Scott Nicolay

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Garrett Cook: Narrative Tyranny and the Gilawalrus in the Living Room | The Outer Dark: Episode 28 — JANUARY 21, 2016

Cook-HungryWallsGarrett Cook discusses his latest novel A God of Hungry Walls, an extreme, brutally transgressive and claustrophobic haunted house tale that not only pushes the limits of Bizarro but provides the latest twist on a lineage of “malevolent genius loci” that starts with Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Twisted topics include the influence of “growing up in a grim and antiquated place,” i.e. New England, his commitment to make each story “really different,” literary and cinematic influences from Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings to Clive Barker’s Coldheart Canyon, uncomfortable intimacy among roommates, using narrative to invoke an unpleasant hypnotic state, his poetry roots, Dante (yes, that Dante), existential psychosis that doesn’t trace back to anything, avoiding haunted house story tropes such as the psychic, the microfiche research scene, the occult detective and the Scooby Doo ending, a Nouveau Roman approach that makes the novel seem like Jack Ketchum’s Last Spring at Marienbad,” the tyrannical nature of surrealism versus Bizarro’s narrative omnipotence, Jeff Burk’s couch, and bench-switching and writing in his own swan spot. Garrett also talks about some of his other works, including his first novel Murderland, his first foray into Bizarro Archelon Ranch, his intentionally historically inaccurate science fiction novel Time Pimp, and his short story collection You Might Just Make It Out of This Alive (Eraserhead Press).

widenerThe conversation then veers to the relationship between weird and Bizarro and Bizarro Central’s New Bizarro Author Series, which Garrett edited, including Karl Fischer’s Towers, Betty Rocksteady’s Arachnophile, Madeleine Swan’s Rainbows Suck, Chris MeekingsElephant Vice, Anthony Trevino’s King Space Void, Christoph Paul’s Slasher Camp for Nerd Dorks, Pedro Proença’s Benjamin and Lee Widener’s Rock n Roll Head Case, which Garrett calls the “absolute buy-ticket-and-ride” of the series or “Bill Plimpton’s Laser Blast.” He also “screams” about Autumn Christian, Danger Slater, and John Skipp, who is publishing them both via his Fungasm Press, a groundbreaking new imprint from Eraserhead. Finally: Garrett’s new performance series in Portland, Ore., Gilbert Road Grotesque, co-hosted by Alicia Graves, and hats.

furnace_cover_sm-662x1024News from the Weird:. Arkham Digest columnist/Strange Aeons fiction editor Justin Steele joins Scott once again with the latest about Livia Llewellyn, Richard Gavin, Xnoybis 2, Nightscript 2, Lost Signals, and more. Then special guest Michael Griffin unveils The Lure of Devouring Light, his much-anticipated first collection, now available for preorder from Word Horde Press and scheduled for release in April 2016. I have no erection, and am afraid that Levitra 20mg may be a problem. And Justin reviews Christopher Slatsky’s Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales (Dunhams Manor Press).

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Next week’s guest: Mark Shapiro, marketing/brand management at Laika Studios (ParaNorman, Coraline) talks about this innovative stop-motion animation house’s upcoming release Kubo and the Two Strings.

More Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Autumn-Christian/e/B006QJ5USQ

https://www.theionpublishing.com/books/the-benighted-path-primeval-gnosis-and-the-monstrous-soul/

Helen Marshall: Lessons in the Raising of the Monsters in the Basement | The Outer Dark: Episode 26 — JANUARY 5, 2016

Boy Eating

Boy Eating

Awards seem to come naturally, or perhaps supernaturally to Helen Marshall whose words weave threads across horror, dark fantasy and into the Weird. Her most recent collection Gifts for the One Who Comes After (ChiZine Publications, 2014) earned her both a World Fantasy Award and a Shirley Jackson Award, and is shortlisted for the ReLit Awards which honor the best new works from Canadian independent publishers. Her first collection Hair Side Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications, 2012) won the British Fantasy Sydney J Bounds Award for Best Newcomer.

Helen traces her transition from small town Ontario to poet to a PhD in Medieval Studies to managing editor for ChiZine Publications to short story writer and now novelist (she hopes to finish her first novel Icarus Kids, which draws on her Medievalist background and explores “plague, denial and apocalypse” this week). She also discusses how the writing community sustains her work, a certain unencumbered freedom in current Canadian spec-lit, and the strong indie press movement in Canada including ChiZine and Undertow Publications. References are made to Robert Aickman including Helen’s unexpected fondness for his story “The Swords” and a shared philosophy of endings, as well as Clive Barker, Stephen King, Etgar Keret

Boy Eating

Boy Eating

and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Helen takes us on a wild ride, peeling back the skin of her imagination including playing with the “rules” of genre, the capaciousness of the Weird, the strange economy of medieval relics, where magic realism and absurdism and medievalism intersect, and how personal transitions provoked her to engage the “monster in the basement” of her second collection: Legacy. They delve deeply into the archaeology of specific stories including “Sanditon” which plays off the concept of “body as book” in Medieval lit, “Ship House” which explores a legacy of violence inherited from her South African mother, her recurring theme of offbeat consumerism meets a childish sense of make-believe turned disturbingly real in such tales as “Supply Limited, Act Now” about kids in an idyllic Bradburyesque community who order a shrink ray that works, and more. Finally, Helen recommends Indian author Indra Das (The Devourers), recent The Outer Dark guest Gemma Files (especially her recent novel Experimental Film), and Nina Allan (The Race).

News from the Weird: Arkham Digest columnist/Strange Aeons fiction editor Justin Steele reviews a weird work from the Vault, Matt Cardin’s Divinations of the Deep (Ash-Tree Press, 2002), an excellent collection of five cosmic horror stories that may lurk just outside the radar of some readers recently discovering the Weird.

Then Mike Davis, editor of Lovecraft eZine, joins Scott and Justin again to talk about exciting Kickstarter stretch goals for his highly anticipated Autumn Cthulhu anthology and more. Plus two new fiction magazines and a major Weird market now reopened to submissions, as well as another author reveal from the much anticipated Lost Signals anthology (ed. Max Booth III/Perpetual Motion Machine Press).

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes  or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Next week’s guest: Rios de la Luz, author of The Pulse Between Dimensions and the Desert.

More links:

https://www.facebook.com/gamutmagazine/?fref=ts

https://whatdoesnotkillme.com/2015/12/22/gamut/

https://www.facebook.com/mantidmagazine/?pnref=lhc

https://mantidmagazine.tumblr.com/

Nightscript: https://chthonicmatter.wordpress.com/

Stories from the Borderland: https://scottnicolay.com/blog/

John C. Foster: On the Road of a Dark Americana | The Outer Dark: Episode 23 — DECEMBER 15, 2015

Dead-Men-updated-coverJohn C. Foster unburies the genesis of his Libros de Inferno trilogy (Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing) which starts with Dead Men, playing in an ugly rough reality that is slipping and in decay, how he develops his storytelling via set pieces and way stations, his repulsion for spoon-feeding readers, his fascination with the concept of dread and creating a sense of jeopardy even for a tough guy, aiming for a dark Americana, Dead Men’s setting in Texas and northern Mexico, moving the second novel Night Roads (Oct. 2016) to Louisiana, blending hard-boiled and noir with more horrific elements, square-jawed heroes versus flawed characters in new lives, a dialogue with Frankenstein’s creation, writing as a corridor with many windows and doors, a Star Wars interlude, his influences including Stephen King, Raymond Chandler and Donald Westlake’s Parker novels, his other upcoming novel which is a dark espionage thriller called Mr. White (Grey Matter Press, March 2016), why you should “get out of the way when you see that Foster-John Smith sketchblack Cadillac coming,” using Mad Max as a structural model, epic narratives such as Gilgamesh and the notion of demi-Gods, revealing character through action, burial suits, damned books, occult versus super-science, the fearlessness of Laird Barron, what’s next for John including another novel, collection and upcoming short stories including “Dead Air” in the highly anticipated Lost Signals, edited by Max Booth III, and his reading recommendations of other contemporary writers to watch including Peter Straub (Koko), Josh Malerman (Bird Box), Paul Tremblay (A Head Full of Ghosts) and Thomas Ligotti (Penguin editions).

case6.000x9.000.inddNews of the Weird with Justin Steele includes the monumental anthology Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction and the VanderMeer Winter Mix StoryBundle which also includes eBooks of Anna Tambour’s Crandolin, Michael Cisco’s The Narrator, and seven other exciting works, an exciting offer which expires on Dec. 31. Also another major story reveal from Lost Signals, edited by Max Booth III, another upcoming Laird Barron novella, an update on Lovecraft eZine’s Autumn Cthulhu Kickstarter, the Ramsey Campbell tribute anthology The Children of Gla’aki. edited by Brian M. Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass (Dark Regions Press) and new books from Dunhams Manor Press. Plus, a clue about Stories from the Borderland #3, posting tomorrow at www.ScottNicolay.com and artist Michael Bukowski’s yogblogsoth.

This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Next week’s guest: Laird Barron and Justin Steele join Scott for a roundtable on The State of the Weird 2016.

It’s a great drug Ultram intended for the treatment of moderate to severe pain.

More Links:

https://chizinepub.com/books/license-expired

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Brackett

https://www.strange-aeons.com/

Stories From The Borderland #2: “The Shed” by E. Everett Evans

avonsfreader-evans

Evans didn’t even merit cover credit. The other stories from this issue are entirely forgotten.

A horror story about children can be especially disturbingSomething Wicked This Way Comes, IT, “The Specialist’s Hat.Throwing adults into unnatural peril is one thing—they at least can grasp their options, draw on support, choose to make sacrifices. Children are at once incredibly vulnerable yet charged with potential, so we fear more for them and the immense possibility of their futures than we do for the intrepid polar explorer, the graying antiquary, or the other interchangeable narrators of so many weird and gothic tales. How cruel the author who chooses children as protagonists in a narrative of weirdness and monsters. Continue reading

Stories From the Borderland #1: “Slime” by Joseph Payne Brennan

slimeweirdtalesWho remembers Joseph Payne Brennan? Some of you I am sure, though not nearly as many as his work deserves. He merits a position in the lineages of Weird Horror analogous to those of David Goodis, Chester Himes, Jim Thompson, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Charles Willeford in Noir—a major practitioner of the form who arose in its postwar Silver Age. Stephen King remembers him, and has paid him homage in stories such as “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” and “The Raft.” Thomas Ligotti remembers him, and it becomes apparent in his verse—Brennan was perhaps the finest poet Weird Fiction ever had—yes, better for the most part than even Clark Ashton Smith, who had a tin ear (though “The Hashish Eater” is a masterpiece, no argument there). Continue reading

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