Laird Barron's Blog, page 4

And, on the heels of my last post, here is an official trailer via Bloody Disgusting for Philip Gelatt’s They Remain. Many thanks to Phil and the team for all their hard work and dedication to adapting my story.

image via Bloody Disgusting

Philip Gelatt’s adaptation of my novelette, “–30–” is on the way. They Remain will screen

on October 7 at the Portland, Or. HP Lovecraft Film Festival.

Bloody Disgusting has a brief article about the event.

image via Bloody Disgusting

Author and critic, Matt Cardin, is dropping a major project at the end of the month. Horror Literature through History is likely to be a major contribution to the field, covering the genre from AAAAAAAAAAAA! to Zombie. Cardin’s a badass and I highly recommend his weird fiction and essays: Dark Awakenings being one example.

image via The Teeming Brain

Livia Llewellyn is one of our best contemporary writers. Check out her interview with the This Is Horror team.

The fantastical, erotic, and horrifying vistas of her imagination are on full display in the short story collections Engines of Desire  and Furnace.

image via Amazon

Blood Standard, first in a series about ex-contract hitter, Isaiah Coleridge, will arrive toward the end of May, 2018. I owe a debt of gratitude to a lot of people, but for today I want to thank my agent Janet Reid for her support and dedication,and Sara Minnich at G.P. Putnam’s Sons for acquiring this novel and its follow-up.

Preorders are available. I’ve linked to Amazon for convenience, but I encourage folks to support local bookstores and your favorite independent sellers. Click here to check out a list of alternatives at the Penguin site.

Thanks, everybody. More soon.

Blood Standard

Award-winning author Laird Barron makes his crime fiction debut with a novel set in the underbelly of upstate New York that’s as hardboiled and punchy as a swift right hook to the jaw–a classic noir for fans of James Ellroy and John D. Macdonald.

Isaiah Coleridge is a mob enforcer in Alaska–he’s tough, seen a lot, and dished out more. But when he forcibly ends the moneymaking scheme of a made man, he gets in the kind of trouble that can lead to a bullet behind the ear. Saved by the grace of his boss and exiled to upstate New York, Isaiah begins a new life, a quiet life without gunshots or explosions. Except a teenage girl disappears, and Isaiah isn’t one to let that slip by. And delving into the underworld to track this missing girl will get him exactly the kind of notice he was warned to avoid.

“Rendered in icy strokes of prose, Laird Barron’s Blood Standard is a remarkably self-assured crime novel—at once explosive and intimate, with a tightly wound plot and wonderfully realized characters. And then there’s Barron’s hero, Isaiah Coleridge. He’s got a dead dog named Achilles and bits of Beowulf on his breath and in his teeth. Needless to say, there’s not too many like him.”—Michael Harvey, author of Brighton and The Chicago Way

[image error]image via G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Arriving May 29, 2018

Hellboy: An Assortment of Horrors is available. Thank you to Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola for allowing me to take part.

cover image by Mike Mignola

Here’s a great discussion of all things related to weird fiction at The Darkness Dwells podcast.

With S.P. Miskowski and John Langan. Thank you to Jason White and Michael Schultz for hosting.

image via The Darkness Dwells

My first pro sale, “Shiva, Open Your Eye,” appeared sixteen years ago this month in the Kate Wilhelm special edition of F&SF.

Space & Time lost the submission as did Writers of the Future. Talebones rejected it after one page. The Magazine of F&SF had it for about a week and sent me a brief, matter of fact acceptance note. Something along the lines of, thanks for the sub, check is en route.

Thank you, Gordon.

image via F&SF

I have a lot of respect for the manner that Niels Hobbs and his NecronomiCon team attempt to negotiate the often fractious elements of the weird fiction community. Putting together something this big with one hand while herding cats with the other can’t be easy. But Niels and co.do it with grace.

Life conspires to keep me away this year, so I’ll extend my best wishes that everyone has a terrific convention. I’m looking forward to all the (possibly incriminating ) pictures and tales.

NecronomiCon 2017

image via NecronomiCon and This Is Horror

Part I of a big two part interview with horror author John Langan at This Is Horror.

Check out John’s Bram Stoker Award-winning novel:

The Fisherman

image via Amazon