The Haunted Weblog

Sunday, March 30, 2003

Cemetery Dancing – I finally found the time to read issue #41 of Cemetery Dance. About time, as issue #42 has already arrived. The fiction was top notch – I especially liked Brian A. Hopkins’s tale of revenge and cosmic horror in the Catacombs of Sicily, “Communion with the Worm” and Chris Bevard’s tale of revenge, ghosts, and madness, “Indian Rain.” The book and movie reviews are always worth reading, and I love Thomas F. Monteleone’s column. The non-fiction in CD is great, worth the cover price on its own.

As usual there are a few interviews in this issue, and I always read them, whether it is an author I already read or someone new to me. I have never read Phil Rickman, but I was enjoying the interview with him. He was talking about the problem of categorization. Shelving a book in a genre section of a bookstore can help its sales. People who like books about spaceships or serial killers are more likely to buy your book if it is shelved near other books about spaceships or serial killers. On the other hand some people see this as relegating a book to a genre ghetto where it won’t get the readership it deserves. Furthermore some books are in a thematic twilight zone, not clearly in one genre or another. This can lead to shelving errors that can cause a book to be placed in the wrong part of the store, losing potential readers. Proper shelving is an ongoing question among booksellers, writers, publishers, and readers. Here is what Phil Rickman has to say about the subject: “(W)henever you see one of my novels in a bookstore it tends to be right there next to Anne Rice – a fine writer, sure, but we’re really not in the same bag. I don’t really know what to do about this. Not many people in the book business, outside of actual writers, seem to be blessed with flexible minds – if it involves the supernatural it must be horror. Assholes.”

Since I have spent most of my adult life working in the book business, as a bookseller and retail buyer, what do you suppose my reaction is to being told that my colleagues and I do not possess flexible minds and are assholes? Well my first reaction was to respond by writing FUCK YOU PHIL RICKMAN! FUCK YOU AND THE HIGH HORSE YOU RODE IN ON! But that would be rude. Rickman says he doesn’t know what to do about the problem, but he is wrong. He knows exactly what to do – insult booksellers. I’ve met a lot of writers in the various bookstores I’ve worked at. Most of them understand that our job is to sell their books. We are their natural friends and business partners. But a few of them see us as ignorant shopkeepers who stand between them and bestsellerdom. We need to be told to do things their way, as the writer surely knows more about bookselling than the bookseller. My colleagues and I have a name for such people: dickheads. The writers who work with us tend to have their books handsold and prominently displayed. The ones who insult us don’t. Following the interview there was a novel excerpt by Phil Rickman. I generally do not like excerpts. I want a complete story, not an advertisement for a book. Nevertheless I can report that it was well written and intriguing. Mr. Rickman is certainly a good writer, and I sympathize with his frustration. But if you come into my shop don’t expect to see me recommending him to my customers. I’m afraid my mind isn’t quite that flexible.

Book 3:15 PM [+]
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Important Safety Tip – Let’s say you are hunting for hidden treasure in India. Your partner is a temple priest and he often performs sorcery upon you to help find the treasure. Let us further suggest that you decide to pray and supplicate yourself before the Goddess Durga hoping that she will reveal the treasure to you. Do not, under any circumstances, bow down before the Goddess if you friend the priest is holding an axe. Trust me on this one.
Book 12:31 PM [+]
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Tradition Vs. Overpopulation in the 21st Century – In China April 5 is the annual Grave-Sweeping Festival. Folks like to go to the graves of their relatives, clean them up, offer food and drink, and burn “hell money.” The government says that it causes traffic jams and the burning paper has started forest fires, so this year they say that people should stay home and visit online cemeteries instead. I’m sure it will be just as fulfilling.
Book 12:19 PM [+]
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Dead Cat Rocks! – (book notes) – Dead Cats Bouncing edited by Gerard Houarner and GAK – Three years ago Gerard Houarner wrote an odd little story about a cat who was born in the Temple of Bastet, sacrificed, mummified, and sent to Hell. Dead Cat doesn’t like Hell, so he finds a way to bounce back to the world of the living. As such this is something of a “mummy” story with a cat standing in for Boris Karloff. The other twist is that the story is told in the first person (first feline actually). Since cats are not known for their strong verbal and written communications skills, Houarner used a writing style that starts spare and whittles down from that. For example:

“See scorpion. Hunt scorpion. Catch scorpion. Scorpion sting. Eat scorpion. Sting inside. Spit out. Hunt again.

“Dead Cat like living.”

Houarner managed to fill his little story with wit, wisdom, grotesquerie, and grace (believe it or not). One might think that such simple prose would be boring, but on the contrary it works its way into your head and starts to be kind of fun. You begin to think it might be neat to write like this too. Dead Cat cool. Dead Cat has interesting perspective. Other writers meet Dead Cat. They want to play with Dead Cat. That fun.

Hence, this book. Houarner’s story was published in a chapbook, puckishly illustrated by GAK, and it became a favorite among horror writes. An idea was born and now we have this weird little anthology with fourteen new stories along with the original and an introduction written by Dead Cat himself. Who wouldn’t want a book with contributions by John Skipp, Tom Piccirilli, Paul Di Filippo, David Niall Wilson, Charlee Jacobs, Edward Lee, Yvonne Navarro, Jack Ketchum, and several other talented people? Some of the writers chose to write in the Dead Cat style, others went their own way. This book is full of surprises. Jack Ketchum wrote something that was strangely touching. Yvonne Navarro sees old D.C. getting it on. Edward Lee writes up some political humor? Gene O’Neill introduced our little friend to Frankenpup. Paul De Filippo gives us an Archy and Mehitable pastiche crossed with a horror story. Tom Piccirilli goes noir while John Skipp gets poetical. Dead Cat meets gods and girls, crazies and catnip. Illustrated throughout by GAK, this little beauty comes with an extra surprise – it is autographed by all of the participants. Is it a collectible or a book of bedtime stories for your warped inner child? It’s both!

Book 4:41 PM [+]
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Rest In Piece – Robert Bourque, inventor of Zoltan the Astrological Wizard.
Book 3:25 PM [+]
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More Inspiration For Writers of Horror Stories – A couple of artists have set up microphones to record the sounds of famous people’s tombs.
Book 8:53 PM [+]
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Stephen King Novel Comes True – In South Africa a 15 year old boy has been accused of starting fires by supernatural means. Is the lad practicing some form of pyrotechnic witchcraft or has he been bewitched himself? That is the burning question. (I’m sorry. It’s a compulsion. I should be ashamed of myself. But I’m not.)
Book 9:33 PM [+]
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Turns Out He Was Just Dead Drunk – The doctors were just about to begin the autopsy when the corpse woke up, jumped off the table, and ran like hell. Turns out he had been drinking bhang, so this is either a warning or a recommendation, depending on your point of view. Just say no kids!
Book 9:19 PM [+]
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The Next Must Have Book – Coming soon to a bookshelf near you: The Midget Bullfighters of Mexico!
Book 9:31 PM [+]
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Big Changes With Big Book – The upcoming 16th edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror will be last for fantasy editor Terri Windling. Kelly Link and Gavin Grant will be responsible for the fantasy half next year. I read it more for Ellen Datlow’s horror picks, but have always enjoyed the Windling half too.
Book 5:24 PM [+]
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Baby Smuggling – 28 baby girls have been found hidden in suitcases on a bus in southwestern China (via Drudge)
Book 4:53 PM [+]
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Good News For Boston Bibliophiles! – Avenue Victor Hugo is going to re-open.
Book 10:35 PM [+]
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Rotten Art – An artist in Belgium is looking for someone to star in the ultimate reality TV show. He plans to film a corpse as it decomposes and post it on the web. Run it in fast forward and you can re-create the last moments of M. Valdemar. Someone may soon have their fifteen minutes of fame as “detestable putridity.”
Book 10:27 PM [+]
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Preserved in Peat – No, not my scotch-soaked liver, mummies. In a major new find archeologists have discovered that some Bronze Age Britons mummified their dead. This opens up new avenues in the fields of historical research and cheesy monster movies.
Book 8:54 PM [+]
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Happy Birthday William Gibson! – Today is the 55th birthday of the man who coined the word “cyberspace.” You do know that he has a blog don’t you?
Book 8:40 PM [+]
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Well Then It’s War – Let us pray that it all goes as it should and good triumphs over evil.
Book 8:35 PM [+]
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Happy Evacuation Day! – On this day in 1776 the British were chased out of Boston by American patriots. We’ve been celebrating it ever since. Some people are also celebrating their Irish heritage today. Good for them too.
Book 8:21 PM [+]
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Ghouls Go Where The Money Is – In the late 18th and early 19th centuries grave robbing was a big business in the UK. Almost as soon as a body was put in the ground someone was digging it up. Why? Medical schools needed corpses to teach anatomy and they were pretty hard to come by. Professors were not above paying for their teaching materials – no questions asked. It is a basic law of economics: where there is a demand, there will be supply. In today’s southern Africa there is no shortage of dead bodies. The only people getting rich are those in the funerary business. It is coffins that are in demand now. That is the background to this grim little story of modern grave robbing. These descendents of Burke and Hare didn’t get away with the child’s coffin that they were after because cemeteries in Zimbabwe are far to busy these days.
Book 9:24 PM [+]
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Mammoth Horrors – (book notes) – The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13 edited by Stephen Jones – Every year I read the two major “best” anthologies and every year I wonder what is meant by “best.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m here to tell you that Stephen Jones’s The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s Years Best Fantasy and Horror (I reviewed the 15th edition a few weeks ago, check out Book Fetish for Calliope’s review of the 14th) are still must-reads for anyone interested in short fiction from the dark side, but I do wonder sometimes. While some of the stories are truly deserving of the highest accolades, some are just good (Nothing wrong with that, but what makes them better than the other good stories of the year?) and some are, well, not all that thrilling. Editor’s choice I suppose, but I wonder if sometimes they feel they have to stretch to fill their gigantic volumes. Maybe I’m just being too picky.

Anyway, here are the highlights: Editor Jones starts out with his usual mammoth round-up of everything that happened in the horror world in the year 2001. The casual reader will surely want to at least skim this, as while it is way too much minutia it does contain remarkable little gems of information.

Four of the stories were in both of the big books, which is an honor any writer would envy. “The Crocodile Lady” by Christopher Fowler, “Struwwelpeter” by Glen Hirshberg, “Outfangthief” by Gala Blau, and “Cleopatra Brimstone” by Elizabeth Hand. All were excellent. The first and last stories were by Chico Kidd, a big honor for someone who is not yet a big name. Both stories feature Portuguese sea captain Luís Da Silva. “Mark of the Beast” was a pretty good werewolf story, and the excellent “Cats and Architecture” featured time travel and demonology. Da Silva is an interesting character and I’m sure we will see more of both him and Kidd. “The Two Dicks” by Paul McAuley gives us an alternative life of Philip K. Dick, a story of art, genius, and paranoia. I’m not sure it is horror, but it is good fiction. Douglas Smith’s “By Her Hand She Draws You Down” is a chilling weird tale of an artist with a great hunger. “Oh Death Where is Thy Spatula” by Poppy Z. Brite is a pleasantly grotesque story about food and death, but it takes itself a bit too seriously. It doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the title. Dennis Etchison gives us the disturbing “Got to Kill Them All” (love that title) in which a man planning a murder makes a new friend.

“First, Catch Your Demon” by Graham Joyce is one of the most gripping and repulsive (I mean that in a good way) pieces of erotic fiction I’ve read in a while. A man on a Mediterranean island meets a beautiful mysterious stranger with an affinity for scorpions. Fun ensues. “Simeon Dimsby’s Workshop” by Richard A. Lupoff is a charming story of a writer meeting his favorite illustrator for the first time. I think the shocking conclusion is actually a bit obvious, but it is still a nice, creepy tale. “Our Temporary Supervisor” by Thomas Ligotti is one of the best pieces in the book. The supervisor at the factory has to go to the home office and is replaced by what can only be described as a malign presence. This is a weird tale mixed with a modern worker’s nightmare. It shouldn’t work, but it does. “Off the Map” by Michael Chislett is about a man who likes to explore London with his A to Z, but there is a spot that not in the guide, where the normal laws of time and space are suspended. Just a nice weird tale, very well told.

As I said, there are a few stories that just didn’t work for me, and a few that were good, but not really outstanding. Still, there is enough excellent fiction here that a horror fan really should check this out.

Now then, how about a pointless comparison? Which is the best of the two best books? It really is an apples and oranges study, as the Datlow/Windling also contains the best fantasy. But just for fun let’s pretend that I’m to be the editor of a new anthology, a best of the best. I’ll call it The Haunted Anthology of the Best Horror Fiction of the Best “Best of” Anthologies. Catchy huh? Here are my picks:

“Prussian Snowdrops” by Marion Arnott
“Outfangthief” by Gala Blau
“The God of Dark Laughter” by Michael Chabon
“Trading Hearts at the Half Kaffe Café” by Charles De Lint
“Got to Kill Them All” Dennis Etchison
“Crocodile Lady” by Christopher Fowler
“Cleopatra Brimstone” by Elizabeth Hand
“Struwwelpeter” by Glen Hirshberg
“Black Dust” by Graham Joyce
“First, Catch Your Demon” by Graham Joyce
“Mark of the Beast” by Chico Kidd
“Onion” by Caitlín R. Kiernan
“Our Temporary Supervisor” by Thomas Ligotti
“Gestella” by Susan Palwick
“Annabelle’s Alphabet” by Tim Pratt
“By Her Hand She Draws You Down” by Douglas Smith
“The Bird Catcher” by S.P. Somotow
“The Puppet and the Train” by Scott Thomas

I got a few more stories from Datlow/Windling than from Jones, so there’s my pointless answer to my pointless question. If you want to read The Haunted Anthology of the Best Horror Fiction of the Best “Best of” Anthologies you’ll just have to buy both books. Which is really not a bad idea.

Book 11:57 AM [+]
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A Series of Unfortunate Events? – Or something much more sinister? That’s what parents in the Limpopo area of South Africa are asking about their kid’s high school. One student died of a sudden illness. This was followed four days later by a knife fight that ended in death for a sixteen year old. The next day a fourteen year old hanged himself. Since then there has been more violence. Parents have pulled their kids out of class and are raising money for a witch-sniffer. Police have warned them about vigilante action, but they are determined. Last week they found one of the witch’s spies, a baboon, and killed it. Kids have now returned to class, and things seem to be calming down, but I have a feeling that more innocent blood will be shed before this is over.
Book 8:32 PM [+]
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Murder, Manhunt, and Magic – Their only evidence an exsanguinated torso, Scotland Yard investigators have made their way to Nigeria. There they have been introduced to the world of ju-ju. Their education includes discovering which animal parts are for sale at the ju-ju market, which parts of a human are eaten for various purposes, and what is the best color to dress a human sacrifice in. The policeman’s lot is surely not a happy one.
Book 8:11 PM [+]
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The Mystery of the River Ethiope – Why does it only kill strangers? Is there a goddess living in the waters? Do locals leave their bad fortune on its banks for strangers to find? Is there hidden treachery in these clear sparkling waters of Nigeria?
Book 7:51 PM [+]
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Mannerist Fantasy – (book notes) – The Fall of Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman – Fans of Ellen Kushner have been waiting more than a decade for a sequel to Swordspoint. When I saw The Fall of Kings I thought “Oh well, still no sequel, but if Ellen Kushner and her partner Delia Sherman wrote it, I’ll probably want to read it.” Imagine my surprise when I started reading only to discover that this was, in fact, the long awaited sequel. I suppose the publisher didn’t make a big deal about it as this book can be read without having read its predecessor. Swordspoint was unusual among fantasy novels in that it contained no fantasy elements. No magic, no monsters, no rings of power. The only thing that put it in the genre at all was that the world it took place in never existed. It was a highly mannered pseudo-European pre-industrial place, a swirl of medieval, Renaissance and Regency. It was a world where kings had been replaced by a council of nobles generations ago, where nobles lived behind walls to separate themselves from the rough and tumble of the streets, and where duels were commonplace. A class of professional duelers had developed. Complex and rigid social codes allowed for nobles to employ these swordsmen to fight and die in their place. It was a fantasy not of wizards and dragons, but of politics, social conventions, rules of etiquette, and style. Owing less to Tolkien than to Georgette Heyer, it was original, witty, and charming.

The Fall of Kings takes place a generation later. The tradition of dueling and swordsmen has passed, the tradition of political infighting has not. As in Swordspoint this culture has no taboo against homosexual love, and as in that book the protagonists are lovers. Not a young rebellious student noble and a master swordsman this time, but the son of that noble, also a student, and a master of history at the university. Again a duel is at the center of the story, but this time it is an academic debate. As you might expect, there is a swirl of plotting and intrigue about our two lovers, and Kushner and Sherman’s cast of well drawn characters engage in a minuet of such interlocking intrigue that no one character ever has the complete picture.

While I was reading this book people would occasionally ask me what it was about. When I was about halfway through I would tell them that it was mostly conversations over food and drink and gay sex. Sensuality has always played a big part in Ellen Kushner’s writing (I’m not as familiar with Delia Sherman’s work) and reading her usually makes me hungry. As for the sex, it is nothing that you haven’t probably seen in a steamy romance novel, only this time both characters are men. If the idea of well written gay erotica is something you don’t think you can handle, that’s your loss. Anyway, all the drinking, dallying, and plotting are leading up to something kind of surprising: magic. As in the first book people generally believe that historical accounts of wizards were just superstitious foolishness, but at the center of this story is an historian’s research into the true nature of the ancient land-based fertility magic that once ruled the kingdom. This magic is both appealing and terrifying, and its discovery leads to events that are magnificent and tragic. The descriptive language is powerfully evocative, redolent of magic itself. It is a satisfying sequel that leaves us with only one unanswered question – how long will we have to wait for the next one?

Book 1:00 PM [+]
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Convertible – A guy in Holland has designed a dual purpose bookcase. When you no longer have any use for books your friends will pull out the shelves, lay it flat, lay you out, and nail the shelves down across the top. It even comes with built-in wooden handles for your pallbearers.
Book 7:58 PM [+]
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Just Routine Police Work – Until recently Katele Kalumba was Zambia’s most wanted man. The former foreign minister was a fugitive for three months, eluding police through the use of witchcraft. The police fought fire with fire, employed a little magic of their own, and caught their man. Now everyone is denying everything. Kalumba says the witchy paraphernalia was planted on him, while the police say they used no unusual techniques in the manhunt. The quote of the week: “But police said that, apart from the lack of underpants and their urination on traditional herbs found at Kalumba's hideaway, it was a conventional operation.”
Book 6:16 PM [+]
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In the Ghoul-Haunted Woodland of Weir – (book notes) – Night in the Lonesome October by Richard Laymon – Folks who have been haunting this blog for a while know that I have something of a love/hate relationship with the works of Richard Laymon. He was always in total control of his prose, his pacing was excellent, and his plots were exciting. On the other hand his characters, while pretty well drawn and sometimes sympathetic, often act as if they were more interested in advancing Laymon’s plot than in using common sense. Not that people always use common sense in real life, but there was often an artificial feeling to the character’s decisions. In Night in the Lonesome October Laymon largely avoided that pitfall by giving us a character who is just getting over a painful break-up. His emotions are in a roil so his bizarre and obsessive behavior is somewhat more understandable. Laymon also wisely invokes Edgar Poe in his title and his protagonist’s name, suggesting that Ed may be following his own “imp of the perverse.”

Ed is a normal guy living in what seems to be in a normal college town. Upset over his recent break-up, he decides to take a late night walk and quickly discovers that after the sun goes down his town becomes populated with some very strange people. It is in this night world that he first spots a pretty young woman who seems to court danger. He becomes obsessed with meeting her, an obsession that puts him at some risk. He enters a world of night-people, some good, some weird, and some evil. Laymon created a fun-house mirror of a quiet little town, some parts warped just a little, some changed to fantastical proportions.

In many ways this is the most satisfying Laymon novel I’ve read. At night his town takes on a edge that can give you the creeps even when the protagonist is just walking down the street. The object of Ed’s obsession is a fascinating character who lives in the spaces that the rest of us abandon when we sleep. There are quiet, amusing little passages and edge of your seat thrills. So what’s not to like?

Well, as with other Laymon novels I’ve read there are moments when the characters do or say things that feel contrived. There is a chapter in which a few of the characters discuss literature. Nothing wrong with this, the characters are college students. It just felt as if they occasionally stopped being characters and instead became a way for the author to express his literary opinions. Also, it seems that in every Laymon novel there will be a passage where a woman will be naked and bound, a woman will do something physically heroic while naked or dressed in something flimsy or kinky, and a woman will perform or be made to perform sexually. We saw it in The Travelling Vampire Show, In the Dark, and Island. As the novel moved along I began to hope that we might not see it here. No such luck. Not that I mind a little bizarre sex in my fiction. Not at all. It is just that it feels so contrived. It is almost as if Richard Laymon would occasionally lay aside his considerable skills as a writer so that he could present us with his favorite S&M tableau. Ultimately uneven, with passages that felt real and natural next to passages that felt artificial and forced, this novel will fully satisfy the many devoted fans of the late Richard Laymon, but will leave a lot of the rest of us wanting more – and less.

Book 9:56 PM [+]
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It’s Rung Down the Curtain and Joined the Choir Invisible – How’s this for weird? When I got to work this morning there was a dead hawk on our front doorstep. Guess who had to wrap up the raptor? When I got home I consulted my Sibley. I think it was a red-tail hawk, possibly a juvenile. Pity.
Book 10:25 PM [+]
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Where is Herbert West When We Need Him? – You and your husband join a cult. So far so good. The cult leader and his family move in with you. Great. The leader tells you that you have to fast for forty days. Kind of tough, what with your husband being diabetic and all, but if the leaders says so then it must be right. Then your husband dies. Sad? No, the leader has said he can resurrect the dead. Yes, of course he can. But this might take a few weeks. Better nip down to the store and pick up some room deodorizers.
Book 10:48 PM [+]
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Blimp Horror – You have not known horror until you have experienced Blimp Horror. Read it. Now. Trust me on this one. (link via: Sore Eyes)
Book 10:00 PM [+]
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Greece Returns to the Middle Ages – The Greek government has banned a book for heresy. Or maybe blasphemy. I’m not sure, but I do know the book looks goofy. And Greece looks goofier.
Book 9:56 PM [+]
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Mina Harker, Fag Hag? – A new theory says that Dracula was a gay fantasy. Now I don’t have any problem with gay vampires, but I do have a question about the folks who come up with radical new interpretations of old books. Do they actually bother to read them? (via: New World Disorder)
Book 9:49 PM [+]
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Worse Than You Imagined – In the 14th century The Plague devastated Europe. Millions sickened and died, the dead began to outnumber the living, and whole communities withered away. Centuries later it is an interesting historical study. We can imagine what life was like for the survivors, try to gauge the effect the horror had upon Western Culture, and investigate the strange and superstitious culture of early Christian Europe as it faced the cataclysm. The research is fascinating and terrible, but not frightening, as we have the distance of history to protect us.

In the 21st century AIDS is devastating southern Africa. Millions are dying and whole countries will be depopulated. The billions that President Bush promised will help, but not enough. This report gives it to you straight and dirty, with a fascinating and terrible look at the traditions and superstitions that are helping to make the crisis worse (via: Arts & Letters Daily).

Book 4:54 PM [+]
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From Hell – Nasty Newsflash. Police in Philadelphia were called to the scene of an abandoned house yesterday where a body had been found. They soon discovered that he had a rope around his neck, he had been cut open from nave to chops, and his internal organs had been removed. This leaves police and those of us with macabre imaginations with a question -- what does one do with a heart, lungs and “other organs” once you have them?
Book 2:50 PM [+]
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