Boo! Did I startle you? No? Well, it’s good that you have a stout heart, as today is full of scarifying scares that are very scary. Boo.

• First up, Spike has decided that the natural followup to her phenomenally successful and dirty (in the best possible way), filthy (ditto) Smut Peddler anthology is to shift from the erotic to something a bit more thanatotic: a horror anthology to be entitled The Sleep of Reason. Much like Smut Peddler, The Sleep of Reason¹ will feature an open submission process, with details around Halloween, so if you have ideas for spooky stories, now’s the time to start developing them.

  But don’t get too far ahead of yourself — while Spike’s made it known that she’s looking for full-page comic work (and legit scary, please) — things like minimum or maximum lengths are still unannounced. Since it’s Spike that we’re talking about, it’s paying work, with contributions due in May 2013, and publication to follow (judging from Smut Peddler’s example, probably around November or December). So if you think that you can bash together a visual story as disturbing as, say, Emily Carroll’s work, keep your eyes on Spike’s twitterfeed for further news.

• Know what’s lost some of its original, terrifying nature? Mermaids. Lure you to your death beneath the waves, or to be dashed upon the rocks? Lost to time, reduced to shilling Starbucks. The menace of mermaids is lost to nearly everybody, with only occasional reminders that mermaids were not always very nice. Still, it can’t all be doom and gloom, and Mark Siegel’s decided to celebrate the imminent release of his own menacing mermaid story with a goofy little story, complete with double entendre title.
• Sometimes, the monsters are real. They lay in wait, they demand their tolls, and then they … do nothing, actually. If! You! Dare! read the story of one brave man, the abyss he stared into, and the monstrously indifferent treatment that he received, treatment that would have driven a lesser man to madness, despair, and death! It’s seriously spooky; no, really.²

________________
¹ Per Spike, the title is taken from a piece by Goya entitled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Creepy, but I always was more of a Hieronymus Bosch man myself; standing before his magnificent Last Judgement in the Groeningemuseum you simply cannot look at the center panel and not take away deep meaning. For me, the principal lesson was Screw not with the bunnies of the Apocalypse. Don’t even get me started on The Garden of Earthly Delights Heck of a weirdo, ol’ Jerry B.

² Okay, not that spooky, but c’mon, it’s Guigar. PS: Boo.a href=