2010 Reading List

I kept track of the books I read in 2010. I hadn’t done this before,  I’m not sure why I started, but I suspect I will continue. It’s not everything I bought or intended to read by a long shot, but here it is. The traditional books are listed separately from the ebooks. I didn’t have a Kindle until mid-September, so that is reflected in the balance.

I’m wishing I’d worked on this post as I went and included a couple lines about each book. Perhaps next year. I wouldn’t recommend all of these, but many I would and several of them quite emphatically. It was a good year for reading.

2010 Books Read

Print Books
1. Song of Kali by Dan Simmons (Tor Books)
2. Benjamin’s Parasite by Jeff Strand (Delirium)
3. The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon (Necessary Evil Press)
4. Children Of Chaos by Greg F. Gifune (Delirium)
5. Primitive by J.G. Gonzales (Delirium)
6. Sesta & Other Strange Stories by Edward Lucas White (Midnight House)
A post on White’s excellent “The Tooth” here. Some other great pieces in this collection as well.
7. The Garden Of Hermetic Dreams Edited by Gary Lachman (Dedalus)
8. Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters by John Langan (Prime)
9. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Harper Perennial)
10. Over The Darkening Fields by Scott Thomas (Dark Regions Press)
Posted on the Dark Regions Message Board after reading this one. “There are numerous stories in this collection that have stuck in my craw. Thomas understands people. Through the darkness and oddity, that understanding is perhaps his strongest attribute… Many of the stories are quite short, but his efficiency, clarity and imagination carve the words deep.”
11. The Darkly Splendid Realm by Richard Gavin (Dark Regions Press)
Here’s an old post on Gavin’s I wrote after reading his book Omens. The Darkly Splendid Realm was a treat.
12. Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge (Tor Books)
13. Can Such Things Be? Tales Of Horror & The Supernatural by Ambrose Bierce (Citadel Press)
14. Cold To The Touch by Simon Strantzas (Tartarus Press)
One of the highlights of the year for me. Strantzas is as evocative in his gloom and strangeness, as his authenticity. The character development is excellent, his voice unique and subtle. “A Seed On Barren Ground” is a story that I ruminate on regularly and would place very high on a list of my all time favorites.  The Tartarus Press production value only added to this wholly satisfying collection.
15. The Man On The Ceiling by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (Wizards Of The Coast Discoveries)
posted on this here
16. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy (Grove Press)
A loaner from a co-worker prompted by my love of A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I hated this and abandoned it after about 100 pages. I can’t remember the last time I did that.
17. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (Harper Perennial)
18. The Book Of Days By Steve Rasnic Tem (Subterranean)
posted on this here
19. My Work Is Not Yet Done by Thomas Ligotti (Virgin)
20. The White Hands & Other Weird Tales By Mark Samuels (Tartarus Press)
21. Alone With The Horrors By Ramsey Campbell (Tor Books)
22. Dark Awakenings By Matt Cardin (Mythos)
posted on this here
23. Occultation by Laird Barron (Nightshade)
24. In The Hand Of Dante by Nick Tosches (Black Bay Books)
25. The October Country by Ray Bradbury (Del Ray)
26. Songs Of A Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti (Subterranean)
27. Beneath The Surface by Simon Strantzas (Dark Regions)
28. Charnel Wine by Richard Gavin (Dark Regions)
(reading now)

Kindle Books
29. Wicked Delights by John Lewellyn Probert (Atomic Fez)
I started a post on this I have yet to finish…
30. The World More Full Of Weeping by Robert J. Wiersema  (Chizine)
posted about this one here
31. Excavation by Steve Rasnic Tem (Crossroads/Macabre Ink)
posted on this here
32. A Host Of Shadows by Harry Shannon (Dark Regions)

Writing Vs. Music: Atmosphere

October is my favorite month. The fires of autumn still hang from crooked branches. The sky is flooded with a crisp blue, unique to fall. It’s a reflective time plump with the magic fumes of decaying leaves. The world and I are more agreeable in October. Fear, mood and setting are recognizable more than any other time of the year. It’s the month of the imagination.

So, what scares you? Is “horror” really even scary? What’s worse, being scared or creeped out? Is there a difference? An orchestral stab, a “boo” moment, are they really scary? What is fear? Not what startles or grosses you out, but authentic guttural dread…

Adjectives associated with fear and darkness appear in a majority of the Gruntsplatter reviews I’ve seen, however, I never once set out to make a “scary” record. I don’t see dark ambient in those terms. The Suspiria soundtrack by Goblin. La-la-La-La… triggered more unease in me than any dark ambient record ever has. Whether anyone noticed or not, my records are social diatribes before they are horror shows. With Gruntsplatter I see the themes and fixation on the creeping dystopia as horrific, rather than horror.

Life when things aren’t right, unsettles me. A guy shouldn’t be singing witch lullabies over prog rock, it’s creepy. It’s not right. The movie Tideland is not a horror movie, but it got under my skin. Creepy, awkward, evocative and soulful. A window into something tragic and not right. Right and wrong are subjective obviously, but it’s those things more than monsters or killers and so many of the tropes of horror that creep me out.

The writings of Thomas Ligotti, Simon Strantzas, Steve Rasnic Tem, Mark Samuels, Richard Gavin and so many others that explore the wrongness in a wrong world, those are the contemporary voices of dread. I don’t worry about demons or serial killers. I worry about that guy on the bus that doesn’t feel right. I turn that thing sitting where it shouldn’t be into something diabolical. The dreams that scare me are the dreams of footsteps behind me from someone not concerned I know they are there. They are the voices in a house I thought was mine right up until I heard the voices. The stranger who says “see you later” and sounds like they mean it. The innocuous things that breach the facade of life.

I think about these things more, the more I write. “Weird tales” more than commercial horror speak in the tongue that resonates with me.  It is the subtleties in life that can go unnoticed, the curious juxtapositions, and the quiet shifts in wind and shadow where the genuine unease lurks. Mystery before bombast.

It’s what I have always tried to do with my music, subtlety and detail. It’s what I hope to infuse in my writing. I think that aesthetic is as much me as anything.

Steve Rasnic Tem

Steve Rasnic Tem writes like a free man. That is the simplest way I can say it. Previously, I had read a handful of short stories and knew I wanted more of Tem’s perspective. In the last few months I have read two novels and a collaborative novel written with his wife Melanie Tem. You can find their joint website here.

I started with the collaborative novel. The Man On The Ceiling was originally released as a novella that went on to win a World Fantasy Award,  Bram Stoker Award and an International Horror Guild Award in 2000. The version I picked up was the  expanded novel released by Wizards Of The Coast Discoveries. It is part biography, part fiction and as the authors remind us frequently all of it is true. I believe them. The surreal emotional dread is authentic.

The fluidity of imagination and jagged reality is handled so well, it’s perhaps the thing that best represents what kind of writer Tem is. The visceral fear he strips naked is rooted in parental anxiety.  Our inability to protect that which is most important turns to poison with the glide of a shadow on the wall. Imagination, fear, disaster fantasies and unconditional love wrestle on the cliffs of psychosis when one is open to feel all that there is to feel.

Next I went to The Book Of Days, published by Subterranean Press. The tale again deals with the theme of parental anxiety and personal insecurities. The protagonists flees his family to his familial cabin in the woods.  What follows is a tale told in the framework of a short story every day as the main character struggles to fend off madness. This set up allows Tem to rip wide his vivid perspective on the nature of pain. All the horror in the world is just behind your eyes. Here is a short excerpt available from the publishers website.

Finally, I just wrapped up Excavation released in eBook format by Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital, 0riginally released in 1997. Parental anxiety again plays a role in his tale of a man who returns to the isolated coal mining town where he grew up. The town suffered a flood that killed his family and numerous others after he left, but the sickness and rage that led him to flee that life is right where he left it.

That Tem can write about such personal, crippling fear with such freedom of ideas is perhaps my favorite quality in his inspired work. I don’t get a sense of self consciousness in the writing despite the self consciousness and, arguably, even narcissism of his protagonists. He goes where the trapped and paranoid mind goes.

Tem has countless short stories out there as well. With any luck a big, fat collection is forthcoming from somewhere (I haven’t seem any indication of that though). Centipede Press recently released a collection of all of Steve and Melanie’s collaborative fiction titled In Concert that I hope to get my hands on before too much longer.

He’s a writer with enviable skills. If you enjoy emotional, psychological prose that slithers between boundaries into the overlooked crevasses of our internal reality Steve Rasnic Tem is probably for you. He also painted the above piece, you can see more of his paintings on the website linked above. It’s been a true pleasure and inspiration to explore his work.

settling in and books aplenty

We are getting settled into the new place and making pretty good headway against the walls of cardboard boxes. I’m finding stuff I haven’t seen in years. There has been a lot of moving in the last 5 years and it’s good to finally be someplace that I don’t feel unpacking will be a waste of time. As I mentioned before this will be the first time I’ll have my full studio set up since I finished recording “The Aberrant Laboratory” in 2006. There will no doubt be some new music in the works before too long. Whether it’s Gruntsplatter or something else I don’t know yet.

It has been a beautiful thing setting up the new bookshelves and loading them up. I went on a bit of a bender and picked up several new titles to get me through the looming Oregon winter.

Omens by Richard Gavin
The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon
The Book Of Days by Steve Rasnic Tem
Poe’s Progengy Anthology edited by Gary Fry
Tales Of Terror by Guy De Maupassant
Stories from A Lost Anthology by Rhys Hughes
Sesta & Other Strange Stories by Edward Lucas White
Edgeworks I: Over The Edge, An Edge In My Voice by Harlan Ellison
The Complete Stories of JG Ballard by JG Ballard
Writers Workshop Of Horror edited by Michael Knost

Most of those were acquired from The Horror Mall, everything except the Ballard book I think… It will be a long, gray winter of weird tales around here.