7/24/26
Experiencing some major issues with Nomono’s cloud-based editing yesterday — technical backend stuff that would probably bore most of you, so the short version is that the dashboard wouldn’t let me adjust the volume between Xander Harris’s opening theme to KEENEVERSATIONS and the transition to talking, and other assorted glitches.
Bottom line — this week’s episode, which features myself, Clay McLeod Chapman, Nicky Gonzalez, CJ Leede, Tanya Pell, and John Langan discussing the new golden age of horror — has been delayed. I’m hopeful to get it sorted today before I hit the road again, particularly since Scott Edelman and I are recording tomorrow, and I really don’t relish the idea of trying to sort these tech issues out from a hotel room.
I also have to mow and take Dallas to the vet for a follow-up and pack and do laundry and 5,000 other things during this brief return home before I’m back out on the road again tomorrow.
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Women In Horror Year: Day 90
Dismal Dreams by Red Lagoe
Every day is steeped in horror. An inexplicable force in the wild. A serpent lurking in the shadows. Or the sinister thoughts forged in the deepest abyss of a tortured mind.
Lagoe offers a gamut of horrific experiences artfully woven into thirteen stories. Explore the darkness within a selfish heart, face death among ghosts, and roar into the snarling maw of the beast. Horror can be empowering if we can survive our most Dismal Dreams.
Red Lagoe, author of Lucid Screams, brings us her follow up collection of horror shorts, Dismal Dreams, with a foreword by Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil's Dreamland, Sara Tantlinger.
Dismal Dreams is a perfect-length short story collection, and serves as a sort of complimentary sibling to Red’s other short story collection Lucid Screams. (The two books are entirely independent of each other, but thematically, they go well together, and also look nice side-by-side on the shelf if, like me, you put a ridiculous amount of thought into the presentation of your home library).
Red has always done an excellent job with characterization — creating protagonists (and antagonists) that the reader can deeply empathize with. Pulling that off every time can be difficult, even for the most aged, veterans or authors. It can be especially tricky in short form, where you only have a few thousand words to do everything. But she does so splendidly, time-and-time again, in a series of stories that while grim and dark as obsidian, often have a line of hope running through them. Indeed, it is that hope that makes the horror that much more effective. As Sara Tantlinger observes in her Introduction to the book, the stories themselves run the gamut between fun and seriousness. It’s a delicate balance, getting that right, and Red should be commended for pulling it off flawlessly.
A solid collection of short stories, and the perfect introduction to someone who is new to her work. My personal favorites are “Shutter Stop”, “Burden’s Beast”, and “Never Have I Ever” (which absolutely gutted me). Dismal Dreams is available in paperback and eBook from La Red Books.
