I was lucky enough to grow up only a few blocks from my hometown’s public library. By the time I was eight or nine and allowed to cross Middlebrook’s busy main street on my own, I became as frequent a visitor there as my father. My family was so familiar to the regular librarians that they never had to look up our number when we checked out books. By the Sixth Grade I had graduated to the adult sections, and I became a habitué of that one aisle just past the entrance on the right, where all the books on one side were marked with blue cloth tags depicting a pipe-smoking mustachioed sleuth, while those opposite bore white squares emblazoned with a red rocketship at the nucleus of a lithium atom. Continue reading
Scott Nicolay
Ana Kai Tangata
Tag: Charles Fort
Will Ludwigsen discusses his acclaimed collection In Search Of and Others (Lethe Press), which was a Shirley Jackson Awards finalist and named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best books released in 2013. The conversation delves deep into the stories and his writing process including utilizing Charles Fort as a character, childhood misconceptions about the Boy Scouts, why he likes his characters (yes, even Charles Fort!) to be “unprepared for the strange,” Han Solo in a supermarket, the ironic back-to-back juxtaposition of In Search Of and Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, growing up before the Internet and the things that made him a “weirdo,” the closest he has personally come to a Fortean experience at age 14, spiritualism and theosophy, nosiness and breaking into abandoned buildings, the assets of novellas, the challenge of “teaching faith in form” to creative writing college students, writing as fishing, attending Clarion in the same cohort as Livia Llewellyn, Robert Levy and Lethe Press publisher Steve Berman, how there is “a little bit of a hoaxer in every good horror writer,” and his bright future, with Scott, as a “decruiter.” Plus his finished young adult novel which he describes as “The West Wing Meets Back to the Future,” future novels and stories that defy expectations, his gratitude for the Weird and why it’s not accidental that he’s writing Weird fiction, a favorite Shirley Jackson story, and a reading of the title story “In Search Of.” His recommended authors include Peter Dubé, Jennifer McMahon, nonfiction memoir My Father the Pornographer by Chris Offutt and rediscovering John D. McDonald who may have been a bigger influence on Stephen King than any horror author.
News From the Weird: Justin Steele reviews Regicide by British Weird author Nicholas Royle (Solaris Books, 2011). Plus The Outer Dark’s win as Best Podcast in the 2015 This is Horror Awards, the complete roster of winners, more cover reveals and collection announcements from Word Horde and Undertow Publications, and Strange Aeons magazine news.
This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
Next week’s guests: Double the Weird with Mike Allen, author of Unseaming and the forthcoming collection The Spider Tapestries, AND Nicole Kornher-Stace, author of The Archivist Wasp.
Please vote for The Outer Dark in the People’s Choice Project iRadio Podcast Awards. Deadline: Feb. 26! https://www.projectiradio.com/podcast-awards/
Order The Outer Dark T-shirts at SkurvyInk: https://skurvyink.com/products/outerdark-shirt
More Links:
https://www.lethepressbooks.com/store/p111/In_Search_Of_and_Others.html
Can anyone advise me if Levitra 20mg really is that safe?
Weird Fiction Review Interview with Will: https://weirdfictionreview.com/2013/02/interview-will-ludwigsen-and-the-weird/
Charles Fort biography: https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Fort-The-Invented-Supernatural/dp/1585426407
The Whisperer in the Darkness (film): https://www.cthulhulives.org/whisperer/trailer.html
Venture Brothers Bigfoot episode clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcyCQT-FKCA
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/199/house-on-loon-lake
Shirley Jackson: https://www.pages.drexel.edu/~ina22/+301/hnrs301-text-Intoxicated.html
News From the Weird:
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2819/the-art-of-fiction-no-91-alain-robbe-grillet
Show credits:
Host/Executive Producer: Scott Nicolay
Co-Host, News From the Weird/Producer: Justin Steele
Associate Producer/Show Notes/Publicist: Anya Martin
Logo Design: Nick “The Hat” Gucker
Music: Michael Griffin
Daniel Mills, author of the 2014 critically acclaimed collection The Lord Came at Twilight, discusses how his writing engages with historical voices such as Hawthorne, Chambers and others, rediscovering obscure authors of the 19th and 20th centuries who delved into weird, ghosts and the supernatural, the tendency among contemporary weird writers to be archivists/archaeologists digging into old sources for forgotten gems, his wistful yearning for past eras such as Colonial America versus confronting the spiritual corruption of American history in his stories, presenting a mannered lyrical approach to storytelling in a fresh and contemporary application, the artistry of depicting grotesque material with beautiful prose, modern cinematic writing versus language itself as “a world where you can disappear,” narrative restraint and the horror that happens offstage, courtships that reflect the intersection of deeply repressed desires and warped worldviews, clerical characters and the contradictions of America’s Christian mythos, creative misremembering, balancing presentism and historicism, discovering a shared New England sensibility with Matthew Bartlett, NecronomiCon Providence and the excitement and critical mass of today’s Weird Renaissance, the resounding influence of John Bellairs, upcoming projects including short stories, a novella and a second novel inspired by the spiritualism and theosophy movements of the late 19th century, and his current recommended reading including Reggie Oliver and Orrin Grey.
This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
More Links:
“Brickett Bottom” by Amyas Northcote: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606161h.html#s2
Next Week’s Guest: Niels Hobbs, Director of NecronomiCon Providence.
This is Horror Awards 2015 Winner!
Best Podcast - The Outer Dark
Get Your Copy Today!
© 2024 Scott Nicolay
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑