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TOD A17 CM Muller: A Lineage of Shadows in the Nightscript

In this archival podcast Scott Nicolay interviews CM Muller, editor & publisher of the acclaimed new annual horror fiction journal Nightscript: An Anthology of Strange and Darksome Tales. It was recorded on October 27, 2015 and originally aired on October 28, 2015. This broadcast also includes bonus new content featuring a follow-up interview with CM Muller about the second issue of Nightscript released in September 2016.
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This archival episode is available with new exclusive material here at This Is Horror . Subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.

Stories from the Borderland #10: “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell and “The Crawling Horror” by Thorp McClusky

May 4, 2016 / Scott Nicolay / 0 Comments

“We must make friends with the many-tentacled alien idea.”
—John H. Lienhard, “Medicine and Maggots”

Hardly a week goes by without at least one reference to John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing appearing in my Facebook feed. No other film has wound its way so deeply into the collective psyche of the quirky amorphous Weird Fiction community that comprises the largest single segment of my social network. Although Carpenter’s film is essentially a science fiction film in its elements and a work of horror in its structure, a powerful consensus clearly exists that it constitutes the finest and purest exemplar of The Weird in cinema. Interestingly its closest rivals to this title, Alien (1979) and Phase IV (1974), are also science fiction/horror hybrids. This aspect of The Weird’s manifestation on the screen deserves further exploration…but not right now, not while we have other dark fissures to explore. Continue reading

Stories from the Borderland #9: “Feesters in the Lake” by Bob Leman

April 23, 2016 / Scott Nicolay / 0 Comments

Several years ago John Pelan and I were shooting pool at Sammy C’s in Gallup, New Mexico. As usual, he was running the table, and also as usual we were shooting the shit about Weird Fiction. I put forth the proposition that H.P. Lovecraft’s oeuvre really only offered at most half a dozen or so genuinely great stories, and after that the drop-off comes on steep as the continental shelf—for the record, my picks are “The Colour Out of Space,” “The Dunwich Horror,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” “The Outsider,” and maybe “The Music of Erich Zann.” I’m open to a discussion of “Pickman’s Model,” “The Festival,” and maybe a few others, but that’s pretty much it. Continue reading

Michael Kelly and Kathe Koja: Carving the Metaphorical Chicken | The Outer Dark: Episode 34 — MARCH 15, 2016

March 15, 2016 / Scott Nicolay / 0 Comments

Michael Kelly and Kathe Koja talk about editing Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2,, the overarching vision behind the Year’s Best Weird Fiction series and much more. The conversation begins with their gratification at the thoughtful reviews of the second volume, Kathe’s excitement when first asked to edit, how they collaborated on the editorial process, the decision to include not just contemporary authors but the first English translations of deceased Weird masters such as Argentinian master Julio Cortázar and Belgian fabulist Jean Muno, Kathe’s comparison of the story selection process to composing a symphony, similarities and differences working with four different guest editors (Laird Barron, Kathe, Simon Strantzas [Vol. 3] and Helen Marshall who will be editing Vol. 4), casting a wide net as an organic way to achieve gender balance and diversity, embracing an expansive view of the Weird, YBW facilitating the discovery of new authors, the fine art of judging bests/awards and looking out for the one who brings the “metaphorical chicken,” the Weird as the “closest mode of fiction to the way the brain works,” the Weird as absorbing the vital parts of New Weird/New Fabulist/slipstream/interstitial/horror, sushi-shaming, the stunning covers by artists Santiago Caruso (1), Tomasz Alen Kopera (2), Beatriz Martin Vidal (3), working with book designer Vince Haig, sourcing from single-author collections to spec-lit and mainstream lit publications not associated with the Weird, occasional frustrations in rights negotiations, the fine art of translation and international authors that can be classified as Weird, a quick anecdote about Eraserhead, their biggest takeaways of working together on Vol. 2, origins of the series, looking ahead to Vol. 3 and even Vol. 4, Kathe’s immersive performative fiction project nerve based in Detroit from her own Under the Poppy to Dracula, unreliable narrators and Wuthering Heights, a brief Doctor Faustus/Christopher Marlowe interlude, and a few of their recommended authors including Priya Sharma and Charles Wilkinson (Michael), as well as Paul Witcover and Maryse Meijer.

Send submissions (stories published for the first time in 2016) for Year’s Best Weird Fiction Vol. 4 to bestweirdfiction@gmail.com.

News From the Weird: Arkham Digest columnist/Strange Aeons fiction editor Justin “Steely J” Steele returns to review Meet Me in the Middle, the new collection by Eric Schaller, also from Undertow Publications. Also, news from Dim Shores, Shock Totem, a much anticipated new audio book, and Ellen Datlow!

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.

Order The Outer Dark T-shirts at SkurvyInk: https://skurvyink.com/products/outerdark-shirt

More Links:

https://weirdfictionreview.com/2014/11/the-expanding-borders-of-area-x/

Mu Xin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vipI6dGiVE and https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/art/reviews/n_9106/

https://fairytalereview.com/

https://granta.com/

https://www.phantomdrift.org/

https://mastersreview.com/

https://interfictions.com/

Eraserhead chicken scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyB4Vx-TavQ

News From the Weird:

Undertow subscription deal: https://www.undertowbooks.com/2016-subscription/

https://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/05/interview-eric-schaller-and-weird-art/

Livia Llewellyn’s Furnace: https://wordhorde.com/books/furnace/

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

Will Ludwigsen: Decruiting the Normal | The Outer Dark: Episode 32 — FEBRUARY 25, 2016

February 26, 2016 / Scott Nicolay / 0 Comments

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

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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