GUEST POST - Shiny Happy Horror: Why YA? Why Me? by Clay McLeod Chapman
In this exclusive guest post, bestselling author Clay McLeod Chapman explains his YA debut, Shiny Happy People.
Essential Short Stories: "Brushdogs" by Stephen Graham Jones
After The People Lights Have Gone Off is one of the best single-author short fiction collections I've ever read, in any genre. It's a marvelous distillation of the imaginative leaps and creative risks Stephen Graham Jones is willing to take in his fiction, and each story
The Scares That Shaped Us Episodes 53 and 54
I'm a little behind in posting the podcast to the newsletter because, well, my brain just basically gave out after 31 straight Halloween essays. Let's play a little catch-up, shall we? First, on Halloween week, we had writer and monster-maker Trevor Henderson on the show to
Tracing The Shape 31: You Can't Kill The Boogeyman
Halloween, like Black Christmas and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, doesn't really end, not in the neat way we tend to think about. There's no real solution to anything, just two people who managed to survive and a whole town terrorized all over again. If you
Tracing The Shape 30: Sam Loomis is Damned
Sam Loomis has wanted this for a long time. It's the end of a long search, and he's cornered Michael Myers on the top floor of a house in Haddonfield. His gun is loaded, he's ready to make his move. If he does it
Tracing The Shape 29: Michael Unmasked
Michael Myers is a composite character played by more than one actor. Nick Castle famously portrayed Michael as "The Shape," the masked and coverall-clad Boogeyman who picks his way through Haddonfield with quiet grace and fluid steps. But for one unforgettable moment, another actor went under that mask,
Tracing The Shape 28: Laurie Drops The Knife, Again
Laurie Strode has placed herself in an impossible position with the biggest gamble of her life. She'd hoped to lure Michael outside by opening the balcony doors in the bedroom, make him think he needed to go chase her through the streets, away from the kids, toward some
Tracing The Shape 27: The Quiet Brilliance of Laurie Strode
If I've gotten across anything in my writing about Laurie Strode over the past month, I hope I've gotten across just how much I think is going on in this character's head. Everything about her, from the way Carpenter and Hill scripted her to
Tracing The Shape 26: Michael and The Kids
One of the more fascinating things about Halloween is how little, for all the backstory and insight it tries to pepper in throughout its runtime, it seems to care about who Michael Myers was before that night in 1963 when he murdered his sister. Those six years, the ones that
Tracing The Shape 25: Loomis is Broken
Once Laurie has seemingly dealt with Michael, Carpenter briefly pivots the action back to Loomis. I say "action," but really he's not doing much of anything, and yet the way Donald Pleasence plays this brief scene says everything about where the character is right now. We
Tracing The Shape 24: Laurie Drops The Knife - A Final Girl Theory
When you're in the habit of watching Halloween a lot, as I've been for more than two decades now, you tend to end up in situations where people want to watch it with you. And if you're in those situations, you're gonna
Tracing The Shape 23: The Scariest Scene in the Movie
The single most frightening moment in Halloween doesn't feature Michael Myers. Here's there, of course. He's always there somewhere, passing like a shadow over Haddonfield, infecting it with his darkness, his menace, his pulsing drive to destroy. But the scariest scene in the movie