The previous installment of Stories From the Borderland examined “The Cactus,” a tale by Mildred Johnson, an enigmatic female author who published only two known stories, both in Weird Tales. This week the author of our featured selection is another mysterious byline from Weird Tales. Allison V. Harding was not only the magazine’s most prolific contributing female author: she was its tenth most prolific contributor altogether, well ahead of many of the magazine’s better known male authors such as Ray Bradbury or Frank Belknap Long. And though we know much more about Harding than Mildred Johnson, she remains in many ways even more enigmatic. She may in fact be The Unique Magazine’s most enigmatic author of all, and its most enduring mystery. Continue reading
Scott Nicolay
Ana Kai Tangata
Tag: Silvia Moreno-Garcia (page 1 of 3)
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
Author/editor Simon Strantzas returns to discuss the reissue of his Shirley Jackson Award-nominated 2015 collection Burnt Black Suns in a leather-bound special edition by Dark Regions Press, generational shifts and rising momentum/progression in the Weird Renaissance, readers who evolve into editors and publishers such as Justin Steele and Sam Cowan (Dim Shores), theme/atmosphere and composing his earlier collections Beneath the Surface, Cold to the Touch and Nightingale Songs, scientific fieldwork as a story topic, the landmark editing of Joe Pulver and phenomenal weird/fabulist writing of Helen Marshall, the art of public reading, the True Detective bump, the dynamic between the Aickmanesque Strange and the Weird, the journal Thinking Horror which he co-edits with sj bagley, taxonomy as applied to insects and literature, reading back to understand 
the tapestry of the genre and how to bend/twist/add to it in a different way, writing as a puzzle, the revolutionary force of T.E.D. Klein, creating/curating the unofficial Website of Terry Lamsley, the British quiet and ghost story renaissance in late 90s/early 2000s horror, other brilliant authors who have not published much lately such as Don Tumasonis and Matt Cardin, the intersection between Weird and Horror, evolving trends and fusion in Horror, collaborating with Michael Kelly on editing Year’s Best Weird Fiction 3, the importance of and challenges to featuring lesser known and diverse writers in collections, Aickman and Ligotti as two writers who (like Lovecraft) opened new territories, Stephen King and Peter Straub, his reading recommendations including Nadia Bulkin and Lynda E. Rucker, an Italian edition of Burnt Black Suns in Edizioni Hypnos’ Modern Weird series, and the globalization of the Weird.
News from the Weird: Arkham Digest columnist/Strange Aeons fiction editor Justin Steele and special guest Sam Cowan, editor/publisher of Dim Shores Press, join Scott for the latest news including more about the exciting line-up for Year’s Best Weird Fiction 3, what’s next with Dim Shores, Lovecraft eZine Press, Egaeus Press, Lost Signals, Gamut Magazine and a listener contest to win a free Garrett Cook book! Plus Justin reviews Split Tongues by Kristi DeMeester, Dim Shores’ fifth and latest chapbook.
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: Authors/editors Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward of the Writing the Other workshop and book.
Please vote for The Outer Dark in the People’s Choice Project iRadio Podcast Awards. https://www.projectiradio.com/podcast-awards/
Also there wasn’t anything like this in the Levitra precautions found online, but still that’s my health, and I don’t want to end up with heart attack or anything similar.
More Links:
https://necronomicon-providence.com/enter/
Robert Dunnell, Systematics in Prehistory: https://www.amazon.com/Systematics-Prehistory-Robert-C-Dunnell/dp/1930665288
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
Rios de la Luz explores the “inner workings that were happening in her brain” while writing her first collection The Pulse Between Dimensions and the Desert, and Scott’s suggestion that her stories resemble the Martian gemstones depicted within–each unique, energetic, fresh, multifaceted, and yet interconnected. Notions of magic realism, time travel, science fiction, Junot Diaz, Ray Bradbury, Lucius Shepard, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and her love of outer space and comic books, especially Los Bros Hernandez’s Love and Rockets, emerge, as well as working with her publisher Ladybox Books, a rising imprint of Broken River Books and being part of the dynamic small press community in Portland, Oregon. The discussion also explores diversity as a rising force in both authors and audience for spec-lit, including Rios’ identity as a “Latina-Chicana-Bruja” writer but “mostly just a strange brown girl,” as well as using Spanish to reset rhythm in her narratives, growing up in El Paso, discovering her favorite writer Sandra Cisneros and her passion for creating young characters like herself, including her excitement in seeing female, African and Guatemalan leads in Star Wars and a black Hispanic super-hero in Spider-Man Miles Morales. Another ever-present element in her writing is the guardian abuela, reflecting the importance of her grandmother and great grandmother to whom she says she “owes so much.” Also queer characters, the awkwardness of puberty (“Church Bush”), disappeared women, dead children (“La Reina”), her complicated feelings about borders and a short reading of her hauntingly beautiful story “Marigolds.Hey bros out there. For your own sake, don’t ever take two big Levitra Generic.” Finally, Rios talks about what’s next for her including flash fiction, zines, two horror stories, a bizarro tale and a novel, as well as recommending poet Yesika Salgado, aka Yesika Starr, fellow Ladybox Books author Meliza Bañales, aka Missy Fuego, and Vanessa Mártir.
News from the Weird: Ladybox Books Head Editor/Curator Constance Ann Fitzgerald joins Scott to talk more about this innovative women-run press/collective, how it got started, its exciting slate of “fiercely talented” authors, the rebirth of the zine and the current dynamic and label-defying small press scene.
Next week’s guest: Garrett Cook, author of You Might Just Make It Out of This Alive (Eraserhead Press)
More links:
Yesika’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/yesikastarr
One of Meliza’s short stories: https://ladyboxbooks.com/2015/02/08/story-of-the-week-face-lift/#more-131
https://www.facebook.com/States-of-Terror-289014071299287/?fref=ts
News From the Weird:
https://ladyboxbooks.com/2014/09/27/ladybox-on-sale-october-15th/
The Punk Singer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwrXC5OXqgc
Orrin Grey, author of Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, shares the secret origins of his latest collection including how artist Nick Gucker deftly worked details from all the stories into a monstrously macabre cover, the dialogue with horror cinema from Universal to Hammer to giallo that runs through his wonderfully plotted works, what he describes as a “Clive Barker influence,” exploring “philosophy” through narrative, using tropes as shorthand but in surprising, unconventional ways, ghost stories not about ghosts as we expect them to be, similarities to Robert Aickman, acknowledging and celebrating dramatic influences from William Shakespeare to William Castle, the extraordinary significance of Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets starring Boris Karloff and how that film juxtaposed an older Gothic, creepy school of horror with the modern paranoia-laced violent horror of the Sixties, scholarly approaches versus jazz riffing on many different traditions of horror film and literature especially in the title story, his love of wax museums, the dialogue between the stories in both of his anthologies, John Langan who wrote the introduction, his obsession with obsession, The Prestige, twin novella finales about selling your soul to the Devil, what he learned about pacing from Mike Mignola and giving the Golem the Universal treatment via Hellboy pulp expressionist styling, affinities with Belgian Weird author Jean Ray and buried Malpertuis in “Painted Monsters,” Old Dark House movies, death as a recurring theme in every single story, what’s next for Orrin Grey including stories, novellas, and a nonfiction book about horror films, talking movies with Gemma Files, musing about seeing his own work someday on film, and his recent reading recommendations including previous The Outer Dark guest Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Amanda Downum.
Justin Steele reviews Orrin Grey’s Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, and joins Scott for this week’s installment of News from the Weird including coverage of World Fantasy Convention 2015 and the World Fantasy Awards, as well as exciting upcoming collections, novels and other works by some of the biggest names in Weird.
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:
https://www.patreon.com/orringrey?ty=h
https://www.strange-aeons.com/
Next week’s guest: Mike Davis, editor/publisher of Lovecraft eZine. and the upcoming anthology, Autumn Cthulhu.
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