I Don't Want to Play This Game Anymore

by Stephen Graham Jones, Gemma Files, Christina Sng

Second installment of the SSDBS series of chapbooks, dark and bleak, horrific and strange, features fiction by Stephen Graham Jones (Bram Stoker Award winner, author of Mongrels and Mapping the Interior), Gemma Files (Shirley Jackson Award winner, author of Experimental Film and Spectral Evidence), Christina Sng (Bram Stoker Award winner, author of A Collection of Nightmares and Astropoetry), Anne Gresham, and Mina Fears.
Also available in limited paperback.

Genres: Horror

30 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 31, 2018

About the author

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author thirty-five or so books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A neat little one-shot chapbook with a unique premise involving games that go too far. I especially liked the poetry by outstanding horror talents Christina Sng and Sara Tantlinger, with their twisted relationship premises. It was cool to read another poem from Gemma Files, who delivers a whollop of a dark fantasy poem about Senet. The short stories herein definitely make good on the book's premise, with the always-amazing Stephen Graham Jones contributing an exceptional creepy tale in 2nd person that genuinely made me scared. Anne Gresham's disturbingly brutal piece about a game-gone-wrong was very suspenseful. And there's also Mina Fears' simple "Flower Girls" story, which has kids tossing crazier and crazier things into the ocean just to see what floats or sinks, in a fun and progressively devious way, but ending with an unexpected dark twist. Many but not all of the contributions invoke childhood games and memories, giving a genuinely horrific spin on them and ALL these contributions are well-written, making for a tight, nifty book. Even the cover art is compelling -- there's a die caught in the (bloody?) beak of that bird that you might not see at first glance. I'd like to see more publishers do chapbooks like these. Nice job, Unnerving.

[Rebecca Gransden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compact chapbook half and half short stories and poetry. Collected around a loose theme of pushing games too far. The quality is quite high overall, with some chilling and, yes, unnerving pieces. The cover is a work of haunting genius.

[Karl]

This chapbook is numbered 22 of 99.

A collection of poetry and fiction.

Contents:

01 - "I Don't Want to Play This Game Anymore" by Gemma Files
04 - "Shft" by Anne Gresham
11 - "Her Pretense Tastes of Peppermint" by Sara Tantlinger
13 - "Flower Girls{" by Mina Fears
16 - "The Girl Made of Electricity" by Christina Sng
18 - "Use Your Inside Voice" by Stephen Graham Jones

[Suz Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fortunate to obtain one of the limited run of print copies signed by Sara Tantlinger, the author of “Her Pretense Tastes of Peppermint.”

I DON’T WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME ANYMORE is a chapbook containing three poems and three short stories. The short stories are great, but the poems are the shining stars of the collection.

“I Don’t Want to Play This Game Anymore” focuses on an ancient Egyptian board game with deadly stakes. “SHFT” explores the lengths people will do to survive in the face of disaster. “Her Pretense Tastes of Peppermint” involves a game of pretend that becomes all too real. The “Flower Girls” play Sink or Swim before becoming upstaged. “The Girl Made of Electricity” decides to go all in. “Use Your Inside Voice” shows that those who play must accept the game’s consequences.