Richard Gavin's Blog, page 23

AT FEAR'S ALTAR reviewed in Wormwood

Issue 20 of Mark Valentine's terrific journal Wormwood: Literature of the Fantastic, Supernatural and Decadent  features a very flattering review of At Fear's Altar by none other than renowned ghost story author and critic Reggie Oliver.

Here is a snippet from Reggie's review:

"On his own ground Gavin's storytelling can be masterly [...]As with Machen and Blackwood at their best an epiphany or illumination is achieved, though Gavin's mysticism is darker and distinctly his own."
Copies of this and other in-stock issues of Wormwood may be ordered through the link above. 

AT FEAR'S ALTAR reviewed in Rue Morgue

At Fear's Altar  is given an excellent review in the April issue of Rue Morgue  magazine. Here is a sample of what reviewer Alison Lang had to say about the book:

"[Gavin] demonstrates that he can pay reverent homage to the pioneers of weird fiction while forging and developing a distinctive voice all his own."Accordingly, his stories sweat and bleed the eldritch, fluidly and often beautifully."
As one might expect, issue #132 also features a variety of fascinating and gruesome articles, evidencing once again that Rue Morgue is one of the most diverse and interesting Horror magazines on the planet. I urge you to buy a copy and support independent journalism.

New Interview

Horror enthusiast and critic Jim Mcleod was good enough to interview me on his website. Our conversation may be read here.

The Arkham Digest reviews THE DARKLY SPLENDID REALM

The terrific Arkham Digest gazes into my 2009 collection The Darkly Splendid Realm and likes what it sees there.

Their review may be read here.

Shadows & Tall Trees

Michael Kelly shares my ambition to provide readers with eerie, sophisticated horror fiction. His journal 'Shadows & Tall Trees' is an eminent venue for stories of this kind, so I'm pleased to report that my latest tale "A Cavern of Redbrick" will be appearing in the upcoming issue, due this July.

Adam Nevill on AT FEAR'S ALTAR

Adam Nevill, a writer of immense talent whose dark novels The Ritual and Last Days have garnered him a deservedly high profile in British Horror, has posted his thoughts on At Fear's Altar:
"There's terrific writing here and a powerful imagination on full power to the last page." 
Adam's full write up and can be read here.

"Echoes from Hades": A Fireside Chat with Don Webb

The latest installment of Echoes from Hades is now online at The Teeming Brain.

I had the pleasure of chatting with writer, magician, teacher and friend Don Webb. It is a remarkable conversation. Don's responses will change you for the better. This interview is transformative. Enjoy, friends!

SHADOWS EDGE & Musings on the Numinous

My stalwart friend, renowned strange tales author Simon Strantzas, helmed this fabulous-looking anthology, Shadows Edge. The book is now available for pre-order from Gary Fry's excellent Gray Friar Press.The fact that this anthology includes my story "Tinder Row" really is a mere adjunct as far as I'm concerned. Shadows Edge is an important book to me. Not only because it includes some of today's finest authors of supernatural fiction, but because the entire premise behind Simon's book is absolutely cardinal to my life and work.

The publisher describes this anthology as containing "fifteen tales of numinous horror." I don't believe this is simply phrase-making or anything coy. As you can see by the description of me on the header of this very website, numinous horror is an authentic mode of literary expression. And for this writer, it is the only mode of expression. I do not make this statement rashly. It is born out of several years of refinement and reflection.

Stretching back to my earliest childhood memories, I was granted exposure to a rarefied emotional, perhaps even spiritual, state. For a long time this state remained nameless to me. "Fear" was a decent approximation, "eerie" better still, but rather than attempting to dissect this experience I sought it where I could.

For many years the main wellsprings of this feeling were my dreams and the genre of classic supernatural horror fiction and films. This was in the early 1980s, when the genre was sinking into a mire of clotting gore. While I took in and was occasionally entertained by some of those boiler room bloodfests, they have long since sluiced through my memory. It was tales of ghosts and the unworldly that opened that door in the back of my mind. Stories of haunted places and haunted people were my initiations into a larger and more shadowy world.

As I matured I learned that this tiny subset of literature served as an artistic vehicle for an aspect of life that is as ancient as the woods that surround us. Theologian Rudolf Otto coined the term "numinous." Based on the Latin word "numen" ("divine power"), Otto described his neologism as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self."

And there it was. Otherness, being haunted by something beyond the reach of the rational mind and the five sensory organs. Something non-rational but powerful, rarefied. The fact that art can evoke such a sensation, even if one chooses to partake of this sensation as just entertainment, is astonishing to me. And it is my goal, my creative drive, my magnum opus.

I would never claim that every one of my tales has evoked this sense of the awesome or the ineffable. No, many of my earliest stories were instances of a young writer simply trying to figure how to to do something with prose. I had to walk before I could run. For many years I read widely in the horror genre, but that has changed drastically over the last few years. The binging has passed. Today my life and my work are very deeply focused. I have whittled my library of horror fiction down to almost nothing beyond the works of those past visionaries (Poe, Machen, of course Blackwood (my primary fiction author), HPL, etc.) and the works of my contemporaries who understand and strive for similar effects. Contemporaries like those gathered in Shadows Edge.Deeper horror. Horror that strives for something beyond inventorying the woes of life or detailing just how sadistic human beings can be. I wish to create earthy, spooky tales, ones that evoke the genius loci of that rare borderland where author, image, and reader meet.

As my focus sharpens, my creative fire burns brighter. All I had ever wanted to achieve in this field was to fashion a body of work that evoked that rarefied feeling I'd always searched after myself, a set of fictives that might stand alongside those past masterpieces of numinous horror. Knowing that many eminent critics, devoted readers and fellow writers feel that I have indeed accomplished this is tremendously gratifying, even humbling.

The work continues. The eidolon is nearer to me and so I labour to make the prose that much smoother, that much richer, that much more precise. May my future works serve as an apotheosis for the souls of both writer and reader. May our worlds be eldritch ones, worlds of a strange and terrible beauty. May we all feel the edging of liminal shadows...

BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR

It's my pleasure to announce that Horror editor extraordinaire Ellen Datlow has selected my story "The Word-Made Flesh" (which originally appeared in At Fear's Altar) for her forthcoming The Best Horror of the Year Volume 5. The fifth installment of this phenomenal anthology series will once more be published by the wonderful Night Shade Books. Full details on the book to be unveiled soon.

AT FEAR'S ALTAR reviewed at Chthonic Matter

C.M. Muller, "scrivener of weird fiction and purveyor of matters chthonic & otherwise" (what's not to like about that?) has kindly posted a review of At Fear's Altar on his site Chthonic Matter:

"If I were limited to one word in which to describe Richard Gavin’s new collection of tales, that word would quite simply be: rich. Rich in symbol, rich in characterization, rich in imagination, rich in utter uniqueness of plot, and last but not least, rich in its use of language..."

Mr. Muller's flattering review can be accessed here.