. This is a simple story but the way everything is described paints a picture and makes it come to life. The way this one was written made me think this is going be a great anthology and all of the other stories here are just as good.

Reckonings is a quiet, psychological horror story with a touch of humor. To show the diversity in Someone Wicked the next story is The Flenser by Billie Sue Mosiman. This horror story goes more for the gross out effect but still manages to have interesting characters and a good shocking ending. The Flenser is about a man who gets a job cleaning flesh off of skull so they can be sold to medical facilities. I did not know jobs exsisted like this and it was interesting reading about how these people would interact with others and what their idea of fun might be.

One of my favorites in this book is Mirror, Mirror by Chantal Noordeloos. This is a dark fantasy story that looks at the legend of bloody Mary. This story begins in 1852 and is told by a girl named Sophie who along with her mother lives on a plantation. Sophie has a step sister named Marie-Louise who is a bully and likes to make Sophie’s life hard. In addition to bullying, Sophie has a hard life and her mother along with others end up dying under mysterious circumstances. Sophie feels like an outcast and makes friends with some of the slaves. Here Sophie finds out about the cursed mirror in the house. I loved how this story was told with all the details of life in the mid 1800′s and I liked Sophie’s relationship with the slaves. This was one great horror story on a legend that I didn’t know much about.

In addition to the excellent horror stories in this book there is a mystery here called Missing by JM Reinbold, along with some good takes on fairy tales such as Sisters: A Fairy Tale by Liz DeJesus which I would love to see expanded into a novel. I also loved the dramatic Impresario by Maria Masington, this one takes a look at one young person’s descent into drug addiction that I think sadly a lot of people can relate to. This book even has some stories that are just for laughs such as The Semi-Aquatic Blue Baker of Borneo by Justynn Tyme which is a hard story to explain, it just has to be read. This anthology has it all and is a book you shouldn’t pass up.… (meer)