Ancient Logic

The problem with mirrors is when you don't like what you see, you have to wonder if it's the mirror's fault or yours. "Rust Maidens" cover 2018 Gwendolyne Kiste's debut novel "Rust Maidens" mentions mirrors directly only a handful of times, and yet I was struck by the idea of reflections as a motif in the novel. Whether opaque, chrome, or clear as day, the figures of this story lurch forward in a funhouse gauntlet of perception and twisted perspective. Phoebe Shaw returns to her Ohio hometown to confront the regrets and horrors of her childhood. Nearly thirty years prior, the young women of her neighborhood exhibited a terrible affliction. The eponymous 'Rust Maidens' are a group of five women who during the course of the summer of 1980, transform into phantoms of urban decay. Their skin puckers and peels, rusted metal bits poke out from the corners of their bodies, and nails change to jagged shards of glass. The cause for this tran...

I'm wary offering advice to other writers.  First of all I've got the whole imposter syndrome thing and whatever advice I give feels like a good way of revealing how little I know about anything. Second, what I've learned mostly relates to solving problems in my own writing. What advice does a dog have to offer to a duck on how to swim?  Spiral Structure by Morgan Crooks (2017) However, for Arisia 2018, I'll be participating on a panel of doing just that - giving advice to aspiring horror writers about writing horror. So, what truths can I impart? Some advice feels absolutely true, if a bit self-evident. You must read . If you're trying to write horror then you must read horror. Not just one novel. Not just one author. You should make a sincere effort to read everything by everyone. The more recent the better. The classics are always going to be there, but if you want a sense of where your stories could fit, you need to see what is being published ...

Despite the release of a single novel and a few short stories, 2017 has to rank up there as one of the more Stephen King ascendant years. No less than four movies based on his works appeared, including one of the most successful horror films of all time, the first part of IT. 'The Mist' (Stephen King) by Dementall.deviantart.com Of course, with King, for every high, there are plenty of lows and 2017 also provided a number of examples of how to do his works wrong. But let's start with the good stuff. The movie adaptation of IT, directed by Andres Muschietti and starring a number of talented young actors (including Finn Wolfhard of "Stranger Things" fame) really captured, for me, a lot of what I liked about the original novel. Being scary certainly helped, but with King, the horror slice is never really the whole cake. What makes King King, at least for me, is the combination of earthy, believable characters with lurid, "Tales from the Crypt...

The print version of Lamplight Volume 6 Issue 2 is now available for order! This magazine includes my horror story, "Implicate Order," as well as fantastic stories from KL Pereira, Sarah Read, Haleh Agar, and many others. Maria Haskins, author of Dark Flash 1 and 2, said that the volume is a "must-read" and that my story is a "spine-tingling slow burn." Print copy of Lamplight Volume 6 Issue 2  To mark the print version's release, I've put together a few things from my writer's notebook that helped shape this story. First are a few images used as reference for the story that I think are wonderful in their own right:  Here are few pictures I took on Nantucket near Long Pond in 2016. The loneliness of these images inspired the atmosphere of the story.  Finally, I put together playlists for my stories while writing them and these songs are a few that seemed to evoke either the atmosphere or emotions of the story. PJ Ha...

In 2016, my wife and I took a short vacation in Nantucket. I'd never been to the island and we were looking for a quick getaway during one of my school vacation weeks. As I joked with friends afterwards, Nantucket was 'fine.' Everything about it was fine. The food was fine. The weather was fine. The views from its beaches were obviously fine. It did feel a bit like a Martha Stewart Theme Park but that's what I expected going there and wasn't much disappointed to find that confirmed.  "Denise" by Zhang Jingna (2010) There was, however, one moment that stuck with me. After renting a car, Lauren and I took a tour around as much of the island as we could. We reached the extreme western edge of Nantucket and pulled over to take in this wide stretch of marshy lake called Long Pond. While there I noticed a scrap of black trash bag caught in some reeds, flapping in this solemn, almost beckoning way. And that was it. I had the beginnings of a sto...

The end of December seems like a great time to express my gratitude for all the stories I've seen published in 2017. So, in order of appearance, here a few stories you could track down and read from me. If you were considering such a rash action. Killing the First Gods . The Book of Blasphemous Words published by A Murder of Storytellers (January 2017). My contribution is a small tale of a woman living in the Upper Paleolithic clawing for survival visited by a ghost of one of her dead gods. Promontory . A Breath From the Sky published by Martian Migraine Press (August 2017). A college president nears retirement from his position and his role as an agent of alien forces. He struggles to maintain his ideals in the face of certain doom and relentless suffering. Upbeat:)  Machinery of Ghosts . The Year's Best Transhuman SF published by Gehenna and Hinnom Books (November 2017). Most of my stories this year dealt with loss and warfare in some way. This tale concerns ...

I am proud to announce my horror story, "Implicate Order" appears in the new issue of Lamplight Magazine (scroll down to Volume Six Issue Two). In the aftermath of a distant relative's funeral, a young boy learns unpleasant facts about the world's hidden ecologies. Of all of the stories I've written, I think this may be one of my favorites. I hope to post sometime this week story-notes on writing this piece. "Implicate Order" appears along side staggering stories from writers KL Pereira, Sarah Reed, Noelle Henneman, and Haleh Agar. There is also a classic story from the Dark Fantasy writer Francis Stevens. I am humbled to have this story appear alongside such illustrious company. Thank you Catherine Grant and the rest of the Lamplight team for choosing this story and for doing an amazing job putting Issue 6.2 together. How to read e-issue: Purchase e-issue directly from Apokrupha Purchase e-issue from Amazon   Purchase e-issue from Smashmouth...

"What Little We Know," started life with these two sentences: "A young man falls in love with a statue who he believes saved his life. He sacrificed everything to save and protect it in return." This synopsis is fairly typical, by the way, for my story ideas. One or two sentences about an image or concept I can't shake out of my head. There was something in this idea I felt interested me, especially after reading Thomas Ligotti's "The Medusa," which I found very inspiring for writing a certain type of 'cozy gothic.' Like the myth of Set's Coffin, the Medusa illustrates the dread of knowing someone is walking into a trap made bespoke for them. I already envisioned the statue as a monster, as something predatory. The idea sat unused for about half a year until the Spring of 2016. I researched a few ideas concerning statues and monsters which is when the egregoi and Atlantis stuff started to accrete around the edges. I finished ...

Arisia 2018 Panels have been announced and it looks like I'm going to be on a bunch in 2018. Go me! Arisia, if you don't know, is a small fan-run, fan-centered annual SFF convention in Boston. I've had incredible experiences in the past taking part in panels on literature, media, gaming, and science.  Two of the panels, "Writing Horror, the Occult, and the Macabre" and "Emotional Impact — How to Make Readers Care," are the first writing panels I've been invited to. I'm not claiming mastery in either but with a few stories under my belt I hope I have a few useful things to share. I'm also on the "2017: The Year in Stephen King" panel which was my reach goal for the year. I count myself as an enormous fan of King's oeuvre and this has certainly been a banner year for the author from Bangor. From television series based on his work (Delores Claiborne and The Mist) to a pair of movies (one reportedly terrible and on...

Even 23 years later, I remember 1994 and Kurt Cobain's death. I experienced that moment as a kind of inside out personal crisis. I felt ashamed by his death. As though his exit in someway indicted my own teenage miseries. "I wish I was like you," goes the verse in 'All Apologies,' "Easily amused." I felt as though a check I hadn't remembered writing had just been cashed.  "Sky Strands" by Morgan Crooks (2012) SP Miskowski's book, named after the first half of that line, is in the words of another reviewer, a novel that shouldn't work. The narrator is unlikeable, unreliable, and dead. The plot is almost entirely told as a flashback and long sections of the novel concern the inner processes of the writer. The daily grind to summon up enough self-esteem to carry a sentence to its logical conclusion is a real struggle, people, but it ain't exactly riveting. But the thing is, this novel works. It is one of the best things I...

My fandom of Stephen King and his adaptions is complicated by the sheer volume of his work. King has written some of my favorite books of all time (Pet Semetary and The Stand) and others I can barely believe I read five pages through. However, no matter what I or anyone might say, King is an unescapable fixture in the world of 20th century and 21st century literature. Most of the people I've ever met have read at least one of his books and I generally find it's a good sign if a person has read a bunch of them. "IT," in particular, occupies a special place in my mind. It was one of the first adult books I read as a kid - way back in the summer of sixth grade at summer camp. I didn't understand all of it on a conscious level but experienced it on a deeper, emotional level. The story of a gang of 'losers,' desperately trying to survive in the face of indifferent adults, hostile bullies, and a monstrous clown made a great deal of sense to me. As...

I am thrilled to share the news my story, "Promontory," will appear in an upcoming anthology of unusual possession stories published by the incredible Martian Migraine Press. The anthology, "A Breath from the Sky,"puts together a classic H.P. Lovecraft tale and twenty other atypical stories of possession. Judging from the cover and the list of impressive authors, I'm anticipating pure awesomeness. "Promontory" is a possession story and one of my more overtly horror tales, so I'm overjoyed that it found a host, er, home here. I am sharing the Table of Contents below, as well as a link to the announcement on the Martian Migraine website to provide a sense of what this collection will be about. The cover is amazing, the other authors selected for the collection are amazing, and I have to say, having a story appear alongside a classic tale like HP's "Colour Out of Space," feels pretty darn amazing. I hope to provide more information about...

Ian Reid's "I Am Thinking of Ending Things," is one of the most haunting novels I've read this year. To say too much about the novel would give away the pleasures of the story but it's enough to say that it concerns an unnamed narrator's drive through a snowy evening to visit her boyfriend's family. During the drive, she considers breaking up with him. Similar to "Disappearance at Devil's Rock," Ian Reid displays a subtle grasp of the tropes of the genre. Although the book is written with enough piercing observational skill to function as a contemporary exploration of relationships, it also knows how to build a sense of dread and alarm through well chosen details. The book functions like a psychological horror story where the killer, haunted house, and heroine exchange places with each other like half-remembered dreams. I suspect readers of Chuck Palahniuk, Thomas Ligotti, and Mark Z. Danielewski will enjoy this book immensely. *** I...

A new chapter is now available for "Agent Shield and Spaceman." As new team members join the Tiger Snake mission, tensions appear within the team. Finished Ramsey Campbell's "Ancient Images," last night. Prior to this novel, I'd only read two other works of Campbells', "Influence" (which I loved) and "Nazareth Hill" (which confounded me). This most recent novel concerns the hunt for a copy of a long lost Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff movie called "Tower of Fear," which appears to be involved in a great many unexplained deaths. Ramsey's writing is consistently amazing but written with a peculiar halting quality that alternately fascinates and frustrates me. The plot of "Ancient Images," is straight forward enough - a young editor interviews the surviving cast and crew of the movie as she darts around the small towns and villages of rural England. However, there always seems to be something else going on with ...

Occultation, the short story anthology by Laird Barron, both broadens and deepens the author's approach towards horror fiction. In comparison to his work in The Imago Sequence, stories such as the title work and Broadsword examine similar themes, but through different voices. These stories are also longer, for the most part, than the stories in the first collection, allowing for a more nuanced exploration of worlds that always seem just on the verge of becoming something else. Consumption plays a big role in Barron's stories, which is something commented on before. However, the carnivorous monsters of these stories are not simply interested in sustenance. Each story describes a destructive process where an old state is broken down and reassembled into something alien. This process might be supernatural in origin (The Forest) or vaguely extraterrestrial (The Broadsword) or it may even be the product of a depraved creativity (Strappado - probably my favorite story in the collec...

April found me reading a lot of horror and weird fiction. There wasn’t as much that grabbed me as last month’s offerings but I didn’t have any problem putting together this list of recommendations. - Ghoulbird by Claude Seignolle (Weird Fiction Review) Translated by Gio Clairval. A visitor to a country manor learns of the horror of the ghoulbird, ultimately succumbing to its enslaving cry. The atmosphere here is what sells the story. By the final chapters I felt myself bracing for the echo of that awful, soul-rending cry. - Postcards from Monster Island by Emily Devenport (Clarkesworld) Adorable kaiju story of NYC becoming a nature preserve for giant lizard lemurs. Another example of what Clarkesworld does so well, introducing and fully developing ideas that might take another author books to achieve. - Spring Thaw by Charles Payseur ( Nightmare). Creepy multilevel story about a man who makes a dreadful discovery in the melting wastes of Antartica. While this story conta...

During the Speculative Fiction: Year in Review panel I got interested in the book jacket description of a book from last year, “The Girl With All of the Gifts,” by M.R. Carey. It was the set-up that got me mostly: a zombie story centering around a young girl, Melanie, the eponymous "girl with all of the gifts," the object of a government study in some mysterious military base. She is kept under constant armed guard, taught about Greek myths while lashed to a chair, and fed writhing meal grubs once a week after being sprayed with some sort of chemical that leaves a bitter smell on her skin. It's the kind of set-up, so inherently wrong and enigmatic, that I just had to follow to the end. "The Girl with All the Gifts" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia  Without giving too much away, Melanie doesn’t stay at the government research facility all too long. The bulk of the story is a long trek through the post-apocalyptic wastes of England, with Mela...

My story “What The Prodigy Learns” was accepted for publication by Mystery and Horror, LLC for an upcoming anthology called “History and Horror, Oh My!” I have been kicking around this idea for a horror story set in Pax Romana since last year and I’m glad that it’s found such a perfect home. Thank you to Gwen Mayo and Sarah E. Glen for selecting this piece for publication. http://www.mysteryandhorrorllc.com

Finishing a collection from Thomas Ligotti is a strange experience. Firstly, one isn't entirely certain what you have just read. Ligotti is known as a horror writer and an influence of Nic Pizzolatto, creator of True Detective. From those two facts you might imagine that Ligotti takes a bleak look at humanity and its role within the universe. In that respect you would be correct. You might also imagine that Ligotti's stories revolve around monsters, serial killers, and other standard motifs of pulp fiction. Here, you might be surprised. Ligotti's "Noctuary" begins with a very astute essay on the nature of 'weird fiction,' tracing its power to the observation that the victims of horror fiction tend to meet a 'tailored fate,' a coffin specifically measured and prepared for them. The succeeding stories each sketch a situation where a protagonist meets some 'weird fate.' At times this fate might be horrific, in that it inspires within ...

Well, it's here! My story "Again and Again," included in the recent Dark Hall Press Ghost Anthology along with many other more talented writers, is available now through Amazon in both e-book and paperback. I feel very lucky to have my work find a market and I hope everyone enjoys reading it. I have not had a chance to read any of the other stories included, so this will be a chance for discovery for me as well.