Many of us have fond memories of childhood, especially those lazy summers when schools were out, the days were hot, and the neighborhoods were ripe for exploration with friends. Hugo award-winning author Dan Simmons captures this age of innocence perfectly in Summer of Night, but then he lets the monsters loose in this old school horror story about how the carefree lives of a group of children are quickly torn from them as they . . . → Read More: Review: Summer of Night, by Dan Simmons]]>

Many of us have fond memories of childhood, especially those lazy summers when schools were out, the days were hot, and the neighborhoods were ripe for exploration with friends. Hugo award-winning author Dan Simmons captures this age of innocence perfectly in Summer of Night, but then he lets the monsters loose in this old school horror story about how the carefree lives of a group of children are quickly torn from them as they confront their ultimate nightmares.

The life-affirming story in Summer of Night reminds me of Stephen King’s It, as well as his short story “The Body,” in that all three stories depict youthful innocence corrupted by unspeakable terrors. In Summer of Night, a group of children in the quiet small town of Elm Haven, Illinois, discover a growing evil in the shuttered Old Central School. The children try to enlist help from their parents and other adults, but the adults ignore the children whom are, from the adults’ point of view, just being foolish and making things up. So the children band together in order to defeat the evil themselves, before the ancient horror engulfs the town and enslaves the world in a reign of terror.

Simmons takes his time to build up the tension and horror in the book, detailing the lives and thoughts of the kids in this everyday midwestern town. In fact, these details are what gives depth to the story. Some critics criticize “genre” stories for lacking characterization at the expense of plot. Simmons mutes this criticism by developing the characters and their motivations in the story so that the reader really cares for them and perhaps even relives childhood memories through the romps of these children as they pursue their summer freedoms to the fullest. This character development is also devastating, however, for when Simmons unleashes the monsters on these characters the reader has come to know and love, the horror is gruesomely effective. This is a horror story the way horror stories should be written.

One interesting fact relates to another of Dan Simmons’ books, Children of the Night, winner of the 1993 Locus Award for Best Horror/Dark Fantasy Novel. In that novel, the story focuses on an American hematologist named Kate Neuman, a dying baby she adopts during a visit to Romania, and a priest named Mike O’Rourke, who helps her get out of that post-Communist country while being chased by Vlad Dracula himself. That priest, Mike O’Rourke, is the same Mike from Summer of Night, just much older, making Children of the Night a loose sequel to Summer of Night.

I particularly enjoyed Simmons’ ability to develop sympathetic characters. I think that especially in horror stories, if the reader is invested in a character, they will likely also “feel” the horror more fully. I also appreciated the author’s attention to detail. The small midwestern town was a believable place and the characters seemed almost like real people. But the author also used other details effectively, such as developing a complex history of a mysterious bell, which almost becomes a character itself, as well as using words and ways of speaking authentic to the time period depicted. For example, a diary entry from 1917 used the term “social intercourse”—an awkward term not in common use today (which means simply “communication between individuals”) but one contextually authentic for the diary.

Simmons knows how to write, how to entertain, and how to give the reader the creeps. All three of these skills are expertly demonstrated in Summer of Night, so pick up the book, listen for the long-silent bell as it rings the doom of Elm Haven, and journey with the children as they fight unsightly terrors that threaten humanity itself.

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My new collection of delicious horror stories has just been published!

Here are more details about the book and what’s inside.

I had the pleasure today of seeing and hearing acclaimed and award-winning author Jeffrey Ford not once today, but twice!

A prolific author in Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Mystery, Jeffrey Ford has written novels, such as The Shadow Year: A Novel, The Girl in the Glass : A Novel, and The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque : A Novel, along with collections of short stories, such as The Drowned Life (P.S.) and The Fantasy . . . → Read More: A lecture and reading by Jeffrey Ford]]>

I had the pleasure today of seeing and hearing acclaimed and award-winning author Jeffrey Ford not once today, but twice!

A prolific author in Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Mystery, Jeffrey Ford has written novels, such as The Shadow Year: A Novel, The Girl in the Glass : A Novel, and The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque : A Novel, along with collections of short stories, such as The Drowned Life (P.S.) and The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant: And Other Stories, and The Well-Built City trilogy. He’s won numerous awards, and lives and teaches in southern New Jersey.

A former student of novelist, critic, and professor John Gardner, today Jeffrey Ford first gave a lecture titled “Beyond Moral Fiction: The Art of John Gardner.” In this lecture Ford summarized the brilliant, chaotic, and tragic life of John Gardner, and focused in particular on Gardner’s controversial book On Moral Fiction, a book which, when it was first published, galvanized and divided critics and authors alike. Even today, the discussion of whether or not authors should aspire to write moral fiction generated heated debate and discussion. This lecture was enthusiastically received and generated discussions long after the lecture concluded.

Later, Ford also gave a reading, where he shared with a large and diverse audience his short story “Daddy Longlegs of the Evening,” in the short fiction anthology Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy.

Here’s award-winning horror writer Nancy Holder introducing Jeffrey Ford:

And here’s Jeffrey Ford, weaving his story of a spider that crawls into a boy’s ear and the ensuing havoc created when it remaps the boy’s neural pathways:

If you wonder how Ford’s tale of creepy horror affected the audience, well, here’s an example:

I managed to leave with my wits intact and a signed copy of The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant: And Other Stories.

What a fantastic (in all meanings of the word) day!

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Does the world need another vampire novel? I would say, yes, of course, especially if that novel is well written and adds something new or compelling to the literary conversation about vampires, a conversation that authors and readers have been having since 1872 with Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla.” In Children of the Night, Hugo award-winning author Dan Simmons makes a solid contribution to the ongoing vampire mythology by giving us not only a believable . . . → Read More: Review: Children of the Night, by Dan Simmons]]>

Does the world need another vampire novel? I would say, yes, of course, especially if that novel is well written and adds something new or compelling to the literary conversation about vampires, a conversation that authors and readers have been having since 1872 with Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla.” In Children of the Night, Hugo award-winning author Dan Simmons makes a solid contribution to the ongoing vampire mythology by giving us not only a believable scientific explanation for vampirism, but also by adding to the history of Vlad Dracula himself.

Winner of the 1993 Locus Award for Best Horror/Dark Fantasy Novel, Children of the Night reflects Simmons’s experiences in the horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres by weaving a compelling horror tale in a thriller format. The tale focuses on an American hematologist Kate Neuman, a dying baby she adopts during a visit to Romania, and a priest named Mike O’Rourke, who helps her get out of that post-Communist country.

But her adventures do not stop there. The baby, which she names Joshua, suffers from several genetic diseases and is doomed to an early death, until Kate discovers that Joshua can gain temporary relief from the disease symptoms when it receives whole blood transfusions. This genetic defect, Kate discovers, holds the key to a cure for many common diseases, including AIDS and cancer. One rather large problem however is that the baby turns out to be the heir of Vlad Dracula himself, and Dracula disperses his shadowy family line, vampires all, to bring Joshua back.

During her multi-country struggles, Kate is assisted by the conflicted priest O’Rourke and a young, too-good-to-be-true Romanian medical student named Lucian. But O’Rourke and Lucian seem to have their own agendas regarding Joshua, and she is never exactly sure who she can trust until the end.

And speaking of the end, this book is written as a thriller, so there are more than a few daring escapes and plot twists therein, including a finale that would make Indiana Jones tip his fedora in appreciation. But interspersed with harrowing escapes from infernos and being smuggled by gypsies, there are also reflective moments, such as when the point of view shifts to Vlad Dracula. From him we hear stories about his century-spanning life as the leader of the vampire clan, and these insights do much to extend the Dracula mythology.

The story settings and details in Children of the Night are well-researched. Much of the action takes place in Romania, and Simmons paints a vivid picture of what life was like there just after the fall of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, overthrown as President of Romania in 1989. In fact, historical events are weaved into the narrative of how the family members of Vlad Dracula act as “dark advisors” to political, economic, and military leaders throughout the country. Moreover, the author presents a technical, detailed explanation of vampirism as a very rare genetic defect. In fact, there are so many genetic engineering details and discussions amongst the characters that some parts of the story are a little thick, as if we are eavesdropping on a conversation in a university genetics lab. But this information is crucial to the plot and adds a layer of credibility to the characters’ motivations and actions.

Children of the Night does not portray vampires as campy love interests, as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, nor does this story take the path of vampirism as global viral pandemic, as in Justin Cronin’s The Passage. Rather, Simmons takes us on a more personal descent into terror and adventure as Kate finds herself mixed up in Vlad Dracula’s family affairs. We learn the genetic reasons why vampires need to drink human blood, and though these vampires are not the supernatural forces from legend, that does not diminish their power as keepers of a family secret seeking the return of Dracula’s heir.

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Half dark fiction, half academic musings on angels, demons, the dead, and monsters, Dark Awakenings, by Matt Cardin, is an exploration of the common religious goals of transcendence, rebirth, and salvation. So what makes this exploration dark? Cardin’s twist of the knife comes from the enlightened observation that these sorts of religious ideals may have tragic, dire, or even horrific consequences if actually realized. What if the path the pious have been following towards . . . → Read More: Review: Dark Awakenings, by Matt Cardin]]>

Half dark fiction, half academic musings on angels, demons, the dead, and monsters, Dark Awakenings, by Matt Cardin, is an exploration of the common religious goals of transcendence, rebirth, and salvation. So what makes this exploration dark? Cardin’s twist of the knife comes from the enlightened observation that these sorts of religious ideals may have tragic, dire, or even horrific consequences if actually realized. What if the path the pious have been following towards enlightenment turns out to lead to death and destruction? Split into seven short stories and novellas and three academic papers, this book is a rather unique combination of fiction and non-fiction horror writing, and a veritable treasure chest of stories and musings for aficionados of the horror genre.

Cardin’s style is often poetic and brooding, with dense descriptive passages and minimal dialogue, peppered with philosophical musings. His horror attitude is much like a cross between that of Edgar Allen Poe and H. P. Lovecraft—explorations of protagonists reaching for the meaning of life while struggling with inner turmoils, or faced with cosmic horrors. In “The Devil and One Lump,” a macabre version of the Charlie Daniels song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” the Devil himself describes of the protagonist, a writer, “You have created protagonists whose very search for salvation produces a backfire effect that damns them to a worse hell than they had ever imagined.” In the fiction stories presented in Dark Awakenings, just so, Mr. Cardin, just so.

The results are quite satisfying for readers desiring stories of the scary and the weird, but those uncomfortable with a spot of blood or the spilling of an internal organ or two may wish to stick with lighter fare. The reader may also be left puzzling the dark religious implications of some of the stories. As with cosmic horror, in the vein of Algernon Blackwood, Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, and H. P. Lovecraft, the horror in Dark Awakenings may not always follow a logical chain. Herein, dark dwarves who crouch low may spring forth at odd angles for cosmic reasons known not to the reader. This is not superficial horror, but horror with implications extending beyond the mundane and having dire ramifications for soul and sanity.

The non-fiction essays in Dark Awakenings are interesting, if academic, musings on the history of angels and demons in supernatural horror: a contemplative analysis of George Romero’s Living Dead films, and an essay on how to read the Biblical book of Isaiah as a work of horror. All these articles shed new information and perspectives on these topics, and are complete with footnotes and suggested readings. For example, we learn about the evolution of the word “demons,” from the historic meaning as being good and bad mediators between God and humans, to the modern interpretation of being the evil minions of the Devil.

In another essay, Cardin shows multiple lenses through which George Romero’s Living Dead zombie films can be viewed. In one section he contrasts how zombies are viewed from a “Western” religious perspective, to how zombies can be viewed from an “Eastern” religious perspective. While thoroughly entertaining, one minor nit is his equivalence of “Western religions” to monotheistic Abrahamic religions imported from the Middle East. True Western religions are the polytheistic religions of the Indians of North and South America, the Norse, the Celts, and the Germani. But once it is clear he’s really contrasting Middle Eastern religious perspectives to Eastern religious perspectives, his analysis of how zombies can be viewed differently based on one’s religious background is informative and interesting.

Also of interest is his use of Roger Schlobin’s three-part taxonomic tool from the essay “Prototypic Horror: The Genre of the Book of Job,” which in Schlobin’s article was used to judge whether or not a given text should be understood as a horror story. Cardin effectively uses this horror-evaluation framework to assess the horror potential of the Biblical book of Isaiah.

So, if you like your horror fiction cosmic and meaningful, or wish for scholarly insights into zombies, demons, and techniques for classifying stories as horror stories, then you will be entirely enchanted with Dark Awakenings. And if you want both your horror fiction and critical analysis in one book, then you will be absolutely thrilled with it.

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Some of us love stories that leave us listening fearfully for shuffling footsteps in the dark, or movies that make us spray our popcorn about the room when the bogeyman leaps from the shadows, on reflection, we may wonder just what it is about scary stories that causes such fearful reactions. Those who scoff at the horror genre, who flinch at any mention of anything bad happening in a story and whose entertainment choices . . . → Read More: Review: Danse Macabre, by Stephen King]]>

Some of us love stories that leave us listening fearfully for shuffling footsteps in the dark, or movies that make us spray our popcorn about the room when the bogeyman leaps from the shadows, on reflection, we may wonder just what it is about scary stories that causes such fearful reactions. Those who scoff at the horror genre, who flinch at any mention of anything bad happening in a story and whose entertainment choices revolve around TV shows like American Idol, may wonder what all the excitement over the horror genre is about. The balm for both these groups is Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, an homage, exploration, and critical analysis of the horror genre during the period 1950-1980, a period that experienced the cultivation and development of the scary story form through radio, TV, movie, and book formats.

Lest the very idea of a thirty-year overview of the horror genre conjure up fears of a stale, academic, and tedious exposition, rest assured that this tour through the spooky and macabre is conducted by the perfect guide–King is an award-winning author of more than 49 horror novels and short stories with many movie and TV adaptations. In Danse Macabre he approaches his task as someone who loves and lives the genre, not as the critic, who dissects and pontificates as an outsider. This book is an insider’s tour delivered in King’s pouncey-bouncy writing style, a conversational one that both entertains and educates.

There are three main contributions in this book. First, there is the dutiful comb-through of the horror highlights of the radio, TV, movie, and book formats. But though it is interesting to hear about mid-1950s radio broadcasts, such as Suspense or Orson Wells’s War of the Worlds, I suspect that most people today, in an era of streaming Internet movies, may have difficulty relating to (horror) radio broadcasts. Nevertheless, the inclusion of radio makes the overview of the horror genre complete, and it reinforces the fact that telling a scary story is not limited by technological channels—an entire world was frightened by Orson Wells intoning over just a radio microphone.

In discussing horror movies and TV shows, rather than heavy analysis King focuses simply on which pieces speak most to our fears, whether they be universal, political, social, or cultural, along with mentioning those films and shows which are just plain entertaining to watch. Again, the tone is light and informational. While we learn how the movie The Amityville Horror can be seen as playing on our economic fears, we also gain insights into how this movie, though it was not critically acclaimed, nevertheless struck a resonant chord with the viewing audience. There are pages to this discussion, touching on many tangents and related movies, such as The Exorcist, Fahrenheit 451, and Them!, but King also sums up his point succinctly with this nugget: “As horror goes, Amityville is pretty pedestrian. So’s beer, but you can get drunk on it.” Time and again in Danse Macabre King similarly illuminates as well as he entertains.

For novels, King discusses ten books that represent the best of the horror genre as both literature and entertainment, such as Peter Straub’s Ghost Story and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. As with his discussion of radio, movie, and TV shows, King careens through the entire literary corpus with tangents, anecdotes, and behind-the-scenes commentary, such as entertaining stories about what happened when Harlan Ellison, an author with some notoriety, was invited to work on the script for the first Star Trek movie.

Beyond just overviewing the horror genre, King more interestingly takes a step back and looks at the elements of the horror story—what scares us and why. He proposes three iconic monsters for the horror genre, and details especially the horror stories those monsters are known for: the thing, (in Frankenstein), the vampire (in Dracula), and the werewolf (in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide). He also shows three levels of emotion horror stories can target within us: terror, horror, and revulsion. The finest and most primal emotional level reached by a scary story is terror, and we are terrified when stories allow our own minds to fill in the details about the baddies around the corner. So in stories that evoke terror–judged to be the most effective at being scary–we are actually not allowed to see the monster behind the closed door. A slightly more coarse emotion, but still scary enough, is that of horror. Here, the door is opened and we see the monster, lurching. If a story can’t achieve the effect of terror or horror, then it can at least cause revulsion—you see the monster, slurping the victim’s entrails like pasta in a wine-dark marinara sauce.

The third and perhaps most important contribution of Danse Macabre is that this book is an homage to the horror genre. King shows us why horror matters and why people who like horror stories aren’t psychopaths. On the contrary, horror can help us understand our deepest fears by showing us a side of life that we don’t often experience directly, lifting the lid of the casket, so to speak. By looking inside, we can learn the truth about ourselves.

Horror stories have the power to transport us back to when we were young and the world was ominous and life was to be relished, and King generously shares his encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm for the genre in Danse Macabre. The book makes us want to be scared, to want to go investigate that strange sound, and King cheerfully leads the way for us down into the dark and dank catacomb. With his insights and recommendations we can crawl as far into the tunnels as we dare in seeking the creepy, guided by Stephen King in the role of our inner child.

Available on Amazon: Danse Macabre, by Stephen King

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Above is a boar located at the excellent Boar’s Head Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Below is a potpouri of reading links. This week includes a space shuttle launch, someone fighting shadows with a sword, how to make a pan flute, and lots of recommended science fiction, fantasy, and horror books and authors. Oh, and Charlie Sheen.

We don’t really need to travel far to find the horrible and the scary. Just one step from my front door, the morning . . . → Read More: Halloween special: scary pic and weekend reading links 29 October 2010]]> WARNING: This is a special Halloween edition of my “weekend reading links”. If the Halloween season keeps you cowering safe inside your home, away from the dark and the scary, then it’s probably best to read no more of this page and please come back next week. You have been warned.

We don’t really need to travel far to find the horrible and the scary. Just one step from my front door, the morning after a storm that brought drenching rains and even a nearby tornado, I found a gangly and harmless Grandaddy Longlegs having breakfast on the head of a wasp.

Even more horrifying–when Mr. Granddaddy Longlegs got startled, probably by me shoving a camera in his face, he didn’t just run for cover. No, he picked up the body of the wasp, like some mechanical robot crane with eight legs, and scuttled away with the wasp into the shadows.

War of the Worlds, indeed!

If that doesn’t exemplify Halloween’s reminder of the sometimes thinness of the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead, I don’t know what does.

So, in honor of Halloween, I’ve a series of weekend reading links, ordered by degree of mundanity. This means that the first links are totally harmless, and they proceed in topic by measure of depression, depravity, horror, and/or insanity. So, you should start reading with the first, then stop when you feel the edges of reality slipping from your grasp. But note that the last link is extra special.

Cheers!

• Irish book covers
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• Free public domain horror books
• [LISTEN] Exclusive story for Halloween: Attack of the Bleu Man Group
• [LISTEN/WATCH] Star Trek’s Q (aka John De Lancie) reads Poe’s “The Raven”

Boo!

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Today my prize pack arrived, and I’ll be in a state of spooky bliss surely through Halloween, if not longer into the dark of winter.

First, I got a signed movie postcard from season one of the series Dead Like Me. This sounds like a . . . → Read More: Retrospective Writing Contest Prize Pack]]> In a previous post I mentioned that my story “A Delicate Touch” won the Raw Dog Screaming Press 100 Jolts Retrospective Writing Contest, judged by Dr. Michael Arnzen.

Today my prize pack arrived, and I’ll be in a state of spooky bliss surely through Halloween, if not longer into the dark of winter.

First, I got a signed movie postcard from season one of the series Dead Like Me. This sounds like a really good series, so I’ve just added it to my wish list.

Second, I got a copy of Audiovile, an audio collection of 16 scary short stories and poems set to spooky music. I’ve listened to a couple of the stories already, and I think this audio version is a great companion to his book 100 Jolts, which I already own. The music accompaniment to the stories in Audiovile adds a new sensory dimension to the creepiness unleashed within.

Third, I received a signed limited edition of the Bram Stoker Award winning poetry collection Freakcidents.

So, thank you again to Michael Arnzen and Raw Dog Screaming Press–what a great and unsettling prize pack, making this a Halloween to be remembered!

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Just in time for Halloween, tonight we’re opening the crypt, so to speak, to start into Thriller, the acclaimed horror series from 1962, hosted by Boris Karloff.

Says Sara Karloff, Boris Karloff’s daughter:

Thriller was well written, beautifully directed, and had some of the finest actors performing these great shows. As if that were not enough, the episodes were not gory. They were suspenseful and intelligent. They invited the audience along on the adventure; . . . → Read More: Boris Karloff’s Thriller]]>

Just in time for Halloween, tonight we’re opening the crypt, so to speak, to start into Thriller, the acclaimed horror series from 1962, hosted by Boris Karloff.

Says Sara Karloff, Boris Karloff’s daughter:

Thriller was well written, beautifully directed, and had some of the finest actors performing these great shows. As if that were not enough, the episodes were not gory. They were suspenseful and intelligent. They invited the audience along on the adventure; they included the audience in the experience; they did not insult the audience’s intelligence as some of today’s viewing trash does.

It was the sheer quality of the content of the work of the participants–crew, writers, directors, actors, and my father’s hosting–that made this magical package called Thriller and that has given it its long legs and its immense popularity with the fans.

Well, in a few moments I’ll see if this series lives up to these high expectations. But in case it does, in case the horror is too intense and the frights too realistic, if you don’t hear from me in a few days, please send out a search party.

Related Posts:

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• Review: Summer of Night, by Dan Simmons
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