The title of this post might be misleading. Specter Spectacular is an anthology released this week that I edited, and while it opens with a pleasantly eerie story ("My Rest a Stone" by Amanda C. Davis) and a straight up frightening story ("Alabaster" by Jaime Rand), the anthology as a whole isn't one fright after another. It's a fabulous mix of the frightful and fanciful. The eerie and the romantic. The horrific and the humorous.Putting this together, I must admit that my favorite tale to come across my desk was "Wendigo" by Shannon Robinson. The tale appeals to my young-working-woman mindset with a quirky family, yet it enthralls, horrifies, and triumphs. It's about addiction, but not merely in the substance sense of the term.
Yet I also had so much fun with funny stories like "The Haunts of Albert Einstein" -- hey, if Einstein is stuck on the ghostly plane, you think he'll sit back and do nothing? -- and "Cooter, Ass-much, and Me" -- as the title implies, it's damn funny ... and a little bit chilling.
Ghosts are fascinating creatures. But I admit to approaching horror tentatively. There's so much gore-fest out there in cinema that horror has earned a "I don't like that" rep from many people. I'd like to think that Specter Spectacular transcends that and invites in those who love the slightly mystic as well as the horrific and the otherworldly. People who enjoy folk lore and romantic tales. People who may or may not believe in "ghosts" but who are willing, in the course of a fabulous short story or two, to explore their potential.
Available as an ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo, as well as in print, Specter Spectacular: 13 Ghostly Tales is out now from World Weaver Press, just in time for your Halloween reading pleasure. Find a dark, chilling evening one night soon, and curl up with this anthology ... but maybe keep a flashlight close at hand. Just in case.
