Overall Rating: 3.5 Stars

Horror short stories are my favorite form of literature, hands down. So when Jeani Rector offered me a copy of [b:Shrieks and Shivers From The Horror Zine|24245237|Shrieks and Shivers From The Horror Zine|Jeani Rector|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1420139570s/24245237.jpg|43829880] to review, there was zero possibility I was going to say no. With a few well-known names in the table of contents, and my love of discovering new horror talent, I really couldn't see a downside.

The book itself is fairly handsome, certainly one of the better covers from Post Mortem Press.

Let's start with the positive: The first actual story in the collection, TAPEWORM by Martin Rose, was quite good. For my tastes, this collection was about a 30% hit rate of stories that I really enjoyed, 20% that were okay, leaving a remainder that wasn't horrible. In fact, it's some sort of achievement that there really weren't any "terrible" stories here.

In addition to the aforementioned TAPEWORM, my favorites in this collection were penned by Joe McKinney, Bruce Memblatt, Elizabeth Massie, Tim Waggoner, Dean H. Wild, Lisa Morton, Garrett Rowlan and Eric J. Guignard. Honorable mention also goes to tales from Shaun Meeks, Ray Garton, Kristen Houghton, and Joseph Rubas.

The contributions from William F. Nolan and Tom Piccirilli, two writers I quite enjoy, were so slight as to barely qualify as actual stories, apparently included only to bolster the appearance of the roster.

Dropping stories from big names into an anthology such as this is one way to get attention, however it's a double-edge: you expect the stories from the big names to be GOOD, and keep your fingers crossed that at least a few of the stories from lesser-known authors hit the mark.

So now for the grumbles:

This anthology stumbles hard out of the gate, with one of the most cringe-worthy introductions to an anthology I've ever read, by the straight-shootin' Bentley Little: He hasn't read the stories, doesn't know the authors contributing to the volume. Goes on to say that Jeani contacted him out of the blue hoping to get a story from him for a previous anthology for an earlier anthology she was doing, so he sent her something he had lying around, something he implied wasn't good enough to submit elsewhere.

Maybe this introduction would've worked better at the end of the book? Or maybe just drop it and let the stories fall or stand on their own?

I soldiered on.

The very first piece in the book wasn't a killer short story to draw me in, but rather a rambling non-fiction bit by John Russo that sounded exactly like someone had bought him a few drinks at a convention, set an audio recorder down on the bar while he rambled, and then transcribed it as "A WORD ABOUT ZOMBIES". Why? What on earth does this have to do with anything? It's a fiction anthology and I'm immediately subjected to John Russo rambling like Grandpa Simpson about zombie movies.

Removing these two bits by Little and Russo would've gotten the whole thing off to much more solid start, in my opinion.

Fortunately, things began to look up after that and before long a few decent stories washed that initial sour taste out of my mouth.

The final verdict?

All in all, a pretty decent collection that does what it's supposed to do: entertain and introduce new authors to a wider audience, and in that it succeeds. Check it out!

I know I will certainly be seeking out more from Bruce Memblatt, Dean H. Wild, Garrett Rowlan, and Eric J. Guignard in the future, as well as digging more deeply into Elizabeth Massie, Tim Waggoner, and Lisa Morton's work to boot. ( )