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The Year in Exile, A Note from the Editor

I’m working diligently to finish up the March issue of LampLight, and while there will be more about that soon, I am excited to announce what the plans for Volume 5 will be.

All four issues of LampLight Volume 5 will be guest edited.

The Year in Exile will start with the September issue, which will be edited by Damien Angelica Walters.

Damien’s new book, Paper Tigers has just come out, and the title story in her collection, Sing Me Your Scars has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award.

The December issue will be edited by Katie Winter, the assistant editor of LampLight.

Katie has been with LampLight since the first issue, and her help has been invaluable. Her perspective has guided LampLight for years, and we are excited to have her at the helm.

We will update later for the editors of March and June 2017 issues at a later time. For now, though, send in your subs!

lamplightmagazine.com/submissions

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Horror 101: Introduction

by Kevin Lucia

“It’s a matter of roots. It may not do any good to know that your grandfather liked to sit on the stoop of his building with his sleeves rolled up and smoke a pipe after supper, but it may help to know that he emigrated from Poland in 1888, that he came to New York and helped to build the subway system. If it does nothing else, it may give you a new perspective on your own morning subway ride…”

– Stephen King, Danse Macabre

 

Two events led me to study the evolution of the horror genre. One was an illuminating night spent with genre legends Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson and Stuart David Schiff, editor of the famed Whispers magazine. They spent the evening regaling their experiences in genre fiction while I listened, a rapt audience of one. I came away convinced my horror reading diet was too shallow, that I needed to explore earlier contemporary voices in horror. This led me to discover Ramsey Campbell, Charles Grant, Manly Wade Wellman, Fritz Lieber, Karl Edward Wagner and so many others. As a writer, I was never the same.

The second event occurred later that year, at the very first AnthoCon, a small but wonderfully intimate speculative convention held annually in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Brian Keene’s Keynote address, “Roots,” exhorted young horror writers to examine the horror genre’s roots to better understand where it’s already been, so we could write stories within the horror tradition that were also uniquely our own. At the time, I was reading The Philosophy of Horror, by Noel Carrol, and Danse Macabre, by Stephen King. I was working on a paper for a graduate class, Film & Philosophy, charting the evolution of American horror cinema. I started blogging about my findings, and my thoughts about the evolution of horror as we know it.

Right around then, the late Larry Santorro approached me about running a monthly segment on his podcast, Tales to Terrify, charting the evolution of the horror genre. “Horror 101” was born. Of course, I realized right away charting the evolution of the horror genre through all its divergent iterations was a weighty task. To try and organize things as best as possible, I decided to follow four tracks in my initial study, understanding there’d be multiple crossovers between them: The House & the Gothic, The Ghost, The Beast & the Monster, and The Weird.

Unfortunately, I only got halfway through The House & the Gothic before increased writing demands and equipment issues (read: my laptop crashed) forced the podcast into hiatus. Sadly, not long after, Larry Santorro passed. Horror 101 was shelved indefinitely.

Recently, editor, colleague and friend Jacob Haddon approached me about writing a quarterly nonfiction column for Lamplight Magazine. Seeing this as an excellent opportunity to resurrect Horror 101 from the dead (which happens so often in the horror genre it deserves its own sub-genre), I pitched the return of Horror 101 to him, with my original four installments: The House & the Gothic, The Ghost, The Beast & the Monster, and The Weird. He liked the idea, so here we are.

One thing to keep in mind, however, especially former listeners of Horror 101: Because of length restrictions, I won’t be able to cover the strands of the horror genre nearly as meticulously as in the podcast. Because of this, I will need to paint with a slightly broader brush.

Defining the horror genre can be a slippery proposition. Probably the best definition comes from Douglas Winter, literary critic and Stephen King biographer, “horror is an emotion” and any tale invoking the emotion of “horror” in its readers is, therefore, a horror tale. This definition, however, opens our focus incredibly wide. If any story invoking a sense of “horror” could be considered a “horror story,” tales not necessarily considered as horror from a marketing standpoint could now be viewed as horror stories. Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Beowulf. Titus Andronicus, an early Shakespeare play. “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner. “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathanial Hawthorne. The Kite Runner. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Where do we begin?

For our purposes, I’ll begin by approaching four branches of the horror tale: The House, the Gothic & the Bad Place; The Ghost; The Beast & the Monster; and The Weird. These by no means encompass everything considered to be horror. It’s merely somewhere to start. We’re sure to stray off path, and should we survive with our sanity intact, there are other facets of the horror genre to consider: The Splatterpunk Movement, the Zombie Phenomenon, Quiet Horror; Religion, Myth, and Folklore in horror, and Post Modern Horror, only to name a few.

A note concerning source material: I’ve drawn much of my information for these columns from The Philosophy of Horror by Noel Carrol, Sacred Terror by Doug Cowan, Christian Horror by Mike Duran, Vortex by Robert Dunbar, and Danse Macabre, by Stephen King. I highly recommend all these tomes, though regrettably The Philosophy of Horror is expensive. For this article, I also drew from an online exploration of German theologian Rudolph Otto’s theories concerning “numinous dread.”

 

more at lamplightmagazine.com/horror101

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An Update on June, 2015

June is our anniversary month (birthday month?) here at Apokrupha. We became official in June of 2012 after over a decade of dreaming, plotting and wanting.

We are behind in the June 2015 issue of LampLight. This is for a few reasons, but mostly, if I dare pull back the curtain some, it is because LampLight, for the most part, is a one editor operation.

This year, 2015, has seen some incredible moments for me already, and some stressful ones. A wedding, a honeymoon, new jobs, moving, all the while trying to keep a float of the submissions and stay on track with the issues. The March issue came out on time, but the June one has not.

There is still a June issue coming. For these reasons, we are behind, but I will not rush this issue just to get it out. I owe it to both the readers of LampLight and the writers who have submitted stories to put the same focus as I always would into this issue.

I ask for a little more patience from everyone.

Paul Anderson is reading for September, which will be out on time, thus re-setting us back to a normal schedule.

The June issue is coming, bringing the final part of Kelli Owen’s Wilted Lilies, a great featured writer, and more. The Volume 3 annual will follow shortly after, and September’s issue will be on time.

And this fall will have some more surprises in store.

This June we are 3 years old, here’s to many more June’s to follow.

-jacob

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LampLight Subscription Drive

We want LampLight to be a professional market. But being ‘professional’ is so much more than just a per-word payment amount. It also means payment for our editing team. It means polite, professional staff; well formatted ebooks and print copies; and most importantly, it means a readership worthy of the name.

And so we are coming to you, asking for help to achieve this goal. We want to get to 1,000 subscribers to LampLight magazine. This will allow us to increase our payments to full professional rate; hire additional readers and editors; and bring you more of the high quality dark and suspense fiction we have been for the last ten issues.

All of the funds from these purchases are going straight to us, no cut from Amazon or Kickstarter. All of these funds are going right back into LampLight magazine to pay writers and editors in our community.

These are our subscriber goals:

250 – Additional readers / editors for staff, reducing reply time for submissions

500 – At this level, we will make a bonus issue of LampLight every year that will ONLY be available to subscribers.

1,000 – LampLight becomes a Pro-Market, we adjust payment to match

We want to be a professional market, help us achieve that. Pick up a subscription, help spread the word.

Buy a Subscription

We have two ebook bundles set up as well for a limited time:

  • All ten issues of LampLight for $20
  • All Apokrupha anthologies for $20

 

For more information on our titles:

The Past issues: http://lamplightmagazine.com/past-issues/

Anthologies: http://apokrupha.com/catalog/

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LampLight Volume I Issue III

The March issue of LampLight is here. Ronald Malfi joins us as the featured artist for issue 3. We talk to him about his writing styles and how his experiences have inspired his work. In our third installment of Shadows in the Attic, J.F. Gonzalez gives us a history of scary stories, taking us from pre-history through the Victorian age. Kevin Lucia brings us part 3 of his serial novella, And I Watered It With Tears.

Fiction from Matthew Warner, Sheri White, Dinos Kellis, and S. R. Mastrantone

For more information and links to where to purchase, go to:

http://lamplightmagazine.com/volume-i-issue-iii

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LampLight Volume I Issue II

December 2012

Issue 2 of LampLight has been published. Kelli Owen is our featured artist. In addition to her dark tale, we will talk with her about her craft and advice for new writers. We will hear more about our literary past from J.F. Gonzalez. Kevin Lucia brings us part 2 of his serial novella, And I Watered It, With Tears.

Fiction from: DJ Cockburn, Christopher Fryer, Christopher Kelly, Tim Lieber, and Jamie Lackey

For more information and links to where to purchase, go to:

http://lamplightmagazine.com/volume-i-issue-ii