I especially love horror in short story form, so I was delighted to find a new collection - and thrilled to find it so gratifying. I think of them at least once a week on the norm and more than that if I am writing something of my own, and looking for the vibes I picked up from those stories to share now, with my readers.

Midnight Graffiti (Warner Books, Oct 1992) is an engaging anthology from the now-defunct magazine of the same name from the late '80s. The stories range in intensity from the sheer grit of "Bad Guy Hats" to the quirky "Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland. Several were interesting in portraying the point of view of part of society: Rainy Season, Say Hello Mister Quigley, Emerald City Blues, Rant.I’m quite happy to have stumbled upon this book at a yard sale and will be keeping it in my collection. Michael Straczynski's "Say Hello, Mister Quigley" is simultaneously disturbing and heartwarming; Joe Lansdale's "Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland" is a fun and clever satire, though not at all horror; "Blue on One End, Yellow on the Other" by K. The rest of the stories in the book I didn't finish because either there was too much violence or I had no clue what went on and had to stop reading (something that I almost never do). I had never heard of the publication "Midnight Graffiti" before, but I wish more publications like it existed now. Schow's "Bad Guy Hats," a detailed study of intraspecific predator-prey relationships and social ecology that will have you scrutinizing even the kindest-seeming of people with suspicion for years to come.

They could blissfully continue to struggle through joyless slop like Dickens, I was getting a little taste of Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, J. The paperback version of the book, released after the movie, went on to sell more than two-and-a-half million copies. Horror is the only medium that regularly succeeds in relating the momunmental strangness of the world in an accessible, cathartic manner.I don't think that the Anthology Experiment went over too well; back to reading something slightly more worthwhile, maybe some letters to the editor from back-issues of Club, if I can manage to pry the pages apart somehow. Bad Guy Hats: I liked the idea behind this, but there was too much graphic violence for me to enjoy it.