Laird Barron's Blog, page 5

I had the opportunity to hang out with Gemma and Weston last weekend at Necon 37. Gemma Files is simply brilliant. I’d read her collection We Will All Go Down Together in PDF, but finally picked up the softcover from Chizine. Peak Files–dark, mysterious, and gorgeously written. She’s done the work since the 1990s and is only getting stronger.

image via Amazon

Weston Ochse is another writer who has labored long and faithfully in the genre trenches. His work covers a spectrum from acid-trip-worthy short fiction (I highly recommend Multiplex Fandango) to commercial military-oriented horror such as Seal Team 666 which may soon be adapted as a blockbuster film.

A special note regarding Weston–he and his wife, author Yvonne Navarro, rescue at risk Great Danes. Weston and I talked about his and Yvonne’s experiences taking care of big dogs and our mutual love of dogs in general. That conversation was among the highlights of my trip to Rhode Island.

image via Amazon

My first Necon has come and gone.

This convention has a loyal following. I understand, after experiencing the tradition firsthand, why people return year after year. Necon feels less like a convention and more like a retreat. The organizers and longtime attendees have established a culture that is both collegial and familial.

I won’t make an exhaustive list of the folks I met over the weekend–many of them for the first time–because I am fated to leave someone out. Suffice to say, I talked a lot of shop, signed numerous books, connected with old friends, and made a few new ones. So, I’ll stick to highlighting a handful of points:

Thank you to the Booth family, Matt Bechtel, and Jack Haringa for inviting me to the event. The entire staff made the stay pleasant–and special note to Martel Sardina who acted as my liaison during the weekend. Thanks also to John Langan for taking on the driving duties and getting us there and back again.

My fellow guests of honor, Kristina Carroll, Weston Ochse, and  Gemma Files, were a joy to be around. Kristina is an exceptional artist (check out her gallery); Weston and Gemma are hardcore professionals and I’ll not soon forget our talk on the Guest of Honor Panel. Toastmaster Lynne Hansen conducted that particular interview–I appreciate her hard work and preparation that culminated in a striking and memorable 90 minutes of discussion.

Now I’m home and back to reality, toiling under deadline for the next book in my forthcoming crime series. It was tough to tear myself away from the book and take a long weekend. In recent times I’ve become increasingly reticent to attend writerly gatherings due to deadlines and general weariness. I’m glad I bucked the trend. Necon is one of the best things I’ve done to recharge my batteries in a long, long time.

July 20-23, I’ll be a guest at Camp Necon 37 alongside Gemma Files, Weston Ochse, Kristina Carroll, and Lynne Hansen. Very much looking forward to seeing colleagues and fans over the weekend.

Recently, I hung out with Ross Lockhart on the Hops and Monsters podcast. Thanks to the guys for having us come around to talk weird fiction, film, and video games.

[image error]cover via Word Horde

I am older now, by a couple of years, than my father was the day I left Alaska for good. My blood runs cold at the intersection of our shadows, and the sight of those shadows growing ever longer at my back. An essay from years ago.

A nice article about Philip Gelatt’s adaptation of my story, “–30–“ at Variety. Paladin picked up the domestic distribution rights. I’ve screened a near finished version of the film–Harper and Henderson do a terrific job.

From the article:

Urman said, “I can’t remember when I last encountered a film that so completely defies categorization and so consistently forges new territory as ‘They Remain.’ Phil weaves such a potent spell, and creates such extraordinary images, you’re utterly convinced that, any second, something awful will happen.”

Jon Padgett does a turn on the Lovecraft eZine. Jon has a terrific debut collection called The Secret of Ventriloquism on the shelves. Creepy, creepy horror in the vein of Ligotti and Aickman.

image via Amazon

I’d like to share a review I did for Locus Magazine last year. This concerns an important writer of horror and weird fiction named Gary Braunbeck and his omnibus of short fiction, Halfway Down the Stairs. He’s racked up plenty of awards and accolades over the years. Regardless, he’s deserving of more credit.

I recommend checking out Gary’s Amazon Page. He’s done a lot of fine work. When the horror is at its darkest, Gary is at his most humane.

image via Amazon

Halfway Down the Stairs by Gary Braunbeck

Review by Laird Barron

Without question Halfway Down the Stairs is a long overdue omnibus of horror stalwart Gary Braunbeck’s short fiction. It’s a massive tome weighing in at nearly six hundred pages and collects the vast majority of the author’s output over the past couple of decades. Winner of multiple Bram Stoker Awards and student of the best 1970s and ‘80s horror traditions, Braunbeck hybridizes the supernatural themes and narrative slickness of Stephen King and marries them to Jack Ketchum’s soulful tales of human frailty. His purview is the shadow kingdom of human existence—abuse, addiction, and violence in its infinite variety. Redemption exists out there somewhere in the darkness, a fragile flame in the gloom.

There is no way to thoroughly examine a book with this scope. The best I can hope for is to illuminate a handful of fragments of the whole. Halfway Down the Stairs is broken into three sections, divvying up around forty stories that span Braunbeck’s career. Part One is titled Throw it at the Wall and See What Sticks. The author notes he considered Potpourri but decided it was “too cutesy” and his estimation was correct—the last thing one could ever call a Braunbeck story is cutesy. It’s an interesting choice to frontload the collection with lighter (relatively speaking), thematically disjointed material, much of it bite-sized in regard to page count. “Crybaby Bridge #25” introduces the rural legend of “crybaby bridges” where motorists park and listen for the eponymous crying babies. There are twenty-four known bridges, but this story is concerned with the twenty-fifth and its connection to a man consumed by grief and guilt. “Attack of the Giant Deformed Mutant Cannibalistic Gnashing Slobberers from Planet Cygnus X-2.73: A Love Story” is a campy mouthful (pardon the pun) and indicative of the scattershot approach that typifies the opening section. Among the longest selections from the first third of the collection is “Cyrano,” a bizarre and hallucinatory tale of time out of joint. Braunbeck shifts from workmanlike prose to deliver chilling descriptions such as this:

His flame-charred flesh slithered from bone, drooping like the sleeves of a dark cloak, when suddenly he beheld near him a hunched and shivering figure wearing only a dressing-gown, slippers, and nightcap. He pointed at the figure and perceived with a start that he was, indeed, wearing a great black cloak whose hood concealed his hideous countenance. No cursed flesh covered his skeletal hand.

Part Two is called With a Little Help from My Friends, a reference to the fact each piece in this section is introduced by a fellow author ranging from Chet Williams to Ramsey Campbell. Here, Braunbeck his legs a bit and we are treated to several novelettes to complement the briefer selections. “Afterward, There Will be a Hallway” speaks of the afterlife. A Bram Stoker Award winner, it ranks among his more popular stories and justifiably so; “Just Out of Reach” is set in his long-running Cedar Hills setting, although possessed of a more science-fictional bent than might be expected; it is directly followed by “El Poso Del Mundo,” a noir-ish tale of deception and violent reversals very much a product of the underbelly of our world and our time.

Sometime Then is Part Three and contains what Braunbeck considers his more popular stories. Two of the best set the pace: “Rami Temporales” is a disturbing story of abuse and the perils of having “one of those faces,” while “The Sisterhood of Plain-Faced Women” and its recurring allusions to T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” pulls us back to Cedar Hill where we bear witness to the conflict between the ephemeral nature of memory and the blood and grit of daily life in a doomed town.

By no means gratuitous, Braunbeck’s depiction of violence and suffering are not for the faint of heart. The finest horror authors mitigate, and paradoxically enhance, the horrific by investigating real human motives and real human emotion. Braunbeck works noir and crime at will. He’s a blue collar guy and his style is tough, albeit with the melancholic core of a poet. Contradiction is the secret to his success. Humans are fragile, tricky, indestructible superbeings that melt in the face of adversity, yet persist beyond all reasonable reckoning when you give them up for lost. Weak, resilient, cruel, base, profoundly noble, and kind to a fault. Predictable and totally inscrutable. Braunbeck understands what makes us tick. Previously I remarked that Tananarive Due, another fine author of the dark fantastic, is at her best when she explores the depths of the heart and her strength is her humaneness. Humanity, humanness are also the signature of Braunbeck. There’s more hard bark on his hide, though, and an old school aesthetic that intimates a storyteller who weaves in darkness must be cruel to be kind.

Tim Waggoner sums it up in his preface to “El Poso Del Mundo”:

…horror that matters—isn’t about machete-wielding maniacs, but rather the pain that eats like cold acid at the center of the human heart.

Nothing truer could be said of Gary Braunbeck’s contribution to the horror canon.

Here’s an interview with Yves Tourigny, a talented artist and designer. I’m honored that he’s created a site that is a kind of repository/concordance related to my weird fiction. He’s also doing fantastic work with Jeff VanderMeer and Matthew Bartlett.

Here’s a piece I treasure:

[image error]art by Yves Tourigny (based on photo by Jessica M)

Continuing with my PSA regarding some of the best contemporary horror/weird fiction authors who primarily appear with small/independent presses. All images via Amazon.com

Alan Baxter (Australian noir; hardscrabble horror)

Crow Shine

C.S. E. Cooney (frightful fantasy)

Bone Swans

Yoko Ogawa (not a small press author, but definitely underappreciated here in the USA)

Revenge

Michael Cisco (only one of the most eminent fantasists of our time)

Animal Money

Mike Allen (journalist, horrorist; this is one of the best cosmic horror collections around)

Unseaming

Steve Duffy (acclaimed horror writer; one of the finer stylists working)

Tragic Life Stories

Gemma Files (the Black Flag of horror)

The Worm in Every Heart

Wilum Pugmire (the Jethro Tull of horror)

Sesqua Valley and other Haunts

Jeffrey Thomas (quintessential weird fiction stylist)

Punktown

Jon Padgett (studied in the catacombs with Prof. Ligotti)

The Secret of Ventriloquism