A couple of weeks back, professor and author Anthony Servante posted an intriguing blog about literary horror through the ages, beginning with Shakespeare's "McBeth" and ending with my novelette, "The Children of Burma," which appears in my fiction collection Legends of the Night. The full article — which also reviews Banished by Billie Sue Mosiman, Skin Trade by Tonia Brown, Merkabah Rider by Ed Erdelac, and Where Darkness Dwells by Glen Krisch — analyzes each work both by contemporary standards and the context of the historical period in which it is set. About "The Children of Burma," Mr. Servante had these — and other — kind words to say:
"...We are immersed in 1942, not only in the middle of a war, but in the mind of an imperial soldier of said war, and we witness the horrors of the man, the army and ultimately the monster itself. Whereas other historical horror stories (many which I eliminated from this article) generalized the historical setting to merely tell a horror story, Stephen Mark Rainey establishes the structure writers of this genre should emulate or at least aspire to imitate...."
I encourage you to check out the full text of the blog here: History and Horror: From Natural to Supernatural
Also, visit Mr. Servante's interview with me (and several other authors) at Cybernocturnalism: Old School Authors Speak Up, originally posted in October 2012.
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