Recommendation: Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories

Gutted is a forthcoming anthology from Crystal Lake Publishing, edited by Doug Murano and Alexander D. Ward. Subtitled Beautiful Horror Stories, the sixteen tales within are all as disturbing and unsettling as you'd expect from some of the biggest names in the genre. And they are all exceptionally well written. There's no specific theme here, just a general commitment on the part of the authors to make their stories sing.

A few words about those pieces that I particularly enjoyed and admired below:

Stephanie M. Wytovich opens with a poem called The Morning After Was Filled with Bone. I've got to be honest, while I read classic and modernist poetry (T.S. Eliot being a particular favourite) I often find 'genre' poetry trite and old-fashioned. But maybe that's because I've not read enough, because Wytovich's poem was excellent: some fantastic imagery and controlled use of language (as you can probably tell from the title). It suitably set the tone for the anthology as a whole. I'll be reading more of her work, I imagine.

Neil Gaiman's The Problem of Susan repeats his trick of repurposing a well-known story for this own ends. And what a trick it is, in this case giving us his own playfully dark take on C.S. Lewis. (Although if you're not au fait with Lewis, Gaiman's tale would lose some of its undoubted punch.)

Water Thy Bones is a typically powerful and lyrical story from Mercedes M. Yardley; in a way the whole story is one extended poetic metaphor. Like many of the stories here it perfectly fits the brief in the anthology's subtitle: it is both beautiful and horrific. There's the scent of wonder as well as fear: a plot that in other people's hands might be body-horror becomes something more akin to Ovid's Metamorphoses.

A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken (Paul Tremblay). There's no way, I thought upon starting this story, that it can be as good as its title. It's a perfect title, so there's just no way. I was wrong. This story is as good as its title, a marvellously inventive and original take on the haunted house tale. Not just my favourite story in this book, but in the running for my favourite read this year...

Damien Angelica Walters gives us another great title with On the Other Side of the Door, Everything Changes. And another story that's as good as its name. A story of how small horrors - families failing to communicate, the unkindness of children, time's passing - can build into something inescapable and all-consuming. Poignant, full of sadness and regret.

John F.D. Taff's Cards for His Spokes, Coins for His Fare is a coming of age story that reads like a combination of Bradbury and Stephen King. And those are comparisions I don't make lightly. The ending was a little too sacharine for me, but that doesn't mean other readers won't like it.

I've never read anything by Kevin Lucia before, but When We All Meet at the Ofrenda convinced me I should rectify that forthwith. An evokative and powerful piece that merges lore about the Day Of The Dead and Halloween, it's another quietly moving story about a graveyard caretaker grieving for his wife.

Most of the stories in the book are original, but there a few reprints, one of which being Ramsey Campbell stellar The Place of Revelation. This is a tale within a tale, a childhood nightmare told by one of the genre's premier prose stylists. Rereading Campbell is always a pleasure and this story loses none of its power the second time round. Just as Stephanie M. Wytovich gave Gutted a perfect opening, Campbell provides a flawless end to an excellent anthology.

Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories seems an obvious labour of love for the editors and publisher, and it shows in every aspect, including the fantastic interior art by Luke Spooner. It's a book for readers who love language as much as story, who understand that horror can be beautiful, ecstatic and revelatory as well as down-right scary (although plenty of the tales are that, too). I can't recommend it enough.

A quick note about two new reviews I've written that have gone up at This Is Horror:

Carus & Mitch by Tim Major, which is an exceptionally good novella from Omnium Gatherum.

And the somewhat uneven new collection from Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning.

Tiny Windows

“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.” - Neil Gaiman.

Regular readers will know that the topic of short fiction, and especially it's relation to the horror genre, is close to my heart. So no surprise that I was so pleased to be asked to be the first interviewee on a new feature on the Horrifically Horrifying Horror blog called Tiny Windows; the brainchild of Anthony Cowin, it's a series of interviews on all features of short horror fiction. 

You can read it here.

Too Big For My Boots

My thanks are due to Dan Howarth, who has nominated me as a 'Next Big Thing' on his blog - an act both extremely generous and wildly optimistic... This nomination means I have to answer some questions and then I get to nominate some fellow writers as up and coming hotshots too, and they have to answer the same questions and then get to nominate in their turn.

Oh, and as well as checking out Dan's personal site you should also bookmark This Is Horror (he writes for it) a site I genuinely check every few days for it's excellent reviews and articles about all aspects of horror.

Anyway, the questions:

What’s the working title of your next book?

It's working title is Short Story Collection #3. Snappy, huh?


Where did the idea for the book come from?

It's a collection of four stories which all take their cue from fairy tales in one way or another, although they are set in the modern world and are pretty damn dark and adult, with elements of black comedy. Three of them are about wishes - how we want to change our lives is pretty revealing about the lives we actually live, I think. The final one is about attempting to predict the future, which really is just another form of wishing it will turn out as we want it to, at least in this story.


What genre does the book fall under?

Is dark-contemporary-fairy-tale-inspired-horror a genre? If not, why bloody not?

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I would have to be an old-fashioned portmanteau horror film. For the first story Kelly MacDonald; for the second, William H. Macy circa Fargo; for the third, I dunno, Maggie Gyllenhaal? The person playing the lead in the fourth story would need to be the same as the first as the two stories mirror each other, so Kelly MacDonald again.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I'm not sure if it will be self-published or not at this stage; although I've self-published a few things now, I am hoping to get the book before this one (Short Story Collection #2) published by a small press, if any are interested - watch this space.

This project is smaller though, just four stories (unless it grows) so self-publishing might make more sense as it won't be the length of a 'proper' book.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Hard to say - the first story was written years ago when I was at university, and I recently came across it again and decided to redo it. That didn't take long but I was really just getting rid of some of my hideously pretentious prose (ah, to be a student again!) and updating some details that had dated in the years since I originally wrote it.

The other three have been written since then; I'd say the first drafts of all of them took maybe six weeks in total.


What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Um, I don't know - I say this out of ignorance not arrogance. I'm sure many writers have used fairy tales as inspiration for darker, modern day stories, and done it a whole lot better than me.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The individual stories have influences ranging from Neil Gaiman; a specific line from Middlemarch; internet shopping; Stanley Donwood; the lyrics to the Nirvana song Very Ape, and how much I hate Heat magazine.

The actual idea of writing a collection of stories based on fairy tales and wishes came from Iain Rowan, who was kind enough to read the first one and suggested I do more.

What else about this book might pique people’s interest?

Well the first lines are these: Once upon a time we lived happily ever after. Or so we are told.

Piqued?

And finally, a reminder…

Okay, I'm not sure how many people I am allowed to pick to answer these questions next, but I am going to arbitrarily nominate five writers, all of whom I think you should be reading and showering with money and/or Galaxy Minstrels:

Iain Rowan
Alan Ryker
S.P. Miskowski
Robert Dunbar

... and I was going to pick Cate Gardner but someone has beaten me to it!

My Top Seven Plus Three Indie Books of 2011

I noticed many blogs are doing their Top Ten indie books, so I have shamelessly decided to copy. I limited myself to picking one book per author so as to include as many as possible, and set to work picking my ten favourites... and then stopped, frowning. As ever, I've made things needlessly complicated...

Firstly, I'm not even sure all these books were published in 2011. I certainly read them all this year, but they may have been published earlier. But aren't people always banging on about indie books and e-publishing meaning that people's books have a longer shelf life? Yes, they are, and if rather looser definitions of previously precise concepts like 'this year' are the price we have to pay for such literary longevity then I'm all for it.

Secondly, and more seriously, some of the best self-published books of read this year are by the authors I've joined forces with for Penny Dreadnought. It would seem somewhat dishonest for me to recommend authors whose success might, however tangentially, benefit my sales in the future. But equally, I read all three of these authors long before Penny Dreadnought was even a twinkling, and there's no doubt their work would have appeared in this Top Ten if we'd not decided to publish together... So after some deliberation I've decided to include them but not rank them. So my Top Ten starts with those three books in no particular order and then continues with a Top Seven counting down to my Number One...

I told you I'd made this needlessly complicated.

(All links to Amazon UK)

#X. Alan Ryker: When Cthulhu Met Atlach Nacha

#X. Arron Polson: These Darkened Streets

#X. Iain Rowan: Ice Age

#7. Jim Breslin: Elephant

#6. Steven Baxter: Musings of A Monkey

#5. Neil Schiller: Oblivious

#4. Various Authors: Infinities

#3. Dan Holloway: Songs From The Other Side of The Wall

#2. Marion Stein: Loisaida - A New York Story

#1. Cate Gardner: Strange Men In Pinstripe Suits

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In other news, this is all sorts of brilliant:

In Defence Of Short Stories #19: Victoria Griesdoorn

Hi all. The latest guest post in the Defence Of Short Stories series is from the fabulous Victoria Griesdoorn, who has not only written a great post on an equally great Neil Gaiman story, but also provided a link where you can hear it for free at the end (I told you she was fabulous). That's proper free, not in some horrible illegal way.

She describes herself thusly: a scientist by day, reluctant writer by night, Clarion Write-a-Thon 2011 survivor, slush reader for Dark Fiction Magazine, and founder and contributing co-editor of the of Altered States anthology series. Victoria has short fiction published in City of Hell Chronicles Vol.I and Cruentus Libri Press's upcoming 100 Horrors anthologies [Me too! - JE]. She's also writing her first novel; a tale of magical realism. Find her at VDGriesdoorn.com or on Twitter @VDGriesdoorn


Take it away Victoria...


Harlequin Valentine 

 My love for reading rekindled when I stepped into my local library, as a 15-year-old kid, and discovered the horror section. Soon I went from King's Misery and Koontz's The Bad Place and Intensity to my real love, the gothic novel. I read my first genre book for kids, Clive Barker's The Thief of Always when I was in my twenties. And then I discovered Neil Gaiman.


I fell in love with the short story when I ran out of Gaiman novels and read Fragile Things. It was 'Harlequin Valentine' that showed me that a story, no matter how short, can have a beginning, middle and end, and feel as epic as a novel. 


 It's the tale of a Commedia dell'arte harlequin who on Valentine's Day gives his heart (literally) to his love, his columbine. The woman in question, Missy, goes around town trying to solve the mystery of how the thing ended up on her door. I won't spoil it, but in the end Missy takes matters into her own hands and the trickster is tricked. 


 The story does this wonderful thing of meandering at a pace. It goes from encounter to encounter, from meeting to meeting, from character to character. All of them are people and they all have something to say. The story is whimsical, but dark. Raw and thoughtful. Funny and morbid at the same time. It is the essence of an epic compressed into 3,500 words. 


 Since reading that story, it has not left the back of my mind. I have written a few shorts myself and have been fortunate enough to see one published. When writing, I now think about 'Harlequin Valentine'. I ask myself how I keep characters alive, and prevent them from looking like cardboard cut-outs. How do I lead the reader down an unexpected path? How do I take a familiar concept and do something new with it? And how do I do that on a hair's breadth? 


 The short story, if done well, does all of this and more. 'Harlequin Valentine' certainly does. 


 If you want to check the story out, pick up a copy of Fragile Things, or look for the Harlequin Valentine graphic novel. There is also a reading by Neil Gaiman himself, available for free at Last.fm.