Welcome to Issue #134 of Nightmare Magazine! I don’t know about you, but after all the excitement of October, when November arrives, I crave a good nap. November inspires me to bring out the fuzzy blankets and all my favorite comfort reads, like the fantasy novels that inspired me to get into writing in the first place (Pamela Dean and Charles L. Grant, I am looking at you).
Which is why I’m extremely glad that way, way back in the spring, I decided to make November our first-ever all dark fantasy issue. Better yet, it’s themed around fairies and fairy tales! But don’t worry. This is still Nightmare, so our authors are bringing only the darkest of takes on all this magic and mayhem.
We’re starting the month with a new story from Sharang Biswas: “Waiting for Jonah.” If you were ever a miserable, lovesick high schooler, you will empathize with the narrator, even as he copes with a frenemy obsessed with powers no one should mess with. Woody Dismukes explores a damper realm in his story of magical beings, “The Curse of the Boto Boy.” Our flash story is “Whatever Takes Us,” a tiny, nasty fairy story from Aigner Loren Wilson. And Tiffany Morris returns with an unsettling poem: “Awakening.”
Our nonfiction includes the latest installment of our de•crypt•ed column, where Shane Hawk discusses the way Stephen Graham Jones’s audiobook The Babysitter Lives has influenced his own work. Our The H Word essay is by critic Zachary Gillan, examining the role of Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener in the history of Weird Fiction. We also have two terrific spotlight interviews with our writers.
It’s our most fantastical month ever! So grab your fuzziest blankets and your hot beverages, and get cozy with another dark issue.
