In honor of the WORLDS anthology releasing on Tuesday, I thought I would offer a small review for another microfiction anthology that came to my attention this week.

Editor, Kevin J. Kennedy, was kind enough to send me a copy, and having read the part 1 of this series, I knew I was in for a wild ride.

I can’t say much about any of the individual stories, given that they are 100 words each, but I can offer my impressions of them and commend Kennedy for a quality anthology of prose.

Some of these had some rather haunting lines, like “No Such Thing” by Shaun Hutson, while others were just down right disturbing or scary like “Beachcombing” by Mark Cassell or “The Gurgle” from Michael A. Arnzen.

The thing about horror is that not all of it is entirely gruesome or terrifying, sometimes the stories end up by darkly humorous too and it was fun to find such stories as “Werewolf Dating Problems” by Sarina Dorie and “Everyday Psychopath” by RJ Roles using that to full effect, intentionally or not.

Out of this collection though were two personal favorites of mine, “Tiki Mug from R’leyh” by Nicholas Diak & “Static Nightmare” by Sarah Tantlinger. Diak’s story is a fantastic appreciation of Lovecraft’s mythos, while still playing with those elements to inventive effect. Tantlinger’s story deals with narrative reinterpretation of what could be sleep paralysis, is also quite haunting and terrible all at the same time.

If you dare grab this, be prepared for unfiltered horror. This anthology is unapologetically for horror readers/writers, so don’t go into this, thinking it is something else. Please grab it if you do enjoy horror, because you’ll hardly read a better bunch of writers around.