Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review of THE SKELETON MELODIES

“This superior volume should garner Smith the wider audience he merits.”

I’m ecstatic that a starred review of The Skeleton Melodies has been posted at the highly regarded Publisher’s Weekly. “Fully-realized characters and evocative prose distinguish the 13 horror tales in Smith’s outstanding second collection (after 2014’s Ghouljaw and Other Stories).” Read the full review here: Publisher’s Weekly Review of The Skeleton Melodies

Listen Up: “Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite” Receives Otic Makeover

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So here’s a first for me:  one of my (early-published) short stories, “Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite” (originally appearing in the summer, 2011 installment of the British Fantasy Society Journal), has been refashioned in the form of an audible episode at Max Ablitzer‘s engrossing endeavor, Horror Tales.

Horror Tales has produced a series of top-notch episodes from writers Caleb Stephens (“The Wallpaperman”), G.D. Watry (“The Mosaic”), Timothy G. Huguenin (“The Unknown Thing”), and T.E. Grau (“Transmission”).

Each episode is expressly created by Ablitzer, who invests calculating care into the crafting of each story’s transition.  All tales are accompanied by the ambient underscore of music, and textured with the swaying draperies of eerie sound effects.

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According to Ablitzer, seven episodes have been planned, with an eighth under consideration.  As of early November, 2018, Horror Tales continued to chart around the world, entering Great Britain’s “top fifty” in iTunes; and the podcast also recently attained the following impressive international iTunes standings:

  • Paraguay:  #1 (Arts)
  • Singapore:  #2 (Literature)
  • Costa Rica:  #4 (Literature)
  • United States:  #30 (Literature)

The Horror Tales Podcast submission guidelines are found here.