Richard Gavin

Posted by scottsplatter on November 25, 2009

I recently finished Omens (published by Mythos Books ) by Richard Gavin, and wanted to sound the horn for him. The 12 stories here showcase a diverse and peculiar dread. Gavin has some great ideas and his command of language and tone made this a quite enjoyable.

His work has been compared to such shambling giants of the macabre as H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Ligotti and Omens deserves such comparisons. It’s not as nihilistic as Ligotti, or as cosmic as Lovecraft. Of the three, I’d place it closest to Poe. The pervasive creep factor that each of those writers possess is present in Richard Gavin. His imagination is impressive and unique, and he does a really nice job of overlaying that strange darkness into a modern setting.

I’m always looking for more writers that capture this side of horror. The current crop of writers that are making waves seem more straight forward. That is not to say they are unskilled or not to be enjoyed. I have just always favored more obscure tales of secrets, nightmares, and oddities and Gavin impressed me.

He has a brand new collection entitled The Darkly Splendid Realm (published by Dark Regions) that I’m anxious to get my hands on. The introduction was written by Laird Barron (who I swear I will do a post on one of these days). It was Barron’s involvement that brought Richard Gavin’s name to my attention and I’m grateful for it.

http://www.richardgavin.net/

Cross-posted from The Aberrant Laboratory

Gary Fry

Posted by scottsplatter on July 6, 2009

fry_cov_sm_impelled I first became aware of Gary Fry through this interview over at Horrorworld. Fry has a PhD in Psychology, and incorporates that knowledge and his own philosophical view of the world in to his writing in a powerful way. His is a horror of the mind and one that uses themes and undercurrents well to give the prose multiple layers on which it works.

The stories are so tightly written and his voice is unique. While I am not as well versed in horror as I could be, I haven’t read anything that feels quite like Fry’s work. The stories work your intellect as well as your imagination. I appreciate those underlying messages and bits of sociological commentary a lot. It’s something I try and include in my own work, and it’s something that is always there in my music.

The cover to the left is from his first collection, The Impelled and Other Head Trips, which is the one I am just finishing up. He has a couple newer releases, the most recent of which Mindful of Phantoms I am looking forward to checking out. In addition he runs Gray Friar Press with a number of good looking titles I expect to pick up as I can.

Cross-posted from The Aberrant Laboratory

Thomas Ligotti

Posted by scottsplatter on May 20, 2009

I was going to wait to post something on Thomas Ligotti until I had read more of his work, but what the hell. I’d heard his name for a few years and had always been sort of curious, but it wasn’t until recently that I decided to give it a chance. I picked up a copy of the short story collection Teatro Grottesco and devoured it. The other day I found a copy of the out of print The Shadow At The Bottom Of The World that I will probably dig into over the long weekend.

Ligotti most often gets compared to Poe and Lovecraft, but from the shadow stories I have read thus far it is a tonal comparison more than a stylistic one. Within his body of work he has visited the Lovecraft Mythos a bit from what I understand, but it is by no means is a focal point. His prose is tight and descriptive with out being overwhelming and superfluous. Ligotti’s stories evoke a vivid environment of apocalyptic dread, anxiety and madness that is truly potent.

His work is one of the very few that I have read that produced a “where have you been all my life” epiphany. The stories in Teatro, particularly “The Red Tower” and “In A Foreign Town, In A Foreign Land,” capture so much of what I have tried to do in Gruntsplatter that seeing it on the page was striking. It was encouraging as well to see that those kind of stories have an audience.

Ligotti has also contributed to Current 93, on the albums “In A Foreign Town, In A Foreign Land”, “I Have a Special Plan For This World” and “This Degenerate Little Town.” I haven’t heard any of those releases. I’m not the biggest of Current 93 fans (David Tibet’s voice is annoying, sue me) but I am interested in seeing how his words play against their style of music.

I’m sure this won’t be the last time you see Ligotti’s name mentioned here, particularly since I have an unopened book of his work waiting for me. Here is an interview from 2004 with Ligotti that is definitely worth reading. If you like dark fiction, short stories or any of the music I have done, I can’t recommend him enough. A lot of the stuff is out of print now sadly, but Virgin Books issued Teatro Grottesco and a collection of three novellas called My Work Is Not Yet Done that which I still need to get, and those shouldn’t be too hard to find. Fox Atomic comics has also issued two graphic novels called The Nightmare Factory based on Ligotti’s stories.

Cross-posted from The Aberrant Laboratory