I really like good horror fiction, but this anthology was a waste of my time and money. There are a few decent stories, such as "Half the Storm", "Peas in a Pod", and “As Lost as a Northwest Alabamian in a Snowstorm”, but most of the stories fail at a very basic level.

The story written by the editor, Nickolaus Pacione, is T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E. It's grammatically incompetent and difficult to follow. Don't just take my word that his writing is horrible. Preview the book and read the back cover and the introduction. Yikes!

Other stories contain either typos and grammatical errors, bad writing, bad grasp of basic facts, blah plots -- or a combination of the above. In one story, the main character is living in Vancouver when a major earthquake hits the city. Within minutes the character can turn on his television (which miraculously still works?) and learns specific details of the disaster, such as the number dead. Um, no. They couldn't even have begun to find the bodies that fast. In another story, an asteroid hits off the East Coast with only a few minutes notice, when in reality, with our current technology, it would have been seen coming for quite a while. There are many other examples of similar problems.

I recommend that readers spend their money elsewhere.

Anthology Foreman's Notes: Line Up and Cover Photo

Every author on this anthology brought their best story forward and knowing this is exactly the reason I wanted to do this kind of anthology. I never thought about doing a theme anthology before but when Gerald Grimmett died I knew I had to do something that brought literary authors together with genre authors, this was it. This one brings out their extreme creativity to capture the forces of the storms or quakes; bringing out the humanity within the horrors of a natural disaster. Macey's story brings out the human side within the whole paranoia of snowstorms in Alabama, while David McCourt's story is by far one of the darkest in the set. I will say that right now -- I usually have the habit of bringing a darkness of my own to the table but I am letting someone else do it this time around. I am proud of each author for bringing their unique vision to this anthology and here it is -- Melyssa's story in this is one of the nastier horror stories in the set bringing a Cthulhu Mythos tone to the natural disaster theme. So if you're coming into this one with the attitude of TABLOID PURPOSES, don't because this is an entirely different entity.
       The entries that I will say are a favorite of mine in the anthology are the ones written by Macey, Everette Bell, Stephen C. Hallin, Jeff Skinner, John Floyd (his entry in Taj Mahal Review was damned good, and seeing the story he wrote in this anthology you will why,) Erin Mackay and a few of the newcovers in this one. Keep an eye on Marissa Low when she gets her novel out there. Many of the authors in this anthology appeared on some pretty well known ones in the realms of small press. Quakes and Storms when it was done I nearly wept because it was a long time coming. A lot of the authors came in on their own, then a few Macey referrals and I give her a lot of credit for getting Brian Dixon (his story in this one is impressive too.) If you're an author looking to get published, look up some of these authors because they've published other authors. The hostess' story in this one is the second darkest story in here -- the darkest belongs to David McCourt. If you never read Pawn: A Novel or the Collection books then you would not know about Barb Marjanovic.
       The styles in this book range from Edgar Allan Poe to a journalist style article. I won't review my own stories because that would be tacky but I will say this is a tip of the hat to the members of this line up because they brought their most talented stories forward to this one. Four of the authors in this one are fresh off the TABLOID PURPOSES II anthology, and this is the editorial debute of Macey Baggett Wuesthoff. She did a hell of a job doing the clean up editing and did the editing on a number of the stories except for three. The formatting was my work and the layout of the book is me; I will have to point everyone to the link where I got the cover photo from for those who might ask where I got that from.
        One thing that stands out with this anthology from the others I put together are that I asked for author's to contribute their photos for the bio section. I had the editor photos placed on the back. I could not find a head shot so I used the photo I took during the TABLOID PURPOSES I photo sessions. But the challenge was getting everything together in one place -- I had a typo in the beginning with the front page but reworked that page and fixed it. I want to thank Melyssa Sprott for taking part in the overall project, and being kind enough to host the anthology on her place. Macey's was going to be the last story in the anthology and Anna's the second to last story in it but with the way it was done Anna's story was the last one and they both added a touch of humor to a bleek anthology. In other words get ready ...... to .... RIDE.....THE.......STORM!