Do you want to read something different? Then join us today, dear listener, as we hop all over the place, and consider a few things which might interest you – including ominous skies full of eyeballs, dark poetic prose and a graphic horror novel project. And then, as we are far-famed at greydogtales for having the intellectual rigour of a fish kettle, we’ll leave the rest to you.
Our picks of the day are a novella, The Writhing Skies, by Betty Rocksteady; news of fresh fiction from Farah Rose Smith, a collection entitled Of One Pure Will, and the re-launch of Sebastian Cabrol’s The Gatherer…
OTHER DAYS, OTHER EYEBALLS
We are not au fait, as people who like the expression au fait say, with much bizarro fiction, and not even sure what it is, except that it borders on and infiltrates the weird fiction field in general. So we hesitated at the new novella by Canadian writer Betty Rocksteady, wondering if this was going to be Our Thing. Rocksteady writes, by her own admission, cosmic sex horror, cat mythos, and surreal, claustrophobic nightmares. Her debut novella Arachnophile was part of Eraserhead Press New Bizarro Author Series 2015; Like Jagged Teeth and The Writhing Skies were released by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing.
Two aspects propelled us forward – the irrelevant fact that we share her love of the classic Betty Boop cartoons, and the neat illustrations (by the author) which pepper the novella. On an initial glance, we were a bit “this is going to be odd, stream of consciousness surrealism”, so we let it sit, and then we read it properly, weeks later. Which was a good move, because we saw a lot more in it on our second visit – and also found that it had certain non-linear passages which contribute important elements to the whole picture. It grew on us, basically. Which is a worrying phrase, considering what happens in the novella.
In brief, an American college girl, Sarah, finds that her previously routine world no longer makes sense, and in a panicked reaction, flees her apartment to seek help or succour. The landscape is warped with dripping and flaking flesh, pulsing growths, and drifting shadows/beings which cannot be properly defined. The sky is wrong, and so is her body, which is undergoing its own organic shifts. She doesn’t understand what is happening, and she doesn’t understand why it’s happening. If this wasn’t enough, Something keeps sending insidious but incomprehensible questions which burrow into her as disturbingly as do more material phenomena.
Rrr? Rrr? Rrr? The sounds of an enquiry you do not know how to answer.
Rocksteady explores this state of affairs through the protagonist (with the in-and-out involvement of her boyfriend Derek and her friend Tiffany), rather than detailing sundry other parties or spending time on the impact of society in general. This personalises the book a lot, and works well to give a disjointed nightmare feel to what is happening; it often feels close to a first person narrative without actually being one. If the initial segment portrays that fear of what’s outside (people with agoraphobia will relate), later ones bring shuddering fears of what’s inside. Inside Sarah, and inside us, that is.
That first glance we took had made us think this was one of those ‘everything’s weird and that’s about it’ scenarios, like many genuine bad dreams. We weren’t entirely right about that. In fact, there are some unpleasant revelations within which make you wonder about the relationship between the changing world and Sarah’s fate, particularly one dreadful moment at the beach where all three characters conspire and argue over a brutal act. Be warned that this core act is really not nice. But does it cause what happens after, or is it merely a chance reflection of what was to come anyway? Is everything about the questions which Something needs to ask Sarah concerning humanity and the event it witnessed? Cosmic horror or personal karma? It’s all pretty visceral, anyway.
Rrr? Rrr? Rrr?
Derek, by the way, is a dickhead, and yet even then, Rocksteady introduces elements which make us see him as a victim himself in certain ways. But in the end it’s slime, and pustulous growths in our own flesh, and open sores, and things squirming up into those bits we normally keep zipped out of sight. And eyeballs in the sky. It turns out to be intriguing, and in the end we rather liked it.
Oh, the illustrations. Yes, the whole novella is enhanced by the frequent black and white illustrations, which have a clear, sort of naif quality (and a Betty Boop element) to them. These are not random, but in synch with the text, and help tell the overall story. Rocksteady has talent.
The Writhing Skies was winner of This Is Horror Awards 2018 Novella Of The Year, and her collection In Dreams We Rot from Trepidato Publishing is being released October 2019.
Rrr? Rrr? Rrr?
You can pick The Writhing Skies up here:
A ROSE OF ONE PURE WILL
Farah Rose Smith is an American writer, musician, and photographer, whose work often focuses on the Gothic, Decadent, and Surreal. She has written The Almanac Of Dust, Eviscerator, numerous short stories in horror and speculative anthologies, and is the founder and editor of Mantid, an anthology series promoting women and diverse writers in Weird Fiction. Her experimental film work has received accolades, including Best Short Screenplay (Rapture, 2016) at the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival and Best Experimental Film (The Atrocity Shoppe, 2015) at the Shawna Shea Film Festival. She lives in Queens, NY with her partner.
When it comes to Smith’s writing, this time it’s not a matter of our general tastes in reading, it’s more that we may not be smart enough to understand all that she’s getting at. Her prose is dark and complex, poetic and laced with learning (and we have friends who love this sort of thing). It’s accomplished literary weird fiction – or deeply literary bizarro, maybe, in parts. Layered and frequently very rewarding if you dig in deep. It feels a bit like reading some of Rimbaud’s work, which is meant as a compliment.
We’re still re-reading her fascinating novella Anonyma (Ulthar Press), and failing to work out how to review it in a way to do it justice, but in the meantime, we’re pleased to see that she has a new limited edition collection out from Egaeus Press.
Of One Pure Will contains what has been described by publisher Mark Beech as “restlessly dreamish, dark tales.” It includes eighteen short pieces: “strange, decadent, restless stories which seem to map their very own attic-space at the edge of the waking world: A treacherous, amorphic region, shewn in a style that writhes and twists, but is never out of Farah Rose Smith’s meticulous control.”
The stories incorporate themes including bodily transcendence, disability, disgust, monstrosity, and eroticism.
You can find out more here:
of one pure will from egaeus press
And the novella Anonyma is available here:
WRY TALES & A DRY BLADE
To follow those, a reminder of something different again and slightly more traditional, greydog’s own 2019 collection A Persistence of Geraniums (Ulthar Press). Strange fictions – dark tales of murder, madness and the supernatural, from Jamesian hauntings, through folk horror and on to wicked events, with a touch of the weird as well. The print version is available now, and the Kindle format should be coming soon.
“Behind the elegant, gorgeous, almost genteel prose of John Linwood Grant, there lurks a monster… (he) brings to mind P.G.Wodehouse gone hopelessly mad and hiding in a cupboard with a long sharp knife. Oh, and by the by, have you met Edwin Dry? No? Then you’ve not yet encountered one of the most ghastly characters in modern strange fiction.”
Matthew M Bartlett, author of Creeping Waves
“Grant skilfully evokes the sensibility of Edwardian Britain in a series of supernatural tales distinguished both by their elegance and by their wit.”
John Langan, author of The Fisherman
Enter a world where the psychic, the alienist and the assassin carry out their strange duties, whilst quiet tragedies unfold in an Edwardian England which is never quite what it seems. From rural Yorkshire to the heart of London City, death is on the air, and no one can sense it better than Mr Dry, the Deptford Assassin, and his exquisite blade. On Suffolk shores, an army widow loads her husband’s revolver; in a small village, a vicar and his wife hear a tale which challenges their beliefs, and a deluded killer almost escapes the courts. This greatly expanded 2nd edition includes a number of additional tales, plus other oddities.
The story ‘His Heart Shall Speak No More’ from this collection was also selected for Best New Horror #29, edited by Stephen Jones and out now from PS Publishing. Oh, and ‘The Jessamine Garden’ is the original of the version which was in the Lambda Award winning anthology His Seed, from Lethe Press.
GATHER UNTO US
Finally for today, a re-launched campaign featuring that gifted weird and horror artist, Sebastian Cabrol. The first attempt at getting out this gorgeous graphic work, last year, didn’t quite make it, but it still looks fantastic, and we want a copy, so we’re delighted they’re sticking to the project.
The Gatherer is a 90+ page graphic novel, drawn by Sebastian Cabrol, written by Emilia Pedrazzoli & Emiliano Pinto, and coloured and lettered by Omar Estévez, and includes loads of back matter on the creation of this book, including Sebastian’s fabulous pencil work.
The Gatherer has a strong film influence and an almost exclusively visual narrative resource is used to carry out the story. The intention is to pay tribute to cult genre movies both from the graphics and scripting standpoints. The book references horror and sci-fi films from the late seventies and the eighties, such as Prince of Darkness (Carpenter, 1987), The Thing (Carpenter, 1982), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978), Possession (Zulawski, 1981) The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986), Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981) and The Lords of Salem (Zombie, 2012).
There are tons of options, rewards and extras, so go take a look now.
the gatherer kickstarter campaign
And if you don’t fancy any of those, we’ll be back in a few days with something else, or a long ramble on a subject that flummoxes everyone, or lurchers. We don’t ever know. Subscribe to greydogtales, and you’ll be warned when to run away…