sumer is icumen in!



Edward Woodward, the star of one of my favorite horror movies–why qualify it?  one of my favorite movies–The Wicker Man, has died at 79.  (That would be the 1973 British version; if the Nic Cage abomination was the first thing you thought of, wash your brain out with soap and see me after class.)  Edward Woodward played the unforgettable Sergeant Howie who successfully resisted the carnal temptations of Britt Ekland only to find himself…well, I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it.  And if you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to see the only successful musical horror film ever made.  Also starring Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, and the delightful Ingrid Pitt makes an appearance as well.   Avoid the shamefully truncated and incoherent 88-minute version and be certain you get the proper 100-minute version instead.

Best New Horror reviewed

Editor Stephen Jones sent me a link to a nice review of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 20.  The blogger actually reviewed the book in a seven-part series of posts and covered every story.  I haven’t read all seven parts yet because I haven’t finished making my way through the anthology myself, but apparently it is pretty glowing throughout. I do want to point out one passage at the end of part seven, though:

If you know anyone that doesn’t like horror give them a copy of this book.  There is so much variety, so much quality on display here that I cannot believe for one minute that there will not be something in here that every reader, no matter how biased, will enjoy.

This is much too involved a tangent to pursue at length right now, but a number of times people have said to me, “Oh, I can’t stand horror” but read one of my stories because they knew me, and came back saying, “Oh, I don’t like horror, but I like that kind of story.  You don’t write horror!”  It’s a shame: the genre has been so degraded in the popular imagination (for a myriad of reasons) that its illustrious literary heritage has been forgotten.  (Yet another tangent, of course, is balancing that literary heritage with the understanding that horror is neither respectable nor is it in good taste.  If it were, it wouldn’t be horrible, would it?)

Go here to read nice things about my story, “These Things We Have Always Known” (and nice things about stories by Peter Crowther and Simon Stranzas).

Here are the links to the other six parts.

Part Two.  Part Three.  Part Four.  Part Five.  Part Six.  Part Seven.

Here are the links to buy the book at Amazon US, Amazon UK (inexplicably still displaying the horrible-in-all-the-wrong-ways-US-cover, which is not the one you should receive if ordering from them), and Amazon Canada, if you are uninclined to trek to a brick-and-mortar place.

Happy Halloween

For your Halloween pleasure, one of my favorite opening paragraphs in fiction:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some to dream.  Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.  Within, walls continue upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. 

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is one of my favorite horror novels.  I reread it every few years; once, I did so while lying in bed running a fairly high fever, which I can only describe as alternately exhilirating and terrifying.

Just as Hill House is one of my favorite novels, Arthur Machen’s “The White People” is one of my favorite short horror stories–an enigmatic descent into a sinister, otherwordly realm through the pages of a young girl’s diary.

All these are the most secret secrets, and I am glad when I remember what they are, and how many wonderful languages I know, but there are some things that I call the secrets of the secrets of the secrets that I dare not think of unless I am quite alone, and then I shut my eyes, and put my hands over them and whisper the word, and the Alala comes.  I only do this at night in my room or in certain woods that I know, but I must not describe them, as they are secret woods.

Happy Halloween.  Watch out for those ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties.

nothing is ever finished

I’ve been playing around with this new blog for a little while, learning my way around wordpress, not knowing what kind of links and categories I want to have or what template to use, what’s going to go on the sidebar there and still not really being sure.  Now I’m impatient with fiddling and ready to launch.  So here I am opening shop with the paint not yet dry (stuff not even painted yet, maybe) and the sign’s not been hung and the door doesn’t open or shut right–throw your weight into it, there you go–and there are still lots of boxes sitting around and things on shelves in all the wrong order.  I’d invite you to take a seat but I haven’t unpacked the chairs.  And you might come in a day or a week or a month from now and find everything different from how it was before (but isn’t that always the way?) and come in after that and see it all back as it began.  So this is a work in progress.  Like everything.