My story “The Eater”, about the guy at the beginning of time whose job it is to taste everything and decide what will kill us and what will keep us alive, (which originally appeared in Apex back in July), is live today at Pseudopod!

Pseudopod, should you have been unaware, is a weekly horror fiction podcast, sister to Escape Pod and Podcastle, a triumvirate I have been struggling to break my way into for quite some time. I love reading fiction aloud, and hearing fiction read aloud, and “the Pods”, as they are affectionately known, are some of the best places to do that. For a reader, I am lucky enough to have netted Laurice White. I haven’t had a chance to listen yet—will do so on my ride home—but I expect it will be great.

Pink Lady’s Slipper orchid, Cypripedium acaule, mixed deciduous woods, Bull Hill, Sunderland, MA
(AKA/e.g., the replenishing pitcher flower of legend.)

A Gustave Doré woodcut for Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Death and Life-in-Death game for the Mariner’s soul.

The first issue of Fantastique Unfettered comes out today, featuring my story “The Driftwood Chair”, a tale of nautical tragedy, hallucinatory demon ghosties and star-crossed beach flirting, set in Cape Cod, and much influenced by Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. I wrote it at Odyssey in 2005 as a kind of good-natured challenge with PD Cacek, got some phenomenal criticism from my fellow classmates and Steve and Melanie Tem, then sat on it obsessively revising and revising for the succeeding five years. You know, the usual story. There was way more Mariner in the original draft… but the feel of it (and an easter egg reference or two) is still there in spades. I love this story. Hopefully you will too.

O the Mariner is so awesome, it’s really hard to pick out just one quote.

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

If you’ve never read it, do so now. In fact, if you’ve only got time for one, skip “The Driftwood Chair” and just read the Ancient Mariner. Of course, if you’ve got time for two….

Live Free or Undead, an anthology of New-Hampshire themed horror edited by Rick Broussard and featuring fiction by James Patrick Kelly, Jeffrey DeRego, Elaine Isaak, and many other great writers either from New Hampshire or in love with it (including, yes, me) ought to be in bookstores now-ish. I haven’t seen a copy yet, but from the cover I think I can guarantee ghosties, ghoulies, zombies, creepy-crawlies, and at least one very attractive lady with an ax.

My story, “Misty Rain”, reprinted from the British zine Murky Depths, is an atmospheric, creepy thing about a brother and sister lost in the mountains. And yes, it has a monster.

New Hampshire has been my favorite state since I was a kid, and despite all the cool stuff I’ve discovered since in all those other states, it still wins. It has Mt. Washington, Indian Head, Pawtuckaway Lake, Farnum Hill Cider, Woodstock Inn Brewery, the Flume Gorge, the Odyssey Writing Workshop, the Tufts Mountain Club Loj, the Pemigewasset River, the Kancamangus Highway, the mouldering bones of the Old Man of the Mountain, and the best state motto anywhere.

So I’m excited enough to get to be in this anthology that I’m breaking from my usual modus operandi and announcing a reading more than two days in advance! Woo!

On Wednesday, October 27th at 7:00 PM, I’ll be reading at Rye Public Library in Rye, NH along with Brendan DuBois, Andy Richmond and the fabulous Elaine Isaak. You’ll get the chance to see my sporting my super-silly Halloween moustache and what I hope will be a legitimately scary costume. And if that isn’t enough to convince you, I’ll have candy. Please come!

And if you can’t make it, there’s a whole bunch of other readings scheduled, including one this coming Friday at the Barley House in Concord, where I’d go for the beer even if there weren’t going to be a bunch of great writers.

Through the magnanimity of Ellen Datlow I received a copy of Inferno in the mail just before Christmas. As I told Ellen at the time, I was primarily interested in the book for thehollowbox, who had been chomping at the bit to get his hands on it for months. So it will be a less-than-surprising Christmas present, and as per the agreement on Ellen's blog, pre-read. ;)

I am not what you'd call an experienced reader of horror by any means, and I know that a lot of you who read my journal aren't, either. Some of this stuff is heavy, and I say that having read Gary Braunbeck's In Silent Graves (The Indifference of Heaven in the UK), and greatly enjoyed it, even though "enjoyed" always feels like a strange word to use with Gary's work. It is an intense ride through areas of the psyche that most reasonable people generally try to avoid.

So I came to Inferno trusting in The Datlow (which, after Salon Fantastique and SCIFICTION, I did) and that the book had received several glowing reviews and knowing not much else. The trust was worthwhile, and I concur with Publisher's Weekly that this is some of the best SF/F of the year, assuming that it is okay with you that a story make a transition into "fucked up beyond all reason", as several of these do.

I knew a handful of the names in the collection -- Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, P. D. Cacek (one of our guest instructors at Odyssey), Pat Cadigan -- but only a handful. And I'm pleased to have read the collection if only to be introduced to so many other amazing writers. Shepard and Ford delivered as they tend to -- Shepard's "The Ease with Which We Freed the Beast" is carefully crafted and as vivid as it is unsettling, which is a difficult juxtaposition to achieve. But some of the most memorable stories out of the collection come from writers I'd never read before -- Nathan Ballingrad's "The Monsters of Heaven", Laird Barron's "The Forest" (this will not surprise justinhowe or thehollowbox, I'm sure -- I'd heard of Barron and wanted to read him but this was my first introduction), and Lee Thomas's "An Apiary of White Bees".

The writing here is just solid to the point of being instantaneously classic. I will pull, mostly at random, from Thomas's story, one of many passages in the collection that made me pause with appreciation:

Oliver didn't care much for the Cortland. It was a landmark, decorated with extravagance and taste, but without a single concession to warmth. His wife Amanda wanted it, so he bought it, and they lived here because she wanted that too, but it was hardly a home. A home should be filled with personal belongings and intimate, happy memories. And at least one person in that place should love you.

Simple, solid, and masterful -- like most of the stories in this collection. With the caveat that there are a couple of stories in the collection I have not yet read -- I've been mostly catching them late at night, trading reading for sleep during the pell-mell craziness of this particular holiday season (I am currently writing this from a hotel room in West Palm Beach, Florida -- my brother is getting married tomorrow) -- Pat Cadigan's "Stilled Life" stands apart from the rest for me. This certainly is no judgment of the quality of the other stories -- the nice thing about a well constructed anthology is that there will be, hopefully, something for everyone. And this one was something for me. But I also think that it is one of the finest stories I've read this year, and among the best short stories I've ever read. A study in friendship and the frantic way that we can attempt to escape the human condition, it is smart and funny and intense and beautiful and unnerving all at the same time. I am not, generally, a Cadigan fan -- again, no judgment here, just my taste, aka what the hell do I know -- but I will follow her work more closely from here on out.

So in closing, there are a number of stories here that are individually or as a group worth the price of the collection, which, aesthetically, is also very fine -- it's a much more handsome book than I was expecting, in a world of increasing trade paperbacks. I do maintain that I would prefer, if possible, to do the majority of my reading on a medium that does not kill trees, but if books should exist (and they should), I think they should look and feel like this.

So that's my synopsis of Inferno, and thanks to Ms. Datlow for sending it my way via the fine folks at Tor. Though I will never be primarily a horror reader or writer, I do enjoy reading widely, and it helps to be able to put my trust in an editor that will provide a prime expreience of the genre being sampled. I do think that the experience of horror is an individual peak in a reading experience -- really fine horror is an unmatchable phenomenon. I owe my openness to its basic symbolic function to Jeanne Cavelos (and Odyssey), whose explanation of the heart of horror led me to write "The Bearer" while at the workshop -- and it has been an element of my writing consciousness ever since. These are important parts of the human condition to be aware of, important dimensions of experience -- and if you're curious, Inferno would be a good way to open that door.