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Drowning with Kevin Lucia

photo by Joanna Smith, Horrorfind, 2011
photo by Joanna Smith, Horrorfind, 2011

I had known Kevin Lucia for about ten minutes when I approached him about doing the first serial for LampLight.

We had met at Necon in 2011, and saw each other again at Horrorfind Weekend. It was June of 2012 when I sent an awkward email that I had re-written about fifteen times. I was making a magazine, it was going to be quiet horror, would he be interested in doing a serial novella to span the first volume.

Kevin said yes, saying he had a piece he had in mind that would be a great fit. And thus, And I Watered It With Tears (later to be republished as Drowned) came to find its home in LampLight. The characters and locations in Tears are woven into his Clifton Heights saga, which I cannot recommend enough.

Tears helped set the tone of LampLight and we would later make our first Radio Play based off this novella.

We had two more serial novellas, The Devoted by James A Moore, and Wilted Lilies by Kelli Owen. All three are fantastic.

In the end, quarterly release is too long in-between installments for a serial. We haven’t given up the idea, though–I think serials are a great means for story telling.

Kevin would return to LampLight for volume 4 & 5 with his Horror 101 series, taking us on a tour of the genre, past and present.

Listen to Drowned, the episode 1 of the LampLight Radio play, based on the novella by Kevin Lucia

Get all of volume 1, featuring And I Watered It With Tears by Kevin Lucia, for only 5$!

And don’t forget to subscribe, so you’ll never miss a great issue of LampLight! Subscriptions support both the magazine and the podcast (and maybe some crazy serial idea we have…).

(Guest appearance in this post by Lincoln Crisler, author of Queen and Other Stories)