Okay, here’s something off-beat — but then the weekend’s coming and so’s summer, so why not? Now and then, I sample some of the stuff that’s being e-published directly. For the most part, I’m not liking it. I’m especially put off by the genuinely crummy grammar and spelling in a lot of this self-published stuff. I’d expect as much if I were sampling randomly, but I usually get books that have been recommended and I’m really dismayed by how poorly some of them are written.
There’s some of that — poor grammar and the like — in Anecdotes in Ashes, but if you’re a horror fan, it’s still a pretty interesting read. It’s micro-fiction: one- and two-paragraph long stories, written by a loose band of online writers who call themselves The Assembly. The whole anthology is only about sixty pages long, but then I picked it up for a buck so that’s about right. It’s also available in paperback for more.
Most of the stories: they’re okay. A shock here and there but nothing memorable. But some of the stories in the first section of the book, “Encounters in The Dark,” actually deliver a nice, creepy little thrill. I particularly liked one called “Hanging,” by someone who goes by the handle Mucalling. It’s three paragraphs long and tells of a website that shows live video of “a dark room, being filmed in black and white, and five people suspended hanging upside down from the ceiling.”
There are other true creepers as well, enough to make this worth the price. It’s an interesting experiment, and if you like scary stuff, I’d take a look.
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