eBooks - Thrillers - Thrillers - Bill Wilson - Midnight Gallery
Midnight Gallery eBook
by Bill Wilson
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Windows PC, Palm, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, Blackberry, iLiad, and more. Features
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Midnight Gallery Summary
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Do you enjoy being scared?
I do. I love the feeling of a cold chill creeping up my spine as I sit in a dark theater watching a good horror film. I still sit around campfires with friends while we tell ghost stories, but for sheer fun, nothing beats curling up in my recliner and turning the pages of a suspenseful novel or short story collection. Books are the great passion of my life. Written words have opened my mind to countless new worlds. Sometimes these are bright and sunny, but other times they are dark and menacing, filled with monstrous fiends waiting in the shadows for their prey. Sometimes they triumph over their intended victims, other times they don’t. For me it’s this awful uncertainty that gives good horror its compelling edge. Like real life, one never knows from one crisis to the next whether the forces of good or evil will carry the day. Short stories have long been my favorite form of fiction. I love them for their directness and simplicity. Whether I’m reading O. Henry or Edgar Allen Poe, nothing beats a tale woven together with a few thousand words. Unlike the novel (which I enjoy as well) there is no room for fat or fluff, just the basic elements of well-crafted writing: a protagonist, the person, force or entity they struggle against, and a slow climb through mounting tension to the climax. It’s a sad fact of modern life that the art of writing short fiction is dying. News stands in the 1940s and 50s were filled with publications like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories of Science Fiction. Nowadays such works are hard to find, save for a few holdouts like the excellent Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, which can still be found in magazine racks across North America. However, for the most part the public’s reading choices consist of specialty periodicals and books about the real world. Not that I have anything against factual writing; far from it. History, science and philosophy are among my favorite subjects, and I enjoy catching up on them in the pages of a book or article. But the little boy in me longs for those days when I would go into the local drug store with a buck in hand and enjoy the delicious agony of deciding which periodicals to spend it on. In those days (the 1970s, in case you’re trying to guess my age) comics were kept in revolving metal stands at the local pharmacy or five and dime, not wrapped in plastic bags and put on display in specialty shops. Most were slightly bent or dog-eared from being read in the store by those unable to afford the cover price. Not every kid had a quarter in those days, you know. There were plenty of superhero titles, just as there are today. But there were also offerings like House of Mystery and The Witching Hour from DC as well as Monsters Unleashed and Weird Wonder Tales published by Marvel. Each issue had three or four stories, and at least a couple of them would make me afraid to turn out the lights that night. Alas, those days are no more, and the once bright flame of short fiction has become a dull glow, in danger of being snuffed out forever. As my own humble attempt to keep that fragile fire burning, I offer the stories in this book. Each is a trip along a dark path. As you turn these pages you will creep down those trails, dense fog clinging to you as you make your way through a forbidden forest towards an unknown destination. Enjoy the journey. As for me, I’m done writing for now. I have a mug of coffee, a comfortable chair and a John Saul novel to keep me company. It’s going to be a good night. |
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