TC Book Review & Interview: Jordan Krall Branches Out from Bizarro and Establishes Strong Mythos Cred with 'Nightmares from a Lovecraftian Mind'

Jordan Krall impresses me.  Yea verily, I am impressed by Jordan Krall.

Known primarily – at least to me, for a long period of time - as a Bizarro author, which is a limiting label in my even more limited opinion, I find Krall to be a bang-up Lovecraftian in that new jack Subtle School, and therefore someone I see as essential to a genre often cluttered by too many Cthulhu cameos and robed cultists who all somehow possess a copy of the Necronomicon.  The stars are always right, and everyone’s favorite Great Old One is on the verge of rising once again to… do whatever he’ll do when he rises from that watery sleeping bag, jammies all soaked, pissy as hell.  That’s Lovecraftian Pastiche 101.  I've done it.  Lots of us have.  Jordan Krall could teach that class, if he wasn’t already admitted into the Miskatonic Graduate Program, where all the banners have been removed from the wall, and only those who are attending know on which campus they really are.

In his recent novella, Nightmares of a Lovecraftian Mind, published by Dunhams Manor Books, Krall cuts clean a Double Live literary concept album, where each titled chapter acts as a song that breathes on its own, but nods to the heaving collective.  Pink Floyd on Yuggothian acid come to glistening life.  This is post-Ligotti, impressionist Lovecraftianism – suggestive, urban, monumentally Weird, spontaneously murderous, and totally lacking in incomprehensible alien gods or even recognizable monsters, except for those who live down the block, or hang around the playground reading manuals on industrial parks.  Krall creates vignettes that are familiar yet cold and otherwordly.  Askew.  Like when a movie crew films something that is supposed to be set in New York on the streets of Toronto to save a nickel and ruin America.  We’re TOLD that we’re in SoHo, but none of the streets seem to fit.  The landmarks are all absent.

Krall is a stylist as much as a storyteller, creating interesting, intersecting characters that could shoulder their own novels, based on their own internal cataclysms and the doom that follows each step.  Osman and Xynobis, Roux and the nameless schmuck who fears an infestation of ants in his apartment - all of these doomed souls are begging for more pages.  Themes prevail, following a wriggling through-line.  Father issues and DEEP DENDO.  Milk and alcohol (that's right - not scotch, not whiskey, but alcohol).  These are a few of the unifying buzzwords and concepts that weave overarching throughout this work of sublime dread.  Figure it all out, buddy.  I have my theories.  Pour me a double shot of alcohol, milk back, and you’ll get my interpretation, but it feels like Nightmares from a Lovecraftian Mind is a set up to be an encyclopedia mortis of KrallCraftian tomes.  One can only hope.

The world he presents is a stark, threatening one, where every stranger and friend are bonded immediately by their shared wish for demise.  Characters are disaffected, and for good reason, as chance encounters and innocent proximity often have dire consequences.  And madness is everywhere, as everywhere is madness.  From the doilies of the suburban home to the jerk-off booths in Times Square.  The common is made dangerous, like Hitchcock run amok in a Steadman painting.  This is Krall’s umbrella shielding a cosmic rain, yet the rivulets fall, making mad those dampened, one breath and random conversation from murder, or worse.

Krall’s prose is clean but rich, interesting in its word selection.  He’s mature and jaunty.  Saucy, weaving just a honey drop of poetic flair and dollop of HPL purple into his narratives.  He’s the smart kid in the back of the room, who’s read more than you and knows the best dirty jokes.  His chapters show that he is well versed in the trappings of the baroque, but prefers to downplay the baubles in favor of a cleanly wrought sentence.  It’s quite the balancing act, and is seamless, with nary a stumble on the wire.  Krall is joining his contemporaries in the genre in helping show us where Lovecraftian writing can go, without being chained to the increasingly played-out confines of the Cthulhu Mythos.  Eerie, unsettling, smooth yet complex.  Layered, odd, and infinitely quotable.  These things are Nightmares of a Lovecraftian Mind.

That said, I feel like his title nods to the Cyclopean elephant not in the room, and will disappoint dilettantes who are expecting inscrutable chants, bloodied altars, and imminent global destruction, only to find a slow, ablated meltdown of a strange, cruel world.  As the better Lovecraftian fiction continues to stray from the proud yet now prosaic roots of its birth, plumbing the depths of madness and fear rather than monsters in the sky, writers like Jordan Krall keep the cavalcade healthy and hale.  As noted above, this is Grad School, kiddies, not 101.

Lynchian, Lovecraftian, Krallian.  Can I make “Krallian” a thing?  I sure as shit hope so, as I’m trying like the dickens to get Barronic as a certifiable adjective, so let’s work on Krallian next.  The unformed Contempo Weird World is ours now, folks, so let’s start nailing down the lexicon and shoring up the perimeter.

I know he’s a hit in the Bizarro world, but I hope Jordan Krall stays and plays in County Lovecraftiana, as he adds so much to the geography.  If he loves his readers – and Baby Jesus - at all, he’ll start writing a novel starring the oddly necromantic Osman tomorrow.  If not, he’s a fucking dick.
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Below you will find a writer in transition, candidly discussing where he's been, his growth, and the new vistas he wishes to glimpse in the days to come.  Check Jordan Krall's head to see where he's at, and see if you want to go with him.  I'll save you a spot either way.

TC:  Let’s start off with your recent announcement that sent ripples through the speculative and underground fiction community, in which you stated via social media that, in future, you will no longer - or only occasionally - write Bizarro Fiction.  As someone who made his bones in the Bizarro scene through such works as Fistful of Feet and Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys, what moved you to make and announce this decision?  Has there been a discovery of a new Muse that uprooted you from your familiar genre, or was your decision rooted in something deeper?  

There are quite a few reasons for this and I won’t bore you with all of them now. But to make it short… my work has gradually been moving away from what can be considered ‘bizarro’ and in fact, one of the books you mentioned, BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE APOCALYPSE DONKEYS, is not really one I would consider bizarro. The bizarro genre, for me, has become too constrictive and most of the books there lack depth. They are too concerned with just being “weird” that they sacrifice good writing and interesting plots. So much of it is juvenile and, for back of a better word, quite simple. I’ve found myself being bored by the output and sometimes even embarrassed by some of the creative decisions some of the authors make. Don’t get me wrong: there are a lot of talented writers there but I just think I’ve outgrown the genre itself. That’s not to say I won’t write another bizarro book. I will. It’s actually pretty fun to do. It just won’t be my chosen genre. I am also appreciative of it for giving me my start in writing professionally.

TC:  When did you know that you were going to be a writer, and what led you to this realization?

I remember being about ten years old and writing stories but they were, of course, quite crappy. Then as a teenager I got a little more serious about it but I mostly wrote cryptic poetry and stories that were overly influenced by Burroughs. I stopped soon after and didn’t start again until I was about twenty-five.

TC:  What was your first brush with H.P. Lovecraft?  What is your favorite HPL story?  What are your plans as far as writing what would be considered “Lovecraftian fiction” going forward?

I don’t know how I discovered Lovecraft, but it was when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. I remember sitting in Barnes & Noble (this was during the time they frowned upon people sitting and reading in their stores) and looking through all the Bantam paperbacks. To me, HPL symbolized the unknown, the mysterious occult side of fiction. I knew that Cthulhu and the Necronomicon weren’t real but it was exciting to pretend it was, to pretend there were sinister cults of worshippers out there.

TC:  Nightmares of a Lovecraftian Mind is quite an achievement.  What was the genesis of this “concept collection”?

I just decided to pour all of my love for Lovecraftian and “cosmic” horror into a collection. That being said, I made sure to stay away from the usual tropes that have flooded the weird fiction genre. I do not use Lovecraftian plot devices or anything. I tried to modernize the subgenre while also making it really personal. In addition to HPL, I was also very much inspired by the writing of Wilum H. Pugmire and Thomas Ligotti.

TC:  With Squid Pulp Blues, Tentacle Death Trip, and now Nightmares of a Lovecraftian Mind under your shiny ass belt, you’ve obviously explored the HPL Mythos quite a bit and established your cosmic horror credentials.  As such, where do you feel you fit in with the wider Lovecraftian Fiction scene?  

My goal is to appeal to readers who want weird fiction that’s outside the norm without being pretentious or derivative of HPL. I suppose I’ve also created my own mythos… not necessarily on purpose but as a result of writing within my
own mental framework. Wow, did that make any sense at all?

TC:  Actually, it makes perfect sense.  Shifting gears away from Lovecraft, you have recently written and released several chapbooks and novellas through Copeland Valley Press, including False Magic Kingdom, Bad Alchemy, and The Gog and Magog Business.  Tell us a little about these.

Those books are three in a series of four books. The last is a novel called YOUR CITIES, YOUR TOMBS. The series is my exploration of paranoia, anxiety, terrorism, fatherhood, marriage, etc. People will be surprised by these books as they lack the explicit sex and violence of my previous work. That being said, I believe these contain some of the scariest and most disturbing scenes I've ever written. I tried very hard to put my own fears into this book to an almost unhealthy degree (I am particularly afraid of tall buildings). Also, I was heavily inspired and influenced by J.G. Ballard, Barry Malzberg, and William Burroughs as well as a multitude of nonfiction books. It’s probably the most personal of anything I’ve written thus far.

TC:  You are the Founder and Galactic Overlord of Dynatox Ministries.  What’s your goal for this promising limited edition indie press?

My goal is to publish really interesting books… the kind of stuff that I myself would like to read. I don’t limit genres either. I prefer more offbeat work but as long as it’s good, I’m open to it. Horror, absurdist, surrealism, nonfiction, etc. In most cases, I give authors a blank check in terms of what they can write. It’s mostly an “invite only” press so far because there are some authors I really want to work with.

TC:  What’s the deal with Krall Con?  Is this a legitimate convention, or just a bit of inspired japery?  How was the debut gathering?  

Well, it started off as a little joke but turned into a legitimate gathering of writers and readers. It was a bit tiny but we had about four motel rooms at our disposal and lots of fun was had. Readings, a David Lynch trivia contest, impromptu film making, and even a really disturbing dance party. This year it was about a dozen people but next year I’m expecting more. I’d really like to raise money in order to hold it somewhere bigger or at least rent out a hall so we can have live music.

TC:  To recap the Year of Krall so far, 2013 has brought us Dynatox Ministries, the first annual Krall Con, your move away from Bizarro, and now a series of compelling paintings.  To what do you credit this expansion and transformation of your creative impulses?

I don’t know, really. I guess I just have a bunch of pent up creativity and I can’t help but let it out in every way possible. I also make music so that’s yet another way I vent. There are simply not enough hours in the day, though.I wish I didn’t have to sleep.

TC:  What are you personally working on right now as a writer?  Any new Lovecraftian/cosmic horror in your – and our – future?  As an editor/publisher, what is Dynatox working on at present?

Yeah, I’m working on expanding NIGHTMARES FROM A LOVECRAFTIAN MIND for the paperback release. For Dynatox, I have so many awesome projects coming, it’s ridiculous. This summer I’m publishing a 6-book set of nunspolitation novellas from several talented authors: Nick Cato, Chris Bowsman, Jonathan Moon, Alex S. Johnson, R.A. Harris, and yours truly. The set will be housed in a wooden box and will be limited to 10 copies. Five of the books will be available for sale separately but mine will only be available with the box. I’m very excited about this.

TC:  Thank you, Jordan, for enduring these annoyingly probing and often inane questions.  The Cosmicomicon will be watching your career closely.  Uncomfortably close.

Thanks, Teddy.

TC Book Review & Interview: Laird Barron Weaponizes the Weird in Debut Novel ‘The Croning' from Night Shade Books

Laird Barron made me gain five pounds.

No, he didn’t hold me down and shovel deep fried butter wedges into my gaping yapper (although, dare to dream). What he did was write a colossal piece of fiction that was nearly impossible to put down, even at the gym, where I do much of my reading every morning. As I hazily recall, just before cracking open Barron’s debut novel The Croning some weeks back, I marched my happy ass off to the local garishly lit LA Fitness, eager to absorb a few pages in between moving weighted objects from one place to another. Forty-five minutes later I found myself on the floor, sprawled in some lazy stretching pose, peering at the pages in front of me with wide, slightly twitching eyes while sadly oblivious meatheads preened in front of mirrors around me. I was hooked, boated, and clubbed, and stayed that way until I closed the last page some blurry span of time later. As I became doughier, I also became more willing, suppliant. I was fattened and ready for the provender plate of dear Old Leech. Just like They wanted it.

Barron’s storytelling has that rare power of grip, weaving a particular strain of beautiful, sinewy prose that somehow possesses enough tiny microfibers to pick up the grit and sharp things swept into the corners of forgotten history. Both beautiful and monstrous, his evocative imagery lures you into the forest with the cadence of lost eons, leaves you in expectant silence, and then rips back the shading canopy, exposing you to the terrible realities that lie waiting under the thin veneers of bullshit “civilization”.

Not surprisingly, the writing is a reflection of the writer and his unique experience set. Barron grew up in the wilds of Alaska and spent several years fishing the murderous Bering Sea and racing the Iditarod on arctic tundra like some goddamn throwback to a time of brawnier, more road-tested scribes, who could lay down some poetic verse before laying you out in a pool of your own teeth for spilling his drink. Papa Hemingway. Jack London. Dashiell Hammett in a parka. All sitting in the corner booth of the Bar on the Borderland, waiting for their Weirdling pals from the Pulps to show up and swap stories of the violent and strange.

Indeed, his meaty, imaginative style is an amalgam of all of these rough and smooth elements, taking shape as a barrel-chested ballerina, a professional wrestler moonlighting as an ice skater. A pagan ninja hopped up on blood saki, beautifully weaponizing the sublime and stuffing horror into documented and geological mysteries long buried for a reason. Barron respectfully nods his heads to his forebearers, but is truly his own man, blazing his trail through the wild, untamed places to find the haunted ruins. The cryptic mounds.  The dolmens... This is Weird fiction boiled hard.

Unfairly or not, Barron is often compared to (elder)godfather of cosmic horror  H.P. Lovecraft, but in many ways, Barron’s work is far more bleak than the Gentleman from Providence. In Lovecraft’s Mythos, profoundly alien Great Old Ones and Outer Gods were mostly oblivious or apathetic to our meaningless existence. The horror often came from the realization of unimaginable truth.  Much like Barron, HPL’s protagonists reflected the man, and as such, were bookish and aloof, ghosts in the coal powered machine, sneering strangers in the hated crowd. In Laird’s “Barronic Mythos” (an increasingly legitimate construct that I may or may not have just given a name), the unearthly entities not only know where we are and what we’re doing, they pop in from time for a bite, and/or to continually fuck with us just because they can. His characters ARE the crowd, reflecting all strata of life, from the aristocratic elite to the shithouse dogs. Barron understand them all, and spares none. All are claymation figurines caught up in a Game Unutterable organized before the beginning of time. All of them are doomed, and Barron allows us a front row seat to the slow, excruciating execution.

The Croning, Barron’s first full-length novel after making his bones and racking up accolades as a conjurer of short fiction, is a perfect reflection of what he does as a writer, while serving as a stage one culmination of much of his storytelling from the past decade. Characters, artifacts, and even families that were introduced in such short stories as “Mysterium Tremendum” and “The Men From Porlock” reappear in The Croning ready to cast off their potential and reveal their dreadful destiny. After a prologue of sorts, which serves as more than just a pitch-black origin story of Rumpelstiltskin, we are lead through three life stages of the affable geologist Don Miller, and together, we follow Don as he follows his brilliant and headstrong wife Michelle, forever living in her secretive shadow as she chases arcane anthropological discoveries around the world, when not locked away in her study researching her family tree, obsessing over the hard-to-find root system buried impossibly deep in the antediluvian loam. As Michelle pursues her own path that occasionally intersects with her husband, Don is left to reflect on his own life barely lived, and in doing so, starts to unspool – with the help of off-the-grid intelligence agencies, old money eccentrics, and even his own son – the mind shattering reality of what has been slithering around his ankles and through his home for decades, and his role in ongoing Outer Machinations older than the cosmos and twice as dangerous. Cults and conspiracies. Secret societies and powerful bloodlines with grand designs forged through unwholesome alliances dating back to the Stone Age. Mind snuffing dread born beyond the reach of time and space. This is the world of The Croning, and this is the writing of Laird Barron, who effectively synthesizes science fiction with science fact, creating a New Kind of Truth that can be as mortifying as it is wondrous. And it all works. Perfectly, it works.

Much like Bloch, Carter, Lumley, Campbell, Klein, and even Ligotti before him, and with the curiously scarred crone looming protectively behind him, Laird Barron has emerged as the new poster boy of cosmic horror, thankfully without a shred of pastiche anywhere in the shot. The Croning shows an already masterful writer fully in the throws of his own, unique style somehow getting better, and that bodes well for us, his readership, which grows by the hour.  We are the Children of Old Leech, and we love you.

In the end, and after all of this convoluted blather, I supposed the highest compliment I can pay The Croning is that it’s the sort of novel I wish I had written had I not first read it. It’s a gift of cosmic naturalist horror that will force you to re-examine everything and everyone around you, if only slightly. The X-Files in print, only infinitely scarier and hitting far closer to home.  It will make you fear the trees.  It will make you check for zippers.

I reckon that’s not too shabby for a first novel.

(The Croning can be purchased directly from Night Shade Books [recommended by The Cosmicomicon, because it's the right goddamn thing to do], and from Amazon for you corporate-felching cheapskates who hate Santa Claus a little and Ross E. Lockhart even more)

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As you process the jibber jabber above, please enjoy the second installment of the The Cosmicomicon Book Review & Interview (the first of which was christened upon the diamond cut abs of Simon Strantzas).  I'd like to thank Laird for making time to sit down with me across the table o' ether, as I know his hours were limited in the days leading up to the hugely anticipated release of The Croning.  As such, I kept my questions as brief as possible, attempting not to repeat inquiries covered in other interviews.  The resulting answers show a very candid, free-form/riffy side of Laird that I don't think I've read before.  Fantastic stuff, that I'm honored to share with you all below.

TC:   Your writing is often compared to that of classic cosmic Weirdists H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, etc. (including by yours truly above), but there seems to be far more at play under the surface of your prose.  More contemporary, brawnier, bare-knuckled stuff.  Just as much Lawrence Block as T.E.D. Klein.  Who are your influences, both conscious and subconscious?

LB:  My earliest influences were pulps and adventure novels. H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, that was my crowd as a kid. Big men with axes, naked alien princesses, exotic landscapes, fantastical beasts. Rivers of blood. Hell of an escape from my family’s sub-Arctic shack.

My interests have shifted over the years. I enjoy Martin Cruz Smith and Kelly Link in equal measure. I riff on Lovecraft and McCarthy if the firing solution calls for it. But my love of the pulps is always there and ever inflecting what I write.

TC:  Charlie Parker had a great quote that always stuck with me:  “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”  Based on your diverse, wide-ranging jobs, pursuits, and travels – many of them often taking place in some pretty gritty, unforgiving locales - you’re a writer who has certainly “lived it” out under the sun and rain, in contrast to a more reclusive individual like Lovecraft or Thomas Ligotti.  How important do you think it is for a writer to get out into the world in order to write about it and the homo sapiens taking up so much space, or can the same time be spent researching to achieve a similar result?

LB:  A good artist had better be able to fake it until he makes it. There’s a reason I do what I do, however. I look at the more desolate portions of my youth as a sacrifice to the muses.

My professional writing career has spanned a decade. What was I doing before that? Digging my way out of the hole provenance dropped me headfirst into as a baby. I know what it feels like. To be punched, kicked in the balls, frozen, dragged, bitten, betrayed and heartbroken. I’ve fired guns and swung clubs when my life depended upon them. I’ve set aside years to train in combatives, and I’ve used them too. I’ve gone completely off the deep end from too many months alone in the wild and come all the way back again like a drunk who drinks himself sober. If a man’s going to write about damaged human machinery it doesn’t hurt to have spent time on fishing boats among ex cons and addicts. Doesn’t hurt to have bunked with bikers and trappers and professional ne’er do wells. I don’t have to invent much when I write. I just reach into my pocket and pull out some bloody receipts.

TC:  I’m sensing that you wouldn’t trade one second of it - the many hardships, tough upbringing, and dangerous scrapes you’ve been through.

LB:  There are moments here and there I’d do anything to change. Just like everybody alive. In the end, it’s all grist for the mill.

TC:  The natural world features heavily into your brand of cosmic horror (I call it “cosmic naturalism”).  Do the wild places on earth – places where you’ve spent quite a bit of time – truly terrify you, or are you instead mining what you know and enjoy, and then twisting it to the dark side?

LB:  I lived in Alaska for about twenty-five years. My family was nomadic. We chased the snow in order to train huskies for the racing circuit, and most especially the Iditarod. Of course the more fabulous elements of my stories are fabricated. But there’s no dismissing the sinister grandeur of primeval wilderness. There’s got to be some natural force in Alaska that fucks with human circuitry. I think Lovecraft’s head would’ve popped like a balloon if he’d found himself trapped in some of the places I’ve been.

TC:  Your memoirs could be a piece of Weird Noir.  Have you ever thought about publishing something entirely autobiographical?  Or hell, maybe you already have.

LB:  Oh, perhaps someday. In the meantime I’m working on a sequence of stories that deal in more explicit terms with Alaska and what I saw there during my youth.

TC:  When writing previous tales like “The Men From Porlock” and “Mysterium Tremendum”, did you know that the characters, locations, situations, and/or Mythology would someday evolve into a novel?  Into this novel?

LB:  With a tiny handful of exceptions, my entire body of work exists within a continuous universe. A few stories, such as those you highlighted, indeed feed directly into one another. I seldom write something that doesn’t inflect or reference every other piece I’ve done prior. I don’t write for an anthology or magazine, regardless of theme, without plotting how it’ll fit in to the mosaic.

TC:  Building on the previous question, are you intentionally constructing a Mythos, or perhaps adding onto that which was initially crystallized by Lovecraft?

LB:  I owe debts to every piece of fiction I’ve read, every man I’ve fought, every woman I’ve loved, every musician or artist who’s taken my heart out then handed it back, changed. The classical masters of dark fantasy and cosmic horror perfected a tradition of the weird story that generally features aloofness and restraint. For better or worse, I am not that guy.

The old tradition’s hallmarks include those of repressed sexuality, violence hinted at or understated, vagueness, iciness. Lovecraft is a giant in the field and I don’t believe the canon needs a contemporary update from me. I don’t repress jack shit. There’s going to be fucking, fighting, blood and thunder in a Barron tale. When I write in this tradition, I’m interested in weaponizing it.

TC:  You’ve emerged as a standard bearer, of sorts, for whatever we’re calling the brutal amalgam of Weird fiction/dark fantasy/cosmic horror these days.  I’ve personally described “Barronic verse,” and I’ve seen “Barronian” used as an adjective.  Did you ever foresee this sort of impact on speculative fiction from the back of a dogsled heading up into the frozen white all those years ago?

LB:   No. My dreams were humble. I was usually too worried about starving or whether freezing my dick to the side of my leg would have long term consequences.

TC:  In a perfect world, what would you be writing in twenty years?

LB:  In a perfect world I’ll be alive twenty years.

TC:  What’s next on the docket for you?  Longer term, what’s a personal or professional goal still unachieved?

LB:  There should be a new horror collection out next year. Deal just needs to be inked. I’ve several stories set to appear soon. Longer term, I’m working on a crime novel. Right now, my main goal is just to keep moving forward as a writer. Keep pushing myself to the breaking point.

TC:  Who would look better poured into a tight pair of spanking new Jordache jeans?  Robert E. Howard or Ramsey Campbell?

LB:  Considering how much weight Mr. Howard has lost these past decades, I’d say Mr. Campbell wins it in a landslide.

"Laird Barron" by JD Busch

TC Book Review & Interview: Simon Strantzas Brings The Horror Home in 'Nightingale Songs' for Dark Regions Press

The genre of popular literature commonly known as Supernatural or Horror Fiction is going through somewhat of a Renaissance these days, and in doing so, its practitioners, consumers, and overall celebrants threaten to unknowingly abandon part of Horror Fiction's past in favor of a seemingly new incarnation that is really just the same creature dressed in a different set of clothing.  Smaller hats and longer sleeves, to hide the scars and the rad tattoos purchased back in more classic yet looser time.  A time before irony and paralyzing self consciousness. 

Slasher cinema and the "YA-ing" of centuries-old supernatural creatures and tropes seems to be one of the biggest culprits in this unspoken yet readily apparent re-branding, but so too are the pop culture success stories of certain writers of "horror books" that sometimes cut as deep as a Bic razor, with scars that last about as long.  In an unrelated artistic field, it brings to mind so many modern/hipster bands fleeing the sexy, dangerous roots of rock 'n roll, so as not to be associated with the embarrassing lipstick and Aqua Net years of super popular hair metal.  The sad part of this is that rock music will always be rock music, and the swagger and smoke of its founding should never be fully forgotten, even if it eventually wore spandex.

Put it simply (and with far less digression):  Horror is out.  The Weird is in.

Indeed, Horror or Supernatural Fiction is now better known to fledgling readers as Weird Fiction.  I, too, am guilty of aiding this re-christening of that tasty miasma of Dark Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Horror Fiction as a monolithic product better known as The Weird, for reasons that have as much to do with interpretation as they do with a lazy sort of short hand (Speculative Fiction is also an increasingly popular catch-all phrase, also liberally employed by yours truly... I'm nothing if not honest).

With that clumsily rendered primer expressed, I'd like to announce Simon Strantzas as an unabashed champion of straight up Horror Fiction, and for that, he should be applauded.  He should also be applauded for his own unsettling tales and contributions to the above, which are meditative explorations of the dark and chilling, which touch on diverse foundational points that make up the creaking yet sturdy skeleton of Horror past, present, and future.  He kicks stereotypes in the nuts with his clean, confident carving of the subtle bizarre that doesn't dance on the horizon, but does a jerky, beady-eyed soft shoe through your living room during Sunday family dinner.  He isn't a barking merchant of swirling, universal doom.  He's whispered death amongst the hydrangeas in your own goddamn backyard.  He's a '57 Chevy, a Colt six shooter.  He's a Horror writer.

Strantzas, the Toronto-based, British Fantasy Award-nominated author of the critically hailed Cold to the Touch (currently out of print and selling privately for upwards of $170) and Beneath the Surface, recently released his anticipated third collection, Nightingale Songs, which explores all those great themes that make up great Horror Fiction - madness, ghosts, hauntings, misshapen freaks, deadly creatures, old houses that are a threat by their very lean and aspect.  Strantzas' horror unspools in the bedroom, the musty basement, the decrepit hotel room, that claustrophobic cabin in the woods, in the backstage area of that poorly lit nightclub, around that piano that always sits empty.  He has an introspective, sometimes existential style, deeply exploring the mental and physical breakdown that often manifest before or because of some jarring, unexplainable event.  The outside world rarely invades these intimate scenes, nor is it effected by the terrible things that occur... at least not yet.  What is effected are those few, intertwined individuals caught in this strange, terrifying nightmare without end or rational resolution other than oblivion.

In Nightingale Songs, Strantzas' horror can be nameless, but rarely is it from the stars.  Insanity lurks, but it comes not from ageless, whispering gods from another dimension.  These terrors creep from someplace far closer - from the nearby wilderness, from across the street, or even from within.  His monsters are those that lurk in the dark, ignored places, both inside us and out.  Danger to ourselves and those we love - which, for my money, is the heart of all Horror - has no one single origination, nor any real solution, creating a frustration of dread, of the grinding inevitable that the protagonist is powerless to change.  Much like Alfred Hitchcock took great relish in horrorizing those mundane, often comforting things we deal with every day (a bathroom shower, a flock of birds, an innocuous chat with an old friend), so too does Strantzas inject the bizarre into the commonplace, with devastating results.

He bends supernaturality (if I may coin a word) to its breaking point, but doesn't snap it, allowing the Horror he writes - no matter how fantastic or shocking the outcome - to assume the trappings of reality.  This stuff could happen, he'll have us believe, and MUST, to people who seem familiar enough to be glaring back at us in the mirror each day.  This isn't fantasy casting, folks.  This is the PTA, the corner table of muttering hipsters, the person sleeping next to you.  Strantzas' characters have deep, meaningful, loving relationships (a rarity in Horror, it seems), steady jobs, friends and family.  They are us, which makes what happens to them/us all the more visceral.  These twelve tales place horror on our lap, daggers wrapped in velvet.

To again parallel Hitchcock, Strantzas creates a thinking person's style of Horror and Weird (sorry) Fiction that is patient and trusting enough to let the audience connect the pattern in the wood grain, and write the coda in their own mind long after the nightingale's song has ended.  That is the essence of Horror - that personal, insidious presentation that inspires an unsettling mindfuck created unconsciously but no less powerfully by the mind of the readers themselves.  Once the door is opened, we always scare ourselves best.  Simon Strantzas, bless him, opens many doors.

In Nightingale Songs, Strantzas' stories run the dusky gamut, drawing in varied notes and thematic flourishes from around the creepy spectrum like jaunty, oddly grinning pianist working the ivories (as an aside:  pianos feature in two of the stories in this collection, and somehow Strantzas has permanently knocked the docile instrument out of alignment and left it forever latently menacing).  In "Pale Light in the Jungle," Strantzas comments on the stultifying power of television and other technological noise, the eeriness of new quiet, and how boredom and apathetic rot masked by electronic media can have dire consequences.  "The Nightingale" and "Something New", while differing greatly plot-wise, both share veins of longing turned to unexpected obsession, and are just as unnerving and Weird as anything you'll read today.  These are two grisly, Lynchian nightmares bolstered by a Ligottian backbeat, set in Midtown of Anytown and yet No Town where I'd want to live, but probably do.  "Her Father's Daughter" embraces classic Horror themes and situations from both the page and screen (car breakdown on abandoned road, cell phone trouble, creepy-ass farm house) with a dash of the supernatural, and while the setting is chilling, I wanted a bit more out of the ending.

I don't think I'm alone in saying that Strantzas is at his best when constructing his tales atop the relationship scaffolding built between a man and a woman, which are often quite powerful and surprisingly passionate.  This is refreshing, as one doesn't tend to see that in a lot of modern Horror of Weird Fiction (and next to never in Lovecraftian fiction), which often cavort with anti-heroes and outcasts, loners and four-time losers at love.  Strantzas, on the other hand, seems to almost be a "Big R" Romantic, celebrating the power of real, abiding love, and showing you what can happen because of it, or due to a sudden lack of it.  "An Indelible Stain Upon the Sky" (recently selected for inclusion in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23, edited by the renowned Stephen Jones) and "When Sorrows Come" truly hum on the page, creating a duet of profound heartache that echo long after like a dirge.  The protagonists are gutted by lost love, allowing the noxious blackness to seep into the empty spaces between the cracks.  "Tend Your Own Garden" takes a different angle on relationships, and crafts a bold, frightening metaphor of bitter breakup and betrayal embodied by a once shared house.  These three tales anchor Nightingale Songs, and provide a thematic melody present throughout the collection.

In addition to the Romantic, Strantzas work can also get close to you through nostalgia.  "Out of Touch", which starts out the collection, brings to mind an era familiar to me, when children still explored their suburban neighborhoods and the wilder places just beyond on bikes that could have been chariots. The critically acclaimed "Mr. Kneale," another stand-out, allows Stantzas to comment on the Horror Fiction industry in general - and inspiration in particular - by setting his story in the realm of the horror convention.  It's a truly spooky tale, with plenty of multilevel bite.

In short, Simon Strantzas is a writer in full bloom, and Nightingale Songs shows all of his varied foliage.  These are powerful stories, adroitly told, which serve to stack him up favorably with anyone writing Horror/Weird fiction today.  
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Shifting gears just slightly, I'd like to announce that this is the first of what is now called The Cosmicomicon Review & Interview, where I personally read their writing or check out their art and then annoy a writer and/or artist with a series of hackneyed, superficial questions to go along with my review of their work.  Think of it as a poorly moderated Q & A panel at your favorite con, sans cocktails (although you're certainly welcome to enjoy one whilst reading).

I hope you enjoy the interview below, and thank you to Simon for agreeing to spend time with blue card questions better left on the floor under James Lipton's desk.

TC:  Hi, Simon.  Thanks for sitting down with The Cosmicomicon, especially in March, as I know that the debauched revelry and dark ritual of Commonwealth Day can last well into summer…  Speaking of things uniquely Canadian, what is it about Canada that seems to breed comedy, affability, and horror in equal measure?

SS:  Canada is an interesting place. We have all manner of influences coming at us from every direction, whether it's our Commonwealth heritage or the influence of American media upon our daily lives. The country is enormous, and its population so spread out that by its very nature it breeds a certain isolation. All these factors add up to a nation of quirks, something our American cousins don't quite fully grasp. I'd wager your country knows more about England than it does what goes on north of the 49th.

TC:  You’re also an artist/illustrator.  Why did you choose to turn your talents almost exclusively to the written word, rather than the drawn image?

SS:  I spent a good time of youth drawing, painting, etc., but realized early in my 20's that I was not cut out for that world, that my talents were mediocre in comparison to what others were doing. So, I simply stopped. For a few dark years, I did little of anything creative until a crisis of the soul brought me into the fold of writing, and it's something from which I have not looked back.

But, more practically, I'm a firm believer in conveying a clear message, and once an artist starts mixing mediums it tends to water down their impact. For example, Ted, are you a filmmaker or a prose writer? Do you identify yourself as one or the other? Do you worry readers aware of your film work will think "Oh, Grau is slumming it with prose" or think you some sort of "poser"? I worry about these things, and to focus on art now would inevitably undermine my attempts at forging a writing career. Perhaps I'm misguided in this belief, but so far I've seen nothing that convinces me otherwise.

TC:  The term “Weird fiction” gets thrown around a lot these days (with few throwing more than I).  Thomas Ligotti describes his own writing as “uncanny” fiction.  How would you personally describe your writing in terms of genre and/or style?

SS:  I suppose I consider my fiction "strange stories", not accidentally because that's the term Aickman bandied around. In my heart, I simply call it horror, but outside, in the world, the term carries with it so many negative connotations that I hesitate to use it. In the end, despite my stumbles and stutters when asked the question, I do ultimately use the term Horror, because I feel it's up to those of us on the genre's fringes to reclaim it. If we don't associate with the genre, all we do is reinforce the belief the genre is made up of its worst elements. Science Fiction has managed to escape into the mainstream and into "literature", as has the Western. Horror is due its share in the serious limelight. I think it's within our reach if only we hold faith in it. Ramsey Campbell often says that he has yet to explore everything a horror story can tell. I like to believe the genre is as endless as he says. And, really, who would know better?

TC:  Your fiction focuses a lot on the internal, the personal/individual, or the interplay of a relationship in an almost microcosmic sense, which is an angle that is quite different than that of macrocosmic horror and the works of Lovecraft.  Which writers do you view as inspirations, or thematically/stylistically similar to yourself?

SS:  My fiction comes from a large number of approaches, all synthesized into my own. Ligotti, Lovecraft, Lieber, Aickman, Campbell, Tuttle, Tem ... these are genre names that rattle in my head, but even beyond horror's walls voices like Millhauser and Auster and Borges and Jackson ring certain notes. There can be a terseness from Miller, the puzzle-box plotting of Moore, all sorts of different masters fighting for dominance. In terms of the "microcosmic", I'm not sure who my literary forebearers are. For me, as an introspective person, it seems only natural to obsess over the tiny movements of a hand, the shifting viewpoints of someone in doubt. Understanding what's happening, regardless of how fantastic that happening is, is really what interests me most.

TC:  What sort of reaction do you want to elicit from your readers?  Name your ideal reader reaction, then one which would appeal to you the least.

SS:  I want my readers to react however they'd like. Any reaction is pleasing to me, from laughter to tears. I can tell you though that what I care about doing least -- what I spend little to no time attempting -- is frightening my readers. It's sacrilege, in this genre, to say that. So many people want only to evoke that sensation. I care more about eliciting awe in my readers, or if I can't get awe, then at least make them think a bit longer than they might normally. I want them to question their world, their own feelings. I want to evoke an image that even when the story is done stays with them. I want to change my reader in some way. The rest, the entertainment, the show, the rollercoaster -- it holds little importance to me. I care only enough to keep the reader involved in the story. After all, no matter how much a story can deliver on the second or third reading, if it's not interesting on the first read no one is likely to return.

TC:  What was the first bit of fiction you completed, and how did that first finished piece play into your current career?

SS:  There are different answers to this, of course. The first bit of fiction I wrote was no doubt as a child, and remember no one of it. The first published piece appeared in a university alternative newspaper, and is best left unearthed. The first proper story, under my name, to see print happened about a decade ago in All Hallows, and it has subsequently appeared in my collection "Cold to the Touch" to positive reviews. In truth, I don't think that single story did much for my career, other than allow me to achieve a goal I'd set for myself at its outset -- namely, get published in All Hallows. By the time it saw print, though, I'd already sold a few more, but I'll tell you, finally seeing my name in print was something it took a long time to get over. Even now, I'm not quite so jaded that I don't enjoy the sensation of cracking a book open and seeing that.

TC:  I ask this a lot, but I truly have an interest in this -- What is your impression of the small press speculative fiction scene, both from the POV of a writer/editor, and as a reader/fan?

SS:  The small press is a necessary evil for the horror genre. Horror, despite what I might have suggested previously, is not really made for the mass market. By its nature it fits in better on the edges of the world, in the shadows. Good horror is transgressive, it questions everything, it challenges right from wrong, and the grander concepts it explores aren't something most average people want to encounter. Except for a brief bubble in the eighties, horror fiction has never been popular, and will always be something sought out by sympathetic readers. They are enough only to fill a small pond, so I consider us lucky the world of technology has allowed even the smallest of ponds professional level production values. Do I enjoy the ephemeral nature of most markets in horror? Not particularly, but in honesty I spend little time in the small press magazine world anymore anyway. Most of what I write nowadays is solicited, which can be both a blessing and a curse.

TC:  I asked Stuart “Re-Animator” Gordon this once, and I think I’ll use it as a Liptonesque tag in my interviews --  What scares you?  (BTW, Gordon said “Everything”)

Nothing interesting scares me. My fears are boring and common.

TC:  To follow up on that, what DOESN’T scare you?

Horror fiction.

TC:  This sounds a bit “job interviewy,” but what do you see yourself writing in 10 years?  30?

SS:  If the dark heavens allow, I'll be writing forever exactly what I'm writing now. Just, I hope, with a bigger audience.

TC:  What do you have on the docket as far as upcoming projects?

SS:  I have more than a few irons in the fire, many of which I can't (or won't) discuss. I will tell you though that I have fiction appearing this year in two anthologies from Stephen Jones. The first, the sequel to the mosaic novel, "Zombie Apocalypse", the second, a reprint in this year's "Best New Horror" volume. As well, I have a piece in the just printed "Aklonomicon", and work in the two tribute volumes from Joe Pulver, "The Grimscribe's Puppets" and "A Season in Carcosa".  And let's not forget the reprint of one of my stories in the upcoming "Night Land" magazine in Japan. Wow, that's a lot, and there is more yet I have to keep under my hat. Let's just say I'm keeping busy.

TC:  Finally:  Bob and Doug McKenzie - a great Canadian impression, or the GREATEST Canadian impression?

SS:  What do you mean by "impression"? That's what we're all like up here. You Hoser.