A Grave Issue

BevVincent

My story "A Grave Issue" has been accepted for publication in FOUND: An anthology of found footage horror stories, edited by Andy Cull and Gabino Iglesias, scheduled for publication in October 2022.

I don't know if this is the final cover -- it's the one that accompanied the call for submissions and I like it a lot!

FlakeNoir

Very nice, congratulations Bev. 

Hedda Gabler

Great cover!

BevVincent

Preorders for the Kindle edition are now open. Apparently the paperback can't be ordered until it's released on October 8th.

Between April and August 2021 eighteen horror writers disappeared. These are the stories they were writing when they disappeared. 

Reader caution is advised. These are not ordinary stories.

Hedda Gabler

BevVincent said:

Preorders for the Kindle edition are now open. Apparently the paperback can't be ordered until it's released on October 8th.

Between April and August 2021 eighteen horror writers disappeared. These are the stories they were writing when they disappeared. 

Reader caution is advised. These are not ordinary stories.

I am definitely getting this one. 

Lou_Sytsma

Very cool concept for an anthology!  This is like The Norliss Tapes with Roy Thinnes of The Invaders fame. 

Congrats on your inclusion, Bev!   

BevVincent

Hey, I’m headlining! That’s a first, I think. 

FlakeNoir

BevVincent said:

Hey, I’m headlining! That’s a first, I think. 

Definitely noticed this, thought it was great. We knew you way-back-when. 🙂

BevVincent

Internet forums are used to significant effect in Bev Vincent’s "A Grave Issue", with obsessive fans of the writer Ramsey Edwinson meeting to discuss an undiscovered work which might be cursed. I loved the fragments of conversations and the need to read between the lines and the silences, which could only mean the worst.

-- Horror DNA

BevVincent

Bev Vincent’s “A Grave Issue” deals with one of my favorite horror tropes, cursed media, in this case a supposedly “lost” book by a famous and deceased writer named Ramsey Edwinson. The story, told as a string of posts on an author fan forum, tells of one poster finding a brand-new copy of a previously unknown Edwinson book at a yard sale and trying to determine its authenticity. It soon becomes clear, though, that the book is possibly cursed. Like many of the other stories, the fun of this one lies in what isn’t revealed, and what connections the reader has to make herself, which I think is the appeal of these type of so-called found footage stories, which in real life almost never have clear-cut resolutions.

>> Anthology review

Hedda Gabler

Very creative story. Great use of social media. And the title was clever in more ways than one. 

BevVincent

It was inspired in part by a very strange email I received one time that had some of that gibberish text in it.

BevVincent

After the 2019 earthquake in Izmir, Turkey, which saw many dead and many injured, a video went viral where a young gamer casually streams and chats on twitch and first low and then high-key panics as the earthquake gets gradually stronger. At the end of the video he shouts “it’s an earthquake, it’s an earthquake!!!!” and runs out of the room, while the building keeps shaking violently.

The real fun, though, starts after his departure, when his mates, all of them freaking out in front of their computers, start quickly and furiously commenting and their comments appear in super quick succession on screen - telling him to get the fuck out, some swearing, some just exclaiming their horror in incomprehensible babble... Nothing happened to the boy and after the video went viral I often went back to it to read the reactions of those horrified people, it held a weird kind of post-catastrophic fascination for me.

“A Grave Issue” has nothing to do with earthquakes or gamers. It is about a deadly book. Still, it reminded me of that video. You will know what I mean when you read it.

From a "Forgotten Horrors" review.

BevVincent

Themed anthologies are as risky as they are exciting. When that risk pays off, you get a tight all-killer (sometimes literally) collection with people taking leaps and providing their own variations on the idea. FOUND is one of those all-killer, no-filler collections, starting off with an introduction ruminating on a (hopefully) fictitious story of an ASMR channel swan-diving into high strange horror before taking us on a twisted guided tour through Reddit threads about mysterious disappearances, recollections of a ’90s-era childhood darkened by a series of Faces of Death-style videos, and a coroner’s report of a house that keeps ending up inside of people. The found-footage conceit makes everything feel that much more real, too, leaving you in a kind of uncanny valley where you feel like you just witnessed something you shouldn’t have.

Standout Stories: “Face Down Death Vol. VIII” by Josh Rountree, “A Grave Issue” by Bev Vincent

>>> Source

BevVincent

Love it or hate it, found footage horror often is some of the most effective stories when it comes to breaking the fourth wall and/or suspending disbelief. It’s because the wall may already be broken down and dismantled that found footage causes such a vivid and vicious response from readers. In Found, editors Cull and Iglesias gathered 18 stories of found footage horror that act as a perfect example of just how dynamic the subgenre can be. From a story about TV turning viewers into zombies by Clay McLeod Chapman to a clever rendition by Bev Vincent that demonstrates how found footage extends seamlessly into social media and online broadcast channels (like Twitch), this anthology gets the mind racing and might just sway those that are on the fence about found footage horror. 

>>> These Unnerving Themed Horror Anthologies Will Amplify Your Terror 

BevVincent

“A Grave Issue” by Bev Vincent sticks to one medium: an internet message board for book fans and collectors. Vincent uses the format to great effect, telling the story of a forum of book nerds who are falling prey to madness as they pass around a mysterious manuscript. Aside from being a fun, spooky story, it also faithfully replicates the feeling of stumbling upon a small but intense online fandom, one where the users have their own in-jokes and insults, long-running feuds and annoyances—a place where people are bound together not just out of a mutual love for a thing but a desire to prove that you are the biggest fan of all. Despite the users’ prickly interactions, however, there is something bittersweet (and scary) about seeing them go mad one by one, the forum slowly going silent.

>> Strange Horizons

Lou_Sytsma

Great idea - congrats!