Giveaway: 2014 Year's End Mega-Giveaway

Year's End Giveaway

Collections: Ana Kai Tangata by Scott Nicolay

                     The Lord Came At Twilight by Daniel Mills (ARC with variant cover)

                     Gateways to Abomination by Matthew M. Bartlett

Novels/Novellas: Far From Streets by Mike Griffin (very limited printing novella)

                             Children of Light by Daniel Mills (very limited printing novella)

                             The Grand Hotel by Scott Kenemore

Anthologies: Mighty In Sorrow edited by Jordan Krall

                       The New Gothic edited by Beth K. Lewis

                       Schemers edited by Robin D. Laws

Poetry: He Walks on All Fours by Matt Bialer

Nonfiction: When The Stars Are Right by Scott R. Jones (shipped separately) 

To enter send an e-mail to contest@arkhamdigest.com with '2014' in the subject line. Include your snail mail address. Contest lasts for three days, and I will randomly draw the winner Wednesday evening. 

The Children of Old Leech Excerpt: “Tenebrionidae” by Scott Nicolay and Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay

Co-author Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay & Missy.

Today brings our final excerpt from The Children of Old Leech, and features a collaboration between father and son, a tale of riding the rails, and secret societies, and gangs, and girls and dogs and far, far stranger things: “Tenebrionidae,” by Scott Nicolay and Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay. Next week, we’ll be back with a little bit more, sharing the book’s introduction and afterword, as well as a gallery of photos. Until then, lie back, listen to the clacking wheels, and enjoy the ride. It is, after all, going to be a dark ride.

—

The whole room pulsed next and… altered, made no architectural sense. Missy barked and twitched her tail against the bucket and Dumont placed a hand on her back. He felt dizzy and fought the urge to puke. The doorway spun around him several times—round and round and round she goes, and where she stops—Ratch and Worm and Marlo stood. The two sidekicks drifted into place behind Marlo right away, assuming generic bully positions so fast Dumont was tempted to laugh. But Marlo had his K-Bar out beside his thigh and the other two each wore their general bulk as a weapon so no way was it time for wisecracks or laughter. The room no longer spun, only rocked a bit side to side in a seasick way as if whatever whirlwind torqued it had settled in overhead for now.

—Lookit the schwag bitch, Marlo sneered at him, spoke the words as a slow smoldering threat. His voice oscillated in tempo as if the distance between them were stretching and receding. Dumont felt another twinge of nausea and struggled to suppress it. Ratch and Worm sneered in their special fleshy ways but said nothing. Missy pressed closer against his thigh, hindquarters stiff with tension as she barked in bursts. He stroked her head to calm her.

—Are you sad because your girl ain’t here? Well you can go ahead an’ cry now ’cause she ain’t comin’. Little Miss Tigger. Turns out she don’t bounce too well.

Dumont didn’t much care to hear what he was hearing but he knew Marlo was s’posed to be big on head games. Didn’t mean any of it counted for a damn thing. If it did then he failed her just like he failed Hector, the kid younger than him at the foster home, what they’d done to him.

He could stand—he was taller than all but Worm—only that would likely take things physical quick, and they were three on one. Maybe they only came to threaten him, scare him into leaving town. They could threaten away. He’d been ready to leave anyway, only with Tigger. But what had they done to Tigger?

She told him about the Shadow Riders almost at the start, how she hooked up with Marlo till someone tipped her off he only wanted her for some kind of sacrifice. How she found it out Dumont didn’t know but the whole story confused him anyway. Tigger was holding some big pieces back, he could tell that easy. Made it all hard to follow but main thing was he could see she was scared. Way shit scared. Now she was missing maybe worse and the Shadow Riders were all up in his face.

He never dealt with Marlo or his crew himself before, only saw them from a distance and Tigger would whisper that’s them or sometimes their names. There were others, Crunch and Skurd, Arkansas Jason and Jimmy Whip, more whose names he could not recall. But Marlo was supposed to be their king or ruler or some shit like that, Ratch and Worm his left hand and right.

—Du-mont. That girl took something from me, Du-mont. Something she shouldn’a took. Did she give it to you, Du-mont? I think she did. Hey, we understand how these things can happen. It’s na-chur-al. Why don’t you just let us take a look in your pack Du-mont? We’ll take what’s ours and leave you with your mutt. No harm no foul, whadda you say?

Ratch stepped hands out toward Dumont’s pack. Although he seemed to move in slow motion Dumont didn’t try to block him, but he teetered sideways away from the Rider, his bucket seat tilting almost toppling.

Marlo started to say something like That’s it—and nod before he saw how Dumont slid himself several inches along the wall, bent to grab the bucket handle, then pushed up the wall all the way and with his sea legs at least half back beneath him swung the bottom of the bucket at Worm. Ratch was closest but Worm was the tallest so Dumont went for him first. The bucket with its half dozen rough crusted inches of lumpy concrete at the bottom took Worm full on the side of the head and he. Went. Down.

Missy lunged for Ratch and her teeth sank into his left calf above his boot so he cursed and stumbled back a step. Marlo jerked to his right, brought the K-Bar full up just as Dumont yanked back hard on the bucket only to feel the wire handle tear free from plastic. The battered orange cylinder tumbled away into the shadows and slammed loud against a wall somewhere off in the dark. Everyone looked surprised. Everyone except Worm, who lay staring at the dirt floor. Staring at it real close, like point blank close. Staring at his blood pouring on the dirt.

Dumont yelled to Missy and grabbed the guitar case, booked it for the exit. He felt a tug on his arm as if someone grabbed him and he yanked hard to get free. He heard Ratch pound after him several steps till Marlo shouted —Leave him, asshole! Get the pack! The pack!

Missy hit the doorless doorway ahead of him and staggered as she went. As he trucked through he felt himself swing up sideways on an incline a second, the whole room pitched over the major part of 90 degrees. His applicable senses all told him brace for the fall but he did not fall. Missy yelped ahead so he knew she felt the same still they both pressed on and came level again in three more steps. His stomach prepared to purge but he fought it down one last time, staggered forward anyway. Not now. Not here.

Marlo called from behind —Run sad punk. We’ll see you again. Run run run and we’ll all have some fun. Later on down the line.

Dumont ran. At least half a dozen blocks, Missy skittering always several feet ahead before Dumont felt the warm wetness on the fingers of his left hand and held it up to see first the blood dripping off them, then the red-streaked facing crescents of pink white muscle revealed in the deep slash across his forearm. He was leaving a trail but he didn’t stop to bandage himself till he reached the yard.

—

The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron may be ordered directly from Word Horde or wherever better books are sold. Ask for The Children of Old Leech and other Word Horde titles at your favorite bookseller.

Interview: Scott Nicolay

One of the standout story collections of the year so far is Scott Nicolay's Ana Kai Tangata (the deluxe version contains an extra chapbook), which I reviewed here. Here's a recent interview I conducted with this breakout author.



When did you first discover weird fiction, and what is your own personal definition of what is considered weird fiction?

One of my very earliest memories is standing next to my mother in the kitchen and telling her about my imaginary monster friends...at least I think now they were imaginary. I was obsessed with monsters and weirdness and all things macabre as far back as I can remember. Perhaps from before birth. I was an early reader as well, so relatives sometimes brought me advanced books one would not normally give a child. Kind of like giving a piece of fruit to a trained monkey, I suppose. When I was seven years old, my Uncle Ed came down from Massachusetts and left me a copy of Frankenstein and a Scholastic books collection called 11 Great Horror Stories, one in a series edited by Betty M. Owen. “The Dunwich Horror” was the anchor tale in that volume. I was drawn to the story by the cover blurb “Wilbur Whateley’s diary was not the ravings of a madman. The Dunwich Horror--huge, ravening, and invisible--was REAL!” It did not disappoint. I still return to “The Dunwich Horror” year after year. Though some dismiss it is derivative and inferior, I find it to be one of Lovecraft’s most technically accomplished works, and above all, a masterpiece of atmosphere and dread. Lovecraft became the first writer whose works I sought out by name. Coincidentally, my Uncle Ed lived in the same area of Massachusetts where Lovecraft’s fictional Dunwich was set.

A few years later I finally found more of Lovecraft, as well as other writers of the Weird such as Hodgson, Blackwood, Clark Ashton Smith, and John D. Keefauver. The ‘90s brought me Aickman, Klein, Ligotti, Lamsley, and Jean Ray, as well as S.T. Joshi’s essential critical study, The Weird Tale. During the ‘80s and ‘90s I also read very deeply in Noir, and I came to understand Noir and the Weird as two aspects of the same thing. Jim Thompson hit on this commonality when he said, “There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I've used every one, but there is only one plot–-things are not as they seem.” In Noir, that revelation occurs at the social and/or political level, whereas in the Weird, the revelation is about our place in the universe...or lack thereof. I wrote a few stories in the ‘90s, though fortunately none of them were published and none of them survive.

A few years ago, as I was beginning the stories that now make up my book, I wrote down some guidelines for myself that I could use to refine my approach to the Weird. I used the “Dogme ’95” film manifesto as my model, and I originally posted my “Dogme 2011” on Facebook for a few friends to see. Later, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer asked to print it at the Weird Fiction Review Online, where it generated a little controversy, something I am apparently becoming good at. Some readers took it as a set of prescriptive rules, and there were a certain amount of “rules are bad” gut reactions. But really, I never meant it for anyone other than myself. All the stories in Ana Kai Tangata are “Dogme 2011” stories though, and I feel this gives the collection a certain thematic and esthetic coherence. Interestingly enough, Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation works perfectly as a “Dogme 2011” novel, not that I imagine I had any influence on his work. It’s more a case of two trains on the same track, with his far ahead of mine.



Much of your own fiction tends to be novella-length. What attracts you to this story length? Do you ever see yourself going even longer by writing a novel?

I let the stories grow the way they need to, following the principle framed by Charles Olson and Robert Creeley that “Form is never more than an extension of content.” Olson’s essay “Projective Verse” and his method of “Composition by Field” are well known to poets, but I have found his ideas applicable to prose fiction as well. While I was writing the stories in Ana Kai Tangata, I began consciously allowing atmosphere and characterization to drive my narrative, rather than plot. I feel that plot is the most artificial element of narrative--it’s this illusion of structure we impose on the artificial worlds we writers create. Which is not to say my stories don’t have plots--they do--but I let those plots grow together with the other elements. In this way, I hope that my stories present a more realistic and immersive world within which the reader can encounter elements of the Outer and Other.

As for tackling a novel, I have no immediate plans. Obviously, novels are more lucrative for a writer to pursue than stories. By some definitions “Tuckahoe”--at over 42,000 words--is a short novel. I could’ve stretched it further, developed certain aspects and tried to make it a stand-alone novel or even a screenplay, but I did not have a sense that the story itself wanted to go there. I feel it is complete as it is, and though I write long, I do not pad. Everything in my stories has a purpose, whether or not it is apparent to every reader. The majority of readers and reviewers have picked up on that, so I feel I was successful in that regard.

I do have several ideas that might support a narrative of novel length, but I am not developing any of them at the moment. Not all are Weird fiction, by the way, at least not in the sense of Weird/Cosmic Horror. The main one is a YA novel which is already over 30,000 words long. I expect anything I write will be “weird” in some way, big “A” or small “a.”

At present I am working on at least five stories of varying lengths, several of which are for invites and/or commissions...and of course, I have that large ongoing translation project.

Having said all that, I am very interested in the novel, and the possibilities it represents for Weird Fiction. I think there are only a handful of truly successful “Weird” novels. Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. William Hope Hodgson’s novels, especially The House on the Borderland. Medusa by E.H. Visiak. Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Red Tree. And most recently, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. We have enough successful models now of how the Weird can succeed in the novel form that a critical mass may be imminent. Perhaps the Weird is finally about to complete the full transition to the novel--and from there to the screen--that its cousin Noir made generations ago.



Your first collection Ana Kai Tangata has stories that share certain themes. For example, a few stories feature caves, and some end with the protagonist about to be "devoured" or something similar. How do your own personal fears, experiences, and thoughts bleed into your fiction?

Obviously, I am not claustrophobic. Caves make me happy, though of course the cave environment must be treated with respect. I have no special fear of heights either, but I am a little more skittish about rope work after a 2004 accident in which I was dropped over twenty feet during vertical caving practice and broke my back. Now I’m Titanium Man. Unfortunately, personal circumstances and the closure of nearby caves due to White Nose Syndrome, a fungal infection that has decimated hibernating bat populations in the Northeast and continues to spread across the country, have made it difficult for me to continue caving. I haven’t had any serious underground time since 2009, when I served as the field archaeologist on a cave expedition to Rapa Nui.

Though I definitely draw on my own experiences in my tales--“If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your horn,” as Charlie Parker said--that doesn’t mean my protagonists are versions of me. They may go some of the places I’ve been, may share some of my experiences, but none of them are meant to represent me. That said, large portions of several of my stories describe events that actually occurred.



Your story "The Bad Outer Space" features a child narrator that comes across as genuine, which is no easy feat to pull off. What challenges did you face while writing through such a narrator?

That story came as naturally as any of the others, if just as slowly. I credit Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat” as my initial inspiration for choosing that approach, although I consider her story one of the finest Weird tales ever told, and I hesitate even to invoke its name in relation to my own work.

I don’t feel that I faced any special challenges in writing that story, and in fact many key elements simply came to me when the time was right. I was lucky to have a major author as first reader on that one, and he helped me tighten up the language. I might have been trying a little too hard to get the narrator’s voice in earlier drafts, but with a little help from a friend, I relaxed it and let it become more natural.



What do you believe to be the best weird fiction out there? What authors, novels, anthologies, and stories should readers familiarize themselves with?

As I’ve said before in various forums, I believe we are in the midst of a Weird Fiction Renaissance, and that The Weird is finally coming into its own as a legitimate literary genre or form. This is the golden age of Weird Horror, this here, this now. So many people point to True Detective, but True Detective was faux Weird, and I think the ongoing success of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy is far more important, and points to the readiness of the general readership to embrace the well-written Weird.

This is really a loaded question, as my answer will inevitably leave out a host of brilliant authors. Among contemporary writers of the Weird, Campbell, Kiernan, VanderMeer, Ligotti, Cisco, and Barron have all achieved mastery. Lansdale is also a master, and our finest living storyteller, though the Weird is only one of his many modes. He “gets” the Weird though. Lamsley and Klein if they were still writing, but they are not. Hot on their heels are such writers as Livia Llewellyn, Richard Gavin, John Langan, Matt Cardin, Simon Strantzas, Allyson Bird, Joseph S. Pulver Sr., Stephen Graham Jones, Gemma Files, Kaaron Warren, and Paul Tremblay, all of whom work in the Weird to varying degrees. The late Joel Lane. Nathan Ballingrud’s first collection North American Lake Monsters last year was a masterful debut that blended the Weird with other approaches to horror. I am honored to be part of this year’s class, which includes such huge talents as Daniel Mills, John Claude Smith, Damien Angelica Walters, and Simon Strantzas, all writers I admire. Strantzas is the giant among us of course. There are many others, but those are the writers I have read most closely.

In the future, I recommend readers keep an eye on Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, Suresh Subramanian, Michael Griffin, Anya Martin, and Selena Chambers, as well as some exciting authors who blend the Weird and Bizarro, such as Nikki Guerlain, Josh Myers, and Jordan Krall. Bizarro is a very exciting genre altogether, and I expect to see more cross-pollination with the Weird. Nicole Cushing, for example, is a major Weird fiction author who began in Bizarro.



2014 has been a good year for you, Ana Kai Tangata was published and garnered some excellent reviews. Do you have any other fiction slated to be published this year? What else can you tell readers about your plans for the future?

So far, so good. I am grateful beyond words that so many readers appear to have understood my work just as I intended--I honestly never expected that. As a poet, you are taught to be happy if anyone gets anything at all... And I am especially grateful to those who have written complimentary reviews of the book, most of them people I knew little if at all beforehand.

As for new work, I have a story in Word Horde’s Laird Barron tribute antho The Children of Old Leech. Since you co-edited that with Ross Lockhart I presume you are fishing for a plug, so here it is. The story is called “Tenebrionidae” and I cowrote it with my son Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay, based on his experiences riding freight trains across the south. I’m proud of what Jesse and I accomplished with that one.

I also have a piece in The Starry Wisdom Library Catalog, which is due out sometime soon, and there is one older story that is still kicking around. Beyond those, I am working on several stories, mostly for commissions or invites. It’s too early to comment on any of those, however, and they probably won’t appear until 2015. Each new story is a struggle, but writing them causes less pain than not writing them.

Review: Ana Kai Tangata by Scott Nicolay

Only too often do debut collections or novels read as such, and while more than a few display promise they still bear the hallmarks of being the author's first foray into the publishing realm. Rarely, a debut work transcends the trappings, and reads as if penned by a master well into his prime. These are the sorts of debuts that readers should take note of, as they herald the arrival of talents that are titanic in scale, talents that will leave their mark for many generations to come. This year marks the appearance of one such debut: Scott Nicolay's Ana Kai Tangata: Tales of the Outer the Other the Damned and the Doomed.


Scott Nicolay came to my attention with his story "Eyes Exchange Bank" from The Grimscribe's Puppets, although he had a couple stories printed before that (one in the ill-fated magazine Phantasmagorium and one in the equally ill-fated Aklonomicon). In my review for The Grimscribe's Puppets I said the following about Scott's story: "Nicolay excels at creating the decrepit setting, which is an oppressive part of the narrative. The characters are realistic, and when the protagonist goes to visit his old friend in the run-down Pennsylvania town in order to find succor from his bad breakup, he finds a town that seems to be a black hole that sucks the life out of it's inhabitants."


"Eyes Exchange Bank" was one of the standout stories in the Ligotti tribute anthology. It managed to capture the theme and spirit of Ligotti's work while using a voice that was fresh and new.


In Ana Kai Tangata readers are served eight stories, every one of which is excellent. Nicolay is obviously very comfortable with the long form, with many of the stories measuring novella length. He takes advantage of the length, taking the time to build upon his characters in layers, resulting in protagonists who bleed off the page. Some are more likable than others, but all are real. The majority of stories focus on men who are struggling with personal issues, with loss and guilt taking the forefront. These broken men are often focusing their energies on certain obsessions. For some it's the loved one they lost, for others it's work related opportunities, and often it's a mixture of the two. These men often struggle with dark desires, and find themselves treading paths in which the light at the end of the tunnel is nonexistent. Almost every story is infused with a noirish inflection, a certain jaded and neurotic look at the world.


The fiction also benefits from authenticity. Caves feature in a few of the stories, and Nicolay's experience as a caver himself serves to anchor the fiction in a believable sense. Nicolay, born and raised in Jersey where some of the stories are set, has an eye for luminous, haunting locales, and many of the settings so perfectly described in the stories are weird, unsettling places that actually exist.


Of the eight stories present, four have been previously published, and four are original. "alligators" serves as an excellent opener, and shows that sometimes confronting one's fears does not have the therapeutic impact it's supposed to. Caves figure a large part in "Ana Kai Tangata" and "Phragmites" although the stories couldn't be more different from one another. "The Bad Outer Space" stands out for it's choice of narrator: a young child. It's not easy to write in the voice of a child, but Nicolay manages and makes the story all the more chilling because of the cold, matter-of-fact voice of the boy. The young Jaycee of "The Soft Frogs" is a perfect example of a Nicolay protagonist: jaded and getting himself in trouble all for the pleasures of the fairer sex. "Geschäfte" may be my favorite story in the book. The guilt ridden protagonist with the dark voyeuristic side paired with the one of the creepiest apartment settings make for a perfect weird tale. The collection ends with the extra long "Tuckahoe." Elements from Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" are present, and what starts out as a police procedural quickly descends into some freaky, backwoods territory.


It's very rare that a short fiction collection contains no weak stories, and it's practically unheard of that a debut collection manages to be all around excellent. Nicolay's debut is proof that it can happen. Eight of the best weird fiction stories that I have ever had the pleasure of reading, all paired perfectly with shudder-inducing art from David Verba, make this a landmark collection. Publisher Fedogan & Bremer have struck gold with Nicolay, and further refined the presentation with the amazing artwork from David Verba, and introduction from Laird Barron, and an afterword from John Pelan. As a bonus, the slipcased deluxe version (coming later this year)  also features a new chapbook novella that doesn't come with the trade edition. Although it is only April, I have a feeling that this is not only going to be hailed as the debut of the year, but possibly even the best fiction collection of the year.