Although most of our Friday nights are like this, we shall read with interest.
At Swim-Two-Swans
No? Well, you have to like Flann O’Brien, we suppose. The title’s merely an excuse to celebrate more goodness from that stylish Irish publisher Swan River Press. Their main August release is You’ll Know When You Get There, by Lynda E Rucker, the award-winning American writer. Inside, you’ll find nine unsettling stories of loss and the unusual, with an introduction by Lisa Tuttle.
Lynda Rucker said of her work, in a 2013 interview:
“I think that (a sense of inevitability) is a feature of a certain type of horror, and it is often a feature of the horror that I write. In a way, I suppose, it sort of violates a central principle of storytelling in which the protagonist needs to keep making an effort to solve the problem—the active protagonist, if you will. My protagonists often, though not always, tend to be more doomed than active.
“This is actually a really interesting question, and I’m going to have to think about it some more; I have a sense that if the protagonist is really active, the story sometimes becomes something other than horror, but I’m not sure about that!”
Nightmare Magazine On-line
Lynda has a website of her own here:
lynda e rucker
And you can find out more about this Swan River release, and other beautifully produced books from them, here:
swan river press
It’s on the Top Shelf in a Brown Paper Cover, Madam
Something which probably deserves a whole article in itself is the sudden arrival of many new dark, weird and horror magazines, both in print and on-line. This year sees the launch of Skelos, Gamut, Ravenwood Quarterly, Vastarien, Turn to Ash – and Occult Detective Quarterly (surprisingly co-edited by the old greydog himself in one of those ‘oh, why not’ moments).
We have a detailed interview/feature with Jeffrey Shanks of Skelos coming to greydogtales soon, and we’ll cover Ravenwood Press’s plans later in the year. You can always find out more about Occult Detective Quarterly’s progress above right, where we stick regular updates, or you can join the Facebook group here:
odq on facebook
Gamut is on-line only, and dedicated to the noir side, whilst Vastarien is intended to cater for the needs of those Ligottian lovers of the literary and liminal (smart stuff). We shall investigate and report back in another post.
As for now, let’s give a quick nod to Turn to Ash. This is a print-only horror fiction zine, with its first issue due out at the end of this month and out to preorder on Amazon in the last week of August. Turn to Ash Volume 1 includes:
- A Scent of Sage by Jason A. Wyckoff
- The Monster I Became by Betty Rocksteady
- Collectable by Tim Jeffreys
- While the Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder
- The Hunter by Terrence Hannum
- Sod Webworms by Adrian Ludens
- Hollow-Eyed Boys by Jordan Kurella
- Chelsea Grin by Michael Kelly
- What Makes a Shadow by J. Daniel Stone
- The Recovered Journal of Marius Vladimirescu, Last of the Clown Hunters by Andrew Wilmot
- So Dreamy Inside by C.C. Adams
- The Mother Chase by Alana I. Capria
- A Tooth for a Tooth by Matt Thompson
You can find out about the magazine at their website:
turn to ash website
Yes, there’s lot more out as well, but we only have two researchers and they’re both longdogs. So other gems will have to wait. We can admit that our current reading list includes:
- Dinosaur Valley, by K H Koehler, which looks like pulpy fun;
- Black Propaganda, which you might call challenging and transgressive (it’s not for the faint-hearted), by Paul St John Mackintosh;
- Lost Girl, by Adam Nevill, which basically looks like it’s going to be a Damn Good Book.
And we just finished Cult of Chaos, by Shweta Taneja, a rollicking good psychic/supernatural adventure through tantrik territory with a cool female protagonist. We ought to try and talk to Ms Taneja some time.
Off to the North Sea for two or three days to run the longdogs while it’s still technically Summer and the ice floes are being held at bay. Back by the middle of next week, and thank you all for listening…
