Tag

YA

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Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

Brenna Yavanoff’s Paper Valentine is an intriguing mixed-category book: part ghost story and part murder mystery. Someone is killing young girls in Hannah’s suburban town of Ludlow, and Hannah feels compelled to solve the case because the ghost of her dead friend Lillian keeps pestering her to find out who it is before they kill again. When I first started reading, I thought that Hannah’s ghost friend would be one of the murdered girls. So I was troubled to learn that, like the ghost of Cassie in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls, Lilian was the victim,[...]

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The Last Halloween By Abby Howard

Creepy dolls, brilliant storytelling, and wasp monsters exploding out of people’s brains-- Abby Howard’s new web comic, The Last Halloween has it all. I suggest you get caught up on the first couple dozen updates immediately, because this is something that everyone who reads the Midnight Society really ought to be following. One of the things I love about The Last Halloween is that Howard has thrown the usual webcomic pacing out the window, giving readers a whole page worth of panels in one weekly update. This pacing really works for the story, allowing her ti[...]

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Find New Haunting Reads

Hey there, boos and ghouls. I had a fantastic small town horror story I was planning on sharing with you today but here's the deal: it's not ready yet. My spidey senses haven't yet ferretted out all the details. These local hauntings can be tightly guarded, you know. So, until I can pry open some more tight lips, I thought I'd share a wonderful resource for finding new haunting reads... Goodreads.com! How many of you have bumped around on the Goodreads site? If you don't have an account, I urge you to get one NOW. It's supereasy. You can even sign up with your[...]

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Bad Writing as Inspiration: Happy Birthday to Me!

It’s my birthday today! So, because I love you all very much, I sat down and watched the seriously terrible 1981 slasher film Happy Birthday To Me. It’s bad. Really bad. And not even in that “so bad it’s good way”. Nope, just bad. But the film did leave me thinking about what we can learn from bad writing. By studying the places the script for Happy Birthday to Me went so horribly off the rails, what lessons can we apply to our own stories, particularly within gory tales of suspense and murder? (This review/analysis is going to be full of spoilers, but[...]

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YA Horror Novels: Part One

If there's one thing most people can agree on about YA & NA literature, is that horror is not a largely represented category. So I wanted to make the first of many lists showing young adult and new adult horror. There are actually several awesome lists of YA horror on Goodreads, and you can find them here: Popular YA Horror, Scariest YA Book, and Young Adult Horror. Today I will focus on young adult horror literature and then next time, we'll look at some new adult horror. Behold the list in all it's horrific glory! Young Adult Horror Anna Dressed in Blood[...]