This was an interesting week.
Last week my children took sick and I felt sorry for them. This week I caught their cold and have blown my nose so much that the cartledge is in tatters. Now I am plotting their demise. I’m thinking gingerbread house, lots of cakes and cookies . . .
But I digress. . .
The Must Reads
HFNN: Horror Fiction News Network may not give Ted Turner any sleepless nights but it’s welcome venue for the serious horror reader who wants the latest low down on the horror side of the publishing world.
Heidi Ruby Miller gives authors, many of whom write horror, a list of 15 questions and asks them to answer six in Heidi’s Pick Six. After the questions and answers is a brief bio with writing credits in case you have no idea who the heck you just read about but you want to read more by that person.
This is not directly horror but it has a lot of sound advice on teaching children to enjoy reading. Build a Reading Family: How to Share Reading with Your Kids. If you’re like me and you have kids you want to guide to read regularly, then this article is for you. The fourth bullet point is so interesting that I plan to share it with the children’s librarian of our library.
The Useful Stuff
Horror Reader is an excellent choice for review of the latest horror novels as well as podcast interviews of the people who work in the business of scaring you silly.
Looking for short stories of horror and dark fantasy? Check out Tangent: Short Fiction Review. They review the short stories of print magazines from large presses to literary publications, online e-zines and even book collections and anthologies. Get up to date information as in the review of the short stories in Chizine, #33, July-September 2007, Weird Tales #345 or a look at the 1970s collection The General Zapped An Angel: New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Howard Fast just to name the first few reviews featured today. If you like your stories short or you’d just like a little help navigating all those periodicals, on-line and 0ff, Tangent is the website for you.
On a Serious Note
You may have noticed this entry is very short. Why?
Because the family dog and cat somehow trashed my wife’s computer on Saturday. We’ve spent all day trying to recover so my blog is very short. It may be that my blog posting will be sporadic as, at least for now; we have to share one computer. My wife has a lot of jobs to finish and it seems some of the data has been lost and must be redone.
Such is computer life.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the kind words about my “Reading Family” post (discovered via trackback). My library didn’t have family packs, but since there are multiple copies of many of hte best kids’ books, it’s usually possible to check out two or three at once. It helps to have separate cards for each member ofthe family, so you can put them on separate “accounts” if your library balks at checking out several copies of the same book to one person.
The alterrnative is to read the book yourself and give it to your kids the next day. Most books up until the high school level can be read by an adult reader in a couple of hours your kids will probably take much longer (unless thhey’re especially fast readers). It’s not quite the same as reading at the same time, but it’s a close second place.
Dustin,
Thank you for dropping by. Your post has stayed with me all these months and finally last week it gave me an idea. After I fix the current book cover crisis on my book lists, I want to start a weekly post talking about books with horror themes and monsters that parents could read with their kids. I’ll be using the brain trust of the children’s librarians where I work to make sure I get it age appropriate. I’m excited about this way of sharing a passion for reading and it is working well with my daughter.
–Greg “The Undead Rat”