Ghouls' Night Out

Female horror scribes team up for hair-raising reading

Comments (0) By Clay McNear Thursday, Oct 8 2009

The most petrified we’ve ever been was on the stroke of midnight one bitter Christmas Eve, reading the final delicious syllables of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. King kept his ghoulish, cheesy masterwork locked in a trunk for years, believing it was too macabre for publication. The parting line is an all-time classic:

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“‘Darling,’ it said.”

Urk.

Horror movies don’t daunt us much anymore, and the only fright we get from the Internet is a “system failure imminent” warning. But at its best, the written word still has the power to age us overnight.

Nothing would please the Ghoulie Girls – a traveling collective of female horror scribes named Sarah Langan, Alex Sokoloff, Sarah Pinborough, and Rhodi Hawk – more than turning your hair ghost-white with their words. The four will read from and sign new works at Scottsdale Civic Center Library.

All are promising lit spooks, but the real find is Londoner Pinborough, a self-proclaimed Stephen King fan whose bloodcurdling Breeding Ground was nominated for the 2007 British Fantasy Award. The sequel, Feeding Ground, continues the original’s post-apocalyptic, The Signal meets Dean Koontz bent. Brilliant.

Admission to the reading/signing is free, but space is limited.

Fri., Oct. 9, 6-7:30 p.m., 2009