A Review of The Children of Old Leech

A wonderful, wonderful fellow writer was the first person to introduce me to Laird Barron. That weekend, I lost myself in his strange world, both horrified and fascinated by the mythos he’d created.

The Children of Old Leech succeeds in paying homage to Barron in all of the best ways. I had to read this book in small sips, delaying gratification so that I didn’t squander any of the pleasure. The worlds built in each story vary but that makes them no less terrifying. So many of the stories are incredibly told, but I’ve focused on only a few of my favorites.

“The Harrow” by Gemma Files takes us under the earth, into a place of darkness, a place of old holes filled with things we can never understand. Perhaps one of my favorite stories of this collection.

Orrin Grey’s “Walpurgisnacht” took us inside the shimmering line between that which is seen and that which isn’t and peers closely into the occult world that is just behind that veil. Loved it.

“Good Lord, Show Me The Way” by Molly Tanzer was one of those stories I simply did not want to end. In fact, at its conclusion, I stepped away from the book for a few days because I wanted to stay in that place she had built, the Church of the Broken Circle. Another one to number among my favorites.

T.E. Grau’s cosmic horror in “Love Songs from the Hydrogen Jukebox” was a tripping balls kind of experience that isn’t often replicated in the written word. One of the more specific connections to Old Leech. Fantastic.

It took me a minute to get into the non-tagged dialogue of Richard Gavin’s “The Old Pageant,” but when I did, this story blew me away. The inscription on Donna’s footboard had me shivering from the outset, but that ending. Wow.

Paul Tremblay consistently knocks it out of the water, and his Notes for “The Barn in the Wild” is no exception. Everything here coalesces, rises together to form a perfectly tight story.

Michael Griffin’s “Firedancing” was yet another story that bathed us in cosmic horror. Everything in the center of the earth opened and laid bare.

Daniel Mills’ “The Woman in the Wood” left me shivering. It’s a difficult thing to pull of period dialect in a subtle manner, and Mills hit the nail on the head. Not to mention some truly terrifying imagery. Rushed off to buy his collection immediately after reading this story.

I’d previously read “Brushdogs” in Stephen Graham Jones’ After the People Lights Have Gone Off. I loved it then, and I love it now. Jones may be one of the most talented writers I’ve read lately.

Overall, the collection is stellar. A few stories weren’t exactly my cup of tea, but this is due to personal taste not lack of talent. A worthy representation.   

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A New Year

The past few weeks have been a strange combination of highs and lows. The highs? A pub and very first SALE at Fear and Trembling magazine. A lovely personal rejection note from Corvus that was so genuine and kind that it was almost as good as a pub. My review of Elyssa East's Dogtown merited an incredibly nice note from the author herself. You can find the review here, and while you are there, take some time to read through the other contributors. It's really a beautiful magazine.

The lows? Form rejections from Bete Noire, and One Buck Horror. 


Still waiting to hear about the potential life of "Hole" from Electric Spec and Niteblade. Everyday Fiction is still ruminating over "Black Water" after 76 days, but I'm being patient. I really like EF, and I'm hoping that the longer the story is out the more likely they will actually publish it.

I haven't been writing every day like I said I would, but I did manage to push out a flash piece that I REALLY love and is currently entered in a contest over at Shock Totem. With all of that said, there's this novel that I need to get back to working on.  Hopefully when I finish it, the round of Nano queries will be out, and mine will be in the fresh batch.

This is totally my year, ya'll. I don't care what the universe says.

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Tiny Creepies

Working on a new piece of flash fiction for Shock Totem. The topic is AMAZINGLY CREEPY. Seriously shit your pants kind of stuff, and I'm in that first draft stage where you vacillate between the excitement of a kid jacked up on Mountain Dew and the promise of Santa bringing a new X Box, and the despair that every writer hits during the first draft stage.

Right now I both love and hate what I've done, and I'm scared about relying on my own judgement before submitting this piece. Usually, I try to have some other writer whom I greatly respect lay eyes on it before submitting, but the deadline is the 7th, and I don't really want to put that kind of pressure on a fellow writer.

But I'm glad it's flash. I love the nature of flash fiction, the smallness of it. The potential for making every word burn.

It's bitchin stuff.

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Finding a Home for Hole

"Hole," or as I more affectionately know it "Bree's Story" is still without a home. I've gotten a fresh rejection from Bete Noire today, and I'm not going to lie, this one stung. As a magazine that claims to pride itself on providing personal rejections, it hurt to open my email and see the same old form rejection that every other publication sends. Oh well. I like the magazine very much and will try again in the future.

So the grand total comes to three with rejections from Clarkesworld and Shimmer, my dream publications. I'm waiting on One Buck Horror, Electric Spec, and Niteblade. All of them have slim publication rates, but of all of the stories I've written, I'm most proud of this one and figured I may as well shoot for the big suckers.

Still waiting to hear back from Everyday Fiction about "Black Water," and it's been out for 56 days. I know, I know, wahh, wahh, wahh, waiting to hear back is hard, but really it is.

My goal for today is to finally install Word on my Mac so that I can get back to working on Find Me Here. My goal is to have the first draft finished by February.

Happy Writing!

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Ghosties and Ghoulies and Long-Legged Beasties

In my heart every day is Halloween. My husband will never understand my obsession with all things macabre, but I'm drawn to it. For a long time, I felt the need to hide my love for horror films and books, ashamed that amongst my more literary minded colleagues, my interests were amateurish. I feared they would flog me with Keats, snicker at me from behind their copies of Ulysses, and preach about the greater joys of reading Chaucer in one's spare time.

Don't get me wrong. It isn't as if I've sequestered myself into one small area of all literary-dom with no intent of ever venturing outside, but this girl can't deny that she loves to be scared. Thank God for Henry James, and Bram Stoker, for Edgar Allen Poe and Shirley Jackson, for H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.

And so for years, I've been rather quiet about loving all things that go bump in the night. Most certainly I never shared my penchant for the Gothic with my writer colleagues, and I most certainly did not write any speculative fiction for submission to any of my critique groups or writing workshops.

Then I started to get bored. Started even to dislike what I was writing. I stumbled across Shimmer Magazine by complete chance and began reading. When I was finished, my flesh crawled. It was exactly the feeling that I had been missing.

Slowly, I began to seek out a network of writers and magazines--writers and magazines who are producing NOW--and started researching. Check out Aaron Polson if you have some time and are a fan of the genre. After many hours devoted to wrapping up my Capstone, I'm letting myself say it loud and say it proud. I'm writing horror, dammit.

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An Impasse

I truly envy those people who can sit at their computers, let their fingers fly over their keyboards, and even freaking smile while they clatter out some new plot developement on whatever manuscript on which they are currently working.

I am not one of those writers. Every time I reach the end of a page, and my cursor shifts to the next, I want to shout, dance, writhe around on the floor in the kind of supreme ecstasy reserved for defloration rituals in primitive tribes. Quite frankly, when I reach the end of a page, I'm drained, tired, and feeling rather ho-hum about what I've just written.

But then there are times when I'm humming along, lost for just the briefest of moments in that world, and I'm not writing anymore, but actually seeing what's happening unfold before me, and I want to cry at how wonderful it all is and jump up and kiss the first person I see, even if it is the zit-infested barrista telling me my coffee is up. Because those moments--the dream as John Gardner calls it--are so few and far between for me that I sometimes wonder if I'm kidding myself.

I'm coming to the belief that writers are the ultimate narcissists. We put our words, our blood to paper. We hoard them, pick away at them until they are perfect before we thrust them before the world. "See?  See what I've done?" we ask.

And then we wait in agony for not just anyone, but someone with some effing power to tell us, "Yes. We love it. Yes. We will publish it." The ultimate validation, the end result of all that longing for someone to just tell us that they like us, that we are good.

For the briefest of moments, it is enough to keep us going, and then the darkness falls down around us again because we are once more faced with the blinking cursor on the blank page and the thought, What if I can't do it again? What if they made a mistake, and I'm terrible?

And oh, god, it becomes so hard to keep going, to lose yourself in the pleasure of writing because the vanity and the pride and all of those terrible things the Bible warns you about begin to sing a terrible chorus of failure in your head, and you are wondering as the words begin to stutter out of you if they are any good, and who will love them, or, even worse, who will roll their eyes and shudder before tossing what you've spent months of your life working on into the nearest waste basket.

And every writing teacher, or instructional writing text you've ever read preaches to not let that critic get in the way, but it is always the critic to whom you write, always her voice that keeps you from writing the next sentence, which you know without a doubt, will be the most atrocious string of words ever committed to paper.

When you are a perfectionist, the hardest thing to do is let down that wall and just do it.

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