Queer Little Nightmares

I found these generally took more effort that reading a regular novel because each time you have to adjust to the world of the story, you can't just dip in and out.

The stories I liked the most were the "Black Mirror" style ones where there was a strange technology or a twist. The "queer person turns into a monster" stories kind of ran together for me.

I also liked the stories for non-Western cultures that explored their own monsters.

Of the poems, Floral Arrangement I was the one I liked the best.

Queer Little Nightmares is a collection of stories and poems for the monsters in all of us (especially the queer ones). Diverse in style and content, these works are deliciously weird and grounded in emotional truth. Standouts for me include the stories "The Vetala's Song" by Anuja Varghese and "Strange Case" by Eddy Boudel Tan, and the poems "Godzilla, Silhouette Against City" by Ryan Dzelzkalns and "Cryptid Cruising" by Avra Margariti. But they're all worth reading.

Love had made of me something invincible, and I was not interested in considering its consequences. 

I think I expected... more? On one hand, the anthology absolutely does what it says it does, exploring queerness through the use of monsters as metaphors. On the other hand, in many cases the balance was kind of off. Sometimes, I felt like the author really wanted to just write a horror story with queer characters without pulling the themes together. More often, I felt like the author wanted to write about queerness without necessary delving into all that horror-y monster stuff, but they probably wanted to be in the anthology, too. 

Overall, as it often happens with anthologies, this was a rather "hit or miss" experience for me. Two short stories really stood out for me. One was Wooly Bully by Amber Dawn, for its heavy summer vibes and my favorite brand …

"The Vetala's Song" by Anuja Varghese ★★★½ "#WWMD?" by jaye simpson ★★★ "Gruesome My Love" by Levi Cain ★★★ "Glamour-Us" by Andrew Wilmot ★★★ "And the Moon Spun Round like a Top" by Hiromi Goto ★★★½ "The Minotaur and Theseus (and Other Bullshit)" by Ben Rawluk ★★★½ "Strange Case" by Eddy Boudel Tan ★★★ "In Our Own Image" by Matthew J. Trafford ★★★ "Ghosts of Pride Past" by Cicely Belle Blain ★★½ "The Call" by David Ly ★★★ "Like Me" by Daniel Zomparelli ★★½