Laird Barron's Blog, page 6

Today is release day for Philip Fracassi’s debut horror collection, Behold the Void. I am honored to have provided the introduction because I can’t say enough about his fiction. Phil’s work is redolent of Matheson, McCammon, and King by way of the contemporary weird. He revels in his influences and shows a lot of ambition (and range) in regard to pushing the literary envelope.

image via Amazon

Nate Southard mines the blue collar seam of North American horror, shoulder to shoulder with Joe Lansdale, Norman Partridge, and Nathan Ballingrud. He has a story called Things Crumble, Things Break in this month’s issue of Nightmare Magazine.

I wrote the introduction to his collection, Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again?  It’s a strong arrangement (one that demonstrates a bit of his range) and a good place to start with Southard.

Here’s a passage from my intro:

“Authors are in dialogue with their colleagues, living and dead. Everybody in this business is a product of his or her influences. The best flare with something like anger, more complicated, though, and after they’ve read enough and lived enough they say, enough, and push back, or punch up as if they’ve got something to prove, as if something vital is in the balance, as if something dear is on the line. Comparing his style to contemporaries, Southard slugs like Donald Ray Pollack, switches and jabs like Norman Partridge, but his angles are unorthodox and peculiar like a postmodernist stepped back to 1937 and said, “Mr. Lovecraft, before you go, there’s something I need to ask…”

It’s an admirable thing to chop against the grain, to be unafraid and unabashed regarding one’s affection for the grimy, pulpy roots of horror and suspense. Far too often for my taste, writers flee the influences that shaped them. Some taste commercial success, or heaven forfend, receive laurels from literary critics, and promptly disavow provenance. I’m not a horror writer! cries the author who built her success on multiple horror novels and collections. I don’t write science fiction, demurs the novelist who made his bones with dystopian yarns featuring super science and time travel. It’s a knock on genre, of course. It’s tantamount to saying that the genus that spawned them is a slumming ground; real art lies elsewhere. I admire those who reject such craven impulses. We live in a world that gave us the pulp genius of Robert E. Howard, the feminist retrofitting of fairytales by Angela Carter, and currently the visceral dark fantasy of Livia Llewellyn; each a wordsmith, each committed to artistry with such ferocious devotion that reading them for the first time is a shock to the senses, an experience that nicks the psyche.

The greatest and bravest artists are all in to the last chip, equivocations notwithstanding. Give me an honest heart, such as Ramsey Campbell’s, any day. Give me a writer who says, this is where I come from and this is what I do. Give me a straight-shooter such as the aforementioned Norman Partridge. Give me Nate Southard.” –From “To the Fearless Ones” by Laird Barron

Here are a few books published by small and independent presses that deserve the time and attention of weird fiction/horror fans.

A Collapse of Horses Brian Evenson  (great American horror surrealist)

Furnace Livia Llewellyn (sex, lies, and body horror)

At Fear’s Altar Richard Gavin (master occultist)

Ghost Summer Tananarive Due (unsung master fabulist)

Skein and Bone V.H. Leslie (successor of Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter)

Knock, Knock S.P. Miskowski (contemporary gothic storyteller)

Behold the Void Philip Fracassi (from the lineage of McCammon and Matheson)

The Lure of Devouring Light Michael Griffin (ice cold and cerebral horrorist)

Jagannath Karin Tidbeck (weird fiction done with elegance)

Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again? Nate Southard (blue collar, hard bitten)

All images via Amazon.com

Jeffrey Thomas is one of my favorite authors of horror/weird fiction. His latest collection, The Endless Fall and Other Weird Fictions, is out from Lovecraft eZine Press.

image via Amazon.com (Nick Gucker art)

Stephen Graham Jones appeared on the Lovecraft eZine podcast. Check out his latest novel, Mongrels.

image via Amazon

The 2016 Locus Recommended Reading List is live.

image via Locus Online

Here’s a recorded panel interview with writer/director Philip Gelatt. Philip wrote the weird science fiction film Eurpopa Report and wrote and directed They Remain, and adaptation of my story, “–30–.” Thanks to Mike Davis for hosting the discussion.

Philip Fracassi’s latest novella, Fragile Dreams, is reviewed over at This Is Horror. This story is a great example of how the modern weird can permeate conventional tropes and destabilize them to fascinating effect.

Watch this space for news of Phil’s debut collection, due in early 2017.

image via Amazon

Charlie and Christian dissect Swift to Chase at their Supercontext podcast.

Show synopsis:

One of the best horror writers of our time is experimenting with genre and structure in his new “mosaic novel” collection of stories. How does Laird Barron bring together Alaska, dogs, cosmic horror and inevitable death to make a new kind of literature?

These guys take a deep dive into pop culture topics from Jessica Jones to John Carpenter. They do their homework and come at the subject from interesting angles. Thanks to them for featuring my work on their show–I highly recommend checking out their backlist as well.

Congratulations to my niece, Oksana Barron, for winning an honorable mention in the Betty Award. The Great Battle carries on the Barron tradition for bloody and disturbing literature. Good work, Oksana!