Splatter Chatter by Shaun Avery

What is it about being a horror fan that makes you want to watch films you know will be terrible? I ask this question having just dragged myself away from the ‘scary’ section of my local DVD store, where a cheap copy of Halloween: Resurrection was proving rather hard to resist. Now, there was just…

Some Thoughts on Rabbit Holes and Filling Them by Daniel Hale

My opinions on the adaptation or reimagining of established classical or fairy stories has changed pretty significantly in the past few years. In my play writing class, I was told to write a play based on the story of Hansel and Gretel, which at the time I found frustrating. I didn’t like being told what…

Why Vampires Won’t Die: they’re still relevant in literature

The recent trend of the undead (or living dead) has left the market saturated. We all know it. And although I enjoyed the Twilight books and half of the True Blood show, they rather ruined it for lukewarm vampire fans. In graduate school, I submitted my vampire novel as my thesis project and got vague…

Beauty and the Beast Black Forest Cupcakes! by Amanda Iles

A tale as old and as classic as Beauty and the Beast deserves its own cupcake. Inspired by the recent release of Disney’s live action movie (and my friend who is obsessed with both the story and coconut), the following is a recipe for Beauty and the Beast black forest cupcakes. Now, I know the…

Hoodwinked: Tricking students into having fun with fairy tales by Alisha Costanzo

When I was a teaching assistant, I taught an essay called the Adaptation/Variation, which allowed students to choose a text and change it in form, in character, in style, in any variety of means with one task in mind—interpretation. Most often, students chose fairy tales because they were familiar from their youth and had seen…

Who Killed All the Radio Stars? Causality and Copresence in Fiction by Edward Cooke

We’ve been reading a lot about the curse of 2016. As writers, we’re in the causality business. Those of us who write horror are wise to exploit superstition in all its forms. Just how solid is our grasp of cause and effect, and is it all we need to succeed? Extravagantly-named logical fallacies like post…