Horror News... Freeman, Garton, and Kurtz website-o-rama

A few new web-based endeavours have captured my attention this week:

• Brian Freeman, author and Cemetery Dance... err... do-all-sorts-of-things dude, has announced that he has started a new blog "to discuss writing, editing, reading, and the publishing business". If you like discussions on any of that, especially pertaining to Cemetery Dance Publications, then you'll want to keep an eye on it here.
• Ray Garton already has a blog, amusingly titled "Preposterous Twaddlecock", where he discusses everything from religious matters to the stories behind his various books. But now apparently he has a bona fide website, "with a message board where [he]’ll be hanging out, information about and links to [his] books online as well as links to interviews, a full bibliography, and starting in the last week of September [...] contests and book giveaways." Giveaways you say? Sounds like a website to keep track of. Visit it here.
• Lastly (and slightly late), Ed Kurtz author of the fun, Henenlotter-like Bleed, announced a few weeks ago that he was starting another blog, this time featuring a free serial novel: Sawbones. From the synopsis: 
  
  In the summer of 1865, a man who calls himself Dr. Septimus Whitehall arrives in war-ravaged Southern Alabama with murder on his mind. Whitehall has come to make himself into a killer, armed only with a list of names and a savage rage. First, he practices his craft. Then he begins his mission in earnest: killing each and every person on his list in revenge for an ambiguous crime against a loved one.
  
  I guess that's serial in more than one way... Keep an eye on the semi-regular installments here (links to all the chapters so far can be found here).

Happy (Belated) Birthday Steve!

Apparently Stephen King had his birthday a couple of days ago. Born on September 21st, 1947... that makes him, what, 64? Wow, how time flies.

If you count the publication of "The Glass Floor" in 1967, he's been enthralling readers for 44 of those years. Here's hoping for 44 more. (C'mon, with his fortune and likely medical advances it's surely within the bounds of possibility!)

Stephen King after reading his latest royalty cheque

On a related note, according to the Hot Library Technician, Mr King has the distinction of having 22 books in a "research guide entitled Banned Books by Robert P. Doyle". These include Carrie which could apparently "harm students, particularly younger girls."

Oh, that naughty Mr King.

Dark Matter – A Ghost Story by Michelle Paver

Dark Matter (OrionBooks, 2010) is, as the subtitle advertises, a ghost story set in the Arctic wastes of the far north. Running at 243 pages (plus 15 pages of extra material), it marks Paver's first foray into spook fiction after a successful run in the young adult market with her Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series.

From the back cover:

What is it? What does it want?

Why is it angry with me?

January 1937.

Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he’s offered the chance to be the wireless operator on an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it.

Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Gruhuken.

But the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice. Stay or go.

Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return – when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible.

And Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone.

Something walks there in the dark.

****

The setting of Gruhuken is well realised: ice and snow-covered; windy; cold. Cold enough that despite keeping the fire stoked, some parts of the expedition's hut's interior become rimmed with ice. When winter arrives it becomes both cold and dark. Suffering it alone would seem like suicide; at the very least, likely to drive someone to madness.

As expected this is what eventuates for Jack. As he is abandoned by his companions, mainly though medical necessity, he elects to stay on and suffer through the long night. His daily rounds include checking a weather station, and as the freezing cold weather worsens, he continues this routine – it's either that or go mad in his isolation. His struggle to maintain at least some sort of daily structure, against worsening cold and encroaching darkness, is a provider of mounting tension. Adding to this tension is a sense of something other; something evil lurking in the cold that gets bolder as time passes. Will his companions return before the evil – or even just the elements, or loneliness – take their toll?

As a period piece the story works quite well. Much is made of the class distinctions of the time, and of Jack's ingrained resentment of his well-to-do companions' easy path in life. Though a tad heavy handed at times, this goes some way to providing a reason for Jack's determination to not let the expedition fail, rather than just bailing out and leaving Gruhuken to whatever lurks there. I'll show them; I don't need to be born with a silver spoon in my mouth to succeed.

The novel is written in an epistolary format - aside from the prologue, each chapter is presented as from Jack's diary. This works well in that it forces the narrative into a measured structure and pace, so that the cold creepiness of the setting can slowly work its way in. It is unfortunate then that Paver changes to first person present tense for the climax. I can see why an author might consider this, after all, as a mode it conveys action more convincingly – but I found that it just jarred me out of the story.

Despite some disappointment with the climax and ending, I still think this is an accomplished ghost story. I would recommend it to anyone who likes the form, especially if you enjoy modern takes by the likes of, say, Jonathan Aycliffe. Hell, I'd even recommend it to anyone who likes Arctic expedition stories (the 15 pages of extra material about the “real” expedition this is based on is a great read*).

Given that Aycliffe seems to have disappeared from the publishing world (other than producing Daniel Easterman thrillers, that is), it would be nice to see Paver produce more of this type of thing. Pretty please.

(*Note: I don't remember having this section in the hardback edition I read, but the paperback I subsequently bought advertises “exclusive material inside”. Just be aware of the differences in editions!)

Free Fiction Wot I Have Found

Recently I've noticed the odd free horror ebook over at Smashwords. Some by authors I'm familiar with, but some also by authors that I'm not familiar with that seem to have decent production values and an interesting blurb.
Admittedly, with the latter I could be recommending some complete shit, but it'sfree shit. And every likes free shit, right?
So here's a selection. Go on, get your fix, load your [insert e-reader device here] up with yet another book you won't get around to reading. Oh and if you do, let me know if I put you wrong (or not) with the unfamiliar ones, okay?

First up: Kealan Patrick Burke, an author you should be familiar with - because he is good, very good - has a couple available:

The Turtle Boy
School is out; summer has begun. For 11-year old Timmy Quinn, it is a time of magic and discovery. But on the day he encounters a strange boy on the bank of Myers pond, everything changes. For it soon becomes clear that dark secrets abound in Timmy's little community, secrets that come cupped in the hands of the dead, and in a heartbeat, summer becomes a season of terror, betrayal, and murder.

This novella won the Bram Stoker award in 2004. Read it and then buy its sequels. An ebook that conveniently collects up the whole lot, Stage Whispers: The Collected Timmy Quinn Stories, can be bought here for the princely sum of $4.99.

Underneath
For Dean, it begins with a dare, one that comes with the threat of violence if he chickens out. All he has to do is date Stephanie Watts, a disfigured girl who is the pariah at their high school. Dean agrees, and soon discovers that there is much more to Stephanie Watts than anyone dared imagine, and deadlier secrets awaiting him...underneath.

An excellent short story with a nice twist. Get it here. The good news is that there are a whole heap of other affordable stories by Burke, available from Smashwords and other ebook outlets. And all pretty darn good.








Next up are a couple of books from Grindhouse Press. I know little about them, other than that they seem to have some pretty f-ed up sounding releases. These books sound entertaining, at the very least.

Vampires in Devil Town by Wayne Hixon
One evening Rachel Stokes is yanked from her bed and dragged into a black van by two young abductors. They refer to her as a chosen sacrifice and her mind races, wondering where they might be taking her. She thinks she knows. There’s a house located in a hollow of rural Lynchville. It’s called the Sad House, a place of legend. Rumors say it appears and disappears. Even worse than the house are the people who live in it. They could be vampires. They could just be ghosts with teeth. They’ve come after Rachel before and she narrowly escaped. And now they've come back to finish what they started in this horrifying and suspenseful novel by first time author Wayne Hixon.

At just under 80000 words, this is a full size novel Get it here.

The Sorrow King by Andersen Prunty
The papers call it “The Suicide Virus.” The teenagers of Gethsemane, Ohio, are killing themselves at an alarming rate.
Steven Wrigley is trying to survive his senior year of high school, still reeling from the death of his mother and adjusting to life with his father. Along the way, he meets a girl who becomes another kind of obsession: Elise Devon.
Elise’s secrets keep her distanced from everyone. She has a special place she calls the Obscura. She goes there when she is depressed or angry. The Obscura makes her feel like nothing she’s ever felt before. When she loses herself to the Obscura, she fears she also gives herself to something much darker, something much more powerful. Something calling itself the Sorrow King...

This is also a novel (get it here), and Prunty has a number of other novels and novellas available. Interestingly, one of them is called "Fuckness". Hmmm.



Next up are a couple of short collections from Aaron Polson. I've been aware of Aaron for quite a while now, but have yet to read one of his books. Naughty me.

 

The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories
A collection of ten dark stories from Horror Writers Association member Aaron Polson. Witness hotels with shifting rooms...carnivorous beetles bent on devouring a sleepy mountain town...vindictive spirits with beautiful eyes...an undead Marine on his return from Iraq...a pond full of restless dead in the title story, and more.

This collection has been expanded upon in The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories Bonus Edition (99c !!!), which adds four stories and 10000 words to the original 30000 word collection.

Violent Bits: A Horror Sampler
A sampler of three dark stories with visceral bite taken from Violent Ends: Horror Stories.

At only around 3000 words, this is a considerably less substantial collection. Then again,as its title says, it is only a "sampler". Also, bits. Violent Bits vs Violent Ends. Clever.
Get this one here, or fork out the massive sum of 99c (99c !!!) for the much larger Violent Ends here.

* * * *

There's more where these came from, but I think that'll do for now. Until next time... 

Stephen King's Mile 81

...where I manage to write way too much for a short story review...


At Mile 81 on the Maine Turnpike is a boarded up rest stop, a place where high school kids drink and get into the kind of trouble high school kids have always gotten into. It's the place where Pete Simmons goes when his older brother heads off to the gravel pit to play 'paratroopers over the side'.


Pete, armed with only the magnifying glass he got for his tenth birthday, finds a discarded bottle of vodka in the boarded up burger shack and drinks enough to pass out. That's why he doesn't notice a freshly mud-spattered station wagon ... which veers into the Mile 81 rest area, ignoring the sign that reads 'closed, no services'.


The driver's door opens but nobody gets out . . .

*****

The latest  release from the Stephen King machine is Mile 81, an e-book exclusive. The marketing guff boldly proclaims that it contains "the heart of Stand By Me and the genius horror of Christine". Whew, that's a lot to live up to.

References to boyhood camaraderie and shenanigans, a la Stand By Me/The Body?
Check.
Vehicle with murderous intent?
Check.


Alas, the youthful shenanigans and Pete's character development aren't terribly convincing. King normally has a deft hand at this sort of thing, but here he misfires.

Also, the vehicular menace is nowhere near the "genius horror" of car (and owner) possession found in Christine. It's more the implacable menace of The Raft. The origin of the vehicle is undeveloped, though it is (perhaps) hinted at in a couple of sentences toward the very end of the tale. (Admittedly, a menace doesn't need to be fully explicable to be effective.)

A large amount of space is given to vignettes (at least one of which could have easily be made redundant) involving people pulling up to investigate the mysterious station wagon and its ever-increasing tail of cars. These are enjoyable and mildly suspenseful, but would be more so if not hampered by repeated foreshadowing. Just when the story has gone on long enough that you think the next character might not - just possibly might not -  be another walk-in from dial-a-victim, we have the suspense ruined by something like "...it was this soon-to-be-fatal misconception that...". Argh.

Given the space languished on these vignettes, and Pete's back-story, you'd think the climax and aftermath would be suitably well-developed. Unfortunately the climax is a little, well... anticlimactic. Before you know it, it's over. What is made of the encounter, post-slaughter, is anyone's guess.

All in all it gives the impression of a rushed, unbalanced, front-heavy tale.

Still, it's a Stephen King story, and there's something about a Stephen King story. Some sort of Pavlovian response to his prose. It's a mildly enjoyable story, and perhaps that's the problem. Mildly enjoyable. I hold Stephen King to a higher standard than "mildly" anything, especially for an exciting, new e-book exclusive.

Still, I don't regret buying it and reading it; I just expected something a whole lot more.

How about value for money? If you don't include the excerpt from his forthcoming novel, 11/22/63, you're getting around, 17000 words. That doesn't even make the grade for novella (usually 17500 - 40000 words), and that's fair enough I guess - it is only marketed as a "short story" after all. Just be aware how much (I mean, little) your four groats is buying.

Note: other worthy reviews include this one here, at The Man Eating Bookworm, where Peter Andrew Leonard laments the bad editing and cover (both of which appear to be largely improved in my version); and this one here, from horror author extraordinaire, Kealan Patrick Burke, who "felt as if [he] had read the opening chapter to an abandoned novel...", which I fully understand.