All My Friends Are Skeletons
One of the nicest things about working in a creative field is that sometimes you get to be friends with some of the most talented people you know. People whose work consistently amazes and inspires you. That’s certainly true of my field, where I’m lucky enough to be friends with some of my very favorite writers who are working today – and, as it happens, some of them have books out now, or will have them out very soon!
I don’t think Silvia Moreno-Garcia will need any introduction to readers of this blog. After all, she wrote the introduction to my latest collection, How to See Ghosts & Other Figments. More importantly, she’s the author of a raft of justly celebrated and bestselling novels that demonstrate an enviable talent for skipping across genres, including Mexican Gothic, The Beautiful Ones, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, and Silver Nitrate.
Her most recent book, The Seventh Veil of Salome, is every bit as much of a triumph as any of those that came before. I know, because I was fortunate enough to read an advance copy so that I could write and program the Seventh Veil of Salome Film Festival, which is available in the Book Club Kit. I did something similar with Silver Nitrate, and I guess they liked my work.
The Seventh Veil of Salome isn’t a horror novel, but I don’t think that any of my readers would be disappointed in it. It tells a story of love and loss against the backdrop of Golden Age Hollywood – a story about the price that we sometimes pay for following our dreams. And it’s all as gloriously realized as we’ve come to expect from Silvia. It’s also out today, so pick up your copy, if you haven’t already.
Longtime (or even relatively short time) readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that Jonathan Raab is one of my favorite voices working in indie horror writing today. Anytime he releases something new it’s a cause for celebration, and this year we’re lucky enough to get not only his recent rules-lite tabletop RPG Vampyrvania but also another entry in his must-read Halloween TV Special series, The Mausoleum of Gore, with cover art by another friend, Trevor Henderson.
The Halloween TV Special series previously kicked off with The Crypt of Blood, and it’s rapidly become every bit as much a part of the season as grinning pumpkins or rubber bats. My copy of Mausoleum of Gore arrived in the mail yesterday, so I haven’t actually read it yet. I’m going to try to save it for closer to Halloween – we’ll see if I succeed!
Victoria Dalpe is someone I knew before I had read any of her work, which is always a somewhat scary proposition. Fortunately, her debut novel Parasite Life proved to be a highlight of my reading the year it came out. Also a talented artist, Victoria has broken up shows of her paintings with a winning short story collection, Les Femmes Grotesques, and is now kicking off the first in a planned trilogy from Clash Books with Selene Shade: Resurrectionist for Hire, due out on September 10.
I haven’t read this first Selene Shade book yet, but its premise – jamming together necromancy and police procedural – sounds like the kind of thing that Victoria Dalpe will absolutely knock out of the park, and her previous work makes it a must-read. And I’m not just saying that because I’ll be seeing her in Providence in a couple of weeks for NecronomiCon.
Last but by no means least, Michael Kelly of Undertow Publications has been kind enough to give me a platform to write about pretty much whatever I want in my recurring Grey’s Grotesqueries column at Weird Horror. This has led to columns on fungal horror, the Crestwood House Monster Books, Hollow Earths and dungeon crawls, and the horror of inanimate objects, to name just a few.
However, in order to turn me loose like that, money is needed to run the magazine, and Weird Horror is currently engaged in a fund drive to help cover the cost of printing and shipping the magazine through next year. Think of it like one of those NPR fund drives, only way less annoying and you get a freaky magazine with great cover art, amazing stories, and some rambling by yours truly out of the deal.
What could be better?
