Laird Barron's Blog, page 11

Paul Tremblay, author of the possession novel A Head Full of Ghosts was recently on the Lovecraft eZine Show with Mike Davis and co. I recommend A Head Full of Ghosts and his upcoming novel, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock

       

John Langan’s new novel, The Fisherman, is available for preorder. My thoughts in brief: “The Fisherman is an epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M.R. James, Robert E. Howard, and Norman Maclean. What you get is A River Runs through It…Straight to hell.”

image via Word Horde

In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman’s Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other’s company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It’s a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.

Recent viewing at the Barron residence: Justin Kurzel’s 2015 adaptation of Macbeth and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit.

Macbeth isn’t a particularly ambitious re-imagining of the material, but Arkapaw’s cinematography is gorgeous while Fassbender (Macbeth), Cotillard (Lady Macbeth), and Harris (Macduff) kick all kinds of ass.

Macbeth

 

Meanwhile, with The Visit, director Shyamalan returns to his early form with a solid and occasionally brilliant bit of paranoia-cinema about teenage siblings who spend the week on an isolated farm with their estranged grandparents. The only real fault is M. Night’s almost fanatical observance of the O Henry or Hitchcock twist, and I suspect most viewers will see the pucn winding up long before it’s delivered. Kudos to Deanna Dunagan who chews the scenery as the increasingly disturbed Nana.

The Visit

Yves was on the Lovecraft eZine podcast this week to discuss his project, They Who Dwell in the Cracks, which is a growing database of my stories, books, interviews, reviews, and so forth. I have little to do with the project except to answer the occasional question, but am appreciative of Yves’ hard work and artistry. I am humbled that he devotes his time and energy to creating this archive, and I think it’s terrific that Mike Davis and friends had him on the show. Thanks, guys.

For Joe Pulver.

 

Eulogy for a Difficult Man

by Laird Barron

He hurt me when we shook hands the last time I saw him

He squeezed and squeezed as if he wanted to crack a stone, before he drove

Away at the wheel of a rusted Dodge Charger

Through the dusty, green-lined ever-after

Shot himself in California in a cabin near the tree line with a pistol

That held two bullets

One chambered and a spare just in case

He bounced at the Black Stars in his wilder days

That’s how he got the scar

I was surprised when, after so many years, he shaved off his mustache

(the cookie duster)

Said the park service preferred their rangers clean cut

I laughed and I shouldn’t have

The two of us chopping wood at his cabin on the mountain

During the presidential election, the one that turned out the way it did

Radio reception faded to static cold as the termination dust on its way

Down from the bare rock summit blowing under the sill of the plywood door

Elk horns and the yellow blanket I hung there to save us

We hunkered near the fire while it gnawed split pine

Red shadows dripped across his face that kept going in and out like the static

He told me state parks are lousy with serial killers

National parks are even worse

If (when) someone murders you

Defiles you and divides the corpse and not a shred is ever found

The shape with the ax is always a shape you know.

Another time he said when he was a kid he kept a lame canary

Brown and white with a crooked leg

The canary weighed twenty-one grams the morning it dropped dead

To the bottom of the cage on a newspaper photograph of

Richard Speck smiling in captivity

Make of it (he winked slyly) what you will and of course I did

Slept with a Green River knife under my pillow for going on fifteen years

Meanwhile, he called over his shoulder

I’ll be right back as he walked into the forest and never came out

Been a while since anybody has

Paula Guran’s Mammoth Book of Cthulhu arrives in stores soon. Thank you to Paula for taking my weird/fantasy/horror novelette “A Clutch.”

The ToC:

“In Syllables of Elder Seas” by Lisa L. Hannett
“The Peddler’s Tale, or, Isobel’s Revenge” by Caitlín R. Kiernan
“It’s All the Same Road in the End” by Brian Hodge
“Caro in Carno” by Helen Marshall
“The Cthulhu Navy Wife” by Sandra McDonald
“Those Who Watch” by Ruthanna Emrys
“A Clutch” by Laird Barron
“Just Beyond the Trailer Park” by John Shirley
“The Sea Inside” by Amanda Downum
“Outside the House, Watching for the Crows” by John Langan
“Alexandra Lost” by Simon Strantzas
“Falcon-and-Sparrows” by Yoon Ha Lee
“A Shadow of Thine Own Design” by W. H. Pugmire
“Backbite” by Norman Partridge
“In the Ruins of Mohenjo-Daro” by Usman T. Malik
“Legacy of Salt” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“I Do Not Count the Hours” by Michael Wehunt
“An Open Letter to Mister Edgar Allan Poe, from a Fervent Admirer” by Michael Shea
“I Dress My Lover in Yellow” by A. C. Wise
“Deep Eden” by Richard Gavin
“The Future Eats Everything” by Don Webb
“I Believe That We Will Win” by Nadia Bulkin
“In the Sacred Cave” by Lois H. Gresh
“Umbilicus” by Damien Angelica Walters
“Variations on Lovecraftian Themes” by Veronica Schanoes

 

image via Paula Guran site

Limbus III is up for preorder. Five science fiction/horror/fantasy novellas featuring  Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Keith R.A. DeCandido, David Liss, and me. My contribution is called An Atlatl and tracks the collision of a fading international supermodel and a skin-walker who’s traded in blood since humanity was still figuring the ins and outs of fire.

Per the JournalStone release page:

 

Limbus, Inc. – Book III

Release Date – July 29, 2016

The Limbus saga continues with five more stories of horror, science fiction, and fantasy from some of the industry’s brightest stars – Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Laird Barron and David Liss.

Thomas Malone thought he’d seen it all during his twenty-five years in the Birmingham homicide division. But then they found the body of a woman suspended above the opening of the mineshaft known as the Vertical, blood dripping into the chasm below. At the bottom of that shaft, two clues—a typed manuscript and a business card, blank but for a name on the front and a single sentence on the back.

Malone couldn’t know that those two enigmatic items would lead him on a manhunt around the world, on the trail of a murderer and an organization of myth and legend. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. The business card said it all.

LIMBUS, Inc.

How lucky do you feel?

J.S. Breukelaar talks about 6 Killer Death Scenes to Tattoo On Your Writer’s Brain for LitReactor.

Blood Meridian; The Lovely Bones; The Haunting of Hill House; Running Dog, Mrs. Dalloway; and “More Dark” are interesting choices. My seventh choice would be the culminating kill from “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

 image via LitReactor

Two debut collections and a chapbook are arriving soon from Philip Fracassi, Mike Griffin, and Michael Wehunt. A cornucopia of horror and weird fiction for April/May.

The Lure of Devouring Light

image via Amazon

 

Greener Pastures

image via amazon, art by Michael Bukowski

 

Altar

 

art by Matthew Revert

 

 

The one and only Ellen Datlow was recently recently interviewed at The Lovecraft eZine. Ellen has several new projects on the way–give it a listen.