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Creepy Sheen
For decades, Humankind sent transmissions around the globe. In addition to reaching every corner of the planet, the signals travelled beyond, into the dark void of space. All of broadcast history made its way gracefully through the stars, racing into the unknown—until the mid 1980s, when nuclear mushroom clouds plumed in the skies of Earth’s Third World War.
The magnitude of the explosions caused the extinction of life on Earth, and sent a shockwave through the fabric of reality. Due to this anomaly, all broadcasts running at the time of the bombs hurtled into space at an impossible speed. The signals, disobeying natural laws, outran and passed all transmissions from previous eras, leaving them far behind. At the head of Earth’s messages to the cosmos travelled the collective broadcasts from one atomic day in history.
In a remote star system, eyes turned towards the approaching 1980s transmissions.
Curious consciousnesses examined the broadcasts from the strange extinct civilisation of Earth. Filled with these transmissions, the distant consciousnesses devised their response. They returned it in the form of their own transmission, directed back to the origin of its inspiration—1980s Earth.
That transmission is Creepy Sheen.
The magnitude of the explosions caused the extinction of life on Earth, and sent a shockwave through the fabric of reality. Due to this anomaly, all broadcasts running at the time of the bombs hurtled into space at an impossible speed. The signals, disobeying natural laws, outran and passed all transmissions from previous eras, leaving them far behind. At the head of Earth’s messages to the cosmos travelled the collective broadcasts from one atomic day in history.
In a remote star system, eyes turned towards the approaching 1980s transmissions.
Curious consciousnesses examined the broadcasts from the strange extinct civilisation of Earth. Filled with these transmissions, the distant consciousnesses devised their response. They returned it in the form of their own transmission, directed back to the origin of its inspiration—1980s Earth.
That transmission is Creepy Sheen.
98 pages, Paperback
Published March 17, 2021
1 person is currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Gransden
22 books259 followersThis author has always lived by the sea.
She tends to write about the edges of things so if you inhabit the fringes you may find something to like.
If you are interested in reading any of her books then send her a message and she'll get it to you in the digital format (PDF, MOBI, or eBook) of your choice.
Fellow indies - feel free to get in touch.
She tends to write about the edges of things so if you inhabit the fringes you may find something to like.
If you are interested in reading any of her books then send her a message and she'll get it to you in the digital format (PDF, MOBI, or eBook) of your choice.
Fellow indies - feel free to get in touch.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
June 24, 2021
This is not so much a book as a concept album of David Bowie-tier complexity.
I think in particular of “Wild is the Wind”, my favourite song from Station to Station. The Thin White Duke is sincere in his emotions here. I’m pretty sure I once read that somewhere, so that’s how I remember it. But in other songs, he seems to ape human emotions as a form of ridicule. “Do my songs move you, idiot?” There is something genuinely hollow about his voice in songs like “Word on a Wing.” Chillingly so.
Creepy Sheen possesses something of the Duke’s coldness. It’s right there in the title, I guess.
Gransden is as much the author of this book as Bowie is the singer on Station to Station. The book is a set of alien transmissions returned to a barren Earth, which was made extinct by WWIII. Give a monkey enough reels of tape from VHSs and cassettes and he’ll give you something back that you can lose yourself in. With quality raw material like you've given this one monkey, you won’t need a million of him.
In retrowave, Stranger Things, AHS 1984 (nostalgiacore or whatever you wanna call it), what we enjoy more than the 80s is how we remember it. What we would like it to have been. We’ve reached end-of-disco fatigue with 80s nostalgia. You’ll find many knowing comments on Japan City Pop compilations on YouTube like, “Ah, time to fondly remember my life in Tokyo in the 80s that never happened.” Humans, it seems, are fantasists by necessity. The implications of this are beyond creepy. There is something about pure reality we just can’t handle.
But the aliens who sent these stories, these transmissions back to us, they don’t do so like Bowie’s Duke. It is not done maliciously. They received this info from us and they’re trying to speak our language back to us. But the medium is the message. In sending these transmissions, they make us ask ourselves: what exactly is it we were trying to say? Are these characters people we know? Do they act in ways we can relate to? Do they live lives we want?
Something interesting about us humans is, we can’t wait to suspend our disbelief. As demonstrated by the effectiveness of these stories which are, by definition, defective. The book possesses something of the escapist qualities we look for in nostalgiacore.
The only beings more shocked than us by these transmissions would be the aliens themselves, if only they could meet us. What are these creatures? They might ask. And why do they represent themselves so falsely? The creepy side of the 80s’ apparent sheen. What is it we want to have back, exactly? What is it we love in general? Something tangible, or something else? But we, in this reality, are luckier than the counterpart Earth in Creepy Sheen’s reality, where the aliens can’t meet us and we can’t meet them. We’re all gone. And we have been unwittingly eulogised by how we documented our own history.
Because of its astutely chosen concept, the book doesn’t, I feel, pronounce on its ideas. It merely reveals them. Besides, if you peer behind the concept to the author herself, I don’t think she would go so far as to say that love of the 80s is 100% fabrication—just enough to make you question your reality. After all, she would not have paid so much attention to this material if she herself didn’t enjoy it too.
Effectively mimicking aliens who transmit 80s stories requires the highest level of knowledge and appreciation.
I think in particular of “Wild is the Wind”, my favourite song from Station to Station. The Thin White Duke is sincere in his emotions here. I’m pretty sure I once read that somewhere, so that’s how I remember it. But in other songs, he seems to ape human emotions as a form of ridicule. “Do my songs move you, idiot?” There is something genuinely hollow about his voice in songs like “Word on a Wing.” Chillingly so.
Creepy Sheen possesses something of the Duke’s coldness. It’s right there in the title, I guess.
Gransden is as much the author of this book as Bowie is the singer on Station to Station. The book is a set of alien transmissions returned to a barren Earth, which was made extinct by WWIII. Give a monkey enough reels of tape from VHSs and cassettes and he’ll give you something back that you can lose yourself in. With quality raw material like you've given this one monkey, you won’t need a million of him.
In retrowave, Stranger Things, AHS 1984 (nostalgiacore or whatever you wanna call it), what we enjoy more than the 80s is how we remember it. What we would like it to have been. We’ve reached end-of-disco fatigue with 80s nostalgia. You’ll find many knowing comments on Japan City Pop compilations on YouTube like, “Ah, time to fondly remember my life in Tokyo in the 80s that never happened.” Humans, it seems, are fantasists by necessity. The implications of this are beyond creepy. There is something about pure reality we just can’t handle.
But the aliens who sent these stories, these transmissions back to us, they don’t do so like Bowie’s Duke. It is not done maliciously. They received this info from us and they’re trying to speak our language back to us. But the medium is the message. In sending these transmissions, they make us ask ourselves: what exactly is it we were trying to say? Are these characters people we know? Do they act in ways we can relate to? Do they live lives we want?
Something interesting about us humans is, we can’t wait to suspend our disbelief. As demonstrated by the effectiveness of these stories which are, by definition, defective. The book possesses something of the escapist qualities we look for in nostalgiacore.
The only beings more shocked than us by these transmissions would be the aliens themselves, if only they could meet us. What are these creatures? They might ask. And why do they represent themselves so falsely? The creepy side of the 80s’ apparent sheen. What is it we want to have back, exactly? What is it we love in general? Something tangible, or something else? But we, in this reality, are luckier than the counterpart Earth in Creepy Sheen’s reality, where the aliens can’t meet us and we can’t meet them. We’re all gone. And we have been unwittingly eulogised by how we documented our own history.
Because of its astutely chosen concept, the book doesn’t, I feel, pronounce on its ideas. It merely reveals them. Besides, if you peer behind the concept to the author herself, I don’t think she would go so far as to say that love of the 80s is 100% fabrication—just enough to make you question your reality. After all, she would not have paid so much attention to this material if she herself didn’t enjoy it too.
Effectively mimicking aliens who transmit 80s stories requires the highest level of knowledge and appreciation.
April 26, 2021
This book is so bitchin’! Look, I know I say this about everything Rebecca writes, but she’s so bloody excellent! I was excited when Rebecca told us she had some new releases coming this year, and I waited eagerly to see what she would drop. She did not disappoint! With that said, this book wasn’t an instant love, it took me a story or two to find my feet and figure out the mood. But once I did, boy did I have fun! I did what I’ve done a number of times with Gransden stuff; I got to the last page and flicked right back to the start to read them again!
I bloody loved these stories, I did, and more so on the second read. Some are creepy, some reflective, and some are a lot of fun and rather self-aware, often using horror clichés with a tongue firmly in the cheek, (even straying into the parody realm here and there,) which brought a smile to my face. Think of an 80s horror trope. Do it now. Ya got one? Yep, that's in this book. Cast Nick Cage in the movie adaptations of these stories, please.
Rebecca Gransden is a master of creating tension and laying in a sense of unease, and we get a fair amount of that in this collection, even during the silly stuff. That takes great skill, and it is executed flawlessly. Some of the stories felt weird and creepy, and some were laced very much with Gransden trademark sinisterism. All of the stories have this wonderful 80s vibe that is described throughout so well. I pictured lots of big hair and neon. It’s not all whimsy and nostalgia, though; there’s a good helping of social commentary and observation thrown in to keep the ol’ grey matter firing, and to ensure the stories are still meaningful and have something to say. With Creepy Sheen, Gransden, yet again, delivers a fantastically entertaining collection. Lucky us! Special commendation on perfectly named characters.
Anyway, I’m off to write fanfic about what happens next to Myra, while I flick my hair from my face. Until next time, peace and love!
I bloody loved these stories, I did, and more so on the second read. Some are creepy, some reflective, and some are a lot of fun and rather self-aware, often using horror clichés with a tongue firmly in the cheek, (even straying into the parody realm here and there,) which brought a smile to my face. Think of an 80s horror trope. Do it now. Ya got one? Yep, that's in this book. Cast Nick Cage in the movie adaptations of these stories, please.
Rebecca Gransden is a master of creating tension and laying in a sense of unease, and we get a fair amount of that in this collection, even during the silly stuff. That takes great skill, and it is executed flawlessly. Some of the stories felt weird and creepy, and some were laced very much with Gransden trademark sinisterism. All of the stories have this wonderful 80s vibe that is described throughout so well. I pictured lots of big hair and neon. It’s not all whimsy and nostalgia, though; there’s a good helping of social commentary and observation thrown in to keep the ol’ grey matter firing, and to ensure the stories are still meaningful and have something to say. With Creepy Sheen, Gransden, yet again, delivers a fantastically entertaining collection. Lucky us! Special commendation on perfectly named characters.
Anyway, I’m off to write fanfic about what happens next to Myra, while I flick my hair from my face. Until next time, peace and love!
September 14, 2021
2.5-3⭐️ (really hard to rate this one lol)
This is perhaps the only book I’ve ever come across where reading the back cover is essential to understanding the overall project.
What we have here is not so much a short story collection, but rather a collection of short sketches and vignettes unified by an aesthetic that I can only describe as “neon doom,” inspired by 80s fragmented faux-nostalgia, fizzy and electric dreams and nightmares, Alex Cox with jolting tinges of Lovecraft. It is meant to create an overall sensation rather than tell a story, to present a fragment of a bigger, more imposing and intimidating world (think LOCAL58TV in book form).
The format is that of a record, with Side A and Side B stories. I do think this is appropriate, as this read to me as a “visual album in written form” more than anything else. My impression is that these could all be music videos.
Unfortunately, as with music videos, a cohesive or satisfactory narrative thread is generally missing. Gransden’s prose is impressive, and its striking nature is what gripped me and kept me plunging through these pages. However, almost every single story left me unsatisfied, lacking any real payoff or satisfaction in their stunted and blurry nature (“stunted and blurry” can most certainly have a payoff, but I didn’t get it here). Granted, I can say with full confidence every single story had an image that was striking, and yet without a fully-realized schema to ring them together, it feels more like stimuli clutter rather than a satisfying read, which may be entirely the point, but it simply didn’t jell with me.
Gransden definitely seems more concerned with vivid, quasi-philosophical fragments, and yet I felt that that style could have been played with better, such as in her story, “Hell Alley,” which to me was the real standout in the book. Presented as the first (and only) chapter of a serialized pulpy crime conspiracy thriller, it obviously lacks a conclusion, and yet the one and only glimpse we get of it is alive with lucid world-building, characterization, and a joyful series of thrills leading up to its nonexistent denouement, in a way no other story in here matches. If all the “stories” in here would have been like that, this would have been a peculiar, experimental winner.
Overall, perhaps not entirely my taste, but Gransden’s writing chops are clearly there, her style is wholly her own, and I would be more than happy to read a full-length work of hers in the future.
This is perhaps the only book I’ve ever come across where reading the back cover is essential to understanding the overall project.
What we have here is not so much a short story collection, but rather a collection of short sketches and vignettes unified by an aesthetic that I can only describe as “neon doom,” inspired by 80s fragmented faux-nostalgia, fizzy and electric dreams and nightmares, Alex Cox with jolting tinges of Lovecraft. It is meant to create an overall sensation rather than tell a story, to present a fragment of a bigger, more imposing and intimidating world (think LOCAL58TV in book form).
The format is that of a record, with Side A and Side B stories. I do think this is appropriate, as this read to me as a “visual album in written form” more than anything else. My impression is that these could all be music videos.
Unfortunately, as with music videos, a cohesive or satisfactory narrative thread is generally missing. Gransden’s prose is impressive, and its striking nature is what gripped me and kept me plunging through these pages. However, almost every single story left me unsatisfied, lacking any real payoff or satisfaction in their stunted and blurry nature (“stunted and blurry” can most certainly have a payoff, but I didn’t get it here). Granted, I can say with full confidence every single story had an image that was striking, and yet without a fully-realized schema to ring them together, it feels more like stimuli clutter rather than a satisfying read, which may be entirely the point, but it simply didn’t jell with me.
Gransden definitely seems more concerned with vivid, quasi-philosophical fragments, and yet I felt that that style could have been played with better, such as in her story, “Hell Alley,” which to me was the real standout in the book. Presented as the first (and only) chapter of a serialized pulpy crime conspiracy thriller, it obviously lacks a conclusion, and yet the one and only glimpse we get of it is alive with lucid world-building, characterization, and a joyful series of thrills leading up to its nonexistent denouement, in a way no other story in here matches. If all the “stories” in here would have been like that, this would have been a peculiar, experimental winner.
Overall, perhaps not entirely my taste, but Gransden’s writing chops are clearly there, her style is wholly her own, and I would be more than happy to read a full-length work of hers in the future.
January 9, 2022
These are stories that feed the subconscious. Many aren’t designed to be understood so much as felt. Each story also acts as part of the whole. I’m not quite sure I’ve figured out what that whole is, but it’s full of neon lights, sprawling landscapes, impending doom, and Twilight Zone-like happenings, with the electronic synthesizer age of the 1980s permeating every element.
My favourites, from both Side A and Side B of this concept album in literary form, were The Future Is White, Arcady, and Hell Alley (which I’m still waiting to “Find out what happens to Myra in Chapter Two - Big City Rat, coming in Issue 29 of Toxic Gore Magazine,” so I’d best update my subscription by sending a postal order for £1.50 and remembering to enclose a self-addressed envelope).
My favourites, from both Side A and Side B of this concept album in literary form, were The Future Is White, Arcady, and Hell Alley (which I’m still waiting to “Find out what happens to Myra in Chapter Two - Big City Rat, coming in Issue 29 of Toxic Gore Magazine,” so I’d best update my subscription by sending a postal order for £1.50 and remembering to enclose a self-addressed envelope).
May 11, 2021
Creepy Sheen by Rebecca Gransden. A short story collection for readers hungry for intelligent, extraordinary literature. Horror elements will make your skin bud with creeps. Ten stories. Not enough.
This review will be short. Too short. Because I have a lack of superlatives. Ten stories. Ten stars. Ten out of ten.
Transmission completed.
This review will be short. Too short. Because I have a lack of superlatives. Ten stories. Ten stars. Ten out of ten.
Transmission completed.
July 16, 2021
Embracing the aesthetic of Eighties US teen and sci-fi movies while also drawing on the darkness beneath the neon, Gransden creates alien perspectives that seem intimately familiar.
This collection contains ten works by Gransden, each strongly displaying the tropes and mores of Eighties US culture but seen from odd angles or applied to unexpected situations.
‘Broken Wings’ Debbie struggles with who to invite to her impromptu sleepover/party to support her friends and make herself happy. This short story evokes the desperate meaningfulness of teenage experience through a neon lens of Eighties popular US culture.
‘Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream’ When a young man is fired from a fast-food restaurant, an acquaintance offers to pay him well to transport a discreet package. Gransden skilfully portrays the tawdry underside of the American Dream, creating a sympathetic reason for the protagonist to take what seems a dodgy job, then slowly increases the weirdness wrapping them in horror before they realise it is more than nerves.
‘The Future is White’ A couple who break down on the side of a lonely road discover a scorpion half-turned to glass. Seen from the viewpoint of protagonists so embedded in the normal they spend as much time discussing who carries a bag as they do the unexplained vitrification of an animal, this story leads the reader into a slightly surreal landscape without an in-world narrator to shape their theories on what might be happening.
‘Tranquilizers at the Mall’ Slumped in a shopping mall filled with odd figures and feeling something grow inside her, a woman medicates away her worries. Gransden blends utter normality, such as dust on chairs, with weird behaviours and visceral description echoing the body horror of certain post-apocalyptic movies; but subverts the reader’s certainty by showing it from the viewpoint of a woman on unspecified drugs.
‘Hell Alley Chapter 1’ After months of gathering dead rats, Myra is used to all the ways they die—until she discovers several that look like almost like they’ve arranged themselves for death. From the opening description of a city that prefers to hire people to gather rat corpses than to fund the rubbish collections needed to stem the growing rat problem, Gransden creates a setting grimy enough to leave the reader craving soap. The tawdry sense of real-world bureaucracy this evokes both strengthens the punch of the weird when it comes and leaves the reader very aware Myra can’t expect any support to deal with it. The setting is pair with an equally engaging protagonist. However while there is a conclusion of sorts to the last scene, this is very clearly only chapter 1 rather than the whole story, so readers wishing to discover whether and how Myra does deal with it are likely to feel disappointed.
‘Infomercial for a Dying World’ As an unspecified cataclysm tears the city apart, a shopping channel presenter resolves to broadcast a message of reassurance rather than fleeing the city. Gransden combines a stark portrayal of image-driven consumerism with sympathetic characters, creating a story that satirises capitalism while also showing hope.
‘Arcady’ Finally escaping a broken toilet cubicle at the arcade, Missy discovers a world almost empty of people. Missy displays a mix of arrogance and uncertainty that one expects of an Eighties teenage girl, making it plausible she is active rather than passive in the face of growing strangeness without weakening the sense of the unsettling and inexplicable.
‘Breakdown on a Synthesizer’ The live broadcast of a local rock band competition is disrupted by a rivalry between two performers that might go beyond the normal. The story is presented as a transcript of the broadcast that seems afflicted by a technical issue, leaving the reader to infer from the ‘audio’ alone what the feud between the two performers is and whether the broadcast issues are related or just coincidence. The story contains a transcript of both performances: while this does add to the sense of an authentic transcript and is necessary evidence of what might have happened, readers who find the quoting of poetry or lyrics in prose jarring might suffer the same loss of engagement here.
‘Liquid Crystal’ A journalist tries to find the truth behind the arrest of a technology broadcaster and his apocryphal final broadcast. Gransden delivers the story like the rough cut of a TV investigation, presenting narrator commentary and interview segments as if the case is famous enough the reader already knows the key details; thus, the reader knows something significant happened and that it wasn’t good, but not what, heightening the tension.
‘The Shadowplayers’ A woman confined to a featureless space discovers an oddity, provoking an argument with her companions over the right response. Written as a script and featuring four characters identified only by generic labels rather than names, this story relies almost entirely on the character’s spoken reactions to describe events and surroundings; this lack of description builds a sense of the characters being within a bland, uniform space, making the fixation on the slightest of changes feel not merely realistic but necessary. Much of the dialogue has an overly formal or poetic tone which both suggests the characters are grasping for whatever stimulus they can, strengthening the image of a featureless space around them, and juxtaposes the tone of old novels with modern content, adding a sense of temporal absence to the physical.
Although Gransden varies her prose to support the individual story, including forays into script and song, the overall style might be described as meaningful shallowness: detailed descriptions and powerful language turned on the ordinary and fleeting as if it is of vast import. Depending on the reader, this will either elevate the shallow to meaning or seem a touch overblown.
Gransden’s focus is strongly on portraying the surreal or incomprehensible, and the reaction of normal people to it, rather than characters overcoming. This evokes films such as Videodrome and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the plays of Beckett, and works of cosmic horror; however, it might disappoint readers who favour plot arcs where a character grows in response to challenge.
While Gransden’s characters do not conquer their flaws, they are neither passive nor unsympathetic; instead, like Eighties TV series characters, they engage by being lightly nuanced representations of an enduring archetype.
Overall, I enjoyed this collection greatly. I recommend it to readers seeking the weirdness of an Eighties teen or sci-fi movie.
I received a free copy from the author with a request for a fair review.
This collection contains ten works by Gransden, each strongly displaying the tropes and mores of Eighties US culture but seen from odd angles or applied to unexpected situations.
‘Broken Wings’ Debbie struggles with who to invite to her impromptu sleepover/party to support her friends and make herself happy. This short story evokes the desperate meaningfulness of teenage experience through a neon lens of Eighties popular US culture.
‘Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream’ When a young man is fired from a fast-food restaurant, an acquaintance offers to pay him well to transport a discreet package. Gransden skilfully portrays the tawdry underside of the American Dream, creating a sympathetic reason for the protagonist to take what seems a dodgy job, then slowly increases the weirdness wrapping them in horror before they realise it is more than nerves.
‘The Future is White’ A couple who break down on the side of a lonely road discover a scorpion half-turned to glass. Seen from the viewpoint of protagonists so embedded in the normal they spend as much time discussing who carries a bag as they do the unexplained vitrification of an animal, this story leads the reader into a slightly surreal landscape without an in-world narrator to shape their theories on what might be happening.
‘Tranquilizers at the Mall’ Slumped in a shopping mall filled with odd figures and feeling something grow inside her, a woman medicates away her worries. Gransden blends utter normality, such as dust on chairs, with weird behaviours and visceral description echoing the body horror of certain post-apocalyptic movies; but subverts the reader’s certainty by showing it from the viewpoint of a woman on unspecified drugs.
‘Hell Alley Chapter 1’ After months of gathering dead rats, Myra is used to all the ways they die—until she discovers several that look like almost like they’ve arranged themselves for death. From the opening description of a city that prefers to hire people to gather rat corpses than to fund the rubbish collections needed to stem the growing rat problem, Gransden creates a setting grimy enough to leave the reader craving soap. The tawdry sense of real-world bureaucracy this evokes both strengthens the punch of the weird when it comes and leaves the reader very aware Myra can’t expect any support to deal with it. The setting is pair with an equally engaging protagonist. However while there is a conclusion of sorts to the last scene, this is very clearly only chapter 1 rather than the whole story, so readers wishing to discover whether and how Myra does deal with it are likely to feel disappointed.
‘Infomercial for a Dying World’ As an unspecified cataclysm tears the city apart, a shopping channel presenter resolves to broadcast a message of reassurance rather than fleeing the city. Gransden combines a stark portrayal of image-driven consumerism with sympathetic characters, creating a story that satirises capitalism while also showing hope.
‘Arcady’ Finally escaping a broken toilet cubicle at the arcade, Missy discovers a world almost empty of people. Missy displays a mix of arrogance and uncertainty that one expects of an Eighties teenage girl, making it plausible she is active rather than passive in the face of growing strangeness without weakening the sense of the unsettling and inexplicable.
‘Breakdown on a Synthesizer’ The live broadcast of a local rock band competition is disrupted by a rivalry between two performers that might go beyond the normal. The story is presented as a transcript of the broadcast that seems afflicted by a technical issue, leaving the reader to infer from the ‘audio’ alone what the feud between the two performers is and whether the broadcast issues are related or just coincidence. The story contains a transcript of both performances: while this does add to the sense of an authentic transcript and is necessary evidence of what might have happened, readers who find the quoting of poetry or lyrics in prose jarring might suffer the same loss of engagement here.
‘Liquid Crystal’ A journalist tries to find the truth behind the arrest of a technology broadcaster and his apocryphal final broadcast. Gransden delivers the story like the rough cut of a TV investigation, presenting narrator commentary and interview segments as if the case is famous enough the reader already knows the key details; thus, the reader knows something significant happened and that it wasn’t good, but not what, heightening the tension.
‘The Shadowplayers’ A woman confined to a featureless space discovers an oddity, provoking an argument with her companions over the right response. Written as a script and featuring four characters identified only by generic labels rather than names, this story relies almost entirely on the character’s spoken reactions to describe events and surroundings; this lack of description builds a sense of the characters being within a bland, uniform space, making the fixation on the slightest of changes feel not merely realistic but necessary. Much of the dialogue has an overly formal or poetic tone which both suggests the characters are grasping for whatever stimulus they can, strengthening the image of a featureless space around them, and juxtaposes the tone of old novels with modern content, adding a sense of temporal absence to the physical.
Although Gransden varies her prose to support the individual story, including forays into script and song, the overall style might be described as meaningful shallowness: detailed descriptions and powerful language turned on the ordinary and fleeting as if it is of vast import. Depending on the reader, this will either elevate the shallow to meaning or seem a touch overblown.
Gransden’s focus is strongly on portraying the surreal or incomprehensible, and the reaction of normal people to it, rather than characters overcoming. This evokes films such as Videodrome and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the plays of Beckett, and works of cosmic horror; however, it might disappoint readers who favour plot arcs where a character grows in response to challenge.
While Gransden’s characters do not conquer their flaws, they are neither passive nor unsympathetic; instead, like Eighties TV series characters, they engage by being lightly nuanced representations of an enduring archetype.
Overall, I enjoyed this collection greatly. I recommend it to readers seeking the weirdness of an Eighties teen or sci-fi movie.
I received a free copy from the author with a request for a fair review.
September 17, 2021
If there is one thing I’ve learnt from reading Gransden is that her writing infiltrates your subconscious and starts to mess with your dreams…cue a nightmare about me trying to pick up purple rat crystals in a dark alley. As with her other books it took me a couple of stories to get into the rhythm, not a fault with the writing, it’s just there is nothing out there like this, such a unique style that takes you on some crazy rides and makes you ask 20 questions every few seconds but once you’ve gotten used to things you are then hooked.
In each of the chapters it feels like you have been dropped into the middle of a story, it leaves you feeling displaced and you can easily pick up the tension of the characters, you ever seen an episode of the twilight zone? You get that great start that fills you with unease and then the story kicks off, that’s what it feels like with this book and it makes it fun to read. Highlights for me were; “Arcady” it was scary, the sort of story that lacks any hope at all and yet you still cheer on the hero. “Tranquilisers at the Mall” was just plain old messed up, only a few pages long but just long enough to toy with your mind. Favourite was “Infomercial for a Dying World” apart from the great title the story captures the human spirit for carrying on regardless even in the face of impending doom.
This book captures the aura of the 1980’s you can almost hear the sound of a cassette clicking in the background. It was great fun reading it and now I’m off to lie in a bright room filled with lots of calming soft things.
Blog reivew: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021...
In each of the chapters it feels like you have been dropped into the middle of a story, it leaves you feeling displaced and you can easily pick up the tension of the characters, you ever seen an episode of the twilight zone? You get that great start that fills you with unease and then the story kicks off, that’s what it feels like with this book and it makes it fun to read. Highlights for me were; “Arcady” it was scary, the sort of story that lacks any hope at all and yet you still cheer on the hero. “Tranquilisers at the Mall” was just plain old messed up, only a few pages long but just long enough to toy with your mind. Favourite was “Infomercial for a Dying World” apart from the great title the story captures the human spirit for carrying on regardless even in the face of impending doom.
This book captures the aura of the 1980’s you can almost hear the sound of a cassette clicking in the background. It was great fun reading it and now I’m off to lie in a bright room filled with lots of calming soft things.
Blog reivew: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021...
October 2, 2021
Creepy Sheen sees Rebecca Gransden's stories develop markedly since last time out, with expository text on the back cover adding another layer of meaning to what's already there on the page. Messages from the end times? They're defined by 1980s pop culture and are structured like the most grandiose concept album, with characters questioning the brittle confines of their own reality within. Cerise neon glows and wisps of dry ice infuse the landscapes of their world. This is a place so evocatively imagined that we grip the very edges of reality itself.
September 1, 2021
There's something unnerving about each of the short stories presented in this volume, which is the point. The mundane juxtaposed with unreality; of an abandoned arcade with a crying toddler, or breaking down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere - emphasis on 'nowhere', or making a routine pick-up for the underworld - emphasis on 'underworld'.
I think this one line exemplifies the collection:
"Your ancestors tried to warn you about the temporal indefatigability of ordinary days."
Well written and idiosyncratic, this was an enjoyable dive into what felt like a series of prologues for unwritten horror, paranormal and sometimes crime novels, like a grimy drive-in theatre's selection of trailers.
I think this one line exemplifies the collection:
"Your ancestors tried to warn you about the temporal indefatigability of ordinary days."
Well written and idiosyncratic, this was an enjoyable dive into what felt like a series of prologues for unwritten horror, paranormal and sometimes crime novels, like a grimy drive-in theatre's selection of trailers.
January 1, 2022
Earth has ended in the '80s, but our broadcasts and transmissions have traveled about the cosmos to a remote star system where an alien consciousness has examined and responded sending back to 1980's Earth the stories here in Creepy Sheen. And, indeed, '80s vibes abound in this mix tape of eight short stories. Gransden continues with her flair for stories that are offsetting, subtly disturbing, and dancing along the periphery of dream, nightmare, surrealness. Characters perpetually on the lam from spirits, the menace of broadcast technology, and the sheer terror of being human intersect in these gripping tales, Normally, I'd be enraged at the cliff hanger she taunts the reader with in "Hell Alley" but it was gripping enough that I just might purchase issue 29 of Toxic Gore Magazine so I can find out what happens next.
October 17, 2021
Second book I've read by Rebecca Gransden. Liked this one more than Sea of Glass. There is something unique about the way she writes that worked more for me in this book than the other. Transmissions from a neon tinted post apocalypse. Good stuff.
June 28, 2021
What’s it about?
From the blurb, and not necessarily from the collection of stories itself, Creepy Sheen (CS) describes that we are living in an alternative history in the 1980s, the Third World War, which has had an impact on the broadcast transmissions making their way through space, as we’re led to believe is usual, and now there is a response aptly described in the blurb: ‘At the head of Earth’s messages to the cosmos travelled the collective broadcasts from one atomic day in history ... That transmission is Creepy Sheen.’
First impressions
I believed I was picking up a retro science fiction collection of stories based in the 1980s, possibly with bizarre or horror themes – just check out the cover. I assumed I knew what to expect of the time period, if only from books and media, and to some degree I was correct. Social and cultural attitudes among friends were different, and one may say more expressive or adventurous if we’re using CS as the template.
‘A perfect hiss erupts as Barney opens the drink with a shiny bottle opener. In one motion, he moves his head back, raising the bottle to take a cooling swig, an idealised silhouette against the shining white of the sign behind him.’
‘In outline they ingest the dark liquid and the brightness of the world glows, until gold turns to white and the heat of every particle lights them up in a burst of phosphorescence, the whiteness at the heart of existence tearing into their souls and remaking them anew.’
‘A distant and melodious bing bong echoed along the dusted walkways above. Starved ferns rusted, threatening to tumble and splinter under their own weight. The flatness of the mock marble seating attached to it in a warped triangle partially covered with drooping ornamental grasses, themselves in a process of steady decay.’
When a character checks her watch in the story Arcady, and not her phone, you feel an odd sense of displacement, a leaping back in time to when we had simpler gadgets, and when the desperation of life looked us in the face.
Just have a taster of the author’s choice of words: ‘And sighted a black truck … as it floated the roadway.’
There was a memorable scene in the same story mentioned above, in the arcade where the reader sees life how it is, with blinking lights and repeated tunes, but there is this disconnection and unreachable part of it that draws the character in and makes you question it. Do we live in these times? Why do we take our friends for granted? Why am I stood here in this arcade now? These questions almost make you feel that the strange circumstances that happen afterwards are the more normal ones.
Praise, criticism, and evaluation
With some stories I didn’t grasp the conclusion or the hidden meaning, if there was one in these ones beyond an alien-invading creepy sheen. This was the case in the stories Broken Wings, Tranquilizers at the Mall, Breakdown on a Synthesizer, and Liquid Crystal. We know something went wrong in the stories, but we’re not sure what. Despite this, the author has managed to make us easily imagine what it would be like when a crisis or two did happen in the 1980s and how the characters would respond to it.
With some stories, it took me a bit to see the link between the premise of the book and the culmination of the short story itself, such as in The Future is White and Infomercial for a Dying World. In retrospect, the way the premise was shown was excellent, saying no more than was necessary.
One of my favourite stories was Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream. The way this story starts! I found this story illustrated the creepy sheen premise in the most visual way, propelling the character into action and taking none of the creepiness out of the sheen, so to speak. You must read Hell Alley, also, in a story akin to Ghostbusters but with more violence, ugliness, and conspiracy than you’d imagine. I would be interested to learn what happened to the character Myra also, after her ordeal.
Overall, I’d say CS is a story that will take any expectations you had of it and slice it into pieces, leaving you with the uneasy feeling of past reminiscence, perhaps, of stepping into a world you’d thought you’d left but you’re forced to return to when on the run. It’s a collection destroyed by the realities of its … reliance on broadcast transmission, or social or cultural attitudes? I don’t say the last sentence with any certainty, but I do intend to compliment the collection as a whole in this paragraph. There is a sense of adventure or the surreal in some stories you may be familiar with from other works by Rebecca Gransden, and increasingly, there is the theme of disconnection, as we have in this collection: reaching out only to be transported to violence or a warped version of a distinctive time that advertised its rosiness but maybe hid uglier things.
As with all of Rebecca Gransden’s fiction, it’s worth your time to read!
From the blurb, and not necessarily from the collection of stories itself, Creepy Sheen (CS) describes that we are living in an alternative history in the 1980s, the Third World War, which has had an impact on the broadcast transmissions making their way through space, as we’re led to believe is usual, and now there is a response aptly described in the blurb: ‘At the head of Earth’s messages to the cosmos travelled the collective broadcasts from one atomic day in history ... That transmission is Creepy Sheen.’
First impressions
I believed I was picking up a retro science fiction collection of stories based in the 1980s, possibly with bizarre or horror themes – just check out the cover. I assumed I knew what to expect of the time period, if only from books and media, and to some degree I was correct. Social and cultural attitudes among friends were different, and one may say more expressive or adventurous if we’re using CS as the template.
‘A perfect hiss erupts as Barney opens the drink with a shiny bottle opener. In one motion, he moves his head back, raising the bottle to take a cooling swig, an idealised silhouette against the shining white of the sign behind him.’
‘In outline they ingest the dark liquid and the brightness of the world glows, until gold turns to white and the heat of every particle lights them up in a burst of phosphorescence, the whiteness at the heart of existence tearing into their souls and remaking them anew.’
‘A distant and melodious bing bong echoed along the dusted walkways above. Starved ferns rusted, threatening to tumble and splinter under their own weight. The flatness of the mock marble seating attached to it in a warped triangle partially covered with drooping ornamental grasses, themselves in a process of steady decay.’
When a character checks her watch in the story Arcady, and not her phone, you feel an odd sense of displacement, a leaping back in time to when we had simpler gadgets, and when the desperation of life looked us in the face.
Just have a taster of the author’s choice of words: ‘And sighted a black truck … as it floated the roadway.’
There was a memorable scene in the same story mentioned above, in the arcade where the reader sees life how it is, with blinking lights and repeated tunes, but there is this disconnection and unreachable part of it that draws the character in and makes you question it. Do we live in these times? Why do we take our friends for granted? Why am I stood here in this arcade now? These questions almost make you feel that the strange circumstances that happen afterwards are the more normal ones.
Praise, criticism, and evaluation
With some stories I didn’t grasp the conclusion or the hidden meaning, if there was one in these ones beyond an alien-invading creepy sheen. This was the case in the stories Broken Wings, Tranquilizers at the Mall, Breakdown on a Synthesizer, and Liquid Crystal. We know something went wrong in the stories, but we’re not sure what. Despite this, the author has managed to make us easily imagine what it would be like when a crisis or two did happen in the 1980s and how the characters would respond to it.
With some stories, it took me a bit to see the link between the premise of the book and the culmination of the short story itself, such as in The Future is White and Infomercial for a Dying World. In retrospect, the way the premise was shown was excellent, saying no more than was necessary.
One of my favourite stories was Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream. The way this story starts! I found this story illustrated the creepy sheen premise in the most visual way, propelling the character into action and taking none of the creepiness out of the sheen, so to speak. You must read Hell Alley, also, in a story akin to Ghostbusters but with more violence, ugliness, and conspiracy than you’d imagine. I would be interested to learn what happened to the character Myra also, after her ordeal.
Overall, I’d say CS is a story that will take any expectations you had of it and slice it into pieces, leaving you with the uneasy feeling of past reminiscence, perhaps, of stepping into a world you’d thought you’d left but you’re forced to return to when on the run. It’s a collection destroyed by the realities of its … reliance on broadcast transmission, or social or cultural attitudes? I don’t say the last sentence with any certainty, but I do intend to compliment the collection as a whole in this paragraph. There is a sense of adventure or the surreal in some stories you may be familiar with from other works by Rebecca Gransden, and increasingly, there is the theme of disconnection, as we have in this collection: reaching out only to be transported to violence or a warped version of a distinctive time that advertised its rosiness but maybe hid uglier things.
As with all of Rebecca Gransden’s fiction, it’s worth your time to read!
Read
May 16, 2021*spoilers*
Rebecca Gransden’s 2021 short story collection Creepy Sheen takes us on a tour of the temporally finite—a set of stories, each of which heralds an apocalyptic end mediated through seemingly innocent objects. These objects seem ordinary: plastic telephones, a stylish knapsack, an arcade game, a pastel jacket, etc. Each object, shiny, attractive, meticulously produced and most of all consumable is nonetheless lacking identity—pedestrian and seemingly without any overture of destruction.
But they conceal something. In curious ways, the objects in these stories are a centerpiece: they thematically initiate subjective dissolution as a stand in for global atomic warfare. These objects capture and reflect back to the reader these very personalized experiences of destruction, even as the people themselves often resemble the hollow, mass produced objects they so enjoy.
It’s a delightful conceit—subjective annihilation fused with 80’s glam-pop.
Gransden’s approach is a clever one: her organizing conceit is of a parallel world, one where the friction of the Cold War ignited a nuclear conflagration. All that remains of human civilization is its broadcast history—decades of radio and television transmissions floating in space. The stories in Creepy Sheen represent these captured experiences.
Creepy Sheen by Rebecca Gransden. Cardboard Wall Empire—$7.95
In “The Future is White,” Barney and Betty, a tourist-couple fit for a sitcom, find themselves stranded in the desert after their car breaks down. The reader is sympathetic to their plight, and yet there is something off about this pair. They seem neither pleased nor entirely displeased with their situation. It is as if they are waiting for something. There is something Beckett-esque about the pair and their situation. In this bleak setting where it isn’t clear what’s happening and what’s to come, we nonetheless have this curiously alliterative couple. In fact, we get echoes from Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot: “‘Nothing to be done?’ Betty asks Barney—’Nothing to be done,'” he confirms. They bicker and trade jibes; they are at turns concerned and bemused. They are stranded in the desert, but their biggest impetus to get back to civilization appears to be a hankering for waffles and coffee.
Then Barney finds it: a glass scorpion, life-sized and perfectly rendered, except for one front pincer, which appears to be real—an undeniably biological component to what they assume is a discarded desert accessory from one of the gift shops they left in their rear view mirror. The scorpion indeed is a human-made object, though not in the way they think.
Betty and Barney set out on foot. As they do so, “They pass car after car carcass, stripped down to the bare metal, each more vanquished than the last, none rusted, all blasted and preserved, polished to the chassis bone.” They come into an awareness that something is very wrong, but they continue on nonetheless. Nothing to be done, after all.
The lights in the distance encourage them; civilization, it seems, is just in view. They climb up to the scaffolding of a large billboard that reads “The Future is White” and look out toward the lights. And then, “the world glows, until gold turns to white and the heat of every particle lights them up in a burst of phosphorescence, the whiteness at the heart of existence tearing into their souls and remaking them anew.”
So ends the story, but what sort of an ending is this? Betty and Barney are made anew—like the scorpion? What is “the whiteness at the heart of existence”? Reading casually, we know the Earth has been swallowed by nuclear explosions—explosions that turn things in the sand to glass and cars to polished skeletons—but Gransden isn’t writing stories to be casually read. Critical to my eye is that they are not made anew, but explicitly remade anew. It is as if the light rearranges Betty and Barney’s component parts. Indeed, Betty and Barney—what sort of names are these? I imagine plump tourists with cameras slung around their necks and fanny packs around their waist: vacant stand-ins for the mass circulation of manufactured objects and the people that buy them.
In “Broken Wings,” we meet Debbie. “Sun-bleached tips of layered blonde hair catch her face in wisps as she moves”—as though her perfectly crafted hair were more integral to her persona than she herself. Debbie speaks to her friends through the “chunky pastel green telephone receiver”—a prototypical LA high school kid looking for casual trouble, she too transverses in objects.
Her friend Tiffany had an eccentric uncle that died and thus a potential cache of liquor may be found at his former residence. If nothing else, it might be a cool place to hang out. They begin the trek—”It’s like a no man’s land, between the hills, and everybody else.” It’s an odd, liminal space—the sort of place in folklore where we encounter the unexpected.
As they draw near, they hear the sound of the ocean crashing against rocks at the base of cliff. The teenagers decide to descend into the darkness to skinny-dip—all except Debbie. Aloof, she remains unfazed as the screams of her friends waft up on the mild ocean air currents. We don’t entirely know why they’re screaming, but the reader gets the sense that it doesn’t matter: something is coming.
Suddenly, a white Lamborghini pulls up. Its driver is mysterious—first we’re told it’s a shadow in the driver’s seat; then we’re told the driver is named Blane. “‘Hey. I’ve been looking for you. Wanna go for a ride?'”
There is an unnerving complexity to this story—an effect achieved by layering images. We’re told Blane has a lightning bolt in glitter on his face—perhaps an element of David Bowie is finding hold, but the more crucial element is in the “universe of sparkles” the lightning bolt heralds. Here as well, there is a deep internal configuration—like Betty and Barney, Debbie loses herself here. This is no skeletal automobile, but the powerful white of his car thematically rekindles the burst of phosphorescence in “The Future is White.” Perhaps he is the explosion itself, but if so, he’s as much a beginning as he is an end. What is more, he’s exactly what she’s been waiting for.
Nothing like a nuclear apocalypse to break you out of your teenage boredom.
For Gransden, annihilation takes on many forms. In “Infomercial for a Dying World,” Diana is filming an infomercial on the roof of a building in a dying city. One by one, the lights of the neighboring buildings go out; social instability grips the city as the broadcast is pushed skyward, eventually to the roof. But the show (or, shall we say, the sale?) must go on. They’re selling dishwasher tablets.
As Tori, the producer, tells her: “‘This red light, designed just for you, this camera, unique in the world. No one in telesales is shot like you Diana. As long as the demon pupil glows, you are on air.’ Diana straightens the sweeping peach pastel lapels of her jacket, uncoils the twin rollers from each side of her head, placing them out of sight under the desk, and positions her shiny hair to rest symmetrically and frame her face.” Like Debbie, Diana leads with her hair.
Diana meticulously composes her appearance for a non-existent audience; however, as with Debbie, the reader has the sense of some uncanny visitor that is both incomprehensible and expected. Diana carries on for the glowing demon eye, aiding and abetting the free circulation of objects in the market, even as televisions themselves are going dark.
“Infomercial for a Dying World” discloses its meaning like a sage—through a handful of critical statements whose syntax allows for several meanings. Tori tells her telesales star that no one is shot like her—how to read such a statement? And what is going on below? The narrative is continually interrupted by references to the chaos below We’re told “Dark hands push televisions out of shady windows.” Is this a reference to looting, or an orgiastic end-of-world outburst? Are the hands dark because the city has gone dark, or does this modifier in conjunction with the shooting power of cameras refract the American racial violence that has otherwise so dominated our attention?
Most mysteriously, as the story closes, Tori “starts to cry, deeply, with gushing sobs,”—is this in sorrow for an impending end, or a joyous expression of a purpose fulfilled? As the red eye fades, Diana, consummate professional that she is, continues on for no one, selling dishwasher tablets in front of an unpowered camera, its red eye powering down like HAL.
What is most disturbing is how matter of fact it all is. Diana simply carries on as the story tapers to a close. (The story ends in parallel with the powering down of the camera—are we, the reader, the demon eye?)
It’s a startling vision of the end of the world, but it’s one that rings true. Certainly, over the last year we have witnessed something of a minor apocalyptic event in the Covid outbreak. One of its most startling aspects is that no facet of human existence responded so quickly and marvelously as our major financial stakeholders. If the world ended tomorrow, Gransden suggests, our last surviving institutions wouldn’t be our hospitals, fire departments or food depots, but eCommerce, infomercials and discount shopping. For every tired survivor struggling to go on, there would doubtless be another trying to figure out how to profit from it all. I have the uncomfortable feeling that Gransden is probably right.
In many ways, the stories of Creepy Sheen resemble the objects they focus on: quaint, shiny and deceptively simple, but with a black hole at their center. These stories have a real pull if you take the time to read them closely.
What’s really impressive is how careful Gransden is with language. Many of the stories of Creepy Sheen begin with simple, even trite, formulations. “Shazza lifted her head,” begins one story. The early sections of many of these stories read like an accumulation of images and details, but there is a flux in the medium as each story begins to pull this information in a direction we cannot discern. It’s like going for a swim and suddenly realizing you’re trapped in a rip current.
As each story crescendos, the language gets more and more precise, both opening and closing questions. Gransden luxuriates in metaphor-laden images, so much so that ordinary objects take on apocalyptic significance. These stories ultimately reward the reader for focus. Creepy Sheen is the sort of book you’ll either yawn at or be kept up all night thinking about, depending on how you approach it.
Creepy Sheen has some exquisite pieces, though as a collection I find something is missing—perhaps a anchoring tale to make the guiding logic explicit. “Hell Alley,” though a wonderfully gritty eco- narrative (or the first segment of one), despite being one of the best reads, nonetheless strikes me as out of place in this collection. “Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream” is in some ways the necessary anchor story and encapsulates some of the themes of this collection, and yet it defies others. The collection thus stands a bit off kilter in my reading—something is needed to bring it all together.
I won’t get lost in the need for thematic unity in a short story collection, which of course negotiable and subjective. Creepy Sheen remains a eerie and vivid set of stories that will reward any patient reader willing to step out to the fringes.
Rebecca Gransden’s 2021 short story collection Creepy Sheen takes us on a tour of the temporally finite—a set of stories, each of which heralds an apocalyptic end mediated through seemingly innocent objects. These objects seem ordinary: plastic telephones, a stylish knapsack, an arcade game, a pastel jacket, etc. Each object, shiny, attractive, meticulously produced and most of all consumable is nonetheless lacking identity—pedestrian and seemingly without any overture of destruction.
But they conceal something. In curious ways, the objects in these stories are a centerpiece: they thematically initiate subjective dissolution as a stand in for global atomic warfare. These objects capture and reflect back to the reader these very personalized experiences of destruction, even as the people themselves often resemble the hollow, mass produced objects they so enjoy.
It’s a delightful conceit—subjective annihilation fused with 80’s glam-pop.
Gransden’s approach is a clever one: her organizing conceit is of a parallel world, one where the friction of the Cold War ignited a nuclear conflagration. All that remains of human civilization is its broadcast history—decades of radio and television transmissions floating in space. The stories in Creepy Sheen represent these captured experiences.
Creepy Sheen by Rebecca Gransden. Cardboard Wall Empire—$7.95
In “The Future is White,” Barney and Betty, a tourist-couple fit for a sitcom, find themselves stranded in the desert after their car breaks down. The reader is sympathetic to their plight, and yet there is something off about this pair. They seem neither pleased nor entirely displeased with their situation. It is as if they are waiting for something. There is something Beckett-esque about the pair and their situation. In this bleak setting where it isn’t clear what’s happening and what’s to come, we nonetheless have this curiously alliterative couple. In fact, we get echoes from Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot: “‘Nothing to be done?’ Betty asks Barney—’Nothing to be done,'” he confirms. They bicker and trade jibes; they are at turns concerned and bemused. They are stranded in the desert, but their biggest impetus to get back to civilization appears to be a hankering for waffles and coffee.
Then Barney finds it: a glass scorpion, life-sized and perfectly rendered, except for one front pincer, which appears to be real—an undeniably biological component to what they assume is a discarded desert accessory from one of the gift shops they left in their rear view mirror. The scorpion indeed is a human-made object, though not in the way they think.
Betty and Barney set out on foot. As they do so, “They pass car after car carcass, stripped down to the bare metal, each more vanquished than the last, none rusted, all blasted and preserved, polished to the chassis bone.” They come into an awareness that something is very wrong, but they continue on nonetheless. Nothing to be done, after all.
The lights in the distance encourage them; civilization, it seems, is just in view. They climb up to the scaffolding of a large billboard that reads “The Future is White” and look out toward the lights. And then, “the world glows, until gold turns to white and the heat of every particle lights them up in a burst of phosphorescence, the whiteness at the heart of existence tearing into their souls and remaking them anew.”
So ends the story, but what sort of an ending is this? Betty and Barney are made anew—like the scorpion? What is “the whiteness at the heart of existence”? Reading casually, we know the Earth has been swallowed by nuclear explosions—explosions that turn things in the sand to glass and cars to polished skeletons—but Gransden isn’t writing stories to be casually read. Critical to my eye is that they are not made anew, but explicitly remade anew. It is as if the light rearranges Betty and Barney’s component parts. Indeed, Betty and Barney—what sort of names are these? I imagine plump tourists with cameras slung around their necks and fanny packs around their waist: vacant stand-ins for the mass circulation of manufactured objects and the people that buy them.
In “Broken Wings,” we meet Debbie. “Sun-bleached tips of layered blonde hair catch her face in wisps as she moves”—as though her perfectly crafted hair were more integral to her persona than she herself. Debbie speaks to her friends through the “chunky pastel green telephone receiver”—a prototypical LA high school kid looking for casual trouble, she too transverses in objects.
Her friend Tiffany had an eccentric uncle that died and thus a potential cache of liquor may be found at his former residence. If nothing else, it might be a cool place to hang out. They begin the trek—”It’s like a no man’s land, between the hills, and everybody else.” It’s an odd, liminal space—the sort of place in folklore where we encounter the unexpected.
As they draw near, they hear the sound of the ocean crashing against rocks at the base of cliff. The teenagers decide to descend into the darkness to skinny-dip—all except Debbie. Aloof, she remains unfazed as the screams of her friends waft up on the mild ocean air currents. We don’t entirely know why they’re screaming, but the reader gets the sense that it doesn’t matter: something is coming.
Suddenly, a white Lamborghini pulls up. Its driver is mysterious—first we’re told it’s a shadow in the driver’s seat; then we’re told the driver is named Blane. “‘Hey. I’ve been looking for you. Wanna go for a ride?'”
There is an unnerving complexity to this story—an effect achieved by layering images. We’re told Blane has a lightning bolt in glitter on his face—perhaps an element of David Bowie is finding hold, but the more crucial element is in the “universe of sparkles” the lightning bolt heralds. Here as well, there is a deep internal configuration—like Betty and Barney, Debbie loses herself here. This is no skeletal automobile, but the powerful white of his car thematically rekindles the burst of phosphorescence in “The Future is White.” Perhaps he is the explosion itself, but if so, he’s as much a beginning as he is an end. What is more, he’s exactly what she’s been waiting for.
Nothing like a nuclear apocalypse to break you out of your teenage boredom.
For Gransden, annihilation takes on many forms. In “Infomercial for a Dying World,” Diana is filming an infomercial on the roof of a building in a dying city. One by one, the lights of the neighboring buildings go out; social instability grips the city as the broadcast is pushed skyward, eventually to the roof. But the show (or, shall we say, the sale?) must go on. They’re selling dishwasher tablets.
As Tori, the producer, tells her: “‘This red light, designed just for you, this camera, unique in the world. No one in telesales is shot like you Diana. As long as the demon pupil glows, you are on air.’ Diana straightens the sweeping peach pastel lapels of her jacket, uncoils the twin rollers from each side of her head, placing them out of sight under the desk, and positions her shiny hair to rest symmetrically and frame her face.” Like Debbie, Diana leads with her hair.
Diana meticulously composes her appearance for a non-existent audience; however, as with Debbie, the reader has the sense of some uncanny visitor that is both incomprehensible and expected. Diana carries on for the glowing demon eye, aiding and abetting the free circulation of objects in the market, even as televisions themselves are going dark.
“Infomercial for a Dying World” discloses its meaning like a sage—through a handful of critical statements whose syntax allows for several meanings. Tori tells her telesales star that no one is shot like her—how to read such a statement? And what is going on below? The narrative is continually interrupted by references to the chaos below We’re told “Dark hands push televisions out of shady windows.” Is this a reference to looting, or an orgiastic end-of-world outburst? Are the hands dark because the city has gone dark, or does this modifier in conjunction with the shooting power of cameras refract the American racial violence that has otherwise so dominated our attention?
Most mysteriously, as the story closes, Tori “starts to cry, deeply, with gushing sobs,”—is this in sorrow for an impending end, or a joyous expression of a purpose fulfilled? As the red eye fades, Diana, consummate professional that she is, continues on for no one, selling dishwasher tablets in front of an unpowered camera, its red eye powering down like HAL.
What is most disturbing is how matter of fact it all is. Diana simply carries on as the story tapers to a close. (The story ends in parallel with the powering down of the camera—are we, the reader, the demon eye?)
It’s a startling vision of the end of the world, but it’s one that rings true. Certainly, over the last year we have witnessed something of a minor apocalyptic event in the Covid outbreak. One of its most startling aspects is that no facet of human existence responded so quickly and marvelously as our major financial stakeholders. If the world ended tomorrow, Gransden suggests, our last surviving institutions wouldn’t be our hospitals, fire departments or food depots, but eCommerce, infomercials and discount shopping. For every tired survivor struggling to go on, there would doubtless be another trying to figure out how to profit from it all. I have the uncomfortable feeling that Gransden is probably right.
In many ways, the stories of Creepy Sheen resemble the objects they focus on: quaint, shiny and deceptively simple, but with a black hole at their center. These stories have a real pull if you take the time to read them closely.
What’s really impressive is how careful Gransden is with language. Many of the stories of Creepy Sheen begin with simple, even trite, formulations. “Shazza lifted her head,” begins one story. The early sections of many of these stories read like an accumulation of images and details, but there is a flux in the medium as each story begins to pull this information in a direction we cannot discern. It’s like going for a swim and suddenly realizing you’re trapped in a rip current.
As each story crescendos, the language gets more and more precise, both opening and closing questions. Gransden luxuriates in metaphor-laden images, so much so that ordinary objects take on apocalyptic significance. These stories ultimately reward the reader for focus. Creepy Sheen is the sort of book you’ll either yawn at or be kept up all night thinking about, depending on how you approach it.
Creepy Sheen has some exquisite pieces, though as a collection I find something is missing—perhaps a anchoring tale to make the guiding logic explicit. “Hell Alley,” though a wonderfully gritty eco- narrative (or the first segment of one), despite being one of the best reads, nonetheless strikes me as out of place in this collection. “Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream” is in some ways the necessary anchor story and encapsulates some of the themes of this collection, and yet it defies others. The collection thus stands a bit off kilter in my reading—something is needed to bring it all together.
I won’t get lost in the need for thematic unity in a short story collection, which of course negotiable and subjective. Creepy Sheen remains a eerie and vivid set of stories that will reward any patient reader willing to step out to the fringes.
July 16, 2021
Originally posted over at my personal blog site, Night Terror Novels
“Seems forever ago now, as if I’m looking back on a different person. I was a sleepwalker. Eating junk, watching junk, surrounded by junk people, just like me. That night woke me up.”
– Rebecca Gransden, Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream
🕹️I received an e-Book of this story in exchange for a fair review!🕹️
A collection of ten weird-horror stories, Rebecca Gransden’s Creepy Sheen takes tales of the abstract and the unusual and then presents them through a filter of neon-drenched eighties glitz. I feel it’s important for me to also include the book’s own description of itself, in order to fully understand the author’s approach to the anthology as a whole:
‘For decades, Humankind sent transmissions around the globe. In addition to reaching every corner of the planet, the signals travelled beyond, into the dark void of space. All of broadcast history made its way gracefully through the stars, racing into the unknown—until the mid 1980s, when nuclear mushroom clouds plumed in the skies of Earth’s Third World War.’
As that brief synopsis suggests, this anthology is written with an alien, otherworldly bent, as though each story is a surviving transmission from a “decimated-by-nuclear-armageddon-in-the-eighties” version of our reality. The stories contained within often feel like they fall somewhere between the broader categorisation of speculative fiction, and more specifically the so-called sub-genre of “quiet horror”. Many are quite hard to define by any terms, and all are simmering with an uncomfortable atmosphere of dread that makes for a compelling read.
Gransden is clearly a skilled author and her enviable way with words really does shine throughout the book – the stories are highly polished and well-written, from the first to the last. At a short 99 pages this book could easily be devoured in one sitting, but I feel given the layered nature of the stories, they’re better read individually, and mulled over for a while afterwards. I saw another reviewer compare this to a concept album, and feel that’s an extremely apt description – it feels as much an exercise in artistic experimentation as it does a collection of spooky narratives.
Creepy Sheen very much exists at the intersection between dreams, nightmares, and an unfiltered reality – and it’s in the melding of these crossroads with the callous, alien perspective they are being presented through that the tension is created. A trio of highlights for me were Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream (great story titles throughout the book, by the way), about a simple delivery job gone very awry, Breakdown on a Synthesizer, a highly original story concerning call-ins during a musical event, and finally Liquid Crystal, about a bizarre and nightmarish infomercial from hell.
I did sometimes feel that the stories were somewhat underdeveloped or open-ended for my own liking, and I do think that the book overall is likely going to be something of an acquired taste – though I suppose much the same could be said for any creative endeavour. It didn’t always click for me, but nonetheless I found it engaging and fascinating, with something of a unique, avant-garde charm. This artistic approach to storytelling can sometimes be a bit polarising, but on that same note, I’m sure there are plenty of folks for whom this will be 100% their breed of creepiness. Taking everything into consideration, I for one enjoyed it, and would be curious to read more from this author at some point.
VERDICT: Creepy Sheen toes the line between the quietly uncanny and the abstract, and as such, might not be everyone’s cup of tea. For fans of that style of horror though, this collection is a sterling example of it: often creepy, sometimes weird, and oozing a cool eighties vibe. It takes natural human nostalgia and scrutinises it via a foreign, extraterrestrial viewpoint, creating a genuinely unnerving ambiance in the process.
It’s a strong ⭐⭐⭐⭐/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ from this reviewer. I also want to say a humongous thank you to Rebecca Gransden for providing a copy and giving me the chance to read and review it.
Book Information
Title(s): Creepy Sheen
Author(s): Rebecca Gransden
Publisher(s): Cardboard Wall Empire
Original Publication Date: 18th April, 2021
Page Count: 99 pages
Format Read: Digital
Advance Review Copy (Y/N): Y
Website(s): https://www.overdrive.com/publishers/...
https://rebeccagransden.wordpress.com/
“Seems forever ago now, as if I’m looking back on a different person. I was a sleepwalker. Eating junk, watching junk, surrounded by junk people, just like me. That night woke me up.”
– Rebecca Gransden, Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream
🕹️I received an e-Book of this story in exchange for a fair review!🕹️
A collection of ten weird-horror stories, Rebecca Gransden’s Creepy Sheen takes tales of the abstract and the unusual and then presents them through a filter of neon-drenched eighties glitz. I feel it’s important for me to also include the book’s own description of itself, in order to fully understand the author’s approach to the anthology as a whole:
‘For decades, Humankind sent transmissions around the globe. In addition to reaching every corner of the planet, the signals travelled beyond, into the dark void of space. All of broadcast history made its way gracefully through the stars, racing into the unknown—until the mid 1980s, when nuclear mushroom clouds plumed in the skies of Earth’s Third World War.’
As that brief synopsis suggests, this anthology is written with an alien, otherworldly bent, as though each story is a surviving transmission from a “decimated-by-nuclear-armageddon-in-the-eighties” version of our reality. The stories contained within often feel like they fall somewhere between the broader categorisation of speculative fiction, and more specifically the so-called sub-genre of “quiet horror”. Many are quite hard to define by any terms, and all are simmering with an uncomfortable atmosphere of dread that makes for a compelling read.
Gransden is clearly a skilled author and her enviable way with words really does shine throughout the book – the stories are highly polished and well-written, from the first to the last. At a short 99 pages this book could easily be devoured in one sitting, but I feel given the layered nature of the stories, they’re better read individually, and mulled over for a while afterwards. I saw another reviewer compare this to a concept album, and feel that’s an extremely apt description – it feels as much an exercise in artistic experimentation as it does a collection of spooky narratives.
Creepy Sheen very much exists at the intersection between dreams, nightmares, and an unfiltered reality – and it’s in the melding of these crossroads with the callous, alien perspective they are being presented through that the tension is created. A trio of highlights for me were Night Drive Drifter in a Bad Dream (great story titles throughout the book, by the way), about a simple delivery job gone very awry, Breakdown on a Synthesizer, a highly original story concerning call-ins during a musical event, and finally Liquid Crystal, about a bizarre and nightmarish infomercial from hell.
I did sometimes feel that the stories were somewhat underdeveloped or open-ended for my own liking, and I do think that the book overall is likely going to be something of an acquired taste – though I suppose much the same could be said for any creative endeavour. It didn’t always click for me, but nonetheless I found it engaging and fascinating, with something of a unique, avant-garde charm. This artistic approach to storytelling can sometimes be a bit polarising, but on that same note, I’m sure there are plenty of folks for whom this will be 100% their breed of creepiness. Taking everything into consideration, I for one enjoyed it, and would be curious to read more from this author at some point.
VERDICT: Creepy Sheen toes the line between the quietly uncanny and the abstract, and as such, might not be everyone’s cup of tea. For fans of that style of horror though, this collection is a sterling example of it: often creepy, sometimes weird, and oozing a cool eighties vibe. It takes natural human nostalgia and scrutinises it via a foreign, extraterrestrial viewpoint, creating a genuinely unnerving ambiance in the process.
It’s a strong ⭐⭐⭐⭐/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ from this reviewer. I also want to say a humongous thank you to Rebecca Gransden for providing a copy and giving me the chance to read and review it.
Book Information
Title(s): Creepy Sheen
Author(s): Rebecca Gransden
Publisher(s): Cardboard Wall Empire
Original Publication Date: 18th April, 2021
Page Count: 99 pages
Format Read: Digital
Advance Review Copy (Y/N): Y
Website(s): https://www.overdrive.com/publishers/...
https://rebeccagransden.wordpress.com/
June 25, 2021
Gransden has a great imagination and shows considerable promise as a writer. All her stories were original and engrossing, but the execution of her ideas is still a work in progress. Professional critique would be welcomed.
I feel this is an author to watch as she grows within her artistry. Creepy Sheen was an excellent start, and with time and growth I believe Gransden will be a master storyteller.
I feel this is an author to watch as she grows within her artistry. Creepy Sheen was an excellent start, and with time and growth I believe Gransden will be a master storyteller.
September 30, 2021
CREEPY SHEEN
Rebecca Gransden
Cardboard Wall Empire
April 18, 2021
Reviewed by Skull
Hello dear readers, it’s your old pal Skull getting back to you with the full review of Rebecca Gransden’s Creepy Sheen. I don’t want to put the hearse before the motorcade but, let me just say that lovers of speculative fiction are in for a real treat when they dive between the pages of this purple covered beauty! So, with further ado, let’s begin…
To those who were kind enough to read my previous post about Creepy Sheen, thank you. Here is your reward/answer to my riddle about the connection arcade crane machines and babies have to this excellent short story collection. “Arcady” is a great example of Gransden’s work. She combines the known and comfortable with the unknown in a shocking way that keeps you turning pages. Missy Jackson is the typical teenage arcade rat. She plays the games until all her money is gone. Unfortunately, it’s just not her day to be a winner and that bad luck extends to using the arcade’s rest room. She’s locked in by a malfunctioning stall door and ends up falling asleep in the none too deluxe surroundings. Upon waking, it becomes clear through many of Missy’s observations that something is very wrong in her corner of the world. One of the indicators of that is a crying baby trapped inside the crane game with all the stuffed toys. Not to mention the creepy guys with the trucks, yikes! “Arcady” is a great story that will chill your blood.
“Liquid Crystal” is a cool piece about a guy who figured out how to take technology way too far, resulting in a prison life sentence. While “Hell Alley” shows us a dystopian future where Myra the city rat catcher has a run in with some guys who are using the rats to create a super drug. And let’s not forget “The Future Is White” which has a ghostly Twilight Zone meets Ray Bradbury vibe presented in a script format. All of which brings us to the diseased diamond of the bunch…
Skull’s favorite story in all of Rebecca Gransden’s Creepy Sheen is “Night Drive Drifter In A Bad Dream.” This tale is smokin’ and I mean that literally! At the core of it is a man and a fast car always travelling at night and catching what little rest they can during daylight hours. Emilio takes on a unique job from his “friend” Dexter because of the huge payout and the chance to get out of a crummy town where he’s stuck in one dead end job after another. I mean, the dude is fighting bums for a package of stale rolls. Not exactly living the high life! But it’s nowhere as easy as Dexter makes it sound. After some truly creepy scenes, Emilio decides to make a run for it, only to find that the thing chasing him is tireless. So instead of jetting off to some exotic location with his loot from the job, Emilio is spending his money in grungy motels and gas station snack bars. But tonight seems a little different, who knows what’s up ahead? Smart investors make a bid for TV rights, now!
Overall, Damaged Skull Reviewer gives Creepy Sheen 5 STARS and a place on “The Wall of Fame”! The overall concept is that we’ve been blasting messages out into space looking for intelligent life and now some of those messages are bouncing back, using the now defunct earth as a giant movie screen. It’s like some lost episodes of the Twilight Zone or unfinished work from your favorite late science fiction writer. Enjoy the show! Rebecca Gransden writes like she is multiple authors and stretches simple scenes into terrifying scarescapes. Get this one, you won’t regret it!
Also, before I return to my nice dark cave, let me mention that Cardboard Wall Empire has many titles on offer including more from Rebecca Gransden, Leo X. Robertson, and others. Tell them Skull sent you!
Rebecca Gransden
Cardboard Wall Empire
April 18, 2021
Reviewed by Skull
Hello dear readers, it’s your old pal Skull getting back to you with the full review of Rebecca Gransden’s Creepy Sheen. I don’t want to put the hearse before the motorcade but, let me just say that lovers of speculative fiction are in for a real treat when they dive between the pages of this purple covered beauty! So, with further ado, let’s begin…
To those who were kind enough to read my previous post about Creepy Sheen, thank you. Here is your reward/answer to my riddle about the connection arcade crane machines and babies have to this excellent short story collection. “Arcady” is a great example of Gransden’s work. She combines the known and comfortable with the unknown in a shocking way that keeps you turning pages. Missy Jackson is the typical teenage arcade rat. She plays the games until all her money is gone. Unfortunately, it’s just not her day to be a winner and that bad luck extends to using the arcade’s rest room. She’s locked in by a malfunctioning stall door and ends up falling asleep in the none too deluxe surroundings. Upon waking, it becomes clear through many of Missy’s observations that something is very wrong in her corner of the world. One of the indicators of that is a crying baby trapped inside the crane game with all the stuffed toys. Not to mention the creepy guys with the trucks, yikes! “Arcady” is a great story that will chill your blood.
“Liquid Crystal” is a cool piece about a guy who figured out how to take technology way too far, resulting in a prison life sentence. While “Hell Alley” shows us a dystopian future where Myra the city rat catcher has a run in with some guys who are using the rats to create a super drug. And let’s not forget “The Future Is White” which has a ghostly Twilight Zone meets Ray Bradbury vibe presented in a script format. All of which brings us to the diseased diamond of the bunch…
Skull’s favorite story in all of Rebecca Gransden’s Creepy Sheen is “Night Drive Drifter In A Bad Dream.” This tale is smokin’ and I mean that literally! At the core of it is a man and a fast car always travelling at night and catching what little rest they can during daylight hours. Emilio takes on a unique job from his “friend” Dexter because of the huge payout and the chance to get out of a crummy town where he’s stuck in one dead end job after another. I mean, the dude is fighting bums for a package of stale rolls. Not exactly living the high life! But it’s nowhere as easy as Dexter makes it sound. After some truly creepy scenes, Emilio decides to make a run for it, only to find that the thing chasing him is tireless. So instead of jetting off to some exotic location with his loot from the job, Emilio is spending his money in grungy motels and gas station snack bars. But tonight seems a little different, who knows what’s up ahead? Smart investors make a bid for TV rights, now!
Overall, Damaged Skull Reviewer gives Creepy Sheen 5 STARS and a place on “The Wall of Fame”! The overall concept is that we’ve been blasting messages out into space looking for intelligent life and now some of those messages are bouncing back, using the now defunct earth as a giant movie screen. It’s like some lost episodes of the Twilight Zone or unfinished work from your favorite late science fiction writer. Enjoy the show! Rebecca Gransden writes like she is multiple authors and stretches simple scenes into terrifying scarescapes. Get this one, you won’t regret it!
Also, before I return to my nice dark cave, let me mention that Cardboard Wall Empire has many titles on offer including more from Rebecca Gransden, Leo X. Robertson, and others. Tell them Skull sent you!
May 31, 2025
Such a vivid collection. Found each story to be more/less consistent quality-wise with my favorites being ‘Night Drive Drifter in A Bad Dream’ and probably ‘Arcady.’ A deep grasp of each character felt captured in a way resonated in most of the stories, coupled with a fairly strong prose-style.
Much love to Rebecca for sending me some of her work.
Much love to Rebecca for sending me some of her work.
July 1, 2021
I will admit that I was a bit unsure about this book when I started it. I didn’t feel like I was connecting with the stories and I was struggling to see where some of them were going. The main reason I picked it up was that I was expecting it to be a shorter read than some of the others I’d been reading since I’ve been feeling tired lately.
Unfortunately, I picked this book up and put it down a fair few times before it really grabbed me, but since I refuse to not finish something I’ve started, I did keep picking it back up and because of that I actually found that I did eventually connect and enjoy a couple of the stories inside. This has been the case for me with other books too and that is why I refuse to have a “DNF” or “Did Not Finish” pile. Especially with short story collections, it can take time to connect with a book, and in all probability half of the issues I have with connecting to short stories is most likely because I’m reviewing them. If I wasn’t going to write about it, I could probably just skip a story or two if I didn’t feel it, but because they’re going to be on the blog I sit and read every story.
My favourite story in this book is called “Hell Alley”, it’s an interesting concept which incorporates something we’ve all been living recently but without making it a covid story. I’ve been actively trying to avoid stories involving the pandemic because quite frankly I’m sick to the back teeth of it and of hearing about it so I lose interest when a story is about that. This on the other hand takes some of what we’ve been living and does something original with it. I enjoyed this story and the way that it played out, there isn’t a huge amount of imagery involved, but it is set entirely within an Alley so there’s not a massive amount that could have gone into it.
I do think this book will gel with more readers, and I’d be interested to talk to others who have read it to see what they got out of other stories that perhaps I didn’t enjoy as much as Hell Alley. I think there should be more discussion about books, it’s a shame that despite being connected to so many more people via Social Media, less conversation seems to happen. So if you have read this book, let’s connect and talk about it!
This book isn’t the longest read and some of the stories are shorter than others, if you regularly commute, this book will be good for you because you an easily digest a story or two while you’re on the bus. And they’re a good length for coffee breaks too.
I’m not sure I’d pick this one up again myself having read it, but I’d probably pick up something else by the same Author.
Unfortunately, I picked this book up and put it down a fair few times before it really grabbed me, but since I refuse to not finish something I’ve started, I did keep picking it back up and because of that I actually found that I did eventually connect and enjoy a couple of the stories inside. This has been the case for me with other books too and that is why I refuse to have a “DNF” or “Did Not Finish” pile. Especially with short story collections, it can take time to connect with a book, and in all probability half of the issues I have with connecting to short stories is most likely because I’m reviewing them. If I wasn’t going to write about it, I could probably just skip a story or two if I didn’t feel it, but because they’re going to be on the blog I sit and read every story.
My favourite story in this book is called “Hell Alley”, it’s an interesting concept which incorporates something we’ve all been living recently but without making it a covid story. I’ve been actively trying to avoid stories involving the pandemic because quite frankly I’m sick to the back teeth of it and of hearing about it so I lose interest when a story is about that. This on the other hand takes some of what we’ve been living and does something original with it. I enjoyed this story and the way that it played out, there isn’t a huge amount of imagery involved, but it is set entirely within an Alley so there’s not a massive amount that could have gone into it.
I do think this book will gel with more readers, and I’d be interested to talk to others who have read it to see what they got out of other stories that perhaps I didn’t enjoy as much as Hell Alley. I think there should be more discussion about books, it’s a shame that despite being connected to so many more people via Social Media, less conversation seems to happen. So if you have read this book, let’s connect and talk about it!
This book isn’t the longest read and some of the stories are shorter than others, if you regularly commute, this book will be good for you because you an easily digest a story or two while you’re on the bus. And they’re a good length for coffee breaks too.
I’m not sure I’d pick this one up again myself having read it, but I’d probably pick up something else by the same Author.
June 16, 2024
We need more people like Myra in this world. Beautiful, lush writing as always. Everytime I read a Gransden book my mind becomes so immersed in these strange, ethereal worlds that I feel like I’m stuck in a heavenly trance.
July 21, 2024
An entertaining and thought-provoking collection of scary stories to peruse in the half-light of sun-baked twilights. A moody, unhurried taste of dreamy apocalyptic nostalgia. With an appreciation for film and music, the author frames the scenes in enigmatic layers of imagery, where molting skyscrapers and abandoned stores abound, where dead rats leak opioid crystals into alleyways. Ballard gave us a sandblasted bleakness, but Gransden offers a neon-drenched small town quietude. It feels like the unfolding of a psyche frozen in an era, committed to an aesthetic, bleeding out over a desolate land of kitsch and bleached bones.
I think her themes speak to an isolation we all feel when we interact with dated art, how the past cannot belong to us but through our interpretation of it. That feeling when you're marathon driving through a surreal landscape at night, slipping in and out of sleep at the wheel, being chased by disembodied headlights. Or that experience of wandering around a mall, surrounded by muzak and dull reflections, when you see someone completely out of place, transported out of another time.
There is an underpinning of paranoia in the characters' actions, as if they cannot believe in the virtual-seeming reality around them, whether they're trapped in an arcade as the world evacuates its inhabitants, leaving a crusty residue of humanity, or they're sunk in daymares, staring at eerie infomercials playing on endless repeat.
the warmth of a fuzzy tv screen. A conspiracy in every moment. The author's beautifully rendered states of mind, provocatively told stories, and delicious aesthetic exploration captivated me.
I think her themes speak to an isolation we all feel when we interact with dated art, how the past cannot belong to us but through our interpretation of it. That feeling when you're marathon driving through a surreal landscape at night, slipping in and out of sleep at the wheel, being chased by disembodied headlights. Or that experience of wandering around a mall, surrounded by muzak and dull reflections, when you see someone completely out of place, transported out of another time.
There is an underpinning of paranoia in the characters' actions, as if they cannot believe in the virtual-seeming reality around them, whether they're trapped in an arcade as the world evacuates its inhabitants, leaving a crusty residue of humanity, or they're sunk in daymares, staring at eerie infomercials playing on endless repeat.
the warmth of a fuzzy tv screen. A conspiracy in every moment. The author's beautifully rendered states of mind, provocatively told stories, and delicious aesthetic exploration captivated me.
October 7, 2021
These short stories were a lot of fun to speed through. I loved the variety of settings, characters, and horrifying plots. I honestly don’t know what the blurb/synopsis has to do with anything, but all the stories do have a definite 80s feel. I think the author will improve with continued writing and editing, but this was a promising start.
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