Scary Good | Check Out My New Horror Newsletter

I have been a fan of horror since I was about six years old.

Well, at six, I was terrified having gotten a sneaked glimpse of “The Exorcist,” and spent weeks drawing levitating girls with distended bellies but…let’s just say later I had an appreciation for a good scare.

I’ve read countless horror novels; watched thousands of films and TV series; and even co-produced and co-written an homage to classic characters, including “Carrie” and "The Ring’s” ‘Samara,” in the second season of a buzzy Web series, “Human Resources.”

And when I worked for the Tribune RedEye years ago, one of my annual Halloween traditions was to write a “Kyles Files” column counting down the most frightsome films I’d ever seen, and inviting readers to enter their own “scare dare” candidates. I always enjoyed learning about revisiting ‘70s peak horror or celebrating modern classics, including “The Conjuring,” “It Follows,” and “Terrified,” to name a few.

Most recently, I launched a newsletter on the Substack platform called “I Dream of Screams.” It’s a bi-monthly themed round-up of the best in the genre, across books, series and films. If you, like me, need an escape from the current horrors going on in this country, give it a look and if you like it, I welcome new subscribers.

As I always say, the more, the scarier. See you there.

NEW PROJECT ALERT | Cubicle Creepshow: Trilogy of Terror

One of my favorite co-workers of all time is my sister/business partner, Kozi Kyles.  Back around 2010, she came up with an idea to take some of her own workplace angst from early in her career and turn it into a concept called "Human Resources."  Basically, she daydreamed that a company she worked for had not been laying off her colleagues in the cruel and unusual way it actually went down.  Instead, she mused, perhaps these employees had been abducted by aliens looking to shore up their intergalactic workforce.  We put our heads together and came up with a feature, which evolved into a Web series, called "Human Resources," which starred comedic genius Lil Rel and a cast of puppets voiced by some of the best talent in Chicago.  We won awards including LAWEBFEST where we were invited to speak about how we bootstrapped our sci-fi fantasy project.  If you've never seen it, you can catch up here.

Fast forward to March 2018 when we debuted the follow-up, also based on our collective experience of workplace horrors from bullying co-workers to irritating e-mail threads and repeated requests to work late for no good reason.   

"HR Season 2: Cubicle Creepshow" is now adding to the over 100,000 views to our YouTube channel and attracting buzz to our social media platforms via @mythlabent.  Check it out if you get a chance and embrace our tagline.  We're using humor (and some horror) to put the work back in "work-life."  

(Credit for the creepy cube in the featured image goes to Kozi.)