Short story deadlines, anthologies and collection have rather consumed my time so far this year, but today we’re fortunate to have one of Dave Brzeski’s in-depth reviews covering, well, quite a lot. New Meteor House publications, and the strange worlds of Philip José Farmer, especially that of the Secrets of the Nine…

SECRETS OF THE NINE

by Dave Brzeski

It’s that time again, when I review the new books from Meteor House. This year, they’re pretty special.

Two out of the three are follow-ups to Philip José Farmer’s classic Secrets of the Nine series, which comprise: A Feast Unknown (1969), Lord of the Trees (1970) & The Mad Goblin (1970).

The series as a whole, and the new books, It’s Always Darkest, by Frank Schildiner, and The Monster on Hold, by Philip José Farmer & Win Scott Eckert, were discussed at length on the Secrets of the Nine panel at Farmercon XVI (2021). It’s well worth watching. It can be found on YouTube, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73cKxYR2PSI

FRANK SCHILDINER – IT’S ALWAYS DARKEST

I’m very familiar with Schildiner’s work, both in, and outside of Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe, so I had no doubt I’d find this short novel of interest.

The original three books by Farmer tell the story of how Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban (unashamed pastiches of Tarzan and Doc Savage) turned against the mysterious Nine – a group of immortals who have manipulated World events in the background, since pre-history. I don’t really want to go into too much detail about that, as it’s all well-covered in that video. Do go watch it.

Whereas Grandith (pronounced Grunith), and Doc Caliban are fighting directly against the Nine, Schildiner’s Langston Dupont takes a more street level approach, in battling the various organisations which support them – be it knowingly, or otherwise.

Dupont is not so much a pastiche of any particular character. He’s more of a conglomerate of all the many dozens of Dark Avenger type heroes of the pulps, and comics, such as The Shadow, Batman etc. Dupont, however, does not operate under a codename, nor does he have a team of aides, in the way that the Shadow and Doc Savage do. He appears to work alone, for the most part, but his martial arts skills, and part-Asian heritage set him apart.

When it comes to battling The Nine themselves, Dupont quickly realises that he’s outclassed, so he goes to work chipping away at their organisation at the lower levels, taking out their agents as and when he can. As with all such pulp heroes, he has a nemesis, but this time it’s the woman he loves. Like Grandith & Caliban, Dupont also served the Nine for a very long time, before all three defected. Dupont’s criminal mastermind ex, Seiko Midori, sadly still follows her evil masters.

As I have come to expect from Schildiner, It’s Always Darkest is a fast-paced and very enjoyable pulp adventure. It is, it can’t be denied, rather violent, just as the Farmer series (especially A Feast Unknown) was. It’s also set in the 70s, and the author has intentionally styled it after the popular men’s adventure magazines, and paperback series of that period. Schildiner is, in fact, a mixed martial arts instructor by profession, so his fight scenes couldn’t be any more authentic. The man knows what he’s talking about!

If I really, really wanted to nitpick, it would be that I noticed some repetition in that Dupont comments on the woeful lack of taste of no less than three people, despite their advantages in looks/wealth and power. I can’t see that having passed the notice of the editors, so I’m going to assume it’s simply a character trait of Dupont’s – perhaps he’s a bit of a snob.

The book does work perfectly well as a stand-alone, but there is one seemingly minor scene, which might not mean much to those who don’t also read The Monster on Hold.

I do rather hope to read more of Dupont’s adventures in the future, whether, or not they involve The Nine.

The gorgeous cover and interior art are by Keith Howell!

Find it here: https://meteorhousepress.com/its-always-darkest/

NB: This is a limited (150 copies) signed hardcover only, so if you want it, you should order it quickly!

PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER – THE MAN WHO MET TARZAN

The second book I’m covering here is a bit different, in that The Man Who Met Tarzan is non-fiction. I’ll save myself some typing by cut & pasting directly from the press release…

“Most people familiar with Philip José Farmer know of his Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke. In fact many became fans of Farmer because of this book. Less well known are the many other articles, essays, letters, and speeches Farmer wrote about Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan over a span of several decades. This collection, The Man Who Met Tarzan, brings many of these together culminating in the high point of his actually interviewing Lord Greystoke himself!”

I’m not going to individually cover every separate piece presented here. That would take too long. Let me start, however, with a warning!…

If you’re one of those people who’ve never read Farmer’s Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke, or Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, you may not be aware of the danger. This book will suck you in! Of particular note are the two connected pieces, ‘Some Problems in Writing the Tarzan Biography’ and ‘The Great Korak Time Discrepancy’. If you didn’t previously consider yourself anal enough to care about discrepancies in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, then there’s a good chance this will change your mind. And once you then inevitably buy a copy of Tarzan Alive… believe me, the list of books, by a multitude of authors, about a multitude of characters, that you absolutely need to get and read will grow exponentially. I write as one who fell into this trap back in the mid-seventies.

It can’t be denied that this book is a geek’s paradise. But don’t be put off if you don’t consider yourself to be all that nerdy. It is, in fact, far more entertaining a read than the concept suggests. I admit that I found ‘From ERB to Ygg’, which traces Edgar Rice Burrough’s family tree all the way back to the Norse god Woden (aka Odin, or Ygg), a little dry, and ended up skimming it, but that was just 9 pages out of over 250.

By the time we got to the real meat of the book, in the second half, I found it hard to put down, especially the ‘Extracts From the Memoirs of Lord Greystoke’, which clarified so much of the more unlikely elements of ERB’s novels, and ‘An Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke’, in which you can cut the tension between Farmer and the jungle lord with a knife.

It’s fascinating to follow the trains of thought of Farmer and others as they argue over the discrepancies in the fictionalised accounts, and try to rationalise them with the real life man who was Tarzan.

I was intrigued to read between the lines of some of the material written by Win Scott Eckert, and others which almost suggested that they didn’t really believe Farmer’s stance on Tarzan having been based on a real, living person… but I put that down to a continued effort to protect the jungle lord’s privacy.

This book is available in a Trade Paperback as well as a Signed Hardcover Limited Edition (signed by Christopher Paul Carey, Win Scott Eckert, Henry Franke, Keith Howell, and John Solie)!

The hardcover features a leatherette cover with gold foil stamping, colored end papers and two interior color images. A fine quality collectible edition to be sure.

As with It’s Always Darkest, there’s an interesting panel discussion of the book on YouTube, here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9BBYl6N9vs I encourage you all to go watch it.

It can be ordered in paperback, and hardcover here: https://meteorhousepress.com/the-man-who-met-tarzan/

PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER & WIN SCOTT ECKERT – THE MONSTER ON HOLD

Which brings me to the main event. The Monster on Hold is an almost legendary planned, but unwritten, fourth novel in the Secrets of the Nine series, by Philip José Farmer. It fell to Win Scott Eckert to complete the work from Farmer’s outline and notes, and I doubt the task could have fallen to anyone better suited.

Eckert stresses in the panel video linked at the top of this article that you really don’t need to read all the earlier material… but it does help. It doesn’t really matter which order you read them in (apart from the Secrets of the Nine series, which should be read in order), much in the way it doesn’t matter which areas of a jigsaw you fill in first, but reading them all does eventually lead to a clearer, bigger picture.

For my part, I had read some of the relevant works fairly recently – Escape to Loki (Farmer’s novel of the earliest adventure of Doc Savage), and The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (in which we learn much about the Eridani and the Capellas), and some so long ago that I decided a reread was in order. So I read the original Doc Savage pulp story, Up From Earth’s Center (it’s fairly easy to find this in a reprint, or even a free download if you hunt around), A Feast Unknown, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin again.

The Multiverse concept is pretty popular in the media these days. Both Marvel and DC have long used it to great effect in their comics, and this trend has increased dramatically in recent years. The idea has also now been embraced by the film and TV franchises based on their properties. The cynic in me does see this as a method by which they can justify the constant rebooting, and changing things from comic series to comic series, film to film, and TV series to TV series that we’ve – would ‘suffered’ be too strong a word? – over the last couple of decades.

Farmer and Eckert have put rather more thought into things. While it has been employed as a clever method to rationalise Farmer’s various Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches, and tie in several of his other ideas, in this case it very much serves the tale they wanted to tell… and it works so well. I think one of Eckert’s best contributions is in the subtle ways he highlights the differences between Doc Caliban, and Doc Savage (or I should probably refer to him as Doc Wildman – his real name).

The first part of this novel – Some Unspeakable Dweller (1977) – follows Doc Caliban in his continued fight against his former masters, The Nine. His position is now quite tenuous, as he is in constant threat of assassination if the agents of The Nine can track him down. Caliban and his companions beard one of the five remaining Nine in his den, and soon find themselves fighting for their lives. They also suffer some quite severe hallucinatory experiences.

In Part II – The Guardian at the Threshold (1984), Doc Caliban captures an agent of The Nine, who turns out to be his universe’s version of a character from that pulp adventure (he apparently having shared a similar story to that of Doc Wildman in the late 1940s). Now he began to understand the truth behind that first adventure. In the eighteenth century, The Nine had summoned an entity from an alternate dimension to help them quell a previous insurrection. Once done, they found they couldn’t banish it back from whence it came, so they now kept it in abeyance in a deep cave in New England, in a place which was in neither of Caliban and Wildman’s universes, but a bridge to both. Caliban is told that what remains of The Nine plan on making further use of this entity… until they finally put an end to Caliban, Grandrith and their friends. He also learns that it’s the source of the hallucinogenic visions that he, and his companions have been suffering from ever since the events of the first part. He doesn’t know what to believe for sure, but he knows he has to go back into that cave.

I was quite surprised at how strong the ties to the Doc Savage pulp, Up From Earth’s Center, were to The Monster on Hold. This seems to be in some ways an attempt by Farmer to rationalise what was really one of the weakest (and the last to be published in the pulp magazine) of the Doc Savage stories, which has been up to now pretty much dismissed as an imaginary tale, in that it just didn’t really work within the Doc Savage universe. The idea of the very rational science hero, Doc Savage, discovering that Hell really existed in the bowels of the Earth, and was accessible via some caves in New England was just a bit too silly. Farmer makes it work, though, and in the process, ties it all in to H.P. Lovecraft’s Chtulhu Mythos.

The third part – Down to Earth’s Centre (1984) – takes us with Caliban as he ventures back down into the caves which had so terrified him back in 1948 (I couldn’t help but wonder if the two dates were a nod to the original title, and publishing date, of Orwell’s 1984). Both hindered and helped by visions, in which he seems to be able to see through the eyes of the other, while that other can see through his eyes, he faces the most frightening experience of his long life.

It’s an exciting page-turner of an adventure to be sure, and great fun for all the Farmer fans who love to work out all the connections, but it’s so much more than that. The Monster on Hold, indeed the entire series, is also a fascinating look at the effect their extreme upbringing had on the psyches of young Grandith, and Caliban. They are immensely powerful, and intelligent heroes to be sure, but they are also so very damaged by their extremely unusual upbringings. This sort of thing has been attempted before with other heroes, most notably Batman, but never have I seen it done so well as Farmer (and Eckert) have done here. It’s quite an achievement. The moral implications of the methodology Doc Savage employed, in the earlier Doc Savage pulp adventures, to cure his enemies criminal tendencies is also brought into question.

The Monster On Hold does not end there, however. There’s a plethora of bonus material in the book, staring with a reprint of Win Scott Eckert’s ‘The Wild Huntsman’, originally published in The Worlds of Philip José Farmer, Volume 3: Portraits of a Trickster (Meteor House 2012). I’d read it in that original appearance, and while I did enjoy it, I have to say it worked so much better, re-reading it after reading all four of the Secrets of the Nine series, of which it’s an important part. Here, we discover how the Xaoxaz of one Earth discovered the existence of his counterpart on another, what he did next and how that ties in to the struggle between the Eridani and the Capellas on one Earth and the fall to Earth of a certain meteorite on another, bringing in the events of Time’s Last Gift, and so many other works along the way. Re-reading this story at this point took it from being a good Wold Newton tale to an essential, and excellent piece of a larger puzzle. It really needed to be included in this book.

The rest of the book is devoted to the various sources Eckert used to complete The Monster on Hold, from Farmer’s notes etc., which were found in what has become known as his ‘Magic Filing Cabinet’. First we get material scanned from Farmer’s handwritten notes, and typescripts. The handwritten notes are very interesting to see, but frankly, Farmer’s handwriting is almost as bad as mine, which makes it quite difficult to read. The typescripts are easier, of course, but they were presented as scans of the original pages, which means the text size is reduced considerably from the original letter-sized (8.5”x11”) pages. Of particular interest is a letter from Farmer to the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, discussing his plans for writing Escape From Loki, his canonical Doc Savage novel. It’s fascinating to see how his thoughts on The Monster on Hold were gradually taking shape, and how they changed over time.

‘Philip Jose Farmer’s Original Prose and Outline’ is pretty much what it says on the tin. First we get three chapters that Farmer wrote sometime in the 1970s – ‘Up From the Earth’s Centre’ (an earlier title for The Monster on Hold, used here to avoid confusion). Here we follow a character using the codename ‘Lacewing’ (a golden-eyed insect), as he takes a familiar trip into the bowels of the Earth. Given the similarities, and differences with the final novel – in fact Doc Wildman also uses that codename in one of Caliban’s visions – one could assume this took place in yet another alternate universe.

Following this, we get the remainder of Farmer’s comments from the 1983 World Fantasy Convention program, outlining the novel, followed by his original version of a first chapter.

At this point, dear reader, you may be forgiven for thinking that this is all much too complicated to deal with. But fear not; in ‘A Tale of Two Universes’, and ‘A Feast Revealed: A Chronology of Major Events Pertinent to the Secrets of the Nine Series’, Eckert goes to a lot of effort to clarify it all for us. Finally, in ‘A Note from the Coauthor’, he acknowledges his many sources, and lists all the pertinent books that we may want to read… and, yes, this does include a few I have yet to get to myself!

Featuring an introduction by Bronze Gazette editor Chuck Welch, The Monster on Hold is available in a Trade Paperback (featuring cover art by Doug Klauba – included in the hardcover as a full-colour frontispiece) and a Signed Hardcover Limited Edition (featuring a wraparound jacket by Mark Wheatley). Each edition also includes interior artwork by both artists. The hardcover is signed by Win Scott Eckert, Chuck Welch, Doug Klauba, and Mark Wheatley!

Find it here: https://meteorhousepress.com/the-monster-on-hold/

At the time of writing, all of the limited, signed hardcovers are almost sold out.

Whilst you’re pondering the above, why not have a look at John Linwood Grant’s own recent second collection,Where All is Night, and Starless (Trepidatio 2021). It’s not bad.

AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH AMAZON UK & US, AND THROUGH THE PUBLISHER, JOURNALSTONE

Amazon US: Where All is Night, and Starless

Amazon UK: Where All is Night, and Starless

As any fule kno, we do not cover the Beast That Is Poetry at greydogtales. Except when, occasionally, we do. Which is all very strange. However, we have two fine examples of this vexing animal in hand – Jessica McHugh’s Strange Nests, and Paul St John Mackintosh’s The Great Arcana, and they crept far enough into our kennel to deserve mentioning. These are two books of verse, but they’re as different as chalk and something which is definitely not chalk. Here’s a taste of them, both widely available now…

STRANGE NESTS by Jessica McHugh

Following her Bram Stoker and Elgin Award nominated collection, A Complex Accident of Life, Jessica McHugh draws this time on the Frances Hodgson Burnett classic, The Secret Garden, for a new collection of her blackout poetry*. What’s that, then? Essentially, blackout poetry is sculptural, carving away at an existing text until you’re left with the words you want.

A Complex Accident of Life, inspired by Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein, was our first extended exposure to the form, and we were sold – if not on everything about blackout poetry in general, certainly on McHugh’s remarkable ability to carve new and evocative meanings from literary monoliths. It’s a fascinating read, and now we have Strange Nests, which McHugh described to us as:

“A collection of horror blackout poetry exploring the consumptive and transformative power of grief.”

The Secret Garden is an interesting choice as a source text, and one of which we approve, as it is set in Yorkshire. We ourselves have a secret garden at the back of our Yorkshire hovel, but unlike that of Misselthwaite Manor, ours is a quagmire created by too many dogs digging and peeing on everything.

Here’s a sample of the unadorned text…

And here’s the graphic way in which McHugh works and presents the full form alongside the extracted core:

The venerable Ginger Nuts of Horror review site said of Strange Nests:

“A thought-provoking and powerful collection of short poems exploring a range of emotions and experiences that even a novice poetry reader can appreciate and learn from. It is worth a look, even if it is just to get a glimpse at the fascinating world of blackout poetry.”

https://gingernutsofhorror.com/fiction-reviews/book-review-strange-nests-by-jessica-mchugh

We agree. McHugh is a textual sculptress, and the reviewers are right, this one is definitely worth a look.

*If you’d like to know more about the form, there’s quite a lot of detail here:

the history of blackout poetry

And there’s an Amazon link here:

Given our second book of the week, mentioned below, we would like to have linked Frances Hodgson Burnett, and the tarot, but the chain is thin. Her own interest in the occult and spiritualism, which developed in later life, seems to have been more centred around theosophical concepts. She stated:

“I am not a Christian Scientist, I am not an advocate of New Thought, I am not a disciple of the Yogi teaching, I am not a Buddhist, I am not a Mohammedan, I am not a follower of Confucious. Yet I am all of these things” (New York Times, Oct. 12, 1913).

However, the Brink Literacy Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to changing the world through storytelling ran a campaign last year for The Literary Tarot, a project due in 2022 which includes both The Secret Garden and Frankenstein:

“We reached out to some of the greatest authors and cartoonists of our time and asked them to pair a tarot card with a seminal book that embodies the meaning of the arcana.”

Bestselling author Leigh Bardugo (Ninth House and Shadow and Bone) pairs the Ace of Parchment (Pentacles) with Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies) brings Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to life in the iconic major arcana card The Hermit.

So maybe McHugh is onto something…

THE GREAT ARCANA by Paul St John Mackintosh

“A visionary cycle of 22 sonnets for the 22 trump cards of the traditional Tarot pack, with accompanying classic Tarot cards to illustrate them, delving into the symbolic, cultural and historical heritage of the Tarot.”

Our other rhythmic offering today is both ancient and modern, a set of sonnets based on the Major Arcana of the tarot.

The entire matter of the tarot is something which has been subject to an astonishing number of interpretations – considering that in the fifteenth century, it was merely a card game played by idle apprentice Italian builders when rain stopped yet another bout of civic piazza construction.

“ ‘Ere, Giovanni, how come this pack’s got more than one Pope in it?”

“Ecumenical schism, innit? And stop lookin’ up me sleeve.”

On the other hand, maybe the tarot does contain the hermetic, transcendental wisdom of Thoth. What would we know? The theosophist Helena Blavatsky said:

“The real Tarot, in its complete symbology, can be found only in the Babylonian cylinders, that anyone can inspect and study in the British Museum and elsewhere. Anyone can see these Chaldean antediluvian rhombs, or revolving cylinders, covered with sacred signs; the secrets of these divining ‘wheels,’ or, as de Mirville calls them, ‘the rotating globes of Hecate,’ have to be left untold for some time to come.”

Paul St John Mackintosh, accomplished writer, poet and journalist, knows more than we do about all sorts of stuff, and has written his sonnets in order to reflect on each of the tarot trump cards. He says of The Great Arcana:

“The Tarot I based these sonnets on, almost entirely, is the Tarot de Marseille, purely because it’s the oldest complete suite of designs and motifs for the Major Arcana. I was very concerned with authenticity and origins when working on this cycle, on the basis that, if the Tarot has anything to teach or reveal, it probably is found most authentically in its earliest forms, not in the later rewritings and interpretations of the system by A.E. Waite and his ilk. I’ve only drawn heavily on the Rider-Waite Tarot deck for one poem — II, The High Priestess — and I don’t particularly care for any of Waite’s readings of the cards. However, imaginative inspiration has been my real guide all the way through, pulling me away from being too much of a dogmatist in any particular direction.”

Here’s a sample – which does not do justice to the style and layout in the actual book:

The Magician

Charlatan, mountebank, you stand,
behind your table set out on the green,
minor arcana laid in your demesne;
cups, coins and swords ready under your wand,
answering to your oh so puissant hand,
your prestidigitation passed unseen,
and so arcane we can’t tell what they mean
and leave the spread for you to understand.
Yet is that rakish hat Infinity,
the cryptic symbol of Eternity,
and Ouroboros wrapped around your waist?
Your Moebius brim, your artfulness proclaim
the occult wisdom hid in your shell game,
as you divine from squares of pulp and paste.

(c) Paul StJohnMackintosh, 2022

It’s a stylish and thoughtful work which both informs and teases, with each sonnet set against a classic image of the card to which it relates.

Find it on Amazon here:

The Great Arcana

ALSO IN BOOKS NEWS…

The Kickstarter campaign for Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives volumes 3 & 4, and The Book of Carnacki, all three coming from Belanger Books and edited by John Linwood Grant, began on the 21^st February. It greatly exceeded its initial goal within hours, but is a good way to pick any or all of the books concerned, singly or as bundles. E-book, paperback, and hardback formats are available. Lots of detail about the books themselves on the Kickstarter page:

The Book of Carnacki/Holmes & the Occult Detectives

Greetings, O Best Beloveds. Today, as keen supporters of independent presses, we’re pleased to have a special feature on the superb work of Canadian publisher Undertow Publications. We have on offer our own fresh-baked review of Kay Chronister’s collection Thin Places (Undertow, 2020), a reminder of Laura Mauro’s debut collection Sing Your Sadness Deep (Undertow, 2019), and a weird welcome from Michael Kelly himself, the Dark Presence behind these and other cunning volumes (plus some brilliant cover art).

Undertow (n) An underlying current, force, or tendency that is in opposition to what is apparent

So let’s start backwards, as always, and hear from Michael about his press first…

MICHAEL KELLY SPEAKS

We’re thrilled to be featured here at greydogtales. Like greydogtales, we’re endearingly weird. And proud of it.

The boring stuff:

Undertow Publications is a celebrated independent press in Canada dedicated to publishing original and unique fiction of exceptional literary merit. Since 2009 we’ve been publishing anthologies, collections, and novellas in hardcover, trade paperback, and eBook formats. Our books have won the Shirley Jackson Award; the British Fantasy Award; and we are a 4-time World Fantasy Award Finalist.

Blah, blah, yada, yada.

Fact is, we love books and stories. Strange, beautiful, macabre, transcendent, odd, scary, lush, lean, numinous, oneiric, and unclassifiable books and stories. We’re almost exclusively known for publishing short fiction, whether in our magazine Weird Horror, or anthologies and single-author short fiction collections.

https://undertowpublications.com/weird-horror-magazine

“Yeah, but what kind of stuff do you publish?”

“Uh, I don’t know… weird fiction?’

“Oh, that’s my least favourite kind.”

“Oh. Sorry. I guess.”

Our aesthetic is beauty and terror, and we believe a book can be judged by its cover.

Our occasional anthology series Shadows & Tall Trees has won the Shirley Jackson Award, and several stories from the series have been reprinted in various “Best Of” anthologies.

https://undertowpublications.com/shop/shadows-amp-tall-trees-vol-8-paperback

Two more Shirley Jackson Award-winning books — Priya Sharma’s All the Fabulous Beasts and Aickman’s Heirs, edited by Simon Strantzas — continue to sell well for us.

Both are masterfully crafted and will, I’m certain, endure. I mean, at least until my death. Please check them out.

https://undertowpublications.com/shop/all-the-fabulous-beasts-trade-paperback

https://undertowpublications.com/shop/aickmans-heirs

Finally, we’re really proud of what we accomplished with the Year’s Best Weird Fiction.

From 2014 – 2018 we produced 5 volumes, and thanks to our glorious guest-editors it showcased the breadth and diversity of the field. I’m still asked, “What is Weird Fiction?” Who knows? The first 3 volumes are out of print, but you can grab volumes 4 and 5 (which won the British Fantasy Award) still.

https://undertowpublications.com/shop/years-best-weird-fiction-vol-5-trade-paperback

That’s us! Weird. Endearingly so.

Michael Kelly, 1/21

SOME DAYS YOU’RE JUST A READER

(as dictated to a large dog by John Linwood Grant)

There is something odd about hyacinths; I always find their scent disturbing yet intoxicating, their appearance waxily strange, and yet beautiful. Which is, conveniently, how I feel about many of the stories in Kay Chronister’s Thin Places…

I initially picked this one up not as a reviewer or a writer, but simply because I wanted to see what weird fiction was up to. Out of pure curiosity (I don’t read in my own backyard when I’m actively writing, and I must have been drafting some murderous Edwardian shenanigans at the time).

So, without any expectations, I took a half hour off to read the collection’s opening tale, ‘Your Clothes a Sepulcher, Your Body a Grave’. And I thought it wonderful. Truly evocative weird fiction with a certain Gothicism – and an abundance of actual hyacinths in it. I could see I was going to like Kay Chronister. A few months later, I had chance to read the entire collection through in one go, and I had thoughts.

Contemporary weird fiction is the creature which you recognise when it crouches on your chest, but which you can’t always adequately describe to others. Well, the good stuff is, anyway. The poor stuff is just people being too clever, too vague, or raiding the thesaurus.

This is a book which suffers from none of the above weaknesses, with one proviso – many of the stories are about change and transformation, and the exact nature of the change, and what it might generate, is not always spelled out. Chronister brushes you with monstrosities, but doesn’t overplay her hand. It’s not that the stories don’t end ‘properly’, as is sometimes said of pieces of weird fiction, it’s that you are left to ponder. And pondering is important.

Chronister deals with generational relationships, and most of the book is concerned with lineage, especially the core matrilineal nature of the world, mother:daughter and sister:sister relationships, and their consequences. This is not to say that men are necessarily demonised or excluded herein, lest some sensitive boy-readers begin to worry – there are some intriguing male characters as well – ‘Life Cycles’, for example, deals deftly with the desires, needs and dooms of men and women, as does ‘Your Clothes a Sepulcher, Your Body a Grave’.

The yearning to give birth and the consequences of doing so are both explored within. There are touching moments, but many are of transformational horror – what we choose, what we submit to, what we become. Birth creates both victims and monsters; it creates us. The cyclical nature of this process infects the book.

‘Your Clothes…’ is an excellent example, and stories such as ‘Life Cycles’ and ‘Too Lonely, Too Wild’ also stand out. But for me, the single finest story outside of the opener is ‘The Fifth Gable’ where Chronister melds folk-tale sensibilities with the fantastical to great effect (not the only story where a folk/fairy tale grimness lies beneath). Unnamed women in a house with many gables make ‘children’, each in their own way, isolated from the world – and then comes a visitor, who wants a child of her own…

Whilst the mother:daughter axis is a big part of her core material, Chronister is very skilled with landscape and the built world; her stories are rich with psychogeography (geometaphysics, if there’s such a thing?). The very feel of people’s surroundings seeps into you. And at least half of the collection could be described as Folk Horror — ‘The Women Who Sing For Sklep’, set in Eastern Europe, is a particularly strong F/Hish example.

Reviews should not always gush throughout. If I have reservations about any of the contents, they pertain to the title story itself, ‘Thin Places’, which is again finely written, with nice characterisation in the shape of the protagonist/observer, but a little slender underneath, and ‘White Throat Holler’, whose premise doesn’t stand up as well as the writing of it. Even so, neither of these lack their satisfying moments, and would out-run many of their competitors in the overall field.

In short, Thin Places is very rewarding, and well worth picking up.

https://undertowpublications.com/shop/thin-places

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B083GZRNV7/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_VQZYHJCGRE4VRBV82G0K

SING YOUR SADNESS DEEP

An Undertow book which we’ve covered before but must mention again, is Sing your Sadness Deep, by Laura Mauro. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this collection by a skilled female writer of the contemporary weird also concerns itself much with women’s lives and transformation, though Mauro’s wings are spread wide over different landscapes from Chronister’s (the latter is perhaps more claustrophobic and tinged with the Gothic than the former).

At the time we said:

“The debut collection by Laura Mauro, Sing Your Sadness Deep, is a work of fine and accomplished writing, as near to flawless in its execution as you might wish for.”

And that is still true. Again, recommended, as is Priya Sharma’s All the Fabulous Beasts, mentioned by Michael above – another wonderful and rewarding collection.

You can read our full piece on Sing Your Sadness Deep here:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/laura-mauro-sacrifice-and-transformation/

Whilst you’re waiting for your Undertow books, why not have a look at John Linwood Grant’s own recent second collection,Where All is Night, and Starless (Trepidatio 2021). It’s not bad.

AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH AMAZON UK & US, AND THROUGH THE PUBLISHER, JOURNALSTONE

Amazon US: Where All is Night, and Starless

Amazon UK: Where All is Night, and Starless

Annnnnd… we’re back. Winter, work, COVID and all that stuff got in the way, but greydogtales is powering up for 2022. Weird literature, strange trivia, and of course, lurchers. So today let’s whet appetites, just for fun, with a new short tale of Mamma Lucy, the old hoodoo woman who travels through 1920s America, ‘adjusting’ things as she goes…

ON THE SEVENTH DAY, SHE RESTED

Willie Brown stole a hog.

‘Cepting he didn’t steal it – he bought it fair from Nate Rivens, when Nate had gone too far down the jug one night. But Nate, as he stuck his head under the pump the following morning, was minded that Willie had been so plumb happy at the deal, he’d left behind the bill of sale. Which got Nate thinking. Paper burned easy; Willie was only one of them colored boys, and surely Nate had the right of it through being what he was – an honest, winsome Rivens, and white as curds, no less? So he bothered his neighbors, he yelled some, and he made out that Willie Brown had gone and took the beast, never a dime in return.

Ole Casper Rivens, Nate’s uncle, had ridden with the judge, days past, and the local constable was no stranger to Ole Casper’s pockets, so it seemed set to be a clear day for the Rivens. They hauled Willie to the courtroom, the judge set a heavy fine for his thieving – it was that or a whipping and the jail at Gainesville – and they took the hog, who didn’t know master from mud-bath.

And that would have been the way of it, had an old conjure-woman not turned up in town the day after the trial. Barefoot and gangly in her faded print dress, she came with a look to her that made hats tip, even those of a few white folk. Some said she was called Mamma Lucy, and that she’d walked heavy through Barrow County once; others kept names to themselves. Whichever way, Willie Brown’s mother knew her face, and had a need.

“Y’all know my boy been wronged, Mamma.”

“That’s a steel-hard truth,” said the conjure-woman, her milk-and-honey eye staring way off from the other. “But hold them tears, girl. We’ll see this through… iffen the Good Lord wills.”

So Willie’s mother bit her cheek, wept a mite more, and went home. Around noon the same day, Mamma Lucy set herself on the crooked hickory bench by Casper Riven’s seed-store. Abe Johnson saw her clear.

“She hunkers down with roots an’ such from that there carpet-bag o’ hers,” he told the drug-store moochers. “And she spreads ‘em out in her lap, like she’s a-waitin’. Don’t use no words, though, not as I heared. Then she jess puts ‘em away, and up she goes, bound for the creek.”

In the night, rats got into the store’s cellar and made play with some of Casper Rivens’s best seed. Ole Casper woke to this bad news, and a bellyache besides, one which Doc Meredith’s powders wouldn’t shift. As for the rats, their bellies ached fit to burst too, but there weren’t a body listening to hear their side of the matter.

The noon which followed, Mamma Lucy was spotted again, squatting in the shade of a live oak, and maybe she had a green felt bag ‘tween her fingers, maybe she didn’t. The oak wasn’t that tall nor wide, but it happened to stand tidy on the edge of Casper Riven’s yard. Again, she didn’t stay long.

That night, Casper’s wife Mercy cut herself whilst peeling taters (for the help had sickened). Cut herself bad, and Doc Meredith had some sewing up to do. With all the fuss and feathers in the house, Casper’s bellyache got worse.

By now, folks all allowed that the conjure-woman was sure seen often near Casper Rivens or what he owned – and he owned plenty. Everywhere he stepped, there – but not any too close – was a dark, gangly figure. Yet she never tried to jaw with him, nor did anything that might raise a holler. Ole Casper himself wouldn’t stoop to speak to her sort; the constable passed by her a few times, all sweat and nerves, but the old colored woman had coin, talked polite, and always moved on if she was told direct.

Casper’s lumbago took a turn for the worse around that time, and his belly weren’t no better.

On the sixth day, a hand told Casper that Mamma Lucy had been seen chawing cane outside the bank where the Rivenses did their business. When the telegraph clattered a few hours later, turned out that he had lost ninety cents in the dollar on an oil claim that proved dry, sudden, out Aintry way…

Ole Casper was done with hogs. Grim as a Hessian’s horse, he strode to his nephew’s shack, and a mighty ruckus was heard. A half hour after, Nate, scrubbed and tight-collared, went calling on the judge. Seems that a bill of sale for the hog had ‘slipped clean down between two boards,’ but now was found. Right sorry was Nate, so he said, and the judge, though hardly sorry, did grumbling justice. Willie Brown got his name and his hog back by sundown.

Outside the courthouse, Doc Meredith and the conjure woman watched a thin colored boy leading away his rightful property. It weren’t no more than his due, and surely less than should have been, but in those times, matters could have been much worse.

“That’s some witchin’ you done there, Mamma,” said the doctor, soft-like. He didn’t look so bothered, though, for the Rivens always put him in mind of temples and ‘dens of thieves’.

“Ain’t no witch.” She gave him her big, horse-teeth smile. “And who says I laid a single trick all week? What folks choose t’believe, well, that’s in other hands.”

Mamma Lucy was an ornery hoodoo woman when the need arose, but she was also in the head-business. And she knew her trade, as Ole Casper Givens could attest…

Next up this week, a spotlight on Michael Kelly’s excellent independent press Undertow.

In the meantime, do have a look at my recent second collection, Where All is Night, and Starless (Trepidatio 2021), which is less Edwardian but more wide-ranging…

AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH AMAZON, AND THROUGH THE PUBLISHER, JOURNALSTONE

Amazon US: Where All is Night, and Starless

Amazon UK: Where All is Night, and Starless