NightWriter

I was very sorry to hear over the weekend from Bob Booth the news that Alan Ryan died in Brazil on Friday, June 3, of pancreatic cancer. I never met Alan, but I read and admired his novels Dead White and Cast A Cold Eye when they were published. He got in touch with me via email last year and for a short period of time we talked a lot via the net. He was just getting back into writing some new horror fiction, after a long stretch when he concentrated on travel writing. Our loss. If you don’t know his work, find it.

The Cemetery Dance hardcover edition of Wicked Things will be officially published and available on Tuesday, May 17th. The volume also includes my novella, “Scramburg, USA”.

http://www.cemeterydance.com/page/CDP/PROD/tessier02<

I recently delivered a new short story, “In the Sand Hills,” which will appear in GUTSHOT, an anthology edited by the English novelist Conrad Williams, forthcoming later this year from PS Publishing. I love the idea of this collection — new tales of the “weird West.” Other contributors include Alan Ryan, Mark Morris, Peter Crowther and Rio Youers, Christopher Fowler, and Sarah Langan.

Happy Christmas, and may 2011 be a wonderful year for us all. I’m very excited about a number of projects I’ve been working on for some time now, which will see the light of day soon!

Comments invited: THE NEW NORMAL: Tales. Or, TALES OF THE NEW NORMAL. Or any other variation making use of “The New Normal.” I’m considering this as a possible title for my new collection of short stories, but I’m still not sure. Yea, Nay, Feh, or Find Something Else — all comments appreciated.

And thanks to Will Errickson for including one of my novels in his ten best reads of the year, putting me in with some very good company.

http://toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.com/

THE SADDEST HALLOWEEN

Thomas Tessier

There were few jack-o-lanterns or decorations set out this time in the neighborhood. You could see anxiety in the faces of the parents, who came in small groups and wouldn’t let their kids go into any house — you had to hand out their treats to them at the doorstep. As if neighbors they’d known for years now might be — someone, something else. As if, even with the parents standing around right outside, some atrocity might be perpetrated in an instant on the other side of the door.

And there weren’t many, though it was a perfect autumn evening, Indian Summer mild and balmy. The last few years, they would show up every few minutes or so from 6 until around 8 pm. But this time, it was over in little more than half an hour. The streets empty. Front door lights turned off down the street, one after another. It was the saddest Halloween he’d ever seen. 50 days had now passed, but everybody was still stunned, anxious and very fearful.

He left his porch light on until 8, as usual, and a stray girl showed up a few minutes before that. Looking 12-going-on-teenager, unsure if Halloween wasn’t a waste, that she was now too old for it, but giving it one last turn. Not from the neighborhood, but he’d seen her a few times downtown, kicking around aimlessly. Probably from one of the triple-deckers clustered around the old thread factory. No friends with her, no one waiting outside. Kind of dumpy, but now dolled up like a Madonna rock star slut imitation. Sad, sad, another soul who wasn’t born to be anything much at all, just to exist. For a while.

He stepped to the side in the foyer, holding the storm door open.

“Hi. Wow, great outfit. Come on in.”

She did. Ah, compliant, too.

copyright (c) 2010 by Thomas Tessier

I’m writing a novelette-length story for a limited edition from Sideshow Press, and we are aiming for publication in late Spring 2011. More details to come.

My story “The Green Menace” will appear in the anthology Classics Mutilated, edited by Jeff Conner, forthcoming from IDW in October. The collection includes a new novella by Joe Lansdale, as well as new stories by Tom Piccirilli, Rick Hautala and Nancy Collins, among others. The idea for the anthology was to mash up real people or characters from history/culture with a monstrous horror situation. For “The Green Menace” I chose to write about Senator Joseph McCarthy at the nadir of his sorry career. I’m not sure how many people even know who he was now, but McCarthyism is unfortunately alive and well today. I mashed Joe up with a pretty tacky horror movie idea from the early 1970s, and it was fun to write. Click on the cover for a better view.

Bob Booth is launching Necon E-Books next month with Rick Hautala’s WINTER WAKE and Les Daniels’ THE BLACK CASTLE, followed in September by my novel PHANTOM and Alan Ryan’s THE KILL, as part of the new Necon Classic Horror series. I’m excited to be a part of this, and other novels of mine will be forthcoming from Necon E-Books in future months.

http://www.neconebooks.com/

June 27, his birthday, happily noted. He is one of my favorite authors, a master who took the golden age of the British ghost story into completely new territory, transforming what was previously “understood” in words like ghostly, weird and strange. He wrote about 50 stories, and for some of us they’re a kind of gold standard. If you haven’t yet read his work, treat yourself and try a few.

And if you have already read Aickman and are an admirer of his work, please check out Philip Challinor’s various writings on Aickman. Philip understands Aickman’s fiction better than anyone I know. His most recent work, Akin to Poetry: Observations on Some Strange Tales of Robert Aickman, has just been published by Gothic Press. Go for it.