Laird Barron's Blog, page 14

Athena says, woof! Which means, Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

photo by Jessica M.

One of the great aspects of writing for a living is that various types of artists sometimes run with an image from a story. Illustrator Tim Keller’s concept of The Huntsman from Frontier Death Song being such a case.

Catch up with Tim and other great artists at Illustrators Social Club.

Image courtesy Tim Keller

Clint Smith talks about his excellent collection Ghouljaw on this week’s The Outer Dark. Michael Kelly discusses Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 3 and the inimitable Justin Steele does a feature review of my latest novella, X’s for Eyes.

And yes, JS is on the money–Christopher Payne of JournalStone and I have plans to release more novellas set in the X’s for Eyes universe.

 Ghouljaw                                       image via The Outer Dark

Mike Davis, proprietor of Lovecraft eZine, is interviewed at the Outer Dark. If you read or write weird fiction, Lovecraft eZine should be one of your first stops.

image via Lovecraft eZine

Happy lucky thirteen, dog.

photo by Jessica M

X’s for Eyes is available for preorder at JournalStone and I’m sure all other venues will follow. Paperback version includes an electronic copy. Just under 25k in length, the first half of the novella is called “We Smoke the Northern Lights” and will also run in The Gods of HP Lovecraft. Both books are slated for release on December 11th.

Many thanks to Christopher Payne, Vincenzo Bilof of Bizarro Pulp Press, Lori Michelle, and Matthew Revert for bringing this project to life.

art by Matthew Revert

Brothers Macbeth and Drederick Tooms should have it made as fair-haired scions of an impossibly rich and powerful family of industrialists. Alas, life is complicated in mid-1950s USA when you’re child heirs to the throne of Sword Enterprises, a corporation that has enshrined Machiavelli’s The Prince as its operating manual and whose patriarch believes, Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds, would be a swell company logo.

Consider also those long, cruel winters at the Mountain Leopard boarding school for assassins in the Himalayas, or that Dad may be a supervillain, while an uncle occasionally slaughters his nephews and nieces for sport; and the space flight research division of Sword Enterprises “accidentally” sent a probe through a wormhole into outer darkness and contacted an alien god. Now a bloodthirsty cult and an equally vicious rival firm suspect the Tooms boys know something and will spare no expense, nor innocent life, to get their claws on them.

Between the machinations of the disciples of black gods and good old corporate skullduggery, it’s winding up to be of a hell of a summer vacation for the lads.

Justin Steele is one of my favorite people in the business. He loves the genre and has an instinct for editing. He’s also a genuinely nice man. I predict we’re going to hear a lot from him over the years.

Now the fiction editor at Strange Aeons, Justin is coming into his own. Here’s an interview with him on The Outer Dark.

Editor/Publisher C.M. Muller is interviewed on The Outer Dark.

I am in the process of checking out C.M.’s Nightscript. Volume 1 features Kristi DeMeester, Gregory L. Norris, Charles Wilkinson, Patricia Lillie, David Surface, Daniel Mills, Kirsty Logan, Kyle Yadlosky, Clint Smith, Damien Angelica Walters, Eric J. Guignard, Marc E. Fitch, Michael Kelly, Bethany W. Pope, John Claude Smith, Zdravka Evtimova, Jason A. Wyckoff, Ralph Robert Moore, Christopher Burke, Michael Wehunt.

image via C.M. Muller

Brian Lillie talks with Livia Llewellyn at 31 Hath October.

Meanwhile, Paul Tremblay is on the record at Unwinnable #67 (2.50 cover price and oh so worth it)

And I hung out the other night with the fellas at Miskatonic Musings to talk about John Carpenter’s The Thing. Happy Halloween!

image via Unwinnable

Jon Padgett’s “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism” is  a little something dark for the day before Halloween.

Yes, anyone can be a ventriloquist. The first step truly is simple according to Padgett. You learn how to hold your mouth. Like this…