Laird Barron's Blog, page 27

Listen to This: TV on the Radio

Great band, great videos.

On Writing: Inspiration

Here’s a brief essay I wrote for . It’s a great series.

The Illusion

Probably the most powerful epiphany I’ve experienced in learning to write has to do with the art of observed detail: what level of description is necessary to paint the picture.

Roger Zelazny was my first great literary inspiration. As a kid, I chewed through Nine Princes in Amber, This Immortal, Lord of Light, The Changing Land, and many others with a fervent obsession. Zelazny was as much a poet as anything else. His language was evocative and musical in a manner that remains unique to the canon. The landscapes he described, especially those found in The Changing Land and certain shadow realms of the Amber chronicles, were ornate and richly detailed to the threshold of sensory overload.

Yet, many years later upon poring through passages that had stuck in my imagination since childhood, I made a startling discovery: Zelazny’s prose was far more restrained than I’d remembered. As any accomplished magician does, he’d conducted a literary sleight of hand, creating an illusion of depth and detail from descriptions that bordered upon the austere. His technique was to describe a character or setting in broad terms offset by a scattering of specific details to sharpen the picture. He set the stage with phrases such as,

“The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden.” –Lord of Light

And a longer joint wherein Corwin of Amber describes being run to ground by his brother Benedict,

“His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror.” –The Guns of Avalon

These examples are sort of the antipodes within Zelazny’s approach to staging, albeit both are economical within the parameters of what they’re trying to accomplish. The most interesting point about the latter passage is that not only does it vividly encapsulate a stormy relationship that has persisted for centuries, it also transmits a sense of immediate and awesome danger to the narrator and moves the plot forward. All in one fell swoop. The chief purpose of descriptive prose is to illuminate and to progress.

Horror in general relies on atmosphere, and the specific variety that I favor gains its power from the gradual and inevitable accretion of detail. Zelazny taught me that a surfeit of description isn’t necessary, but rather the deployment of effective words and only so many as are required.

State of My State 2014 Edition

I forged ahead with a significant amount of writing this year–the majority of it won’t make the scene until 2015, so I’ll leave that aside and stick with what is here at the moment. My agent is in possession of two manuscripts, one of which is the forthcoming Alaska collection, Swift to Chase. A handful of stories saw publication. The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All won a Stoker and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. I wrote several introductions and forewords for my fellow authors, including Simon Strantzas, John Goodrich, and Scott Nicolay. Guest-editing the Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 1 is a hell of a milestone–I am proud of the book Mike and I put together. Additionally, I penned essays and eulogies for colleagues who have passed on to the other side. A bittersweet task, but it was honor to take it on.

Thank you to Ellen and Matt at KGB, Cory and the gang at Night Shade, Ross Lockhart and Justin Steele at Worde Horde, Michael Kelly at Undertow, the good folks at WORD BOOKSTORE in Brooklyn, everybody at THE STRAND in Manhattan, and INQUIRING MINDS bookstores of New Paltz and Saugerties, NY. As always, much appreciation to my agents Janet and Pouya and their assistants Penny and Jess. Thanks to my family and friends, especially Fiona, John, and David Langan. And special thanks to my girlfriend Jessica. She’s a wonderful person, and I am lucky to have her in my corner.

Finally, my heartfelt gratitude to my supporters and fans in the genre community. Thank you for buying my books and reading my words. It permits me to keep at this writing bit. I appreciate your kind words and thoughts–this is a solitary gig and it makes a difference knowing you’re out there pulling for me.

2014 publications

Stories

“(Little Miss) Queen of Darkness” Dark Discoveries Magazine, #29

“Screaming Elk, MT” Nightmare Carnival

“the worms crawl in,” Fearful Symmetries

Man with No Name, A Mountain Walked

Reprints

The Croning Valdemar Books, Spain

“Bulldozer” Lovecraft’s Monsters

“Ardor” The Cutting Room Tachyon 2014

“Termination Dust” The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2013 

“Jaws of Saturn” The Best Horror of the Year 6

Essays

“Silken Death Tunnel.” Introduction to Pop 1280 by Jim Thompson

“May Bury You (On Robert Aickman’s ‘The Hospice’)” Weird Fiction Review

“Life among Ghosts.” introduction to Hag by John Goodrich

“We Are For the Weird.” Introduction to the Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 1

“Shine On, Dark Star.” Michael Shea tribute; Locus Magazine

“No Form Is Eternal.” Michael Shea essay; Lightspeed Magazine

“A Stitch in Darkness.” Introduction to Unseaming by Mike Allen

“Dig My Grave.” Introduction to Burnt Black Suns by Simon Strantzas

“Eye of the Raven.” Introduction to The New Black Dark House

“Waking the Titans.” Introduction to Ana Kai Tangata by Scott Nicolay

Tahiti Is a Magical Place

Robert Aickman is the kind of writer who makes one better for having read him. Cold Hand in Mine is a great collection, and particularly a great collection of the so-called weird tale. It’s my favorite, but the man will prove unerringly brilliant whatever book of his you happen to come across. An elusive, yet palpable connection persists between Aickman’s strange stories, and joins his collections together until they coexist and cooperate like discrete elements of a nervous system.

Thanks to David Davis at Weird Fiction Review for affording me the opportunity to explore one of Robert Aickman’s most famous tales, The Hospice.

Image by Ida Kar, vintage bromide print, 1960 (via Weird Fiction Review)

Read This: Farrago’s Wainscot

Farrago’s Wainscot had its last issue in 2009. I am happy to see this excellent ‘zine of the uncanny and the mellifluous will return in February 2015. Meanwhile, I encourage perusing the archives. If and when you do,  start with Edward Morris’ Lotophagi. A weird and horrific little piece set in the Pac NW, reprinted by Ellen Datlow for her year’s best.

Listen to This: Apocalypse Rock

Drawing the Weird

Recorded a podcast the other night for SF Signal. One of the guests was artist Jim Pavelec. I encourage you to give his site a look. Great work.

image via Jim Pavelec

All Is Farewell

Goodbye, Mark Strand. Thank you for the greatness of your poetry. I found your work at a time when I was wandering the wilderness; your words were a light peeping from a window and through the darkness. Your ending signals another within me. Goodbye is a rehearsal of sorts.

Drawn by a light in a window, I followed a path through the wood. Begun nearly twenty years ago, the path has carried me to a great clearing beneath a night sky where all paths eventually converge and then disappear. When I glance over my shoulder, there is only the forest, black and shapeless and impenetrable, except for that flickering light, hanging as a beacon to other travelers in the dark.

I’ll keep moving farther from the labyrinth of forest, across the grass of the field that rolls on until it curves against a starry horizon. You and Roger and Michael and Sylvia and CE and the others, the many others, are out there somewhere, accelerating as tachyons into the ultimate.

Farewell, Mark Strand, and thank you for the light and the path. I will follow, slowly and with a purposeful stride, from here and to the end, always catching up.

NY Times on Mark Strand

Photo via NY Times

“It is true, as someone has said, that in

A world without heaven, all is farewell.

Whether you wave your hand or not,

It is farewell, and if no tears come to your eyes

It is still farewell, and if you pretend not to notice,

Hating what passes, it is still farewell.”  –Mark Strand

+1: Vlad the Impaler

Here is one more to add to the previous list…great video, but hunt down the full song.

Listen to This: Six Under the Radar

Six lesser known bands/musicians I enjoy: