Laird Barron's Blog, page 46

Norman

I used to write poetry. Had some published in a local paper when I was a boy. Placed a few more pieces here and there over the years. I subsisted on the likes of EA Poe and Robert Service during my youth. These days it’s Mark Strand and Anne Sexton.

A tough discipline. In the years just prior to my breakthrough into the horror/fantasy field with short fiction, I tried to improve by writing poetry and nothing but for a year. One of the wisest courses I’ve ever undertaken, but grueling. I never shook the feeling of punching way above my weight class. Even so, it would be nice to think that eventually I’ll return to the ring. In the meantime, here’s  one from back in the day.

Norman

by Laird Barron

Father is a Saxon killer

Father slays Picts too

He hits them with his hammer

He chokes them with his chain

When he stomps home, his maul is bitten

I cannot lift it from the table—yet

You should see his hands

Big and black as iron

Father’s beard smells of  hound

Father’s beard smells of cinder

It tickles my ear and I laugh

When he kisses me goodnight

Berserker, Lewis Chessmen

 

ee cummings

The late great E.E Cummings is one of my favorite poets. This is among the best things he ever wote.

Buffalo Bill’s
by e.e. cummings



Buffalo Bill ‘s
defunct
                     who used to
                     ride a watersmooth-silver
                                                            stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                                                                                   Jesus
he was a handsome man
                                                            and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

Through the Ghastly Door

Will Jacques just sent me an amazing piece of art. It’s called Finding the Way Out and was inspired by my novelette “The Broadsword.” Seek ye more of his work at the Ghastly Door…

 

The Illusion

A while back, Draven Ames asked me to contribute a few lines for his series Aha Moments in Writing.  My brief essay regarding the illusion of detail just went  Previous contributors include Maurice Broaddus, Amy Grech, Walter Greatshell, John Hornor Jacobs, and Ellie Sodorstrom. If you are interested in a peek under the hood of the writing process, this is the series for you.

Watch This: Trailer O’ Doom

A big thank you to the supremely talented Nick Langan for filming this trailer of my literary work. Special thanks to John and David Langan for cutting right to the moral of my stories: don’t go into the woods, ever.

State of the Union LB Edition with music

I’m wrapping up a crime novel–it’s three quarters of the way to draft. Ardor, the next collection needs an original novella and some touch up work. I’ll turn that over to my agent mid 2014. It’s an Alaska-themed horror collection. Less emphasis on cosmic terrors and more focused on noir and thriller aspects. I’ve already placed a handful of original stories in various anthologies slated for 2014, as well as some reprints and foreign sales. Additionally, I’ve been commissioned to write three introductions and seven or eight new stories for upcoming anthologies. Busy times.

Thank you to the publishers, editors, and readers for all your support.

Here’s what I have out, or forthcoming, for 2013:

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, Night Shade Books

“Rex” Gigantic Worlds

“Slave Arm” Blood Type

“Termination Dust” Tales of Jack the Ripper

“Ardor” Suffered from the Night

“Black Dog” Halloween: Magic, Mystery, & the Macabre

“The Beatification of Custer Poe” Shades of Blue & Gray

“Nemesis” Primeval Magazine

“Jaws of Saturn” The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

“LD50” Weaponized (and here at the site)

“Blood & Stardust” Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination

And here’s some Local H to take it on out:

Watch This: Abed

Elizabeth Massie is an excellent writer, so it’s nice to learn that her story “Abed” has been adapted for film. It certainly appears creepy enough.

Farewell to a Poet

CE Chaffin passed away recently. He was a former medical doctor and a practicing poet. A big, complicated man who struggled with depression on an order of which most people are blessedly ignorant. We met years and years ago when I submitted a poem to his excellent ezine The Melic Review. CE took an interest in me and my writing. We shared kinship in our passion for literature and in our battles with the demons of depression. In time I wound up editing poetry for Melic and it was a good experience, and one that led to my forging ahead with professional fiction writing. Of course, as the years rolled by, time, circumstance, and a career in prose, carried me ever farther away from Melic and most of the poets and authors I once knew.

Four years ago, he and his wife Kathleen visited my wife and I in Olympia. A drought had Western Washington in its teeth. CE arrived near the end of a driving tour and seemed mightily restless. He composed a beautiful poem while sitting on our sofa and drove off the next morning. The first and last time we ever met in person. For unrelated reasons, his visit marked the beginning of a time of great personal darkness in my life. I feel a measure of sorrow and guilt that these days my horizon is at least illuminated with flashes of color while CE has lost his own final battle.

We were never close in the way people typify relationships. My personal struggles made matters difficult and I wish I’d been stronger, done more. Nonetheless he remains an important figure. CE was an honest, plain-spoken critic, a superior poet, and someone who demonstrated faith in my abilities that few ever had. He mentored me when a mentor was what I needed most. For that I am grateful.

Good bye, Craig. Requiescat in pace.

One fist of iron, the other of steel

Cormac McCarthy is my favorite living author and Blood Meridian is his masterpiece. As the jacket copy notes, it is “An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America’s westward expansion…” Fueled by McCarthy’s relentless and brutal lyricism, it’s a novel capable of flensing a reader’s emotions in a way that is rare and grimly wonderful. Labeled a western or historical, I consider it a great North American horror novel that will live in your memory with the power of a car accident.

Another book that affects me like lye in the eye is James Dickey’s To the White Sea. This novel follows the desperate journey of an American gunner shot down during the firebombing of Tokyo. The protagonist Muldrow calls upon survival skills learned from a lifetime of hunting the remote interior of Alaska as he evades capture and heads north from Tokyo into the frozen north. Anything but a hapless victim fleeing for his life, Muldrow is much closer to representing a tiger set free to ravage an unsuspecting populace. There’s a lot going on under the surface of the chase story–it’s really a stark and horrific examination of a man traveling from the darkness of genesis into the darkness of annihilation.

Watch This: Intermission in Hell

This little cartoon will give you nightmares, just like Bambi did when you were a kid. Maybe worse. Be warned–NSFW. Possibly not safe for anywhere.