Poe Returns

Note: This series didn't get picked up by ABC, but happily The Raven with John Cusak as Poe is coming to theaters in Fall 2011.

News that ABC's considering a series with Edgar Allan Poe as its detective lead is intriguing and exciting, especially with dark mystery investigations on the agenda.

 I'm sure the style, while the setting is historic, could resemble The X-Files and The Night Stalker revival with a little C. August Dupin-style ratiocination thrown in, but it's a little off-beat and innovative, and pays homage the father of many of the things I enjoy. I'll certainly sample it.

While it's to be written by Chistopher Hollier who's worked on Alias, the concept reminds me of a  novel I enjoyed as a kid, a time when the idea of  Poe and Poe's work were particularly thrilling.

I have mentioned it briefly here before though only in passing.

It's called Poe Must Die by the versatile Marc Olden who wrote thrillers of many stripes including a paperback series in the seventies, police procedurals and some wonderful Asian-themed thrillers including Dai-Sho, pitting a journalist against a Yukio Mishima-like adversary.

In Poe Must Die, the troubled Edgar Allan Poe is paired with boxer Pierce James Figg who's on the trail of a black magician. Said magician's in pursuit of an artifact known as the Throne of Solomon. It's legendary power is said to surpass Lucifer's, so its falling into the wrong hands could have dire consquences.

Poe's detective skills are utilized and ultimately Figg's pugilistic prowess comes into play, aided by a bit of mysticism. It's been years, but I remember it as a great, atmospheric adventure with mystical elements.

I suppose it's too much to hope that the pilot will be a 90-minute extravaganza based on the book. I'm sure it's possible to arrive at Poe as detective with paranormal cases independent of other sources, but it would be fun to see Poe Must Die brought to life.

Either way, Poe on TV is a good thing.

Genre Oscars

I've seen more of the Best Picture nominees this year than in some time. I've been making a point of getting off the sofa more and hustling out to the theater. I try to do my part to encourage the making of more movies.

It's interesting how many films have at least a drop of genre juice on them this year.

The King's Speech and The Kids are All Right are more likely Oscar contenders--human dramas with strong performances. I saw both, and I liked both.

Speech is the movie I'm rooting for, in fact. It is an emotional journey, finding drama as it deals with small, intense human strife against a backdrop of war and political crisis. It examines the toll of leadership on the individual and illustrates the importance and the power of words and symbolism on the world stage at a time when such consideration is particularly relevant. 

The genre side

The films that fit the notion of genre flicks are exceptional examples and not to be dismissed, however. I think they really are some of the best films of the 2010. In a year where safe, cookie-cutter fare was offered up, they stretched boundaries.

There are certainly lessons for all writers in this year's slate, opportunities to examine the development of character and the exploitation of cliche or previous works or myths.

The most obvious of the genre group is Black Swan with it's horrific elements, which surprised many people I've talked to, including Christine who hasn't gone to a real horror movie with me since walking out on Warlock a few weeks after we went to The Silence of the Lambs.

 Black Swan is definitely a study in how to enrich a thriller with character and a dose of subtext. Themes drawn from the ballet, to me, balance perfectly with the delusions of the central character.

Winter's Bone is set up on a mystery chassis with a few horrific touches. It does one of the best jobs ever of creating a realistic rural.
universe, in which the poor aren't caricatures and the accents seem real.

It has the well-woven strands of a mystery plot, enriched by its snapshot of a culture and its strong heroine.

 The Move Westward
True Grit's a Western, of course, though one built from a literary novel. It really is a perfect adventure story, enhanced both by its use of arch types and its skewering of them. Mattie Ross is the precocious teen capable of outwitting adults, though she breaks the boundaries of Disney heroines easily, and Rooster Cogburn inverts the stalwart Western hero without sacrificing mythic acts.

Inception is the other genre entry, deceptively looking more like an epic thriller yet with a mind-bending labyrinth at it's core. It's still the more traditional in this mix, yet it stands out against the well-crafted but safe summer blockbusters that surrounded it last July. It was the one of the mix that made me want to go to the theater vs.waiting for the disk.

I enjoyed the set pieces including Joseph Gordon-Levitt's floating challenge more than the opportunities to interpret and re-interpret dream-within-a-dream possibilities, though I know those have been fun for some. I'm a Lost fan and apologist, but I'm not really up for multiple rehashes of  Inception. That's just me.

For a while, it looked like 2010 wasn't a great movie year, but, you know, looking back, maybe it was OK.

Blood Hunter Sample

Blood Hunter proved to be my most popular ebook of 2010, so here's a sample to kick of the New Year.

Happy Holidays!

Wishing All A Happy Holiday Season!

Upcoming Movies I'd Rather Be Seeing

You ever go to the movies, and see trailers for flicks you'd rather be seeing than the show you just paid for?

I saw a perfectly fine holiday movie yesterday, but the trailers, always look better. They're the "what else is on?" of the theater experience, a couple of compressed minutes of pure imagination, revealing the best of a two-hour movie while sparking your imagination about possibilities as well:






And a Sci-Fi turn based on the novel from James Frey of "A Million Little Pieces" fame. The next Harry Potter?




Who's to say how these will pan out, but what a seven minute ride.

Doctor Who Christmas Wallpaper

I know I haven't written a Doctor Who post in a while, but I'm a Whovian of a few years now and looking forward to having the Christmas special actually air in the U.S. on Christmas Day this year on BBC America.

That it's a Doctor Who look at "A Christmas Carroll" is an added bonus, because that Dickens classic is another of my holiday-season passions. For Harry Potter fans, there's that guy who replaced Richard Harris as well. OK, I know he's Michael Gambon.

Happily, to help decorate computers for the holiday season and to help with the wait, the BBC has released some Doctor Who wallpaper from the installment here.

My desktop's now decked for the holidays.

Also fun: Ferguson's lost Doctor Who Cold Open

Doctor Who Halloween Wallpaper From the Tennant era

The Young Adult Paranormal Thriller Novel Interview

Crossroad Press is posting videos about its e-book offerings. Here, I talk about the two of my young adult paranormal novels currently available in digital editions. These were originally written under my young adult pseudonym Michael August, which indicates a book suitable for younger readers. Adults can enjoy these as well, of course.

I had a lot of fun writing the YA's, which as I mention are a great opportunity to do  horror where the tension and suspense rely on atmosphere and mood more than visceral scenes. I particularly enjoyed re-editing The Gift for the e-edition.

These books are available from the publisher, Crossroad Press

Or most other e-book outlets and platforms including smart phones or as .pdfs:

Amazon
Deadly Delivery
The Gift

Smashwords
Deadly Delivery
The Gift

Or search Sidney Williams on iBooks, where The Gift is available.

Her Fearful Symmetry - A Disturbing Literary Ghost Story

(May contain mild spoilers)
It's not, hopefully, giving away too much to say that the most disturbing elements of Her Fearful Symmetry, by The Time Traveler's Wife's Audrey Niffenegger, come late in the novel. That's an essential note to make for horror readers, just to keep expectations realistic.

This is not a haunted house tale, not a tale of rattling chains, cackling spirits or creaking doors. No visceral horror creeps into the mix.

It's a rich, character-driven narrative with a supernatural component that builds its disturbing storyline carefully, allowing the reader to realize what's ahead with a growing sense of tension and dread.

Symmetry's Sphere
Her Fearful Symmetry is first, however, a novel of complicated people and complicated lives from deeply obsessive-compulsive Martin to focal twins Julia and Valentina Poole to ghostly Elspeth Noblin, who spends most of the novel dead though very much a part of the narrative.

Elspeth is sister to the twins's mother, Edwina, and upon her death the mirror twins inherit Elspeth's flat on the edge of London'a Highgate Cemetery, provided they live a year in the residence.

Much of the plot revolves around their stay and their interaction with Martin, a crossword puzzle author upstairs whose wife has decamped. Unable to leave his apartment or give up his ritualistic obsessions, he languishes and befriends Julia, while Valentina becomes infatuated with Robert, Elspeth's significant other who is obsessed in his own right with a never-ending thesis on Highgate.

I've been intrigued of late, as a reader, with the blurring of the lines between genre and literary fiction. In "Stranger Things" (The Writer's Chronicle, September 2009) author Debra Spark examines works with genre elements in which--in her point of view--merit creeps in. She looks at the Michael Chabon thriller The Yiddish Policeman's Union with its alternate history, for example, and Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link.

Symmetry does that beautifully, incorporating elements of the Victorian ghost story into a study of people, relationships and manipulation.

It is a literary drama in its depiction of the relationships mentioned, but from those interactions and personalities, Elspeth's ghostly presence and sinister plans begin to emerge. The title is accurate in spite of Elspeth's seeming benevolence, and, if strong plotting is the stuff of genre, then Niffenegger utilizes the genre tool well in tightening the knots formed by the various strands.

For those interested in horror that stretches mind and imagination, Symmetry is a great choice.

Symmetry for Kindle

Related Posts

• I Was Dora Suarez: Poignant, Brutal Thriller
• The Red Tree: A Study in Quiet Horror

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone has a great day!

Enjoy the stuffing.

Sanctuary! Fantasy SF Paranormal Fun With Monsters

Is there a name for fans of Syfy/Canadia fantasy-thriller Sanctuary? You know like Trekker? I'm ready for my badge and membership card.

I glanced at the first episode when it aired on then Sci Fi, but didn't get to stay with the series, and I'll confess I was a little dismissive. Just another paranormal investigation show, I thought.

I returned for more sampling when the season became available on Netflix Watch Instantly. Episodes became a nice 45-minute break for the lazy part of Saturday afternoons just before time to start my grill for dinner while I was in school.

And I decided the premise was kind of fun and that Sanctuary wasn't just another X-Files. For the uninitiated, it's about Dr. Helen Magnus, Amanda Tapping, Stargate SG-1's Maj. Carter in a stunningly different persona. Dr. Magnus is immortal due to some Victorian magi-science, and she heads a network devoted to finding and protecting a generous supply of "abnormals" sprinkled around  the globe.

The mythology grows richer as the series moves along, even though there are obviously cost-conscious episodes in which Magnus and right-hand-man Dr. Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunn) are trapped in one-set confines such as the cabin of a crashed aircraft or the belly of an oil tanker. One ep was set entirely in a warehouse, viewed through the lens of a news crew's camera.

Myth, myth
Magnus is part of a circle that includes a misunderstood Jack The Ripper, Dr. John Watson and Tesla. The Sanctuary network is fraught with internecine political struggle, and there's a rival organization called Cabal. (Spoiler warning) One major character was killed off with stylish imagination.

The Season 2-ending, Season 3-beginning arc eschewed claustrophobic confines for a glob-spanning, world-threatening feature-like three-parter introducing Bollywood numbers and even more mythology, which seems headed in a Steampunk direction next. That's if an eye-candy holograph recently unlocked is any indication.

Happily with Netflix and Hulu, you can catch up quickly or just begin the series now and forge ahead at your own pace.

You never know what monster will crop up next.

The Night Oliver Littlechap Spent in Jail

My indoor-outdoor cat, Oliver Littlechap, wandered onto our doorstep five years ago, a thin Oliver Twist for whom we couldn't find an adoptive home. If he wasn't wild, he was close to it.

He lived on our patio for a while and was eventually granted inside privileges around the time Hurricane Rita's inland bluster reached our neighborhood.

Domestic dispute
Oliver's domesticity has always been a little in question. For ages he's liked to prowl the wooded area behind our house and has on occasion been given to staying out all night.

Cats are just not that into doing what they're told.

He disappeared once around 8 p.m., didn't return the next morning and remained missing until Christine and I stood in the back yard calling him diligently in the early afternoon. The vocals finally disturbed him, and he came staggering, blinking and half-asleep, out of a flower bed.

With a little effort, Christine's curtailed some of his roaming, letting him out at night before mealtime. Usually he's been back in an hour, though more recently he's taken to going out the front door when we get home in the evenings.

Bolts out actually, allowing no time for greeting or discourse.

Tuesday was no different when we came home from the gym. An orange streak shot past us, and we went inside to shower and fix dinner.

The front mat remained empty a while later when I looked out. Usually Ollie plops down there after his rounds, waiting to be let in for dinner. Or perhaps for him its supper, the later meal, usually enjoyed after The Theater.

Call back
When he still hadn't shown up in another little while, I called for him. Front first. Then back yard. Nothing. I waited a few minutes and called again.

Still no sign. Shaking the Pounce bag didn't do any good either. Reluctantly, I went to bed without Ollie inside, though I took consolation in remembering he'd done this sort of thing before.

The next morning he still wasn't on the stoop. Christine and I walked up the street calling until we had to go to work, and we toured the neighborhood by car before driving in.

I was worried, but I kept consoling myself that he'd be OK. Maybe he had wandered into the woods again.

After a couple of hours at work, I realized I wasn't concentrating and decided to make a quick swing home.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Ollie in one of those cat huddles on the front lawn. He'd finally decided to come home.

We pause now for a message from our jailer
But when I got out of my car, I noticed something on his collar. It's murder to keep a collar on Ollie. He's lost two dozen in five years. We had one of those chips implanted so that if he ever wandered too far there'd be a chance of getting called, but recently I found one I could keep on him without being too constricting.

I went over to him and rubbed his head, thinking, "My god has someone had him tied up?"

It wasn't a cord but a note secured by a twist tie.

"Your cat spent the night in my armadillo trap," an anonymous neighbor had written. Threats began after that. If he--though the note writer said she--returned to his/her property Ollie would be turned over to animal control.

Neighborly.

Five years I've worried about him, but Ollie's done fine in our quiet little cul-de-sac, 'till what I suspect is a newish neighbor with a landscaping fetish shows up.

It took Ollie a day to get back to being himself. His nose was red and his face seemed a little swollen, probably from trying to push the trap door open to free himself. Luckily it was chilly but not that cold the other night.

He's adapting to being indoor only fairly well so far, though there have been a few requests for a word with the management this a.m.


More Ollie

• Cat's on the Baker's Rack
• A visit to the Cat Condo

Gnelfs And E-book Release Interview

David Burton, author of several fantasy thrillers, has an interview with me about Gnelfs posted on his Random Musings blog.

I got to talk a little about what I'm coming to think of as my "B-movies In Print" period of writing fast-paced thrillers.

Check it out and be sure to check out David's titles as well!

A Visit to Heroes Club The Art of Toys in San Francisco - Horror Collectibles

My buddy Clifford Brooks was showing me around San Francisco neighborhoods when he did an abrupt U-turn and grabbed a parking spot the other night. "You have to see this place," he said, nodding toward a showcase window with a giant blue robot: Heroes Club: The Art of Toys.

We could only stare in the windows at the shadowed array of collectibles since the shop had closed for the day.

But since we both grew up with Aurora model kits and Famous Monsters of Film Land, we returned the next day for a museum-like tour through an array of super heroes, soldiers, Bruce Lees, steampunk figures and a generous smattering of monsters including a full-sized Jason Voorhees looking down from a ceiling perch.  

Before the Icon

Smaller Jason replicas including a Friday the 13th Part 2 version in a pre-hockey mask burlap sack joined various iterations of Michael Myers, Freddy and a host of other vampires and creatures. An incredible life-size Nosferatu offered a sinister gaze from a rear showcase, and a wooden-frame 3-D replica of the Famous Monsters back page monster mask ad graced another shelf. 

"Are you guys collectors?" he asked.

"Just looking," Cliff said, observing a price tag. 

That didn't seem to bother him. He proceeded to show us a Count Dracula ring and a similar Mummy ring with, he noted, finer detail than some other versions. 

A Hong Kong native, he noted his favorite movie is The Exorcist and pointed to a wall where a bas-relief face of Pazuzu stared forward.

Stan's eye

A hand-eye-coordination statue, not for sale, peered from another case. "That was a gift from Stan Winston," he said. On yet another shelf stretched, a monster from a Twilight Zone-like series from Asia, never seen in the U.S. "Asian people know this," the proprietor said.  "U.S. people not so much." 

A Godzilla figure with an actor stepping out of it was a littl more more recognizable for U.S. audiences. 

Stake out

One of the most fascinating items was a hand-crafted vampire hunter's kit (seriously click the link and have a look) from Zom Bee Toys, maker of Frozen Dead figures as well. 

Moving it from a shelf to the counter, the proprietor offered a closer look. It looked Van Helsing-ready with bottles of holy water and a metal crucifix, plus a weighty wooden mallet and an array of stakes.

"These are hand crafted," the proprietor said, noting the handle-rings etched in the wood and the finely-honed points.

"They sharpen these by hand," he noted, demonstrating the twisting technique and stressing the whittling style of points would be much more jagged. "It takes a lot of time to do that right," he said.

I'll never convince Christine to adopt a collectibles decorating theme, but it was a nice spot to visit. 

Here's hoping the economy doesn't squeeze out this kind of coolness. 

A Universal Horror Writer Moment

Maybe it's not exactly a moment, but there's an experience shared by many writers of a certain age who've put pen to horror.

In Night Shift, Stephen King's fabulous first collection of short fiction, a glance at the copyright page notes many of the tales first appeared in, shall we say delicately, men's magazines. In the seventies, King found a steady outlet for his fiction in Cavalier and similar publications.

In those ancient of days, the '80s, when I was finishing college and discovering the horrors of general assignment reporting, I began to finish stories that I felt were worth sending out. Keep it down out there. I heard that.

I got Writer's Market like many other young, aspiring scribes  and perused magazines that accepted mystery and horror. Through a lag in editing or updates, Cavalier and other publications that had gone in new editorial directions by the eighties were still listed as outlets for horror fiction.

So, it was a.) where Stephen King was published a few years before and b.) it accepted horror. Seemed like a good idea for submission.

The results for everyone who went through those same paces, I suppose, confirm the writer advice adage that you must read the markets to which you're submitting. Reading stories from the same publication in anthologies isn't always quite the same, especially if there's been a lag of a few years.

When I sent a story to Cavalier, I got a form rejection with--the bright side--a personal note scribbled on it: "It's good, but we need strongly sex-oriented stories."

The world had begun to change. The specialization of newsstand publications and niches had begun. Scarcer were the er, well-rounded editorial styles that offered "readers" pictorials mixed with a couple of stories and relevant articles.

The only fictional narratives in Cavalier--once the publisher of King and tales such as Roald Dahl's über classic Man from the South--were now captions for pictorials of women fighting.

Happily, in this new era, writing marches on, and even as old venues for words die, new venues are born. I guess that's the good news.

And I've got to get back to re-editing some of those stories that were rejected by Cavalier but found other print homes.

Gnelfs Cover Art - October Horror

Especially since it's October, Halloween time etc. that I'd put up a nice-sized view of the new e-book cover art from Neil Jackson. The sad side of e-books is that covers are mostly thumbnail propositions.

The original mass market paperback's art was nice, but this really makes me shudder.

Get Gnelfs via the banner at right for the Kindle. It's a few pennies more but available in multiple formats at Smashwords.

It's about the title characters but also features dueling sorcerers, or OK one bad sorcerer and one mysterious occult investigator and dark trails.

An Interview about Blood Hunter and Gnelfs

Sonya Clark was kind enough to offer me an opportunity to discuss the e-book release of Blood Hunter and Gnelfs recently.

The interview is now posted on her site.

Sonya is the author of a fantasy novella called Bring on the Night that's now available as an e-book.

I really enjoyed recalling the origins of both novels and talking about writing even a little about my reporting days.

Drop by and see it if you can.

I Was Dora Suarez: Poignant, Brutal Thriller

Books on cult fiction and many reviews warn about the late Derek Raymond's I Was Dora Suarez, an entry in his Factory series of police procedurals. They seek to alert readers to scenes and references not for the faint of heart nor weak of stomach.

The novel includes all of the shocking references that get spotlighted including the possibly mythical felching, but they're milder than reviews would lead you to believe, and they are there either in character or serve to represent the profane, brutal world in which the unnamed narrator, a police detective sergeant, and the unfortunate Dora Suarez reside.

Raymond strives to find beauty in darkness and decay and paints the backdrop in willfully extreme tones.

Narrator hero and victim
The narrator's tough, just back to police work after what amounts to a suspension, and is prone to violence. He's satisfied with his rank and has no desire for advancement, but the discovery of the book's brutal opening deaths sets him an investigation that will rattle him like no other.

In an almost third-person narrative, that opening describes the dual murder of Dora Suarez and her unfortunate landlady who is thrown through a massive clock.  

Soon the detective is uncovering layers to Dora's life, and a look into her diary makes him understand her soul even as he delves into those darkest corners to which she was exposed.

Deep fascination
His fascination with Dora and her freshly washed hair at the time of her discovery is deepened by his exploration of her thoughts and dreams. Dora is damaged, but her spirit is unquestionably human.

Discoveries drive obsession as the detective and a partner intensify their search for her murderer.

The book drags in a few passages, but those are easily surpassed, and the ending, as the detective closes in on the hideously monstrous culprit provide an intense payoff both on a genre entertainment level and emotionally.

I Was Dora Suarez may not be for those tender-hearted souls who can't take tough fiction, but for those who can face a dark tale with a heart and soul, it's an interesting excursion.

I understand other entries in the Factory series eschew procedural conventions in interesting ways, and so I'm looking forward to sampling more Raymond, as I continue a quest for reading that straddles the literary and genre universes.

Guest Blogging on The Road

I'm literally guest blogging on The Road today. It's a brief meditation on Cormac McCarthy's subtle use of horror in the novel.

Check it out over at Elder Signs Press.

What's On the iPod/iPhone?: Big Finish's (Sherlock) Holmes and the Ripper

I was pleasantly surprised recently to discover:

a.) The Big Finish Podcast 

b.) That Big Finish is doing Sherlock Holmes stories

c.) You can now download from the Big Finish website

d.) Downloads are less expensive than CDs

I've been under a rock two years, so I'm still catching up on a lot of things.

 Of course when I gained all this knowledge, starting with the podcast, a natural choice for a birthday gift request was "Holmes and the Ripper," an installment based on a stage play by Brian Clemens of The Avengers fame and scores of other TV shows and movies.

The story's core stems from the conspiracy theorized in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution by Stephen Knight, so it bears similarities to From Hell, the Jack the Ripper miniseries and the earlier Holmes flick Murder By Decree. Chronologically, release-wise, the play falls it the middle. It pre-dates From Hell and the graphic novel on which it's based but followed 1979's Decree by about nine years.

I suppose the conspiracy is too delicious dramatically to be abandoned, even though it's widely discredited.

Familiarity with the source material doesn't minimize the enjoyment of the production, because it's gloriously and freshly executed with a full cast, incredible music and a music suite track that's a dark mind ride unto itself.

Nicholas Briggs is wonderful as  Holmes, pining over Irene Adler--The Woman--yet  up to the challenge of conspirators and mystics in pursuit of the truth behind the Whitechapel killings. Interesting use is made of Scotland Yard Commissioner Robert Anderson, who, I believe, gets a lot of examination in Ripperology.

"Holmes and the Ripper" manages action, chills and excitement, sparking the imagination with its brilliant mixture of sounds and pauses. It's a great starting point for the Big Finish universe.

A note on the download - The download is not like an Audible or iTunes audiobook. You receive the CD tracks in a zip file, which means importing to iTunes and making a playlist. It's relatively painless.

The Red Tree - A Study In Quiet Horror

Now and then a novel comes along that's so subtly eerie it generates fear that seems to affect your central nervous system. The Haunting of Hill House is that way, as are some of the novels of Charles L. Grant.

To me, The Red Tree achieves similar results, with its sense of unease and its gradual, ambiguous journey into the supernatural. It's a true don't-read-this-too-late-at-night experience.

As I followed Sarah Crowe, the protagonist and chief narrator, through her strange experiences, the little creaks and groans of my house, and the sounds of insects or pine needles thumping the window made me look twice or turn on an extra light.

It's the kind of terror that's hard to achieve, but The Red Tree author Caitlin R. Kiernan does it so well Crowe's journal seems like the real chronicle of experiences--both mundane and incredible--hammered out on a battered manual typewriter.

Crowe, we learn early, is from a small Alabama town, but she's more recently lived in Atlanta and achieved a degree of  literary success . The death of her lover, Amanda, has driven her to an ancient house in Rhode Island. There, in the basement, she finds not just that old typewriter but also a manuscript by the house's former resident, a suicide.

While she's supposed to be writing a contracted novel, Crowe begins to delve into the abandoned manuscript and to peruse the red oak on her rental property, subject of the dead author's narrative which explores the tree's myth and twisty tales of New England legend. The tree, for hundreds of years, has exerted a strange influence, and the interspersed passages from the abandoned manuscript add wonderful eeriness.

Rustin Parr's been here
The tree is tied to bizarre ritual killings, strange disappearances and stories of shape shifting, all of which enthrall Crowe even as she begins a troubled affair with the house's new upstairs tenant, a beautiful young artist fleeing her own troubles in Los Angeles.

As strange experiences for both of them escalate, lines between the strange and the surreal blur and Crowe slowly reveals the truths behind her flight from the South, and questions about whether or not she's a reliable narrator build.

Don't come to the book expecting visceral, brutal horror. Come expecting soft chills that become shudders and eventually rattle and shake you. It's whispering horror with one of the best explorations of writer's block I've read since The Lime Works.

Also available in a Kindle Edition