I’ve been anticipating Daniel Mills‘s latest collection for quite some time, so I’m impatiently scouring the internet for any new release date information from Undertow Publications. I don’t see a specific date yet, but believe it’s scheduled to be released this year. Mills is an absolute master of the uncanny, a writer whose understanding of loss and the beauty of the inexplicable is second to none. His stories consistently fill me with awe and a sense of sorrowful longing, like a child’s ghost returning decades later to the forest that was once home to their treehouse, now long subsumed by nature.

Mills is also an exceptionally kind person whose support and sympathetic words over the year(s) has been invaluable. So very many thanks, Daniel.

Cover art by Yves Tourigny. Design by Vince Haig.

David Peak’s fantastic debut collection Eyes in the Dust and Other Stories is now available for pre-orders. I was humbled that David reached out to a nobody like me requesting I write the introduction. I can only hope I managed to express how much I admire and respect his body of work. A brief excerpt from the introduction:

“All of Peak’s stories are thick with setting. Again and again he conjures an elusive magical substance that occurs when pessimistic philosophies and compelling characters are dissolved into ambience. A mad alchemist, his writing is rare alchemy.”

I deleted the previous published draft of this post, but decided it wasn’t too bad. So the one or two who’ve already read this may recognize much of the following.

I released my second collection in late January. Despite plenty of ambivalence about the book itself, that failed to diminish my respect for the kindness of those authors who provided blurbs, shared it on social media, and mentioned the title as something worth reading in 2020. Nobody owed me anything, I don’t know any of them in real life, and few had even heard of my writing. I’m grateful they took the time to comment, shout out, and generally support a small press writer whose anonymity is assured. I’m relieved a handful found something of interest in the collection. I’m way outside of the loop and don’t know any writers or publishers personally. My general impression is that the writing community isn’t particularly inviting, if any meaningful community even exists. Having said that, I emphatically thank those who supported my book in various selfless ways.

First, and most importantly, many, many thanks to Kristine Ong Muslim. Having a writer as accomplished as her contribute 3,000 words give or take was an absolute highlight in the last 12 months. At the risk of sounding like a fawning fan, she’s simply the best writer around. Finding her slim volume Age of Blight while reading up on speculative fiction from the Philippines was a revelatory experience as potent as my first discovering Octavia Butler, Thomas Ligotti, or Ervin Krause. Her intro’ for my book is a pearl in a literary compost heap. It’s the best thing in the collection.

And with equal importance I thank Jon Padgett for publishing a writer with no track record to justify making such a gamble on. You’ve my utmost gratitude. I wish the book had a wider readership; Grimscribe Press deserves to be recognized for the phenomenal work under its banner. The other authors involved with Padgett’s press, as well as Jon’s writing itself, will surely eclipse anything I had to offer. I can only hope my book isn’t a black eye.

Thank you so very much to William L. Rukeyser and the estate of his mother, Muriel Rukeyser. And thanks to Dan Dzula for authorizing the use of Elizabeth Eaton Converse song lyrics, even though I ultimately decided not to incorporate them.

My profound thanks to Adam Nevill, Daniel Mills, Clint Smith, T.E. Grau, Steve Rasnic Tem, John Langan, Brian Evenson, Philip Fracassi, S.P. Miskowski, Kurt Fawver, Simon Strantzas, Jose Angel De Dios García, David Peak, John Claude Smith, Scott Dwyer, Seb Doubinsky, Paula McAuliffe, Chesya Burke, Edward Morris, Jeffrey Thomas, s.j. Bagley, Weye’s Blood, Scott R. Jones, Matt Cowan, Justin Steele, Aaron Besson, Steve Berman, Dejan Ognjanović, Perry Ruhland, Justin Burnett, Cody Goodfellow, Joshua Dysart, Christopher Ropes, Rowan Fortune, Orion Zangara, Nick Cato, Paul StJohn Mackintosh, Sibylle Baier, Timothy Jarvis, Michael Cisco, Mike Griffin, Tim Waggoner, John Boden, S.C. Hickman, Daniel del Valle, Matt Cardin, Jonathan Raab, Thomas Ligotti, Acep Hale, Matthew Bartlett, Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, John Palisano, Des Lewis, Craig Laurance Gidney, Kathe Koja, Nick Mamatas, Angela Slatter, Michael Kelly, Jeffrey Ford, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, and Sam Edwards.

Suffice it to say all have been supportive and/or inspirations in some capacity, in varying degrees, whether they realize it or not. Most likely have no idea.

And thank you to Annie, Roman, August, and Bowie. They put up with a lot of bullshit as I tried to make this writing dream work. I missed the net, but they’ve all been there to catch me. Love you all. I’m sorry I wasted the last 9 years.

I’m working on the introduction to David Peak’s debut collection, Eyes in the Dust and Other Stories. It’s a remarkable book. I’ve two stories awaiting release in 2021: “beautiful animal” in a Fulci tribute titled Beyond the Book of Eibon, and “Fearful is the Ancient Evil of Their Faces” in Cody Goodfellow and the late Joe Pulver’s New Maps of Dream. Both anthologies look solid, and I’m proud to have been invited to send something for them. Hopefully the Spanish edition of The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature will be released in 2021, as will the Polish edition of Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales. Unfortunately, the German publication of The Immeasurable‘ fell through, so that was another disappointment. I can look back at these events and feel I’ve accomplished a handful of worth in the micro-press writing world. I gave it a shot.

No interviews or such this year. Maybe I shouldn’t have said no to those rare review and podcast requests, or maybe I should’ve gone out of my way to pursue those interviews and podcast requests—it’s not like too many rolled my way. I normally don’t do them, but I did say yes to two of the better known horror podcasts when they asked me in late 2019 and early 2020. But they never followed up. I don’t know how these things work. Maybe I should’ve participated in writerly stuff like conventions and whatnot over the years, though the pandemic put a bullet in the head of that possibility in 2020. I made plenty of mistakes this year. All I am certain of is that if I do continue to write it is of the utmost importance to focus on reliable, professional publishers. I turned down a few projects this year; too much of the indie publishing world is less than stellar. Be choosy. Quality over quantity.

Some readers have contacted me over the months to let me know they think both Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales and The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature deserve to exist. I thank them for reaching out.

It was a disappointing year. It really took the last 12 months to sour me on the whole publishing thing. Sure, there’ve been plenty of setbacks over the last decade, but nothing that really nailed home the futility of this as 2020 managed to do.

That’s an appropriate note to end on.

My story “Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners” has been reprinted at PseudoPod, with narration by Christiana Ellis, followed by an insightful, lovely review from Alasdair Stuart.

Listen here: PseudoPod 732: Devil Gonna Catch You in the Corners

I’m pleased to announce that my story “beautiful animal” will appear in Perry Ruhland and Astrid Rose’s tribute anthology to Lucio Fulci. The wonderful cover art is the work of Trevor Henderson. My story is a tip of the hat to the more unusual, hallucinatory, and melancholic aspects of Fulci’s films. Unfortunately, there is no eyeball violence in “beautiful animal”, but it does have a hitman, plenty of mad science, and blow up dolls. It’s a macabre, psychosexual weird tale with its roots in Fulci, nunsploitation, and noir.

Beyond the Book of Eibon will also include stories by the following excellent writers:

• Adam Cesare (Clown in a Cornfield, Video Night)
• Gemma Files (Experimental Film, The Hexslinger trilogy)
• Orrin Grey (Guignol and Other Sardonic Tales, Painted Monsters and Other Strange Beasts)
• Michael Hoarty (Akashic Imprint Oddities, The Bodies Bear Traces of Parasitic Infection forthcoming)
• H.K. Lovejoy (Funerary artist, The Black in Between forthcoming) 
• Kai Perrignon (Static Vision, The Melbourne International Film Festival)
• Jonathan Raab (The Hillbilly Moonshine Massacre, Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization)
• Perry Ruhland (The Last Nautilean & Other Seaside Phantasmagoria, Sungazer)
• Zin E. Rocklyn (Nox Pareidolia, Flowers for the Sea forthcoming)
• Astrid Rose (Morbid Tales: An Anthology of Weird Fiction, Bullet Points Monthly)
• Matt Serafini (Rites of Extinction, Under the Blade)
• William Tea (Mannequin: Tales of Wood Made Flesh, In Stefan’s House: A Weird Fiction Tribute to Stefan Grabiński)
• Mike Thorn (Darkest Hours, Shelter for the Damned forthcoming)
• Mer Whinery (Trade Yer Coffin for a Gun, The Little Dixie Horror Show)

Death Wound Publishing is looking at a February, 2021 release date.

Contracts signed/arranged/pending for Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales to be translated/published in Poland, and The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature in Germany. The Spanish translation of The Immeasurable‘ should be out in 2021; the pandemic has set things back a bit. The Polish edition of Alectryomancer‘ will be translated by Wojciech Gunia, the writer who also translated Ligotti’s Teatro Grottesco. It’s interesting to me that these requests all came out of the blue recently—in fact, I was hesitant at first because these publishers have worked (or will work) with the likes of Jeff Vandermeer, Jeffrey Thomas, T.E.D. Klein, Ted Grau, etc., and I assumed them contacting an obscure writer like me was some misguided phishing attempt! While I have a small readership in the U.S. judging by social media and emails, I do tend to get many readers from Eastern Europe, Mexico, Central and South America emailing me about my books. I’m humbled at this response, particularly for someone with zero interviews, podcast appearances, readings, or convention attendances.

Congratulations to Clint Smith for The Skeleton Melodies, which is now available for pre-order. The book has already garnered praise from Laird Barron and Adam Golaski (who provided the introduction), so my two-cents is irrelevant. Suffice it to say it’s a brilliant collection of the macabre, and Smith is at the head of the pack when it comes to contemporary horror. I wish the world for Clint who is not only an accomplished writer, but also a wonderful and generous person. I can’t thank him enough for allowing me to read The Skeleton Melodies a few months back, and I look forward to seeing his work attract a lot more deserved attention.

“…The Skeleton Melodies… nicely ups the game from his 2014 debut, Ghouljaw and Other Stories. A resident of the U.S., Smith nonetheless has a gift for language and story that reminds me of my favorite weird fiction authors across the pond, namely Conrad Williams, Frank Duffy, and Joel Lane. The Skeleton Melodies is good work in its own right, however I admit to a trace of nostalgia. Smith’s affable and easy tone changes on a dime; monsters lurk in the shadows. He writes pulp of a literary sensibility that I relished in 1980s anthologies by editors such as David Hartwell and Karl Edward Wagner.”
—Laird Barron

 

Lately, I’ve been busy attending protests, donating what I can to Black Lives Matter as well as several movements I respect, and volunteering for various causes. Other personal challenges have reared their ugly heads over the last couple of months, so it feels like I’m fighting an amorphous unrelenting Hydra-headed fog of obstacles. Despite this, we try to assist 24/7 as best we can here in S. California; I haven’t seen the potential for positive changes this meaningful and consequential since the ’94 protests in Los Angeles. My wife is Guatemalan, and we’ve long had discussions with our kids, each other, and friends about racism, police brutality, and the white supremacist foundations of this country. This all dovetails with conversations about LGBQT oppression, basic income, health care rights, feminism, environmentalism—my kids are 3, 9, and 13, and they fill me with hope that they’ll be contributing to and experiencing a better world. Call it secular faith, wishful thinking, or this old Marxist’s optimism, but I hope for great things to proceed.

Having said that, the geography of racism is mapped out in detail, and the first step in plotting one’s way is acknowledging that these deep divides are socio-culturally and historically etched into the landscape. I’m no scholar, and suggesting two books in a blog post maybe two or three people might read if I’m lucky is not particularly relevant when it comes to such important subjects. I’ll go ahead and suggest the following two books as an introduction to these issues anyway: Medical Apartheid and Buried in the Bitter Waters.

Harriet A. Washington’s Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present is meticulously researched, and expertly exposes the racist pseudoscience that saw medical bodies torturing and maiming slaves and freedmen, as well as the continuing abusive atrocities overwhelmingly inflicted against Black communities today. The beginning and end of malicious racist experiments did not happen with Tuskegee, but have deep roots in the medical sciences that continues in 2020. It’s an astonishingly well written book, and devastating in its clarity.

Elliott Jaspin’s Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America is a good place to start as well. The idea that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 magically leveled the playing field after centuries of brutality is offensive at best, and usually presented as a default argument to perpetuate white supremacist domination. Centuries of kidnapping, murder, and slavery continue to have profound social, economic, and psychological impacts on Black folks today. Contemporary struggles are a direct consequence of colonialism, and Jaspin’s book gives a detailed account of how ethnic cleansing committed by whites has created the racist structures that underpin the American edifice.

Philip Fracassi is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Naacp Legal Defense & Educational Fund Inc (Ldf).  Donations are 100% tax deductible.

The sun burns and the sun is as orange as the face of an angry preacher and the sun moves imperceptibly. The planet turns slowly beneath us all. The planet shifts beneath the dead. The planet moves. The oceans churn. The sky moves above us all. Deep below, 6,000 kilometers inside the Earth, something the size of the Moon opens its mouth to sing.

I can’t thank you enough for everything, Joe.

Goodbye.