Last week we talked about the most well-known vampire in the world, Dracula. The Dark Prince will probably return for another round of Mini-Reviews at a later date, since we only had the chance to check out a few of the products featuring Dracula and there are certainly many more available.

This week we are going to take a look at some great collections of scary stories. There are fiction anthologies on every subject imaginable. Fans of Horror & Dark Fantasy have many authors and publishers to choose from. Some of the authors featured in this week’s mini-reviews include Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, Kelley Armstrong, David Wellington, C.J. Henderson, Tanith Lee and Patricia A. McKillip…just to name a few.

Here are a few anthologies that I’ve had the chance to check out recently…

Flashback Weekend 2008 By Day – Flashback Weekend features Chicago’s most complete Horror/Movie Memorabilia convention featuring Celebrities, a stunning dealer’s room, costume contest, special events, and… By Night- Horror Party Central featuring Charles Band, the New Millennium Theatre Company, the First Annual Flashback Weekend Zombie Pinup Beauty Pageant, and much more! www.flashbackweekend.com

EMPIRE by David Dunwoody

The outbreak began in 2007. It’s now 2112.

The crippled U.S. government is giving up its fight against an undead plague. Military forces and aid have been withdrawn from the last coastal cities, leaving those who choose to stay in the “badlands” defenseless against hordes of zombified humans and animals.

It’s been a hopeless battle from the beginning. The undead, born of an otherworldly energy fused with a deadly virus, have no natural enemies.

But they do have one supernatural enemy… Death himself.

Skin and Bones is the second installment in Permuted Press‘ series of zombie anthologies, The Undead. It’s very much a case of what you see is what you get–which, of course, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, providing you like zombies.

The anthology opens with one of the strongest tales, David Wellington’s Cyclopean. The over-used ‘zombies working 9 to 5, no one even realizes they’re zombies’ theme is employed, but only lightly. Cyclopean is a fast-paced, entertaining and original zombie tale with Lovecraftian overtones.

Review by Leah Clarke

As zombies invade a barricaded apartment building, the vampire inhabitants must protect their human livestock. Shade, the vampire monarch, defends her late father’s kingdom, but Frost, Shade’s general, convinces his brethren to migrate to an island, where they can breed and hunt humans. In their path stands a legion of corpses, just now evolving into something far more lethal, something with tentacles–and that’s just the beginning.

Drop by the Austin Chronicle’s website for an interesting discussion between Spencer Parsons and Diary of the Dead director George Romero: George Romero’s latest state of the union via flesh-eating legions of the undead I just can’t resist that stuff, man. I grew up on EC comic books, and it’s all gags and puns. I […]

A Vampire Tale by David Wellington

After having read Monster Island, I was pleased to hear that Wellington was writing a vampire story. 13 Bullets is a modern action adventure with deadly vampires, great writing and a few clever plot twists.

The vampires in 13 Bullets are as inhuman as they get. Usually sometime after they’ve been turned they begin to lose all of their hair and mutate into their new, monstrous forms. They are incredibly strong, difficult to damage and often have an array of other powers at their disposal.

The dead are rising from their graves, so what can you do? Maybe grab a baseball bat and play some Zombie Baseball! Or grab that shotgun and sacrifice yourself for the good of the others. Of course, you can always get in your car and leave your friends in the dust.

Zombie Fluxx is an expanded version of Fluxx, a card game about change. The game changes as you play it, starting with the basic rule of draw one card and play one card. This will,of course, change when new rules are played.

Review by Graveyard Greg

Join authors D.L. Snell, John Sunseri, Ryan C. Thomas, and David Dunwoody as they fire four more rounds into the growing horde of living dead.

The latest zombie collection from Permuted Press has just been released. This is the fourth volume in the Undead series. Make sure you check out Grim’s review of Flesh Feast for a peek at some of the cool stuff offered in this series.

Headshot Quartet mixes things up a bit. Fitting for volume four of the series, instead of an anthology of short stories, this book features four novellas. Four brutal, action-packed tales of zombie hordes across the world.

Welcome to the second set of “Contest Edition” Mini-Reviews.

These are just some of the products offered by the sponsors of the Flames Rising Favorite Horror Game Contest. This week we sci-fi adventure mixed with medieval horror, zombies, pirates and more!

If you missed out on the first “Contest Edition” from last week, be sure to check out that mix of great games from other sponsors.

The subtitle of this 2007 Permuted Press offering is ‘A novel about zombies.’ This isn’t entirely true. Ross fills his days with selling bootleg horror movies, cheating on his two-timing girlfriend and hating life in general. He feels trapped in a vicious circle of uselessness.

Just as he begins to resign himself to the mid-twenties twilight he seems unable to escape, he starts to notice men in radiation suits, following him. Filming him.

Review by Leah Clarke

Welcome to another collection of Mini-Reviews here on Flames Rising!

This week we are going to focus on some of the cool products published by some of the sponsors of the “Favorite Horror Game Contest” and the creative games they have released. Next week will be a few more of sponsors’ products. Including amazing art and funny cards.

So sit back and enjoy this collection of zombies, cannibals, strange creatures and nightmare cities…

“The It’s Alive Show” presents World Zombie Day In 1968 a film was released in Pittsburgh that changed the face of horror history forever. It changed zombies from mindless undead slaves into flesh-hungry beasts that thirst for blood! Film history would never be the same. Now, 40 years later, some new blood is picking up […]

Round three of the Flames Rising Flash Fire Mini-Reviews series is here!

This week we’ve got a vampire theme going on with a mix of fiction, comics and games. Some vampire hunters might even make an appearance as well. You can’t have the monsters without giving the heroes a little screen-time too. So, grab your garlic, watch your neck and enjoy!

Independent films often struggle with their ability to attain audiences and garner recognition. I like to think that some of these lesser-known films are self-aware, either stretching their boundaries to be a “great” film, or toying with conventional filmmaking to experiment with the media.

Review by Monica Valentinelli

Eve of the Dead, a zombie novel by Nathan Tucker, combines the vision of Romero’s post-apocalyptic world with the break-neck pace and action of pulp zombie fiction at its finest to create a story that will leave you begging for more.

I recently had the chance to have short conversation with Nathan about writing Eve of the Dead and the challenges of getting from the idea stage to the final product. I didn’t want to reveal too many spoilers, so this interview is mostly about Nathan’s writing style in regards to the book.

Welcome to the first installment of the Flash Fire series of mini-reviews on the new Flames Rising website!

Every Friday (hopefully) we’re going to post a series of short reviews of new-to-me Horror & Dark Fantasy products. These will usually be one or two paragraph highlights of whatever caught our eye that particular week. Basically…stuff we think is cool and want to share. We will try to keep it a mix of stuff, but you never really know just what we will be up to in a given week.

This week we’ve got some Changeling, a few zombies, a conspiracy, Cthulhu and something unnatural…

Twilight of the Dead now a free online read! Five years after the dead rose a small band of survivors has taken refuge in the fortified town of Eastpointe. When a newcomer arrives claiming to know the location of the antidote to the zombie plague, it sends the town into an uproar. To retrieve this […]

Flesh Feast as an anthology of zombie-oriented horror fiction, currently available from Permuted Press, the third in a series apparently. The volume is presented much in keeping with the current, and ongoing, resurgent zombie fad but isn’t truly and entirely a zombie-oriented collection. While the stories do all follow the undead theme, zombie purists (those who foam at the mouth about 28 Days Later) are going to be a little disappointed and, to be honest, they have a point. The stories that stray the most from the more classic zombie fare are the weakest.

Colonial Gothic is a game of occult mystery and darkness set during the American Revolution, I shall try to contain myself from dispelling too many myths about that time or the nature of the revolt, or what the British actually did/were doing and why but even without that making my forehead vein throb this seems, to me, to be a peculiar time period to place such a game in, when there are more pressing matters for both the British forces and the rebels.