Today, dear listener, we rush around like headless sausages to cover two bits of news – a forthcoming tribute anthology themed on the work of Stefan Grabinski, and an enthusiastic review of Thana Niveau’s recent collection of horror stories, Octoberland.

The lurchers, and even poor old John Linwood Grant’s own work, will have to wait for another day. To proceed…

---

GRABBED BY GRABINSKI

Stefan Grabinski (1887-1936) was a Polish writer who produced some most striking tales of weird and supernatural fiction during the early Twentieth century. In latter days he’s been compared to Poe and Lovecraft, but to be honest, he’s in a class of his own – his story ‘The Wandering Train’ still disturbs us. China Mieville said of him, a while back:

“Sometimes (he) is known as “the Polish Poe”, but this is misleading. Where Poe’s horror is agonised, a kind of extended shriek, Grabinski’s is cerebral, investigative. His protagonists are tortured and aghast, but not because they suffer at the caprice of Lovecraftian blind idiot gods: Grabinski’s universe is strange and its principles are perhaps not those we expect, but they are principles – rules – and it is in their exploration that the mystery lies. This is horror as rigour.”

The Guardian (2003)

One of the problems has always been getting decent translations – the nuances of weird and surreal fiction don’t always translate well, because so much meaning can be in the precise words, their sound and ‘feel’, which the writers use. But that situation is ameliorated by the 2012 edition of the Mirosla Lipinski translation, which is a good introduction to Grabinski’s work.

http://amzn.eu/d/4qEc35a

Some of it’s dark stuff, so be warned. He has a thing for trains and the weaving of the weird and the (his) modern world which fascinates, giving many of the stories a quite different feel from some of his Western contemporaries. If this were not enough to endear his work to us, we might note one of Mieville’s other comments in the same article:

“Grabinski has several stylistic tics, and the only one that sometimes grates is his prediliction for ending paragraphs with ellipses…”

Well, gosh, do we love our ellipses here at greydogtales…

---

IN STEFAN’S HOUSE

So why do we mention this Grabinski fellow at the moment? Because Dunham Manor Press is putting together a tribute anthology. We’re keen to see this one come out so we can have a good flick through. Dunham have a very modest campaign going to raise enough money to give the contributors a penny or two, and we think it’s worth a look. It also has cover art by Paul (Mutartis) Boswell, an illustrator who has begun to make a name for himself on a number of excellent weird fiction projects.

“Jordan Krall here from DUNHAMS MANOR PRESS. I want to publish this excellent collection of stories that are inspired by Stefan Grabiński. Money raised will go to the authors and artists involved including Brian Evenson, Steve Rasnic Tem, Damian Murphy, Christian Wiessner, Michael Faun, C.M. Muller, Ron Wier, Michael R. Colangelo, Trevor Kroger, Liam Garriock, William Tea, and more.

“And yes, I know that Grabinski wasn’t ALL about trains… but personally, that’s what really attracted me to his work. My father (who is now on hospice care) worked for NJ Transit for over 40 years and so anything railroad related really hits home for me.

“The plan is to start this shipping in January 2019.”

The campaign details can be found here:

in stefan’s house

---

---

OCTOBERLAND CONQUERS NOVEMBER

Thana Niveau is neither Polish (as far as we know) nor was she around to ride Grabinski’s trains. A contemporary, self-described ‘horror freak, SF geek, sister of dragons and occasional werewolf’, she had a novel, The House of Frozen Screams, released in October 2018 by Horrific Tales.

Thana now has a collection of her short fiction available from PS Publishing. The latter is described thus:

“Thana Niveau’s stories feature people on the edge – the edge of death, the edge of sanity, the edge of reality. In this diverse collection, two sisters leave a trail of bodies behind them as they go on the run, desperate to outrun the dark secrets of their past. A film fan is haunted by the actress whose brutal horror films he can’t stop watching. A child hears a ghostly voice through the radio reciting only numbers. And a young woman revisits the place she and her brother loved above all else—Octoberland—the strange amusement park that tore their world apart. Horror wears many faces here, from creeping dread to apocalyptic devastation, and no one escapes its dark touch.”

Here’s what one of our roving reviewers, Paul St John Mackintosh, has to say about this new collection…

---

A Review of Octoberland by Thana Niveau

by Paul St John Mackintosh

(PS Publishing, 358 pages)

First lines matter a lot in short stories. That’s a well-worn truth that many modern writers seem to forget. If you can’t hook the reader from the off, you might as well give up. If La Rochefoucauld can accomplish more in a single epigram than you can in an entire story, then you have a genuine problem. You can’t rely on your cultural kudos, artistic or intellectual aspirations, or reputation to keep eyes moving down the page: you have to snag them.

Fortunately, in Octoberland Thana Niveau crafts, dresses, barbs and baits her hooks so alluringly that the reader will be caught gasping and twitching until the tail end of the tale. “We buried the first body in the woods behind a bar called the ‘Nite Owl’.” (‘Going to the Sun Mountain’) “It was just after the funeral that the cities began to call to me.” (‘The Language of the City’) “SENSATIONAL! The WONDER of the Century! A DREAM of Figure Perfection!” (‘Tentacular Spectacular’) “You’re not supposed to go in there!” (‘Little Devils’) “Murderer!” (‘Wasps’) If those first lines don’t keep you reading, wanting to know what’s behind them and what happens next, I’d be very surprised.

It’s not just about semantic openness, and statements that demand an explication. It’s also about vividness, colour, tone, topic, suggestion. A collection with story titles like ‘The Call of the Dreaming Moon’, ‘No History of Violence’, ‘Death Walks en Pointe’ and ‘The Calling of Night’s Ocean’ is already off to a good start in that regard. The 25 stories in Thana Niveau’s collection are brief, condensed, strikingly imagined, vivid, relentless. The physical quality of the volume is up to PS Publishing’s usual excellent standard, and the cover art by Daniele Serra is a draw all in itself.

Let’s be clear: this is not New Weird, strange tales, dark fantasy, or occult detection. Most of the content is sheer, unapologetic horror. It’s not fey, teasing divagations from social and perceptual norms. It’s not gentle, almost imperceptible pickings at the fabric of consensus reality. It’s not slight intimations of unease born of absences and ambiguities. It’s full-on, full-blooded assaults on your acute stress response, executed with all the gusto of slasher fiction, but none of its cheap sensationalism. You want literally chilling juxtaposition of social media with ancient tradition? You got it. (‘The Face’) You want Mesoamerican apocalypse? You got it. (‘Xibalba’) You want snuff movie fans meeting their hideous consummation? You got it. (‘Guinea Pig Girl.’) You want harsh, acid social retribution? You got it. (‘No History of Violence’) Here and there there’s a hiss of steampunk, a flicker of faerie, but hardly anything to lift the dire, ferocious mood. The nearest this volume gets to a refusal to depict and craft its horrors is the things that aren’t there, in the tale of the same name, and their absences and void spaces are as frightful as most stories’ demons.

Do any of the stories under-deliver on their promise? At times that’s bound to occur, especially in such a voluminous and diverse collection, but it doesn’t happen often. Even when the narratives have to boil down the wonderful suggestiveness of their openings to concrete resolutions, Thana Niveau’s excellent prose is usually on hand to save the day, and finish the job with an appropriately resonant resolution. More than a few do the exact opposite, and end in a completely unexpected, disorienting denouement.

Out of all the horror books I’ve read this year, this is probably the one I’ll be returning to most often in future, thinking “How can I do something like that?” and just “Wow.” A striking showcase of some marvellous work in the genre, and a superb demonstration that horror, in its purest, strictest sense, is more imaginative, diverse, cruelly elegant and finely crafted than it’s ever been.

---

Octoberland also appears to be available from Amazon as an ebook in the UK, but only as a hardback in the US. Try the links and see what options you get:

UK http://amzn.eu/d/8ZPvgHV

US http://a.co/d/44emc6p

---

---

For listeners of a loyal disposition, you can find dear greydog‘s most recent stuff all over the place (as he usually is), including:

http://amzn.eu/d/8TGISXi

http://a.co/d/9FbdP5Q

http://a.co/d/5XlGOPD

http://amzn.eu/d/ggRsgrL

http://amzn.eu/d/b7OFFXW

---

---

Some eighteen months ago I wrote a paragraph which turned into a year long project:

“Sealed records from Scotland Yard, now opened, note that Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, the senior investigating officer on the Whitechapel murders, was provided with the sum of 1000 guineas in October 1888. Swanson’s instructions were apparently to put an end to the killings ‘by whatever means necessary’. What happened to the money is not known.”

As a result, writer and artist Alan M Clark asked me if I would be willing to write about what that implied, and in the process, work with him on a conclusion to his thoughtful and humane series of historical novels about the women who died during Whitechapel’s Autumn of Terror. Reconstructions, fictional but faithful, of the lives of the women themselves.

I have a lot of respect for Alan’s approach, and in the end, the only way I could do his ideas justice was to explore a female protagonist of my own, Catherine Weatherhead. A young woman whose life ran alongside Mary Jane Kelly’s, but at a distance.

Being me, I also chose to include many aspects of period spiritualism alongside the historical setting and events, and to let in questions of the Aether and the nature of psychic powers. This brought my contribution in line with my longer series on murder and the supernatural, Tales of the Last Edwardian. So it’s almost a prequel to some of my other stories, in fact, and introduces characters also to be found in the early 1900s – especially the feared Deptford Assassin. Here,  you finally find out how he earned that title.

Not only did we construct our own takes on these Victorian lives in our individual books, but we worked closely together on the concept of an interwoven version, where readers could get the whole picture, as it were. This involved repeated cross-checking of the minutiae of dates and timing, character interactions across both books, and the pacing of the final outcome in November 1888. But we got there.

That book, 13 Miller’s Court, which contains both of our novels interleaved, is out today –  on the one hundred and thirtieth anniversary of Mary Jane Kelly’s death. We have tried to serve her with respect and honesty…

---

---

Announcing the Release of 13 MILLER’S COURT

Two young women walk the streets of London, barely aware of each other’s existence. Each pursues a course that puts her at risk, but whilst Catherine Weatherhead contemplates exposure and failure, Mary Jane Kelly must fear for her very life.

13 Miller’s Court brings their stories together in one volume, their struggles and hopes interwoven in a vista of 1880s London where no one person sees everything. Or do they?

The city has a killer at its heart, and both women know who he is. He moves in shadow, and he does whatever suits his purposes – nor does it seem that anyone can stop him. Is he the solution to their problems, or one more terror they must face?

The death of Martha Tabram, on 7th August 1888, changes everything. For Martha, born in Catherine’s Southwark and killed in Mary Jane’s Whitechapel, poses a new question.

Are there now two monsters in London Town?

Perspectives and secrets; revenge and rivalries. Bloody murder, and two women caught up in the storm. Read 13 Miller’s Court and learn about the human cost of the Autumn of Terror.

---

“I met yuir man once, after the end, aye – if man he was. I met him, and saw those eyes for myself. I would nae put that sight into yuir head, not if you filled my cap with sovereigns. When next I stand by St Peter’s Kirk, I’ll pray on those old stones and ask. Did I do the Lord’s work, or someone else’s?”

Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, Scotland Yard

---

13 Miller’s Court is comprised of two novels: The Assassin’s Coin, by John Linwood Grant (which is also an early, crucial story of his mysterious and deadly character Edwin Dry, the Deptford Assassin), and The Prostitute’s Price, by Alan M. Clark, about the life of Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth book in his Jack the Ripper Victims series. The authors wrote the novels as companion pieces. Both books are previously released by IFD Publishing.

Though the two stories are whole and appear separately in paperbacks and ebooks, they are larger still when read together, each with its own point-of-view protagonist. Here IFD Publishing presents the stories together in one book, their chapters alternating. They share the same timeline, some characters and scenes. Both tales lead the reader to 13 Miller’s Court itself, a room made infamous during the Autumn of Terror.

Watch the book trailer

13 Miller’s Court – Available now on Amazon in the States, and due any day in the UK

http://a.co/d/cjEZXTN

---

---

THE INDIVIDUAL NOVELS

The Prostitute’s Price

A novel that beats back our assumptions about the time of Jack the Ripper. A tale of Mary Jane Kelly, a woman alive with all the emotional complexity of women today. Running from a man and her past, she must recover a valuable necklace and sell it to escape London. Driven by powerful, conflicting emotions, she tries to sneak past the deadly menace that bars her exit.

The Assassin’s Coin

She is Catherine Weatherhead, and she is Madame Rostov. She will lie. She will deceive. She will change the course of history, for she is haunted, and murder speaks to her. In Whitechapel, all talk is of the one they call Jack the Ripper, but there is another killer in play, and he most definitely has a name. Mr Edwin Dry, the Deptford Assassin. The truth is not what you believe. It is what Catherine and Mr Dry make it.

---

---

We’ll be back in a couple of days with all sorts of other weird news…

We should probably explain, in case you have a headache. The non-mystery of greydogtales is that we wander all over the place, from lurchers, through strange detectives and Edwardian trivia, to weird and horror fiction.  THERE IS NO PLAN! All is whim and confused fancy, so the easiest way to not miss anything is to subscribe for free, on the left. No chicken carcass salespeople will call, and your home is not at risk. Not from us, anyway. So, let’s get on…

Where do you come from? Despite H P Lovecraft’s considerable influence on weird fiction, some of us only found the guy from Providence after we had already gone weird. It may be a Britlander thing, but we ourselves were steeped in the dark and/or wry fiction of Emily Bronte, William Hope Hodgson, H G Wells, Saki and Jerome K Jerome before ever we trod Arkham. Our own main influences can be found in those and other early writers, with HPL  following on later, extending the tendrils of cosmic horror which arose in the last days of the Victorian era. It’s probably why old greydog only visits Lovecraftland in his writing on those rare occasions when the Muse has a coughing fit and spits on his shoulder.

However, one independent publisher which has done a lot to explore HPL’s themes imaginatively is the Canadian Martian Migraine Press, helmed by Scott R Jones. There’s always something exciting and different about their anthologies, taking cosmic horror in new directions, re-interpreting Lovecraftian concepts, or simply going deep into the roots of humanity, perception, and madness.

Today we cover their 2017 anthology A Breath from the Sky, reviewed by one of our guest reviewers, author Matt Willis. We asked Matt to have a look at this anthology because no less than six of the stories within were recently given a nod by Ellen Datlow in her Best Horror of the Year (Volume 10). Particularly noted were authors Premee Mohamed, Megan Arkenberg, Cody Goodfellow, Aaron Vlek, Gordon B. White, and Jonathan Raab. A well-deserved moment for the authors and for Martian Migraine.

Oh, and there are loads of new, interesting weird fiction and horror books out at the moment. We’ll try and mention some of them next time…

NOTE: As usual, any opinions expressed below are those of the individual reviewer.

---

---

A Breath from the Sky – Unusual Stories of Possession

Editor – Scott R Jones

Martian Migraine Press, 2017

Reviewed by Matt Willis

Having written several stories recently on the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the vessels it can occupy, I was interested to read A Breath from the Sky – Unusual Stories of Possession, and in terms of the sheer breadth of possibilities in this concept I was not disappointed. The collection is not perfect, but anyone who is interested in the idea will find something to intrigue and entertain them.

Editing a themed anthology is no simple business. At the point you send out your open call or your invitations, you lose control of the idea, and when the stories come back, with all those myriad interpretations of the brief, you have to re-establish it as best you can. A good anthology has to not just contain a selection of great stories, it has to hang together as a book as well as any novel, take the reader on a meaningful journey rather than throw them aimlessly from point to point. The choice of stories must be as much for how well they complement the collection as for individual quality.

It can also be a thankless business – readers will inevitably prefer the styles of some writers over others and will inevitably have subjective ideas about what a short story should look like, and how the experience of reading one should be. If there’s something for everyone, there is inevitably nothing that will please everybody. There is, it should be said, much to please readers of short weird and horror fiction.

It felt to me at first that A Breath from the Sky might have set itself too difficult a task to fully succeed. The first angle was to produce a collection of ‘strange tales of possession’, which the anthology certainly is. There are as many different angles to the concept of ‘possession’ here as it is possible to imagine.

In addition though, it tied itself to the HP Lovecraft story ‘The Colour Out Of Space’ as an additional inspiration and hook. I couldn’t help feeling that this additional angle to the theme left A Breath From The Sky sometimes pulling in too many directions. A collection of tales inspired by the Lovecraft story would perhaps have been thematically more cohesive, as would a collection that sought to explore every conceivable angle of possession. In trying to do both, A Breath from the Sky sometimes feels a touch confused. Placing the Lovecraft story third in the running order is symptomatic of this. We’ve barely been introduced to the idea before being taken straight to Lovecraft’s lengthy story of a meteorite and the strange effects it starts to have on a remote area west of Arkham, Massachusetts which, as the collection’s introduction admits, is not overtly a story about possession. This is reinforced by following the story with the only other tale in the collection that is obviously inspired by it, ‘The Monsters Are Due In Mayberry’, by Edward Morris – a few others reference it obliquely, but before and after that double bill, ‘The Colour out of Space’ doesn’t seem to command much influence over the book. Perhaps it would have made sense in this instance to leave it out…

For all that, A Breath from the Sky is home to some fabulous stories, and, as I’ve already alluded to, the variation of interpretations of the concept of possession is in itself impressive. These range from the straightforward tale of a demonic entity inhabiting a human body to much less obvious treatments – strange sounds and signals that appear to take over the personality, seemingly human consciousnesses that find themselves in bodies that don’t belong to them, technology that starts to turn people into something else… There are allegories and fables, and possibly the odd warning.

With due consideration of the fact that everyone’s preferences will be different, I felt this collection really hit its stride about halfway through with a strong run of stories beginning with ‘Viscera’, by Sam Schreiber. This is a story that seems to be about a relatively straightforward demon possession but rapidly evolves into something else. The “demon” Solmaz, who can taste human souls and has disturbing appetites, is an engaging narrator and the story takes an unexpected turn which might be a metaphor for current gender politics or just an imaginative take on “the ghost in the machine”. It’s followed by ‘Everything Wants To Live’ by Luke R.J. Maynard, a refreshingly original rumination on the ever closer relationship between humans and technology and the blurring of the lines between them.

‘The Evaluator’ by Premee Mohamed is reminiscent of an old-fashioned occult detective story with a hardboiled narration and a genuinely chilling adversary with a surprise nature. Of all the stories that echo the “blasted heath” setting of the Lovecraft tentpole story, I felt this one did so with the most originality. ‘Open Night At The Dirtbag Casino’ by Gordon B. White tells of an entity stuck in a brutally Sisyphus-esque routine with no idea why or how they ended up that way, or what their endless ordeal has made of them. ‘But Thou, Proserpina, Sleep’ by Megan Arkenburg an unsettling, poetry-punctuated tale of a visitor who comes through a blizzard into the home of a reclusive academic, was, for me, a highlight.

Overall, A Breath from the Sky is well worthy of attention despite its flaws, which rather pale beside the quality of the writing. The collection is at its best when it has something to say about what it means to be human in the late modern era.

Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/d/eUhm2Sa

Amazon US http://a.co/d/8EVEyR7

---

---

Matt Willis‘s latest book is A Black Matter for the King, available in paperback and on Kindle now:

Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/d/5QDtg4e

Amazon US http://a.co/d/g3VBHgg