Status Updates From Weird Tales: Library Editio...

"The Good Wife" by Lee Murray was an annoying story about a starving woman, an evil husband, and a lazy dragon. Everyone in this story would logically have starved to death years ago because they don't lift a finger to get food for themselves (unless forced to by others).

"The Canal" by Alessandro Manzetti is a poem. I'm not the audience for that.

Some good stories, some not, as expected. I'll read another later.

"Hats" by Joe Lansdale, about a magic hat shop, would make a good Twilight Zone episode (there was one like it, actually). Short, magic in modern day, with a predictable twist, but fun enough to read.

"Trailer Part Nightmare" by Gabrielle Faust is a tiny flash fiction about a woman experiencing a tentacled horror emerging in her trailer park. That's it. It emerges. The end. I don't like flash fiction.

"No One Ever Survives the Beach" by Weston Ochse was a chaotic mess of references to factions and characters like Red Queen Mab, the White Worm, the Sky Isles, and more, all told in a revolting first person present tense with a breathless narrator spouting off to the reader like a war correspondent, sketching out the plot without giving any reason to care about its participants.

"Last Days", the Dracula story, was everything you could want from a Dracula prequel. It fit the tone of the original book and set up the events we know. It claims to be actual content cut from the original beginning of the book, but I doubt that. I don't care much for prequels when they don't have proper endings like this, but this one was okay anyway.

"Last Days" is a story from Renfield's PoV from Dracula. It starts with a slavishly typical framing story as most supernatural stories used to do, with people insisting the story is true. And the characters act like this has never been done.

"Is this some sort of literary conceit?" I asked. "Pretending that your creations are real?" I chuckled. "If so, I cannot decide if it's heavy-handed or a stroke of genius!"

"To the Marrow", by Rena Mason, was a little disjointed by jumping back and forth in time between the narrative and police reports of cell phone recordings from after the fact, but this was a strong, interesting archaeology story.

"Feathers", by Tim Waggoner, was written in 2nd person, casting me the reader as an unsympathetic psychiatrist. The only good thing about this was that it was flash fiction, and over fast.

"The Beguiled Grave" by Marguerite Reed is the highlight of this issue so far. A powerful, immortal witch is sent to break a king out of his secret prison, using necromancy. Great world-building, character voice, and structure. Also liked her casual reference to the king's sexual parts even though there's no sex in the story.

"Ellende", by Gregory Frost, seems to be a sort of spin on Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", where a couple happens upon a small rural town filled with deformed cultists. It wasn't bad.

"The Legend of Lightning Lizzie" by Marie Whittaker is flash fiction of some guys telling an urban legend that's actually real.

"Too Late Now", by Seanan McGuire, is just what I expect from Seanan McGuire from reading her Wayward Children books: Young women trying, and often failing, to survive in a brutal world with a fantasy or SF backdrop. This one is essentially her take on Day of the Triffids, and of the two, hers is the superior story.