Horror Aficionados discussion

Ok obviously Sutter Cane is a fictional author, created for the movie In the Mouth of Madness. I think the influences for him were Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft. However I don't really find Stephen King all that scary at all or that similar.. And H.P. Lovecraft, while good..didnt write novels and I find his prose/writing style a bit hard to understand at times..I was wondering..if there was similar authors to the fictional Sutter Cane or not? Im currently reading Bentley Little's stuff and his stuff is similar at times and good.

Might've been Ramsey Campbell too really. I actually badly wanted to read Sutter Cane, only, you know, without the going crazy thing.

Yes, I do! He wrote me this way. It's good for the book.

Awesome movie aside, I was about to ask this question myself. Are there any real authors like Cane, besides King and Laymon?

As I said before King isnt very good imo and only book of Den Koontz's I liked was Phantoms. Couldnt get into a Ramsey Campbell book either. Didnt like the way he wrote. Is Laymon good? What abot McCammon?

Too funny on the thread title, Ryan.

I like King but I find him overrated.
Dean Koontz mainly sticks to thriller formulas to me, but I did like Phantoms and a few others.
Ramsey Campbell I have several books of that have set for years and I still haven't gotten around to reading them - I can't recall if I'm in love with his writing style or not, seem to remember it as dry British? - so I have a lot to try for him still. Remember The Nameless was creepy in a disturbing way.

How would describe the fictional Sutter Cane's writing and what specifically are you looking for?

Maxie wrote: "Hey, Erin, I like Koontz. He's more horror than thriller. Loved Phantomas and The Funhouse and Twilight Eyes.

Ramsey Campell writes excellent British horror novels. Give him a read. You won't be l..."

Well, Koontz has written so, so many books, so it could be the ones I mainly picked up in recent years happened to be on the thriller side. Funhouse was pretty good, I remember that one, and always liked Servants of Twilight. It seemed to me his earlier stuff was more horror, but I could be mistaken.

Id describe Sutter Canes's work as love raftian horror or body horror. But sadly i dont like the way Lovecraft or Ramsey writes..I want a more modern writing style. Im looking for more books like Brian Keene's but his books are always too short for me. So like his books but longer

Take a look at my debut novel, Forsaken. Stephen King gave me permission to use one of his characters in it. It was a finalist for a Bram Stoker award. And after reading it, the Stoker family asked me to write a prequel to Dracula based on Bram's original notes (I'm writing it now).

I'm also a huge Sutter Cane fan :)

Be sure to let me know what you think.

Try The Fisherman by John Langan, he gets into Lovecraftian stuff in his work pretty often, and this probably his best.

Jeff wrote: "Try The Fisherman by John Langan, he gets into Lovecraftian stuff in his work pretty often, and this probably his best."

Also Langan's House of Windows.

Not sure you'd like her writing style, but Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Red Tree & The Drowning Girl are excellent, drawing on Lovecraft and Arthur Machen, among others, without being imitative.

For writing style, Laird Barron's The Croning might be more to taste.

I'll go out on a limb and suggest a writer I've only read in short stories, Kathe Koja. Her novels sound intriguing, and if I remember reviews and commentary accurately, her work does deal with body horror among other things.

You may want to take my opinion with a grain of salt, though. I like Campbell and his The Grin of the Dark is one of the best Lovecraftian novels I've read.

Jeff wrote: "Try The Fisherman by John Langan, he gets into Lovecraftian stuff in his work pretty often, and this probably his best."

I just read that a couple of months ago. Excellent imo.

I heard he reads me...

I had always so wished that John Carpenter would write or get someone to write the books SC wrote in the movie.

Jeff wrote: "Try The Fisherman by John Langan, he gets into Lovecraftian stuff in his work pretty often, and this probably his best."

it's a coincidence but i read the synapse and it takes place in upstate NY, guess where I live? XD

Thomas Ligotti (Teatro Grottesco), Richard Gavin (Grotesquerie), Matt Cardin (To Rouse Leviathan), several others. Pick up a copy of Vastarien: A Literary Journal via Grimscribe Press, visit Thomas Ligotti Online at ligotti[dot]net. Arguably, the most influential genre author writing between Lovecraft and King would be Richard Matheson, so that may be another foothold, but I'd point very much toward Ligotti, Gavin, and those of the Ligottian persuasion, sublime horror, and the like.