6/30/26

So, Dad has pneumonia and is currently hospitalized. He is stable and his condition is improving and they are cautiously optimistic that he’ll be released on Wednesday. Grandma, meanwhile, despite the advice of those around her, is determined to check out of rehab on Thursday and return home. Bottom line — family stuff continues, and I’m picking and choosing my interactions for the foreseeable future, as it comes to which emails and text messages and such to respond to, and which to not. You can either dig that or you don’t. I don’t care. It’s my bandwidth, and I will set the limits.

~

With that in mind, I’m going to cheat a little bit today for Women In Horror Year, and go with something I edited…

Women In Horror Year: Day 69

Four Past Meat Night by Gemma Amor, Laurel Hightower, R.J. Joseph, and Hailey Piper

eBook: Kindle - Nook - Kobo - Apple

Four Past Meat Night -- Over twenty-five years ago, a group of ambitious new writers joined forces to shake up the horror world with 4X4 -- four novellas, four voices, one unforgettable collection that helped define a generation of dark fiction. Now, the wheel turns again. From the mind of Brian Keene, Pandi Press presents four distinct voices defining the new horror renaissance -- Gemma Amor, Laurel Hightower, R.J. Joseph, and Hailey Piper. At the sound of the tone, the time will be... Four Past Meat Night.

The paperback (included as part of Pandi Press’s November 2025 Pandi Pack subscription box) is out of print, but the book is now available digitally. As an editor, it’s one of the things I’m proudest of in my career. All four novellas are exceptional. Rather than review them here, I thought instead that I’d include my Introduction from the book:

Way back in 2001, during the beginning of the previous Great Horror Fiction Resurgence (that has since been replaced by the one we are experiencing now), some friends and I did a book together called 4X4. The idea behind it was simple. Each of us had been working hard, writing every day and getting published wherever we could, and we were slowly – very slowly – starting to build some individual fan bases. We had an idea of putting out a collection of four individual novellas by each of us. Our reasoning was that if our readers bought the book for our novella, they would then discover the other three authors, and thus, our fan bases would each triple in size. We had our pal Gak (an up-and-coming artist to complement our up-and-coming writer selves) do the cover, and the great Ray Garton (then just shy of thirty years in this business) wrote an Introduction, and thus, 4X4 was released upon an unsuspecting horror genre.

The book was published as a signed limited-edition hardcover by Delirium Books. It sold out way faster than anyone – including the publisher and ourselves – had expected, and a quick trade paperback edition followed. We did a little mini-book tour in support of it, signing at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, Borderlands Books in San Francisco, and Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego. We also appeared on The Jerry Lentz Show – an appearance that went terribly awry but that I look back on with great fondness and laughter. The trade paperback’s print run sold out, and the rest, as they say, was history. Readers now knew who we were.

In assembling this book for Pandi Press, I wasn’t thinking about 4X4 – at first. What happened was this: the publishers (Kasey Lansdale and Jonathan Levit) asked me if I could give them two books that would be purchased and shipped together. I said yes immediately, because Kasey is like a little sister to me, and I have deep ties and affection for her family, and Jonathan is an actual magician and could turn me into a frog if I said no.

The first book, I decided, would be a Best of Brian Keene collection, because (like the aforementioned Ray Garton) I am just shy of thirty years in this business and have written enough short stories that an actual Greatest Hits compilation is a viable option.

For the second book, I wanted to use the opportunity to spotlight some other writers. And as I mulled that over, the 4X4 blueprint suggested itself to me. What if I picked four authors who have some serious chops and have built up some impressive fan bases – and then introduced their readers to the other three authors. And introduced my readers to all four of them? Once that was decided, selecting the four authors was easy. All four of these authors are still relatively early into their individual careers, but in a short span of time they’ve released an astonishing output of books and stories, and have each built up (deservedly so) dedicated audiences. All four have had a direct, noticeable, and positive impact on the genre overall. All four have strong, unique voices and yet are reminiscent of the absolute best our genre’s history has to offer.

Gemma Amor is, in my opinion, one of the hardest working new writers in the United Kingdom. She has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the Splatterpunk Award, the British Fantasy Award, the August Derleth Award, and the Indie Horror Book Award. Readers who enjoy the works of Sarah Pinborough, Lucy Taylor, or Kalean Patrick Burke will find much to celebrate with Gemma. Her writing can run the gamut from quiet horror to mainstream to Splatterpunk – often within the same story. The novella included here is a wonderful example of this.

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award winning author of a number of books and well over one hundred short stories. She’s one of the most prolific authors of her generation, developing a staggeringly impressive backlist in a relatively short time (and I say that as someone who has a backlist bigger than my ego). While she’s definitely a master of cosmic horror, it’s important to note the elements of humor, pathos, body horror, and a quirkiness bordering on bizarro that embody her fiction, all of which are present in the novella that follows. Fans of Mary SanGiovanni, John Langan, and Carlton Mellick III will be all in on this one.

Laurel Hightower is not here to fuck around. She is here to hurt you. A Bram Stoker Award nominee and a This Is Horror Award winner, her prose is simultaneously beautiful and sharp with perfectly delivered precision and all-too-believable characterization. Readers of Tom Piccirilli, J.F. Gonzalez, or Mehitobel Wilson will be instantly transfixed. Like many of her previous novels (particularly Crossroads, Below, and Day of the Door), her novella herein will leave you emotionally devastated in the best possible way.

Unlike many of her generation of writers, Bram Stoker Award winner and Shirley Jackson Award nominee R. J. Joseph actually understands the difference between Extreme Horror and Splatterpunk, and like the best Splatterpunk writers, her work has a deep socio-political core. That’s not to say, however, that her writing can be safely pigeonholed in the Splatterpunk subgenre, because it absolutely transcends that. Mainstream Splatterpunk, perhaps? Although I like to think of it as Literary Splatterpunk. Her novella that follows is brutal and beautiful, and evokes Skipp and Spector, David J. Schow, and Clive Barker at their best. If you’ve ever thought, “What would it be like if Shirley Jackson and Wrath James White collaborated?” well, here’s your answer.

It has been my pleasure to watch these four writers develop and succeed over the last few years. All four of them are among my favorites of this new generation. Some of you will have purchased this book based on their names, rather than mine, and that brings me a lot of joy and satisfaction. And as for you older folks who purchased this because of my connection to it?

Well, allow me to introduce you to four of your new favorite horror writers. All you’ve got to do is turn the page…

…if you dare.

Four Past Meat Night is available for Kindle - Nook - Kobo - Apple from Pandi Press.