Sanitarium Magazine Issue 1

I was beyond excited to see last year that Sanitarium Magazine was being revived. I loved the magazine in its first life. It has a special place in my heart as this was the magazine to give me my first story acceptance at a time where I was beginning to lose all confidence in my writing.

I was first published in Issue 28. I’d bought 5 copies! I was nervous as I had never read it before but immediately loved it and continued to buy every issue afterwards until it stopped at issue 51. I was devastated. Its always so sad to see such a great magazine go but like with most indie horror presses they are run on love for horror not for profits.

And amazingly I got another story acceptance from the new version of Sanitarium I was thrilled beyond words and after reading the first issue I am also very proud to be featured alongside such talented writers.

To call this a magazine is a huge understatement. This is a great and vast tome of horror. Seriously there wasn’t one tale I didn’t enjoy in this.

This magazine/tome has really reignited my love for horror. For me I much prefer short horror fiction. I feel in this format there are less rules and restrictions in creating tales. You can push it as far as you want. You can be really mean to your characters as readers don’t expect a big pay off at the end. In horror novels there tends to be a sense of hope and salvation at the end, but in short fiction that dream is decimated.

With this I was genuinely excited each time I started a new tale as each one before it had been so good!. There’s 20 tales in here, some touch upon poetry, science fiction, history, folklore and just plain weird!

This was a very hard choice to make but my two favourite tales, (couldn’t pick just one) were The Slaughterman’s Tale by Dan Soule. I just loved this, so creepy from the get go and really chilling from beginning to end. I also loved The Mouth that Opens by Logan Noble it really reminded me of American Horror Story at it’s best. Two writers I’ll be keeping a look out for in the future. I hope to see a lot more of their work.

Also up there is The Alchemical Wedding by Max D.Stanton. I’ve never read anything like that before! Mad and brilliant!

This is a superb debut and if the second issue is anything like the first this will soon be a huge name in horror once more.

The only downside is the wait for issue 2!