tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85592195151614901892024-03-05T10:36:55.901-05:00The Arkham DigestFeaturing reviews and commentary in the fields of horror, noir and weird fiction with the occasional mention of film, video games, and other items of interest. Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.comBlogger157125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-52920391108570125682016-05-09T14:40:00.003-04:002016-05-09T19:57:58.739-04:00Review: Brutal Pantomimes by Rhys Hughes<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.egaeuspress.com/" target="_blank">Egaeus Press</a></b> is a publisher that consistently prints beautiful hardcover editions, and has become one of my favorite small publishers of the past few years. Their most recent offering is <b><a href="http://www.egaeuspress.com/Brutal_Pantomimes.html" target="_blank">Brutal Pantomimes</a></b>, a new collection by Welsh author <b><a href="http://rhysaurus.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Rhys Hughes</a></b>, who writes absurdist fantasy and horror. Humor is a large part of his work, which consists of several novels and hundreds of short stories. <b><a href="http://michaelcisco.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Michael Cisco</a></b> provides the introduction.<br />
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For awhile I've been familiar with who Rhys Hughes is, but this collection is the first time I've read his fiction. And while it wasn't my favorite release from Egaeus Press, it was still a solid collection, further proof that this is a publisher worth following. Physically, this book is a beauty. Lithographically printed, cover and endpaper art by František Tichý, and illustrations by Jacques Callot.<br />
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Humor can be truly hit or miss, and sometimes depends upon the mood of the reader. Hughes writes fiction that is imbued with humor, and at times I found it tiresome. To remedy this, I took my time reading the book, and found that I much more appreciated it in that manner. The stories within show a clever mind and a dangerous imagination. Hughes manages to find the whimsical in nearly everything, and considering this collection contains his 500th written story (500!!!!) I would dare say he has one of the most powerful imaginations working today.<br />
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Some Stories:<br />
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<i>The Jam of Hypnos</i> is a great opener for the collection, and one of my favorites. A young man is given a power by the Deity of Dreams. Any food the man dreams of will materialize next to him while he slumbers. The man ends up marooned on an island, where he must use his power to survive and escape. The story plays with the gift/curse duality. Worth noting, this story first appeared in a Poe tribute anthology.<br />
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The second story, <i>The Private Pirates Club</i>, is a funny set of stories with a story. A barroom full of men, each one telling his own story about the pirate they believe to be "the world's second worst pirate." These tales eventually lead to the punchline about the World's Worst Pirate, and the story is quite a fun little tale of adventure.<br />
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<i>Corsets on the Outside </i>pokes fun at Steampunk fashion, but overall fell a bit flat for me. <i>Wise Man</i> follows, and while at times I found the story really funny, it seemed overlong and embodies the tiresome comment I made earlier, although there are many moments of brilliance in the story.<br />
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Another adventure story that I quite enjoyed was <i>The Inflatable Stadium</i>. This absurd adventure story begins with a man who puts wheels on his ship, and finds himself blown miles and miles inland. In a silly town he meets an assortment of oddball characters, including an inventory with multiple pocket watches, a cruel but pretty woman acting as the town's tyrannical leader, and a fractured version of the town's former mayor, who knows appears as copies of himself in all different sizes. The man finds himself trapped, and schemes to escape and take his revenge on the town in the form of the inventor's inflatable stadium. The story moves long briskly, and was definitely a favorite of mine.<br />
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<i>The Eeriness That Lurks on the Far Side of Furniture </i>is one hell of a story title. The story itself is quite short, but doesn't find itself lacking because of that. A man seeks shelter in a mansion filled with bizarre furniture, the failed experiments of an inventor hoping to turn ordinary furniture into weapons for war. The majority of the story is the conversation between the two men as they thread their way through the labyrinth of cupboards, chairs, couches, tables and cabinets.<br />
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Overall, an enjoyable collection and a nice introduction to the work of Rhys Hughes. Even though I found the humor to be a mixed bag, I feel that his imagination may be unmatched, and I'm very much looking forward to digging into more of his work.<br />
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<br />Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-41651143196257137942016-04-16T06:00:00.000-04:002016-04-16T10:48:32.782-04:00Rejoice in the Madness of the xPulver!<div>
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<i>Come rejoice and dance and sing</i></div>
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<i>Rejoice in the madness of the Yellow King</i></div>
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<i>And if your city turns into a city unseen</i></div>
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<i>I'm sure that the madness has been... enough</i></div>
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<i>-For Greater Good - Le Jugement Du Roi En Jaune</i></div>
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"Dream is the key."<br />
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It sounded like cliche bullshit, but instead of turning to leave there was something in the woman's eyes that made me hesitate. She knew.</div>
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I handed over a large chunk of my cash, and she gathered what I would need. My American ears struggled with her German accent, and I worried that I would miss an important part of her instructions, and that the entire trip would end up being a wash. Once I had everything in hand, she repeated the steps and escorted me out of her shop.</div>
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The streets of Berlin were quiet as I walked back to the empty apartment. A small, old building tucked onto a corner, it looked like a large stone wedge. The apartment was a suite of rooms on the sharp corner, and the building was dark and quiet enough that it was obvious I was the only person staying there.</div>
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As night fell, I laid out the items I obtained from the woman and began the ritual as she described. I felt sick when the substances kicked in, and seemed to enter a feverish state immediately. I could feel each drop of sweat on my body, and they had entered a cycle where they would freeze before melting and dripping down a bit before freezing again. I curled into a ball on the mattress that was the apartment's sole piece of furniture, and after what seemed hours the fever passed and I felt a serenity take it's place.</div>
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My body relaxed, and I laid back on the mattress and steadied my breathing, allowing sleep to overtake me. "Dream is the key."</div>
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*****************</div>
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I don't remember entering a gate, a portal or a door. My surroundings didn't slowly rematerialize. I was simply there, and I knew I was where I wanted to be. The room was made of rough stone, and lit by candles which were placed on the floor around the room's edges, I didn't know how much time I had, so I walked out of the room's only entrance.</div>
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After following a short hallway I found myself outside, standing in a small forest glade. It was twilight, but two giant moons in the sky provided plenty of pale illumination. The air was cool and moist, and nearly beyond earshot a lute played a sad, slow song.</div>
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I followed the path out of the glade and realized I was walking a path in a large, wooded garden of some kind. The music grew louder, and as I neared it I began to notice others wandering the paths. Their clothing was dated. Robes, simple outfits made of rough cloth, most in tatters. Several of my fellow wanderers were crying, some were mumbling, but all of them were smiling. Big, idiot grins on every face, but not smiles of happiness.</div>
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The music led me to a courtyard, where there were many of these people gathered. Some conversed in small groups, while others cavorted in dance around the lute player. The murmur of conversation seemed off, and something about it bothered me. I walked through the courtyard and continued to be unnerved by the murmur of voices, although hearing snatches of conversation more clearly only served to further confuse me. None of them were talking about anything that should cause worry, but something about their speech itself blanketed my mind with anxiety. </div>
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It wasn't what they were saying. It was how they were saying it. It was the punctuation. They spoke as if they were reading aloud from a paper riddled with excessive and abnormal punctuation. Pauses were longer than they should be, as if multiple ellipses were strung together. Some words were emphasized out of proportion, one exclamation point wasn't enough. Some words were slurred like they had been shortened.</div>
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I didn't know how much longer I could listen, so I pushed my way through the courtyard. On the far side was a gate into another courtyard, flanked by guards. They wore rusted plate, and had pale, sickly faces. The guards looked at me intently as I neared, but without saying a word they opened the gate and ushered me through.</div>
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The second courtyard was smaller, and appeared to have once been extravagant. Ages of decay and decadence had taken a toll, and the place wasn't much more than a pile of rubble and refuse. The people in here still wore tatters, but their garments appeared to have once been finer than the clothes of the revelers from the previous courtyard. Nobles, once, they all wore masquerade masks, but I could still see the grins. They milled about and socialized, stuck in an endless party. Several looked at me as I passed but none said a word. I had found what I had sought.</div>
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In the center of the yard stood a broken throne, and seated upon it was the reason I undertook my journey. The man seated upon the throne did not look kingly. He was shorter than average height, slightly rotund, and wore garments more tattered than any of the other inhabitants of his realm. His cloak was yellow with age and decay, as were his pants, shirt and boots. He had a large, grey bear and a thick mustache that began to curl up at the edges. His face alone did not have the grin of madness that was a fixture on every other face in his court, including the wretch at his feet.</div>
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The wretch wore nothing but bright, torn, red trousers, and a metal collar fastened around it's throat. It held a large scroll in its one claw, and a quill in another, and was writing at a furious pace, copying every word the King uttered.</div>
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I approached the throne and heard the King reciting words to his scribe in a language that was foreign to me, but I recognized the bizarre manner of speaking as being the same as his subjects. He beckoned me forward and stopped his bizarre rant. His eyes were keen, and I realized that although he must have been as mad as his subjects that hidden underneath that madness was a powerful cunning.</div>
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He coughed, and then spoke to me in my own tongue. Smoke poured out of his mouth with every word, and curled upwards, question marks floating above his head.</div>
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"U.....Come Frwrd. Do you kno where u are?????????????????????"</div>
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"I know this place. But I don't know it's name."</div>
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"Iz a name.......... importnt? Some call it cArcosa, some call.....it names in tongues long forrrrrrgotten. Some..they...call it NOTHING.........."</div>
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When he spoke to me directly I felt sharp pains in my head, and I wondered how much longer I had.</div>
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"Do you know why I'm here?"</div>
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He laughed, and leaned forward, and I noticed that every one of his facial hairs was an exclamation point. The dot on each one hovered slightly away from the tip of each hair, creating a sort of shimmering effect as he moved. His eyes were two, coal black periods. </div>
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"I knowzzzzz why yrrrrr herrrrrrrrrrrre boyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..........There;s only one reason any1 comez here.!.!.!"</div>
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He reached into his cloak and pulled forth a red pen. Seeing it was almost too much, and I nearly snatched it from his hand.</div>
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"nowww,,,,,, are you SURE......SURE......sure...this is what you want?"</div>
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I knew that it wasn't what I wanted. It was what I needed. I nodded, and reached my hand out. He laughed a wicked laugh, but his eyes wept tears.</div>
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"Open yur shirt boy..........."</div>
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I did what he told me, and he used the pen to carve a word into my chest. The blood and the red ink ran together and dripped down my stomach, and then my pants. I looked at the word he had scrawled but could make no sense of it: xPulver</div>
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"Here"</div>
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He handed me the red pen, and as my hand clasped it I could feel a spawm of pain spreading from my fingers and up my arm. I tried to open my hand but the muscles were locked into place. The King and the wretch began to laugh, and were soon joined by the revelers in the court, until a chorus of laughter drowned out all other sound. The pain spread and I was rooted in place, losing conscious as my body could no longer handle all of the stress. The last thing I saw were the moons, ugly and broken in the sky.</div>
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**************************</div>
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I awoke to pain. My head hammered, my mouth was dry, and my chest burned as if it were scratched although there appeared to be no wounds present. Everything was as I left it: the mattress on the floor, the candles I used for light, the remnants of the supplies I bought from the woman. There were no scars on my chest, no red pen brought into my world. But there was something. A stain of red ink, smeared on my right hand.</div>
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<i>For Joe, A true friend and mentor</i><br />
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Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-13622511998309418802015-11-21T11:49:00.001-05:002015-11-21T12:03:44.228-05:00Trouble in Lovecraft Land - We're All Better Than This<i>Firstly, I apologize for the lack of updates to the blog. I've been keeping busy with fiction editing for Strange Aeons magazine, as well as writing reviews for the next issue and starting a new column of booze/cigar/book pairings. I've also been reviewing books and discussing news of The Weird on The Outer Dark podcast.</i><br />
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The weird fiction community means a lot to me. I started to become involved back in 2012 when I started the blog, but it wasn't until NecronomiCon 2013 that I met everyone. I couldn't have imagined a warmer welcome, and since then I've come to regard many of my colleagues as good friends.<br />
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Since then, there's been many petty feuds and disagreements. The boat is rocked sometimes, but things usually right themselves fairly quickly. In the past several months tensions have been on the rise, and due to political differences many find themselves taking a side, or doing their best to stay out of it while shaking their heads at how absurd it's all become. Science Fiction had the Sad Puppies to deal with, but that fiasco managed to infect genre as a whole. Robert Price made a speech at NecronomiCon 2015 which likened the Middle East to Lovecraft's Red Hook, and this moment was when lines begin to solidify.<br />
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The most recent issue was the decision to change the World Fantasy Award from a bust of Lovecraft to something more neutral. While many argued on either side, it's an issue that should have been dropped weeks ago, yet instead it continues to grow and become one of the biggest problems the community has faced.<br />
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ST Joshi has always been a very well respected member in the field, and the most well-known and productive scholar of HP Lovecraft. He is, understandably when one looks at his life's work, not happy about the change of the WFA. Here is a man who by all rights knows Lovecraft more than anyone. His initial protest was just that, one man making a statement against a change he couldn't stomach. If he wants to return his WFAs then so be it, that's his business. But it doesn't end there.<br />
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Joshi, and others, have been making increasingly uglier posts about the situation. It seems there are several people, including but not limited to Joshi, who feel that removing the Lovecraft bust is the first step in removing Lovecraft from everything. And this is where things get out of hand, and some people need to step back, calm down, and look at things like the intelligent adults we all know they are. Lovecraft's legacy is not going anywhere. Most of the people who were for the change don't want Lovecraft erased at all!<br />
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Changing the statue and being a fan of Lovecraft are not mutually exclusive. I think the change was a good idea. The award itself has moved away from what it started as, and it was never called the HP Lovecraft Award. In actuality, I had no strong feelings either way in the beginning, the award holders have every right to decide how their award appears, but after hearing arguments it is for the best that the award changes.<br />
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With that being said, I love Lovecraft. My blog takes its name from his work, as an homage to the author responsible for bringing me into the world of weird fiction in the first place. I have a house full of Lovecraftiana, be it artwork (those Liv Rainey-Smith woodcuts though!) or sculptures (my toddler nephews love looking at McKittrick and Broers takes on Cthulhu) or books. My League of Legends username is Señor Cthulhu (add me if you want, but I'm terrible). My friends have spent hours drinking booze and playing Arkham Horror. My students draw me pictures of Cthulhu. You get the picture.<br />
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So there. I'm a huge fan of Lovecraft, and I'm all for the award changing. It's that simple. Joshi and friends are smart enough that they should be able to understand that the award change does not mean that Lovecraft's influence is trying to be denied or pushed aside or covered up. There is no reason for the ugliness we are now all experiencing.<br />
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In the past week I have seen Joshi's wife telling a poet that he must not want to work with any publisher affiliated with Joshi because he posted that he disagreed with Joshi's wording on the issue. This poet was on Joshi's side in regards to the statue changing. If that's not pure insanity, I don't know what is. In the latest blog post, Joshi went after many authors and editors including Ellen Datlow, the genre's greatest editor, and Jeff Vandermeer, one of the most important voices of the the weird working today. The vitriol being spat out questions Datlow's integrity for being pro-change yet editing Lovecraftian anthologies, and accusing Vandermeer of "[...] failing to grasp the immensely complex social, political, cultural, and historical factors surrounding this entire issue." Datlow and Vandermeer have been the most inclusive editors out there. Datlow is one of the most well-read, intelligent, and kind editors working in the field. To question her morality is so ridiculously insulting it actually made my jaw drop to read it. Vandermeer has made it a mission to show readers the truer, broader horizons of weird fiction. He doesn't dismiss Lovecraft, but makes it clear that Lovecraft is a small part of the entirety of the weird. His anthology <i>The Weird</i> showcases this perfectly. Joshi goes on to say that all of these authors and editors will be forgotten while Lovecraft's legacy will remain, a petty and gross thing to say, taking the issue of the statue change to a very personal level.<br />
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And the situation is not limited to Joshi. Associates are now circling wagons. Some publishers are now deciding not to publish people for being on one side of the issue. The "Old Guard" and the "New Blood" seem to be truly at odds for the first time, and it's really not pretty at all.<br />
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I know most of this post comes across as anti-Joshi, and while it's true that I feel he is acting really out of hand and taking this issue much further than it needs to be, sinking to the depths of foot-stomping and making personal attacks, I don't want to use any of this as an attempt to make Joshi irrelevant. I don't take glee in the fact that his post makes him look terrible, and that it's in actuality hurting his cause even further. Some people are responding calmly, but not all, and it's just as ugly as his post.<br />
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No, I don't feel any of those things. Instead I feel a deep and profound sadness. I see a community full of wonderful people that seems ready to collapse on itself. I think ahead to the next convention, and I wonder, is it going to be so nastily divisive? Are guests going to refuse to be on panels with other guests? Are blowouts going to ensue, or are both sides going to ignore each other, lending the air a feeling of two separate and simultaneous cons inhabiting the same physical space but seeming light years apart? I don't want that.<br />
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One of the most appealing aspects of this community is the diversity. This includes the people whom I find myself disagreeing with on many levels. I don't want them ostracized, but I don't want them drawing lines either. It's my hope that the goodness of this community will shine through the current ugliness, and we will all be able to find whatever it is in ourselves to get along, or at least keep it civil, because that is the weird fiction community that I fell in love with.<br />
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<br />Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-26233929887580359802015-08-28T15:30:00.000-04:002015-08-28T15:30:00.053-04:00Review: Bastards of the Absolute by Adam S. Cantwell<br />
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I think it's appropriate to open this review with a look at the physicality of the book itself. Egaeus Press is consistently publishing some of the best looking hardcover books being put out today. The appearance and feel of the book is enough to get any jaded bibliophile to drool.<br />
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Now, even though the book as a physical object is gorgeous, the most importantaspect is the quality of the writing between the covers. Thankfully, this book delivers.<br />
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Adam S. Cantwell is a British author, and part of what I'll for now call a "European strange literature" movement. Certain things that come to mind when talking about this subset of weird literature: Old World Europe, dense prose, intellectual narrators, decadence, surrealism. Many of these authors have their work published as beautiful, limited hardcovers from publishers such as Passport Levant, Ex Occidente, Side Real Press and now Egaeus Press.<br />
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Several of the stories in this collection have appeared in limited tribute anthologies to Bruno Schulz, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Hanns Heinz Ewers, or as very limited Passport Levant editions, so it's great to see them all collected in a beautiful, yet affordable edition.<br />
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Some of my favorites:<br />
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<i>The Face in The Wall </i>is a story about a man who is imprisoned inside a city wall. His entire body is in in the wall, with only his face exposed. He spends ages in the wall, watching the changes of the city, and coping with ill treatment from citizens of the city. A clever blend of fantasy and horror, it's great story to open the collection with.<br />
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Next up is <i>The Filature</i>, a story in tribute to Hanns Heinz Ewers. As punishment, a German man's employers send him to a Chinese silk factory. The story reads as his journal, and we see the man repeat many of the same mistakes that brought about his corporate exile in the first place. Some truly creepy moments in this one.<br />
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Music is an important aspect of several stories in the collection. Three of which (<i>Moonpaths of the Departed, The Kuutar Concerto, </i>and<i> Symphony of Sirens</i>)<i> </i>first appeared collected together as <b>A Pallid Wave on Shores of Night </b>by Ex Occidente. Another, <i>Beyond the Two Rivers: A Symphonic Poem</i>, first appeared in <b>The First Book of Classical Horror Stories </b>edited by D.F. Lewis. I loved the shared themes of these stories, and how they managed to all use music differently. Several (all?) feature real life composers. My favorite of the four may be <i>The Kuutar Concerto, </i> which features Sibelius having a drunken night out in seedy bars after an incident at one of his concerts. He runs into someone who knows him from the past, and the drunken revelry spirals into the realms of the otherwordly.<br />
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<i>Only For The Crossed-Out </i>is Cantwell's Bulgakov tribute, and is a wonderfully absurd story. A clerk of sorts works in an archive of books where they cross-out and censor books.Things take a turn for the interesting when our protagonist falls down a chute and becomes trapped in a basement mass-grave of books.<br />
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The collection ends with <i>Orphans on Granite Tides</i>, originally released as a stand alone by Ex Occidente. Billed as a "Metaphysical Grotesque," this tale follows a German man who finds rare books and manuscripts as his occupation, although this job of his has become his life. This serves as a frame story for a peculiar document he finds. The document claims to be a sort of memoir by a well traveled Native American, who has metaphysical experiences and sees the world within our own world. A difficult piece, but one that shines for it.<br />
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This book was my first experience with Adam S. Cantwell's fiction, and shan't be the last. His fiction is tantalizingly mystifying, and brings readers to a magical, Old World Europe that is equal parts horrifying and beautiful.<br />
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Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-89191857987746626932015-08-24T15:30:00.000-04:002015-08-27T21:37:51.565-04:00Necronomicon 2015: We Are Providence<br />
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I've been terribly slacking when it comes to blog posts. Between my day job, other work I'm doing in the weird fiction field, reviews appearing elsewhere, and sometimes going through periods where I don't read nearly as much as I should, I've just not been giving this blog the attention it deserves. I hope to remedy this, and I have a few reviews lined up that I have to type and post, but first I wanted to take the time to do a post about NecronomiCon Providence, which was held this past weekend.<br />
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I actually wasn't planning on doing a write-up on the con this go around, even though it came up earlier in the weekend when The joey Zone told me he enjoyed my blog post about the 2013 con. That was my first con, and it was special in many ways. It truly changed my life.<br />
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On Sunday, the final day of the con, I went to see friends in the vendor's room after participating on The Future of Weird Fiction Panel (more on that later). I picked up the Dim Shores chapbooks I pre-ordered, and was planning on buying an original Cthulhu art piece from <b><a href="http://cthulhucommune.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Dave Felton</a></b>. I first met Dave at the 2013 con. One afternoon we were both in the Haven Brother's food truck, and recognizing we were both attending the same con, struck up a conversation. Dave was familiar with The Arkham Digest, and we had a nice chat.<br />
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So here, the final day of NecronomiCon 2015, I found myself hanging out with Dave in the vendor's room. He gifted me the Cthulhu piece, and told me about reading <a href="http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2013/09/well-always-have-providence.html" target="_blank"><b>my write-up of the last NecronomiCon</b></a>, and some follow up Facebook posts by myself and others. He commented on seeing me say somewhere about how it changed my life, and that he realized the first con changed his life too. He remember how Jeffrey Thomas remarked on Facebook that it felt like the con was still going on via Facebook, which in a way it really was. Excitement was running high for everyone, and it seemed that none of us really wanted to let go of what was truly a magical weekend.<br />
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<i>Dave Felton is amazing.</i></div>
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After we parted, I headed downstairs for lunch before grabbing a train home. As I sat on the train I thought about the weekend, and quite a bit about the conversation Dave and I had a few hours earlier, and I came to the conclusion that writing about this year's con was something I should take the time to do.<br />
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I remember quite clearly the mix of emotions I had going to the first NecronomiCon. The Digest wasn't even a year old, and despite having made friends and acquaintances online, this would be the first time I would meet many of them. Excitement and nervousness both boiled so high I could no longer tell one from the other. Would I just see them on panels? Would we get to talk much? Would it be awkward? Would they be polite but not really want me bugging them?<br />
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My fears turned out to be unfounded, and I felt as if I had come home, so to speak. These were my people.<br />
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A lot has happened in the last two years. I've attended a few more cons (the wonderful HP Lovecraft Film Festival Portland, Cthulhucon Portland, Readercon). I edited an anthology that was published. I started to become a guest at the cons I attended. I've been on panels. I've had a story published, another one taken for con-exclusive round robin. Reviews and interviews by me are appearing in other places. My anthology was nominated for an award. In two years I went from being a fan who wrote reviews, to an active participant in the field that I love. It's been, simply, a wild two years.<br />
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<i>Future of Weird Fiction Panel. L to R: moderator SJ Bagley, Simon Strantzas, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, myself, Mike Griffin, Joe Pulver</i></div>
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Even though I take pride in each accomplishment, everything I've done so far pales in comparison to the best thing that has come from all of this: the friendships. I've been lucky to fall in with some truly wonderful people, some of whom I talk to almost daily. And this is why cons are so special. Some people go for the gaming. Some to see some cool, hard to find films, or hear their favorite authors read. Some go to watch some interesting panels. And sure, all of that stuff is fun, but that's not why I go anymore. I go to see my friends. Social media is a great way to keep in touch, yeah, but isn't even comparable to being able to sit around a restaurant table enjoying good food, good drinks, and fine conversation with friends you too rarely get to spend time with. I'm sure I'm far from alone with this sentiment.<br />
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NecronomiCon is cementing itself as the premiere weird fiction convention. As sad as I am that it doesn't occur ever year, I think having it every other year actually works best. Neils Hobbs and crew should be commended for doing such an excellent job.<br />
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I arrived late Thursday night. My flight out of Philly was cancelled at the last second but I managed to catch a train just in time. It was a stressful day, but I finally made it, just in time for the witching hour. As I walked towards the hotel from the train station, I saw a group of people on the edge of the small park across from the hotel front, directly in my path. As I moved closer, they began to take on more familiar shapes, and I realized that it was several of my friends. Running into them upon arrival couldn't have been a better welcome in Providence.<br />
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<i>A beacon in the dark...</i></div>
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Although I missed out on the Thursday night shenanigans, I managed to see several readings and panels over the course of the weekend. I caught most of the Ramsey Campbell interview, and all of the New Weird panel. I attended readings by Mike Griffin, Pete Rawlik, David Neilsen, Scott Thomas, Richard Gavin, Tom Lynch, Simon Strantzas, Jeffrey Thomas, and caught the end of Michael Cisco reading during the Aickman's Heirs book launch. I also attended, and was called upon to get up and introduce the authors, readings by Scott Nicolay, Anya Martin, and Joe Pulver. My weekend also ended with a bang when I was invited by moderator SJ Bagley to take an absent Laird Barron's spot on The Future of the Weird panel. Other panel members included Simon Strantzas, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mike Griffin, and Joe Pulver, and was quite a bit of fun. Scott Nicolay recorded the panel for his podcast, The Outer Dark, and I know there is some video footage out there as well.<br />
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While not attending panels or readings, I was apt to be found in the vendor's area, the hotel bar, a restaurant, or somewhere else among friends. Along with all my old friends, there were many other online friends I was able to hang out with the for the first time, including but not limited to: Heidi Ash, Scott Dwyer, Matthew Warren Richey, Michael Wehunt, Damien Walters, Barry Lee Dejasu, Rick Lai, Scott Jones, Christopher Patrick Burke, Michael Bukowski, Todd Chicione (we met so briefly last time), Ian Welke (we hardly saw each other! Definitely a drink next time!).<br />
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The weekend was just as magical as it was two years ago, and I hope that this con continues for a long time.<br />
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<i>L to R: Lena Griffin, Erin Laroue, Nathan Carson, Ross E. Lockhart, Scott Dwyer, Heidi Ash, myself, Tom Lynch</i></div>
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A final story, to end the post.<br />
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In 2013, when I first arrived, I dropped my bags off in my room at the Biltmore and then went down to the hotel bar for dinner. A man staying in a neighboring hotel (The Omni or Hotel Providence I believe) wandered in and took the seat next to me. We exchanged pleasantries and names, realized we were both there to attend the same con, so had a conversation over beers and dinner. I realized then that there was probably nothing to be nervous about. I was attending a convention with a bunch of other kindred spirits, and would be in good company. After we parted, I entered the lobby and ran into the group of people who would become some very important people in my life. For the rest of the weekend, the man I dined with and I didn't cross paths.<br />
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As the Future of Weird Fiction panel wound down, several people approached the stage to talk with the various panelists. Some wanted to remark on something we said they heartily agreed with, or thought profound, one lady told me she was happy I mentioned video games since she was a game designer. A few people came bringing books for the panelists to sign. But one stood out in particular. It was the man who I shared a meal with when I first arrived in Providence two years ago, and now our paths finally crossed again, two years and a convention later. He was with his wife (or girlfriend? I'm not sure.) who had some questions, and he recognized me from before, and thought it was very cool that I was now on panels.<br />
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Afterwards, while I sat on the train, I thought about running into this man. I thought about my friends I was leaving. I thought about what Dave Felton said to me. And I realized: cons are more than meet and greets, and more than panels and vendors and fancy costume balls. Cons are about friendships and coming together. They change lives.<br />
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Weird fiction fans and Lovecraftians are often considered a fringe society. We are often outsiders, spread thin. But on weekends like this, it all changes. We all make the pilgrimage. Introverts become temporarily extroverted, and we all share an experience that is totally different yet the same for all of us. We realize that we aren't outsiders at all, we are a family. We are Providence.Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-82497929530116979752015-07-01T20:37:00.000-04:002015-07-01T20:37:12.134-04:00Interview: Simon Strantzas talks Aickman's Heirs<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;"><b>Robert Aickman's fiction is often referred to as "strange fiction" instead of "weird fiction."</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;"><b>Whether or not you're a fan of labels, they do exist even if they best serve consumers. What are the defining characteristics of strange fiction as opposed to weird fiction? Do the two ever overlap?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">I wrote a <a href="http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/h-word-strange-story/" target="_blank"><b>whole essay on this topic for Nightmare magazine last December</b></a>, so I urge anyone with an interest in this topic to visit that site and read the thing. The truth of the matter is these terms are in many ways unimportant. Horror, Weird, Strange, Dark Fantasy—whatever dark fiction is written, someone will come along and classify it. The thing is, these terms are to a large extent meaningless—the genre is so fluid that there really are no firm dividing lines between them. Some stories wholly occupy one space, some multiple. That's how it should be. But, that said, I did write an essay explaining differentiating the two. Why? Because I feel that it still serves an important purpose. Not to chop up, categorize, and sub-genrify Horror, but instead to identify some of its most pervasive and interesting threads. By understanding how the genre works, I feel we can better understand the genre itself. As writer, that understanding is a powerful tool.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">But, your question. I suppose it's unfair to direct readers elsewhere, so the crux of the difference (to my mind; yours may differ) is this: the Weird seems to be primarily an American-led movement, and the Strange European-led. The Weird is concerned with the effect on us of the extra-planetary, and the Strange the effect of our internal world. This is due to a large degree on the mindsets of the two peoples as a whole, the Americas staring at the stars and exploring, the Europeans gazing at their shoes and reflecting. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;"><b>I think it's safe to say that many horror and weird fiction fans have at the very least heard of Robert Aickman, and with new, affordable editions of his work published in the last few years many have had the opportunity to read his fiction. What sets Aickman's works apart from his contemporaries and those who came before him? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">Aickman followed in a less-travelled line of ghost story writers whose concerns were of the ambiguously internal. His precursors were writers like Onions and, most specifically, de la Mare, but unlike them he had the influence of modern psychiatric thought and philosophy to bolster his beliefs. Using them, he was able to fashion his thoughts on sexuality, poetry, and dream-logic into something wholly unique at the time it was written. And, still to a large part, it's remained so. Aickman is difficult to imitate, precisely because what he wrote was so uniquely born of his own personality. Not many writers can claim such singularity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;"><b>What does Aickman and his work mean to you? How has Aickman influenced not only your work, but the weird/strange/horror fields? What current authors are currently carrying on his legacy?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">Aickman has been immensely influential on my own work by showing me how much of a story can be intuited by a reader by only the scarcest of clues. Forming narratives that exist on a different plane than the page is fascinating, though the danger one faces is some readers are unwilling to follow along the entire way. This evokes confusion and frustration, but if I've played my cards right, never a sense of aimlessness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">Aickman's work was heralded by only a select few for a number of years, but I feel that tide is turning. "Aickman's Heirs" being, I hope, of the first of many to champion him. What effect this renewed interest will have on the genre remains to be fully seen, but already we're seeing writers picking up the baton. No one is writing quite like him, of course, but we're seeing strong threads in the work of Steve Rasnic Tem, Ramsey Campbell, Lynda Rucker, Daniel Mills, and Terry Lamsley. To name but a few.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;"><b>Aickman's Heirs is your second time editing an anthology, with Shadows Edge being your first, with a third coming in the form of The Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume Three. What have you learned from editing? Is this something you enjoy and will revisit?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">I've learned that editing is a challenge that demands one's full attention, and that there is little more exciting than the discovery of new talent. But all that time takes its toll, and the more I edit the less time I have for my own work. Some writers may consider it a fair trade, but I'm disinclined to agree. I think my own fiction has been under attended to for some time now, and I hope to remedy that over the coming year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;"><b>For the readers who have yet to read anything by Robert Aickman, what are five essential stories that they should start with and why? What makes these stories special?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">My favorite perhaps is "The Inner Room", a tale unlike any others in its mystery and symbolism. But it's very oblique, and not where I'd send a new reader. Instead, perhaps I'd point them to my first Aickman tale: "Ringing the Changes". It's perhaps the most straight-forward of his work, yet still maintains that sense that there is more beneath the surface than immediately clear. Or, perhaps I'd direct them to "The Swords", a dazzle of sublimated sexuality, one that's in turn funny and disturbing. It doesn't go in the direction one might expect, though like great fiction, it's conclusions are inevitable. Since I'm naming the popular tales, I might as well suggest "The Hospice", which revels in its bizarre nightmarishness and dislocation. And, finally, a personal favorite: "Marriage", a story about the pull of love and lust. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">There are so many more that this, though, that I could recommend. Aickman was absolutely fantastic, and I'm quite pleased to have this opportunity to help highlight his work by showing how its influenced this new generation of writers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;"><b>Thanks for your time!</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px;">The thanks are all mine.</span></div>
Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-65081775945412775472015-06-22T16:47:00.003-04:002015-06-30T10:50:24.875-04:00Review: Aickman's Heirs edited by Simon Strantzas<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aickman" target="_blank"><b>Robert Aickman</b></a> is a name that many readers of horror/supernatural/weird fiction have probably heard before. He didn't have a huge output of fiction in his time as a writer (I believe he wrote 48 or so stories that were published) but the stories he did write have long since established his name in the genre's history.<br />
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Aickman's fiction is most often referred to as "strange stories" instead of weird fiction or horror. His stories are less about the weird crossing over into reality as they are about reality and strangeness being intertwined. Even the most mundane objects or conversations found in his stories are laden with the strange, and his stories often utilize dream logic. One of his most well-known stories, The Hospice, serves as a prime example, and reading the story is akin to playing voyeur to someone's dream. Subtle is also a key word when it comes to Aickman. Much of the dread and unease from his stories comes across in a quiet, subtle manner, and often include liberal doses of dark humor.<br />
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These stories have influenced many writers over the years, and one among them is author Simon Strantzas. It was actually <b><a href="http://strantzas.com/" target="_blank">Simon Strantzas</a> </b>and <a href="http://www.daniel-mills.net/" target="_blank"><b>Daniel Mills</b></a> who pointed me in Aickman's direction years ago, and for that I am grateful.<br />
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It's also fitting that the man who introduced me to Aickman's work is the editor of the anthology I'm reviewing, <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Aickmans-Heirs-Simon-Strantzas/dp/0981317790/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435005406&sr=8-1&keywords=aickman%27s+heirs" target="_blank">Aickman's Heirs</a></i></b>. I couldn't think of a better editor for this project, and ever since Shadows Edge I've been eager to read another anthology with Simon behind the helm. And oh boy, was the wait worth it.<br />
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Aickman's influence is explored in fifteen stories from some of the finest working authors. <b><a href="http://www.brianevenson.com/" target="_blank">Brian Evenson</a></b>'s "Seaside Town" is an excellent choice to kick off the anthology. A man set in his ways gets dragged on a vacation with his girlfriend, and what follows is an excellent example of how to quietly and slowly build up dread.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.richardgavin.net/" target="_blank">Richard Gavin</a></b>'s "Neithernor" comes next and, as usual, is a standout. Gavin is a master of creepy stories, and this one ranks up there as one of his most unsettling.<br />
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I'm familiar with <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_(author)" target="_blank">John Howard</a></b>, although I haven't read him until I read his story "Least Light, Most Night." I now plan to seek out more of his work. The story itself concerns a man reluctantly accepting his coworker's invitation to a social gathering, and then it gets weird.<br />
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I'm most familiar with <b><a href="http://davidnickle.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">David Nickle</a></b> due to his great novels, but the man can write some stellar short fiction as well. "Camp"is about a newlywed couple on a camping trip, and Nickle deftly hands the creep factor.<br />
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<b><a href="http://theinterludehouse.webs.com/" target="_blank">D.P. Watt</a></b>'s "A Delicate Craft" sees an immigrant worker taking up an unlikely hobby, and <b><a href="https://nadiabulkin.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Nadia Bulkin</a></b>'s "Seven Minutes in Heaven" explores a small American town with a secret.<br />
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<b><a href="http://michaelcisco.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Michael Cisco</a></b>'s "Infestations" has a woman struggling with personal demons return to her home city to clean out a deceased family friend's apartment. Dread and paranoia infest the story.<br />
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<b><a href="https://lyndaerucker.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Lynda E. Rucker</a></b>'s "The Dying Season" is perhaps my favorite story in the anthology. A couple spends time in a trailer at a leisure resort during the off season when they meet a young couple staying somewhere nearby. Rucker's story is brimming with subtle unease, and haunted me long after reading it.<br />
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<b><a href="http://michaelwehunt.com/" target="_blank">Michael Wehunt</a></b>'s "A Discreet Music" stays closer to home, as a grieving widower is changing while confronting truths about himself. <b><a href="https://johnpaullangan.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">John Langan</a></b> brings the strange into a strip club with "Underground Economy" while <b><a href="http://www.helen-marshall.com/" target="_blank">Helen Marshall</a></b>'s "The Vaults of Heaven" takes place in Greece as a British archaeologist is brought on to do some work on a few ancient finds.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/barquing" target="_blank"><b>Malcolm Devlin</b></a>'s "Two Brothers" is a sad story about growing up, while <b><a href="http://www.daniel-mills.net/" target="_blank">Daniel Mills</a></b> writes the most subtle story of his that I've read, "The Lake." Growing up is also a major part of his story, as past events shape who we become. "A Change of Scene" by <b><a href="http://www.ninaallan.co.uk/" target="_blank">Nina Allan</a></b> is the longest story in the book, and like some stories before it concerns a vacation gone wrong. The anthology ends with <b><a href="http://www.lisatuttle.co.uk/" target="_blank">Lisa Tuttle</a></b>'s "The Book That Finds You" which is an eerie tale concerning a woman and her obsession with a certain obscure weird fiction writer.<br />
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The fifteen tales paint a powerful landscape of the strange, the subtle, the uneasy, and at times the darkly humorous. Strantzas's sophomore editing gig couldn't have been any better, and I'm sure this anthology will find it's way on many Best Of lists at the end of the year.<br />
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<br />Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-71694503170428598122015-06-05T10:33:00.000-04:002015-06-05T10:33:29.166-04:00Interview: Molly Tanzer Talks Vermilion<br />
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<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">To start, this is your first novel? How did it feel to
finish such a big project?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">It’s certainly my first published
novel. I typed THE END on my first novel back in… gosh, maybe 2008? 2009? It
was fun, but it was definitely training wheels time. I think that beast was
like 175k, and it was bonkers. The second novel I wrote I feel no affection for
whatsoever; in fact, I deleted it from my hard drive when I finished it, it was
so awful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">As to your second question… I’ve
experienced various sensations at various times, with <i>Vermilion</i>. Finishing the first draft felt <i>great</i>. Finishing the draft that went out on submission felt…
exhilarating. Finishing the version that’s now printed and thus no longer
editable felt pretty terrifying, actually! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Much of your fiction takes place in historic time periods,
but to my knowledge this is your first time writing a Western. What attracted
you to this setting? What did you set out to do with the tropes and the genre?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">My initial desire to have a
conversation with the Western came about when I moved to Colorado. The scale of
the landscape was amazing—I had visited before, but waking up every day to see
mountains, being able to explore them at my leisure… living right where the
prairie meets the front range… wow. It triggered my memories of being wild for
the Little House books as a kid, and bam, I wanted to write something about
this place. Uh, and I was also watching a lot of <i>Deadwood</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The thing is… as you noted, Westerns have certain tropes.
Most modern Westerns, in terms of novels and film/television, seek to either
draw attention to those tropes, or to invert them, because even though the
Western has fallen out of favor, we’re still all too aware of those conceits. In
terms of characters, you have the Gritty Loner, the Native Threat, the Trifling
Whore vs. the Good Woman, and so on. In terms of plots, you have A Stranger
Comes to Town, the Man with a Past, The Person from Back East Who Must Leave
Civilization Behind, and so forth and so on. Because they’re all very familiar,
a Western that unconsciously draws on tropes can come off as feeling a bit
outdated… take <i>Appaloosa</i>, the film, for
example. While it was an enjoyable movie with a lot to like, I was annoyed by
the movie’s embrace of the Trifling Whore trope in Renee Zellweger’s character.
Maybe it’s a holdover from the novel, I’m not sure, but regardless, it was
boring because it was just so dang familiar.</div>
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With <i>Vermilion</i>, I
wanted to invert the Western while still paying homage to and drawing on the
tropes of a genre that I love. So, while I might start with a Gritty Loner as a
hero(ine), she goes East, not West; she moves from a state of detrimental
independence to flourishing under positive interdependence (in the traditional
Western, the hero usually has to “go at it” alone, leaving behind any
wimminfolk or friends). Additionally, throughout the novel, traditional
outsiders, even within the “Weird” Western, such as women, progressive
thinkers/social radicals, and racial minorities prove more “civilized” and
establish order much more effectively than those in a position of privilege. Oh,
and of course, Lou is a person of color, and she gets a white sidekick. That
was also fun to write!</div>
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<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">One of the major themes throughout the book is gender
fluidity and sexual orientation. Could you discuss why you chose to explore
these themes at length and what you hope readers took away from this theme?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">First and foremost, I write what
I like to read! But it was also part of my mission above. Classic Westerns are
often relentlessly heterosexual—or at least, they try to convince us they are,
by having rough-and-tumble ‘good buddies’ visit a whorehouse or get married to
make it clear they’re not really hot for one another. Hell, even <i>Red River</i>, which is famous (infamous?)
for its awesomely homoerotic subtext, pairs Montgomery Clift’s Garth with a
lady at the end, much to Cherry’s dismay. I’m having a hard time even coming up
with a classic Western that features lesbians, or the implication of
lesbianism. Maybe a little in <i>East of
Eden</i>, but like, that’s kind of a stretch. (If anyone knows of any, let me
know in the comments!)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Westerns are often very
traditional in their approach to gender roles, as well… when men were men and
all that. Women, with notable exceptions, are almost exclusively relegated to
domestic duties, and even the ones that saddle up to ride with the boys are
usually doing it to stay close to the man they love. Mattie from <i>True Grit</i> is the obvious counterpoint,
but that’s one of the reasons <i>True Grit</i>
is so good. And when you do get a gender-ambiguous character, like Calamity
Jane in <i>Deadwood</i>, they tend to be
tragic in some way. I wanted to spin this, and have a genderfluid heroine at
the center of the narrative, one whose ambiguousness helps her, rather than
makes her some sort of object of pity or spite, and who doesn’t have some sort
of magical transformation moment where she puts on a dress to amaze the hero,
showing she was “beautiful all along.” Meh. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">As to what I wanted readers take
away… I’m not sure how to answer that. Sure, I had a lot on my mind when I was
writing it, but first and foremost I wanted <i>Vermilion</i>
to be a fun adventure story—and I saw the characters and their private lives as
natural fits for the tale, rather than object lessons. If anything, I wanted to
normalize the presence of such characters and themes within the genre of the
Western, not draw attention to them!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">On that note, I’ll point to a
novel that was almost constantly on my mind while drafting <i>Vermilion</i>: Connie Willis’s <i>Uncharted
Territory</i>, a novel that at first I wasn’t sure I liked when I read it in
college, but really stuck with me in that way of better books. For those who
haven’t read it, I shan’t spoil it, but I actually structured the first chapter
to be an homage to her novel in my first draft, and though I eventually chose
to introduce Lou in a different, more effective (for my project) way, I kind of
still regret the loss. Those who have read Willis’s novel probably know what
I’m edging around—and anyone who hasn’t, who liked <i>Vermilion</i>, might want to pick up a copy. It’s a Space Western, and
it’s super good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Vermilion</span></i></b><b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> has
quite a lot going on, being a weird Western with elements of Ghostbusters and a
liberal dose of Chinese mythology/folklore. The psychopomp business is
especially fascinating. What sort of research did you do for this novel?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">What sort of research <i>didn’t</i> I do would probably be an easier
question to answer. Of course I put a lot of hours into researching the Chinese
cultural element, because I wanted to be as respectful as possible in my
treatment of Chinese-American culture and the Taoist traditions Lou’s work
draws on. I also read and did just a ton of random stuff… I visited a train
museum, drove up to Cheyenne to see the lay of the land to give those scenes a
touch of verisimilitude, researched the properties of cinnabar/vermilion… hiked
all around the Rocky Mountains (oh, the sacrifices I make for art!). Hell, I
even contacted a period firearm museum for information on Lou’s LeMat, toured the
death facilities at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and got a
prescription filled at a Chinese apothecary in San Francisco after reading all
about traditional Chinese medicine in a copy of the <i>Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine</i>. Fun times! </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Now for the big question. Are there any plans for a
sequel? Will we see further adventures of Lou Merriwether or more fiction set
in the same world? </span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">More fiction, certainly. This
August, <i>Nightmare Magazine</i> will be
reprinting a short story of mine called “Qi Sport,” which is about Lou’s first
adventure. It’s referenced in <i>Vermilion</i>,
but this is the full account. And next year, Lazy Fascist will be releasing a
standalone edition of “Rumbullion: An Apostrophe,” a novella/short novel of
mine (which you actually reviewed). “Rumbullion” is very tangentially related
to <i>Vermilion</i>. No one who read
“Rumbullion” on its own would have any idea it was related to anything else,
but I think anyone who reads <i>Vermilion</i>
first will notice some overlap.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">As for an actual sequel… I feel
confident saying <i>Vermilion</i> won’t be
Lou’s last adventure. We’ll have to see!
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">What else can readers expect from you in the coming
months?</span></b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I have several short stories
coming out—one in Joe Pulver’s anthology <i>Cassilda’s
Song</i>, and all-lady King in Yellow anthology, that’s sort of about Ayn Rand
and Carcosa… it’s called “Grave-Worms.” I have another story called “The Thing
on the Cheerleading Squad” in Innsmouth Free Press’s <i>She Walks in Shadows</i>, ed. Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Oh, of course, and
“But Only Because I Love You,” in <i>Dreams
From The Witch House</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">In terms of big stuff, I have
another novel coming out this November from Lazy Fascist, called <i>The Pleasure Merchant</i>. It’s an 18<sup>th</sup>
century picaresque about Tom Dawne, a wigmaker’s apprentice who becomes a
manservant when he is dismissed after one of his wigs is sabotaged, and then
rises through late 18<sup>th</sup> century society… but as Tom’s station
changes, so do his pleasures… Anyways, it’s probably my most personal novel to
date, and my least speculative work (even if it’s the most horrifying, in a lot
of ways). It’s very loosely based on the real-life 18<sup>th</sup> century
philosopher and poet Thomas Day, who was bewitchingly terrible. If people have
heard of Thomas Day, it’s usually because he wrote a poem called “The Dying
Negro” that was intended to drum up support for the abolition of slavery
(good!), but Day’s sympathies did not extend to women. Because he was unlucky
in love—this guy was basically an 18<sup>th</sup> century “nice guy”/MRA and
all women he came near basically fled his presence—he adopted two orphan tween
girls, took them to France to isolate them, and tried to train them in the
hopes one of them would blossom into his ideal bride. The account of his experiment
is best chronicled in Wendy Moore’s <i>How
To Create The Perfect Wife</i> which I highly recommend if you want an
excellent pop history read about how horrible the 18<sup>th</sup> century
really was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Thanks for your time!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Thank you!</span></div>
Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-52396075311705539742015-05-27T16:00:00.000-04:002015-05-27T16:00:01.572-04:00Review: Vermilion by Molly Tanzer<br />
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Author Molly Tanzer has been a longtime favorite here at the Arkham Digest. Both of her collections, A Pretty Mouth and Rumbullion help set the standard for modern weird fiction. Vermilion is Molly Tanzer's first novel, and is one of the biggest releases of the year. The description from publisher Word Horde's website:<br />
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<i>Gunslinging, chain smoking, Stetson-wearing Taoist psychopomp, Elouise “Lou” Merriwether might not be a normal 19-year-old, but she’s too busy keeping San Francisco safe from ghosts, shades, and geung si to care much about that. It’s an important job, though most folks consider it downright spooky. Some have even accused Lou of being more comfortable with the dead than the living, and, well… they’re not wrong.</i></div>
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<i>When Lou hears that a bunch of Chinatown boys have gone missing somewhere deep in the Colorado Rockies she decides to saddle up and head into the wilderness to investigate. Lou fears her particular talents make her better suited to help placate their spirits than ensure they get home alive, but it’s the right thing to do, and she’s the only one willing to do it.</i></div>
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<i>On the road to a mysterious sanatorium known as Fountain of Youth, Lou will encounter bears, desperate men, a very undead villain, and even stranger challenges. Lou will need every one of her talents and a whole lot of luck to make it home alive…</i></div>
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The West is always best when it's served with a liberal dose of weird. Tanzer's novel is unique in many ways. Lou Merriwether, the protagonist, is a half-Chinese girl in a time and place where the Chinese are looked upon as being less than human. Being a psychopomp also further alienates her from the world, as people seem to regard people in her line of work as being creepy. Lou has a few close friends, but is a bit of a loner. She's stubborn and tough and far from perfect. She makes mistakes, sometimes acting without thinking, and berates herself for not thinking things through. She doesn't give up though, she is determined and tenacious.</div>
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Gender fluidity is also a prevalent theme throughout the novel, and the willingness to explore the subject is one of the novel's great strengths. Too often fantasy protagonists are generic, cookie-cutter characters, but not so in Molly Tanzer's fiction. Lou is at her most comfortable wearing men's clothing and cutting her hair short, and going by Lou instead of Elouise. Her sexuality itself is a little less clear and defined. Gender fluidity doesn't end with Lou, but for the sake of spoilers I'll leave it at that. </div>
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The diversity on display is perfect. Characters of all races and orientations are represented. The world building is excellent, and Molly has created a gritty Western world in which the supernatural exists alongside the normal. Bears talk and have their own civilization, co-existing with man despite tensions. Spiritual and undead threats are handled by professional psychopomps like Lou, while monsters are dealt with by licensed monster hunters. </div>
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Woven throughout are elements of Chinese folklore and mythology. Geung Si, a hopping vampire/zombie hybrid from Chinese folklore, make a few appearances. While Lou has many tools at her disposal for her psychopompery, she deals with Geung Si by using more traditional Chinese methods. Her other methods deal with using some interesting, steampunk-esque technology. Tanzer created a really interesting system for how it all works, and I'd love to see more.</div>
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My only real complaint with the novel was the villain. At times he was way too hammy, one of those villains who catches the character only to reveal all by talking and talking and talking. Tanzer handled this well however, as even the protagonist refers to tiring of the villain and his "hammy" ways. This self-awareness helped me overlook what I thought to be the novel's one deficit.</div>
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Fans of fantastic adventure books and readers looking for something fun and different shouldn't hesitate to pick this one up, as it's already one of the best books of 2015.</div>
Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-19765036300412430132015-04-21T16:00:00.000-04:002015-04-21T16:00:02.693-04:00Interview: Jesse Bullington, editor of Letters to Lovecraft<b><br /></b>
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<b>So far you've penned three published novels and numerous short fiction. As far as I know this is your first time editing an anthology. How did you adjust to the change? Is editing something you see yourself doing again in the future?</b><br />
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You're correct that this is my editorial debut, but I made my first fiction sale something like fifteen years ago, so I've logged a lot of hours working closely with professional editors. The funny thing is you learn as much from the bad editors as from the good ones. I've also beta-read a lot of my colleagues' work, so critically eyeballing other people's work isn't anything new. So adapting to being on the other end of the process was fairly painless, and a nice change of pace. That said, the work itself is just as time-consuming and headache-inducing as writing, so while I'm sure I'll do more of it in the future I doubt I'll make a regular habit out of it.<br />
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<b>Letters to Lovecraft is an anthology with a concept that really stands out to me. Mythos anthologies abound, and there's also a good deal of non-Mythos themed Lovecraft anthologies, so seeing an anthology tackling his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature was refreshing. What inspired you with such an original anthology idea? Why have authors respond with fiction instead of short essays of their own?</b><br />
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The premise was something Stone Skin Press already had in mind when they invited me to edit the project. As soon as I found out what exactly they had in mind for the anthology my enthusiasm doubled, because as a longtime Lovecraft fan I'm of course very familiar with the essay, and it seemed a remarkably novel way of engaging with the Gentleman of Providence. Asking for original fiction in response instead of essays seemed far more intriguing, because by doing so they'd be demonstrating their ethos instead of simply explaining it. Since including your own work in projects like this can often seem gauche, the only downside was knowing that as anthologist I wouldn't be able to write something myself for such a neat premise.<br />
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<b>With the anthology, what was it you most hoped to accomplish and what did you want to avoid? </b><br />
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My primary goal was providing readers with an interesting anthology, one that represented a wide array of tones and styles instead of just ringing the same bell over and over.<br />
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<b>The fictional responses from authors varied greatly. Some chose similar passages, some did not. Some wrote stories supporting statements from the essay and some wrote stories opposing the same statements. Are there any portions of the essay in which you think Lovecraft was 'spot on' and were there any portions where you felt he was totally or partially wrong?</b><br />
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Well, I don't wish to simply repeat the particulars I singled out in my introduction to the anthology, so let me see...I'm in harmony with a lot of Lovecraft's assertions, and even those I don't necessarily agree with are of course well-reasoned and articulate. If we can consider anyone a preeminent authority on the titular topic, it would be Howie, but as a result the essay is full of broad-sweeping generalizations--that there's one test of what constitutes "the really weird," etc.--which I find more interesting than convincing. But then I'm not much for absolutes in general--that this philosophy worked for Lovecraft is evident enough, and it's fun to contemplate. Oh, and in terms of his assessment of his predecessors, I'm more or less in agreement with him in some instances (William Hope Hodgson, Arthur Machen,and his particularly rich survey of Poe), but think he gives others short shrift--Matthew Lewis' The Monk, for example.<br />
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<b>Do you feel that Lovecraft's essay is still relevant today, nearly a century after it was written?</b><br />
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Absolutely, or else I never would have edited the project! For all his shortcomings, Lovecraft remains one of the most interesting writers of the 20th century, and I think future generations will always be able to learn a thing or five from both his fiction and his literary philosophy.<br />
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<b>Finally, are there any future projects that you're willing to talk about?</b><br />
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A lot of my works in progress remain Top Secret Clown Business, but one that I can talk about is Swords v. Cthulhu, an anthology that I'm co-editing with Molly Tanzer. As you might guess from the title, it's a collection of action-heavy fantasy with a dark or historical bent. After the somewhat esoteric nature of my first anthology it's been refreshing to take a turn at something much more straightforward--we're still finalizing the table of contents, so while I don't want to drop any names just yet, I will say we've scored a number of luminaries of modern Lovecraftiana, as well as veterans of neighboring genres...<br />
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<b>Thanks for your time, it was pleasure.</b><br />
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Thank you for the opportunity, and of course for taking the time to read the book.Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-91519183661008615412015-04-08T12:46:00.002-04:002015-04-08T12:46:45.586-04:00Review: Letters To Lovecraft edited by Jesse Bullington<br />
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Love him or hate him, it's impossible to deny Lovecraft's legacy. He is considered a pioneer of weird fiction, even if others of his time or before his time wrote stories that could easily qualify as being in that category. His work has inspired many, and his Mythos alone has swollen to obese proportions with fiction, some of which are finely polished gems and others are borderline fan fiction and pastiche.<br />
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For many, myself included, Lovecraft was an introduction into the world of weird fiction. I still remember reading "Call of Cthulhu" for the first time, home on break from college and the only one awake in the house, reading the story which had been posted on some website, white letters on a black background. It called to me, and the following day I found myself walking out of a bookshop with a Lovecraft collection in hand.<br />
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Lovecraft's fiction lives on, and Lovecraft scholarship is still alive and well. Books collecting his letters (he wrote letters like you wouldn't believe) can easily be found, as well as anthologies containing stories said to be Lovecraft's favorites among his predecessors and contemporaries.<br />
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Fiction and letters aside, Lovecraft penned an essay titled "Supernatural Horror in Literature." In it he spoke of other horror writers and stories, and laid out his own philosophy on what makes successful horror fiction.<br />
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Author <b><a href="http://jessebullington.com/" target="_blank">Jesse Bullington</a></b> recently edited <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Lovecraft-Eighteen-Whispers-Darkness/dp/1908983108" target="_blank">Letters to Lovecraft</a></b>, an anthology of fiction written in response to portions of Lovecraft's essay. The title is a slight bit misleading, as these are not letters written to Lovecraft in response to the essay, but pieces of fiction. In a world where the market is glutted by Mythos fiction and Lovecraftian anthologies such a different approach is a welcome treat.<br />
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In his hefty intro, Bullington puts it all on the table. The good, the bad, and the ugly of Lovecraft is laid bare without bias. The editor also makes an excellent point about "Supernatural Horror in Literature" being important not just for writers deriving inspiration from Lovecraft, but for anyone working in horror. The writer asked several authors he admires to read the essay, choose a quote that resonates with them in some way, and write a fictional response. Some stories support the quote they chose, others set out to prove that quote wrong, and others do a bit of both. This isn't a clear cut "I agree/disagree" with the passage as much as it is an emotional response. Some authors chose the same passage and came up with wildly different stories, depending on what the passage meant for them. The result is an anthology unlike any I have read before, one that truly stands out as one of 2014's finest.<br />
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Many readers decide whether or not an anthology is worthwhile based on the ratio of great/good/bad stories. In this case the anthology was to this reviewer's taste, as there isn't a bad story in the bunch, although some are more effective than others.<br />
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Brian Evenson's "Past Reno" and Gemma Files's "That Place" both use the same quote for inspiration and both deal with children settling the estates of their deceased parents. Otherwise they are very different stories. Evenson focuses on the idea of uncertainty and the unknown. His subtle tale of a man suffering severe anxiety on his drive to settle his estranged father's estate is an ambiguous tale. Is the man's reality coming apart because reality is truly wearing thin, or is it all a manifestation of his fear and anxiety? Gemma Files works with an expanded version of the quote from Lovecraft's essay, and uses the basis of Narnia novels as a foundation for a much darker tale. Siblings return home to settle their parents' estate and remember a weird game they played in childhood, which turns out to be a little more than just a game. Angela Slatter works with the second half of the quote Gemma Files chose, and her story "Only the Dead and the Moonstruck" is a bit more overtly Lovecraftian. Another tale of loss, this story instead deals with a family coping with the disappearance of one of the siblings. Emotions run high, and guilt is shared by the mother and also the sister, who may have seen something the night her brother went missing. A very effective tale of dread indeed.<br />
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Writers Nadia Bulkin, Robin D. Laws, and Paul Tremblay all responded to a quote about how proper weird tales have "a certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces." The three stories were some of my favorites from the anthology. Bulkin's "Only Unity Saves the Damned" is a story about three outsider friends who make a hoax based on an urban legend, and how it leads to all of their downfalls. The idea of small towns being a "black hole" whose pull is impossible for many to escape is a theme of her story and one she executes perfectly. In "The Trees" Robin D. Laws brings readers on a sailing voyage with a grieving man who is brought on board by his uncle. He feels out of place for the entire voyage, and even more so when the ship reaches it's mysterious destination and he realizes what the purpose of the voyage is. Paul Tremblay sets out to prove Lovecraft wrong with "_______." The story draws dread not from atmosphere but from a very commonplace setting and an awkward conversation where something is just not right. The story is a true chiller, and it takes an author with talent to infuse such a scenario with as much dread as Tremblay does.<br />
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The last authors to tackle a shared quote are Jeffrey Ford and Chesya Burke. They chose a quote about fertility rites being performed by some degenerate, subhuman minorities. Jeffrey Ford's darkly humorous "The Order of the Haunted Wood" sees a fertility cult evolve alongside civilization, and to continue to exist behind the scenes of the corporate pharmaceutical world of "male enhancement" medicine. Chesya Burke's approach to the quote instead has nothing to do with fertility cults, and all to do about Lovecraft's racism, which is apparent in the quote. In "The Horror at Castle of the Cumberland" Burke writes about a young white man who has fits, whether they are of a religious nature or purely biological and accompanied with hallucinations isn't too clear. The story is about having a choice, and whether people make a choice based on what they believe or what everyone around them believes. For many, sadly, it is easier to be a follower rather than a leader. The boy witnesses a black man and his daughter become the victim of a mob for a crime they didn't commit, and the boy is left with the choice of going along or speaking out. It's a story that packs quite a punch.<br />
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The rest of the stories didn't overlap in which quotes they chose to respond to, but some overlapped in other ways. Stories by Orrin Grey and Ken Asamatsu both involve Lovecraft himself. In Grey's wonderful "Lovecrafting" HP is referenced, along with other classic weird fiction writers, but doesn't take center stage. The story is written in movie script format, making it further standout, and is one of the highlights of the anthology. Asamatsu's "Glimmer in the Darkness" features Lovecraft more at the forefront, as he has a conversation with a strange man while eating ice cream. Not the most effective story in the anthology, but entertaining nonetheless.<br />
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Livia Llewellyn's fiction always hits the mark, and "Allocthon" is one of the most effective stories in the anthology. It follows a woman in the 30's living in a company house in some sort of depression work town. Llewellyn chose a quote about nature and it's mysteries, and how nature "speaks" to man. The woman in Livia's story is stuck in a humdrum life and feels much like a bird trapped in a cage, longing for escape. Things change as she goes on a company picnic and nature has an odd effect on her. She seems to be stuck in a loop, replaying the same day over and over, different every time. A powerful story, as Llewellyn writes nothing less.<br />
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"The Lonely Wood" by Tim Lebbon follows a man visiting a cathedral and experiencing a sort of "personal apocalypse" making him question his beliefs (or lack thereof). Cameron Pierce's "Help Me" tackles a quote about judging a weird tale not on it's highest points, but on what it can achieve emotionally at it's most mundane point. Inspiration from Lovecraft's Innsmouth permeate this creepy little tale. David Yale Ardanuy tackles the legend of the Wendigo in "One Last Meal, Before the End." The story takes place in isolation, and gore abounds. Stephen Graham Jones brings his master storytelling talents to bear in "Doc's Story", a werewolf tale. Kirsten Alene's "There Has Been a Fire" is a subtle, poetic story about a professor. This was one of my favorite stories and the first fiction I've read from Kirsten Alene. The story is surreal, and manages to be both creepy and lyrically beautiful at the same time. A powerful combination.<br />
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The anthology ends with stories from two heavy-hitters of current weird fiction. Molly Tanzer chooses a quote about weird often appearing in works that viewed as a whole could fit a different genre entirely. "Food From the Clouds" goes forward in time to a London which has reverted back to more ancient ways of doing things. Barons own private lands in the aftermath of some sort of semi-apocalyptic comet crash. The story follows two poachers as they enter a walled-in area that no one else has set foot in since the comet crash. A fun story with bits of creepiness, Tanzer has managed to convey the feel of a much more fleshed within the confines of a short story. Not many fantasy authors can pull off such a feat.<br />
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The Mandela Effect, which is when people (usually many) remember things happening differently. Often these are unimportant things, such as people swearing that the Berenstain Bears was once spelled Berenstein Bears. It's mostly chalked up to man's memory being unreliable at best, but more esoteric theories abound dealing with parallel dimensions and all sorts of strangeness. "The Semi-Finished Basement" by Nick Mamatas is about four people meeting in a basement as a sort of support group. They eat blondies and bicker and discuss how they remember certain things in history as different from the rest of society. That the change was effected over the whole race but for some reason the veil wasn't pulled over their eyes. One man, a schizophrenic, goes on and on about The Crawling Chaos and Egypt. The ending is a riot, and a definite twist that I didn't see coming. Mamatas is an intelligent writer, and his Lovecraft-inspired tales are among the best.<br />
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By looking beyond the superficialities of the Cthulhu Mythos, and bypassing common Lovecraftian themes to look instead at the essay that outlines Lovecraft's philosophies behind weird horror, Jesse Bullington and his 18 authors have done something truly special. Letters to Lovecraft is easily one of 2014's best anthologies, and a must read for weird horror fans.Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-11455355820090782452015-04-01T14:52:00.001-04:002015-04-01T14:52:27.992-04:00Interview: Rich Hawkins<br />
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<b>With your latest novella you take readers to a small, seemingly isolated, small British town. I find that a setting can have a huge effect on a piece of horror fiction, as atmosphere can make or break a story. What drew you to this type of setting?</b><br />
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I was born and raised in a village very similar to the one in ‘Black Star, Black Sun’, and I’ve always loved horror/weird stories set in small communities. The sense of dread and isolation seems to work well in those stories, especially when combined with Lovecraftian themes. I spent twenty-seven years of my life living in my home village, so the idea that I could take that small village mundaneness and add some cosmic horror themes to it was very appealing to me.<br />
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<b>Black Star, Black Sun is a novella, and is your second book to be published. Your first, The Last Plague, is a much longer work. Do you find the novel length or novella length to be more challenging?</b><br />
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The novel, definitely. It’s a long road and I seem to put more pressure on myself with a novel.This leads to bouts of anxiety and stress punctuated by moments of relief after a good day’s writing. I’m a bit fucked up, I suppose. The novella holds a different challenge in that its brevity compared to a novel demands a leaner, more streamlined plot, but at the same time needs some meat on the bones. At the moment, I feel more drawn towards novellas, but that may change in the future - I’m still a rookie and I’ve got a lot to learn.<br />
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<b>Besides Lovecraft, what other authors and pieces of fiction lent inspiration for Black Star, Black Sun?</b><br />
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I’m a big fan of Adam Nevill, and while I think his writing is not particularly Lovecraftian, it was a great inspiration to me when I was working on the novella. Also, Laird Barron’s work has influenced me greatly and continues to do so. I first read ‘The Imago Sequence’ about two years ago, and it floored me. It’s fantastic.<br />
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<b>Growing up, were you always a reader of dark fiction? What draws you to these types of stories? Do you have any personal favorites (stories, novels, authors)?</b><br />
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Not always. I began reading horror/sci-fi/dark fiction in my early teens, but as I grew older, into my late teens and early twenties, I stopped reading any sort of fiction due to a greater interest in alcohol, women and sports. That was until my mid-twenties and I picked up a copy of Stephen King’s ‘Pet Cemetery’, and I rediscovered my love of horror fiction. King, in turn, led me to Lovecraft and contemporary writers, and ten years later my house is full of books.<br />
I’m not sure what draws me to horror. I’m quite pessimistic, if that matters. I was a strange child. Horrific things have always intrigued me. If I’m honest, I think I find comfort in horror.<br />
As I said above, the works of Adam Nevill and Laird Barron are great favourites of mine. Other writers whose work I admire greatly are Gary McMahon, MR James, Tim Curran, David Moody, Wayne Simmons, Conrad Williams and Nathan Ballingrud.I would advise anyone who hasn’t read their work to check it out.<br />
And Lovecraft, of course…<br />
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<b>As an author of dark fiction, what is it you hope most to accomplish with your work? What do you want readers to take away from your stories?</b><br />
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At the moment I’m just trying to build a portfolio of work and see where it takes me. I’m not writing for the money (or lack of it); I write because I have to, I think. It’s a strange feeling. I couldn’t even tell you why I started writing stories in the first place.<br />
I’m just grateful that some people are reading my stories. If I can scare, unsettle or even affect them in some way, I’ll be overjoyed.<br />
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<b>As of the time of this writing I haven't had a chance to read The Last Plague yet. Does it draw any parallel with Black Star, Black Sun?</b><br />
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Not really. There are undertones of cosmic horror in The Last Plague, but I never intended it to be overtly Lovecraftian, and it’s a different story in many ways. They are both very bleak stories, however, so they’ve got that in common, and they both deal with humanity’s helplessness against alien horrors.<br />
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<b>Any future writing projects that you would care to tell readers about?</b><br />
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I’m currently working on the sequel to The Last Plague, set some months after the events of the first book. Once that’s done I have an idea for a horror novel about religious fundamentalismand missing children.<br />
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<b>Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.</b><br />
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Thanks for inviting me over, Justin. It’s been a pleasure.<br />
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Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-52516259908841290242015-03-23T15:30:00.000-04:002015-03-23T15:30:01.701-04:00Review: Black Star, Black Sun by Rich Hawkins<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Star-Sun-Rich-Hawkins/dp/0993718035/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427071037&sr=8-1&keywords=rich+hawkins" target="_blank">Black Star, Black Sun</a></b> is my first exposure to author <b><a href="http://richwhawkins.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Rich Hawkins</a></b>. He previously penned <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Plague-Rich-Hawkins/dp/0992883830/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0TC2BK6YQKYK3JAEG6HG" target="_blank">The Last Plague</a></b>, a novel about a not quite zombie apocalypse, that picked up some good reviews. This work is much shorter, making it a novella, although it is still quite a good size.<br />
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The story follows a man named Ben Ottway who, still reeling from his wife's mysterious disappearance, returns to his old hometown to stay with his father and put his life back together. Things take a turn for the worse as Ben begins having disturbing dreams that start to cross over into reality. He thinks he may be going mad, until he realizes that the "dreams" are not experienced by him alone.<br />
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Hawkins brings the otherwordly, cosmic horror in droves. Once things begin they escalate very quickly, grotesque scenes abound and the town soon becomes a Boschian nightmare. There are some wonderfully done, creepy segments, but some later parts of the book came across as being laid on a bit too thick. The scenes that were subtle were much more effective, and where the author shined. Many of the earlier scenes with Ben traipsing around and having off-putting encounters were handled like a pro.<br />
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The protagonist was very convincing as a man whose life was falling apart, barely hanging on with the the help from nicotine and caffeine. He existed in parallel with his father, who numbed the pain of his widower lifestyle with alcohol. At times I felt like the dad wasn't as developed, but I instead came to see him purposefully portrayed as an almost-empty shell of a man, lonely and filling his time with television and booze while wearing a ratty dressy gown, church being his only real social outlet.<br />
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This is a good novella, but it's not without it's problems, many of which are common among newer authors. Some of the side characters came across as rather one-dimensional, and at times I was struck by a repetitiveness. Later parts of the book seemed overlong, and lost some of their effectiveness as a result, whereas a trimming may have resulted in these segments packing more of a punch.<br />
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Criticisms aside, I enjoyed the novella quite a bit. Many segments of it really resonated with me. It's the second published book from a new author, and at times it is obvious that this is an early work of fiction. That said, I see a lot of talent in Mr. Hawkins, and I have a feeling I will be doubly pleased with his next offering. In the meantime, fans of Lovecraftian horror should check this novella out, as I have a feeling that many of them will really love this one.Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-8737215303433196462015-03-19T15:30:00.000-04:002015-03-19T15:30:01.685-04:00Review Roundup & News: MarchApologies for not updating sooner, but at the end of January I took on the duties of a school counselor at a nearby school while continuing my full time time counseling job. Doing the work of two school counselors has taken a lot of time, and I fell behind on my reviews. Also I have been reading some books that probably don't belong on the blog, since early on I decided the blog was going to focus on dark and weird fiction, so when I read the occasional fantasy novel I won't be reviewing it here (<a href="http://www.joeabercrombie.com/" target="_blank"><b>Joe Abercrombie</b></a>'s <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Half-World-Shattered-Sea-Abercrombie/dp/0804178429/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426775699&sr=8-1&keywords=half+the+world" target="_blank">Half the World</a></b> is amazing though, if you like fantasy then READ MORE <a href="http://www.joeabercrombie.com/" target="_blank"><b>ABERCROMBIE</b></a>). Things are still busy, but I plan to make more blog posts.<br />
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I have some cool news. I conducted an interview with author <b><a href="https://lairdbarron.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Laird Barron</a></b> which will appear in the <b><a href="http://lazyfascistpress.com/" target="_blank">Lazy Fascist Review</a></b>. I also reviewed <b><a href="http://www.gabrielblackwell.com/p/home.html" target="_blank">Gabriel Blackwell</a></b>'s <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Dissolution-Fleeting-Improvised-Men-Letter-Lovecraft/dp/1937865142/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1426775052&sr=8-2&keywords=gabriel+blackwell" target="_blank">The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised-Men</a></b> which should also appear in volume three or four of Lazy Fascist Review.<br />
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<b><a href="http://dynatoxministries.com/" target="_blank">Jordan Krall</a></b>'s <b><a href="http://dunhamsmanor.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a></b> is having an Indiegogo campaign to raise money for their 2015 lineup. This is a really cool micropress and their limited edition chapbooks are essential for weird fiction fans. The campaign is also a great chance to pay upfront for the books coming out in 2015 so you don't have to worry about ordering them all individually. The campaign is <b><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dunhams-manor-press-weird-fiction-2015" target="_blank">HERE</a></b> and now is the chance to meet some stretch goals before the campaign closes on March 26th at 11:59 PM.<br />
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Also, some good news regarding some colleagues: Clint Hale recently started a new review blog, <a href="http://www.darkofthings.com/" target="_blank"><b>The Dark of Things</b></a>. Clint knows his weird, so I have high hopes for this venture. <a href="https://chthonicmatter.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"><b>C.M. Muller</b></a>, a reviewer and published author, is starting an annual journal of weird fiction, <a href="https://chthonicmatter.wordpress.com/nightscript/" target="_blank"><b>Nightscript</b></a>. Mr. Muller has excellent taste and I have no doubt that this will be premiere publication. Also recently, my friend <a href="http://nothingisimminent.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><b>Sam Cowan</b></a> has also announced that his micropress Dim Shores will announce their first publication soon. Dim Shores will publish novella and short story chapbooks. Sam is very knowledgeable about weird fiction as well, and has a background in book design and publishing so I have no doubt this will also be a top notch micropress. Exciting times ahead!!!!!<br />
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Now, on to the reviews.<br />
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<b>Vox Terrae by <a href="http://thewildernesswithinbyjohnclaudesmith.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">John Claude Smith</a> (<a href="http://dunhamsmanor.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a>)</b><br />
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John Claude Smith is a new writer for me. I have both of his story collections, but haven't cracked them open yet. One weekend I found myself with some reading time, and decided to devote it to several chapbooks from Jordan Krall's Dunhams Manor Press, the weird fiction imprint of Dynatox Ministries. This was also the day I became a fan of John Claude Smith. I started with Vox Terrae, a disturbing tale about a grieving man seeking a way to his beloved. As a couple they were both engaged in the occult, and sought a way to the other side. Kenneth, the main character, contacts his old friend and occult mentor Ivan, and the two seek out a woman whose translation of a vile tome led to Kenneth's girlfriend's death. Their journey leads them to a house of horrors that brought to mind Laird Barron's Children of Old Leech.<br />
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<b>Dandelions by <a href="http://thewildernesswithinbyjohnclaudesmith.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">John Claude Smith</a> (<a href="http://dunhamsmanor.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a>)</b><br />
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Dandelions is a bit more of a slow burn, and the author handles it perfectly.Two couples take a trip and stay at an eerie little motel by the seashore. The place is permeated by a sense of wrongness. Small oddities taking on sinister connotations and added together to create a surreal nightmare. An excellent use of atmosphere and location, and a terrifying little gem of a weird tale.<br />
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<b>Twisted Histories by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13491162.Tom_Lynch?from_search=true" target="_blank">Tom Lynch</a> (<a href="http://dunhamsmanor.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a>)</b><br />
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Tom Lynch brings a B-movie aesthetic to these two stories based on Lovecraft's Mythos. The first of the two stories, and the creepier of the two, is a telling of how John Dee translated the Necronomicon. A desperate attempt of saving his career and reputation quickly becomes a descent into madness. The second story is an action-filled yarn of Cold War spies in Berlin. Some weird experiments are being carried out on the Eastern side of the Wall, and some American spies find out the hard way that it's often best not to meddle where weird science is concerned. The two stories lack the literary punch some of the other Dunhams Manor books go for, but they are nonetheless very fun reads.<br />
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<b>The Queen in Green by <a href="http://www.ginaranalli.com/" target="_blank">Gina Ranalli</a> (<a href="http://dunhamsmanor.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a>)</b><br />
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Another author that I've yet to read before, Gina Ranalli delivers a creepy tale set in the woods. A young boy leave his family's campsite to explore the woods and collect kindling. He meets a mysterious dwarf who wants to introduce him to a very special tree. The story is quite short, but Ranalli manages to paint a rather creepy picture.<br />
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At the time of this writing, copies are still available <a href="http://dynatox.storenvy.com/collections/240632-all-products/products/12067136-the-queen-in-green-by-gina-ranalli-dunhams-manor-press" target="_blank"><b>HERE</b></a>.<br />
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<b>This Fragmented Body by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5404770.Christopher_Slatsky" target="_blank">Christopher Slatsky</a> (<a href="http://dunhamsmanor.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a>)</b><br />
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The first of three chapbooks by Christopher Slatsky I read in one day, and enough to get me excited about this author. Amputees, run down apartment buildings, and puppets make for a heady brew. A blackout hits the city, and several amputees of all ages who make the building their home confront their personal tragedies and recurring nightmares. Slatsky builds dread from page one, and is not shy about amping up the weird.<br />
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<b>No One Is sleeping In This World by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5404770.Christopher_Slatsky" target="_blank">Christopher Slatsky</a> (<a href="http://dunhamsmanor.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a>)</b><br />
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Two artistic friends are making a documentary about architecture, and decide to visit an old warehouse designed by an eccentric, one-of-a-kind architect. Somehow the building managed to be forgotten, tucked away in a run-down industrial district, until one of the friends finds out about it. They visit it to find a sort of Cult of Cities. Slatsky offers a glimpse of American urban decay, and early on layers on the unease that makes for some of the best weird fiction. Wind blown plastic bags appear to be floating faces, strange homeless people seem to rule the streets in a forgotten, dying part of town, and an incongruous warehouse built by an infamous architect is somewhere where it makes no sense for it to be. A wonderful story.<br />
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<b>Alectryomancer by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5404770.Christopher_Slatsky" target="_blank">Christopher Slatsky</a> (<a href="http://dunhamsmanor.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a>)</b><br />
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This strange tale is a surreal, sci-fi masterpiece. At a depression era work camp, Rey spends the days working in the fields and contemplating a strange recurring hallucination he has of a burning horse. People have been disappearing, but Rey is mostly concerned with cockfighting, as his successful gamecock is set to fight an undefeated, otherworldly gamecock called Alectryomancer. Rey kills time in between work and cockfighting with looking at pictures of a family he hasn't seen in a long time, and reading passages from a bizarre, nonsensical journal that he found. The journal discusses time travel, ancient engines at the core of the earth and similar concepts. Slatsky has succeeded in creating an original, bizarre tale that left me full of dread and wonder.<br />
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At the time of this writing, copies are still available to order <b><a href="http://dynatox.storenvy.com/collections/240632-all-products/products/11297217-alectryomancer-by-christopher-slatsky" target="_blank">HERE</a></b>.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wrenchies-Farel-Dalrymple/dp/159643421X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426775404&sr=8-1&keywords=farel+dalrymple" target="_blank">The Wrenchies</a> by <a href="http://fareldalrymple.com/" target="_blank">Farel Dalrymple</a> (<a href="http://www.firstsecondbooks.com/" target="_blank">First Second</a>)</b><br />
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I very much enjoy graphic novels but tend to not review them. The Wrenchies deserves a mention here because it is one of the strangest ones I have read, and one of the best. The story begins with two brothers who enter a cave and defeat a demon. One brother, Sherman, takes an amulet as his prize. What follows is a disjointed, surreal narrative that follows several threads as they weave together. Children gangs roam a post-apocalyptic America, fighting against the Demons who have control. An outsider child named Hollis lives in out time as a neighbor of the adult Sherman, and when he finds the amulet he is transported to this strange, futuristic world where he finally finds people he fits in with - the child gang called The Wrenchies. An adult group of Wrenchies that exists in Sherman's comic is through a timewarp to join their young counterparts. There are all sorts of things going on in this novel. Modern day Sherman seems a very troubled man, unhappy and filling his time off from work doing drugs and drinking, only productive when he writes his comic. It seems he is haunted by some sort of tragedy in the past, and the line is blurred as to what is truth and what is fantasy when it comes to Sherman. The fantastical version seems to have been many things: a child spy, a demon-slaying warrior, a space explorer. A hard to understand book, The Wrenchies will benefit from multiple rereads. The book is wonderfully entertaining and thought provoking, and the art is absolutely gorgeous.Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-40702987904554798322015-02-03T17:33:00.000-05:002015-02-03T17:33:15.099-05:00Interview: Timothy J. Jarvis<b><br /></b>
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<a href="https://timothyjjarvis.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Timothy J. Jarvis</a> is the author of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wanderer-Timothy-J-Jarvis/dp/1782790691/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422223863&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wanderer+jarvis" target="_blank">The Wanderer</a></i>, which was <a href="http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2015/01/review-wanderer-by-timothy-j-jarvis.html" target="_blank">my choice for weird fiction novel of the year</a>. Below is an interview I conducted with the young author in which he brings his knowledge of the weird to the table to share. Enjoy!<br />
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<b>I'd first like to thank you for taking the time to talk to me. What can you tell readers about yourself and your work?</b><br />
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Thanks for interviewing me; it’s a pleasure. Though that’s quite a tough question to open with. Well, in brief biographies I’ve called myself, ‘a writer and scholar with an interest in the antic, the weird, the strange.’ Which is close enough, and though that ‘scholar’ is deliberately archaic, it is true that I’m an academic as well as a writer. I’ve lived in London for a good while, and the city is one of my main inspirations.<br />
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In my writing, I attempt to fuse a fustian old Gothic sensibility with a more contemporary pulpish narrative, to bring together various tendrils of weird fiction, and to be jarringly odd: at times horrible, at others cloyingly sentimental, at times tense, at others comically absurd. The Romantic Gothic writer, Charles Robert Maturin, whose <i>Melmoth the Wanderer</i> is a key influence on my book, once wrote, venting his frustration at the critics and theatre managers who wished for him to exercise restraint, to curb his grotesque excesses:<br />
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‘I have no power of affecting, no hopes of instructing, no play or other production of mine will ever draw a tear from the eye, or teach a lesson to the Heart, so I wish they would let me do what I am good for, sit down by my magic Cauldron, mix my dark ingredients, see the bubbles work, and the spirits rise, and by the pale and mystic light, I might show them “the best of my delights”.’<br />
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While I see much to admire in subtlety, consistency of atmosphere, controlled prose, in the end, like Maturin, I just want to throw everything at the page, see what sticks, then drench it in gore.<br />
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<b>The Wanderer is quite a complex narrative for a debut novel, and works out quite well. What made you to decide to write it in the framed narrative format?</b><br />
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Thanks! I partly wanted to go back to the roots of the Gothic, with its found manuscripts and strange tale fragments, and in particular to those later, more complex and antic versions of the tropes, found in books like <i>Melmoth</i> and Jan Potocki’s <i>The Manuscript Found in Saragossa</i>. And some of the most powerful weird tales, from William Hope Hodgson’s <i>The House on the Borderland</i>, to more recent examples, like Caitlín R. Kiernan’s <i>The Red Tree</i>, Mark Z. Danielewski’s <i>House of Leaves</i>, and Gemma Files’s and Stephen J. Barringer’s <i>‘each thing i show you is a piece of my death’</i> (which I reckon one of the most terrifying short stories ever written) have been convoluted found text stories. It’s my sense that complex, many-stranded plot structures are like mazes, in which the reader becomes lost. They also, especially those involving storytelling, threaten contamination; the borders of the text are corroded, the tale seeps out, and the setting in which the reader reads seems just another frame. When the found text’s strange appearance of truth, its suggestion of being more <i>account</i> than <i>story</i>, is added to this, then the effect can be positively nightmarish.<br />
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<b>What were the biggest influences on The Wanderer? While reading it there seemed to be many that stood out to me, and a few names readers of weird fiction should pick up on scattered throughout the book. What were you hoping to accomplish with this novel?</b><br />
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As I’ve mentioned, the key influence was Maturin’s strange book of 1820, <i>Melmoth</i>, a novel often considered the very last of the original Gothic mode. <i>Melmoth</i> is very odd text, which brings, to the violence and ‘bad taste’ of the Gothic, a high-Romantic sensibility, and also, more incongruously, the comical, sceptical, and metatextual mood of Renaissance and Enlightenment satire: Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Sterne, and Diderot. I hope to set up a similar jarring clash of tones in <i>The Wanderer</i>.<br />
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Another important precursor, was Poe’s only longer work, <i>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym</i>. Poe seems to have hated writing it and to have done so for quite cynical commercial reasons. He was, of course, a master of lyric verse and the powerfully atmospheric short tale, and based his poetics on a unity of effect, but I think those stories of his that leaven the ‘Arabesque’ seriousness, with the impish and ‘grotesque’, his most enthralling. And in <i>Arthur Gordon Pym</i>, a book often criticised as awkward, episodic, unable to sustain a mood, there is much that is grotesque, and downright odd.<br />
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Poe’s general disinclination for the novel also led him to attempt to make of it a hoax, and present it as a true travelogue; it seems he thought he could, in this way, ease his financial hardships with the sale of the book, while distancing himself from the potboiler nature of the project. But sometimes it’s parodic, makes its fictionality apparent, and at others, when Poe appears to have had a moment of enthusiasm for the book, a more sublime, philosophical tone predominates. It is a novel of confused motives and disparate moods, and also one in which the world of appearances is a bizarre puzzle, and the numinous lying beneath no less absurd. And I love it for all of these things.<br />
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Writing <i>The Wanderer</i>, I was inspired not just by <i>Arthur Gordon Pym</i> itself, but also by what I see as two failed attempts to solve Poe’s enigma: Jules Verne’s <i>The Sphinx of the Ice-Fields</i> and Lovecraft’s <i>At the Mountains of Madness</i>. Both attempt to make of Poe’s chaos some stable order, Verne through tedious scientistic explanation, Lovecraft by aligning the text with the events of his nihilistic cosmos. But Poe’s ridiculous text just sticks its tongue out, scampers about, clubs them to the ground.<br />
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This idea of the victory of the absurd led me to put Punch at the heart of the book. Punch is as brutal an example of the Carnivalesque prevailing over reason as can be imagined. I was thinking also of Alfred Jarry’s Pere Ubu, who, like Punch, is a scion of the <i>commedia dell'arte</i> figure of Pulcinella, and is also perhaps a descendant, via Lautréamont’s vile Maldoror, of Melmoth’s.<br />
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Arthur Machen’s London tales were also an important influence. In his work, characters may find themselves rounding an ordinary street corner in the middle of the afternoon, only to find themselves confronted with something utterly bizarre. I tried to infuse my book with this sense that you might just happen on something strange and terrible when wandering the city.<br />
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I also wished to weave together yarns pulpish, but believable, with threads of theory, to produce a rough and unevenly textured cloth. In this I was inspired by Angela Carter’s extraordinary <i>The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman</i>, a book in which philosophical musings clash with Sadean picaresque. Among the ideas that shaped my book are Vico’s argument that the nature of history is cyclical, Gilles Deleuze’s discussion of writing as a plunge into the abyss, and Eugene Thacker’s horror of philosophy.<br />
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There were a number of other key literary inspirations. A notion as to the structure of <i>The Wanderer</i> came from Machen’s <i>The Three Imposters</i>, M.P. Shiel’s <i>The Purple Cloud</i> was a particular influence on my thinking about the desolated world I wished to depict, and from Jorge Luis Borges’s short story, ‘The Immortal’, I took a sense of disaffection and amorality in the undying. I also wanted to find an odd and apt voice for my eternal narrator, and cast about looking for models. I ended up taking quite a bit from Thomas Browne’s prose style, and allusions to <i>Hydriotaphia</i> and <i>The Garden of Cyrus</i> crop up in the book. I also took cues from the digressive nature of Laurence Sterne’s eponymous narrator in <i>Tristram Shandy</i>.<br />
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And there was one further influence on the book – eerily, a retrospective one. While editing the book, after completing my first draft, I came across a reference to a novel by Walter Owen, <i>More Things in Heaven…</i>, a book made up of linked narratives about cursed manuscripts, manuscripts that cause readers to spontaneously combust, a book itself supposedly cursed. Intrigued by the seeming resemblance to <i>The Wanderer</i> and undeterred by claims of malign influence, I ordered up <i>More Things in Heaven…</i> at the British Library. On opening it, I felt an eerie shock. The first line of Owen’s work runs: ‘On the 14th July 1935 Mr Cornelius Letherbotham, an English gentleman resident in Buenos Aires, died under extraordinary and distressing circumstances.’ The first line of <i>The Wanderer </i>was (and is): ‘On the 18th December 2010, Simon Peterkin, a British Library archivist and writer of weird tales with a small, if cultic, following, disappeared from his Highgate flat.’ I read on, gripped by a horrid fascination, and discovered more and more correspondences. Then I began dabbling, working more, this time intentional, allusions to <i>More Things in Heaven…</i> into my book.<br />
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Then, in the block I lived in at the time, there was a bad fire. No one was hurt, but the building was gutted. I stopped tinkering after that.<br />
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I guess my main aims for <i>The Wanderer</i> were to evoke a creeping weird horror, but also to create a riotous clash of tones and modes that would in itself be weird, to move from gruesome violence, to mawkish sentimentality, to the absurd and comic, without any respect for a unity of impression.<br />
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Or rather, I should say these would have been my influences, methods, and aims, had I written <i>The Wanderer</i>. But the fact is I found it in the flat of an obscure author of strange stories, Simon Peterkin, after he’d vanished in uncanny circumstances. Initially I thought it a novel by Peterkin, now I’m not sure who wrote it. I merely brought it to publication. And I’m no longer sure that was at all a good idea…<br />
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<b>As a reader of the Weird, how would you describe weird fiction to a reader unfamiliar with the genre? What would you describe as essential reading for fans of the weird, both works of antiquity as well as their modern counterparts?</b><br />
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It is my sense the Weird is defined by a slow realisation, which dawns, dread and ineluctable, that things were never what we thought them to be, that they were always already weird. This is the etymology of the word after all; what the Weird shows us is what is, and has always been, fated for us. This is the main way the Weird differs from horror, I think. In horror, things as they are, are attacked by something which slops forth from some rent in reality. This thing may be defeated, or prevail, and the world will return to normal, or all will be changed utterly, but there is always the sense that the horror is something from outside, from beyond, that disrupts the world. In the Weird the world is shown to have been weird all along – we simply had our eyes closed to its weirdness before. Weird therefore lacks narrative climax, but has more subtlety: the true face of the world can inspire dread, but also ecstasy, or evoke both at the same time.<br />
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I think there are actually two kinds of weird. The first is the Weird as a true genre, a genre of stories in which, in a broadly realistic setting, a speculative element strips the mantle from the world, shows us its numinous flesh. But I think there is a broader category too, in which the general meaning of the word is present alongside its etymology; weird fiction here is simply what’s weird, what doesn’t sit neatly anywhere, is unsettling. This kind of story also shows us that what we thought we could trust – the stability of a narrative, the consistency of tone, sense and reason – can also be enweirded, betray us.<br />
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Because the Weird contains these two possibly categories, it can accommodate the visceral and scalpel-keen horrors of Laird Barron’s <i>The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All</i>, alongside the chilling ecstasies of D.P. Watt’s <i>The Phantasmagorical Imperative</i>, and Anna Tambour’s delightfully delirious <i>Crandolin</i> – to pick at haphazard three brilliant books I’ve recently read, three very different books, but all weird.<br />
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My notion of what is essential weird reading is constantly changing, but off the top of my head, aside from those books I’ve already mentioned, here are a few I think really potent examples of the mode. William Beckford’s dark Arabian Nights fantasia, <i>Vathek</i>, is one of the oddest novels of the original Gothic I’ve read, and is certainly deeply weird. Sheridan Le Fanu’s <i>In a Glass Darkly</i>’s linked tales are harrowing and deeply strange. Stefan Grabiński’s tales, in which the occult and the technological are melded, are uniquely haunting. <i>The Hearing Trumpet</i> by Leonora Carrington is one of the most consistently bizarre novels of all literature, constantly wrong-footing its reader. Kenneth Patchen’s <i>The Journal of Albion Moonlight</i> is a bizarre odyssey across a surreal USA, reminiscent of some of William Burroughs’s novels, a novel of furious compassion and belligerent pacifism. The mundane strangeness of Shirley Jackson’s short fiction is, for me, utterly compelling. Robert Aickman’s work contains more overt supernatural and surreal elements than Jackson’s, but also conveys the horrible sense of a real that is unreliable, or has been compromised somehow. Eric Basso’s <i>The Beak Doctor</i> is an extraordinarily evocative work of fantastical urban decay. Kōbō Abe’s <i>The Face of Another</i> is a delirious and nightmarish work of philosophical horror. <i>The Course of the Heart</i>, by M. John Harrison is one of the most affecting and devastating novels of all weird fiction. And I find the bleak vision of Thomas Ligotti’s tales always gives a shudder.<br />
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As a number of commentators have noted, we seem to be in the midst of a weird renaissance at the moment, and there are a number of recent books that I think have expanded the possibilities of the mode: K.J. Bishop’s <i>The Etched City</i> took the New Weird urban fantasy template and gave it a <i>fin de siècle</i>, decadent mood; Kelly Link’s scintillating stories are bogglingly complex, structurally and generically, but with a real human core to them; Hal Duncan’s work has powerfully queered the mode, and woven in myth and folklore; Reggie Oliver has taken the classic English ghost story and made of it a brutal bludgeon; Mark Valentine’s and John Howard’s Connoisseur stories take the psychic detective tale and infuse it with a revelatory mysticism; John Langan has shown that the weird tale can be made metafictional and playful without sacrificing even a jot of its horror, and Nathan Ballingrud has shown that a spare literary prose style and brilliantly realised characters can be added to the form. And Jeff VanderMeer’s <i>Southern Reach</i> trilogy has demonstrated that the weird can cannibalize other genres, be genuinely horrifying and transmutative at the same time, and can deal both with vast concerns and the minutiae of human life.<br />
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<b>Does film interest you as well? What films do you think best express the sense of The Weird?</b><br />
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I think the Weird has translated really well into cinema – inventive filmmakers have found powerful visual analogues for the linguistic estrangement of weird fiction. Growing up I watched lots of horror films, particularly relishing ’80s slashers, but it wasn’t till I got to university and watched surrealist classics, such as Luis Buñuel’s <i>Un Chien Andalou</i> and Maya Deren’s <i>At Land</i>, that I realized a film could be strange and unsettling, without being overtly frightening.<br />
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David Lynch is a master of using striking visual effects and powerful sound design to enhance the weirdness of his strange, transgressive narratives. They are also utterly tonally inconsistent, rapidly cycling from horror to comedy to melodrama to crime and so on. I think my favourite of his films is probably <i>Inland Empire</i>, though I also love the often underrated <i>Lost Highway</i>, which contains, for me, perhaps the most terrifying moment in all cinema – the protagonist, Fred Madison, meets at a party a mysterious man, who tells him to call home, and when he does so, the mystery man, who still stands before him, picks up…<br />
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Other films with a powerful weird sensibility include: Bella Tarr’s <i>Werckmeister Harmonies</i>, a film based on László Krasznahorkai’s novel, <i>The Melancholy of Resistance</i>, which enhances the strangeness of the central premise – a travelling show displaying a stuffed whale and a Machiavellian dwarf comes to town and rioting ensues – by using just 39 shots in its two and a half hour running time; Andrei Tarkovsky's <i>Stalker</i>, which takes an already very odd sf novel, <i>Roadside Picnic</i> by the Strugatsky brothers, and makes it truly weird by refusing to explain anything and suffusing it with a wan melancholy; <i>The House with the Laughing Windows</i>, directed by Pupi Avati, is a ’70s Italian horror, but is utterly unlike a conventional giallo –muted in its colours and effects, odd and etiolated in its plotting, it’s a captivatingly weird film; Andrzej Żuławski’s <i>Posession</i> is a truly bizarre piece, a harrowing relationship breakdown mixed with highly sexualized Lovecraftian elements, and espionage; <i>Marebito</i> by Takashi Shimizu is a far cry from the director’s <i>Ju-on</i> (<i>The Grudge</i>) films – there is no attempt to explain the speculative elements in supernatural terms, and few jump scares, instead there’s just creeping dread and a plot that mashes together weird influences into an impossible to parse story of manifestations of fear, an underworld beneath Tokyo, and vampire robots; Lars von Trier’s <i>The Kingdom</i> is quite possibly the weirdest TV show ever made, mixing up a number of utterly incongruous elements – a hospital built on cursed ground, a sentimental ghost story, child abuse, silly, and often ribald, comedy, medical drama, the rebirth of a monstrous evil – into something that makes absolutely no sense, but lingers in the mind; and Jessica Hausner’s film, <i>Hotel</i>, which is a masterpiece of restrained terror, taking a series of horror film tropes – a bullied new girl working in a strange hotel in the woods, a cave rumoured to be inhabited by a child-eating witch, another missing girl, whose glasses the protagonist is forced to wear – and inverts, twists them, building up such a cloying tension that a late revelation that a long corridor simply goes nowhere is enough to utterly harrow you.<br />
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<b>Can you tell readers about any upcoming project or plans for the future?</b><br />
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I’ve been told that there exists a set of critical notes and an essay about <i>The Wanderer</i>, or a version of it, written by a student of the weird, who has apparently disappeared; I’m trying to track these down, and get to the bottom of the story. I have also been passed a collection of manuscripts that tell a very strange tale of a London under threat from some demonic source, of the tutelary spirits of the city, of the death of the scholar who discovered the texts, and of parallels with the demise of a decadent Belgian poet during the siege of Paris in 1870. I’m trying to see if I can make head nor tail of this before compiling these; I’m kind of hoping I won’t.Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-79907093816994713972015-01-25T17:48:00.000-05:002015-01-25T17:48:17.920-05:00Review: The Wanderer by Timothy J. Jarvis<br />
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Since starting this blog and becoming part of the weird fiction community, I've been put in contact with many wonderful people, many of whom love to share their love of fiction. While I often have authors and publishers sending me books to review (I should also note, it's clear which ones actually read the blog based on what they propose to send me) I often review books I come across on my own, or books that ping my radar based on recommendations. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wanderer-Timothy-J-Jarvis/dp/1782790691/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422223863&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wanderer+jarvis" target="_blank"><b>The Wanderer</b></a> by <b><a href="https://timothyjjarvis.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Timothy J. Jarvis</a></b> falls into the latter category.<br />
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Much like the mysterious manuscript that makes up the majority of the book's narrative, The Wanderer was something I stumbled upon. A mention of it on the <b><a href="http://ligotti.net/" target="_blank">TLO message boards</a></b>, an inclusion on a year's best list on a fellow review blog. The cover isn't too busy, and besides title and author it includes a creepy drawing of a Punch & Judy puppet stage. Puppets have long been a macabre fascination of mine, as well as several weird fiction writers and fans that I know, and since I've started reading weird fiction Punch has shown up a couple times and always gives me a chill. There's something inherently dark and twisted about the odd-voiced little demon of a puppet.<br />
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Jarvis, whose name struck me as familiar, is someone who knows weird fiction. He truly GETS it. His nonfiction articles published on the <b><a href="http://weirdfictionreview.com/" target="_blank">Weird Fiction Review</a></b> website offer further proof of this,<br />
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<b>The Wanderer</b> is one of the best books of 2014, hands down. Weird fiction is dominated by short stories and novellas, and it's rare that a novel length piece of work comes along that is as engaging throughout as this book.<br />
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<i>After obscure author of strange stories, Simon Peterkin, vanishes in bizarre circumstances, a typescript, of a text entitled, The Wanderer, is found in his flat.</i></div>
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<i>The Wanderer is a weird document. On a dying Earth, in the far-flung future, a man, an immortal, types the tale of his aeon-long life as prey, as a hunted man; he tells of his quitting the Himalayas, his sanctuary for thousands of years, to return to his birthplace, London, to write the memoirs; and writes, also, of the night he learned he was cursed with life without cease, an evening in a pub in that city, early in the twenty-first century, a gathering to tell of eldritch experiences undergone.</i></div>
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<i>Is The Wanderer a fiction, perhaps Peterkin's last novel, or something far stranger? Perhaps more account than story?</i></div>
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The book opens with a Foreword and a Note On The Text to set the stage for the bulk of the book, which is the found typescript. Jarvis tells a sprawling, epic story and deftly weaves together a plot taking place over several millennia. The script is written in the far future, near the Earth's end, and tell's the narrator's story in a non-linear fashion. Parts of his story take place in our modern day, parts during his years of wandering the Earth, and others telling of the moments he is writing the manuscript. </div>
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The narrator's prose is often rambling, and includes some interesting syntax (consciously, as the Notes on the Text mention this) which lends a sort of authenticity to the entire book, allowing the frame narrative and book to work together towards becoming more than just a piece of fiction, but an excellent piece of meta-fiction.</div>
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Jarvis explores many ideas over the course of his novel: what happens when man crosses borders into strange places he is not meant to be, what is it like to be hunted and live in fear, how does immortality over the ages affect a person? The novel is filled with scenes of terror, scenes of awe, and a glimpse into an ordinary man's millenia-spanning world.</div>
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I say this is my favorite novel of 2014, and it's a statement I stand by. Jarvis has chops, and <b>The Wanderer</b> is an epic sized tale of weirdness and horror that no one should miss. It's terrifying, mind-bending, beautiful and unforgettable.</div>
Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-70590085389122812922015-01-22T15:30:00.000-05:002015-01-22T15:30:00.971-05:00Review: Skillute Cycle by S.P Miskowski<div>
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Enter Skillute, WA: a small, blue collar town that is pretty much ignored by outsiders. A rural black hole, a town that grabs ahold of you and doesn't let go. Men grow old and pass the time by drinking beer, and the women grow up and pass the time playing bingo and gossiping among one another. The town has some dark moments in its history, and the books themselves give a look at Skillute over 50+ years.<div>
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The main narrative doesn't focus as much on the town itself, as it does a select few people populating the town, and how they're affected by living in such a place. At the heart of the narrative are three women: Ethel, Beverly and Marietta. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Knock-S-P-Miskowski/dp/061558070X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1421936992&sr=8-3&keywords=sp+miskowski&pebp=1421936997067&peasin=061558070X" target="_blank">Knock Knock</a></b>, the first novel, follows these women over a 50+ year period, starting when they are young girls.</div>
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<b>Knock Knock</b> is a powerful debut, opening strong and ending with a punch. The three girls at the heart of the story are revolted by a health class video and from a fellow student's story about how her mother's pregnancy is enacting gross changes on the woman. The three set out into the woods, where they conduct a small ritual and make a pact. Unbeknownst to them at the time, there is something of a cruel and dark nature that they awake, setting in motion events that take several decades to come to an end. </div>
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Miskowski's novel follows the girls as they grow old, all while something dark is stirring under the surface. Beverly has an edge to her, a sarcasm that seems a self defense mechanism. She's strong, and learns some of life's hard lessons early on when she has a teen pregnancy, which her parents hide until the baby is born and can be given away for adoption. Over the years she marries, and becomes a widow, yet she remains strong and independent.</div>
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Ethel grows up in a broken household. Her parents are drunks, and her mother has a cruel streak, bringing other men home and spending much of her time out at bars. Tragedy strikes early, leaving Ethel to be raised by an aunt. Ethel is the meek one of the bunch. She's quiet, polite. She goes along with things. It isn't until middle age that Ethel finds love and marries, and even gets pregnant. It's clear from the start that something is wrong with her daughter.</div>
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Marietta is the mysterious one. The girl raised by her aunt, a midwife that many refer to as being a witch. Strange things happen around Marietta, and she sees things no one else sees. </div>
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The narrative's strength lies in restraint. Much of it is ambiguous. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Ethel is home alone with her baby, Connie Sara. The baby reminds her of her mother, and just silently stares at her, following her from room to room. Ethel becomes frightened, and is then torn. Is something wrong with her or is something wrong with the baby? Is it only in her head? Maybe she's not fit to be a mother? Maybe everyone is right and she was too old to have a baby? Why does her husband not seem to have a difficult time like she does? The paranoia and fear is so well handled that the reader doesn't know what to believe. </div>
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Miskowski does a fine job of giving the reader a glimpse into the horrors of womanhood: Beverly's teen pregnancy and forced adoption, Marietta's abusive brute of a husband and sacrifices she has to make, Ethel and the horrors of parenting. These are trials that many women have had to face, and are all too real.</div>
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<b>Knock Knock</b> can be read alone, and is one of the better weird horror novels of the past few years, but the full story unfolds over three more novellas, all of which are published by<a href="http://www.omniumgatherumbooks.com/" target="_blank"> Omnium Gatherum</a>.</div>
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The first novella in the cycle, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Delphine-Dodd-S-P-Miskowski/dp/0615698182/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1421936992&sr=8-5&keywords=sp+miskowski" target="_blank">Delphine Dodd</a></b>, is a prequel and is a first person account as told by Marietta's aunt Delphine. One of the more interesting characters in Knock Knock, Delphine Dodd only appeared briefly as a wise old woman. This novella gives readers her backstory. The majority of the novella follows Delphine as a child, when she, along with her sister, are dropped off at their grandmothers house. Her grandmother is a healer, midwife, "witch of the woods" type, and it is from her that Delphine learns her trade. The other part of the novel follows Delphine a few decades later, when she moves to Skillute, and shows the history of the malevolent force in <b>Knock Knock</b>.</div>
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The second novella, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Astoria-S-P-Miskowski/dp/0615840493/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421936992&sr=8-2&keywords=sp+miskowski" target="_blank">Astoria</a></b>, takes place during the time frame of <b>Knock Knock</b>, and follows Ethel after we last saw her. This gives more closure to her character, and although it mostly takes place outside of Skillute's borders, it may be my favorite of the bunch. The narrative is surreal, with small oddities bringing a strong sense of doom throughout, leading to a wonderful conclusion. Miskowski is at her best here.</div>
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The cycle ends with <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Light-Skillute-Cycle-3/dp/0692275282/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421936992&sr=8-1&keywords=sp+miskowski" target="_blank">In the Light</a></b>, which takes place several years after the events of <b>Knock Knock</b>. The first half of the novella focuses on Ruth, a young new girl who recently moved to Skillute, and the second half follows Henry Colquitt, a former pastor and son of Marietta. Everything comes full circle in this volume, providing readers with a solid conclusion. </div>
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S.P. Miskowski has become one of my favorite writers with these books. Fans of weird fiction, and dark small town stories should pick these up without hesitation. While I'm sad my time in Skillute has come to an end, I look forward to seeing what Miskowski does next.</div>
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Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-30325651905357879752015-01-02T13:39:00.001-05:002015-01-02T13:39:37.120-05:00Interview: Helen Marshall<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.helen-marshall.com/" target="_blank">Helen Marshall</a></b> is one of the finest practitioners of strange fiction working today. I recently read and <a href="http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2014/12/review-gifts-for-one-who-comes-after-by.html" target="_blank">reviewed her latest collection</a>, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gifts-One-Who-Comes-After/dp/1771483024/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420223904&sr=8-1&keywords=gifts+for+the+one+who+comes+after" target="_blank">Gifts For The One Who Comes After</a> </b>and found it to be one of the best fiction collections of 2015.<br />
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<b>Gifts For The One Who Comes After is one of the finest fiction collections of the year. The themes of legacy and of family are a common thread throughout. What is important to you about these themes and what made you want to explore them?</b><br />
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Let me first say, thanks very much for saying that! It’s tremendously kind! I suppose, in some ways, the themes in <i>Gifts</i> followed on naturally from my first collection, <i>Hair Side, Flesh Side</i>. In that collection, I was exploring issues of history in a broad sense, which no doubt came from the fact that I was in the final stages of a PhD in book history and medieval studies. I was interested in the physical traces of history, and in books particularly. But when I started writing <i>Gifts</i>, my brother had just had his second child; the question of family, what binds them together, what is passed on from generation to generation, seemed very important to me. And when you think about it, it’s just another way of thinking about history—not textbook history, but personal histories, the stories you hear from your grandparents, the fables you make up for your children. And in some ways it seemed like a warmer sort of history, closer to the oral tradition.<br />
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<b>Have you always had a love for the fantastic? What brought this about?</b><br />
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I started reading fantasy at a very early age: E Nesbit and Susan Cooper, Patricia C Wrede, Scott O’Dell, Lloyd Alexander. When I got older then I moved onto Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, Charles de Lint and Guy Gavriel Kay. My mom would read to my sister and me every night until we were old enough to read ourselves. With me it never really stopped. I was a <i>reader</i>—that peculiar type of child who never stops reading, no matter what. If my family was going to drive from my hometown in Sarnia to Toronto, about three hours away, then I’d get to choose a new book from the bookstore and that would be the best part of the trip. I remember very vividly that my grade one teacher brought over a girl for me to play with at recess because I was always stuck in a book. The whole situation confused me. I didn’t know what to do with her. And I hadn’t been lonely at all. <br />
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<b>What were some of the authors and books that you've read throughout your life that have stuck with you the most?</b><br />
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I mentioned some of them above but, oddly, although those writers made up much of my childhood, they don’t have such a strong connection with what I write now. There’s a part of me that wishes I felt more comfortable with high fantasy. I have a PhD in medieval studies and that seems the perfect background to go write a big, fat, epic trilogy. But I can’t—or I can’t yet. I don’t understand, narratively, how those books work. Or I don’t feel it intuitively the way I can with other kinds of stories. But picking at random amongst the works that have stuck with me, Guy Kay’s <i>Fionavar Tapestries</i> would rank highly. It seemed to me that there was tremendous humanity written into his mythic reworkings, particular the Arthur and Guinevere strand. Tom Stoppard’s <i>Arcadia</i> is another. I came to it much later in life, as a graduate student on one of my first research trips to London, and it still strikes me as one of the finest pieces of literature ever produced. Just watching it makes me tear up—not even at the sad bits, just because it’s so damn good. The whopper of a novel It was my first introduction to Stephen King and it has a profound effect on my writing. King is a master of the yarn. I read recently that there are stories you fall into effortlessly and stories that give pleasure in the work you do: King is one of the most engrossing storytellers I’ve ever encountered and the way he writes about children and growing up always moves me and charms me at the same time. And then Robert Shearman’s collection <i>Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical</i> made me fall in love with the form of the short story. Like King, Shearman has an easy, offhand style but there’s such deadly precision in what he does. And I had never encountered absurdist fiction before that—there was something about it that instantly chimed with my own sense of humour, which is both very whimsical and quite dark.<br />
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<b>Of your own fiction, what are your favorites and why? </b><br />
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It’s strange because when I think back on my stories, what I remember most about them is the process rather than the final product. And so I do have favourites—of course I do!—but they’re my favourites because of the way I wrote them. In that respect, “Lessons in the Raising of Household Objects” is probably at the top for me. I wrote that story for Kelly Link and Gavin Grant at Clarion West, an intensive six-week workshop I did in 2012. And I was coming up on my deadline to submit but the story I had been trying to get to work—a complex beast of a thing I never managed to crack—completely dissolved. I was trying to force it but I never had the right sense of what I was doing. So in a panic I went to the only part of the story I had written that seemed like it had any life, and that turned out to be the beginning of “Household Objects”, a story about a little girl who adopts two cans of tomato soup. What followed was a mad rush of gleeful typing where I said to myself, “no rules except at the beginning of every section something must happen.”<br />
But some of my other favourites in <i>Gifts for the One Who Comes After</i> are “Supply Limited, Act Now”, about a group of kids who get a working shrink ray, because it’s much lighter. Also—miniature dogs! And from <i>Hair Side, Flesh Side</i> my favourite story is “Sanditon”, about a woman who finds a lost manuscript of Jane Austen written on the inside of her skin. That was the first story I wrote where I really felt as if I tapped into something that was my own, something that felt new and distinctly me rather than an experiment in someone else’s style.<br />
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<b>If an unfamiliar reader asks you about your fiction, how would you best describe it to them?</b><br />
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Clumsily, for the most part. I still don’t have a good answer to this question and in part that’s because my fiction is quite changeable. Sometimes it’s surrealistic, sometimes more openly fantastic or horrific, sometimes poetic. I don’t know. Many people call me a horror writer but I have a sort of push-pull relationship with horror. I quite enjoy certain kinds of horror fiction: ghost stories, the strange and the weird. But there are aspects of the horror genre that I find myself resisting: namely, brutality and open violence, excessive gore, the sometimes shoddy characterizations of women. But I suppose that’s the best reason to be part of a genre—because you feel invested but you still have something to push against.<br />
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<b>In another recent interview you said you were a lover of single malt scotch. I'm also quite a fan, and have been considering writing up whiskey (or booze in general) pairings to go with books. What are your favorite whiskeys? If you had to choose a whiskey to pair with each of your ChiZine collections, which would you choose?</b><br />
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I’d choose Glen Morangie to go with <i>Gifts for the One Who Comes After</i>: it’s sweet on top but it’s still got a bit of smoke and fire to it underneath. <i>Hair Side, Flesh Side</i> would probably be a dirty martini. There’s a touch more bitterness there, but also it’s a bit naughty. (When I was writing <i>Hair Side</i>, I eventually ran out of gin and vermouth and came up with a pretty poor substitute—olive juice and tequila. I’m not sure I recommend it.)<br />
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<b>What are you currently reading? Do you have any recommendations for fans of the weird and fantastic?</b><br />
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I’ve been working my way through all of David Mitchell’s books. What a find! He’s brilliant! I started off with <i>The Bone Clocks</i> but in all honesty my favourite of his is probably <i>Black Swan Green</i>, a completely realistic novel about a kid growing up in Worcestershire in the eighties. The writing is extraordinary. As for recommendations for fans of the weird and fantastic, well, I discovered Robert Aickman’s short stories this year and he’s wonderful: dry, witty and very, very odd. Julio Cortázar was an Argentinian short story writer who I like very, very much. He wrote a short story called “Letter to a Lady in Paris” in the collection <i>Blow-up</i> about a tenant who starts vomiting up rabbits. His work is so wonderfully surreal and often hilarious. More people should be reading him, I think. I also came across a fantastic collection of graphic short stories called <i>Through the Woods</i> by the Canadian web cartoonist Emily Carroll. She’s a wonderful inventor of grisly little ghost stories and her use of space is amazing. You can also find her work online at <a href="http://www.emcarroll.com/">http://www.emcarroll.com/</a><br />
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<b>What's the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you, and/or the weirdest place you've ever been?</b><br />
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I visited the island of Delos last year. It is hard to explain how amazingly cool it is: it’s one of the most geologically stable places in the Mediterranean and so, as a result, it became a holy sanctuary and was the reputed birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. The site, which is huge, is filled with numerous temples belonging to the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, my favourite of which was the temple of Dionysus, which featured relief carvings of chickens with entirely phallic heads. I ended up wandering around with my notepad for most of the day, writing roughly a series of passages which eventually became “All My Love, a Fishhook”. But near the museum there was a large forested area that used to be the sacred lake of Zeus, which apparently held the spermatozoa until it was drained on account of the mosquitoes which were breeding there. There were benches set up so I sat down to write. About twenty minutes in, I heard chanting. There were men and women in bright orange robes all around who were getting on with a ritual of some sort—apparently, so the guard at the museum told me, they were cultists and they regularly performed their rites there.<br />
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<b>What can readers expect from you in the future?</b><br />
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I have a couple of stories coming out in collections in 2015 including “The Vault of Heaven” in <i>Aickman’s Heirs</i>, edited by Simon Strantzas; “Stud” in <i>Twenty-First Century Bestiary</i> edited by Heather Wood; and a story in <i>Cassilda’s Song</i>, edited by Joe Pulver. I’m also hard at work on a novel called <i>Icarus Kids</i> about children who come back from the dead with wings. I hope to have that finished off in a month or so!Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-61356460739684260142014-12-19T15:30:00.000-05:002014-12-19T15:30:00.741-05:00Review: Written in Darkness by Mark Samuels<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been a fan of <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Machen-Other-Weird-Tales/dp/1907681051/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1419005276&sr=8-3&keywords=mark+samuels" target="_blank">Mark Samuels</a></b> ever since I read <b><a href="http://www.tartaruspress.com/samuels.htm" target="_blank">The White Hands</a></b> in early 2013. Afterwards, I went on to buy every book he's written, even hunting down a copy of his long out of print first collection <b>Black Altars</b>. <b><u><a href="http://www.egaeuspress.com/Written_in_Darkness.html" target="_blank">Written in Darkness</a></u></b> sees Samuels teaming up with <a href="http://www.egaeuspress.com/News_-_Egaeus_Press.html" target="_blank"><b>Egaeus Press</b></a>, a publisher who is putting out some of the finest books weird fiction has to offer.</div>
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The nine stories within are sure to please any Samuels fan. As usual with his works, the prose has a certain formality, bringing to mind some old school weird fiction. They are narrated in an erudite manner, which seems to fit the image of the lonely academic, which lends itself to the themes of much of his fiction. In the introduction, author <b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggie_Oliver" target="_blank">Reggie Oliver</a></b> used a phrase from Samuels' The White Hands, which sums this up well: “I believe that mental isolation is the essence of weird fiction.” The characters in his stories are isolated, they tend to be loners who don't fit into modern society. They struggle with many concepts and themes: decay, change, technology. </div>
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My favorite stories:</div>
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<i>The Other Tenant</i> follows a man with no friends or family, on early retirement due to an illness. He is not a likable man, and is rather honest about only caring for himself. At night he is bothered what seems to be a television program or recording of a very dubious nature that is playing in the neighboring apartment.</div>
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Technology, and more specifically the dehumanization due to technology, comes into play in <i>An Hourglass of the Soul</i> and <i>Outside Interference</i>, which are my two favorite stories in the book. In the first story a man is sought out and hired by a new company, and within days is sent on a business trip to a remote area in Mongolia. The pace is fast, and readers are just as flustered as the protagonist as he is quickly whisked away on his trip, arriving only to be taken straight to the job site where he finds something he isn't expecting. <i>Outside Interference</i> stands out for not following a lone person, but focusing on an entire group. It takes place in a recently abandoned office building in an abandoned business park, which makes for an excellently creepy venue. A few slacker types are left behind in a company's move in order to transfer their paper records onto the computer. Things seem bad enough when a blizzard begins and they fear being snowed in, but when the elevator door opens and unleashes what was once their minibus driver it is apparent that the blizzard is the least of their worries. Both stories show a fear of technology and what it can do to people, and the "static zombies" of <i>Outside Interference</i> are rather symbolic of today's smartphone culture.</div>
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While the previous two stories both included some corporate, Ligotti-esque horror, it is <i>The Ruins of Reality</i> which, to me, is the most Ligottian story of the bunch. A decayed, urban setting is filled with the desperate dregs of society and when recruitment posters for the mysterious "N Factory" show up around town, they are overtaken by a wary sense of hope. The story is dreamlike and surreal, and what seems like a possible answer to the problems of the people seems to instead be a fate much worse.</div>
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In <i>My World Has No Memories</i> a man wakes on a boat in the middle of an ocean. He doesn't remember anything, and can't seem to get his bearings due to malfunctioning of compasses and stars that don't match his star charts. His predicament is frightening enough in itself, but once he discovers a glass jar filled with some of migraine and vision inducing growth, he learns what frightening really is.</div>
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<i>My Heretical Existence</i> first appeared in an anthology in tribute to Bruno Schulz, and is a story of a man seeking something more, when he stumbled onto a mysterious, hidden area of the city, and a tavern full of very different people. He then begins his own transformation.</div>
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The collection finishes with <i>In Eternity Two Lines Intersect</i>, a story in tribute to Arthur Machen. A man is released from some sort of institution and takes up residence in an apartment of a missing man. He tells the building's owner that he doesn't have to throw away the missing man's effects, that he will take care of them himself. As he settles into his new home he becomes fixated on these belongings, a church across the street, and an area of woodland on a nearby hill. As the days wear on he finds his thought patterns changing, and begins to wear the missing man's clothes, which fit perfectly. He reads his books. He begins to have dreams and visions, sometimes waking up from dreams clutching an object he was not in possession of before. Reality and dream become blurred as the man has a spiritual awakening, leading others into the woods for a celebration of transcendence.</div>
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Overall this is a very enjoyable, if short, collection, and in line with other offerings from Egaeus Press the book is very aesthetically pleasing. Titles are done in calligraphy by Geoff Cox and the book features haunting endpapers. As of today there should still be some copies left, so <a href="http://www.egaeuspress.com/Written_in_Darkness.html" target="_blank"><b>order direct from the publisher</b></a> to secure one before you miss out.</div>
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Other books by Mark Samuels reviewed by The Arkham Digest: <b><a href="http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2013/04/review-black-altars-by-mark-samuels.html" target="_blank">Black Altars</a></b>, <b><a href="http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2013/02/review-white-hands-and-other-weird.html" target="_blank">The White Hands</a></b>, <b><a href="http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2013/05/review-glyphotech-and-other-macabre.html" target="_blank">Glyphotech</a></b>.</div>
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Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-16979294166617771642014-12-15T15:30:00.000-05:002014-12-15T15:30:01.273-05:00Review: Gifts For The One Who Comes After by Helen Marshall<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.helen-marshall.com/" target="_blank">Helen Marshall</a></b> is an author I have heard of the last few years, but I had yet to read anything by her until this summer, when I sat down with <b><a href="http://ellendatlow.com/" target="_blank">Ellen Datlow</a></b>'s <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fearful-Symmetries-Ellen-Datlow/dp/1771481935/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418648773&sr=8-1&keywords=fearful+symmetries" target="_blank">Fearful Symmetries</a></b>. Marshall's story, In The Year of Omens was one of the highlights of the anthology for me, and therefore had me quite excited to check out her forthcoming collection.<br />
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Published by the ever wonderful <b><a href="http://chizinepub.com/" target="_blank">ChiZine Publications</a></b>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gifts-One-Who-Comes-After/dp/1771483024/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418648764&sr=8-1&keywords=helen+marshall" target="_blank"><b>Gifts for the One Who Comes After</b></a> contains seventeen stories without a mediocre one in the bunch.<br />
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Marshall is a masterful storyteller, penning stories that manage to be creepy and beautiful at the same time. Her fiction hits hard emotionally, bringing to mind the debut collections from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/North-American-Lake-Monsters-Stories/dp/1618730592/ref=pd_sim_b_45?ie=UTF8&refRID=0N2JM2ZAX384FQG9A455" target="_blank"><b>Nathan Ballingrud</b></a> and <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Engines-Desire-Tales-Other-Horrors/dp/1590213246/ref=pd_sim_b_26?ie=UTF8&refRID=0N2JM2ZAX384FQG9A455" target="_blank">Livia Llewellyn</a></b>. The stories explore many themes, among them family, dysfunction, inherited guilt, growing up, and regrets. Her writing comes across as honest, and fearless, qualities which elevate her writing into the topmost tier of weird fiction being written today.<br />
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A few of my favorite stories:<br />
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In <i>The Hanging Game</i> a woman revisits her childhood and a dangerous game her and others would play. The game was a sort of sacred rite of passage, and more of a ritual than a game. Inherited guilt also comes into play and the story explores the idea of children paying for the sins of their parents.<br />
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<i>Secondhand Magic</i> opens with what seems to be a classic, mid-century, suburban neighborhood, but things take a darker turn when a kid magician gets on the bad side of a spiteful woman who knows how to use real magic. It's a heartbreaking story.<br />
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<i>Lessons in The Raising of Household Objects</i> is another story where family is front and center. A young girl narrates a story in which her mother is pregnant with twins and the girl is terrified of the twins and of their imminent birth. The story plays out like a nightmare, an anxiety dream the girl is having, as the story goes further and further into the surreal.<br />
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Family is at the forefront again in <i>All My Love, a Fishhook</i>. A man tries to come to terms with the troubled relationship he has with his father and his own son.<br />
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The title story is one of the best weird fiction stories of 2014. A town is plagued by "omens," Everyone has their own individual one, which ends in their death. The main character is a young teenager, and is struggling as she wants her own omen and feels left behind as hers refuses to manifest. Another beautiful, dark, sad story.<br />
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<i>The Santa Claus Parade</i> has forever changed the way I will view street corner and department store Santas.<br />
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<i>The Zhanell Adler Brass Spyglass</i> is another sad story about a boy struggling to cope with his parent's divorce.<br />
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In <i>Crossroads and Gateways</i> Marshall makes use of African myth to tell a fable of love.<br />
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Readers take a trip to a creepy South African house in <i>Ship House</i>, another story in which family and inherited guilt take the forefront. This one is also run through with the creepy Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale.<br />
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<i>Supply Limited, Act Now</i> is a melancholic story of growing up, and follows a group of young boys as they get their hands on a real shrink ray.<br />
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More family tension exists in <i>In The Moonlight, the Skin of You</i>, which follows a girl who stays with her father after her mother abandons them. They live in a rugged, logging community, and things change when a mysterious girl arrives.<br />
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<i>The Gallery of the Eliminated</i> is about a boy whose father brings him to a mysterious, magical place in the wake of a family tragedy.<br />
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Helen Marshall's writing evokes feeling of love, beauty, guilt, yearning, regret, and sadness. She understands the complex family relationships that exists and explores them fearlessly. This is a must have collection for fans of weird literature, and is easily one of 2014's best books.<br />
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<br />Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-64690934261764006752014-12-10T19:11:00.000-05:002014-12-10T19:11:00.130-05:00Giveaway Winner<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxjIHWSwDIM1uX4pn7HFVcUETkqtbUC4yRXi467G2ChjQa8kFZYcQt7SNNskKx9dTJFV4aK-zrkOIKGiyj05c3G2fxAg1lJ6gmCZw13cIN_q82GkAjmSP-9lOu9rjWVx_Ny0ayS9k0Mhwf/s1600/10846274_765365853534312_6073420426463288231_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxjIHWSwDIM1uX4pn7HFVcUETkqtbUC4yRXi467G2ChjQa8kFZYcQt7SNNskKx9dTJFV4aK-zrkOIKGiyj05c3G2fxAg1lJ6gmCZw13cIN_q82GkAjmSP-9lOu9rjWVx_Ny0ayS9k0Mhwf/s1600/10846274_765365853534312_6073420426463288231_n.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_vqcQc0MFVf6hixzwoVi2ibxnLT7cKh7LPuGjncOkwPb3XCPl1OPFbfky_PtFCIWNq9HlUnJTGahGRM3OIfztLqC5KJHXOxy3wrmgzbW-pinjmhOqpLornVhBIVg9xLbeW5kIBsayd59/s1600/WTSAR_313px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_vqcQc0MFVf6hixzwoVi2ibxnLT7cKh7LPuGjncOkwPb3XCPl1OPFbfky_PtFCIWNq9HlUnJTGahGRM3OIfztLqC5KJHXOxy3wrmgzbW-pinjmhOqpLornVhBIVg9xLbeW5kIBsayd59/s1600/WTSAR_313px.jpg" height="400" width="248" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>And the winner is Claire Gilligan!</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Thanks to all who entered!</b></span></div>
Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-42557278426237355842014-12-07T18:21:00.000-05:002014-12-07T18:47:16.686-05:00Giveaway: 2014 Year's End Mega-Giveaway<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYNy9SiPAHzqh_SnNKjJ5bQCUoEmEcbbWQg5kr74-DFi57H7wuVGUgIt8Lrt9IDZr2sgtsN5vZ57NcxP2N3kodoHK9QdjhEkOim38S05_EUUXpOyO84bEncuPl6KmFe5S7uzDtw6BMDHuB/s1600/10846274_765365853534312_6073420426463288231_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYNy9SiPAHzqh_SnNKjJ5bQCUoEmEcbbWQg5kr74-DFi57H7wuVGUgIt8Lrt9IDZr2sgtsN5vZ57NcxP2N3kodoHK9QdjhEkOim38S05_EUUXpOyO84bEncuPl6KmFe5S7uzDtw6BMDHuB/s1600/10846274_765365853534312_6073420426463288231_n.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_vqcQc0MFVf6hixzwoVi2ibxnLT7cKh7LPuGjncOkwPb3XCPl1OPFbfky_PtFCIWNq9HlUnJTGahGRM3OIfztLqC5KJHXOxy3wrmgzbW-pinjmhOqpLornVhBIVg9xLbeW5kIBsayd59/s1600/WTSAR_313px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_vqcQc0MFVf6hixzwoVi2ibxnLT7cKh7LPuGjncOkwPb3XCPl1OPFbfky_PtFCIWNq9HlUnJTGahGRM3OIfztLqC5KJHXOxy3wrmgzbW-pinjmhOqpLornVhBIVg9xLbeW5kIBsayd59/s1600/WTSAR_313px.jpg" height="320" width="199" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Year's End Giveaway</b></span></div>
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<b>Collections: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ana-Kai-Tangata-Damned-Doomed/dp/1878252089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417993862&sr=8-1&keywords=ana+kai+tangata" target="_blank">Ana Kai Tangata</a> by Scott Nicolay</b></div>
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<b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Came-at-Twilight/dp/1937128873/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417993870&sr=1-1&keywords=the+lord+came+at+twilight" target="_blank">The Lord Came At Twilight</a> by <a href="http://www.daniel-mills.net/" target="_blank">Daniel Mills</a> (ARC with variant cover)</b></div>
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<b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gateways-Abomination-Matthew-M-Bartlett/dp/1500346721/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417993877&sr=1-1&keywords=gateways+to+abomination" target="_blank">Gateways to Abomination</a> by <a href="http://www.matthewmbartlett.com/" target="_blank">Matthew M. Bartlett</a></b></div>
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<b>Novels/Novellas: Far From Streets by <a href="http://griffinwords.com/" target="_blank">Mike Griffin</a> (very limited printing novella)</b></div>
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<b> Children of Light by <a href="http://www.daniel-mills.net/" target="_blank">Daniel Mills</a> (very limited printing novella)</b></div>
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<b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Hotel-Novel-Scott-Kenemore/dp/1940456088/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417993973&sr=1-1&keywords=grand+hotel" target="_blank">The Grand Hotel</a> by <a href="http://scottkenemore.com/" target="_blank">Scott Kenemore</a></b></div>
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<b>Anthologies: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Sorrow-Tribute-David-Current/dp/0615990045/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417993946&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=mighty+in+sorro" target="_blank">Mighty In Sorrow</a> edited by <a href="http://dynatoxministries.com/" target="_blank">Jordan Krall</a></b></div>
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<b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/New-Gothic-Dont-Embrace-Darkness/dp/1908983051/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417993451&sr=8-1&keywords=the+new+gothic" target="_blank">The New Gothic</a> edited by <a href="http://www.stoneskinpress.com/" target="_blank">Beth K. Lewis</a></b></div>
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<b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Schemers-Betrayal-Knows-No-Boundaries/dp/1908983043/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1417993856&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Schemers</a> edited by <a href="http://robin-d-laws.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Robin D. Laws</a></b></div>
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<b>Poetry: He Walks on All Fours by Matt Bialer</b><br />
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<b>Nonfiction: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/When-Stars-Are-Right-Spirituality/dp/0987992880/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417995909&sr=8-1&keywords=when+the+stars+are+right" target="_blank">When The Stars Are Right</a> by <a href="http://martianmigrainepress.com/s-r-jones" target="_blank">Scott R. Jones</a> (shipped separately) </b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>To enter send an e-mail to <u><a href="mailto:contest@arkhamdigest.com">contest@arkhamdigest.com</a></u> with '2014' in the subject line. Include your snail mail address.</b> Contest lasts for three days, and I will randomly draw the winner Wednesday evening. </span></div>
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Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-91987377953332431262014-11-07T13:47:00.002-05:002014-11-07T13:48:16.369-05:00Review: The Grand Hotel by Scott Kenemore<br />
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<b><a href="http://scottkenemore.com/" target="_blank">Scott Kenemore</a></b> is an author that up until now I wasn't familiar with. He penned a few zombie novels, as well as a humorous nonfiction series, <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Zombie-Better-Living-Through/dp/1602391874/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415385740&sr=1-3" target="_blank">The Zen of Zombies</a></i></b>, but it's with <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Hotel-Novel-Scott-Kenemore/dp/1940456088/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1415383788&sr=8-4&keywords=the+grand+hotel" target="_blank">The Grand Hotel</a></i></b> that Mr. Kenemore leaves the zombie genre to try a different kind of novel.<br />
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The Grand Hotel is a dark fantasy novel with elements of horror and humor sewn throughout. The frame story is narrated by the night clerk of a mysterious, labyrinthian hotel. The man, much like The Grand Hotel, is much more than he appears to be, and it's this mystery that forms the skeleton of the novel, although it's the meat on the bones which is truly interesting.<br />
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When a tour group arrives, the clerk takes them on a tour of the hotel, meeting several hotel inhabitants along the way. The bulk of the book is comprised of these episodes, in which different hotel guests, each eccentric and special in their own way, narrate their personal stories. These stories vary in content, but almost all involve the supernatural in some way. The stories are akin to fables, and the clerk makes a game out of the tour with a young girl in the tour group, asking her after each story what the true point of the story is.<br />
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Some of the stories are stronger than others, but overall will fail to pierce the armor of the hardened horror reader. Some are weird enough to be memorable, but others are rather forgettable, and the hotel's guests are the same way, although they are often more interesting than their stories. One old lady spends her time alone in a ballroom with a variety of tuxedo'd mannequins on wheels in which she dances with, although her story doesn't live up to this interesting set piece, and is instead a forgettable yarn about a young nobleman and a mysterious gypsy girl she was friends with. A former television chef tells a story about a haunted Scottish castle where his ghost-hunting cooking show had it's last show. The narrative voices used for the stories seem a bit forced as well. While Mr. Kenemore may have been going for a more natural feel with how the speakers tell their tales, I couldn't help but find myself straining to immerse myself in the individual stories.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kenemore's novel mixed dark fantasy elements with some whimsy, and while it can be an entertaining read it doesn't hit it's potential. Many of the twists in the frame story are spotted early on, leading to a lackluster conclusion. Kenemore did make interesting use of the Indian collection of stories </span>Vetala Panchavimshati (or Baital Pachisi) which gives an interesting bent to the novel, but not enough to make the book a standout. I'm not saying the novel is bad, because I don't believe that's the case, and I see a lot of potential in Mr. Kenemore. The novel is worth a read, but there's nothing there that warrants a revisit either. Regardless, I will be paying close attention to Scott Kenemore's future books.Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-59317561422342370332014-10-15T15:30:00.000-04:002014-10-15T15:30:00.312-04:00Review: No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX9v0HpPGEb4GqqpKrGpPBDioBesp6IxSp8U74nL9DlAWpZ7jMKjAaczThET2uPYKaNhD2yN03KZeaXFnIxPmNzGBEtlW9vSMHoipPZRWQ1eqSgJRD1xhfQzocMBM-bIgmJxO1Vi_VcHMW/s1600/No_gets_out_25_v.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX9v0HpPGEb4GqqpKrGpPBDioBesp6IxSp8U74nL9DlAWpZ7jMKjAaczThET2uPYKaNhD2yN03KZeaXFnIxPmNzGBEtlW9vSMHoipPZRWQ1eqSgJRD1xhfQzocMBM-bIgmJxO1Vi_VcHMW/s1600/No_gets_out_25_v.jpg" height="400" width="263" /></a></div>
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<b><a href="http://www.adamlgnevill.com/" target="_blank">Adam Nevill</a></b> has fast become one of the big names of horror fiction. His first novel was published in 2004, and since his second novel in 2010 he has delivered one horror novel per year, with short stories appearing sporadically. <a href="http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2013/10/review-house-of-small-shadows-by-adam.html" target="_blank">Last year I reviewed</a> <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/House-Small-Shadows-Adam-Nevill/dp/1250041279/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=" target="_blank">House of Small Shadows</a></i></b> (my favorite of his six novels) and then <a href="http://www.arkhamdigest.com/2014/07/interview-adam-nevill-on-house-of-small.html" target="_blank">conducted an interview with Mr. Nevill this past august</a> after the book was released in the US.<br />
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<b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/No-One-Gets-Out-Alive/dp/1250041287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413379345&sr=8-1&keywords=no+one+gets+out+alive+nevill" target="_blank">No One Gets Out Alive</a></i></b> is his latest, and longest, novel. It wastes no time getting to the action, and the terrors of 82 Edgehill Road begin in the very first chapter. The book tells the story of Stephanie, a young woman who has been hit hard by the recession. Her mother died young, and she was raised by a father and a mentally ill stepmother, and after her father dies she tries to stay on with stepmother but the arrangement doesn't work. She has left her last boyfriend, and finds herself truly on her own. Jobs are scarce to the point of nonexistence, and a temping agency barely manages to get her any gigs, so the girl is forced to confront poverty head on and take a ridiculously cheap room in a shady, rundown house. This is where the book starts. Stephanie wakes up to all sorts of noises: plastic crinkling under her bed, sobbing girls in adjacent rooms, a muttering female voice from the fireplace, and the presence of someone in her room walking over to her bed. One night in the house would be enough, but due to financial circumstances she has nowhere else to go. Things go from bad to worse, and only keep going downhill.<br />
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Structurally, the book reminds me of Nevill's third novel, <b><i>The Ritual</i></b>. There was a turning point in <b><i>The Ritual</i></b> where the book seems like it could end, only to do a 180 and become almost a completely different horror novel. The book was highly praised, and some fans loved the subverting of expectations while some were put off by the drastic turning point. I was in the former camp. This novel has a similar structure, and when the horrors reach a crescendo and the novel seems to be over it continues for another 200 pages. While there were moments I felt like the latter portion could have been a bit shorter, I thought that overall it worked well and took the story to new heights.<br />
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Also like <b><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Ritual-Adam-Nevill/dp/0312641842/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413381527&sr=8-1&keywords=the+ritual" target="_blank">The Ritual</a></i></b>, <b><i>No One Gets Out Alive</i></b> deftly blends realistic horrors with the supernatural. The hauntings of 82 Edgehill Road are scary enough in their own right, but the true horrors of the house come from Nevill's darkest characters yet: landlord Knacker McGuire and his cousin Fergal. The proprietors are the scum of the low class: uneducated, shady, predatory, angry, selfish, violent. They're criminals, who hide behind flashy clothes, manipulating and taking advantage, and ultimately resorting to extortion and violence when things don't go their way. The author did an excellent job depicting these characters realistically, and the books most intense, terrifying moments involve them.<br />
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The horrors of poverty are center stage, as well as the horror of being alone, with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. The book is also a look at female victims and survivors in horror. Nevill has some poignant things to say about modern society and their reaction to female victims as well, which is in itself another powerful avenue of horror.<br />
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The supernatural doesn't take a backseat to the realistic horror either, but instead works in tandem with it. No one believes that she saw ghosts and worse, leaving her with few friends, and even the ones she has don't believe her, thinking her mentally and emotionally broken. This leaves her mostly on her own, facing a horror that's become a part of her.<br />
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Adam Nevill has come a long way since publishing his first novel, and his growth as a writer has been apparent over the course of his novels. <b><i>No One Gets Out Alive</i></b> is one of his best yet, and truly reaches for new heights of terror. That Nevill managed to sustain dread throughout a novel of this size is a true accomplishment, as this book throws horror at the readers from the very first paragraph and doesn't let up until the end. If you're a fan of horror and Adam Nevill isn't on your radar, you're doing something wrong. The novel is set to hit shelves in the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1447240901/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1SCBKD2JQ7NP0BFNAR9R&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=455344027&pf_rd_i=468294" target="_blank">UK on October 23rd</a> and will be <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250041287/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0SSBZEF664H3AF1C4CAC&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200382&pf_rd_i=507846" target="_blank">released in the US April of 2015</a>.<br />
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<br />Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8559219515161490189.post-26615871854967564502014-10-04T20:20:00.001-04:002014-10-04T20:20:43.936-04:00Review: The Mission by Ted E. Grau<br />
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I’ve always been partial to the Weird Western. My love of the weird, horror and fantasy has always been strong, but I didn’t truly appreciate the Western until I came across the gritty Spaghetti Western films directed by Sergio Leone. These films hit the sweet spot. There was the frontier setting, wild and lacking any controlling institution, bandits and vigilantes running rampant. Every man carried a six-shooter at the very least, forging his very own path through the dust and grime. These were tough sons-of-bitches, dealing with tough situations. Danger is a constant. The violent setting of the American West is horrific, so throwing supernatural horror into the mix just serves to up the ante. Lovecraftian and cosmic horror in particular has always seemed to be well-suited to the Western environment, giving an author a desolate, wide-open setting to place his horrors, making man feel quite alone before the horror even takes the stage.<br />
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<b><a href="http://cosmicomicon.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">T.E. Grau</a></b>’s <i>The Mission</i> serves as prime example of what can be done when these two genres collide. The novella starts off with a typical Western plot; a group of Army men are on the hunt for a couple of Native Americans. Grau shows what can be accomplished when combining the West with the horrors of Lovecraft, as the men make some strange discoveries.<br />
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The tension of the group is already thick when the novel begins, with some members clashing over racial differences and just skimming the boiling point. Once the stage is set, the already palpable tension ratchets into overdrive for the remainder of the novella. As the group is beset by strange occurrences, such as finding an out of place town where a town shouldn’t be, the Captain does his best to stay cool and keep his group from tearing each other apart.<br />
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Some of <i>The Mission</i> brought to mind <i>The Men From Porlock</i> or <i>Blackwood’s Baby</i> by <a href="http://lairdbarron.wordpress.com/" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Laird Barron</a>. All three stories are period pieces featuring groups of tough guys coming face to face with horrors beyond their comprehension. Grau nails the rough tone required to portray these types of characters, making for a story that has already moved high up on my list of favorite Weird Westerns.<br />
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<i>The Mission</i> was published by Jordan Krall’s <a href="http://dynatox.storenvy.com/" target="_blank">Dunhams Manor Press</a>, an imprint of <a href="http://dynatox.storenvy.com/" target="_blank">Dynatox Ministries</a>, as a very limited chapbook. orders.Steely Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18266900897828837550noreply@blogger.com1