Read Me A Nightmare

By: Angelique Fawns
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  • Summary

  • "Read Me A Nightmare" brings strange short stories to life. A fan of Twilight Zone? Tales from the Crypt? Mixing genres, these tales come from the realms of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and comedy. A writer yourself? Stay tuned after the readings for interviews with editors, publishers, voice actors and other interesting folks in the industry. Visit www.fawns.ca to learn more. Please --if you enjoy the episode, leave a review!

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    Angelique Fawns
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Episodes
  • 48 Peggy's Hungry Haunted Clown

    48 Peggy's Hungry Haunted Clown
    Nov 11 2024

    Welcome to Episode 48 of Read Me a Nightmare, I’m Angelique Fawns, your host. Today I’m sharing a creepy tale featuring a Haunted Circus and a bloodthirsty clown.

    Peggy’s Hungry Haunted Clown first appeared in It Was All A Dream 2: Another Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right, released this August by Hungry Shadow Press.

    This is a gorgeous anthology with custom art for each story and I share the TOC with some phenomenal writing friends of mine, including Yelena Crane and Amanda Cecelia Lang.

    Check out the show notes for the link to check out the book.

    My inspiration for this story was watching the transport trucks carrying rides trundle into the little town of Sunderland for the annual Maple Syrup Festival.

    Kristi Stewart does a fantastic job bringing this Middle-Grade Horror story to life. She’s a professional voice actor and frequent performer for this podcast.

    Prepare to meet a clown just as terrifying as Stephen King’s Pennywise as we all head to the circus.



    Get full access to Angelique’s Substack at angeliquemfawns.substack.com/subscribe
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    23 mins
  • 47 Body Count - Halloween Special

    47 Body Count - Halloween Special
    Oct 27 2024
    This guy tried to pick up the wrong witch…Body Count was written by myself and recently published in DreamForge’s Dark Visions magazine, its annual Halloween treat. You can read the story for free here:https://bit.ly/Body-Count-A-FawnsBody Count is read by Kelly Pidgeon, one of the best voices in the business. No one does a tough guy character like he does. Kelly is also a member of the band, Boats Against the Current. You can listen to their music here:https://boatsagainstthecurrentmusic.bandcamp.com/Jane Noel created the art piece above, and I absolutely love it.Check your shoes for dead mice, and get ready to grin like a dang Cheshire cat.Scot Noel from DreamForgeHow does an author sell to DreamForge? Firstly, I recommend joining the Dreamcasters. https://dreamforgemagazine.com/dreamcasters/This is one of my favourite writing groups and the monthly meetings have helped me hone my craft immensely. Plus I’ve made some wonderful lifelong friends. (Many of whom I met for the first time this October at World Fantasy Con! Including Jane and Scot Noel.)Here are more hints right from Scot Noel pulled from past interviews I’ve done with him:AF: When looking to buy for your magazine, what is your perfect story? SN: That’s easy, the perfect story generates a powerful emotion in me when I read it, and I either end the tale with a big smile or in tears. Tears not necessarily because it is sad, but because something powerful and resonating happened, like an affirmation that the future is not lost, humans are not doomed, and the Human Adventure is Just Beginning. Oh, and don’t: * Start in Medias Res, especially if that means lots of explosions and chaos- don’t care. * Bore me with expositions and explanations that you think are world-building. * Misuse dialog as a way to make your point or an alternative way to exposit, instead of to reveal the mental state of the speaking character. * Use unusual names, words, or ways or speaking that do not make your story more engaging, but do provide a speed bump or road block to smooth reading. * DO keep the reader with the actions of the protagonist and engage us with their challenges and emotions as they face the problems you’ve set before them. AF: Your website says, “Our tales revolve around those individuals and groups who bring meaning and value to the world, whose actions are of consequence, and whose dreams are the vanguard of things to come. Whether you call that Solarpunk, Hopepunk, or just DreamForge stories, you’ll find them here.” What is "Hopepunk"? SN: We were well into the development of DreamForge when I started looking around to see if anyone else was sharing a more hopeful vision of the future. In that search, I found author Alexandra Rowland, author of A Conspiracy of Truths and A Choir of Lies, and whose novel In the End I was reading at the time. As I learned, Alexandra first coined the term Hopepunk in 2017. In a Den of Geek article, she went on to say: “Hopepunk is a subgenre and a philosophy that says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.” It was catching on, and even as we prepared our first issue of DreamForge, I could see that people were using the term in relation to hopeful fiction. At DreamForge, we don’t think of ourselves as a Hopepunk publication, but we do believe we’ve published some Hopepunk stories, as well as Solarpunk (where humanity overcomes present day challenges to achieve sustainability). The two terms often seem to show up together, being part of a growing optimistic radicalism. AF: Any advice for writers submitting to DreamForge? SN: The one piece of advice for writers submitting anything to anywhere is to read the publication! That doesn’t mean you have to go spend a lot of money; if you cast your net wide enough and give it a try, there’s usually someone who can loan you a copy, and many of today’s stories can be found free online. I know writers wonder if they are making a nuisance of themselves or are getting a bad reputation with the editor when they submit story after story that gets rejected. The answer is no. As editor of DreamForge, I’ve sent back a lot of stories to authors who tried again and again, yet I just didn’t have a place for those stories or perhaps they just didn’t quite rise above the others I chose. But I enjoyed the stories and respected the authors. When I did get mildly peeved, it was when it was obvious that the writer knew nothing about us, and we were simply on their “making the rounds list.” I don’t mind being the 5th or 25th publication on your list; that’s practical. What I do mind is when you gave no consideration to what we publish and then get upset about it when we send it back. We’re not here for stories about seduction, revenge, and murder, or to read screenplays, children’s books, and novel ...
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    22 mins
  • 46 The Matron of Hawthorne Hall

    46 The Matron of Hawthorne Hall
    Oct 3 2024
    A ghost story at an all-girls boarding school just in time for Halloween…The Matron of Hawthorne Hall was written by myself, and inspired by my time working at an exclusive boarding school in the countryside outside of London England. The story is read by Kristi Stewart, a professional voice actor and frequent performer for this podcast. The Matron of Hawthorne Hall is published in the current issue of Max Blood’s Mausoleum HERE.Max Blood’s Mausoleum: A Home for the Weird and TerrifyingMax Blood’s Mausoleum launched on March 1st with a new home for horror. The editor, Max Blood, says, “We’ve read it all before and will read it all again, so send us something that will really set us back on our heels. Terrify us. Make us squirm. Send us the best of your worst.”Max Blood’s Mausoleum is a paying market, offering $30 per piece, and has three issues out in the world. He recently published my Halloween ghost story, “The Matron of Hawthorne Hall” and I thought this was a good time to check in with his experiences so far. AF: How has the reception to Max Blood’s Mausoleum been?MB: Reception has been fantastic! I’ve had many great authors submit stories to our publication, and this has been really exciting for me. I worried when I started this that I would have a difficult time discovering enough great stories. That was a pessimistic view of the future. In reality, I had too many great ones. There are a ton of exciting, engaging authors out there whom I’d never heard of, and it excites me every time I discover another great one. The hardest part is choosing which stories to accept and which to pass on. I’ve had to pass on some pretty good ones.On the reader front, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to receive multiple emails from readers praising our stories, and I’ve passed those praises onto the respective authors. It brings me tremendous joy to get to do that.And then there is the continuing success of our authors. Several of the stories we picked up have since been picked up to be republished in other publications. And one story (we can’t reveal which at this time) has been picked up by a production company to be made into a short film! AF: Do you have any numbers as to your downloads and submission stats?MB: Well, we just published our third issue, so we’re still pretty small. That said, our numbers are not bad at all. In September, we had nearly 400 unique visitors to our site, about half of which were authors viewing our submission guidelines. So, it’s a good place for authors, for sure. That said, I’d say it’s a great place for readers. That’s 200 readers for our latest issue. Your story, “The Matron of Hawthorne Hall,” had a fantastic 32 readers get into it. And these are stories that the authors poured their blood into. They have each brought something special to our site. I certainly plan on increasing those numbers as we continue to publish such brilliant horror stories, but this is not a bad start at all.AF: What types of stories are you buying/what kind is most likely to be successful?MB: The ideal story for me is that which I wish I had written. Honestly, it’s that simple. If I read a piece and think, “Why didn’t I think of that?,” that’s a great sign. This often comes in the form of a story that pushes the limits of comfortability. Read “The Blood Horse,” by Kurt Newton, published in Issue 3, and you’ll see what I mean in action. That story even pushed my limits, made me uncomfortable. “Pavement Spatula,” by David Vonderheide, is another great example of this. It is psychologically terrifying. I wish I’d written that!That said, it doesn’t always have to push limits in these ways. I love horror that touches on other genres. Especially Science Fiction. It has to still be definitively Horror, but touching on another genre offers complexity that is often missing in mainstream Horror.AF: What did you like about The Matron of Hawthorne Hall and why did you send me a revise and resubmit?MB: There are times when a piece doesn’t touch on the above, but when it comes to actually reading the piece, I simply enjoy it. It’s difficult to qualify a reason behind it, so let’s just call it Magic. Some stories just have a bit of Magic. A bit of Charm. Your story was just such a story. I seriously enjoyed it. That said, it was initially pretty far from what we publish at Max Blood’s Mausoleum. In many cases, no matter how great a story is, this is a hard pass for me, but when that Magic is particularly strong for me, I will sometimes offer a chance for revision to bring the story at least a little closer to what we are looking for. It’s important to me that the story remains THAT AUTHOR’s story. I don’t want to get rid of what makes the story unique to them. So, I try to structure some remarks around where I think we can meet halfway. Compared to stories like “The Blood Horse” and “Pavement Spatula”, your story was a bit...
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    23 mins

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