I cannot emphasize how eye-opening Adam Golaski’s work was for me. I wouldn’t dream of comparing my writing to his, but I felt a kind of symmetry on my first reading “The Animator’s House”. It felt as if I’d stumbled across a writer far more skilled than I, but was interested in following non-traditional paths of storytelling as well.
And what can I say about Clint Smith? His stories are time and again the superior entries in many an anthology, and I read him with an equal mixture of awe and despair on realizing I’m just a pleb watching someone consistently hit their mark. I’m eagerly awaiting his sophomore collection due to be released next year.
In upcoming months, a conversation will be available between Adam Golaski and I—an exercise (which has been structured as an interview) that began in the autumn of 2017, one in which I was reluctant to conclude late last winter (the publication venue will be announced in due time).
About a year ago, Scott Dwyer (steadfast champion of the horror genre and editorial superintendent of the “nightmarish and…nebulous” site The Plutonian) had achieved breathing perverse life into his publicational labor of love, Phantasm/Chimera: An Anthology of Strange and Troubling Dreams, for which he had a specific vision, fulfilling a specific vision for creating a project with a singular roster of writers.
In addition to writers, Dwyer’s “cast” included writers who I’d previously established contact via reader-writer interactions on social media, namely Jon Padgett, John Claude Smith, Matt Bartlett, and Chris Slatsky. Still, there were others whose…
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Christopher Slatsky 