Yesterday was Day 1 of #HalloweenHangover at the Libbie Place Barnes & Noble in Richmond. It’s a new event, featuring authors from far and wide, including many from the Commonwealth. I didn’t know what to expect, as I’ve never been to anything quite like this at a bookstore before, but it was essentially a horror book festival. I talked to a few people for the first time, hung out with old friends, and bought a few books…
The event’s a two-day affair, so swing by and check it out if you’re in the area. And while you’re there, check out the horror section! It’s been a minute since I visited this location, and they’ve got a very nicely curated set of books. Here’s an endcap featuring Richmond’s own Valancourt Books:
Here in the ol’ unhallowed laboratory concealed in the basement of the collapsing castle, it’s always spooky season, so it’s typically a slight shock to look up from my labors and notice the rest of the world taking notice. I do, however, love all things Halloween, so here on the cusp of October Country, I’m getting ready for slightly more horroring than usual…
Make with the candy dish!
This week marked the return of Fountain Bookstore‘s JABBIES (“Judge a Book by Its Spine”) series, visits to Richmond by publishing professionals to talk about their work, authors, and forthcoming books. I’ve been to a few before and really enjoyed them, but this one was truly up my alley:
The Big 5 Names in Horror
I got a lot out of the event, learning bits and bobs about the industry that I truly hadn’t heard elsewhere. The discussion of comp titles at various stages was welcome, and I particularly appreciated hearing Kelly Lonesome talk about her vision for Nightfire. I’ve seen similar-ish panels before, particularly given the ongoing work I do with the Cabell First Novelist Award wearing my humanities librarian hat, but something about the combination of editors, sales force, and bookseller really gelled for me. And, of course, I bought a couple books…
Unhallowed Reading
I read Nothing but Blackened Teeth a couple months ago, and it’s really stuck with me for its combination of motifs from different horror traditions. Plus it has by far the best ekphrasis I’ve read anywhere in a long time. I got halfway through Devil House in audio this summer and had to return it to the library, and I thought it was really good, so here we are.
As for my own literary efforts, they proceed apace. I didn’t reckon just how much it would strain my patience to shift gears to novels. Right now I’m forging through yet another draft of what I sometimes jokingly call UNTITLED FUTURE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND PULITZER PRIZE WINNER. Which would be a Hell of a trick for a short (~70K?) novel that rides the line between literary fantasy and horror, but stranger things have happened.
What’s next? If all goes as planned, querying on UNTITLED FUTURE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND PULITZER PRIZE WINNER by year’s end, and switching (back) to UNTITLED NOVEL OF ARCANE AND ELDRITCH HORROR (~150K? ~300K?). I traveled to do some on-site research for it last week, and I plan to take another research trip this spring, as I’ll have a better shot at getting inside some buildings and soaking up the vibe.
For any RVA-ns, or Richmond-adjacent folks, this Sunday (February 18th) I’ll be participating in a group reading with a bunch of local authors. It’s going to be noir and broken hearts, and it starts at 7:00 p.m. at McCormack’s Irish Pub.
For those who didn’t catch my essay on horror in flash fiction, originally published in Thinking Horror 1, it’s now available in LampLight. Volume 6.1 is currently available in e-book and will soon be available in print. The issue includes the usual array of goodness, and it features Damien Angelica Walters.
Next week I’ll have the pleasure and honor of giving a brown bag talk at the English Faculty Forum at my university (VCU). It will be Wednesday, November 8, 2017. “Aesthetic Experiments: H. P. Lovecraft and ‘Pickman’s Model’ in 1927.” Noon-1:00, in 308 Hibbs Hall. Free and open to the community at large. I’ll be speaking with my “librarian hat” on, although as time goes by, the different hats seem to be increasingly difficult of distinction. This talk is part of a project that I’ve been poking at from multiple angles in recent years, and which is starting to resemble an academic monograph. TBD.
For those finding this site before the talk at VCU and wanting to know more about what I do, the “About” and “Publications” pages linked above should be of some help. The “Weird Fiction Publishers” page is a list of publishers I update occasionally and maintain for my own use and that of the community of weird fiction readers, writers, publishers, etc. If you want an idea of what people look for here, these are some of the most popular posts:
My “En Plein Air,” a short story that first appeared in Nightscript 2, will appear in Best New Horror #28. I’m gratified that Stephen Jones liked the story enough to include it in his anthology, and I look forward to it finding new readers. My thanks to C.M. Muller for first publishing it in his fine and darksome anthology, and to the readers who’ve been pleased to encounter it, both in print and when I read it last year at ICFA.
This is probably my favorite story I’ve written about Richmond, with scenes set on Cherokee Road, at the VMFA, etc. While I won’t say too much more about that, I will say that this forthcoming appearance is a validation, not least that the approach I took to the story was fruitful, from the background work to the way I went about the writing. It has resulted in the first instance of any work of mine making it to an annual anthologies, let alone one of such long standing as the Best New Horror series. I couldn’t be happier.
J. T. Glover 