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: scott nicolay (page 5 of 13)
Gerald Kersh’s “Men Without Bones” presents a virtual case study in the awkward position of midcentury Weird Fiction. A truly—literally—pulpy tale, its original publication in 1954 came not in Weird Tales but in Esquire. By that time the pulps themselves were moribund, while new markets were arising. Michael Kelly and I recently discussed on The Outer Dark how mainstream literary journals are currently publishing some of the best Weird Fiction, but here we find ourselves more than 60 years back with a classic of unfiltered cosmic horror in a magazine whose literary reputation was already established by authors including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Gide. Despite such an auspicious initial placement, regardless of at least two dozen reprints since, or the fact that it remains in print today, I will wager “Men Without Bones” remains unknown to much of The Weird’s contemporary readership. Continue reading
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/
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 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
Authors/editors Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward join Scott for a very special show focusing on diversity in Weird and speculative fiction. They start by recounting the story behind the origins of their Writing the Other workshop/book, its connections to Clarion West, the next set of upcoming online classes (March 13), its impact on spec-lit writers over its 25-year history, and their hopes for an updated book to reflect new language and examples. The conversation proceeds to positive directions with diverse characters, how writers need not to be afraid to write what they don’t know but they do need to research, the concept of “parallax” and W.E.B. DuBois, writing the other as a collaborative process, why treating equally or fairly doesn’t mean not seeing color, gender or other differences, rewarding examples of people who learned and gained courage from the Writing the Other program to increase 
their own representation of people of color as characters, teaching the “reptile brain,” the good example of Joe R Lansdale, and midwifing works by Sarah Smith and South African writer Nick Wood (Azanian Bridges. NewCon Press, Nov 2016). Cynthia and Nisi also talk about some of their own written and edited works. Cynthia discusses her edited anthology Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West, which features stories about non-white characters on the frontier, in the context of growing interest in the Weird Western in books, film and graphic novels, a second volume on the way, and several novels in progress, including Night Rising, the first in The Return of the Dark trilogy, an apocalyptic magic story set in Tucson which she calls a “cozy catastrophe.” Nisi reveals some of the back story about Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delaney, which she co-edited with Bill Campbell (Rosarium Publishing), which has received 
considerable praise, as well as contemplating her interaction with horror and exploring a different relation to death and the status quo in the African diaspora in her 2008 James Tiptree Jr. Award-winning collection Filter House, confronting steampunk’s embedded imperialism in her upcoming Belgian Congo set novel Everfair (Tor, Sept. 2016), encountering ghosts in her middle grade novel Speculation, and much more. The conversation concludes with their recommended writers including Bill Campbell, J. Comer (Planetary Stories), Ayize Jama-Everett ( whose works include The Liminal War and The Entropy of Bones), Australian feminist writer Sylvia Kelso (The Blackston Gold and The Amberlight series), Aqueduct Press’s L. Timmel Duchamp (The Red Rose Rages Bleeding, The Marq’ssan Cycle, and more), Nigerian writer Tade Thompson (Making Wolf and Rosewater, Sept. 2016), Matt Ruff (Lovecraft Country) and Amy Wolf (The Misses Bronte’s Establishment).
News From the Weird: Special Guest Richard Thomas gives The Outer Dark listeners an exclusive sneak peek at the exciting plans for his highly anticipated new neo-noir spec-lit fiction magazine Gamut, featuring a who’s who of writers, artists and staff, and its Kickstarter campaign.
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 guest: Will Ludwigsen, author of In Search Of and Others (Lethe Press).
Please vote for The Outer Dark in the People’s Choice Project iRadio Podcast Awards. https://www.projectiradio.com/podcast-awards/
Order The Outer Dark T-shirts at SkurvyInk: https://skurvyink.com/products/outerdark-shirt
More Links:
Bert and I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPGf77t9hRA
Stagecoach Mary: https://www.blackcowboys.com/maryfields.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold%27s_Ghost
Review of Lovecraft Country by Nisi Shawl: https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/matt-ruffs-lovecraft-country-horrors-in-1950s-america/
https://www.thedarkhousepress.com/
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
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