The Nightmare Box has opened!
Cynthia Gómez’s book release | Solidarity Forever zines | Antifa World Kickstarter
The Nightmare Box and Other Stories is out today!
Cynthia Gómez’s The Nightmare Box and Other Stories is out in the world today, and WOW! It’s received some great early reviews. Check out what Cynthia Pelayo, LP Kindred, Mara Olivas, and Sam Asher had to say about these stories:
“A powerful, and empowering, collection of fantastically terrifying tales centered in Oakland, and the experiences of Latine, Queer and Working-Class people living there. The Nightmare Box by Cynthia Gómez is fierce and magical, while confronting very real issues faced by marginalized communities today.”
-Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Crime Scene
“Cynthia Gómez deploys a gift for layering the poetic atop the grotesque, an empathy for seeing a victim forced to be the villain, and the vision to see the horrific in lived experiences. These tales thrum with heart, a livewire pulling readers through the collection. In turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, Nightmare Box signals the arrival of a promising voice and career in horror.”
-LP Kindred, writer, editor, podcaster, cocoa-founder of Voodoonauts
“With horrors that start tame only to rapidly grow more vicious and more violent as the suffering of marginalized people continues, Cynthia Gómez’s The Nightmare Box and Other Stories is a sharp collage of brown rage that laces queer history with the supernatural to make something unabashedly, radically, Latine.”
-Mara Olivas, author of Sundown in San Ojuela
“There comes a point in The Nightmare Box that you cease wondering at the skill and imagination on display, and begin to simply revel in it. This is a writer with teeth and grace, grit and majesty. Cynthia Gómez isn’t merely talented: She’s masterful. Read these stories again and again.”
-Sam Asher, author of Really, Shockingly Bad Things
Get your hands on this collection of dark, magical, dread-inducing, angry, and cathartic stories! The best way to support Cursed Morsels and Cynthia is to order directly through our site (see below), but you can also order the book from all the usual places.
Oh, and if you want to share this book with your community, request it at your local library. Thanks so much!
Solidarity Forever Zines
Cynthia and I put together a bonus zine to go with the release of her book. The theme was “Solidarity Forever,” and Luísa Dias (who also designed the Nightmare Box cover) designed the look of the zine for us. Take a peek at this goddamn incredible design work!
Inside the zine are brilliant stories from Xochilt Avila, Felix Bill, and Richard Lau. These stories range from brutally cathartic to sincerely heartwarming to laugh-out-loud funny. You don’t want to miss it!
And remember, the only way to get a copy is by ordering The Nightmare Box and Other Stories directly through our store.
Antifa Worlds Kickstarter announcement
On January 6th, 2022, Cursed Morsels Press published Antifa Splatterpunk, one of the raddest, Nazi-killingest projects I (editor-in-chief Eric Raglin) have had the pleasure of editing.
Because fascism continues to rear its ugly hydra heads almost everywhere on this planet, we’re coming back with another anthology of antifascist fiction. This time around, we’re opening the door to all types of horror and Weird fiction—splatterpunk still included.
The title of this new anthology—Antifa Worlds—is a direct acknowledgement of fascism as a threat everywhere. For that reason, I plan to include multiple stories from international perspectives. I'm also seeking out stories about worlds that feel different from our own and activate our antifascist imaginations.
There are no special invites for this anthology; I’ll select all stories from our open call. Regardless of which authors are featured, you can expect dark, strange, bold, messy, and imaginative visions of antifascist resistance.
We aim to host an open submission call for this anthology in September 2024 (details here: https://cursedmorsels.com/submission-calls/) and publish the book in October 2025.
However, we need to secure our funding first. We’ll run the campaign later this month, so make sure to click the “notify me on launch” button and support the project as soon as it goes live!