THE OFFICIAL SITE OF JOSE CRUZ (the one who’s the writer)

Review

  • REVIEW: Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt

    I think I know whose woods these are. They are the woods of Michael Wehunt, and they are indeed lovely, dark, and deep. Though the title of the author’s first collection posits that we’ll be visiting the rosier side of the neighborly fence and venturing into pastoral lands oft dreamed of, Wehunt’s stories are literally…

  • REVIEW: The Arrival of Missives by Aliya Whiteley

    Reading weird and dark fiction at the rate that I normally do can sometimes inspire a kind of tunnel vision. While stories may differ greatly in subject matter, setting, or voice, the one element that has always remained the same in my experience is tone. Each story, no matter how diverse the prose, generally fluctuates…

  • REVIEW: The Little Dixie Horror Show by Mer Whinery

    Horror being, among other things, the genre of subversion, it stands to reason that the authors working in this mode should frequently take the landscapes that make up their homes and their travels and introduce elements of the fantastic to both accentuate and complement the darker qualities inherent in those landscapes. Mer Whinery has managed…

  • DILLINGER (1973)

      From the moment that Warren Oates swings open the bank teller’s window and greets the audience on the other side with a grin equal parts sleaze and charm, DILLINGER (1973) appears to be another production mining the gangster-as-folk-hero vein ala BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967). A wealthy pigeon of a woman has just turned her…

  • SEASON OF THE WITCH (1973)

      Like the malcontent MARTIN (1977) who sought answers and an alternative nightside to the dull, crushing poverty of his daylit hours, Joan Mitchell (Jan White) plunges into the world of all-the-rage witchcraft to distract from the role of compliant housewife that has been both pressed upon her and eased into without much personal pushback.…

  • REVIEW: Cassilda’s Song ed. Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

    Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the fact that the “King in Yellow” cycle of author Robert W. Chambers consists of only four core texts—two of them only tangential in reference, and all short stories at that—is the notion that someone might endeavor to create an anthology written in tribute to and existing in…

  • REVIEW: The Nameless Dark by T. E. Grau

    We live in a time of plenty. In the last decade and change, the rise of small publishing houses and e-reader devices has opened up a doorway through which a veritable smorgasbord of dark fiction has poured forth into the hands of fans who might not have otherwise encountered them. But not even the accessibility…

  • REVIEW: Painted Monsters and Other Strange Beasts by Orrin Grey

    It’s no secret that the shadow of cinema has loomed large over American horror fiction ever since the premiere of the country’s first devoutly supernatural chiller on Valentine’s Day, 1931. (That would be Tod Browning’s DRACULA for the philistines out there.) Since then novels and short stories alike have drawn inspiration from the silver screen and…