Author: John Baltisberegr
(This article first went live on Madness Heart Press 1.23.21)
I just beat Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow for the umpteenth time. I’ve beaten that particular Castlevania game a lot, under new game +, regular, hard, boss rush, Julius Mode, I’ve even played rom-hacks of it. It’s a fun little game. But is it horror? Is it a horror game?
Continue reading “Let’s Beat Up Dracula … Together!”(this post is originally from Madness Heart Press, on 1.9.21)
This morning my wife tried snuggling me, she asked if I was mad, I said, no, but that I was thinking about eating Pokemon. Her response? “That tracks.” But it doesn’t. Not really, Pokemon is a strange fantastic world filled with bright colors fueled by friendship, but if you peel back even the first layer of the game’s setting things begin to unravel in the worst way. Pokemon is a survival horror game as grisly and dark as they come. Let me explain.
Continue reading “The Existential Horror of Pokemon”(Originally Published on Madness Heart Press 1.2.21)
Oh. My. God. You already spent all that time carefully crafting your words into the perfect masterpiece. You spent hours hunched over a desk, or a coffee table, or some surface pouring out the darkness and pain inside yourself in order to grace the publishers and editors of the world with your intense and insanely skilled wordsmithery. Why should you, after doing so much, have to kowtow to some stuck up publisher’s meager whimpering for how to submit your work that will make you both rich? Fuck em’ instead send them this list, to explain why their guidelines are stupid and you are amazing!
Continue reading “Why Submission Guidelines Are Bullshit”(This post was first live on Madness Heart Press in 2020)
I sat down to write a best of 2020 list. I did. I was going to talk about the best horror books of 2020, I was going to go on and on about how much I read. But I got into it, and I realized, that most of the books I read, I read to provide blurbs, or I read submissions. Or I read to prepare for an interview. Long story short, I read a lot fewer of 2020’s books than I intended to. I was also going to write a Women of Horror list, and I will do that, there are so many incredible authors that I want to highlight, but as it’s currently the last day of 2020 I wanted to do a best-of list today.
Continue reading “Top Ten Unexpectedly Spooky Games of 2020”(This article was first shared on MadnessHeart.Press in 2020)
Look, I know, that title? It’s clickbait. You clicked on it because surely, surely there isn’t a serious article by a serious press about authors and their dicks. And yes, while I do collect pictures of writers’ genitalia, that is a sacred bond between me and Shane McKenzie.
Continue reading “Identifying The Author by the Weird Dicks”
When I first got my books on Godless.com, I had no idea what to expect. I knew that it was another venue for distribution, a chance to make a little more money, something I am never opposed to, I didn’t know what would happen. The next day the owner of Godless called me by my hated nickname, I corrected him and this conversation followed:
Continue reading “Writing A Super Hero Parody”
Back to Japan! So, a few weeks ago, my friend Edward Lipsett over at Kurodahan Press asked me to get Master of the Uncanny into the hands of a few reviewers, I said sure, of course and as a thank you, he sent me a few books.
Continue reading “Okamoto Kido: Master of the Uncanny – A Review”
Here’s a full disclaimer, I am both a fan of and a critic of Japanese media. I love Kurosawa, Toho is my lifeblood, I enjoy samurai and ninja in books, comics and movies. But at the same time, I mostly strongly dislike anime and most jrpgs. Manga is always a mixed bag. I’ve had an easier time finding horror and cool things I like in Manga form, though a lot of what I have enjoyed actually came out of Korea. So understand that there are aspects of Japanese media and culture that I love and fanboy out over, and aspects that I just straight up cannot stand.
Continue reading “Smashed by Junji Ito – Review”
Book 1 of the Splatter Western books from Death’s Head Press. I got this book by trading away a copy of Treif Magic to the publisher. I gotta tell you. I like anti-heroes. I like books and stories that are told from the perspective of a villain. And the Magpie Coffin delivers that in spades.
Continue reading “Review of the Magpie Coffin by Wile E. Young”
As a lot of you know, I’m a publisher as well as an author. You may also know that I do the podcast circuit. So it isn’t unusual for other presses to reach out to me to interview the author of a book they have coming out. Perpetual Motion Machine Press did that with Antioch, and while reading it I thought, I should review this book. And here we are.
Continue reading “Antioch by Jess Leonard – Review”