DLW never fails to grab me by the balls and drag me kicking and screaming though her writing. I'm never sure if she's intentionally fucking with the audience, or if her writing is just naturally chaotic/evil and reading it causes insanity.

It came from 1954. The beast of Sunny Florida. The thing from another world.

Surface, surface, surface...

As an avid reader, I can easily go through three or four books a week, particularly during the summer months, and this particular book came into my possession as an impulse buy at my local second hand market. I had never heard of the author, or the title before, however while the brief synopsis on the back cover gave little away, the contrasts between the basic plot and the seemingly innocuous title—Heart Shaped Box—was enough to get my attention to give Joe Hill's debut novel a try.

Let me get it out in the open that Joe Hill's NOS4A2 is a brilliant book; it is a sheer irresistible page-turner packed with a fantastic story and characterization, it tells of Victoria McQueen, known as Brat to her father, finding out her unique ability to a bridge that brings together reality and thoughts/fantasy.

Who Are the Best Horror Writers?

The first text we're going to use is a controversial one. Heart of Darkness was written by Joseph Conrad in the year of 1899. There are multiple quotations in the text that suggest that Marlow has a lot more control over the narrative than Frankenstein in his text. Frankenstein's motives are controlled by his emotions, this can change events and retellings of other people's stories. Whereas, Marlow is able to control the emotions of others using the story. The most notable of these incidents is when he tells Mrs. Kurtz what Kurtz's last words were; of course, he doesn't tell her the truth and says that he said his wife's name instead of "The Horror! The Horror!"

"During this short voyage I saw the lightning playing on the summit of Mont Blanc in the most beautiful figures. The storm appeared to approach rapidly, and, on landing, I ascended a low hill, that I might observe its progress. It advanced; the heavens were clouded, and I soon felt the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its violence quickly increased… While I watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step."

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a novel synonymous with the beginning of sci-fi, the high fothic novel, the beginning of the modern novel and even the start of the modern world. Written in 1818 and revised for over a decade after, Mary Shelley's novel was first published as a part of a competition set by the poet Lord Byron. The competition was that they had to write a frightening story and the winner would get funded for publication.

I can easily say form the first three stories, that this anthology is worth the cover price. Madness Heart Press has done it again. So far, I’m actually more impressed with this anthology than Creeping Corruption.

“No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.” (KING, STEPHEN. IT. SCRIBNER, 2019.)

I am a person who really does not have a taking to horror. I have tried picking up a Stephen King book and getting through it, but it was a horrible experience where I had nightmares that were constant. I had to immediately rush to the nearest library and throw the book into the return slot and never thought about it again. Now, you might be asking me, how do I know that he is the best horror novelist out there? Well, for starters, he has sold 350 million copies of his books and he has written at least 88, and any author can tell you that is a lot of books to write. However, I was taking a class for creative writing and one of my profs, whom I admire to this day, has told me that if you are going to read any book, it must be Stephen King's On Writing:A Memoir of the Craft. So I bought it at Value Village and I started reading. He starts off with his childhood and how we grew up. There was a story of when he got an ear infection, and every little detail of the sounds of what he felt made it seem so agonizing and real, that I understood why he wrote horror. He took a simple childhood story and he turned it into a horror story of the ear infection. That's what made me realize that anyone can be a writer, anyone can be a horror writer. You take a simple story, and bit by bit, you add parts and words that make it terrifying—and there you go, you have a book.