If you don’t understand the headline, an old head can explain it.
This week I’m recovering from food poisoning, probably from raw honey. I don’t know. This week has been a wash. That said, I’ve been doing more reading and listening to podcasts. The books I ordered while I had Covid had arrived and before this latest fresh hell, I got some reading in. I listened to some podcasts and learned two things to apply to my work in progress:
Writing Excuses. When you leave a red herring, have your most liked character notice it first and be distracted by it. I lucked into doing this right because my novel has few characters. And to have a charismatic villain, just give them a goal and turn them loose. Have them make mistakes and vulnerabilities. Did well with this, thanks to guidance from my writing group Noble Fusion.
Body Shocks: Extreme Tales of Body Horror. edited by Ellen Datlow
You don’t need to be queasy about Extreme Body Horror anymore. It seems that prose masters of gore like Ed Lee are no longer considered “Extreme Horror” and are now called “Splatterpunks”. Now “Body Horror” is less about grotesquerie and more about social commentary, as in Cronenburg or Del Toro movies. Look up Sam Miller’s story in Pseudopod for his sequel to Carpernter’s “The Thing” from a queer perspective.
Or look up Johnson’s “Spar”, which won the Nebula for Best Short Story. The collection span this now-seemingly quaint story of amorphous alien sex, to collectors of anatomy, to forced paralysis, to murder victims. There is a being made of candy and I found that a neat idea. The whole book is worth reading. I enjoyed it. My enthusiasm may be a little wrung out from my recent experience, if you catch my drift.
“The Wide Carnivorous Sky” collects John Langan’s stories. Think Stephen King with less monster, more dread. (This is terribly reductive, but I’m dehydrated okay?) I am on the fence about this collection. He writes dense and compelling descriptions, sets just enough mood, then it’s an info dump of a monster or a rather pedestrian kill. Langan is a college professor who teaches fantastic fiction, and he comes up with great ideas. But these stories seem more set-up than execution, so to speak. He does grittier, more lived-in people than King, though, and should be read if for that reason.
All in all, most of what I read from both books seemed less about sensation than about sensibility.
Yet I’m squeamish about Ed Lee, so your milage will vary.
The body is a skeleton wrapped in a meat gundam suit powered by a bowl of electrical jello that may be haunted, all made from stardust, standing on a rock spinning in space. Any of these elements can fail at any time. You’re welcome.