Nightmare Magazine, Issue 129 (June 2023): Nightmare Magazine, #129

By Wendy N. Wagner

NIGHTMARE is a digital horror and dark fantasy magazine. In NIGHTMARE's pages, you will find all kinds of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror.

 

Welcome to Issue #129 of NIGHTMARE! We have original short fiction from Ozzie M. Gartrell ("The Seconds Between Light and Sound") and Neal Auch ("and its place remembers it no more"). Our Horror Lab originals include a poem ("Bog Girls") from Maureen O'Leary and a flash story ("They Say") from Matt Dovey. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, "The H Word," plus author spotlights with our authors, and a media review from Adam-Troy Castro.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223064701

Book preview

Nightmare Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 129 (June 2023)

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: June 2023

FICTION

The Seconds Between Light and Sound

Ozzie M. Gartrell

and its place remembers it no more

Neal Auch

They Say

Matt Dovey

POETRY

Bog Girls

Maureen O’Leary

NONFICTION

The H Word: Neuroscience of Fear

Jonathan H. Smith

Book and Media Review: June 2023

Adam-Troy Castro

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Ozzie M. Gartrell

Neal Auch

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Nightmare Team

© 2023 Nightmare Magazine

Cover by jdrv / Adobe Stock Image

www.nightmare-magazine.com

Published by Adamant Press

From the Editor

Editorial: June 2023

Wendy N. Wagner | 992 words

Welcome to Issue #129 of Nightmare Magazine!

One of the things I love best about my life is that I get to be a part of the amazing, weird, and wonderful horror community. The horror community is a place for fans of all kinds—from folks who enjoy watching the occasional Netflix release all the way through people who obsessively collect and comment on special issues of whatever medium or merch calls their name. Every horror creator I’ve met has been a fan of the genre in some way, shape, or form, with most of them doubling not just as writers or filmmakers but also editors, critics, and curators. Most work in horror doesn’t just exist for itself: it also exists in order to be a part of the larger cultural project that is Horror.

I know the exact date I knew that I wanted to be not just a horror fan but also a community creator: October 3rd, 2009. Day two of the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon. On that beautiful, sun-bright October afternoon, I stepped into the dark lobby of the Hollywood Theater and found myself surrounded by horror lovers intent upon sharing their work, their thoughts, their favorite movies, their favorite books. The atmosphere was as intoxicating as the craft beer on tap, resonant with the CthulhuCon motto: The only convention that understands. I was understood! I belonged!

That wonderful feeling of belonging has helped me through a lot of tough moments in my life, as has the drive to create things for other horror fans to enjoy. Belonging is such an integral part of the human condition, and we are all hungry to belong to something larger than our own single existence. But that hunger brings with it danger. It’s easy to lose ourselves in our communities and our projects, or to overlook dangerous situations. It’s easy for hunger to turn to harm.

This month’s issue is organized around Belonging. We’ve got a beautiful dark fantasy tale of mer-pirates from Ozzie M. Gartrell (The Seconds Between Light and Sound) and the story of a botanical expedition gone horribly awry from Neal Auch (and its place remembers it no more). Maureen O’Leary takes us into Irish history with her poem Bog Girls, and Matt Dovey has a cautionary flash story: They Say.

Neurologist and horror fan (see? We have our tentacles everywhere!) Jonathan H. Smith brings us his medical expertise in his essay The H Word: Neuroscience of Fear. Of course our author spotlight team has interviewed our short fiction authors, and Adam-Troy Castro brings us a media and book pairing themed around vampires.

It’s been a long time since I realized I wanted to make a place for other horror lovers, and I like to think that this magazine is that place. Welcome home, friend. You belong here.

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Publisher’s Note: Kindle Periodicals is Closing, and We Need Your Support More Than Ever.

Many of you have likely already heard about the new existential threat to Nightmare and all of the other digital magazines in the SF/F/H field: the impending closure, in September, of Amazon’s Kindle Periodicals program. They will be transitioning some magazines into Kindle Unlimited, and so in some respects things may continue as normal if you subscribe via Kindle Periodicals—but this shift will cut severely into the finances of any magazine currently using the service; Nightmare, for instance, will see our largest source of funding cut it in half. (For additional information about this seismic shift, you can see Neil Clarke’s deep dive into the details at neil-clarke.com/amazon-kindle-subscriptions.)

What We Can Do About This

The best thing you can do if you are a Kindle Periodicals subscriber is to migrate your subscription over to one of our other subscription options. Currently,