You know the drill: Junji Ito releases a new collection in the States; I read it; I review it. And in his latest collection, The Liminal Zone 2, Ito-sensei once again gives us four stories that try to toe the line between the world of human-caused horror and the more supernatural kind. (Plus the complicated relationships between fathers and sons, now that I think about it.)
You may recall, but I was not impressed with half of the stories in the first Liminal Zone (see my full review here). And, as Ito-sensei himself says in the afterword of Liminal Zone 2, he feels he’s having fewer ideas for stories every year. Can what ideas he has work for me this time?
For the most part, yes.
The first story, “Demon King of Dust,” follows a young boy living in what remains of a hot springs inn with his increasingly unstable father and two servants. The father is paranoid about dust, claiming it’s part of a terrible demon that rules over the abandoned resort town where the inn is located. It’s a very freaky story, where every couple of pages reveals more and more strange and disturbing imagery and truths. I love how it just escalates and how you’re left guessing how much is real or how much is in the father’s head.
The second story, “Village of Ether,” is about four college students returning to the small town one of them grew up in, and where a pair of scientists were supposedly developing perpetual motion machines (machines that lack an external power source and are considered impossible by mainstream scientists). However, the town is very changed from when the one student was a kid, and the only remaining scientist is hiding secrets that are about to come to the surface. Again, the art here is imaginative and terrifying, especially the “automaton servants,” and it just keeps getting freakier up until the end, which I would define as “explosive.”
The third story, “The Strange Hikizuri Siblings, Chapter 3: Uncle Ketanosuke,” is the latest venture in the Hikizuri siblings, six strange and dysfunctional siblings who have appeared in previous, increasingly supernatural stories (don’t worry, you don’t have to have read the previous stories to enjoy this one). In this tale, a girl named Hotaru senses a strange aura from the Hikizuri family home and ends up staying with the siblings in the hope that it may explain why she’s always felt a heavy weight upon her soul from early childhood. Be careful what you wish for, because the truth is as freaky as these siblings, and I bet a live-action film on just this one tale would be both hilarious and creepy!
The fourth and final story, however, is the weakest of the bunch. “The Shells of Manjunuma” is about a young man living in an area where the local turtles and crows are considered evil and cursed, and the turtles’ belly plates can predict who will die under mysterious circumstances. Ito-sensei himself all but admits in the afterword that he was really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, and it shows. The story feels pretty pointless, which only detracts from some of the very gruesome art.
But all in all, this is a much better collection of Ito-sensei’s work. Whereas The Liminal Zone earned a 2.5 out of 5, I’m awarding The Liminal Zone 2 a 3.8 out of 5. Plenty of great storytelling and scary imagery to match! Just skip the last story and you’ll be sufficiently creeped out.
In recent days and across my social media, as well as on my blog, the number of people following me has grown by leaps and bounds. Why is that? I have my theories, but this post isn’t about theories. Instead, it’s to better introduce myself to my new Followers of Fear, as I like to call the people following me and supporting my writing career.
And since I’m a horror writer, obviously I’m doing thirteen items to get to know me better.
So, without further ado, here’s what will hopefully be a fun introduction to yours truly. And who knows? Perhaps some of my long-time Followers of Fear might learn something that’ll surprise them. It’s happened before!
I’m a writer of horror and dark fantasy with five books under my belt. I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and in college, I started self-publishing books. My first book was a collection called The Quiet Game: Five Tales to Chill Your Bones, which came out in 2013. The next year, I published a slasher novel called Snake about a serial killer hunting mobsters in New York City (think John Wick, Taken and Friday the 13th got smashed into a novel). Both did okay, and continue to get readers today.
Five years later, I published my first novel with a publisher. Rose was released by Castrum Press in summer 2019, and followed a young woman turned into a plant/human hybrid (and that’s just the start of her problems). I followed Rose in 2021 with The Pure World Comes, a Victorian Gothic horror novel about a maid who goes to work for a mad scientist. And last year, in 2023, I published my second collection, Hannah and Other Stories, which was released by BSC Publishing Group.
That’s all five of my books out now. I’m proud of all of them and all I’ve managed to do with them over the years. And I plan to put out more in the years to come.
All five of my currently available books. I love them and am so proud of them (and their awesome covers).
I’m Jewish, queer, and have disabilities. Growing up, my life has been an interesting ride, to say the least. Not only did I grow up in a fairly religious Jewish household, but both my father and mother are rabbis. I went to a Jewish day school for most of my youth, learning Hebrew and Judaic subjects for half the day and then learning normal stuff the rest of the day. I also went to synagogue nearly every week, and attended Jewish teen and college groups until I graduated.
To this day, I still practice a lot of the religious practices I grew up with and feel a strong connection with my faith and heritage.
I’m also bisexual. I figured that out in college, and came out about half a year after I came to that realization. Probably took me that long to get comfortable with it because, even surrounded by accepting people and LGBT family members, I still worried about being persecuted. However, I did come out and it was all good, which was reassuring. And then some years later, I realized I was also aromantic (if you’re unfamiliar, it means I can’t feel romantic desire or attraction). Which, looking back, felt pretty obvious, considering I didn’t care about having a relationship all my life. But when I realized it, it was still a bit of a revelation.
And finally, I’m on the spectrum. Have been my whole life. I also have ADHD, a form of albinism, an anxiety disorder, and most recently, diabetes. Yeah, that last one was only diagnosed a couple of months ago, and it sucks! To say the least, it was a shock for me and I miss not being able to eat sweets or have a drink as much as I used to. But, on the bright side, I’ve improved my health by leaps and bounds since finding out, and I plan to keep it that way. Too much to do in my life, after all.
And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve made it a goal to increase representation of these three groups, as well as their intersections, in my fiction. So far, I’m meeting that goal, and hope to release some of those stories soon.
My writing influences. My major influence is, without a doubt, Stephen King. I read IT as a preteen and it was a formative moment in my life! That whole summer, I was transported to Derry, Maine and, when I finished that book at summer camp, I knew what kind of books I would write for the rest of my life.
I’m also majorly influenced by the ideas of HP Lovecraft and the subgenre of cosmic horror, as well as Anne Rice and a ton of anime and manga. All those creators and stories have led me to writing some really insane stories, such as Rose, which I mentioned above, or “Fuseli’s Horses,” one of the stories in Hannah, which is about carnivorous horses.
But I’m not complaining. People seem to like my work, after all.
I love going to the movies and to the theater. It’s rare that a month goes by without me going to see a movie. Usually it’s a horror film or a new superhero film, but I sometimes go see comedies, fantasy and sci-fi films, and anime films getting theatrical releases. I just love going to the movies! I didn’t get to go as much as I wanted when I was growing up, so starting in college, I went as often as possible. And I still do.
Most people are surprised to learn I like ballet. Then they see how much it appears in my stories.
And now that I have a decent day job, I also go to the ballet and to touring Broadway shows. My interest in ballet started probably in college, and as a working adult, I got really into it. It’s gotten to the point where I’m kind of obsessed and look for ways to insert ballet and dancers into the stories I write! And as for Broadway shows, I think Disney movies as a kid primed me to be a fan of those, though the breadth and depth of musicals out there is far wider than Disney can think up, as it turns out.
Now, I have subscriptions to both the local ballet company and to touring Broadway shows that stop in Columbus. And I have to say, I think I would be just as psyched for one of my stories to be adapted into a ballet or Broadway show as I would be for a movie. Maybe even more.
I have several tattoos. To be precise, I have a chest tattoo of a tiger with a blue Star of David, a full back tattoo of one of my favorite ideas from the horror genre, a wrist tattoo referencing some of my favorite anime, and a Tarot card on my right leg that’s about halfway done. However, while I have my tattoos, I don’t normally share photos of them. That’s partially because I just don’t feel the need to. My tattoos are for me to express myself and to have my body reflect who I am. So, their existence on my body is enough for me.
Still, they’re awesome. And I plan to get more as time and money allows.
My most popular work is Rose. I’ve been publishing for over a decade now, but none of my work has done as well critically or commercially as Rose. And I think I know why: it’s the unusual story of a woman turned into a plant/human hybrid. Very weird, very Kafkaesque, and very fantasy horror. Add in that it’s a short but twisty read with Japanese folklore and mythology mixed in, and it’s not surprising that that book does so well.
Plus, you gotta love that cover.
Anyway, if you would like to check out Rose, you can check out its page HERE. I hope you like it if you read it.
I go ghost hunting at least once a year. I’ve been lucky to go to several different locations to ghost hunt. From famous places like the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, OH and the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast in Fall River, MA, to lesser known locations such as the Anchorage Mansion in Marietta, OH and the Bellaire House in Bellaire, OH, with the hope to visit and revisit many, many more.
Also, I try my best to get my investigations on YouTube and upload them to YouTube. So, if you would like to check out my ghost hunting videos, you can check out my channel HERE. They’re spooky good!
I make my own wine. Most people don’t realize that you can brew your own alcohol at home, but it is, and there are plenty of people of doing it, including me. I’ve made a batch of plum wine, and I just finished and bottled a batch of pumpkin wine (yes, pumpkin wine). And I’ve been making my wines based on colors of the rainbow: plum wine is red, and pumpkin is obviously orange. Yellow will be dandelion wine, green will be mint, blue will obviously blueberries, and indigo/violet will be elderberries. And I can’t wait to try them all!
The pumpkin wine I made, all bottled up. Looks good, doesn’t it?
I bought my first home two years ago. For millennials like me, it’s hard to find an affordable home, let alone a non-fixer upper that you don’t have to share with a bunch of other millennials. However, I was lucky enough to find and buy a small condo for myself two years ago, and I’ve been living in the Haunted Condo, as I call it, ever since.
Sadly, it’s not very haunted by anything except me. I don’t know why, I’ve done voodoo rituals and everything else to make the place haunted, but so far, no otherworldly dice. At least I can make one hell of a Halloween display every October and decorate the inside as I like!
My yard is the spookiest in the neighborhood every October.
I’m the chapter coordinator for HWA Ohio. The Horror Writers Association is an international organization that supports horror writers and helps them network and grow. Ohio’s chapter is about six or seven years old, and I’m the guy who runs it! Which was never my intention: some other members organized the chapter, and I volunteered to find a venue. Somehow, I kept arranging locations for us to meet, and that morphed into becoming the chapter coordinator. And after the parent organization set a formal election process for chapter coordinators for all chapters…well, I ran without competition. I guess people think I’m doing a good job or something?
Anyway, HWA Ohio has its own website, which lists our members and puts out news about us. If you would like to check the website out and support us, click HERE.
So proud to have a story from this collection adapted into a radio play.
I recently had my very first story adaptation. Remember my collection Hannah and Other Stories, which I mentioned above? Earlier this year, I became acquainted with a producer for WCBE 90.5, a local NPR station who interviews local creative types. He also runs a yearly Halloween show, where a short story is adapted into a radio play, with the roles played by local high schoolers.
“Hannah,” the lead story in Hannah and Other Stories, was this year’s story. It was my first time having a story adapted, and it was so, so good! The kids did really well in their roles, and it was amazing hearing my story brought to life on the radio.
And if you would like to listen to it, you can! It’s available to stream online, and you can listen to it in full HERE. Let me know what you think if you listen to it. The more people who listen, the better for future shows and future students. Plus, who knows? Maybe another one of my stories will get adapted. It happened once, didn’t it?
I tend to break out in song at any provocation. I kid you not, this is something I did daily in high school, and which I do quite frequently these days. In fact, I’m part of a critique group with some of my fellow Ohio horror writers, and they say it’s not a meeting if I don’t burst out in song at least once!
Too bad I sing badly, but hey, why should I let that stop me?
What I’m working on now. I’m juggling a few projects at the moment. For one, I’m putting together another collection of short stories, and I hope to have more on that in the coming days and weeks. I also recently finished a new novel, The Shape of Evil, which is about a 3D printer from Hell, and I hope to have that ready for pitching to agents and publishers by June next year. Finally, I also have a collection of novellas I plan to work on at some point, and I have a mummy novel I started but put aside for other projects that I plan to get back to.
Plus some short stories to send out to magazines and anthologies here and there. Yeah, I’m a busy guy, aren’t I? But that’s kind of the way I like it.
Anyway, that’s thirteen things you need to know about me. I hope you enjoyed learning about me, because I enjoyed writing it. And if you did, be sure to follow this blog and my other social media to keep up with what I’m doing and when I have new work coming out.
And if you would like to check out any of my other work, I’ll leave a link to my book page down below. You’ll find all my published works and then some there, including free stories. And if you like what you read, I hope you’ll leave a review online so I, as well as other readers, know what you think.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night and pleasant nightmares.
So, I just heard that Fangoria Entertainment is going to make a whole bunch of movies based on Junji Ito’s work. They mainly will adapt stories from his collection Smashed, but I hope Remina or Madonna get adaptations as well, as they are great stories (see my reviews for Remina and The Liminal Zone, respectively). In the meantime, a new collection of Junji Ito stories got translated, so I’m here to review it.
As I say, Junji Ito can be hit or miss with me, but this one was entertaining enough.
My favorite story was probably “Town of No Roads,” which follows a teen girl who goes to live with her aunt after her parents and brothers react the wrong way to a stalker breaking into her room. As if that’s not stressful enough, her aunt’s home has been swallowed up by a giant structure where nobody has any privacy. It’s weird, but you really start to empathize with the main character and the themes of the necessity for privacy really do resonate.
Other stories really struck a chord with me, which was nice. “”The Ward” is a creepy body horror story about several women in a hospital ward who start acting funny, while “Blessing” is a tragic love story with a great twist in the end. “Mold” just grossed me out (as a homeowner, I felt the main character’s pain, especially when it comes to cleaning one’s home). And “Descent” was a weird but engrossing story with a great hook and a mysterious resolution.
Of the rest, they were mostly decent. The titular story, “Alley,” has a great idea, but I feel like there’s too much exposition, which is followed by an ending that could have been a few pages longer. “The Inn” has a great idea and some terrifying art, though the ending kind of puttered out on me, and “Smoker’s Club” has a great idea about tobacco and smoking that would put anyone off cigarettes, though it also could have used more pages for its story. And “Memory” has a great story, though not enough scary art for me (it still would make a great movie).
The only bad story was “Ice Cream Bus,” which other than a reminder about why stranger danger exists, wasn’t much better than its animated Netflix adaptation.
Overall, I think I would give Alley by Junji Ito a 3.8 out of 5. There’s some decent horror in there, so if you’re looking to get into his work, this might be a good choice for your second or third read of his (I recommend picking between Remina, Uzumaki and Tombs for your first and second reads).
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!
The other night, I was reading the final volume of the manga Alice in Borderland. If you haven’t read the original manga or seen the kickass live-action adaptation on Netflix, the story follows a teenager who finds himself among several people randomly placed in a Tokyo emptied of people. Even stranger, the people left in Tokyo have to take place in life-or-death games. If they win the games, they’ll get to live a bit longer. If they lose, they die. And if they don’t survive the games, a laser will come out of the sky and kill them.
Yeah, pretty dark stuff. Makes for a great sci-fi thriller.
Anyway, without spoiling the end of the manga or the TV series, the last chapter features a reporter asking random people on the street why they’re alive. Seems like a random way to end a rollercoaster of a manga, until you realize the death games the characters deal with takes a toll on them psychologically, to the point that some of them even wonder if it’s worth trying to live.
The answers the reporter gets are all over the place. A few aren’t interested in answering and make sure the reporter knows it. A few more don’t know and have never thought about it. Several give variations on “So I can die without regrets” or “I do it because there’s someone important in my life.” Some answers are shallow, like the weekend beer or for material things. Others are about how happy they are everyday or pursuing what they love.
One woman thinks it’s to find out why we’re here, while two others think it’s because of biology.
One little girl in Gothic Lolita dress says she’s living and putting herself in misery everyday for revenge against her parents.*
One man says it’s because this life is all there is.
A couple, for one reason or another, are just going through the motions until they die.
Reading the chapter, I realized something; none of us really know why we’re alive. Not what the meaning of life is; that related, but I feel like that’s a question revolving around the general population and not the individual.
But seriously, why are we alive? Was each one of us placed on this planet for a purpose? Is it just because of biological drives for survival? The need to reproduce and pass on our DNA to a new generation? Is it something we need to figure out for ourselves? Or is it just because we’re already alive, so might as well keep living?
Or perhaps it’s not something we should not think too much about. Perhaps instead we should live.
It’s a question that would probably puzzle this guy for quite a while.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about since I read that chapter. I know my purpose in life, the purpose I set for myself: live a good life, write some damn good horror stories, and try to leave this world a bit better than I found it. And I have an opinion on what the meaning of life is (no, it’s not 42). But are those the same answers to this question?
Maybe. Or maybe not. Like I said, I don’t get up every day thinking, “I’m getting up and I’m alive to write scary stories and have a good life and improve the world.”
Hmm…but I do get up every morning because I have dreams I want to pursue. A lot of what I do everyday is because I want to achieve those dreams. So maybe’s that’s why I’m alive.
But in the end, I don’t know if I need to think about it that hard. It never was something I needed to think that hard about before, after all. Why should that change going forward?
In any event, I’ll keep going forward. I’ll keep pursuing those dreams and hopefully improving my life and the lives of others while I’m at it. And maybe, if a reporter asks me, “Why are you alive?”, I’ll have a decent answer.
How would you answer that reporter’s question? What do you think of this topic? Was this too heavy a subject for a blog post?
*And I’m probably going to write a story around that little girl, because that answer was just too dark and intriguing for me to just pass over. I want to write a story around her and find out what made her like that!
Just a reminder, my Followers of Fear: this Saturday, April 6, I’ll be at the Wagnalls Library in Lithopolis, Ohio from 10 AM – 2 PM for their Local Author Fair. If you can, please stop by. I’ll be selling books, doing Tarot readings, and sitting on a panel. You can find out more on their website here. Hope to see you there!
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night, pleasant nightmares, and check out Alice in Borderland. Manga or TV show, it’s an awesome series. Just my two cents on the subject!
Earlier this week, I tried to write a story about a cursed anime. And I thought I would have a blast writing it. I mean, horror and anime, two of my great loves! And for a bit of added fun, maybe some ballet, because God knows I like putting that into my stories like King enjoys throwing in psychics and other writers.
But for some reason, while working on the outline, I just couldn’t make it work. Every time I tried to add to the outline, I just felt blocked and frustrated. After a while, I just figured that I would need to find a different way to tell this story, so I put it back in the proverbial idea bin.
And you know what? That’s okay. This sort of thing happens to writers of all stripes, not just me. Sometimes, you just need to put the story away and hope a way to tell it eventually comes to you.
That’s what Stephen King did for Under the Dome. He tried numerous times to write that novel, but it just didn’t click for him. Not for around thirty years. But eventually he was able to find some way to get unstuck and knock out one hell of a doorstopper novel.
Who’s to say that couldn’t happen with this anime story? Either that, or I could make a graphic novel out of it, provided I could find a good artist to work with.
For now, though, while I wait for that story to click or an artist to collaborate with, I have something new to work on. A story about a 3D printer from Hell. And judging by the progress I’m making in the outline, I won’t have the same issue. Yeah, I’m still figuring out where it’s going, but I’m figuring it out by leaps and bounds.
Makes me think it could be one hell of a read when I’m done. And I’ll have one fun ride while writing it.
You know the drill: new Ito comes out, I read it, I write a review.
Mimi’s Tales of Terror follows Mimi, a college student who has a bad habit of encountering supernatural or strange phenomena in the course of her everyday life. The stories are adapted from Shin Mimibukuro, which from what I’ve been able to gather is some sort of anthology of urban legends and spooky stories that may or may not be connected to a series of movies and TV specials. In this volume, Ito takes those random tales and centers them around one girl, who should honestly learn how to be like the Winchesters of Supernatural.
Anyway, Ito’s work can go either way for me. Some of it is awesome, some of it is terrible, and a lot of it is average. Where did Mimi fall? I’d say above average.
Granted, the first three stories are definitely below average. Two of those stories are only a few pages long, so you wonder why they’re included or not fleshed out more. The third, about a woman in black whose height seems to change every time she leaves her apartment, had a good premise but ultimately left me unfulfilled and disappointed.
However, the rest were quite spooky. In one, Mimi moves to an apartment building next to a graveyard and witnesses some stuff that I found a little unsettling. In another, a little girl clings to her because a strange phantom follows her around and leaves ash everywhere. And then, after she and her boyfriend have a fight, Mimi joins a friend in a secret basement with a red spot on the wall that changes appearance over time. It’s all quite freaky and showcases Ito’s love of strange and macabre.
I also got a kick out of Mimi and her friends’ speech patterns. They’re written like they have American southern accents, which probably means they’re from the Kansai area of Japan. (I wouldn’t call it the Japanese equivalent of the south, even if it is in the southern part of the country, but generally people from the Kansai area in anime and manga are given southern accents when the work is brought to North America to differentiate them from folks who speak with a more Tokyo-ish/General American pattern.)
The most unsettling tale, however, is an extra at the end of the volume called “Monster Prop.” In this story, a young woman working for a haunted attraction tries to recreate a scary experience she had as a kid as a prop for the haunted house. However, doing so has some unintended and unforeseen consequences. It’s truly freaky stuff.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give Mimi’s Tales of Terror a 3.8 out of 5. If you avoid the stories that are under six pages and the one with the woman in black, you’ll probably enjoy the old school psychological horror vibe of the volume. Give it a shot and see what you think.
You know the drill. Junji Ito, currently the biggest name in horror manga right now, released a new collection of short manga in North America. I got my hands on a copy from the library, read it, and now I’m reviewing it.
In Tombs, Ito brings together some old and some new stories to terrify us. From a town where tombstones show up wherever someone dies, to a strange neighbor who calls to a young man at night and a town where everyone appears to be anemic, there’s something for everyone in this collection. And all of it is guaranteed to stick in your mind.
This was probably the most solid collection of Ito’s shorts that I’ve read. Not a bad one among the group. Obviously, Ito’s art is always well-done and extremely evocative, with every line made to scare the ever-living daylights to you. And the ideas of these stories are all very inventive. I often found myself envying some of the ideas he had to come up with these stories, my favorites being the titular story “Tombs,” as well as “The Bloody Story of Shirosuna.” The former story is the one I mentioned where tombstones show up whenever someone dies, while the latter is the one about the town being anemic.
Close runner-ups were “Floaters,” a story where people’s inner thoughts manifest physically as these little hairballs that float in the air and speak your thoughts when you touch them, and “Bronze Statue,” which follows an old woman’s obsession with her youth and commemorating it in bronze.
It was also great to finally read “The Window Next Door,” which I’ve only heard about and have never read (I didn’t want to read it illegally online). That particular story has some of the most disgusting and off-putting art I’ve seen from Ito, all without using blood or gore.
The only issue I really had with the collection was that the story “Clubhouse,” which is a ghost story with a fun and clever concept, ended a bit too abruptly for my tastes. I honestly felt like it could have had a better resolution if it had a few more pages. That being said, the story is still pretty awesome as it is.
All in all, Tombs by Junji Ito is a great collection with some amazing and creepy stories worth reading. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m going to give it an even 5, a top score. Definitely go out and read a copy if you can get your hands on it. Hell, I might buy myself a copy to own if the opportunity presents itself. It’s that good.
Also, I think “The Bloody Story of Shirosuna” would make a great live-action movie. Can someone please get on it? And yes, please do live action, not anime. I’ve sort of given up on anime adapting Junji Ito well (two series have been really sub-par and the Uzumaki adaptation has been delayed forever, so what does that tell you?). And don’t make an American version of it, I’m sure that would ruin it by adding all the wrong elements to make it more local. But yes, please make a live-action adaptation of it.
Alright, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!
A lot’s been happening this month, hasn’t it? My birthday, bought a condo, and now three book anniversaries! In this case, the anniversary is for Rose, my first novel with a publisher, my most reviewed novel, and by far my most popular book. As of today, Rose is three years old.
So if you’re unaware, Rose is a Kafkaesque fantasy-horror novel that was published on June 20th, 2019. The novel follows Rose Taggert, a young grad student who wakes up in a greenhouse with no memories of the past two years. Immediately afterwards, her body transforms into a plant/human hybrid as an attempt to save her life. As she tries to adjust to the changes, Rose realizes that those around her are not all they seem, leading to a desperate fight for survival.
I first started Rose as my college thesis back in 2014 during my last year in college, and finished the first draft back in 2015. Six drafts later, including one where I rewrote about two-thirds of the book,* it was published by Castrum Press in paperback and ebook, with the audio book being released six months later.
And as I said, it’s been my most popular book, with most of the reviews being overwhelmingly positive. I think it’s the odd concept of a woman turned into a plant/human hybrid. It was heavily influenced by my love of anime and manga, which I made sure showed in the book, as well as Stephen King’s novel Misery. It’s been quite heartwarming to hear so many people love it and even to say that it’s one of their favorite novels.
In fact, here’s what people are saying:
Loved the premise and all of the descriptions of turning into a plant creature, as well as several other body horror scenes, were disturbing in the best way. I also liked the psychological horror of the story and was often at the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next…Overall, a solid horror story! I feel the strong beginning and surprising and intense ending made this a great horror experience and a book I would definitely recommend.
Emma, Amazon
From start to finish, Rose does not disappoint. The story has good pacing and I was actually quite surprised as to how developed the charters were considering how short the book is. What I really enjoyed about this book was that even if you strip away all the supernatural elements it is still a good story and once it picks up you will not want to stop reading. I do have a couple things that I would have liked to have happened in the story but they are minor and with trying not to give any spoilers away, I will keep them to myself…If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be held captive by a psychopath with a magic tome then this book is for you. Do not let the cover fool you. This is not a tween fantasy novel.
Jarod, Amazon
In this work, Rami Ungar paints a captivating picture of Japanese folklore and magic, which serves as a backdrop for a story about captivity, manipulation, and possession! His narrative style also captures the dread and claustrophobia of being a captive, not to mention the twisted pathology of the captor! Scary stuff, and all the while you’re rooting for the bad guys to get their just desserts!
Matthew Williams, author of The Jovian Manifesto, Goodreads
There’s more like this, and a few unlike it, but I don’t want to make this post annoyingly long.
Anyway, if any of the above makes you want to check out Rose, I’ll include the links down below. And if you end up reading the book, please let me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it not only helps me in the long run, but other readers as well.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’m sure I’ll be back with more news very soon. But until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!
*Word of advice, don’t write flashbacks into your story unless they relate to the main plot of the story, let alone make them a third of the story and another third dependent on the flashbacks. They might be interesting or do plenty of character development, but they’re unnecessary to the main story and will in all likelihood be nixed from the final product. Believe me, I know.
In my last post, I mentioned that I was prepping to move into a bigger apartment and was getting ready to do so. While going through some stuff, seeing what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to donate, I was surprised by what I found hidden at the bottom of a box: my three contributor copies of the Winter 2011 issue of TEA, A Magazine. This is significant because this was the first time I was paid for a published story!
While my memory can be very unreliable sometimes, I remember that story, and that magazine, so well. I was still in high school then, and I was just starting to try and get into the short story market. In those days, I was regularly borrowing these annual guides on the short story market, reading the articles for anything I could use to improve my own storytelling techniques and looking at the listings of magazines and small presses I could submit my work to. One of the listings was for TEA, A Magazine. You can guess what it was focused on. Articles, ads, recipes, and even fiction centering on tea.
I was a big tea drinker even then, so I was intrigued. And I thought, Why not try to write a short story about tea and send it their way? And I did, a short story called “Summers with Grandmother Fumika.” And as you can tell from that title, I was a huge nerd for anime, manga, and Japanese culture back then. In fact, I was crazier about it then than I am now! But back to the short story. “Summers with Grandmother Fumika” was about a young Japanese-American girl who stays with her grandmother during the summers, and one summer, they perform a tea ceremony for a kitsune, a multitailed fox spirit.
Definitely more fantasy-based than Rose was, though they both drew upon Japanese culture. And it had a happier ending.
I don’t think I really expected TEA to accept my work, but to my surprise, the editor actually enjoyed the story and wanted to work with me on it. A couple of months of edits, and they sent me a contract. Not too long after, they sent me a $100 check for the story, as well as my contributor copies.
My short story in the issue, “Summers with Grandmother Fumika.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, once said that he could make a million dollars in his lifetime, but he would never feel richer than he did the moment he received a $400 check for his first story, A Princess of Mars. For me, I have the same feeling about that $100. Not because I grew older and $100 didn’t seem like such a big deal as it did in high school. But because that check came with more than just monetary meaning. It came with validation.
Imagine, only 17 and someone thought that something you had written was not only good, but they wanted to pay money for it! To include it in a magazine read by hundreds, maybe even thousands of people! “Intoxicating” doesn’t even begin to cover the feeling I had then. And I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since, trying to replicate it.
Of course, like any addiction, nothing ever compares to that first high. Thankfully, with this addiction, there are plenty of other perks when I manage to publish something people enjoy. You can probably guess what they are.
I’m glad I was able to rediscover that story and those contributor copies. It’s been so long, I’d forgotten that I even had them. And with it being around ten years since that issue of TEA was released, it feels almost timely. Makes me want to do something with “Summers with Grandmother Fumika.” Maybe a reading on a YouTube video? It’d be more fantasy than horror, but I’m sure there would be some people interested in hearing me read it. We’ll see after the move.
Anyway, thanks for strolling down memory lane with me, my Followers of Fear. It was a nice, warm, nostalgic moment in my day and I wanted to share it with you. And it reminds me that, even though it’s been awhile since I’ve had an acceptance, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. Hell, if I can do it at 17, then I can do it at 27. Just a matter of time, work and finding the right publication.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night, Shabbat Shalom, have a good weekend, and pleasant nightmares.
I looked for a cosmic horror GIF, and this was my favorite.
Cosmic horror is everywhere these days. Since HP Lovecraft first kicked off the subgenre in the early half of the 20th century, it’s spread from pulp magazines to all corners of horror literature, to table-top roleplaying games and video games. And while cosmic horror has been in the movies and on TV sporadically since the 1960s, in the past couple of years we’ve seen a glut of it on those mediums: Annihilation, Stranger Things, The Color Out of Space, Underwater, Lovecraft Country (which I’ll be watching soon now that I have HBO Max), The Endless, and most recently, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina‘s fourth season (though not very well).
And there are more on the way. Just today, I heard about a new film called Sacrifice coming out next month that has Lovecraftian themes (click here to check out the trailer). Sometime this year, the long-awaited anime adaptation of Uzumaki by Junji Ito is supposed to air. Richard Stanley, the director of Color Out of Space, hopes to do a trilogy of films based off Lovecraft’s work.
And there’s a lot more that I probably don’t know about. Plus new games, novels and short stories, comics, manga and anime, poems and art! Cosmic horror is kinda going mainstream right now. Or as mainstream as horror can get.
Color Out of Space was awesome. And we may have more like it in the future.
The question is, why now? Why is this particular subgenre only now just getting mainstream acceptance? Why the sudden enthusiasm?
I think there are a few reasons. One is time and a devoted fanbase. Cosmic horror, as I said, originally came from pulp magazines with very small circulation. However, the fans who enjoyed the stories of Lovecraft and those who played in his world–what would later be known as the Cthulhu Mythos–preserved and kept the stories going even after the deaths of the magazines and of Lovecraft. Through hard work and advocacy, more fans found cosmic horror and found themselves drawn to the stories. Then as now, fans would then tell other fans, or create their own work based on these stories, which has a looping effect of creating more fans through exposure. So, it may have taken time, but cosmic horror has been able to spread with patience and the love of many who follow it.
Almost sounds like cosmic horror is an eldritch deity in and of itself, doesn’t it? I find that hilariously appropriate.
Another factor at play, I believe, is that modern audiences are more receptive to that kind of horror than they have been in the past. Like I said, it’s taken time for cosmic horror to penetrate the public consciousness, and so for many people, cosmic horror may be a nice change of pace from the usual horror fare. We’ve seen plenty of haunted house stories, slashers, and sequels and ripoffs of possession or ghost stories. Those elements are not normally part of cosmic horror. In fact, it could be a breath of fresh air for audiences.
And finally, while cosmic horror normally deals with ancient, otherworldly gods and terrible secrets, it’s a great place to talk about modern issues. Granted, horror has always been a place to explore our everyday fears and anxieties, but cosmic horror, through the perspectives and interactions of its human characters against these terrors, can do it in a unique way. Lovecraft Country uses cosmic horror to explore racism, which both was part of the genre’s start and which is a current problem today.
Is it too much too hope that one of those works might be a kickass, terrifying adaptation of Hellstar Remina by Junji Ito?
And I wrote a novella, What Errour Awoke, that combined elements of cosmic horror with the current pandemic to explore the fear with the latter. And yes, I still hope to get that published.
So, with all these factors, can we expect more cosmic horror in the near future? I think so. Maybe not in huge numbers from the movie industry, as cosmic horror tends to have a spotty track record there.* But certainly in other mediums. Horror-themed TV has been booming, so we’ll likely see plenty of shows exploring those themes in the future. Comics and manga have always loved cosmic horror. And, of course, we’ll likely see many, many new books or short stories in that vein.**
So long as they’re made with lots of love, both for the subgenre and for the projects themselves, rather than for the money, I look forward to it.
Are you a fan of cosmic horror? Are you enjoying the wave of new works in the subgenre? Let’s discuss in the comments below.
*While they were well-received by critics and moviegoers, Annihilation and Underwater underperformed at the box office, and Color Out of Space only had a limited theater release.
**Hopefully, I’ll be able to add to this. I’ve a few cosmic horror ideas waiting to be written. I’d love to share them with you all someday.
Rami Ungar The Writer 