Monday, October 31

Penny Dreadful project: The Beginning!

I've kind of fallen in love with classic, victorian Penny Dreadfuls. Like horror zines for Victorian England, these hand-printed and bound pamphlets were the beginning of the horror entertainment genre as we know and love it today.
Many of the classics we love were serialized either in zine form or as part of anthology magazines. The Picture of Dorian Grey, Dracula, Carmilla. This meant plucky heroes and long format stories that seemed to resemble modern television series' a bit more than your everyday novel.

So, I'm bringing them back.

The Dollar Dreadfuls series will have three lines: The Penny Blood Classics {aka Pennies}, The Penny Dreadful Tales {aka Dreadfuls}, and Moderns Fear, an anthology. All content will be as diverse, inclusive, and fem-positive as possible.

The Pennies will be the classic victorian penny dreadfuls, reprinted from public domain and with (hopefully) original illustrations.
The Dreadfuls will be serialized original horror stories, with short original pieces of literature and art. Something like a series of television show episodes.
And Modern Fear will be a horror anthology with original and classic works combined, along with any awesome genre stuff I can get my hands on.


The first Penny will be Carmilla -- the story of a young woman whose new friend is hiding something dangerous. Volume 1, Issue 1 is available now.