Shroomed & Doomed
I'm admittedly ambivalent regarding the well-deserved pop cultural moment fungi are having with the popularity of the video game-turned-show THE LAST OF US. "Sporror" is having a moment, clearly.
Cordyceps Fungus Pesticide
I'm ambivalent because my novel, THE CURSED EARTH, is 100% fungus horror-centric -- specifically from a folk horror/cosmic horror comedy thriller angle. I crushed it with this concept, ran with it, went all over the place with it.
THE CURSED EARTH is woefully underread and underappreciated, and it came out ahead of this HBO-fostered boom. Yes, the video game has been out for a long time (since 2013), but the "sporror" is now apparently hot, and my novel came out ahead of this wave.
THE CURSED EARTH is a strong addition to this subgenre and it's just not getting seen or appreciated, which bothers me as a writer and creator. Maybe my biggest failing with it was making it too big a novel (480 pages) and putting too many characters in it (not really, but in the world of fleeting attention spans, maybe too much to track?)
It's a good book, and it's destined to be overlooked as this sporror moment comes and goes. Maybe it'll be discovered 20 years from now, and people will realize I wrote a kickass fungus-centric horror novel in 2022. I dunno. It's demoralizing to do good work and have it lost in the void. That's true horror.
Cordyceps Fungus Pesticide
I'm ambivalent because my novel, THE CURSED EARTH, is 100% fungus horror-centric -- specifically from a folk horror/cosmic horror comedy thriller angle. I crushed it with this concept, ran with it, went all over the place with it.
THE CURSED EARTH is woefully underread and underappreciated, and it came out ahead of this HBO-fostered boom. Yes, the video game has been out for a long time (since 2013), but the "sporror" is now apparently hot, and my novel came out ahead of this wave.
THE CURSED EARTH is a strong addition to this subgenre and it's just not getting seen or appreciated, which bothers me as a writer and creator. Maybe my biggest failing with it was making it too big a novel (480 pages) and putting too many characters in it (not really, but in the world of fleeting attention spans, maybe too much to track?)
It's a good book, and it's destined to be overlooked as this sporror moment comes and goes. Maybe it'll be discovered 20 years from now, and people will realize I wrote a kickass fungus-centric horror novel in 2022. I dunno. It's demoralizing to do good work and have it lost in the void. That's true horror.
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