Welcome to Issue #130 of Nightmare Magazine!

When I was a kid, my parents weren’t particularly fussy about what I watched on TV, which meant that as a five-year-old, I was deeply afraid of both nuclear war (thanks, The Day After) and rooms filled with flies (courtesy of The Amityville Horror).

For some reason, The Amityville Horror really struck a youthful nerve. It probably didn’t hurt that my family, like many in the early ’80s, was badly hit by the decade’s brutal recessions. Like the film’s Lutz family, our financial situation caused us to seek out less-than-ideal housing solutions, although I’m happy to report blood never dripped from the walls anywhere we lived. (Mushrooms in the carpets are a different story, however.) Those early years of my life have given me a deep appreciation for a genre of fiction you might call “Financial Horror.” Stories in this genre start with bills in the mail or a leaking roof and end with big, grim consequences, especially when financial difficulties slam up against supernatural disasters.

Our two full-length short stories this issue land squarely on the “Financial Horror” side of the ledger. In Isha Karki’s story “Sell Your Trauma for Salvation,” the narrators struggle to claw out a place for themselves in a world that mirrors ours in economic unfairness—but has some distasteful new dietary trends. The narrator of Adam R. Shannon’s story “First in Fear and Then in Pain” is living through her own Amityville Horror-type haunted house crisis.

The hauntings continue in our Horror Lab originals, but be warned: both of these ghost-flavored bonbons have fun and unusual structures. Flash story “Anatomy of a Haunted House” from Avi Burton is, well, a study of either anatomy or architecture—you decide. And brace yourself for a creepy poem (or is it a quiz?) in “Why Are You Haunted?” by Joan Tierney.

If you love horror new releases, then you already probably know Emily Hughes, whose website ReadJumpScares.com compiles upcoming horror novels. We’re delighted to host her for a fun book review! At The H Word, Zachary Rosenberg delves into the power of horror fiction based on Jewish folk stories, and of course the spotlight team has plumbed the depths of our short story writers’ spooky brains.

It’s another terrifying issue—although maybe not as terrifying as paying your credit card bill.

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, we have the following options available:

1. Subscribe direct via our website: We have options for 6 month, 12 month, 24 month, and Lifetime subscriptions. We’re in the process of also bringing back the pay-as-you-go monthly subscriptions (i.e., the way Kindle Periodicals currently works) as well. Your issues can be delivered to your Kindle or Kindle app of choice the same way they are via Kindle Periodicals, though they’d appear on your device as regular eBooks rather than the special “periodical” format Kindle Periodicals forced us to use.
2. Subscribe via Weightless Books: Weightless Books’s subscriptions work exactly like our Direct subscriptions, though they only have 6 and 12 month options.
3. Become a Patreon patron: If you just want to support Nightmare and the other Adamant Press magazines (without getting ebooks in return), you can become one of our Patrons at Patreon. You’d be able to choose any amount that you’d like to pledge to support us, either monthly or annually.

Visit Nightmaremagazine.com/support for more info about all of the above.

Why We Need Your Support

There are no big companies supporting or funding Adamant Press’s magazines—and Adamant itself is kind of a two-person show—so the magazines really rely on reader support. Because of that, it’s vital for us to keep as many Kindle Periodicals subscribers—which is the vast majority of our subscribers are—as possible during this upheaval. So, please—if you care about the continuation of Nightmare and any other genre magazines you subscribe to, please take this to heart and help us make this transition.

Thank You for Being a Subscriber

Thanks so much for your generous support over the months or years you’ve been a subscriber. Together, we can ensure that Nightmare will continue coming to you every month for many years to come.