{"id":2155,"date":"2016-06-08T13:47:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T13:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/?p=2155"},"modified":"2016-06-08T13:47:15","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T13:47:15","slug":"everything-weird-for-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/everything-weird-for-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Weird for a Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you dare to step within? Be warned – today we crash into lots of weird new works by authors all over the world, fail to give any of them proper coverage, and then drift off to Africa. And Django<\/strong> resurrects a household tradition. This is indeed one of our confused mid-week medleys\u2026<\/p>\n

Someone asked us recently \u2013 why greydogtales<\/em>? We think that they were interested in the name, rather than questioning our existence. The name bit we can answer. It’s partly because last year the first new story we wrote, a tribute to William Hope Hodgson’s<\/strong> Carnacki, was called Grey Dog<\/em>, and partly in honour of our late lurcher Jade<\/strong>, who was a lovely but troubled rescue.<\/p>\n

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We’ve mentioned Jade before, and boy, was she hard work. Almost impossible to train, and proof against any behaviourist we tried. She was, however, great in summer. She hated bluebottles. As we also hate the little buggers, it was a delight to find the stairs and hallway littered with dead flies. Being an agile lurcher, Jade was quite capable of leaping and catching them in mid-air. I imagine that they tasted rather bitter, so she left the bodies to be swept up later. Good dog.<\/p>\n

It was promising, then, to find that Django, our quite sane but silly longdog, has developed the same interest in ridding the house of flying vermin. With the heat up this week, he has been patrolling the house and taking down enemy fly-craft with some success. Unlike Jade, however, he seems incapable of using insect recognition charts, and thus goes after bees as well. So we live in fear of him getting a stung nose, and at the same time we applaud him for his fly termination. Daft dog.<\/p>\n

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Note-type thing: For all the books below we’ve given a UK Amazon link for consistency. We’d like to point out that if you ask a grown-up, they will be able to find other sales links, even ones direct from the publisher. If you use the last option, the writer may get a better cut that way.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Now, weird works. That was where we were going. Let’s start with a mention of Matthew M Bartlett<\/strong><\/span>. Matthew seemed on the surface to be a shy, ordinary joe, the kind of dime-a-dozen guy a dame could pass in the street on her way to a cheap bourbon joint, yet that hot afternoon in Queens, something changed\u2026<\/p>\n

Sorry about that. We drifted. So, you should look at his stuff. We were utterly absorbed by his book Gateways to Abomination<\/em>, a slightly indescribable collection of short pieces interwoven to give you clues to some deeper single vision.<\/p>\n

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With its focus on Leeds, Massachusetts, we were driven to respond with a challenge from Leeds, Yorkshire, which you can read on Brian O’Connell’s<\/strong> Conqueror Weird<\/em> website here: john linwood grant on matthew m bartlett<\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew has now released Creeping Waves<\/em>, which is both a sequel and not a sequel \u2013 you can read it separately, but if you’ve read Gateways<\/em>, you’ll probably get even more out of both of them. Hopefully we’ll pin him to the interview board later this summer.<\/p>\n

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creeping waves on uk amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

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El Bartlett also has a story in Ravenwood Quarterly’s<\/em> soon-to-be-released inaugural issue, so we nudged editor\/publisher Travis Neisler<\/strong><\/span> for a quick pitch about that endeavour:<\/p>\n

“H<\/span>i<\/span>! I\u2019m head weirdo here at Ravenwood and I approve of this message\u2026 sorry, <\/span>it’s <\/span>election time here in the state. Mr. Grant offered me a moment to spotlight what we\u2019re <\/span>up to,<\/span> so here I am. The magazine is coming along with the help of the most excellent Sam Gafford and we are still hopeful for a late <\/span>J<\/span>une shipping date. After that you can expect <\/span>chapbooks for <\/span>John Paul Fitch\u2019s \u201cSunflowers\u201d and then Mr. Grant<\/span>‘<\/span>s \u201cA Persistence of Geraniums\u201d as well as some others. Big things happening! Another big thanks go to Sam Gafford \u2013 <\/span>we <\/span>seriously could not have got this far without him. Thanks for the opportunity to chitter on!”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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ravenwood quarterly blog<\/a><\/p>\n

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As we’ve raised the spectre of writer John Paul Fitch<\/strong><\/span> now, it’s worth mentioning that John has recently written four episodes for the upcoming ‘Fragments of Fear’<\/em> TV show. The concept of Fragments of Fear is rather tempting: \u201cFrom a dark and foreboding subterranean vault, a series of otherworldly narrators lead the viewer through tales of terror, horror, and suspense, offering a dark and disturbing take on Jackanory<\/em> meets Tales from the Crypt<\/em>.\u201d You can find out more below:<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/fragmentsoffear.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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Had enough weird yet? No? Then why not check out the new book from Michael Wehunt<\/strong><\/span>, entitled Greener Pastures<\/em>. Michael, who dwells in sunken Atlanta (What? Ed.)<\/em>, has already produced over twenty disturbing and strange short stories, one of which, I Do Not Count the Hours<\/em>, was included in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu<\/em> which we mentioned last week (see\u00a0cthulhu may not live here any more<\/a> ).<\/p>\n

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greener pastures on uk amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

Greener Pastures<\/em>, his first collection, not only pulls the best of these together but also includes some new tales written especially for the book. Well worth a look.<\/p>\n

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“She said that her name was Beauty, that she’d been raised in a mission beyond Lokoja. She was a liar. When you looked into her eyes, the colour of ironwood, you could see that no Jesus-man had ever been inside that head.” (jlg)
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If you follow our ramblings on Facebook, you might know that we have an interest in Africa (we’ve even been there, but only to the Northern bits, sadly). The two areas most relevant to our own writing are:<\/p>\n