Novel News: Pre-order I AM THE RIVER, the novella that pined to be something more

Cover by Ives Hovanessian

I never know how long a story is going to be when I begin writing it. I have a rough idea, based on the scope of the plot and complexity of the narrative, but that’s always vague and never completely predictive. I only truly find out when it’s complete. Maybe I don’t have the proper control over the work I’m doing, or perhaps it’s more about trusting the story to tell me what it wants to be, how it wants to present itself to the world.

Stories are organic things, and shapeless when born, only firming up and taking their ultimate form when all is finally said, and all is finally done. Then and only then do we – meaning I – know the size of the thing we are dealing with. You don’t measure the size of paws, or the diameter of bones. There’s no extrapolation equation or scaling up ingredients. Stories grow like an unknown tree, reaching full maturity when its DNA says so.

I started I Am The River with the intention that it would be a novella. My second overall, and my second book with the fine folks at Lethe Press. I was even hoping it would be a novella, as I had intended to save the “first novel!” milestone for my next project Salt Creek, which most certainly will be a novel at the very least (with plans to spin it out into other projects and mediums). How long and large that one will be remains to be seen, but I know that it will easily cross the size threshold into the vale of the proper, 100,000+ word novel.

But as I continued to write I Am The River, exploring its strange twists and turns as they were revealed to me, I watched as the book surpassed the word count of a standard novella, and flowed into short novel territory, where it quickly made itself at home and then sat down, its journey complete.

I trust this story. I like this story. I needed to change the “A Novella” to “A Novel” on the title page, which you can see covering the completed “Zero Draft” manuscript, completed on Sunday night, September 10th, 2017:

Now the careful task of editing begins. While I engage in this joyous exercise, you are free to pre-order I AM THE RIVER: A NOVEL via the Lethe Press website here. Word from the top says that if you pre-order before Halloween, you will be able to purchase the novel for a discounted novella price ($13.00), which is eight quarters less than the going rate ($15.00).

I Am The River: A Novel will be released in February, 2018 as a trade paperback and ebook, with the possibility of a hardcover edition in the works. Should a hardcover edition be made available, anyone who pre-orders a paperback copy before the release date can apply that credit to the hardcover.

From the Lethe Press website:

Coming February of 2018!

Special sale price of $13 lasts until November 1st
​​
by T.E. Grau

During the last desperate days of the Vietnam War, American solider Israel Broussard is assigned to a secretive CIA PSYOP far behind enemy lines meant to drive terror into the heart of the North Vietnamese and end an unwinnable war. When the mission goes sideways, Broussard is plunged into a nightmare that he soon finds he is unable to escape, dragging a remnant of that night in the Laotian wilderness with him no matter how far he runs.

Five years later, too damaged to return home and holed up in the slums of Bangkok, where he battles sleep, guilt, and a creeping sense of madness, Broussard discovers that he must journey back to the jungles of Laos in an attempt to set things right and reclaim what is left of his life.

A fever dream with a Benzedrine chaser, I Am The River provides a daring, often surreal examination of the Vietnam War and the days after it, burrowing down past the bullets and battlefields to discover the lingering horror of warfare, the human consequences of organized violence, and the lasting effects of trauma on the psyche, and the soul.

T.E. Grau is the author of dozens of stories and other written works, including the books They Don’t Come Home Anymore, Triptych: Three Cosmic Tales, The Lost Aklo Stories, The Mission, and The Nameless Dark, which was nominated for a 2015 Shirley Jackson Award for Single-Author Collection. Grau lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Publishing News - New novella I AM THE RIVER coming in late 2017 from Lethe Press

I am happy to announce that my newest novella, I Am The River, will be published in October/November of 2017 by Lethe Press, the same outfit that released my debut collection in 2015.

Moreover, I am proud to release the cover of I Am The River, created by Ives Hovanessian, which - as with all of Ives' covers - certainly adds an extra element of beauty and fascination to the book. I am and have been so luck to have her creative talents associated with my work.

More details as we near the release date...

Cover Reveal: Upcoming release THEY DON'T COME HOME ANYMORE: A NOVELLA features cover art by Candice Tripp

I'm exceedingly proud to finally be able to reveal the cover for my upcoming release, They Don't Come Home Anymore: A Novella, a 32,000+ word story published by This Is Horror.

The cover art is by the exceptionally talented Candice Tripp, a UK painter and sculptor that my wife Ives Hovanessian turned me on to a few years back. Since then, I'd been waiting for the right project to coalesce that would be an ideal pairing of her artwork with a corresponding story that suited it, and thankfully my first short novel arrived from the cranial factory as the perfect vehicle. I approached Candice for the cover, and thankfully she agreed. With the art secured, that Ives designed the cover — working with Candice's phenomenal oil painting Everything Is Lovely As Long As You Never Want To Leave (which itself sounds similar to the novella in terms of title, if not theme) and solidifying the tone through font, color, and clean space — seemed incredibly fitting, considering that she's been a fan of Candice's work longer than I have, and pointed me in that direction in the first place. Everything fell perfectly into place, with wonderful results, as you can see above.

This is the first step in working toward This Is Horror's planned mid-November 2016 release of They Don't Come Home Anymore: A Novella, a story that might, at first blush, seem like a slight departure from my previous work, as it centers on a teenage girl, and is very much a tale of obsession, loneliness, and a search for meaning, acceptance, and love in a world (and sub world) that waits, cruel and threatening, just behind the facade. It's also about vampires, but not the garden variety sort you'd expect in a mass market/network television teenage vamp story, but something that cleaves closer to the natural world, and how our planet once was, and might still be in certain darkened corners. I can't really say more, other than to invite you to pick up the book when it's available, and tell me what you think it's about, underneath, beyond that first impression.

But, that's for another day, in another season, approaching faster than you might think. Watch this space for pre-order information in the coming weeks. In the meantime, check out that cover again. The devils truly are in the details.

Review News: The Nameless Dark receives stellar treatment in The Haunted Omnibus

After writing everything other than fiction for so many years, I still have a hard time processing the fact that people will sit down and devote hours and hours to reading stories I write, then feel moved enough to compose extensive, detailed, thoughtful reviews on these stories, with the primary purpose of helping draw more readership to certain books and authors. It's a wonderful thing.

Writer Jose Cruz did just this, and posted up one of my favorite reviews The Nameless Dark has ever received at his excellent electronic journal devoted to short dark fiction, The Haunted Omnibus, which is what The Cosmicomicon would be if I was a better reviewer, had better focus, and better taste in blog template design.

Its Mission Statement:

The Haunted Omnibus was established to recognize the long tradition and continued perseverance of the short form within the literature of horror, the dark fantastic, and the Weird. 

Although websites, journals, and awards dedicated to the field and yearly anthologies of the best in short fiction continue to proliferate, the founders of the Haunted Omnibus felt that there was still a need for a space dedicated solely to the discussion of dark short stories, novelettes, and novellas. 

Reviews of anthologies and single-author collections, by their nature, tend to relegate even the exemplary stories to one or two sentences of critical analysis at best, if any mention is warranted at all. The Haunted Omnibus seeks to in part turn this trend around by providing the attention and appreciation that these short works deserve. 

Taking its name from the landmark 1937 anthology edited by Alexander Laing, The Haunted Omnibus provides reviews, essays, and just-plain-fun testimonials of the short horror story’s power, history, and relevance. In this spirit, our single-story spotlights strive to include tributes made by multiple contributors and, when possible, short interviews conducted with the authors to detail their creation of the stories. 

It is our hope that through our efforts at the Haunted Omnibus, fans and readers will engage more deeply with darkly speculative short fiction and afford it the study that it merits.

Edward Gorey

I'll provide an excerpt of the review here, but please do head over to The Haunted Omnibus and poke around a bit:

"We live in a time of plenty. 

In the last decade and change, the rise of small publishing houses and e-reader devices has opened up a doorway through which a veritable smorgasbord of dark fiction has poured forth into the hands of fans who might not have otherwise encountered them. But not even the accessibility or mass proliferation of grim literature can be held entirely accountable for the embarrassment of riches we have today. A similar wave passed during the Great Horror Boom of the 70s and 80s, but the current renaissance we live in now has granted us the gift of quality in addition to quantity. 

This commitment to higher literary standards, along with a special devotion to the short story, has led to the releases of dozens of books in the last few years that all bear the craftsman’s seal of approval, a time when even debut collections hum with a vitality and talent that wouldn’t have been dreamt of in those bygone days of spinner rack terrors. With the unleashing of The Nameless Dark, T. E. Grau has cemented himself as an author whose byline should spark in readers a joyful expectancy for what surprises there are to follow.

Having spent his early days grinding away in the Hollywood dream machine, Grau has instilled the stories collected here with a cinematic beat and tenor. Many of them have the feel of miniature epics, stories of great change that course the classical arc and find his cast of rebels and hard-hearts attempting to desperately pick their way through life’s minefield before butting up against the high-powered electric fence of the unforgiving cosmos. Even at their bleakest—and many of the tales end badly for at least one person—Grau’s works satisfy with the rightness of their narratives, the feeling that the scales of the universe have attained their balance once more regardless of the insignificant lives that were overthrown to do so..."

John Picacio

(4/22/16 edit: Please also check out an author interview published today at The Haunted Omnibus here)

TC Book Review: Following up on his award-winning debut collection, Nathan Ballingrud continues dark excellence with novella 'The Visible Filth,' now available from This Is Horror

Cover by Pye Parr

Very little of what is classified as horror fiction or contemporary Weird fiction scares me, and that's okay, because I don't read this style of literature to be frightened. I don't like to be frightened. Truly terrified. Who does, really, if we are being totally honest with ourselves? There are plenty of undertakings one can pursue if genuine fear (not thrills, or shock) is the end result, and I don't see me or anyone else I know heading down those paths, either in a literal or metaphorical sense.

Instead, I read this style of fiction for the wonder of it all, and while the atmospherics can sometimes be unsettling, they usually just end up being cool, or interesting, or awe-inspiring in their fantastical rendering. But in terms of true terror, that is reserved for the decidedly non-fiction realm of real life monsters that burn down villages and break into your homes and hunt women and defile children and devour innocence like they're on some sort of infernal time clock. For all but the true believers, supernatural fiction is fantasy, and fantasy is never scary, as how could something that is admittedly not real serve as a threat to the safety and well being of me and my loved ones?

But Nathan Ballingrud, who does write horror and Weird fiction as well or better than anyone else tapping the keys today, is straight-up scary. Not him personally, as he's a lovely fellow. But the people, places, and things he unleashes onto the page can often be horrifying in all the full-bodied definition of the word. And I like it. My Lord, do I ever like it.

Perhaps its the sense of authenticity of the characters and settings, both of which wear the weight of imperfection like a favorite pair of jeans. Most likely, this conjuring of discomfort from within the reader comes from the way deeply buried human flaws are exhumed, dissected, and laid bare to the humid air, then left there for all to witness, without apology. The abomination of the cut wide human soul. That's unsettling stuff, and that's what Ballingrud writes, like the Larry David or Ricky Gervais of dark fiction. Squirms coated with gooseflesh.

After wowing the horror fiction world in 2013 with the release of his debut collection North American Lake Monsters, which earned him nothing less than a Shirley Jackson Award and the fierce admiration of his peers, Ballingrud continues to build his lasting legacy of pitch black, uncomfortable fiction with his new novella The Visible Filth, published by This Is Horror (an outfit I hadn't heard of prior to ordering this book, but will return to as a customer based on the professionalism and care provided by owner and managing editor Michael Wilson). This is a taut story, shot through with suspense that binds together the strips of shapeless horror of seemingly everyday people and circumstances like a filthy quilt sew with piano wire.

The story is set in New Orleans, but it could be a slice of life in any city or small town where there are bars and college students and eroding relationships. And roaches. And cell phones. This is horror with a firm sense of place, but it is also universal enough that you can feel it churning on your neighborhood block. The evils done and the threats posed aren't ripped from a pulp mag. They could be taken from the morning paper, from text drenched in terrified mystery.

None of the four main characters are incredibly likable, nor fully happy, which seems an honest appraisal of life amongst twenty- and thirty-somethings dwelling in and around the bar scene, no matter the zip code. The leads are flighty and morose and devoted to self medication, spiritually empty in that vaguely nihilistic way of slacker narcissists. A love triangle threatens to destroy an already unstable square, but before this can happen, a random act of violence in a dingy barroom is all that it takes to link a hidden vein of depravity into the group, and plunge these players into a glistening black tunnel that unspools in front of them, the ghastly terminus unknown.

The Visible Filth, like much of Ballingrud's exceptional writing, is an exercise in indefinable - but somehow familiar - horror beyond our control, or even our explanation. Monstrous things are happening just below the veneer of normal life, and all you can do is watch. And you do watch, despite revulsion, and despite your shame. The fact that you like it unlocks something inside you, and you sit, at a bedside, the roaches gathering patiently, and you wait for what is coming.

Nathan Ballingrud is an American writer of horror and dark fantasy. His first book, the short story collection North American Lake Monsters, was published in 2013 by Small Beer Press to great acclaim, including winning the Shirley Jackson Award and being shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker awards. He lives in Asheville, NC, with his daughter.