A year ago, I was looking online for some good horror fiction. Leaves were turning, my fridge was stocked with various pumpkin ales — it was that time of year. And what I discovered is that there are a lot of really bad horror fiction sites out there. I mean, when clichéd ideas are compounded with poor writing and a complete lack of editing ... it's just not at all entertaining.

I was a bit disheartened — some of my favorite sites didn't seem to be online anymore, and my whole ethos of "the Jeffersonian world-wide Web is awesome, and short stories are the building blocks of all good entertainment, and horror fiction is as captivating and memorable as any around" kind of took a hit when confronted with so much garbage as evidence to the contrary. And so the picks remained on hiatus.

At this point, you may be thinking, I've read his stories; who is he to talk? Which is fair. Even if "The Complete Published Works of Matt Lally" took longer than 45 minutes to read, my commentary here would still be obnoxiously elitist. I'm not going to apologize, but I'm hoping you'll forgive me a bit if I tell you that I've found a site I like this year — The Late Late Show publishes online horror stories that are actually readable. I regret that I'm a little late in picking them as they published their last issue in July, but there are a good 20 or so archived stories you can still read for free. Happy Halloween.