Coming Attractions

The video teaser for Unspeakable Horror is out, and you can get your free copy right here.



Watch for my name. I'm "and 17 others." In all seriousness, I'm grateful to be part of what people at Context were calling an anticipated and prestigious anthology.

An Experiment in Sleep Deprivation - HyperiCon 4

I arose at 4:30 on Friday morning in order to drive to Nashville, where HyperiCon is held. I finally went to sleep around 2:30 the next morning. Lather, rinse, repeat, and you'll get a good idea of what my three-day experience in Tennessee was like.

The details? Plenty of those. Some I even remember.

For example, seeing my pal John Hornor Jacobs. (That's John with Fran Friel. More on her below.) John and I roomed together at the con, and it was his idea to bring some snacks to keep in our room. If it hadn't been for this wise suggestion, we wouldn't have had much to eat (or drink -- but more on that later) the entire weekend, because the conference hotel was inexplicably without a restaurant or bar. In addition to his uncanny prescience John's also a terrific writer, and gave me the manuscript of his first novel during the con. I've already read the first four chapters, and survey says we have a winner. John also has three -- count 'em! -- shorts slated for publication. (For a different view of the weekend's festivities, including a terrific and funny video, check out John's blog, Bastardized Version.)

One of the people I was most looking forward to meeting is Fran Friel, whose new book, Mama's Boy and Other Dark Tales was recently released. In addition to being one of the nicest people you could ever meet, Fran has a hidden dark side which she gives free reign when it comes to her fiction.

As a result, Mama's Boy is filled with stories that are both lovely and troubling at the same time -- a tough act to pull off. She also makes a great dinner companion, which John and I discovered Saturday night. We went to The Melting Pot, a restaurant that specializes in fondue which, contrary to all rumors, has not completely gone the way of Pet Rocks and key parties.


Chatting with fellow Illinoisan Steven Shrewsbury was also a high point. Shrews, as he's called, is the author of the just-released Hawg, as well as a dozen or so other books, and just about as many more on the way. With a full-time job and family, I don't know how he does it. Shrews is also one of the most... um, animated?... readers you're likely to see. Seriously, if Steven Shrewsbury schedules a reading at your local bookseller, show up. If you don't, you'll be left wondering exactly what everyone else is talking about.

Saturday night saw several parties. My favorite was the Apex bash, hosted by Apex Book Company editor-in-chief Jason Sizemore, editor Mari Adkins (who I shared more than a few good laughs with), and graphics guru Justin Stewart. Apex is the publisher of Fran's new book in addition to many others, along with Apex Digest. For my money (and they managed to make off with a bit of it) Apex puts out some of the best-looking and -reading publications out there. Naturally, they put on a great party, complete with a truly horrifying shot concoction called "scrambled brains."

Seen, painted on the sidewalk, while I was in downtown Nashville.

Sunday didn't amount to much for me, other than a long drive back to Chicago with a sack of ten White Castles in the passenger seat, purchased to nurse my hangover. While I was glad I went, I was glad to be back home as well. Because I knew I was finally going to get some sleep.

Happy Horror News

Just received word that the +Horror Library+ Volume 3 from Cutting Block Press has accepted my story "The Living World."

In it, an anorexia patient shares a secret with her young counselor, which causes her to see the world in a new and frightening way.

Of nearly 500 stories submitted, "The Living World" is one of only 30 selected. I'll be appearing with notables like Gary Braunbeck, Bentley Little, Michael Arnzen and my pal, Kurt Dinan. Actually, the entire anthology looks amazing. Even the cover is kick-ass. (The artist is Chad Michael Ward.)

Sincere thanks go out to R.J. Cavender and his editorial staff. I'm excited and honored to be included.

Look Closer

You may be thinking, "Wait a minute. This is a blog about horror. What's with the late-seventies prog-rock album cover?"

And if you'd never taken a closer look at The Alan Parson Project's 1979 release, Eve, you'd be justified in thinking that.

But if you have, you already know why I posted this. Because it starts out looking perfectly normal and ends up being perfectly horrifying.

Go ahead and click on the image -- I went to great pains to find the largest, highest-res version available. Take a look. Then look closer.

I saw this album cover several times in the store before I really looked at it. But the day I did -- on a Sunday afternoon, at a record store in a Des Moines, Iowa mall -- I was at first shocked, then disgusted, and finally, thrilled.

I'd been suckered, and now I was in on the joke, and I loved it.

I wish more frightening films and fiction took this approach. The other night I started watching Saw III. It opens with a man sawing off his leg, and lingers on all the gory details. And I turned it off after 15 minutes, because when something starts at 11, there aren't too many other places it can go, other than serving up one more 11 after another.

Shock. Shock. Shock. Shock. Shock. Before too long it stops being shocking and starts being boring.

This attitude probably won't endear me to the younger generation, for whom the Saw series is aimed. But like everyone else they'll get older some day. They'll have seen it all and wonder why none of it satisfies them any more, and then they'll understand.

When something sneaks up on you -- appearing at first to be one thing, lulling you into a comfortable place, and then later revealing itself to be something much, much worse -- you really do get a shock from it.

When something bad happens to a character you identify with and care about, you really do feel it.

When tension is created and then released in an act of horror or violence, you really get your money's worth.

In Good Company

Today I can announce that my short story "The Boys of Bald Cave" will be appearing in the Dark Scribe Press anthology Unspeakable Horror. (That's the cover art there on the left.)

In it, two twelve-year-old boys awaken a malevolent presence inside the cave near their homes. When one later vanishes, the other covers up the true circumstances behind his disappearance and must live with his own guilt and shame.

All through the month of May Dark Scribe Press has been announcing their authors, and I'm pleased to say they've put together an impressive line-up. It's an honor to be included among them.

You can find out more about the anthology and its authors at the Dark Scribe Press web site.

"Odd Thomas" by Dean Koontz

I've never read a Dean Koontz book. I've always been a Stephen King reader, supposing, incorrectly, that you could only be one or the other.

But when someone recommended Odd Thomas to me after hearing my novel idea, I knew I had to check it out.

Odd Thomas is the first of what is currently four Odd novels and a comic book slated for publication in June of 2008. After striking gold with one stand-alone book after another for years, it seems Koontz hit platinum with this character, and is more than happy to keep mining the vein for as long as it produces.

Good on him, I say, even though the publishing industry's desire for -- or insistence on -- series books is a trend that leaves me cold.

Odd -- whose name was supposed to be Todd before it was botched on his birth certificate -- is a twenty-year-old fry cook in Pico Mundo ("little world"), California. He's adjusted to his strange talent for seeing the dead by limiting himself to a small-town existence, where ugly deaths from murders, suicides and car accidents -- and the restless spirits they produce -- are a relative rarity. Life, for him, is just more peaceful that way, and Odd confesses he could never live in a large city, where unhappy souls are produced by the dozens on a daily basis.

And yet, despite Pico Mundo's picturesque calm, the disgruntled dead have a way of finding Odd just the same. The book opens with the appearance of a murdered twelve-year-old girl and Odd's heroic pursuit of her assailant through the town's tract homes and swimming pools.

Because of thrilling captures like this, Odd is trusted by the local sheriff as someone who can help solve -- and occasionally prevent -- crimes. So when a stranger arrives and Odd gets a whiff of his less-than-savory plans, it's practically no time at all before he and the reader are on another chase to get to the bottom of things and save the day.

Though Odd is a likeable character with a good head on his shoulders, a girlfriend to whom he's eternally devoted, and a strong desire to do right by the wronged spirits he encounters, his actions often strained my own suspension of disbelief. He laments getting involved in crime and punishment, yet seems eager to break into a suspect's house in search of clues. He enjoys the sheriff's respect and friendship, yet when confronted by a dead body in his apartment he goes to great lengths to conceal the evidence, as if the police wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt.

Koontz tries his darnedest to justify these odd reactions in order to keep everything moving swiftly forward, but in the end it required more than a bit of indulgence on my part. However, when it comes to learning from an author who's got the mechanics of plot and story down cold, there are plenty of worse examples out there to follow.

Though his writing and character work seem less polished than King's, Koontz doesn't get bogged down in the drive for literary importance that has marred some of his contemporary's latest efforts. (This may have changed, however, with the release of The Darkest Evening of the Year, which appears to be chasing some of the same ambitions.)

Still, the book is a satisfying enough read, and even though I saw the ending headed down the tracks from miles away, it still managed to be a surprisingly emotional moment for me. This was my first Dean Koontz book, but I'm pretty sure it won't be my last.

"Being Dead" by Jim Crace

Joseph and Celice are zoologists, scientists and academics. They harbor few illusions about the meaning of life or death, seeing both as just two points so far apart on a continuum that they could conceivably be touching somewhere on the other side.

Married for 30 years, they've traveled back to the bay where they met and first made love, when a stranger finds them on the beach and brutally murders both of them.

So begins Jim Crace's Being Dead, which is both a detailed study of what becomes of two corpses left to the elements and a surprisingly tender love story that begins and ends in death.

Crace is a British writer with some half dozen well-regarded novels to his name and, judging from this book, someone who's both horrified and enraptured by humanity's place in a world that cares little for its fate.

The novel is structured as two interwoven halves. The first opens with the murder of Joseph and Celice and catalogs with detached specificity the changes their bodies go through as they first die and then succumb to the forces of nature over the course of six days. The second chronicles their meeting 30 years earlier as graduate students doing fieldwork at the same spot they would later die.

Just as their meeting was not a typical -- or even entirely romantic -- story, nor is their life or death. Crace describes Celice as something of an Amazon, tall and muscular, with a prickly demeanor; Joseph is smaller physically, but the superior one when it comes to intellect and career. These complementary aspects -- or imbalances, depending on how you want to look at it -- combine to make a marriage that is not always happy and passionate, but one built on mutual respect, understanding and, most of all, enduring love.

Reading Being Dead I was often reminded of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, another novel composed of intertwined stories that move forward and back in time and somehow manage to merge so completely that it seems everything is happening to everyone. Eventually the connections between the characters -- and by extension, us -- become so overwhelming that they almost completely obliterate the differences separating them.

Though told on a much smaller scale, Being Dead has the same effect, especially once the couple is noticed missing and their daughter, an unsteady combination of both parents' physical and emotional make-ups, strikes out to discover what's become of them.

Crace's emphasis on the decomposition of Joseph and Celice's bodies is a fitting tribute for two scientists who have always believed that death is simply another stage of life. He follows them in precise, but never gory, detail as their bodies first give way to a great darkness, then become food for crabs and gulls, grow stiff and bloat, and finally begin their return to the earth.

And yet, this clinical tone sets the reader up for some very emotional moments, such as when police are removing Joseph's hand from around his wife's ankle, which he reached out for in the last moments of life. But six days of decomposition have caused their flesh to meld, and the two must literally be torn apart. It's an image that manages to be both sickening and unspeakably sad at the same time.

Crace's British vocabulary did cause me to scratch my head on more than a few occasions. For example, I have no idea what an "unmetalled road" is, though several of them appear throughout the book. But the world he describes -- one in which nothing on earth lasts or matters except for love -- is one I'm familiar with, and it brings me a small measure of comfort to learn I'm not completely alone in it.

Where Are My Manners?

Last week Tyler Monfredi, one of the writers I met at the World Horror Conference, posted excerpts from an email discussion we had about the writing process on his blog.

It's an honor to be part of it, especially since other writers in the series include John Hornor Jacobs, Tracy Carbone and Hank Schwaeble.

John, Tracy and Hank all have interesting, revealing and valuable things to say. I mostly ramble on about the infinite number of drafts I have to produce in order to achieve something worthy of professional rejection. But alas, this is my cross to bear and now is not the time to complain.

Apologies to Tyler for not mentioning it here earlier.

"Already Dead" by Charlie Huston

I don't particularly care for the hard-boiled genre of crime novels, and it probably goes without saying that I'm no fan of vampires either. Yet I loved Charlie Huston's Already Dead, which is a smart and gritty combo of both. Who knew?

Uber-agent Donna Bagdasarian, that's who. She recommended Charlie Huston to me over drinks at Love is Murder. (Donna, if you're reading, kisses!) I'd never heard of the guy, but after telling her about my own novel, she pretty much put it on my required reading list. What can I say? Donna's powers of persuasion should be legendary.

As should Charlie Huston, if this book is any indication of what he's up to.

The place: New York City. The time: Not quite yesterday, not yet tomorrow. Vampires inhabit the city in the thousands, organized into competing guilds that are just this side of tumbling into all-out war. Joe Pitt -- blood-thirsty private eye -- is caught in the middle of it all.

The plot is pure urban noir. An underage heiress has run away from home and her parents want Joe to track her down through Manhattan's lower levels of Hell. There's another job that Joe is trying to finish as well -- locating the source of a zombie-creating bacteria that's somehow running loose in the streets. Then there's his HIV-positive girlfriend, who loves Joe but won't fuck him, and Joe's own complicated relationship with the various Vampyre cults and all their competing interests. Not to mention Joe's own conflicted feelings about what he is and the things he has to do to survive.

It's a complicated tale full of twists and turns, and I probably would have placed Already Dead into my own personal remainder bin if it weren't for the book's swift, engaging style and Joe's own infectious sense of snark. Even with a broken jaw and tied up by thugs, the guy manages to toss off one-liners like candy from a parade float. I couldn't help but like him. He's smart, he's brave despite being sick and tired of the whole damned mess, and he wants desperately to do the right thing, even when he isn't sure what that is but is certain it'll only get him into more trouble.

The portions that struck me the most, the ones I'd read this book again for, were those describing the various strata of Vampyre society -- particularly the ascetic Enclave, who seek enlightenment through starvation -- the tale of Joe's long-ago initiation into the life of the Undead, and his ongoing efforts to survive it one night at a time.

Fans of the vampire genre should check out Already Dead if they haven't already. (Along with its sequels, No Dominion and Half the Blood of Brooklyn.) Un-fans, like me, should consider it as well, because there are delights here for even the most strident Van Helsing.

And the cover is kick-ass, too.

Good News at a Great Time

While I was at World Horror I learned that a short story of mine has been accepted for an anthology.

The editors have requested my discretion -- they'll be releasing the table of contents and author list in April or May -- so unfortunately I can't mention the story or anthology's title at this time.

I'm honored to be included.

Day 10-14 - Salt Lake City, UT

World Horror 2008

This was my first real writer's conference. One day at Love is Murder doesn't really compare.

Writer's conferences are events where new and up-and-coming writers go to meet well-known authors, agents, editors and publishers, as well as other writers like them. And where fans and everyone else can rub elbows with the big names during whatever precious time is left. The whole thing runs on ethyl alcohol and everyone enjoys a wonderful ride, me included.

Based on excellent advice given to me by Marcus Sakey, I parked myself in the hotel bar on Thursday night and bought people drinks. I met Horror Library editor and writer R.J. Cavender, Cutting Block Press's Boyd Harris, the dangerously funny Cody Goodfellow, R.B. Payne celebrating a recent acceptance, Hal Bodner, author of Bite Club; re-met Tracy Carbone, and had a terrifically long talk with John Paul Allen, author of Gifted Trust and Monkey Love. I saw Martel Sardina and Eric Cherry from Chicago's Twilight Tales. And none of them promised me money in exchange for a link on my blog, though I couldn't blame you for thinking they did. I didn't get home until almost three in the morning, and for an introverted misanthrope who's usually in bed by ten, I think I did okay.

The next day I went to a few late panels, attended the first half of my workshop with Mort Castle, then went back to my room and spent the rest of the night there, nursing myself with take-out from the Crown Burgers across the street from my hotel and liberal amounts of HBO.

But by Saturday I was back in fine form, and the highlight of the day was the second half of my workshop with Mort Castle. Mort is a dark fiction legend who lives in the Chicago area, a terrific talent and resource to have nearby. Mort has written just about everything, and seen just about everyone try to write it, too.

And yet, rather than being jaded or harsh, Mort is one of the most serene and supportive teachers I've ever had. We wrote some short pieces after the first half and read them to the group the next day. Some were better than others, but Mort found something positive to say about each one of them and, better still, made it sound completely genuine and believable.

At one point Mort held his thumb and forefiger just a little bit apart and peered at us all from between the space. "You need this much talent," he said, then opened his arms wide and finished. "And this much ambition."

How many times have I said that ambition always trumps talent? (Only because it's obvious ambition rules the world, not because I possess these qualities in those proportions.) Mort, I love ya. Thanks for a great workshop.

It was during Mort's workshop that I also met John Hornor Jacobs, a hella talented guy who also knows one or two things about advertising. That's him on the right, and that's us on Sunday, craving bacon and eggs the way zombies crave brains. Mort's workshop is also where I met Tyler Monfredi and Petra Miller, two more promising writers who made the conference a lot of fun.

Throughout the con I also spent a lot of time with editor and writer Elizabeth Blue. I don't know if she'd appreciate me posting this picture of her or not, but I think she looks glam, despite Salt Lake City's dry, cold, unpredictable but generally shitty weather. I can't wait to read some of her stuff.

And those, unfortunately, are the only two pictures I have from World Horror 2008. Why I didn't take at least a hundred more is beyond me now, but it might have had something to do with not wanting to look like a total fanboy.

Which I think I did with Kurt Dinan. I saw him coming out of a panel and just shouted his name after recognizing it from reading Longtime Gone last month in Chizine.com. We talked for a bit, but Kurt was maybe a bit leery of my enthusiasm. Nice guy, though. I'll try to behave myself better next time.

Every Horror Plot

The following is the first paragraph of Caleb Crain's review of Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King, which appeared in The New York Times Literary Review on September 12, 1999. I've always been impressed with its insight and accuracy about what brings a horror story to life.

Every horror plot hinges on at least one moment of grand imprudence. You really shouldn't buy that 1958 Plymouth Fury. You really shouldn't take that job as the hotel's winter caretaker. And you really shouldn't dig up your dead son and re-inter him in the enchanted Indian burial ground. But of course the hero acts unwisely, because in some dark cellar of his personality he wants the bad thing. And the reader, with a lesser, merely voyeuristic rashness, wants to see him do it. In the efficient economy of the horror novel -- too efficient for the psychologically fastidious -- the resulting nightmare delivers both a thrill surreptitiously longed for and a punishment for having indulged.

Scary + Funny = Neither

I understand the desire to create a frightening film or piece of fiction that both startles viewers and makes them laugh. I just don't sympathize with the decision to go ahead and do it.

Working on my own fiction, I understand how difficult it is to create and sustain a mood. Especially when that mood is a growing sense of dread, or outright terror, or the understanding that the horrific can hide inside the everyday. It's not easy to scare people, particularly when everyone's seen everything and their buttons have all been pushed to death.

And so we take things further and further. If a splatter of blood is good buckets of it are better. Ten zombies beat one. Jumping out and yelling "Boo" trumps the creeping sense that someone or something is waiting for you in the shadows of the room you're sitting in right now, and soon you'll hear them speak your name and feel their cold hand caressing the side of your neck.

Unfortunately, going for broke usually has the effect of sending whatever we're working on into the realm of the ridiculous. But rather than taking a step back -- or several -- and figuring out where things went wrong and how they can be fixed, far too many of us make the decision to just go with it and call the finished piece a horror/comedy.

The result is Return of the Living Dead and Bubba Ho-Tep and Shaun of the Dead and Dead Alive and a list of movies that started coming out in the late eighties and have long since had their day in the sun. Films that, in my opinion, are the cinematic equivalent of something that's both a floor wax and a dessert topping, to steal from an old Saturday Night Live skit.

Now I know these films have their fans. But there's a big difference between them and something like Rosemary's Baby or Cloverfield.

The difference is, like God and the Devil, in the details. And finding that one detail -- or series of them -- that makes someone shudder instead of snicker takes time and care the sense that you're working on something that deserves both. Turning things up to 11 is easy. Creating the moment that follows someone home and makes it difficult to walk into a dark room and fumble for the light switch is a whole lot tougher.

But it's also a whole lot more satisfying.

Why "Frightening Films and Fiction"?

I've been an enthusiastic reader and watcher of horror since I was a kid. I was the only fourth-grader in my class reading H.P. Lovecraft. (Reading it, not necessarily understanding it, but that's another post.) I bugged the man who ran the only movie theater in my small town to tell me the exact date "Carrie" would start playing, and dutifully showed up on opening night. I became giddy upon discovering Clive Barker's "Books of Blood" in the mid-eighties.

I love horror.

I just don't love horror any more.

At least not what passes for it these days.

I browse the horror section of any bookstore and I'm by turns bored or embarrassed by all the sexy vampires and lurid covers. I look for something out of the ordinary at the video store but can only find the latest torture porns and horror-comedies.

A friend of mine who's a successful crime novelist once told me that horror is now the second lowest-selling genre of fiction next to Westerns. Think about that for a moment. At the bottom of the barrel, cowboy-and-indian sagas that have lost their relevance, followed by monsters who no longer have to power to scare us.

These are dark days for horror aficionados who miss the pleasure of a genuine scare or the lingering unease that follows you to bed after the last page is turned or the TV is turned off.

Consequently, I've had to branch out into other genres looking for my scares. I find them, but they're almost never clothed in the putrefied tatters of the grave.

This blog is for those books and movies, the hidden gems that deserve a second look. And for those like me who are out there looking for them.