An excellent tradition (started by Neil Gaiman) that has been taking place in October over the past couple of years: give the ones you care about something horrific to read for Halloween! #allhallowsread Here are my recommendations: Pet Sematary -- To begin with the standard fair, this is one of Stephen King's best. Also try The Dead Zone, It, and The Shining. I would also add 'The Tommyknockers,' a highly underrated King novel. I Am Legend -- Besides Bram Stoker's Dracula, this is the only other story with vampires I would recommend. Please don't bother with the movies; I'm sure Richard Matheson was none to pleased with any of them. The twist at the end of this one elevates I am Legend to literary heights. Shadowland -- I considered Ghost Story, or even Floating Dragon, but Shadowland is a superior effort on Straub's part, in my opinion. A very interesting read. Very creepy. American Psycho -- A gruesome comment on the wealthy American consumerist culture. Some of the most vivid descriptions of violence and sexual depravity ever in print! Highly recommended. ;) V. -- There is horror in this challenging book, and an air of the macabre. Easier than Gravity's Rainbow, but more challenging than The Crying of Lot 49. Thomas Pynchon's V. has certain implied supernatural elements that make it acceptable for any list of horror literature. The Collector -- John Fowles's first novel, and it is disturbing. If you cut through all the literary commenting on the English class system, you get a story about a deeply disturbed man holding a young liberal woman captive in his basement, with unpleasant results. House of Leaves -- A postmodernist masterpiece of twisting and turning...literally! Prepare to read this one sideways and upsidedown. There are some very frightening parts to this spiral into the void... The Turn of the Screw -- A classic in the "ghost story" genre by Henry James. Or is it? Ambiguity of character and story done with such precise mastery, it leaves one in a state of awe, and totally creeped out. The Road -- Cormac McCarthy is depressing. That's a fact. And The Road is a trudge through hopelessness, but done with such vivid clarity and strength of spirit. Wonderful! The October Country -- Ray Bradbury wrote some truly horrific stories in his early years and many of his best are collected in The October Country. "The Next in Line" is particularly good, as are such classics as "The Jar," "The Small Assassin," and I would add "The Emissary." Books of Blood -- Clive Barker's short stories are fantastic and gruesome and well worth your time. Very good stuff. From Hell -- To add a graphic novel to this list--Alan Moore. This one is excellent, stick with it to the end and you won't be disappointed.
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His sister--Lisa--is standing on the bank of the creek, watching the trickles of brown water slide sluggishly through the bulrush like snakes. The looming cathedral ceiling of the the sky presses down on them. Crickets fill the air with an unending reee. Three men are coming towards them down the road, rifles slung over their shoulders. One of them points at them. They run; Lisa’s soft tiny hand is enveloped in his, their legs whipping through the grass, pulling her, then a shot, and she sags and is heavy. He keeps running. Lisa hasn’t cried out or screamed and when he looks the top of her head isn’t there anymore, nor those curious blue eyes, nor her tiny impish nose; her little body--dressed like a doll--flings wildly through the swampy foliage behind him as he drags her. Several days later he is lying awake in bed, starring at the webwork of cracks in the ceiling, when his father comes into the room. His father makes him do things, and he does them the best he can--not wanting to upset his father, knowing he was supposed to be watching Lisa, that her death was all his fault--chained to the bed, floating out of himself. Afterwards, sitting in the dark of the middle of the night, his father whispers: “I wish your sister was here.” I was invited to read my poem for the University of New Mexico Student Publications Fair (10.25.12) since my poem was honored in the university publication Conceptions Southwest in 2007. I’m not good with this sort of thing and tend to get nervous, so here’s what I’m going to say, presented in a form with which I feel comfortable: the written word... Time Slot: 12:15 to 12:30 It went well. I strayed a bit from what's below and rambled on, but all in all it was good practice... Hello. My name is Keith Deininger and I was published in Conceptions Southwest number 30 in 2007. My poem, entitled "Grandma," was chosen as the editor's choice in the category of poetry. I've been asked to read it for you and I will, but first, let me say a few things. In 2007 I was about to graduate with my undergraduate degree in Creative Writing and I called myself a writer. I was like most, I talked a lot about writing but did very little of it. On a whim, I submitted a few poems to Conceptions Southwest, the first time I'd ever submitted anything. And when I was published I felt honored and my confidence soared. Conceptions Southwest gave me the courage to believe I might actually have a real writer inside me, and, eventually, something clicked and I began to take my writing seriously. I began to write regularly and with passion. It has since become a daily habit and I have written a lot of short stories, an poems, and three novels. I send my work out to various publications regularly and receive rejections all the time. That's part of it. There's a good chance there's one sitting in my inbox right now. Then again, there might be an acceptance, and there have been. I have published several short stories and my debut novel is being released as a mass market paperback this summer. So, I guess, I'm on my way. I'm a writer, for better or worse, and Conceptions Southwest, for me, was the beginning. The best advice I can give to aspiring writers stuck at the beginning is to do two things above all else: read like a maniac and write obsessively. Just write. That's all you can do. Oh, and don't be afraid to submit your work. You'll get a lot of rejections, but then, eventually, that acceptance just might be coming your way. But anyway, I'm here to read my poem. It's a little surreal, as much of the imagery in my writing tends to be. It's called 'Grandma.' Grandma The boy watches her face- thick, like a wax candle that sits on the mantle, old and sticky and ignored. The weight of her skin melting, viscous, into the cracks and folds of her sunken eyes, opaque, smeared with bad mayonnaise and the boy wonders how he must look to this woman in her bed of white sheets with his bright summer clothes and ruffled blond hair. He swallows a dry lump of cotton as he imagines the pain and backs away slowly from the woman’s writhing hands, the heads of two vipers, striking blindly at the air nails bitten jagged Down the corridor under the blinking red sign he pushes through that back rusty door, creaking out past the waiting room into the blazing summer air. He rushes forward, pushing on, though the sun is too bright, and his body too light and he races past all the young men in their shorts and all the tanned laughing girls and the curve of their hips, past the vendors unnoticed and carefully over the scattered cans of beer slammed fast under the sun. In his youth no one cares to sell him a t-shirt or bum off his money or offer him drugs. In his youth he is safely ignored and left to absorb with a child’s nomadic eyes. Then out past the dock, padding through the sand, and way past the beach where the homeless sleep, he knows of a cove, cast in dark shadow, where he can dig in the sand and bury his thoughts. A smooth bar of sand, cool and moist, licked fresh every morning by the ocean’s salty tongue. Here the boy rests and ignores the familiar stink of the deflated carcass, torn and left bare by the struggles of the ocean’s heavy waves, and he tries to forget the gurgling hum of Grandma’s words as he keeps his distance from the tentacles stretched out, reaching, as if to snatch him up tight, and draw him near for a kiss. And with that, thank you so much! If you're interested in more, check out my website, appropriately entitled KeithDeininger.com! It's a strangely anti-climactic feeling, and the wait times are brutal. I have signed a contract with the independent publisher DarkFuse. I will be joining the ranks of such established genre writers as Greg F. Gifune, Tim Curran and William Meikle. I spent all last week editing the manuscript I hadn't looked at in months, which included writing an entirely new ending! I'm very excited. I can't wait. I'm giddy as I write this. But my new editor also already let slip the casual inquiry as to what I might be working on next... And that's the way it is. I make a small advance and wait until my book comes out this summer and pray to whatever gods I find myself currently able to believe in that the damn thing sells! Also, I cringe in fear at the thought of what my peers will think (and my parents!) at the more, shall we say..."extreme" scenes that they and everyone else will be able to read freely in just a few months. Also, I keep writing and working on the next thing, on the next vision, the next project. I'm suddenly all too aware of the business side of writing and all the responsibilities that come with it! Still, I'm thrilled about the things I'm working on ('Out of the Jar," my current novel in progress, I feel, is much better than 'The New Flesh') and I feel accomplished and the future feels a bit warmer, a bit brighter. I mean, I've been working towards this my whole fucking life, so... It's time for the 2012 Story Contest hosted at MicroHorror.com, just in time for Halloween. This year, with my novel in production to be released next summer, I am determined to win and so I sent them my best. I sent them two stories and they've been published and they're on the site now. This year's them is... ART. The first story I sent Nathan Rosen, the editor over there, is "A Deep Spiraling Green," that, strangely enough, fulfills last year's contest theme of Water as well. It involves an art school master who, after a voyage to The Green Sea, returns changed, different in all the wrong ways... The second story is called "Legion, oil on canvas, unsigned," and involves a woman in an art gallery who becomes fully absorbed in gazing at a painting of a legion of purple-skinned demons at war with a band of horse riders. She gets a little more than she bargained for... Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe face the 'Antichrist'! Anthony Lane's review in The New Yorker is apt and worth a quick read. "I see no reason to ally oneself wholeheartedly either with those who despise von Trier for his horrific silliness or with those who revere his ambition," Lane says. "Both have a point, and the problem is that von Trier, even at his most objectionable, can summon a wealth of images that defy explanation." And, I would argue, it is these disturbing images, the nightmare tumble through this subverted "Eden," that mark the brilliance of this movie. 'Antichrist' shows some of what the movie medium is capable of achieving that other mediums cannot. It is truly horrific! I, for one, am of the second camp when it comes to von Trier's movie, I "revere his ambition," and thank him for it. Personally, I thought House of Leaves was a work of genius. If you haven't read it, then at least pick up a copy and glance through it. It's a creepy and super-weird work of postmodernism, kind of a mishmash swirl of stories and letters and other things surrounding a house (pretend that's the right color) that seems to be much larger inside--a dark winding catacomb--than it appears to be from the outside. Exploring the house becomes like exploring the abyss. You could also call it a "satire of academic criticism." Check it out. And if you like House of Leaves as much as I did, then you might be interested in Daneilewski's Favorite Ghost Stories. When sleep finally took her, it was as if she were not merely dreaming, but had been transported to some other place and now lay, still awake, in a different bed in a different house, waiting for something to happen. The room was empty, the floor bare, the window tacked with newspaper from which moonlight cut across the room through a tear, dust swirling in its beam. There was no longer a skylight above her head, but a jagged hole over which plastic had been stapled, that bulged slowly in and out with the whistling of the wind outside, as if the house itself were breathing. She knew, somehow, that something was going to happen, something horrifying. She couldn’t leave the bed; she was frozen in place; she knew there was no escape. It was dark, and cold, and windy outside, but whatever came for her, would come from inside. The quilt that lay over her was the same as from her uncle’s house, but had somehow become scuffed and threadbare, thin and creased like tissue paper. Her body lay beneath it like a tiny wilted flower. The hole in the ceiling began to breathe more heavily, crumpling in and out. The cat tucked at her feet, sleeping soundly and unaware. From far below--how big was this house?--she heard a crash, something large and ungainly moved about. It had to drag itself, running into things, whatever it was, making a great deal of noise. It scuttled through doorways and up stairs, moving slowly, climbing the house to where Kate lay frozen in bed. The sounds it made grew closer, ascending stairways, coming up, level after level. Kate willed her legs to move, but they remained motionless, as useless as planks of wood. The ceiling was breathing more and more rapidly--excitedly. The thing below her was scratching walls and snapping banisters. The room was growing hotter and hotter, as if tied to the proximity of the approaching thing. The air was thick and wet. She could feel the floor, the walls, the house trembling and creaking. Then the thing began to thump up the final set of stairs. Kate’s entire body seemed covered in sweat and she was terrified this wasn’t a dream--how could she be sure? If she knew it were a only dream, all she had to do was to wait for the end, that moment when something jumped out at her and she woke up screaming. If it wasn’t a dream... She tried to move her legs again. If she was awake, the thing crossing the hallway and coming up to the room was going to get her. She heard it more clearly now, rasping heavily. It was on the other side of the door. She knew it was massive, writhing and black. It pushed against the door, making it bulge and the hinges creak. The ceiling hyperventilated. Kate lay with her body still motionless and her head turned to watch the door, eyes wide, chest blazing with fear. But the door did not splinter and burst, but opened slowly, as if from a subtle breath. It was dark beyond--blacker than shadow. Muggy warmth spilled into the room like a roiling fog. A figure stepped forward, then another. They stood with their faces obscured, looking at her. This is no dream, she thought. This is really happening. “We knew this would happen when we took you in.” It was her mom and dad, but their voices were raw and scraped. “Now we wander...wander in the dark...and in the cold...” Behind them, the darkness churned. “You killed us, bitch. You filthy little bitch!” Kate began to scream. Whilst hard at work on my next novel--a surrealist's journey through nightmares and other worlds and the gods and masters of those worlds--I've been considering the nature of reality, I've been thinking a lot about Plato's Cave. In Plato's model, we are removed from reality by several layers of perception. We are like prisoners watching the shadows cast on the wall by puppet performers, assuming that what we see is true reality, which clearly it is not. If you're interested start here: Allegory of the Cave. I've approached my new novel with this skewed sense of reality in mind, with the idea that certain "truths" are happening beneath the surface of things, and that it is these things taking place beneath the main narrative that will prove to be most important--layers of mystery peeled back as the narrative unfolds. Ambitious? Well, I for one think so and am absolutely terrified I won't be able to pull it off... |
"Unrelenting Horror"- FREE!An award-winning author known for blending elements of fantasy with horror in his surreal, literary style. Author of WITHIN, A GAME FOR GODS and VIOLENT HEARTS.
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