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Notes on Lilly Clave's "They Never Die"

Nice atmosphere in opening paragraph.

“Friday, October 29th” – Nice little touch. It looks like you have set up the story to come to a climax on Halloween. Other reviewers might hate that choice. I think it rocks!

“I've heard that they can live for days with their heads cut off-and that was before they started getting bigger, before they swallowed up the whole town.” -- [This is a] unique twist! [This contrasts greatly with] the famous stories in this sub-genre [in which the creatures] can be killed with a head shot.

You might want to consider as your opening scene/line/image (if you ever re-write this for a reprint in another market) to be [one of the creatures] shuffling around, a thing of menace AND ITS HEAD HAS ALREADY BEEN BLOWN OFF! ARARRRRGHHH!

“The light scares them away, thankfully.” Whoa, back up. Didn't you say they were even scarier in the daylight? This is fantasy, but you want to make this consistent.

"metamorphosed like the rest of them, well..." Well, if this gut was a college English teacher he would say “metamorphosed” – But he’s a gas station guy so I don’t see him using the word.

-- Kevin James Miller, Author
"Scarlet Corners"

How do you know that the gas station attendant isn't a former a college English teacher who "metamorphosed" into a guy with a lower-paying job? I, for example, fill my tank up at the local HeXxon station. The attendants there can read untranslated editions The Necronomicon, without even using a thesaurus! And if you drive off without paying for your gas, they'll cast a spell and turn you into a dino-saurus. Heh heh. -- Dr. Macabre

Painting That Old Dark House

I very much enjoyed Margaret B. Davidson’s story “The House that Tobias Built.” The way she painted the house in words made the house a character in and of itself. But, what I particularly liked was the sense of delight the narrator had when describing his vicious old place ... the idea that someone would purposefully build a house of horrors is a great concept.

I think the story stands very well on it’s own, but at the end I found myself wanting to know more about the family. This could easily be stretched out into a longer piece, maybe illustrating the family dinner and the family members—which, I can imagine, must be every bit as intricately wicked as the house.

-- Lilly Clave, Author
"They Never Die"

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