Laird Barron's Blog, page 9

Agent Janet Reid explains why she turned down a handful of recent queries. Janet’s blog is mandatory reading if you are a new writer slugging it out in search of representation.

Benoit Lelievre penned a beautiful advance review of Swift to Chase over at his Dead End Follies site. There’s a lot going on in this review, but I most appreciate what he has to say regarding the importance of short stories in general.

Ellen Datlow has another anthology in the wings. Children of Lovecraft drops next month. Ellen included my dark fantasy story, “Oblivion Mode,” set in a fragmented alternate reality.

It features a cast of characters I’ve worked on for  a while, including the otherworldly knight Karl Lochinvar; her companions, Knight Vagrant Marion Hand, retired scout Jonathan Bowie; and  over the hill beasts of the Ur Blood, Rabbit Abbot, Mantooth the war dog, and Flint the faithful charger. This time around the company squares off against Baron Need, a horror from antiquity.

Table of Contents:

Nesters by Siobhan Carroll

Little Ease by Gemma Files

Eternal Troutland by Stephen Graham Jones

The Supplement by John Langan

Mortensen’s Muse by Orrin Grey

Oblivion Mode by Laird Barron

Mr. Doornail by Maria Dahvana Headley

The Secrets of Insects by Richard Kadrey

Excerpts for An Eschatology Quadrille by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Jules and Richard by David Nickle

Glasses by Brian Evenson

When the Stitches Come Undone by A.C. Wise

On These Blackened Shores of Time by Brian Hodge

Bright Crown of Joy by Livia Llewellyn

Mike Mignola art; image via Amazon

I’ll be reading with Paul Tremblay and John Langan at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Providence tomorrow–Sunday August, 21st. Our event is at Arcade Providence (65 Weybosset St) and begins at 12:30. Afterward, I’ll join director Philip Gelatt as he discusses the adaptation of my novelette “–30–” for film.

I hope to see you there.

image via H.P Lovecraft Film Festival

Mike Davis and an esteemed panel chat with Michael Griffin about his debut collection, The Lure of Devouring Light among other things.

I recommend The Lure of Devouring Light; these stories are an icy mix of weird and horror fiction. Introduction by John Langan.

image via Word Horde

Thank you to Matthew Summers for our recent chat at Smash Dragons. It’s a wide ranging interview; we talked about a few authors I admire, including Stephen Graham Jones, Kaaron Warren, and Paul Tremblay.

Matthew asked about my favorite Australian authors and I inadvertently omitted two of the best–Terry Dowling and Anna Tambour. Dowling is a fixture in Ellen Datlow’s anthologies. He does it all, but his horror is particularly effective. Tambour also  covers a range; some of her best work is dark, indeed. I highly recommend her latest collection, The Finest Ass in the Universe.

image via Amazon

My latest collection, Swift to Chase, is available for pre-order from JournalStone. Ordering options for Amazon and other retailers will follow soon. Thanks to the editors who originally published the various stories (it contains one long original), Chris Payne and co. at JournalStone for helping put this together, Paul Tremblay for the introduction, and Chuck Killorin for the cover art.

This will hit the street the first week of October 2016.

art by Chuck Killorin

Laird Barron’s fourth collection gathers a dozen stories set against the backdrops of the Alaskan wilderness, far-future dystopias, and Giallo-fueled nightmare vistas.

All hell breaks loose in a massive apartment complex when a modern day Jack the Ripper strikes under cover of a blizzard; a woman, famous for surviving a massacre, hits the road to flee the limelight and finds her misadventures have only begun; while tracking a missing B-movie actor, a team of man hunters crashes in the Yukon Delta and soon realize the Arctic is another name for hell; an atomic-powered cyborg war dog loyally assists his master in the overthrow of a far-future dystopian empire; Following an occult initiation ritual, a man is stalked by a psychopathic sorority girl and her team of horrifically disfigured henchmen; a rich lunatic invites several high school classmates to his mansion for a night of sex, drugs, and CIA-funded black ops experiments; and other glimpses into occulted realities a razor’s slice beyond our own.

Combining hardboiled noir, psychological horror, and the occult, Swift to Chase continues three time Shirley Jackson Award winner Barron’s harrowing inquiry into the darkness of the human heart.

I recently had the distinct pleasure to sit down with Michael Calia, Victor LaValle and Paul Tremblay to discuss horror on the Wall Street Journal Speakeasy podcast.

Thank you to Michael and staff at the studio for the opportunity to have this great round-table.

image via WSJ and PHOTO: JESSICA M., MICHAEL LAJOIE, EMILY RABOTEAU

Stephen Graham Jones talks about novellas he’s read of late.

Check out his latest novel, Mongrels   Meanwhile, I agree–this is the age of novellas and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s the ultimate form of horror and weird fiction.

image via demontheory

The Elk

One morning as a man and dog traveled an

Old dirt road through the mountains

An elk emerged from the briars

Among the ponderosa pine

Scarred black muzzle, lop-ears, gray flanks

Her eyes were also black

As the cold ancient stars and the ever dilating

Space between them

The dog barked and strained at the leash

Primitive blood recalling horns winded

A thousand savage chases

The elk regarded man and dog

Fearless and innocent

Her blood recalled nothing of the spear

She ambled along barbwire, hooves kicking up the ashes

Of last summer’s fire

Until she found a gap and darted into the pines

Fleeting shadow, always west

Years grind the mountains

His wife’s photograph

Reminds him of the great inferno

That scorched the cliffs of the valley

And of the black ash that curls in its wake

How dust lies upon dead roots of shelled trees

Waiting to fall to splinters when the wind comes down

Out of the north in October

The dust will remain for generations

Walking toward her means crossing scorched earth

Into darkness

The truth of it is

Bitterness is green sap flowing to the wound

Sometimes he dreams he is the elk

Thunder outside his tent

Is the report of a hunter’s rifle

He shambles, then flies

Euphoric with terror and longing

Beyond the break in the barbed fence

Pastures and hills and sky

Keep raveling

Farther than he’ll ever have or know