It has been a while since I posted anything akin to an update here, though I do my best to keep active on social media.
The year has been good to me so far, with my acceptance ratio being higher than my rejection ratio for the first time in my career. Matt Cardin mentioned me in a podcast as "a name you might recognize," which must mean that somewhere out in the darkness, folks are reading my work. With that in mind, I wanted to highlight a few anthologies and some kickstarters that I am a part of and tell you a bit about the stories I've contributed to each project.
Anthologies:
In 2017, I told myself that if I got into any one of four anthologies I really wanted to be a part of that I would be kinder to myself in assessing my own writing. I got into three of them, and they're quite the anthologies!
I. Chthonic: Weird Tales of Inner Earth
Anyone who has read a Martian Migraine book knows that Scott R. Jones is an excellent curator of stories. The book includes some powerhouse writers, from my friend John Linwood Grant to top tier and well-established names such as Nadia Bulkin (currently reading her excellent collection), Gemma Files, Christopher Slatsky and Ramsey Campbell (!!!).
My story for this one is a tough one, and without spoiling it I can give you a bit of the background as to where it came from. I first came across the phrase "Volver al monte," while reading a piece from Kathleen Thiedon about paramilitaries in Colombia. In the wake of a "successful" round of negotiations between the administration of Alvaro Uribe and the AGC (at the time, the largest far-right paramilitary organization in the country) many paramilitarios decided to merely keep their arms and shirk their commitment to the peace agreement. Others were more reluctant, eager to start families and return to society. The phrase these former combatants used for the dreaded return to war was "volver al monte," to go to the mountains.
The story begins with General Alfonsin Santos, a man who was renowned as the architect for the counter-insurgency policy of an unnamed country. The general is old, philosophic, and uneasy with how at home he becomes when he too returns to the mountains. There he begins negotiations with a rebel group going by the name "Tuta Puriq," an old Quechau word "boogeyman" or "those who walk at night." Suffice to say, these negotiations do not last long.
The story is peppered with references to civil war in both Peru and Colombia. "Tuta Puriq" was a name many villagers in the highlands of Peru used to describe Sendero Luminoso (the Shining Path) as it engaged in a campaign of terror against the indigenous population of Peru. This said, Santos himself seems to be more of a Colombian military mind than a Peruvian one.
The story has become a milestone for me, and I cannot wait for you to tell me your thoughts on it:
https://www.amazon.com/Chthonic-Weird-Tales-Inner-Earth-ebook/dp/B07B2LWZRG/ref=la_B01M34MZOT_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520013151&sr=1-1
II. Test Patterns
I have to blame KA Opperman for getting me into this one. Through him I met Duane Pesice and Michael Adams, who told me about their vision of an anthology dealing with human themes and irony in the veins of Twilight Zone.
It just so happened that I had a story I thought I would fit. "Golden Girl," is one of the earliest stories I have written, and like many others from that period of my life (I think I was 22 when I wrote it) it has gone through revision, revision and revision. The core of the story, however has remained the same. Themes include the horror of attraction, the way in which people lose can lose themselves as they become enamored with someone else. It does not help the protagonist that the subject of his affection is eerie, a puppeteer with questionable motives and an intangible hold over him.
Test Patterns is full of great stories and I am still in the process of reading it. Expect a full overview later in the month.
https://www.amazon.com/Test-Patterns-Duane-Pesice-ebook/dp/B078MYZD6V/ref=la_B01M34MZOT_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520013151&sr=1-4
III. Occult Detective Quarterly Presents
If you've been bothered with my too-frequent updates about the Bartred family, I apologize. I have big, big plans for occult detective Joe Bartred and his family and friends. Readers of "Magdalena" may get a bit of whiplash reading this story. Joe is older, wiser and he is not alone. He has brought his daughter June to Los Angeles, hoping that she will make a more informed choice regarding her future. That's all I want to say about it for now, but this will be my first ever-novelette.
Kickstarters:
I. Vastarien: A Literary Journal
My first ever literary essay, my contribution for this journal came about as I was preparing for some exams. Political persuasions aside, a key component of Ligottian horror is the ravages of capitalism, the ghost towns and abandoned industrial parks in its wake. With this comes a complete loss of self, the ridiculous commodification of labor that forces people to make absurd plastic doll-heads and other abhorrently useless products. This idea is very much in dialog with Karl Marx's thoughts on the alienation of labor. Lesser known than Marx, however, is Karl Polanyi, perhaps one of the most intelligent and intricate theorists of political economics of the last century. Writing as WWII drew down to an end, Polanyi marked himself as a "non-Marxist socialist," and hypothesized that both fascism and communism were responses to the desperation that unfettered markets created.
He termed this merciless capitalism "the Satanic Mill."
As if that wasn't just asking to be put in dialog with Ligotti?
Reserve your copy here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/867956165/vastarien-a-literary-journal
II. Broken Eye Books
This one is my second pro-sale ever! And it's a weird sort of story. I'll be teasing more about it as time goes on, but it draws directly from my experiences in college both in undergrad and graduate school. It concerns a strange student, Laura Nodens, who is investigating the death of her favorite TA. The story, if had to boil it down, is "Veronica Mars vs. Cthulhu." A certain Lovecraftian congressman also cameos.
Contribute here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1557256029/welcome-to-miskatonic-university-an-anthology
