Doug Talks Weird

This looks like it has the potential to turn into a great web series. In this first instalment Doug Bolden talks about one of Laird Barron's short stories; 2005's Proboscis.

New Story: And the Filth Flows ...Always

The flooding was immense. I looked through the bedroom window at the street below. The black slime that last night had begun to seep up from the drains and to flow languidly down the gutters had risen so that neither the tarmac of the road nor the grey stone of the pavement could be seen. In their place was this slow moving river of it winding its way towards the center of town.

Cars and pedestrians alike made their way through the early morning haze seemingly not noticing the dramatic change to the street through which they passed. I wondered how they could be unaware of the viscous filth that pulled and sucked at their feet, that fouled the tires of their vehicles spraying their chassis’ with the grim substance.

The house was empty. It had been for years. Years since my daughter Kate had left home for her own life and, before that, since Alice had been taken from us. It had been so for years; yet now, faced with this strange and horrid phenomenon outside, I felt the loneliness more than ever. Since those first days after Kate left, those first days without either of the girls –without my family I felt the need to talk to someone –to anyone. To ask why they were not more perturbed, more caring, of the effluence which was now flooding the street. How could they bear to walk through it, to even drive through it?

The houses of Elderslie Road are old red brick Georgian terraces. Front doors opening directly onto the street but elevated by a couple of small steps. The blackness was flowing below the top of the first step, surely they must notice? It is only because of this tiny elevation that the horrid looking stuff was not flowing beneath doors and flooding the houses. At the rear of each house are more steps than in the front which lead down into the back yards so if the flooding was the same in the back then, at least, it would not have come into the kitchen. For now.

Read the rest here and, as ever, feedback is always most welcome. :) You can also, if you prefer, download it for Kindle and other ebook readers by clicking the links.

#LadyHags: Women in Horror Month

It be Women in Horror Month, wahey! Don't worry lads, only another couple of weeks and we'll be back to Men in Everything 11 Months so don't be worrying your pretty little heads over it. ;) To be fair to my fairer sex all the posts from men that I've seen about WiHM have been extremely positive. However there is always someone who insists on behaving like something of a douche and, more than likely, starts speaking without engaging their brain-mouth filter.

Ridiculous cockwombles aside I think that any excuse to celebrate the fantastic fiction produced by women is a valid excuse. So I thought I would share some thoughts on some absolutely amazing women writers that I've discovered over the last few years.

Nicole Cushing



 

 

 

 

 

Nicole Cushing has been producing short fiction in the Bizarro and Weird fiction genres for a good while now but it is her two longer pieces that I really want to bring to people's attention -Children of No One (UK, USA) and I am the New God (UK, USA).

I first discovered Cushing's work when I was searching online for work by Thomas Ligotti and this name kept on cropping up. Nicole Cushing, Nicole Cushing, Children of No One. My interest was piqued and so I decided to download Children of No One from Amazon. I'm not really a fan of ebooks on account of not having an e-ink reader and so having to read on my phone -I can't read long texts on a screen and tend to even print off short stories rather than read them online. I devoured Children of No One however and went straight out to pre-order I am the New God.

Children of No One is a dark, very dark, look at the extremes to which a person can go when they are driven by a single goal and who are convinced of the overwhelming value of their desires. The story follows an extremely wealthy individual as he attempts to get access to an underground, highly illegal, art installation. Throw in a hefty dose of occult mystery and the disgusting attitude of the elite towards poor and working people and you have a disturbing, chilling, and fantastical tale of a very human darkness.

Cushing's second novella, I am the New God, is perhaps, for the most part, a more traditional horror tale of madness and murder. A highly disturbed young man is contacted by, an, equally disturbed, monk who convinces him of his divine destiny. This results in twisted experiments to test the veracity of the monk's claims, a murderous road trip, and a gloriously twisted and ecstatic finale.

Cushing has two books being released this year. A collection of short fiction  -The Mirrors from Cycatrix Press and her debut novel Mr Suicide from Word Horde.

Caitlin Kiernan



 

 

 

 

 

 

Kiernan has been producing dark fiction since the early 1990s but I first found her fiction with the publication of the sublime The Drowning Girl: A Memoir in 2012. She has produced 10 novels, a whole bunch of comic books and hundreds of pieces of short fiction. She's also a published palaeontologist to boot. The two works of Kiernan's that I want to talk about are The Red Tree (UK, USA) and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (UK, USA).

I've discussed The Red Tree before and so I'll let that review speak for itself. Suffice to say this is one of the best pieces of cosmic horror produced in the last decade, at least the last decade.

The Drowning Girl: A Memoir is in some ways similar to The Red Tree in that it deals with an unreliable narrator who is fully aware that they are an unreliable narrator and makes no attempt to hide it. The Drowning Girl is the story of India Morgan Phelps, or Imp, a young woman with an undefined mental health issue kept stable with medication who has an encounter with a naked woman she meets by the side of a deserted road one spring, or possibly winter, who is a mermaid, or possibly a werewolf, and the affect this has on Imp and her relationship with her games journalist girlfriend.

Kiernan's prose is utterly beautiful and her ability to build a sense of disorientation and weird horror is second to none.

Livia Llewellyn



 

 

 

 

 

 

Livia Llewellyn is a writer of erotically charged weird fiction. She has one collection of her short fiction currently available, 2011's Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors (UK, USA), but has at least one new collection due out this year (I think).

I talked briefly about her story Furnace in my ongoing review of The Year's Best Weird Fiction -you can read that here, which first appeared in the Thomas Ligotti tribute anthology The Grimscribe's Puppets (UK, USA).

Another story of particular note that was published recently is It Feels Better Biting Down which was published in Nightmare Magazine's October 2014 special Women Destroy Horror! special issue. A story of twin sisters with a special birth defect who encounter something weird that changes them completely yet somehow makes them even more themselves. Llewellyn's language is rather erotically charged which adds to the discomfort the story instils in the reader.

***

These are just three of the prominent women currently writing wonderful weird fiction and who are some of the driving forces behind the weird renaissance that is presently underway. They are by no means alone in this however. There are some amazing women working in the field, too many in fact for me to even consider writing briefly about. We have the likes of Molly Tanzer, Gemma Files, A.C. Wise, Joyce Carol Oates, Ellen Datlow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Allyson Bird, Kathe Koja, and so many, many more. So many in fact that it seems absurd that we should need a Women in Horror Month and it is a sad fact, considering the breath taking quality of the work produced, that we still do.

Pulver in Yellow

Joe Pulver, if you haven't already heard of him (and why the hell haven't you??), fuses beat, noir, pulp and high weird with startling skill. He's also the go to person when it comes to Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow stories. Joe has written god knows how many King in Yellow stories over the years --well I suppose he knows how many too, as does Mike Davis of the Lovecraft Ezine as Mike is currently preparing to put out volume one in a the collected Yellow stories of Joe Pulver! Excited? You could say so!

I find it most fitting that Joe's work is being collected this year as 2015 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Robert W. Chambers as well as the 120th anniversary of the first publication of his collection The King in Yellow. I get the feeling this year is definitely going to have a maddening yellow hue to it. :D

Keep an eye on the Lovecraft Ezine for news on when the book is going to be released. I'm sure I'll probably be posting somewhat excitedly about it here too. :)

[caption id="attachment_898" align="aligncenter" width="470"] Cover design by Steve Santiago www.illustrator-steve.com/[/caption]

 

Now, Mike Davis, a quick message for you.

Twenty Fourteen to Twenty Fifteen

This year has been a good year. A hard year, but a good year.

I handed in my dissertation, on the application of situationist psychogeographical techniques to studying archaeological landscapes, and sat my final exams in April/May. That was a proper slog. As C hadn't been able to find a proper job (seriously, someone around Glasgow must want to hire Cambridge graduates. I mean, WTF?) and so I had to work 25-35 hours a week as well as studying full time and working on my dissertation. It's a wonder that there's not more grey in my mane right now! :)

So I'm now an archaeologist. Which is to say that I'm, for the most part, underemployed and not working in archaeology... I probably could find a job in archaeology but most beginning jobs are for people to work on excavations and I have a terrible loathing for excavation and, to boot, I'm not very good at it. I've also got crap knees so crawling around in the muck all day scraping away layer after layer of mud isn't really that appealing a prospect. If anyone happens to want to hire an archaeologically trained office monkey though -I'm your man. :D

This year was also the year that I finally, thanks to finishing uni, found the time to both read a whole heap of the fiction that I've been building up over the course of my studies and to start actually writing some.

I've completed one full length story, The Sable Masque, which is currently sat in the slush pile at one of my favourite short fiction magazines awaiting rejection. It's a short tale of a man who wakes up one morning to find that the world around him has changed dramatically, and horrifyingly, yet only he seems aware of the change. It's also quite heavily metaphorical for the alienation of the worker under capitalism and all that jazz. Well, it seems heavily metaphorical to me.

I also won second prize in a wee flash fiction competition for a piece called The Dolly Doll which was nice.

I've currently got a whole host of works in progress.

I have nearly finished a King in Yellow inspired story called Scheme, which was formerly known as Schemes of Grey and Yellow, which I posted an excerpt from earlier this month. I'm also making slow but steady progress on my novella Dolorosa which I'm hoping to have finished, well -ready for redrafting, by spring.

I'm working on a small collection of King in Yellow related stories that I'm hoping to release as an ebook this summer to celebrate the anniversary of both the birth of Robert W Chambers and the publication of his King in Yellow collection. Currently there are three works in progress including Scheme. One follows a young unemployed man and his encounter with a secret institution in Glasgow that uses Lethal Chambers to allow the poor and unemployed to voluntarily cull their own ranks. The other is a letter from a prisoner awaiting trial in Barlinnie Prison following his accusation of having committed a string of murders for which he blames a certain 19^th Century document...

Added to the Yellow stories are Sally's System -a story about family tradition, holidays, and murder most foul; To the Mountain -a kickstartered expedition to an anomaly on Google Earth turns rather more interesting than the participants imagined; and Our Clouded Hills -a novelette set in near future Britain.

I've also become slightly more active with regards the Lovecraft Ezine public message board and even managed to catch a live show a few weeks ago. Which is a first due to my work patterns and time zones. The Sunday show doesn't air until 11p.m. on this side of the pond and given as I work Sunday and then generally have to be up at 6a.m. the following morning I don't really get the chance to watch live. Hopefully I'll get more chances in future. I also really want to help out with the Ezine now that I have some free time as I think it's a really important project. To my mind the Ezine is replacing the gap left by the clusterfuck that Weird Tales has become since the change in management.

On the home front Little Ms. X continues to impress me as she continues to grow into a fabulous young woman working out the world around her. She's so much more clued up than I was at her age, she's amazing and makes me so happy and proud in equal measure. Even when she's in full blown angry teenager mode. I can't wait to see what happens next even though it is also terrifying given the bullshit and nonsense that comes with being a teenager. I also have the growing urge to kill every teenage boy within a 20 mile radius of the village. Just to be on the safe side, you know?

As we move into 2015 I'm not going to make any new years resolutions as I always seem to break them almost immediately. There are some goals that I am going to set myself however which I may be able to achieve.

Firstly I'm going to knock smoking on the head. Again. C and I are both going to switch across to those e-fag things as a stepping stone to getting off the evil weed. I'm also going to try and put out a piece of free fiction every month with the first pieces, probably, being Sally's System and Our Clouded Hills which will be, again hopefully, going out in January and February,

Also, hopefully, there will be a less dead end job for me to find early in the new year. Fingers crossed eh?

Lists!

Everyone loves a good old end of year list so here are a couple of mine.

Books I've read (Not counting books for uni, obv.)

Never Again: A collection of weird fiction against fascism and racism containing a brilliant variety of the Weird.

A Season in Carcosa: Edited by the King in Yellow himself, Joseph S Pulver Sr. this is a fantastic anthology of tales inspired by Chambers' King in Yellow series. Very highly recommended.

The Weird: I actually bought this a couple of years ago but it is a massive tome and I've been slowly dipping in and out of it for a long time now. This is probably the defining volume when it comes to Weird fiction.

Cthulhu 2000: I bought this specifically so I could read Black Man with a Horn by T.E.D. Klein which I reviewed a few months ago.

The Red Tree: An utterly fantastic novel from Caitlin Kiernan. If you haven't already read this you should. Now. It's probably one of the best works of Cosmic Horror that has been produced in the last couple of decades. Absolutely brilliant.

The Spectral Link: The long awaited, and stunningly presented, new tales from the dark master Thomas Ligotti. I reviewd it when it came out, you can read that here.

The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies: John Langan's collection of long shorts. Another wonderful collection from a master of the weird.

Celebrant: This novel by Michael Cisco is a confusing one. I don't know whether to read it extremely closely or to just let the sumptuous text wash over in. Cisco manages to maintain a highly strange and surreal prose style throughout this novel that makes this one of the most gorgeous things I've ever read.

The New Uncanny: An interesting anthology looking at Freud's notion of the uncanny. This is well worth picking up if you get the chance.

Cthulhu Cymraeg: It's true that the Welsh language may look and sound something like Aklo but this volume is in English so that even I could read it. The few stories in this slim volume cross the spectrum of the weird including some bizarro works and more traditional, and chilling, cosmic horror.

The Dark Domain: Stefan Grabinski is a singular Polish voice. Writing at the beginning of the 20th Century his work belies an unease with the increasing speed of industrialisation and mechanisation of the world around him.

American Supernatural Tales: A brilliant collection put together by S.T. Joshi in a series curated by Guillermo Del Toro. This book features fiction that spans nearly two centuries and features some of America's finest writers of horror fiction from Washington Irvine through H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and on to Thomas Ligotti and Caitlin Kiernan.

The Thomas Ligotti Reader: A collection of essays looking at Ligotti, his work, and his influences. For the true cosmic horror nerd.

HP Lovecraft The Complete Fiction: A beautiful collection of HPL's stories put out by Barnes and Noble of all people.

Films I've enjoyed

Banshee Chapter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhrYDiaSo_s

Oculus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYJrxezWLUk

Absentia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa1UJLqYeBU

Pride

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZfFvsKDuUU

Dead Snow 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glIoXwTcG60

Shows I've enjoyed

True Detective: Yeah, there was the whole shenanigans with the plagiarism of Thomas Ligotti but it was still a fantastic show. I just wish the creator was a bit more honest about his influences.

Gotham: A bit of a silly show but that emerged into a nice mob vs. the police show with some nice tips towards the Batman universe that even a non-Batfan like me can appreciate.

Constantine: A bit of a let down to be honest but I'm still hoping that it will develop into something more fitting of the name. The Welsh dude that plays Constantine is brilliant in the role so hopefully it will move away from the monster of the week pish that has defined the fist episodes.

Supernatural: Because if I want a monster of the week show I go to the Winchester boys. :)

American Horror Story: I didn't really think that much of Freak Show but Little Ms. X loves it and I pissed myself laughing when she pointed out that "Murder House had ghosts, Asylum had aliens and a serial killers, Coven had witches. Freak Show has an entitled rich white boy because there's nothing more terrifying." :D

The Walking Dead: Probably the most tense show on TV. Every time someone does something dangerous, like walking down the road or having a poo, I'm convinced they're going to die a bloody death at just that moment. Proper edge of your seat horror.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Despite starting slow this has just grown better and better as it has gone on and I'm chomping at the bit for the next season.

The Wire: Yeah, I know. But C only just managed to get me to watch it this summer and wow! It's one of the best bits of television ever produced.

Music I've listened to

Radical Dance Faction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUsx4iEe8HU

Joan Osborne

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAeTywPiP4

Faith No More

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJR2Ab-DIkA

The Baghdaddies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68W-QFg5czs

Tansads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZotfSiLInx8

Ned's Atomic Dustbin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxVMfBfQDY

Leatherface

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYQBUyL0ips

[spunge]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbH50Bv31l8

Leftover Crack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unxrRffd9iY

Star Fucking Hipsters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAqRHaQxStU

 

I hope everyone has had a great year and I hope that we have a better one over the coming 12 months.

I Won a Thing

I submitted a piece of flash fiction to Michael Brooks monthly flash fiction competition over at his Cult of Me blog. Well, I came second place. :)

You can read it over on his blog. Hope you enjoy it. :)

Out of Skin by E.M. Carroll

Emily Carroll is a Canadian comic book author with a bunch of comic strips available to read on her website. Amongst those strips that are free to read is Out of Skin which is a thoroughly chilling tale. You can read it here.

Permuted Ponderings

For the last few days I've been reblogging author, blogger, time traveller(see image below), and all round good egg Sean Hoade's posts about the recent shenanigans of Permuted Press. Sean is one of a group of authors who have a major grievance with the small press company over promises made and broken with regard the publication of their work. I was going to let Sean do all the talking as he seems to have covered all the bases and, unlike him, I have no dog in this fight. So to speak. Well, I'm never one to keep my trap shut for long and so here's my thruppence worth on the subject.

[caption id="attachment_724" align="aligncenter" width="462"] Left: Hoade in the late 1800s Right: Hoade as he appears today.[/caption]

There are two things I would like to discuss briefly here. The brevity being because I'm actually sat in work at the moment and want to get this finished before my boss comes in to interfere with my internetting. Firstly the conflict between legality and ethics and, secondly, the effect that actions like those taken by Permuted Press can have on a small community such as the horror literature community.

One of the things that has been brought up a few times recently, and in other similar situations that I've come across over the years, is the repeated assertion that Permuted Press are well within their legal rights to do what they did. That the contract which the authors entered into with PP did not state that they would definitely see their books printed into actual tangible objects that would be available in book stores and adorning the shelves of horror aficionados the world over. The wording of the contract was such that PP were buying the option to publish the books in print form. So yes, legally, have no obligation to publish their work in such a way.

However PP had led many of these authors to believe that they would indeed be publishing their books in such a manner. I'm sure that, given the tiny advance on royalties they were offering ($350 on publication) that the thought of having their books in glorious wood pulpy splendour is what convinced many of these authors to sign on the dotted line. What Ponzi Permuted Press have done is mislead authors, attempting to bolster their roster of talent giving themselves the appearance of being a larger, more professional, outfit than they actually are. This is highly unethical. Legal yet unethical.

For many commentators on the internet it seems that there is a confusion between ethics and legality. As if an action's legality has any bearing on the ethical nature of said action. On whether an action was right or wrong. There are countless examples of things that are illegal despite being ethical. Whether it's environmentalists stopping roads being built or soldiers refusing to follow orders, sitting at the front of the bus or preventing scabs from gaining entrance to a work site. All of these things are, or were, illegal and yet they were/are -beyond any shadow of a doubt- exactly the ethical thing to do.

Similarly there are countless actions that are, or were, completely legal yet are ethically unjustifiable. Rape in marriage, the brutalisation of prisoners, laying off entire work forces, tax avoidance, environmental devastation, the wholesale slaughter and waste of billions of animals, third world debt, outsourcing, imprisoning children. The list goes on, and on, and on.

So when we are discussing a matter, the actions of individuals or groups/organisations, then the issue of legality shouldn't come into it at all. Unless it is as a condemnation of the structure of our society which allows unethical and harmful activities to occur and shelters the perpetrators under the cloak of legality. For when the cloak of legality is removed then we can expose the actions to the cold, hard, light of critical thought.  When we do this then it becomes abundantly clear that Permuted Press have acted extremely unethically in their behaviour towards their authors. For this they deserve to be censured in the strongest terms possible.

There are also those who will criticise the authors now raising their voices about their treatment. They will say that they should have read their contracts properly. That it is their fault for entering into a deal that was so patently one sided. Which brings us to my second point.

Authors are human beings. They are individuals with aspirations, hopes, strengths and failings. Like all humans they are prone to trust others of their species. This trust is one of the things that makes us human, that allows our societies to grow and our civilisation to exist. It isn't laws and proclamations that allow us to walk down the street not cowering in fear that we're going to get shanked when we turn the corner. It's the trust that we have in our fellow humans that they aren't going to shank us. It's a well founded trust too as the vast, vast majority of humans will not behave in such a manner -regardless of what the media would have us believe. This is why it is always good "shock-horror" news entertainment when someone does breach that trust.

So when someone who is a part of our community, in this case the horror literature/small press community, makes us an offer then we take them at face value. We have to; because a community can only function with this trust that others are going to act in good faith. So when PP pull a trick like this it makes others nervous that they are going to get shafted in a similar manner. It creates bad feelings between people in a small community. Bad feelings do nothing to add to the health and growth of said community.

For example. Should I ever finish a long piece of fiction and were I to submit it to Mike Davis over at Lovecraft Ezine I would trust Mike to not be looking to renege on any deal, verbal or otherwise. I need to trust Mike as the relationships between people in the community absolutely have to be built on trust. I want my books to be coming out, I want other people's books to be coming out, I want to know that those of us within the community are treating one another with respect and not seeking to make a quick buck at one another's expense. I want a healthy community. The actions of Permuted Press, and others like them, do harm to the wider community. It isn't just about these particular authors and these particular contracts. It's about those of us in the community not having to think and act like fucking lawyers when we want to work on a project together. And yes, signing to a small press is more like entering into a collaborative project than a deal with one of the Big 5. For the simple fact that small presses tend to be run by fans. By people that love the genre they are working in. They are the same as the authors they work with. Sure everyone needs to make a buck, capitalism sucks like that, but there is no need to be an utter dick by screwing over your, figurative, neighbours.

So fuck Permuted Press and may the works of their authors find better, more appreciative, homes elsewhere.

Free Weird Story - Men of the City

On Deviant Art the renowned Liverpuddlian author and artist Clive Barker is reading short fiction based on a painting of his - Men of the City - and so I submitted a short piece which I've also posted here.

Enjoy :)

Well, hopefully you will. :D

[caption id="attachment_671" align="aligncenter" width="470"] ©2014 CliveBarker[/caption]

Gemma Files - This Is Not For You

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="575" class=" "] ART © 2014 SHELBY NICHOLS (From Nightmare Magazine. Image links to artist website)[/caption]

It's here at last! Women Destroy Horror, the special edition of Nightmare Magazine edited by the, ever awesome, Ellen Datlow. A handful of the short stories and articles  are going to be made available for free on the Nightmare Magazine website. To read the whole lot you have to buy the magazine either in hard copy or ebook(Kindle, Nook. Kobo), the ebook looking like a proper bargain as it's still the regular price of £1.90 despite featuring far more stories and articles than a regular issue of Nightmare. The hard copy is a shade off £8 but is still a bargain considering how much is crammed inside.



The first story to be released for free is 'This Is Not For You' by Gemma Files.  Files has been publishing fiction since the mid-1990s yet, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first tale of hers that I've read - a full list of her published work can be found on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

I read 'This Is Not For You' on the train to work this morning and, if the rest of her writing is like this, I have to read more. I'm adding her to my Christmas list this year for sure. (Are you reading this C?) The story follows the bacchanal rites of a revived Hellenistic cult with a serial killer lurking in their midst. This is a disturbing, yet playful, story and the elements that make it disturbing are exactly the same elements that also make it playful. Files inverts the trope of the male serial killer  -the lone hunter- stalking his, mostly, female victims and turns it into a very female collective activity that celebrates female power in the same way that the serial killer trope celebrates male power through its fetishization of violence and the ability to take life at will. The story also has a nice little dig at the male douche-patrol that stalk the internet fighting for the rights of men oppressed by women everywhere(sarcasm).

Over the next couple of weeks we are going to see '...Warmer' by A.R. Morlan(8th October), 'It Feels Better Biting Down' by Livia Llewellyn(15th October) and 'Unfair Exchange' by Pat Cadigan(22 October) released for free. I'm really excited to read Livia Llewellyn's story. But then again who wouldn't be? :)

As well as the short fiction Nightmare are also releasing 'The H Word: The H is for Harassment (a/k/a Horror’s Misogyny Problem)' by Chesya Burke8th October), 'Artists Showcase: Five Women Artists Who Are Destroying Horror Art'
by Galen Dara(15th October), and an interview with Joyce Carol Oates by Lisa Morton(22nd October). All of which I'm looking forward to reading over the coming weeks until pay day when I'll be ordering the hard copy.

If you are considering buying this via Amazon please use either the links in this post or the links to Amazon in the sidebar as that way the fantastic Lovecraft Ezine will get a bung at no extra cost to you. :)

Keep it weird.

Black Man With a Horn - T.E.D. Klein

I have heard repeated mentions of the T.E.D. Klein story 'Black Man With a Horn'  over the last few years and have heard it described as both masterful and a classic weird tale. I had read 'The Events at Poroth Farm' in S.T. Joshi and Guillermo del Toro's American Supernatural Tales -part of a series curated by del Toro for Penguin- and had thoroughly enjoyed it. It is an extremely unsettling story and I highly recommend it. However that was the extent of my reading of T.E.D. Klein. I set out to try and find a copy of the story online, it dates from the early 1980s/late 1970s so there was every chance it may be sat on the internet somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn't find it. It appears in S.T. Joshi's monumental collection A Mountain Walked but that's ever so slightly out of my price range. It does look beautiful though.

[caption id="attachment_586" align="aligncenter" width="470"] Illustration from A Mountain Walked for Black Man With a Horn[/caption]

I eventually found a copy of Cthulhu 2000 from Del Ray which included the story. Not quite so sumptuously presented I'll admit but the volume does include an amazing array of authors including Thomas Ligotti, Michael Shea, Harlan Ellison, and Ramsey Campbell amongst others. £3 well spent by any measure. I eagerly jumped into the story at the first chance I got which was, inevitably, on my morning commute to work. It soon dawned on me that reading this story at the present time, what with all the hoo haa that's going on surrounding HPL and the World Fantasy Award, was somewhat fitting. The protagonist of the story is an old man, an author of weird fiction who was a contemporary of Lovecraft's who has outlived his deceased friend and seen the world change around him. He harbours many of the same prejudices that Lovecraft did though to a far lesser extent. Of this character I would actually buy the 'man of his time' argument as there is no hatred to his racism, merely an understanding of how the world works stunted by culture and, to an extent, ignorance. The character's racism is also tempered by a misanthropy that causes him to scorn most people regardless of race or ethnicity.

It was, in fact, a thorny problem: forced to choose between whites whom I despised and blacks whom I feared, I somehow preferred the fear.

The tale is littered with passages like the one above where the protagonist expresses his discomfort with the world that has changed around him, leaving him trapped in a present that it alien and which shows no sign of ceasing in becoming more so as time progresses. Many of these passages are addressed directly to Lovecraft as he imagines his old friend's reaction to the world as it is now, well -as it was in the 1970s, and how badly he reacted to the New York that he knew in the early 1920s when he was driven by his fear to pen The Horror at Red Hook. It is a brilliant set up for a weird tale as the protagonist is already alienated from the world around him and so it doesn't take much to push him into the world of the truly weird.

The horror of this story is based on a cult mentioned by both  August Derleth and Lovecraft, the Tcho-Tcho, and the protagonist's investigation into their connection with the disappearance of a missionary with whom he becomes acquainted on a flight. I shan't go into the plot, track the story down and read it, as that's not what I wanted to discuss here. I think that  the most notable thing about the story, for me at the moment anyway, is Klein's handling of the prejudices of the protagonist and how he conflates them with Lovecraft's own, much more vitriolic, bigotry. It illustrates quite well the difference between the racism of a person who is 'of their time' and the shocking racism espoused by HPL. It is a nice exploration of the sense of displacement that a person can feel as they are left behind by the world as they age and how, eventually, they can come to peace with the inevitability of change and the alien. As the narrator does at the end of the tale.

The description of this story as a masterpiece of weird fiction is quite accurate. Whilst the story itself may not be quite as boundary pushing as some of the work being produced by today's masters in the field it is brilliantly executed and the subtler aspects of the story have made this a new favourite of mine. I'll definitely be seeking out everything else written by T.E.D. Klein.

Oh, and I should say that you probably shouldn't read this if you can't stomach the expressions of attitudes and prejudices that don't gel with your own.

Story Feedback Wanted

Hey, if anyone who reads this would like to read one of my short stories and give me feedback on it please let me know. I've posted a password protected copy of it on the blog here and will message you with the link and password. Any advice and/or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Message me at my Gmail: awhendry.writer

or via Twitter: @postantiquarian

or, alternatively, leave a comment here with your details and I'll drop you a line.

Review - The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan

I posted this review of The Red Tree by by Caitlín R. Kiernan over at Good Reads.

The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First off. DO NOT LET THE COVER FOOL YOU!
This is not urban fantasy/paranormal romance. This is a beautifully written piece of literary weird/cosmic horror. Whoever ok'd this cover doesn't seem to have read the book.
Taking the form of a journal kept by Sarah Crow, an author grieving the suicide of her partner, The Red Tree is a sumptuously written examination of grief, anger, loneliness and the effects these can have on a person's sanity. Kiernan is masterful at her deployment of the unreliable narrator. The concept of the unreliable narrator being one that runs throughout this story; and, indeed, is carried on in her next novel The Drowning Girl.
The plot of the novel revolves around an ancient tree sitting just within sight of a farm house Sarah has rented in order to both work on her novel and try and deal with her grief. The tree is steeped in monstrous lore and terrible legends linked to barbarous rituals, serial killers and suicides. These myths and legends weave themselves into Sarah's story, into her grief, her loss and begin to fragment her sense of self and reality.
As with all of Kiernan's work The Red Tree is gorgeously written and a joy to read. Her prose is exceptional in the field of weird/horror writing and why she hasn't won more awards I do not know.
Still, I don't know what the hell is going on with that cover...


View all my reviews

The Red Tree - Caitlin R Kiernan

I'm a huge fan of Caitlin R Kiernan. I have been since I read her weird masterpiece The Drowning Girl last year. I still think that it's a travesty that the book didn't win every award that it was possible to win; so beautiful is her prose. I picked up the book that was released prior to The Drowning Girl, The Red Tree, quite a while ago but due to my studies obliterating my ability to read anything like the amount of fiction I would like I have only just gotten around to reading it. I've nearly finished the book, and probably will this evening, but there is something about it that has been bugging me.

As with the Drowning Girl Kiernan's story here is absolutely sumptuous and masterful in its execution. Following the final weeks of bereaved author Sarah Crow as she comes under the fell influence of the titular red tree it is presented as journal kept by Sarah Crow throughout her last weeks at the farm house to which she has fled to hide from her crumbling career. As well as being a masterpiece of Lovecraftian/Cosmic horror The Red Tree is also an intimate character examination of a middle aged woman whose life is crumbling about her whilst she is dealing with the emotional fall out of the suicide of her lover. Basically this book, as with The Drowning Girl, is a fantastic piece of genre fiction that shits from a great height upon the notion that genre fiction is all about plot and lit fic is all about character. I can't recommend it highly enough.

High praise. So, what is it that's bugging you so Andy? That's sticking in your craw to the point that you have to write about this book before you've even finished it? Well dear readers... who am I kidding? Dear reader, it is such a small thing that it is faintly ridiculous that it bugs me so. It's the cover.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="316"] Seriously????[/caption]

So, this a character examination of a middle aged lesbian encountering such stark and unthinkable horrors that it twists her sense of reality, shakes her to her core. Yet someone at ROC thought it was a good idea to put a moody looking early twenty something on the cover making this look like by the numbers paranormal romance or urban fantasy. Talk about mismarketing and misrepresenting the work within. Sarah Crow is 44 years old and broken. She isn't a 22 year old mysterious and sultry goth girl.* I know that we're told from a young age not to judge a book by its cover and all that jazz. Unfortunately, when it comes to buying books, that's exactly what we do. If I had seen this on a book shelf, without having previously read The Drowning Girl, I would have most definitely not have picked it up. I would have assumed it was some kind of a Twilight cash in. When Little Ms. X saw me reading it recently she guffawed and asked if I was reading a kids book. When I explained the plot of the book she looked at the cover unbelievingly.  It does this work an immense disservice that it is dressed in the black crushed velvet of a paranormal romance novel.

I honestly can't recommend this work highly enough and if you see it tucked between some god awful Twilight cash in nonsense at your local book store please, please rescue it and give it a good home. You will be grateful that you did.

Rant over. :D

 

*Not that I have anything against mysterious and sultry goth girls. It's just that this book isn't about one.

The Spectral Link - Thomas Ligotti

To be at odds with the status quo of one's world can be frustrating to the point of madness. Fear, hate, and desperation are just a few of the mental states that fall to those who would have things other than they are. To become unhinged from the majority is to lose that vital link that keeps one complacently within the fold. Set adrift within the forbidden, the outsider remains on a steady course towards utter doom.

So opens the preface to The Spectral Link - the first release of new Ligottian fiction since 2006's collection Teatro Grottesco. I received my copy in the post last week and the wait for its delivery brought about an impatience that I've not experienced since I was a child waiting for Christmas.

The book itself is a very slim volume, only 94 pages, and only contains two stories - Metaphysica Morum and The Small People. Only 94 pages but it is a truly beautiful wee volume. Everything from the quality of the paper through to the silk smooth dust jacket screams quality and we really should expect no less for a work that has been so anticipated since its surprise announcement last year(if I remember right). This is the first book that I've ordered from Subterranean Press, due mostly to the price, but if their releases are all to this standard I can see myself buying many more in the future. Bibliophilia is an expensive habit...

In the, very brief, preface Ligotti outlines the core theme of much of his work. That of the outsider who does not merely find himself at odds with society but with reality itself and of the only salvation being insanity.

Of course, the situation is hopeless for those who wish an alteration in affairs that by their very nature are fixed and define the world in which we are all chained. Their dispute is with reality itself, or what passes for reality.

Metaphysica Morum

The first of the two stories in this collection is told from the perspective of a person who seeks nothing more than to be "euthanized by anesthesia", a phrase repeated often throughout the tale. This repetition reinforcing the fragile mindset of the protagonist as he experiences strange phantasmagoric dreams involving a 'dealer' who offers him a "all-new-context" and tries to relate these dreams to his therapist come meditation guru; a Doctor O.

There is an unrelenting bleakness to this story that readers of Ligotti will find most familiar but which others may find rather disturbing. Even someone familiar with Ligotti's previous work may find that this tale really ramps up the horrifying ennui, pessimism and depression that permeates works like My Work is Not Yet Done and Nethescurial. The narrator describes his fragile mental state as being the result of a demoralization he feels when confronted with the world as it is and the strange connection between his dreams and what he perceives as reality.

You could attribute my psychological instability to this fact as well as to the dream occasions that so suspiciously bled into my quotidian life that sometimes I could not tell one from the other, which hypothetically might be attributed to there being no actual distinction between them.

Something that is, no doubt, reinforced by the revelation of his somewhat insalubrious origins as revealed in a partial letter from an estranged family member.

As with Ligotti's other work; the text drips with a very concisely manifested bleakness and philosophical rejection of all that that others take for granted as being of value.

The Small People

Then I saw the sign just off the right side of the road. It had one of those simple faces on it, and written below were the words: SMALL COUNTRY. My whole body tightened, as it always did when I saw one of those road signs.

The second offering in the volume concerns a young person's hatred of,  and obsession with, the eponymous 'Small People'. As with Metaphysica Morum the tale involves a doctor which is of note, I feel, as these stories were penned following a brush with death that lead to the author's hospitalisation. In this story the narrator is directly addressing a doctor as the tale of their childhood unfolds.

The narrator is obsessed with a group of people who live apart from normal, 'real' being the distinction the narrator makes, human society. This story is very open to multiple readings and interpretations. The Small People with which the protagonist is obsessed could be read as a representation of a society from which the narrator is alienated or as a section of our society, especially of groups marginalised by race/ethnicity or lifestyle.

Until then, I scarcely had a glimpse of any small people. My strange fear of them originated mostly from the simple face on the road signs that alerted people, real people, of their impending entry into small country. The mere idea of the smalls was enough to make me anxious about something I couldn't name. And looking into that red plastic toy, I was sorry I hadn't thrown myself onto the floor of our car, even knowing that my parents would have called me a shameful little bigot for the rest of the vacation.

Again this story is typically Ligottian with it's focus on things which mimic humanity - in earlier stories marionettes/puppets/clowns all feature heavily. Yet I think that the fear/anxiety elicited in the narrator by the existence of the smalls is a step beyond similar stories by Ligotti which I have read as it is so easily read as a reflection of real world bigotry. Something which, I feel, gives the story a greater depth than it otherwise may reach. It is similar in this manner to my personal favourite Ligotti story Our Temporary Supervisor in the collection Teatro Grottesco which plays with the horrific alienation of work in a capitalist society.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="447"] Thomas Ligotti - Teatro Grottesco by SergiyKrykun[/caption]

The book, in hardback, is still available via Amazon UK though the Subterranean Press website is listing it as sold out. I would highly recommend picking this up before it disappears into the realms of the overpriced Ligotti collectibles market.

Ligotti Online has an interview with the author where he discusses the background to his writing of the stories and the tales themselves. You can read it here.