Last week, I received my contributor copy of the Samhain 2023 issue of The Hungur Chronicles, which proved to be a nice, early Holiday present. This semi-annual, digest-sized magazine edited by Terrie Leigh Relf and Robert Bellam features stories and poems about vampires, with a special emphasis on vampires who have a connection to space. Today, I thought I’d take a brief look at the good stuff you’ll find on the pages of the current issue to tempt you to take a look for yourself. Of course, for the writers in the audience, consider this a market to put on your radar! And yes, while I do have a story in the issue and love it when people read my stories, I have already been paid for my contribution and don’t receive any further compensation if you check any of this out.

The issue opens with three haibun. For those not familiar with this poetry form, it’s typically a short prose piece followed by a haiku. I’ve never seen a strict limit placed on the size of the prose, but most American interpretations limit the prose material to around one to four paragraphs. The haibun in this issue are “Symbiosis” by Tyree Campbell, which tells the story of a vampire-like butterfly on an alien world, “The Clearner” by Marcia A. Borell, which tells the story of a vampire employed to clean crime scenes, and “I Wear Shades Everywhere I Go Is Not Because I Think I’m Cool” by Francis W. Alexander, which tells the story of a vampire from space who drains knowledge from his victims.

This first short story in the issue is “Beware of the Streets” by Andrage Benedick. It tells the story of a recently homeless man who discovers there are vampires roaming the streets. This is an especially good story for those who like their vampires monstrous, unsympathetic, and lurking in unexpected places.

This is followed by Gary W. Davis’s short story “The Derelict” about a NASA mission to Neptune. Their primary mission is to investigate an object long thought to be a moon but proves to be an artificial object that has been in orbit for a long time. At first, our intrepid explorers fail to find an airlock they can open, so it looks like they’ll go away disappointed. However, they do discover a place where a sufficiently large meteorite pierced the hull, allowing them to enter.

My story “Survival and Sorcery” comes next. This is a tale from my Scarlet Order vampire world and tells about the Navajo vampire Mendez, who first appeared in the novel Vampires of the Scarlet Order and his encounter with a skinwalker. The two discover they may have a common pedigree.

This is followed by a review of the 2022 film Nanny by my friend and sometimes collaborator Lee Clark Zumpe. Although Nanny isn’t actually a vampire film, Zumpe makes a good point about how good horror can be disquieting and challenge our perceptions of the status quo.

The next short story is James Bullard’s “Quantum Poetry.” A man goes to the library as an escape from the pressures of life and discovers two men having a strange conversation in the racks. Intrigued, he follows them through a portal into a spacetime conveyance that can take him to planets throughout the universe. He also learns that the two men are vampires and their most recent traveling companion is none other than Albert Einstein, who just committed suicide rather than let them turn him into a vampire. I loved how this story gave us vampires who had every appearance of being true gentlemen but who also have a truly monstrous side.

The final story in the issue is Geoffrey Hart’s “The Phantom of the Niebelungen.” In this story, we meet a psychic vampire in New York who goes a set of performances of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in order to feed on the emotions generated, only to have the tables turned on him.

It’s always great to receive contributor copies of a book featuring stories I truly enjoyed. If you would like to get a copy, you can find them here: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/hungur-chronicles-samhain-2023

If you’re a writer and think you may have a story or poem to tempt Terrie Leigh Relf and Robert Bellam, you can find the writer’s guidelines here: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/hungur-chronicles-guidelines

With that, I’ll wish you Happy Holidays. May all your surprises be pleasant ones and may you be haunted by only happy memories!