Children of Old Leech Excerpt: "The Harrow" by Gemma Files

The Children of Old Leech Deluxe pre-order spotted in the wild. Courtesy of Anya Martin.

As you might have heard, we’ve got a new anthology landing July 15, The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron. Over the next few weeks, we thought we’d share a brief excerpt to preview each story. These will be dropping on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and start today with “The Harrow,” by Gemma Files…

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The earth is old and full of holes, Lydie Massenet’s mother used to say, at least once a day, back when she was still Lydie Pell. Its crust is thin, and underneath there’s nothing but darkness. A rind, that’s all we live on; just thin ice, waiting for it to thaw and crack. No need to dig, really—if they want to find you, they will. Never trust anything that comes out of a hole.

And: Okay, Mom, Lydie would say, the way her father had taught her to. That’s good. That’s fine. Then just smile and nod, all the time staring off at nothing much, something invisible—contemplating Mars, he called it—until her mother finally stopped talking.

You have to know this, Lydie, if nothing else, her mother told her. Darkness shifts, darkness conceals; it’s impossible to know what’s hiding inside it, no matter how hard you try. But if history teaches anything, it’s that what we don’t understand, we fear… and what we fear, eventually, we come to worship, if only to keep it in its rightful place. To make sure it doesn’t come after us.

Yes, Mom. Okay. Sure.

’Til, one day: Stop saying that, goddamnit! her mother yelled, and slapped Lydie across the face, so hard her glasses cracked in half. That was the day her father brought Doctor Russ home, the day before her mother went somewhere else—first for a rest, and then, after everything they did to her while she was there had utterly failed to make her well enough to come home again, to stay.

What’s wrong with her, Daddy? Lydie asked her father, at last, to which he only shook his head and sniffed, trying to pretend he hadn’t been crying.

Honey, I wish to God I knew, was all he said, in return. And hugged her a little too long, a little too tight.

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: Shadows & Tall Trees 2014

Shadows & Tall Trees is the premiere journal for weird fiction. Editor Michael Kelly never fails to combine a stellar lineup of stories exploring the liminal and strange. The most recent volume, Issue 6, is special in more ways than one. It is the first Shadows & Tall Trees to be released since Undertow became an imprint of ChiZine Publications. It also marks the series growing from a smaller journal format to a full blown anthology, containing seventeen stories. This volume is also dedicated to Joel Lane, one of the finest practitioners in the genre, who tragically left us last year.

Kelly has far exceeded expectations, putting together an exceptional volume at a much larger length, alleviating the reader's fear that the larger length would lessen the overall quality by including filler stories.

Some highlights include:

Michael Wehunt's Onanon is a really creepy story about a man, his sickly old mother, and a mysterious girl. The man's search for identity and who is mother truly was are intertwined with the girl he begins a sort of affair with. The story builds to quite a disturbing conclusion.

Hidden in the Alphabet by Charles Wilkinson has an old, once-controversial filmmaker attempting to meet his long estranged and thought dead son, a meeting set up by his niece, who was once an actress in his films. There is a sense of great wrongdoing in the director's past, as he used his son and niece in ways that were utterly wrong, and a current sense of justice being enacted on the director.

Kaaron Warren's Death Door Cafe is about dying people given a second chance, and what they are willing to sacrifice of themselves for that chance. The setting is a secretive cafe, which is only known from word of mouth, where the dying go to see if they are worthy. The story is melancholic and beautiful, another great story from an excellent writer.

Road Dead is a really short story about four young guys going for a drive in order to find cellphone reception, when one of them decides to take a detour. F. Brett Cox manages to pull off a creepy little story that reads like some rattling off a story about a dream they had.

V.H. Leslie's The Quiet Room is a tale of grief and family. A father gains full custody of his daughter after her mother dies, and they move into a big old house. As the man is trying to adjust to being a full time father of a teenager, his daughter takes a turn for the strange, becoming quiet and withdrawn, seemingly obsessed with a dusty, old piano, on which she keeps the urn of her mother's ashes. Leslie paints a convincing portrait of the father and his daughter, and there is a sense of dread permeating throughout the piece.

R.B. Russell is mainly known for running Tartarus Press, an excellent British publisher of weird fiction, but he is quite an author as well. Night Porter takes a premise that seems like it's straight out of a mainstream horror flick: a young girl takes a job as a hotel's night porter, and her job soon takes a turn for the horrific. Russell takes this premise and veers it straight into weird territory, creating an excellent horror story that I enjoyed very much.

Shaddertown by Conrad Williams reminds me of much of Ramsey Campbell's modern fiction. In Holes for Faces many of Ramsey Campbell's stories featured either elderly characters, or children, and sometimes both, playing on their similarities and differences. These stories are often fraught with anxiety so powerfully written that the readers begins to feel it themselves. This is very much what Williams has done with this story, which follows a grandmother with breathing problems (cigarettes get you every time) who decides to take her grandson out on a tour of some underground tunnels. The anxiety the old woman feels is palpable, and Williams executes this like a master.

Christopher Harman's Apple Pie and Sulphur was an great story that was bursting with dread. A trio of old hiking buddies get together for a last hike before two of them move away, and due to a full train take a walking detour through a mysterious wood. They stumble on some creepy abandoned places before finding a small inn/restaurant seemingly in the middle of nowhere. At this point Harman takes the gloves off and the story quickly veers into nightmare territory. Harman excelled at creating a surreal atmosphere, as the remaining protagonist seemed trapped in an almost limbo-like version of town, not knowing what was real and what was hallucination. The dread builds and builds, although the ending doesn't quite live up to it. Overall a very impressive story.

Summerside by Alison Moore explores the liminal strangeness of a certain house when a new girl moves in.

The Space Between is co-authored by Ray Cluley and Ralph Robert Moore, and is one of my favorite stories in the anthology. The authors do an excellent job displaying the hopelessness and despair of their main character. A man loses his swanky job, forcing him and his wife to move into a cheap apartment in an old boarding house until they can get back on their feet. A small door leads to a storage area and into crawlspaces around the house, and this soon becomes the man's escape outlet. Things get murkier and murkier the more obsessed with the crawlspaces and neighbors the man becomes, as he gets bolder and bolder in his travels through the walls. It's a chilling look into voyeurism, and how low someone can fall.

C.M. Muller's Vrangr is a short, eerie tale of a man inheriting an old property from a relative he doesn't even know. He has strange dreams and an affinity for the past, but decides to head to the old house and see what his inheritance is all about. I am familiar with Muller as a blogger and reviewer, and this was the first piece of his fiction that I have read, and it left me rather impressed. From reading the story it is clear that Muller knows his weird fiction, and has the skills to craft a rather numinous tale. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.

The anthology closes with the wonderful Writings Found in a Red Notebook. I have long been a sucker for the "found notebook" style of stories (although I've so far been mixed about found footage films) as is apparent from two of the stories I chose to publish in Children of Old Leech. David Surface knocks it out of the park with this story, and sustains an intense feeling of dread that builds up right until the climax. When a troubled couple take a detour on a long drive through the desert, they awake lost and confused. Obviously, things get worse. It's an intense, terrifying story, and is enough for me to look for more of Surface's fiction.

2014 is a good year for weird fiction. Shadows & Tall Trees grows to anthology length, and knocks it out of the park, and Kelly's Undertow Publications is publishing the first volume of The Year's Best Weird Fiction edited by Laird Barron.

Interview: Simon Strantzas

Simon Strantzas is one of the most impressive voices in the weird fiction genre, proving himself time and again as an author, and last year as an anthology editor. He has four short fiction collections under his belt (Beneath the Surface, Cold to the Touch, Nightingale Songs, Burnt Black Suns) and one edited anthology (Shadows Edge). I recently reviewed his new collection from Hippocampus Press, Burnt Black Suns. Previous reviews of his collections can be found here and here, and a previous interview can be found here.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me Simon.

It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me!

This month marks the publication of your fourth short fiction collection, Burnt Black Suns. How does this collection differ from your others? If you were to sum up each of your collections in one sentence each, what would those sentences look like?

BURNT BLACK SUNS was crafted, from the beginning, to be a sort of sequel to my first collection. That book, BENEATH THE SURFACE, found its inspriation primarily in the works of Thomas Ligotti, with threads of Lovecraft, Lieber, and Aickman woven through. I've always been pleased with its focus on a particular mode, but not as enthused with the book's reception from some corners. On occassion, the book was criticized for being too consistent in its bleak tone, so I thought I might try to revisit the idea, only with something more reflective of where I am as writer a decade later. BURNT BLACK SUNS shifted in focus a bit while writing it, but I managed to maintain its exploration of the sort of weird fiction I most enjoy, while finally showing curious readers what my work is like on a bigger canvas.

Summing up the previous collections is difficult, because they each have their own flavour. If BENEATH THE SURFACE was Ligottian bleak, then COLD TO THE TOUCH was Aickmanesque in its subtlety. NIGHTINGALE SONGS was perhaps a hybrid of the two, but one where my individual voice, I think, started to emerge over my influences. BURNT BLACK SUNS, thus, finally feels wholly me at this point in time.

While all of these stories are entirely your own, several of them pay homage to weird fiction maestros of the past, most notably Lovecraft (Thistle's Find), Ligotti (By Invisible Hands) and Chambers (Beyond The Banks of the River Seine). Two of these appeared in tribute anthologies. Do you find it more difficult or restraining to write a story for an anthology of the sort?

Well, considering "Thistle's Find" first appeared in a Lovecraftian book, I argue it, too, is part of a tribute (though Lovecraft's work has become so pervasive we tend to forget this). But your point is taken. I don't find it terrible different to write for anthologies of these sorts because I don't concern myself too much with playing in anybody's wheelhouse. I don't write pastiche or mimicry. Instead, I find something in the writer's work that speaks to me, and I simply explore it. Other than a few trappings, I like to think one might read any of these stories and not immediately make the connection that they were written as tributes. I hope they stand on their own. If anything, I find it less interesting to write toward themed anthologies. Unlike a tribute book, which offers a range of a writer's inspirations to draw from, a themed anthology often has one focus, and writing something that not only entertains but also doesn't have its central mystery ruined by the nature of the book can often be tricky.

What attracts you to writing not just horror, but more specifically weird fiction?

For me, there's always been a dark beauty to the horrific. It's a genre of images, which makes it a perfect vessel for themes and metaphors. Horror is capable of telling story that encompass the full range of the human condition, and often its fantasy element allows it to do so in a more direct way than non-genre fiction can manage. The weird—insofar as I define it—deals with the sort of philosphical underpinnings that appeal to me most. The twin ideas of the malignant outer and the unknowable other. Weird fiction simply interests me more than much of general horror fiction, and other than its sister sub-genre, the Strange, it's where I want expend the bulk of my energies exploring.

What are your thoughts on the current state of weird fiction? Some say we are in a golden age. Do you agree or disagree with that sentiment?

I think it's far too early to be making sweeping statements. What I can agree is that, for the moment, weird fiction is gaining attention in the North American market. We're seeing it with the canonization of Lovecraft, with television shows like True Detective, and the rise in authors working in this section of the genre. But it's not a universal thing. Travel to Britain and Europe, and I think you'll notice the Strange is leading the way in revitalizing the genre. I imagine this only makes sense, based on the general temperament of the Americas versus Europe. We tend to like our grostesqueries on display, not hidden behind a curtain. I feel blessed to be working alongside so many writers who are writing in this so-called "weird wave", and even more so that many of them are my friends. It's a fabulous time to be writing.

Do you have any plans to write any novel length fiction or do you foresee yourself staying with the shorter form for awhile?

As I write longer pieces, I begin to see how a novel might be forged, but I'm not convinced I'm the one to do it. That said, I will admit that though I haven't yet conquered the short story to my satisfaction, after more than a decade working in the form I've begun to get curious about what else is out there for me to do. It also doesn't escape me that despite the higher notice short fiction has been recieving as of late, the novel still rules the publishing world, and if I want to move beyond where I am now, it's likely I'll need to have a few novels under my belt. Unlike earlier in my career, the idea of this does not fill me with dread, though who knows what time will bring. I suspect before I retire, I'll have written at least one. But it won't be soon.

There are many recurring themes in your work. Liminal places, characters suffering from grief or loss. What about these themes, and others that you revisit, are important to you?

I don't think I truly know, or would want to. There is something in my mindset, regardless of how practical it can be day to day, that hungers for the unknown, that wants to imagine another place where the worst of our world comes from. Perhaps it's simply my way of trying to understand a random universe—ascribe meaning through otherworldly sources, attribute the hand of fate to ill-meaning gods. But along with this, I'm fascinated with the minutae of personal existenace, and how those outer forces affect it. Author T. E. Grau once refered to what I wrote not as cosmic fiction, but as micro-cosmic. That strikes me as good a description as any for what I do.

Besides being one of the genres finest authors, you've also proven yourself as a fine editor with the wonderful Shadows Edge. Do you plan to edit any more anthologies?

Thank you, but I hardly did much with SHADOWS EDGE. The truth is that if you get a good enough group of writers involved, your own work is fairly minimal. Luckily, I was able to coerce a few ringers to write me the sort of fiction I like to read. That others may have liked it, too, is lucky. Satisfying, but lucky. As for editing another book... well, I have hopes to do another next year, but that will be my last. I really don't enjoy the editing process all that much, and would rather focus my energies on writing my own work than editing another's.

Thanks for your time Simon, it was a pleasure.

The feeling is more than mutual.

Review: Burnt Black Suns by Simon Strantzas

Burnt Black Suns is the fourth collection from modern weird fiction maestro Simon Strantzas, and will definitely be a strong contender for horror collection of the year. Strantzas is one of the finest, and I've yet to see him publish a weak collection of fiction. Instead, with each collection his skills continue to grow and flourish.

With Burnt Black Suns we see Simon at the top of his game, weaving memorable weird tales which are sure to unnerve and horrify readers. Simon's characters come from all sorts of backgrounds, many dealing with loss or their own insecurities as their worlds slowly transform around them. He works well with emotions, and his characters' anxiety can acutely be felt by the reader. The dread in these stories is palpable, and the buildup and pacing is excellent.

The collection opens with On Ice, a story which uses its arctic setting to great effect. The story is full of suspense as a group already fraught with tension braves the elements on a scientific expedition. Once it becomes clear that they are not alone things take an even darker turn.

Personal loss takes the forefront of Dwelling On The Past. A man's grief and guilt over his daughter's death haunts him as he infiltrates a native protest and finds himself face to face with a different  kind of horror.

Strong as a Rock is a tale of two very different brothers still dealing with the death of their mother. Their opposite personalities create a sense of friction, although a brotherly love also shows itself. This story is an excellent example of the author's fascination with thin places, and as the story goes on reality becomes less and less concrete.

Simon is a longtime admirer of Thomas Ligotti, and pays homage to him with By Invisible Hands, which first appeared in Joe Pulver's The Grimscribe's Puppets. This was one of my favorites from that anthology, and Simon deftly crafts a story of an old, anxious, confused puppet maker who receives a summons from a mysterious Dr. Toth. The entire story has a dreamlike quality to it, and the puppet maker seems to be far removed from the world, almost living in a separate reality.

One Last Bloom is another story of scientific discovery gone wrong, giving it some common ground with On Ice and Thistle's Find. The main character is an egotistical, bitter young man, full of jealousy for his better looking, well-liked co-worker. This is another story while the dread is ratcheted at an excellent pace, and watching the unlikable main character squirm is rather enjoyable.

First appearing in Joshi's Black Wings series, Thistle's Find is a story of Lovecraftian mad science. The down on his luck narrator attempts to find help in an eccentric old neighbor from his youth, but Dr. Thistle is no Doc Brown, and it isn't long at all before our narrator realizes that the doctor and his experiments may not be as harmless as he once thought.

Beyond the Banks of the River Seine is a story written for a King in Yellow tribute anthology, and masterfully uses some of the tropes without crossing into pastiche territory. The narrator isn't the most reliable, or likable, but is an excellent voice to tell the story.

One of my favorite stories in the collection, Emotional Dues, follows a painter who approaches a rich buyer directly, cutting out his art dealer. The painter is full of pent-up emotions due to an abusive father that he channels into raw, abstract paintings. This is another story full of tension from start to finish, and full of creepy characters, such as the wealthy and mysterious Rasp, and the skulking Nadir.

The collection ends with the excellent novella Burnt Black Suns, easily the highlight of a very strong collection. The story deals with loss of such a profound nature, and is about a man and his pregnant girlfriend arriving in Mexico to hunt down his son, who was taken by his ex-wife two years prior. Simon does an amazing job of painting an impatient, grieving father, torn between his missing son and his girlfriend and unborn child. The setting is top notch, with the oppressive atmosphere further upping the tension, all leading to an earth-shattering climax.

Burnt Black Suns is an excellent collection of fiction, from an author who is constantly upping his game. I have no doubt that this will be one of the strongest contenders come award season, and shouldn't be missed by any fan of literary weird horror.

April Reviews: The First One You Expect by Adam Cesare; Street Raised by Pearce Hansen; The Elvis Room by Stephen Graham Jones; The Walls of the Castle by Tom Piccirilli; The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory

Well April has been a busy month, due to attending the HP Lovecraft Film Festival & CthulhuCon in Portland, finishing up my Masters degree, and wrapping up work on The Children of Old Leech, the anthology I co-edited with Ross E. Lockhart. My reading has definitely slowed down, but I've managed to finish several shorter works. I don't want to neglect the blog, so I'm breaking from my traditional way of posting by fitting many short reviews in one blog post.

The First One You Expect by Adam Cesare

I rather enjoyed this novella from Broken River Books. It was my first time reading Cesare, and won't be the last. The novella follows a youngish deadbeat who works at a grocery store and makes ultra low budget, extreme horror films with his best friend. A sexy new employee starts working at the grocery store, and shows quite an interest in the narrator's films as well as his knife collection, and it isn't long before she's on board to be his next star. What starts out as a geek's wet dream soon becomes a nightmare. Cesare does an excellent job at creating a tense plot in a short amount of time, and rocket forward without letting the story lose any momentum. The narrator evokes equal parts sympathy and disgust. On one hand he seems trapped on the downward-sloping ride his life has become, yet on the other he himself is just as complicit and undeserving of sympathy. Time to seek out more books by Adam Cesare.

Street Raised by Pearce Hansen

One of the five launch titles for Broken River Books was a stripped, revised edition of Peace Hansen's Street Raised. I had heard a lot about this book, and had recently read a King in Yellow tale by Hansen in A Season in Carcosa. The novel is short, dirty, and brutal. Recently released con Speedy rallies his old comrades, junkie brother Willie and tough sidekick Fat Bob, in order to pull one last job before settling down. At times the book felt too stripped down, and too short for all that was going on: vicious Mexican drug dealers, a creepy junkie serial killer that felt underused, and an angry and vengeance seeking gang of skinheads. While everything happens so fast that it often felt difficult to connect with the characters, it doesn't come across as a flaw. Instead, this approach mirrors the story itself. It's fast, it's ugly, and it's filled with characters who don't really give a shit. A fun, bloody book, this is yet another success for Broken River Books.

The Elvis Room by Stephen Graham Jones

A favorite author of mine, Stephen Graham Jones has proven himself time and time again that he is an author that can bring it, no matter the genre. The Elvis Room is a chapbook from This is Horror, and a foray into supernatural horror. This novella follows a middle-aged professor, once disgraced and pushed into fringe circles due to an experiment to disprove the supernatural that backfired. The man needs something else to prove himself, and makes a discovery about ghosts and hotels which seems like it could be his ticket. Jones often shows a kind of genius with his ideas, and this novella is no exception. Clever, eerie, and beautiful, snag this limited novella before it's gone. (Edit: Looks like the chapbook is Sold Out, but the novella is available on Kindle)

The Walls of the Castle by Tom Piccirilli

This one is the first in the Black Labyrinth line from Dark Regions Press, and if it's any indication of what's to come then sign me up for the subscriber's package. This trippy short novel (novella?) follows a man known as Kasteel, a grieving father who becomes a fixture at The Castle, a huge labyrinthian hospital complex. After losing his son he finds himself becoming a sort of angel in the machine, helping patients in need and striking up friendships with strays from the psych ward. Every angel must have a devil, and eventually Kasteel finds himself up against Abaddon, his opposite. The labyrinth in this story is multifaceted. In the literal sense, The Castle itself is a labyrinth. A man can live in it for weeks and barely be noticed. The labyrinth also manifests itself figuratively in Kasteel's fractured mind. His grief for his son has become a labyrinth that he has found himself lost in. He doesn't even recall his real name, adopting Kasteel (Castle) as he becomes the building's angel. The story is a beautiful tale of a man trying to do good and find himself, a violent ex-con who has been broken and is attempting to put the pieces together. The only flaw is that the climax comes quickly and seems abrupt, where it seems it should be a bit longer. Otherwise it's a solid, psychological noir that shouldn't be missed.

The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory

This is the oldest book on the list, originally seeing print in 1986, and recently (in 2013) reprinted by Valancourt Books. I picked this one up after seeing some weird fiction readers and authors highly recommend it. I found the story to be mesmerizing, although it was completely unlike my expectations. A young married couple and their toddler son inherit an uncle's cottage in the Welsh countryside, as well as his unusual pet bird, a cormorant which the husband names Archie. The couple hardly knew the uncle, so the arrangement is highly unusual. As seems obvious, the arrangement doesn't work out well at all, and it's painful watching the family struggle with the often vicious, disgusting bird. Gregory has written an unforgettable weird novel, one which manages to twist expectations and have a field day toying with the emotions of readers. Sympathies will not remain static, as shocking scenes manage to completely subvert the readers feelings. This bizarre little novel should be on every weird fiction reader's list.

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.