What do you think?
Rate this book
By Reason of Darkness
BY REASON OF DARKNESS is the new acclaimed collection of dark and fantastic fiction by William P. Simmons! Features the author's best, award-recommended stories of supernatural horror, suspense, and dark fantasy, including those given Honorable Mentions in volumes of THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR. From chilling suggestive horror to daring, hard-edged suspense, this celebration of twilight people living midnight lives proves there is as much fear in a well placed whisper as in a scream. Featuring 23 stories, several of them new, BY REASON OF DARKNESS has already received praise from such macabre masters as Graham Masterton, Hugh B. Cave, and Al Sarrantonio.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
7 people want to read
About the author
William P. Simmons
43 books17 followers'Simmons draws from a well with waters dark and deep, that taste of guilt, despair and fear, to cultivate his surprising and inventive tales of horror.'
-- ADAM NEVILL
(British Fantasy Award Winning author of THE RITUAL and NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE).
William Simmons is an acclaimed author, critic, anthologist, and journalist specializing in supernatural horror fiction. He is an Active Member of the HWA. Eight of his stories received ‘Honorable Mentions’ in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. His collection WE FEED THE DARK received accolades from such horror legends as ADAM NEVILL, ERIC J. GUINGARD, and FORREST AGUIRRE.
“Avoiding horror’s traditional icons and their premeasured fright potential ... (Simmons is) a writer whose approach is both original and refreshingly unconventional.”
- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
His collection BY REASON OF DARKNESS received rave reviews from Cemetery Dance, All Hallows, and Publisher's Weekly, who called him
Simmons “…evokes both Ray Bradbury and Joyce Carol Oates.” – PETER BELL, All Hallows
His first collection BECOMING OCTOBER sold out quickly upon release, and he collaborated on the Halloween collection DARK HARVEST with author Paul Melznick. His stories have appeared in several venues, including Cemetery Dance, Flesh & Blood, Darkness Rising (1-9), Infinity Plus, Dark Discoveries, and many more. His poetry has appeared in Chizine, Gothic.net, Lullaby Hearse, Dead Cat Bouncing, etc.
GRAHAM MASTERTON, author of The Minatou, said Simmons “has the gift of making an ordinary day seem scary.”
NANCY KILPATRICK, author of The Goth Bible, said “Simmons has a knack for constructing dark, creepy, introverted tales, full of obscure terrors that reflect nearly mythical realms.”
And T.M. WRIGHT, author of Strange Seed, compared Simmons’ horror fiction to “like being taken back forty years and discovering Poe for the first time, and M.R. James, and Shirley Jackson.”
Simmons has contributed reviews, essays, and scholarship to Rue Morgue, Publisher’s Weekly, Wormwood, Hellnotes, Gauntlet, Cemetery Dance, and others. His review columns include “Dark Devotions”, “Literary Lesions”, and “Folk Fears”. He contributed an introduction to Falling into Heaven, by Maynard & Sims, and his reviews have been blurbed for several books.
As a journalist, he created Our Ladies of Darkness, one of the earlier interview columns devoted to female genre authors, and Beyond the Fifth Dimension: The Twilight Zone Interviews, which spoke with surviving scribes of the influential television series. He also conducted two special chapbook length interviews with Richard Matheson and F. Paul Wilson, both for Gauntlet Press.
His reviews have been used as blurbs by Tartan Asian Extreme and he has contributed Liner Notes to DVD releases.
“His anthologies are carefully crafted, the stories bleeding into each other with seamless precision.” – MAYNARD & SIMS, Demon Eyes.
As an anthologist he has edited the bestselling SEASON OF THE DEAD: SUPERNATURAL HORROR FOR HALLOWEEN (reviewed by Rue Morgue) and the bestselling WILDWOOD: TALES OF TERROR & TRANSFORMATION FROM THE FOREST.
His other anthologies are MONSTER CARNIVAL and YULETIDE FRIGHTS.
He is the series editor for Shadow House Publishing has several anthologies and single author collections in development. for Shadow House Publishing, including The Library of Weird Fiction and Horror Hall of Fame Novellas.
-- ADAM NEVILL
(British Fantasy Award Winning author of THE RITUAL and NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE).
William Simmons is an acclaimed author, critic, anthologist, and journalist specializing in supernatural horror fiction. He is an Active Member of the HWA. Eight of his stories received ‘Honorable Mentions’ in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. His collection WE FEED THE DARK received accolades from such horror legends as ADAM NEVILL, ERIC J. GUINGARD, and FORREST AGUIRRE.
“Avoiding horror’s traditional icons and their premeasured fright potential ... (Simmons is) a writer whose approach is both original and refreshingly unconventional.”
- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
His collection BY REASON OF DARKNESS received rave reviews from Cemetery Dance, All Hallows, and Publisher's Weekly, who called him
Simmons “…evokes both Ray Bradbury and Joyce Carol Oates.” – PETER BELL, All Hallows
His first collection BECOMING OCTOBER sold out quickly upon release, and he collaborated on the Halloween collection DARK HARVEST with author Paul Melznick. His stories have appeared in several venues, including Cemetery Dance, Flesh & Blood, Darkness Rising (1-9), Infinity Plus, Dark Discoveries, and many more. His poetry has appeared in Chizine, Gothic.net, Lullaby Hearse, Dead Cat Bouncing, etc.
GRAHAM MASTERTON, author of The Minatou, said Simmons “has the gift of making an ordinary day seem scary.”
NANCY KILPATRICK, author of The Goth Bible, said “Simmons has a knack for constructing dark, creepy, introverted tales, full of obscure terrors that reflect nearly mythical realms.”
And T.M. WRIGHT, author of Strange Seed, compared Simmons’ horror fiction to “like being taken back forty years and discovering Poe for the first time, and M.R. James, and Shirley Jackson.”
Simmons has contributed reviews, essays, and scholarship to Rue Morgue, Publisher’s Weekly, Wormwood, Hellnotes, Gauntlet, Cemetery Dance, and others. His review columns include “Dark Devotions”, “Literary Lesions”, and “Folk Fears”. He contributed an introduction to Falling into Heaven, by Maynard & Sims, and his reviews have been blurbed for several books.
As a journalist, he created Our Ladies of Darkness, one of the earlier interview columns devoted to female genre authors, and Beyond the Fifth Dimension: The Twilight Zone Interviews, which spoke with surviving scribes of the influential television series. He also conducted two special chapbook length interviews with Richard Matheson and F. Paul Wilson, both for Gauntlet Press.
His reviews have been used as blurbs by Tartan Asian Extreme and he has contributed Liner Notes to DVD releases.
“His anthologies are carefully crafted, the stories bleeding into each other with seamless precision.” – MAYNARD & SIMS, Demon Eyes.
As an anthologist he has edited the bestselling SEASON OF THE DEAD: SUPERNATURAL HORROR FOR HALLOWEEN (reviewed by Rue Morgue) and the bestselling WILDWOOD: TALES OF TERROR & TRANSFORMATION FROM THE FOREST.
His other anthologies are MONSTER CARNIVAL and YULETIDE FRIGHTS.
He is the series editor for Shadow House Publishing has several anthologies and single author collections in development. for Shadow House Publishing, including The Library of Weird Fiction and Horror Hall of Fame Novellas.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 2, 2011
Some of the tales were really good, but others were equally bad. That's why I gave it 3 stars.
A book of short stories. The one entitled 'The Cleaning' is the most HORRIBLE short story I've ever read. He made a character, who's selfish beyond belief, even most Republicans aren't THAT bad. And what can you say about a character who's so detestable there's no way in the WORLD you can begin to like her.
The woman ridded herself of her husband just b/c he had a stroke and she saw him as a complete burden. She was even disgusted b/c she had to help him learn to walk and talk again, and his failed efforts made her sick with disgust at him. So she gets rid of him for good.
If people knew how many times this is true in my line of work, that knowledge would sicken them. I've treated several people who were incapacitated from strokes and I've seen several so-called relatives take the 'complete burden on me' attitude. There's nothing likable about it, and I thought one of the rules of writing was to create a character that the reader can sympathize with.
I didn't sympathize with the asshole woman in this story one tiny bit.
In fact, the story made me question its creator. I wondered if he would be another dimwit family member who thinks their relative's pain is about THEM and not the patient.
BTW I think it's pretty damn presumptuous to compare one of this guy's horrible stories to anything Edgar Allan Poe wrote. Edgar Allan Poe NEVER wrote about a character who did something horrible just b/c they were a selfish asshole. The closest story, that IMO doesn't really come close, is The Black Cat, and even THAT was better than a woman who gets rid of her husband b/c she sees him as a burden. The guy in 'The Black Cat' was doing things while under the influence of alcohol, which he was demonstrating as a sickness, not just someone who thinks mentally challenged people have no place in a so-called 'normal' relationship.
I find it offensive that the person writing about the writer had the nerve to align that story with anything Edgar Allan Poe wrote.
A book of short stories. The one entitled 'The Cleaning' is the most HORRIBLE short story I've ever read. He made a character, who's selfish beyond belief, even most Republicans aren't THAT bad. And what can you say about a character who's so detestable there's no way in the WORLD you can begin to like her.
The woman ridded herself of her husband just b/c he had a stroke and she saw him as a complete burden. She was even disgusted b/c she had to help him learn to walk and talk again, and his failed efforts made her sick with disgust at him. So she gets rid of him for good.
If people knew how many times this is true in my line of work, that knowledge would sicken them. I've treated several people who were incapacitated from strokes and I've seen several so-called relatives take the 'complete burden on me' attitude. There's nothing likable about it, and I thought one of the rules of writing was to create a character that the reader can sympathize with.
I didn't sympathize with the asshole woman in this story one tiny bit.
In fact, the story made me question its creator. I wondered if he would be another dimwit family member who thinks their relative's pain is about THEM and not the patient.
BTW I think it's pretty damn presumptuous to compare one of this guy's horrible stories to anything Edgar Allan Poe wrote. Edgar Allan Poe NEVER wrote about a character who did something horrible just b/c they were a selfish asshole. The closest story, that IMO doesn't really come close, is The Black Cat, and even THAT was better than a woman who gets rid of her husband b/c she sees him as a burden. The guy in 'The Black Cat' was doing things while under the influence of alcohol, which he was demonstrating as a sickness, not just someone who thinks mentally challenged people have no place in a so-called 'normal' relationship.
I find it offensive that the person writing about the writer had the nerve to align that story with anything Edgar Allan Poe wrote.
January 20, 2018
(3.25 stars)
Harper's Mill, the setting for many of Simmons' stories, is much like Charles L. Grant's Oxford Run: a place whose facade of normality continually leaks with intense darkness. And were it not for amateurish excess, Simmons' prose style would be strongly reminiscent of Grant's. When a character in "Becoming October" is described as a "candy-corn soul of freedom," even forgiving readers might wonder if the author's sense of stylistic restraint hasn't been swept away by the autumnal winds whistling through many of these stories; which leads to this collection's main strength: atmosphere.
The opener, "The Wind, When It Comes", along with "The Right Size" and "Following the Stones," uses the sensuous decay of autumn to reflect the characters' emotional turbulence, often to very haunting effects. Even in explicitly psychosexual tales such as "Skin" and "Daddy's Little Bitty Pretty One", Simmons' attentiveness to scene-setting, especially in terms of light and space, effectively dramatizes the dark, desperate desires of the protagonists.
Littered with rudimentary errors of grammar and spelling, By Reason of Darkness certainly is not a truly exceptional debut; even its two arguable virtues--atmosphere and style--are sometimes excessive. However, for those who appreciate small-town horror which alternates between realism and surrealism, Simmons' only collection to date offers mood and violence in equal measure.
Harper's Mill, the setting for many of Simmons' stories, is much like Charles L. Grant's Oxford Run: a place whose facade of normality continually leaks with intense darkness. And were it not for amateurish excess, Simmons' prose style would be strongly reminiscent of Grant's. When a character in "Becoming October" is described as a "candy-corn soul of freedom," even forgiving readers might wonder if the author's sense of stylistic restraint hasn't been swept away by the autumnal winds whistling through many of these stories; which leads to this collection's main strength: atmosphere.
The opener, "The Wind, When It Comes", along with "The Right Size" and "Following the Stones," uses the sensuous decay of autumn to reflect the characters' emotional turbulence, often to very haunting effects. Even in explicitly psychosexual tales such as "Skin" and "Daddy's Little Bitty Pretty One", Simmons' attentiveness to scene-setting, especially in terms of light and space, effectively dramatizes the dark, desperate desires of the protagonists.
Littered with rudimentary errors of grammar and spelling, By Reason of Darkness certainly is not a truly exceptional debut; even its two arguable virtues--atmosphere and style--are sometimes excessive. However, for those who appreciate small-town horror which alternates between realism and surrealism, Simmons' only collection to date offers mood and violence in equal measure.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews