Magazine Review: Cemetery Dance #64

Cemetery Dance #64

One of my two favorite magazines in the world I was excited to see a new issue of CD on the shelf at the book corner in my hometown of Bloomington Indiana. I did chuckle at the stupid looking cover. I understand it was inspired by a Bentley Little novel but you know what it didn’t grow on me. Thankfully you can’t judge a book or a magazine by it’s cover.

This is the Bentley Little special issue, and I admit I don’t know his work as well as I should. I have read several short stories and only one novel. So I enjoyed the feature interview by author David Silva, and piece breaking down Little’s novels by Mark Sieber. There were a few other articles about Little and two excellent short stories written by the man himself. The first story was a strange story called “the wheel” that I enjoyed quite a bit.

CD has several regular features including mediadrome, news from the dead zone and so on. Those are all strong entries and something I look forward to as a horror reader. It’s hard to have relavent commentary when your magazine comes out a few times a year. Battling the internet would be impossible but CD manages to provide the deep commentary that justifies the wait.

I enjoyed the interview with Brian James Freeman (co-editor of CD) and he sold me on his novella The painted Darkness which is now on my mental “to read” list. I enjoyed the fiction in this issue with stand-out stories for me were “Long Black Coat” by Benjamin Percy and “Out of Touch” by Simon Strantzas

Thomas Monteleone gives us another hilarious piece about absurd Hollywood plot twists and probably the only let down comes from Stephen King. As you can see on the cover there is a sneak peek of King’s new limited edition novella Blockade Billy. It’s a baseball story and did nothing for me. That’s ok, I still love the man and hear that his new novella collection is quite good.

Bottom line…If you like Horror Cemetery Dance is a safe bet.