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Year's Best Hardcore Horror book cover 1
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Year's Best Hardcore Horror
Series · 2 books · 2016-2017

Books in series

Year's Best Hardcore Horror, Volume 1 book cover
#1

Year's Best Hardcore Horror, Volume 1

2016

Excerpt from the Introduction: Editors Randy Chandler and Cheryl Mullenax put the call out to horror writers and editors of extreme stories, the hardcore stuff that breaks boundaries and trashes taboos, the transgressive tales you can't "unread" (as Chuck Palahniuk says). We staked out our territory and nailed this to the wall to guide us: YEAR'S BEST HARDEST HORROR Not your mama's best-of horror annual. This stuff comes from the edge of the abyss, stories you read at your own risk because you feel the abyss looking right back into you through the tainted lens of each twisted tale. Some of the stories you'll find here are loaded with very graphic descriptions of violence, sex and depravities, while others may contain only one shocking moment of brutality. In others, the hardcore aspect may be less graphic and subtler than you might expect. Some of these quieter tales offer the reader some time to recover from the more disturbing ones preceding. Most of the stories collected here are from small and specialty press anthologies, with a few from periodicals, like the prestigious Splatterpunk Zine in the UK and Thuglit here in the US. Bizarro is also represented with a couple of tales from the unlikely anthology Blood For You: A Literary Tribute To GG Allin from Weirdpunk Books. (If you're not familiar with the late GG Allin, you can find snippets from some of his outrageous and obscene punk shows online, which will increase your appreciation of those two tales.) So for now, forget about that neighbor you suspect is a serial killer, don't worry about the drunk driver that could take you out on your next trip to the store, push those troubling news stories to the back of your mind and immerse yourself in the imaginary horrors at hand. But don't be surprised if you sense something dark staring back at you from between the lines. That is to be expected when you enter these forbidding realms. With any luck, you may find something useful to help you survive the approaching Apocalypse. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: The Year That Was "Worth the Having" by Michael Paul Gonzalez "Awakening" by Jeff Strand "Readings Off The Charts" by Adam Cesare "Reborn" by The Behrg "What's Worst" by David James Keaton "Dead End" by Kristopher Triana "What You Wish For" by Lilith Morgan "King Shits" by Charles Austin Muir "Cleanup On Aisle 3" by Adam Howe "Bath Salt Fetus" by George Palacious "Bored With Brutality" by MP Johnson "Exposed" by Monica J. O'Rourke "Eleanor" by Jason Parent "The Scavengers" by Tony Knighton "The Most Important Miracle" by Scott Emerson "Hungry For Control" by Clare de Lune "Clarissa" by Robert Essig & Jack Bantry "Where The Sun Don't Shine" by Pete Kahle "Blackbird Lullaby" by George Cotronis
Year's Best Hardcore Horror, Volume 2 book cover
#2

Year's Best Hardcore Horror, Volume 2

2017

Comet Press is extremely proud to present its second annual anthology featuring this year's hardcore corps of authors with the best extreme horror fiction of 2016 that breaks boundaries and trashes taboos. Selected from indie publishers and magazines such as Weirdpunk Books, Necro Publications, Splatterpunk Zine, Corner Bar Magazine, Carrion Blue and Raw Dog Screaming Press, these stories represent the state of the art of extreme horror fiction. Whether extreme in theme or with gore galore, these disturbing tales will be hard to forget even though you may wish you could. Yes, there will be blood. Lots of it. Gore galore and plenty of the gushy stuff. But you'll also find tales less graphic but with hardcore attitudes, transgressive stories you're not sure you should be reading, stories showing you things you shouldn't see. Visceral fiction. Read at your own risk. Table of contents: Michael A. Arnzen "55 Ways I'd Prefer Not to Die". Jasper Bark "Bed of Crimson Joy". Christa Carmen "The Girl Who Loved Bruce Campbell". Marvin Brown "The Field". Adam Cesare "Please Subscribe". Matthew Chabin "Father of Dread". Jose Cruz "American Gods, American Monsters". Andrew Darlington "Coming of the Darkula". Paolo Di Orazio "The Contract". Stefanie Elrick "Mother's Nature". William Grabowski "Out Hunting for Teeth". Sarah L. Johnson "Little Sister, Little Brother". Eric LaRocca "Miss\_Vertebrae". Alessandro Manzetti "Kozmic Blues". Tim Miller "Backne". Alexandra Renwick "Redux". Bryan Smith "Implant". Jeremy Thompson "The Hallowfiend Remembers". Tim Waggoner "A Face in the Crowd". Wrath James White "Ownership". Stephanie M. Wytovich "On This Side of Bloodletting" & selected poems from Brothel.

Authors

Stephanie M. Wytovich
Stephanie M. Wytovich
Author · 16 books

Stephanie M. Wytovich is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has been showcased in numerous magazines and anthologies such as Weird Tales, Nightmare Magazine, Southwest Review, Year's Best Hardcore Horror: Volume 2, The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 8 & 15, as well as many others. Wytovich is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, and an adjunct at Western Connecticut State University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Point Park University. She is a recipient of the Elizabeth Matchett Stover Memorial Award, the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant, and has received the Rocky Wood Memorial Scholarship for non-fiction writing. Wytovich is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and a graduate of Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection, Brothel, earned a home with Raw Dog Screaming Press alongside Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, An Exorcism of Angels, Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare, and The Apocalyptic Mannequin. Her debut novel, The Eighth, is published with Dark Regions Press, and her nonfiction craft book for speculative poetry, Writing Poetry in the Dark, is available now from Raw Dog Screaming Press. Her 2023 poetry collection, On the Subject of Blackberries, is out now. Follow Wytovich at http://stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com/ and on Twitter and Instagram @SWytovich​ and @thehauntedbookshelf. You can also find her essays, nonfiction, and class offerings on LitReactor.

Jasper Bark
Jasper Bark
Author · 9 books
Jasper Bark finds writing author biographies and talking about himself in the third person faintly embarrassing. Telling you that he’s an award winning author of four cult novels including the highly acclaimed ‘Way of the Barefoot Zombie’, just sounds like boasting. Then he has to mention that he’s written 12 children’s books and hundreds of comics and graphic novels and he wants to just curl up. He cringes when he has to reveal that his work has been translated into nine different languages and is used in schools throughout the UK to help improve literacy, or that he was awarded the This Is Horror Award for his last anthology ‘Dead Air’. Maybe he’s too British, or maybe he just needs a good enema, but he’s glad this bio is now over.
Alessandro Manzetti
Alessandro Manzetti
Author · 11 books

Alessandro Manzetti (Rome, Italy) is a Three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author, editor, scriptwriter and essayst of horror fiction and dark poetry whose work has been published extensively (more than 40 books) in Italian and English, including novels, short and long fiction, poetry, essays, graphic novels and collections. ​ English publications include his novels Shanti - The Sadist Heaven (2019) and Naraka - The Ultimate Human Breeding (2018), the novella The Keeper of Chernobyl (2019), the collections The Radioactive Bride (2020), The Garden of Delight (2017), The Monster, the Bad and the Ugly (2016, with Paolo Di Orazio), and The Massacre of the Mermaids (2015), the poetry collections Dancing with Maria's Ghost (2021), Whitechapel Rhapsody (2020), The Place of Broken Things (2019, with Linda D. Addison), War (2018, with Marge Simon), No Mercy (2017), Sacrificial Nights (2016, with Bruce Boston) Eden Underground (2015), Venus Intervention (2014, with Corrine de Winter), and the graphic novels Calcutta Horror (2019), Her Life Matters (2020) and The Inhabitant of the Lake (2021), and the Guide '150 Exquisite Horror Books' (2021) ​ He edited the anthologies The Beauty of Death (2016), The Beauty of Death Vol. 2 - Death by Water (2017, with Jodi Renee Lester) and Monsters of Any Kind (2018, with Daniele Bonfanti) ​ His stories and poems have appeared in Italian, USA, UK, Australian, Polish and Russian magazines, such as Weird Tales Magazine, Dark Moon Digest, Splatterpunk Zine, Disturbed Digest, Space and Time, The Horror Zine, Illumen, Devolution Z, Hinnom, Recompose, Polu Texni, Nothing's Sacred, Okolica Strachu, and anthologies such as Splatterpunk Forever, The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 13, Classic Monsters Unleashed, Best Hardcore Horror of the Year Vol. 2, 4, 5, 6, The Big Book of Blasphemy, Midnight Under the Big Top, Bones III, Rhysling Anthology (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021), HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. 3 and 4, The Beauty of Death Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, World of Light and Darkness, One of Us, Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World, Tales of the Lost Vol. 3, Hope: Poems of Hope and Resilience From the Pandemic, Sorrow and many others He edited the anthologies The Beauty of Death (2016), The Beauty of Death Vol. 2 - Death by Water (2017, with Jodi Renee Lester) and Monsters of Any Kind (2018, with Daniele Bonfanti) Awards and Nominations: • Bram Stoker Awards 2021 winner • Bram Stoker Awards 2019 winner • Bram Stoker Awards 2015 winner • SFPA Elgin Awards 2019 winner • Bram Stoker Awards 2019 three-time nominee • Bram Stoker Awards 2018 nominee • Bram Stoker Awards 2017 two-time nominee • Bram Stoker Awards 2016 two-time nominee • Bram Stoker Awards 2014 nominee • Splatterpunk Awards 2019 nominee • Splatterpunk Awards 2018 nominee • Rhysling Awards 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 nominee • Elgin Awards 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 nominee • This is Horror Awards 2017 nominee • HWA Specialty Press Awards 2017 winner (as CEO of Independent Legions Press) Furthermore, he received honorable mentions (for stories and poems) in Ellen Datlow's 'The Best Horror of the Year' Vol. 7-8-9-10-12-13 ​ ​He is the CEO & Founder of Independent Legions Publishing, editor of 'Molotov Magazine' (in Italian), HWA Active member and a former HWA Board of Trustees member. In 2021 he served the Science Fiction Poetry Association as the Rhysling Award Chair. He lives in Trieste, Italy website: www.battiago.com

Eric LaRocca
Eric LaRocca
Author · 16 books
Eric LaRocca (he/they) is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of the viral sensation Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. A lover of luxury fashion and an admirer of European musical theatre, Eric can often be found roaming the streets of his home city, Boston, MA, for inspiration. For more information, please follow @hystericteeth on Twitter/Instagram or visit ericlarocca.com.
Tim Waggoner
Tim Waggoner
Author · 71 books
Tim Waggoner has published nearly fifty novels and seven short story collections, and his articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and Writers’ Journal, among others. He's won the Bram Stoker Award and has been a finalist for both the Shirley Jackson Award and the Scribe Award. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. Visit him on the web at www.timwaggoner.com.
Christa Carmen
Christa Carmen
Author · 6 books

Christa Carmen lives in Rhode Island and is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of the short story collection Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked. She has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Boston College, and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine. When she’s not writing, she keeps chickens; uses a Ouija board to ghost-hug her dear, departed beagle; and sets out on adventures with her husband, daughter, and bloodhound–golden retriever mix. Most of her work comes from gazing upon the ghosts of the past or else into the dark corners of nature, those places where whorls of bark become owl eyes, and deer step through tunnels of hanging leaves and creeping briars only to disappear. Visit her at www.christacarmen.com.

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Year's Best Hardcore Horror