This month I’m speaking to Caleb Bethea about their debut novel Disco Murder City, published by Maudlin House this September. This is a seductive, trippy story soaked in blood and sequins. Murder City is a nightmarish world where sleep paralysis demons stalk the dancefloor, committing extreme acts of violence in the nightclubs of this metropolis....| Seize The Press
Recommending a single story is a bit of an impossible task for me, since I’ve been reading so much short fiction I admire this past year. So I’m going to bend the rules a little bit and mention three authors who I assume many Seize the Press readers will be familiar before making my final...| Seize The Press
John Chrostek’s debut novel Feast of the Pale Leviathan is published on the 26th August by Deep Overstock Books. It is a dark fantasy adventure story about Owen, a man who drifts out to sea and finds himself trapped in the belly of a giant Leviathan-esque kaiju. Within the belly of the beast he discovers...| Seize The Press
“Why are you all afraid of the corpse drivers?” Little Fly asked Momo. “Because, because we’re human,” Momo said. The dialogue at the beginning of the short story “The Family Night Watchman”, between the protagonist, Little Fly, and his friend Momo, points to the existing boundary between the living and the dead, and to the...| Seize The Press
Hey Nicky, thanks for dropping in for a natter. I’m always banging on about looking for more non-American writers to publish in STP; as an American living in Spain, maybe we can consider you an honorary European. How did you end up living in Barcelona and how does it compare to the US? I’d be... The post Interview with NM Whitley, author of “Clarinet” and “Manywhere, Manyone, Manything” appeared first on Seize The Press.| Seize The Press
Meanwhile elsewhere—” begins Balsam Karam’s The Singularity, depicting an unparticularized city; cars, highways, half-desert and mountains, the ever-rising ocean. Later there’s a description, almost as if a sales pitch for this tourist town. He says he knows the city has been ravaged by the war but the architectural solutions are so fascinating. The fact that... The post Writing Disaster in Balsam Karam’s The Singularity, translated by Saskia Vogel from Shinjini Dey appeared firs...| Seize The Press
The internet abounds with comparisons, joking or not, between Covid and zombie movies; people would deny zombies are real even while they’re being eaten, your neighbors and acquaintances have revealed that they’re the type to hide that they’ve been bitten. Others compare the inefficiency of the government’s response to Covid-19 to societal collapse in zombie... The post In Defence of the Price: a review of Red Skies in the Morning by Nadia Bulkin from Zachary Gillan appeared first on ...| Seize The Press
We talk about the supernatural often, but the preternatural – the hazy area in between the natural and the supernatural – doesn’t seem to have the same grip on us. In Rivers Solomon’s haunted house novel Model Home, it pops up early on as a logic of white supremacy: “everything whiteness does can be rationalized... The post Interrogating the Preternatural: a review of Model Home by Rivers Solomon from Zachary Gillan appeared first on Seize The Press.| Seize The Press
It was a Saturday, about two weeks before I was set to graduate from high school. I went to Avila Beach to work on my last English paper, the only thing between me and graduation. As the dour tide pressed up against my feet, I could make out the five-appendaged shape smothered by sea foam.... The post “Avila Beach” by Z.D. Dochterman appeared first on Seize The Press.| Seize The Press
Content warning1 “We can’t move to the hills because Lo’ Rax won’t let us and we can’t move down coast because Lo’ Tally so we have nothing to do but sit here and die.” Ma explains this to the traveller. Again. Traveller stupid and it third time they ask. They have matted hair, long as...| Seize The Press
The Private Notary wakes in darkness. It is November already and though there is no snow on the ground the cold seeps into his quarters. Out in the front room, he stokes up some embers in the wood stove, still glowing from the night before, and prepares a breakfast of tea and a soft boiled...| Seize The Press
The gun doesn’t remember you. The man you were was not important, nothing more than another in a series of shifting targets for the shouting hole of its small black mouth. Furthermore, you may have been a woman. Let’s say you were. It doesn’t make any difference to the gun. What matters is that the...| Seize The Press
Mirror glass shows us a world flattened, reversed, uncanny; a portal trompe l’oeil. The sense of unease from staring into it too long—where the known world becomes suddenly unfamiliar and alien—is a feeling also evoked in the strange prose offerings of Ivy Grimes. At the top of 2024, Grimes released her debut novella Star Shapes...| Seize The Press
I stand at the foot of the Palace Mall and its opulent towers, capped by Muscovite-inspired domes, looming before wispy, distant clouds. It was built in three days this past summer. Absent, then present, like May flies, mushroom heads, etc. A cricket chirps so loudly in the dying boxwood adjacent to the parking lot that...| Seize The Press
It’s been a bit longer than usual between issues, but Seize The Press #12 is now loose in the world! I’ve been open about the reasons for the delay between issues, and it’s simply because I couldn’t find the right stories I wanted to accept. I absolutely didn’t want to just start accepting stories for...| Seize The Press