nightmare magazine — BLOG — ANTHONY R. CARDNO

Here’s what I read, listened to, and watched in July 2024!

BOOKS

I read 15 books in July: 9 in print, 3 in e-book format, and 3 in audio format. They were:

1. Represent! by Rosalie Mastaler, Hunter Mastaler and Brant Day (PRINT)

2. Let the Games Begin by Rosalie Mastaler, Hunter Mastaler and Betty Yuku (PRINT)

3. Hunter's Tall Tales by Rosalie Mastaler, Hunter Mastaler, and Danelle Prestwich (PRINT)

4. A Scout Is Brave by Will Ludwigsen (E-BOOK) REVIEW HERE

5. Caesar Now Be Still (Wilson Hargreave #1) by Frank Schildiner (E-BOOK) REVIEW HERE

6. Changes in the Land by Matthew Cheney (PRINT)

7. Prez: Setting a Dangerous President by Mark Russell, Benjamin Caldwell, Wilfredo Torres, Mark Morales, and others (PRINT, Graphic Novel Challenge)

8. Reflections (Indexing #2) by Seanan McGuire (AUDIO)

9. Star Trek Adventures: The Operations Division Supplemental Rulebook by Chris McCarver, Andy Peregrine, Jack Geiger, and others (PRINT)

10. Dancing on the Edge by Russ Tamblyn (AUDIO, non-fiction challenge)

11. Lovely Creatures by KT Bryski (PRINT)

12. A Stick-Figure Macbeth by Mya L. Gosling (PRINT) REVIEW HERE

13. Super Sons: The Complete Collection Book 1 by Peter J. Tomasi, Jorge Jiminez, Patrick Gleason, Carlo Barberi, and others (PRINT, graphic novel challenge)

14. We by Yvgeney Zamyatin, translated by Clarence Brown (AUDIO)

15. Victory Harben: Tales from the Void, edited by Christopher Paul Carey (E-BOOK, ARC (book to be published in September)

STORIES

Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it.

1. “The Last Lucid Day” by Dominique Dickey in Lightspeed Magazine #170, edited by John Joseph Adams

2. “The Only Writing Advice You'll Ever Need to Survive Eldritch Horrors” by Aimee Picchi

3. “The Heist for the Soul of Humanity” by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek

4. “The Aliens Said They Want to Party” by Joel W.D. Buxton

5. “Songs of the Sorrow of Thorns” by Amayah Perveen

6. “The Red Queen's Heart” by Vanessa Fogg

7. “A Guide on How to Meet the Deity of Many Faces” by Oyedotun Damilola Muess

8. “Between Above and Below” by Carrie Vaughn

9. “The Girl Who Loved Peacocks” by Seanan McGuire, from the Author’s Patreon

10. “The Terms and Conditions of Kindness” by James Bennett, from The Dark #110, edited by Clara Madrigano and Sean Wallace

11. “That Maddening Heat” by Ray Cluley

12. “Every Hopeless Thing” by Tia Tashiro, from Clarkesworld #214, edited by Neil Clarke

13. “Pellucidar: Dark of the Sun” by Christopher Paul Carey, from Victory Harben: Tales from the Void, edited by Christopher Paul Carey

14. “Victory Harben: Clash on Caspak” by Mike Wolfer

15. “Victory Harben: Stormwinds of Va-Nah” by Ann Tonsor Zeddies

16. “Victory Harben and the Lord of the Veiled Eye” by Christopher Paul Carey

17. “Jason Gridley of Earth: Across the Moons of Mars” by Geary Gravel

18. “Beyond the Farthest Star: Rescue on Zandar” by Mike Wolfer

19. “Grottmata” by Thomas Ha, from Nightmare Magazine #142, edited by Wendy N. Wagner

20. “Automaton Boy” by Sara S. Messenger

21. “The Museum of Cosmic Retribution” by Megan Chee

22. “Tamaza's Future and Mine” by Kenneth Schneyer, from Asimov's Science Fiction 582/583, edited by Sheila Williams

23. “The Phantasmagoria of Castle Specfel” by Greta Hayer, from Kaleidotrope Summer 2024, edited by Fred Coppersmith

So that’s 23 short stories in July. Less than “1 per day” again, which puts me slightly behind again for the year! (July 31st was the 213th day of 2024.)

MOVIES

I watched one movie in July:

1. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

The week ending July 28th was the 31st week of the year, so I’m still way behind on the “1 movie per week” challenge.

TELEVISION

· Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episodes 1 – 20 (20 episodes)

That’s 20 episodes of television, which is well below the “1 per day” I was shooting for and keeps me behind the pace for this challenge.

LIVE THEATER

I didn’t get to any live theatrical performances in July!

Summary of Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 6 of 15 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month: 23 read; YTD: 202 of 366 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 15 read; YTD: 75 of 120 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge: This month: 2 read; YTD: 15 of 52 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 3 read; YTD: 12 of 12 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 1 read/watched; YTD: 2 read/watched. (I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie earlier in the year and finally watched the movie this month.)

Movie Challenge: This month: 1 watched; YTD: 17 of 52 watched.

TV Shows Challenge: This month: 20 episodes watched; YTD: 149 of 366 watched.

Live Theater Challenge: This month: 0 shows attended; YTD: 9 of 12 attended.

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). So anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

As a fan of Bram Stoker in general and his most famous novel specifically (some would say “fanatic” is the more accurate term), I’m always curious about works that expand, expound upon, or deconstruct, Dracula. Even works I don’t enjoy will give me some new insight into my favorite novel, or at least insight into how other people regard it. And if I do like the work, even better!

Gwendolyn Kiste’s “The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary)”, from Nightmare Magazine #86 (November 2019), fair fully blew me away. It’s a wonderful deconstruction/reconstruction of a part of the novel that often gets ignored or conflated/downplayed by media adaptations: the life and death(s) of Lucy Westenra. Thanks to movie and television focus on independent, poor-but-plucky Mina Murray and her eventual marriage to damaged hero Jonathan Harker, people tend to forget that the novel features two female leads and that one of them doesn’t fare quite so well as the other. (And with the recent penchant for making Mina Dracula’s reincarnated soulmate or current lover, poor Lucy gets even less attention. But that’s a post for another time.)

Stoker gives us some of his original story in Lucy’s POV mostly via letters to Mina about Lucy’s courtship by three dashing young men of very different backgrounds – but you have to squint hard to see past the flighty exterior presented. What little else we know of Lucy we know from Mina’s own journal entries. Stoker never quite gives Lucy the introspective moments Mina experiences, especially once Lucy suffers her first death and we lose her POV.

Kiste gives us what is missing from the original work: Lucy’s inner self, conflicted over how she had to act to survive in high society and fulfill her mother’s expectations. The entire story is narrated by Lucy post-death, listing out how each of her friends, would-be-saviors, Dracula, and even society itself contributed to the end we see her receive in the novel. It starts out feeling like we’re just going to get a litany of blame – but as the diary entries go on, the story becomes so much more. Kiste doesn’t reveal anything regarding Lucy’s final death in the novel that many authors haven’t also revealed about Dracula (and Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, and other such creatures); the twist is what Lucy will do next.

The key to the story is the voice Kiste gives Lucy – there are glimmers of the flightiness and flirtiness we see in the original novel, but Kiste builds off of the few more serious moments Stoker gives to reveal a Lucy who knows exactly what her place in British society is and rails against it – and who discovers the power to do something about it.