Demons and Death Drops

by Chris Krawczyk (Editor ), Sanjana Raghavan (Contributor), Dori Lumpkin (Contributor)

Demons and Death Drops: An Anthology of Queer Performance Horror is a static theater of horrors and joys set on the stage of queerness. Here, there be monsters, music, puppets, hallucinatory prose, poems, illustrations of monsters, baby queens, and combat kings. We present the curtain call for burgeoning talent as they sashay their way across these pages.

Werewolves in the dressing room of the burlesque house. Dark forces invading the minds of Drag Queens. Murderous Karaoke Kings. These stories are more than just stage fright, brought to you by folks from the LGBTQA+ community, who know a thing or two about performing, coming out, and the deep horrors of being seen.

Genres: Horror, Queer, Anthologies

248 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2023

Reviews

[Mar books_baking_barks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Demons & Death Drops is “an anthology of queer performance horror” edited and published by Little Ghost Books in Toronto, Ontario. They are a queer horror bookstore and café downtown and one of my favourite booksellers. This is the first of their self published books that I have read, and before getting into the story I have to say the quality of the book and the pages were so satisfying to hold and read. My pet peeve is thin book pages and cramped font, and this had neither. It was an awesome reading experience.

Now onto the stories. Many of these stories are quintessentially Torontonian - for example, a raccoon drag king wanting to make it big in The Village. There’s also lots of body horror in parallel to the trans experience, which is one of my favourite themes in queer horror. I liked the mix of short stories, poetry, and comics and felt that it had good pacing and variety between each story. Some of these short stories were so good I wanted them to be a full length novel! I would absolutely recommend this anthology to those looking to dip their toes into this genre, it’s a great charcuterie spread of what queer horror has to offer!

[The Wintermute System · Rating 2 out of 5]

First: disclaimer. I got this for free from the same publisher that gave me the last horror book I read, Most Likely to Summon Nyhiloteph. But instead of them handing it to me, I picked it up off a freebie table at a convention; I assume Little Ghosts Books didn't want to have to pay to fly back a bunch of books. I don't think I went light on it because of that, but if you think I'm biased, you've been warned.

Some anthologies are fairly flat in quality: almost all, or all, good or bad stories. This was was, like most, more of a mixed bag. The back says this is 'an anthology of queer performance horror' and I don't know if the theme being this specific harmed the quality in some ways: they got queer authors writing this, too, thus furthering narrowing down the author pool.

That being said, there were some real gems: the first story piqued my attention and the last was, in my opinion, one of the best. Some I thought were confounding, or flat out felt dumb to me: one about raccoons, an animal I am obsessed with so I thought I'd love it, felt like it was trying to hard to be horror-camp and didn't work at all for me. I also ended up looking at all the author bios in the back halfway through and made a game of seeing if I could guess how much I'd like the story based on the bio. (Spoiler: I could not do this with any consistency.) I think I was neutral to did not like on most of the stories, and there were some poems that I didn't get - I have a hard time with poems, not going to lie, and find them to be more confusing than prose/non-fiction in general. There was one illustration with no explanation that I found gorgeous, but didn't quite get why it was in this either. I was probably gentlest on the comics, because I enjoy comics so much, although a couple prose stories were my favorite.

So it's a mixed bag in more ways than one: multiple mediums which I enjoyed, but also a full range of stories from, again in my opinion, terrible to fantastic. I just think there were more that leaned towards the former to the latter.

I also kinda skimmed the back, saw that Little Ghosts published this, and went 'yes please.' So maybe I should have paid more attention at the time, but it was Sunday, I had done a lot of volunteering work and moving around at the convention for like three and a half days straight and I was was a little groggy. Mea culpa. It was worth a read for the better stories, and I'll be holding onto this for the better stories and the comics, which I'll want to read again. Also, I am attached to this book because I loved the booksellers and wished I lived closer to Toronto now, and I have a fond space in my heart for stuff they publish. I want to go visit them next year for my birthday, especially if they still have the mystery box I can pick up there, and I plan to buy as much of Laurel Hightower's books as I can when I go there. I do hope if they continue publishing anthologies that there's more of an even quality and that I end up enjoying them more, as I would definitely give another anthology another try.

I don't have the energy to go through this story/comic/illustration by illustration although I know some people enjoy that - and I do sometimes - so this is what you get, sorry, or you're welcome if you don't enjoy the story by story reviews.

[ThatBookMoth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully spooky collection of queer horror that really shows the horrors of the community.
From a makeup artist being stalked in “Smash Subscribe”.
The dark side of knighthood in “The Knight To Remember Scandal”.
Cosmic horror’s behind “Drag Mothers”.
And the melancholia behind “I Don’t See Myself In You Anymore”.

[Taylor Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dnf

[Aaron Guzzwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this little gem at a local book market and really enjoyed it. Each author offered a unique perspective and narrative for the reader to experience, making the bite sized readings fun and interesting.

The only downside for me would be that I did find that the majority of the stories were written from the point of view of a character who had been wronged in some way, shape or form and was seeking their vengeance or retribution against society. I can understand why that perspective or experience is a dominating one in this genre, but would love to also see what other perspectives and opportunities the genre has to offer.

Would recommend!

[Veronica ☠️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

19 authors, 19 stories, poems, and illustrations by some very talented artists! An anthology of queer performance horror 🖤 Here's some stand outs for me

1) At Rest by Maud TW: Our main character loves to make music. They decide to take a stroll into the cemetery one day and starts to jot down some ideas. The inspiration comes from different tomb stones. When they go and preform these new songs, they start to see.....people.
- This was a really fun one! If you're into ghosts and music, this one's for you!

2) Raccoon Revenge Porn by Stephanie Butler: Lila lives in downtown Toronto which is full of raccoons, which she actually loves. One night she gets a text from Eris, her play thing, and asks her to come over. Once Lila arrives, she's greeted with another and things start off well...until they're not. Magda, the other escort, leaves and happens to see raccoons eating people. She has to tell the others before the rabid human eating raccoons take over!!
- I fucking loved this so much! This was sexy, fun, funny, and a great story. I'm keeping my eye on this author

3) Digestion by Geo LaForme: Oliver DelMaro felt like a brand new person! With the transition, everything was almost perfect....except for 1 thing, his voice. There was a big gig and he wanted to be as ready as possible so a friend explained how they knew of a parasite to change your voice forever. Oliver went to said alley and got the parasite. All was well........until it wasn't.
- Another fun one! I really wanted this one to be a tad longer! Such a great story

Bonus story- T4T by Wren Fernando: this was a beautiful illustrated story about 2 people just living in the moment. When you find your right person, the rest of the world doesn't matter. One of my favs! 🖤
I highly suggest to pick up this collection! Little Ghosts Books is a Canadian horror bookstore and they have several anthologies under their belt. I highly suggest!

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a mix of interesting concepts though some were a bit meh. I'm not super into anthologies because it's hard to read a book consistently when jumping into different short stories constantly. I think my favourite story was Raccoon Revenge Porn.

Also not sure if this just happened to be my copy but the first 10 pages of the book came loose. I also noticed that some of the formatting could have been better/more consistent. One of the comics had text cut off because it wasn't properly sized to the pages, sometimes the headers were misaligned, and I saw one page in the middle of a story that didn't have a page number.

Hopefully the quality improves a bit on future publications.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

i thoroughly enjoyed this! it was super fun and very in tune with the season which i really liked. i also am happy that i was able to support an independent bookstore + publisher by purchasing and reading this book. that’s always a plus in my eyes. as with all anthology collections, there’s always pieces that i like more than others which is why this is a 3 star review. but overall, this was a really enjoyable read.

i love being queer and reading horror lit in the fall !!!

[Scott Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy “Raccoon Revenge Porn” by Stephanie Butler. Nothing else here really speaks to me.