Updates, Honorable Mentions, and the Warping of Young Minds

This summer marked the first time I taught (twice, even!) creative writing for young writers. I was delighted to serve as guest author for the good folks at Richmond Young Writers, and had the pleasure of working with Julie Geen, whom I’ve known for a couple years now, at VCU and from around town, James River Writers, etc. The kids were great, it all seemed to work out well, and I’d love to do it again one day.

This autumn I’m going to be presenting some of my Lovecraft scholarship in an academic venue. More details on that down the road, but I’m darn excited. My other scholarship on literary horror, HPL, and weird fiction continues apace.

In a not unrelated vein, I’m excited for the publication of “His Knife, Her Shadow,” in the second issue of Thinking Horror this autumn. My piece is a confessional memoir of sorts, all about how I came to horror as a child in the early 1980s. Writing it proved unexpectedly harrowing, and I hope it’s of interest to the readers of Thinking Horror.

Finally, in further exciting news, I was delighted and honored that Ellen Datlow noted two of my short stories for her long list of Honorable Mentions for Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 8:

“Hunger Full and Lean,” The Lovecraft eZine 34 [free online]
“Mercy’s Armistice,” Big Bad II [$2.99 on Kindle]

Summer of Horrors

This year I’ve put up “out for the summer” signs on Twitter, Facebook, etc. I have a bunch of projects under way that have external or internal deadlines over the next few months, and the distraction would have been too much. I have plans to return in the fall, but it is shocking how much calmer and pleasant I am finding life without social media waggling interesting, heartbreaking, or infuriating things in my face. My third autobiography will be entitled A Life Without Clickbait.

Aside from checking on the haps at places like LitHub or AL Daily , I’ve been listening to podcasts when I’m not writing or reading. This includes most recently United Nations of Horror‘s Hellraiser Special, and This Is Horror‘s two-part interview with V.H. Leslie. The Leslie interview was thought-provoking, with some interesting overlap for me with a Fountain Bookstore event last month featuring two publishing professionals, one of whom is the Editor in Chief of Europa Editions, which publishes famed spotlight-shunner Elena Ferrante. Time away from the hurly-burly, it seems, has merits. I picked up Leslie’s Skein and Bone a while back, and I hope to read it this summer.

I’m also excited to be guest author this summer at two Richmond Young Writers camps led by Julie Geen. One is the already-full Dark Worlds camp for ages 12-14. The other is Halloween in August, for ages 15-17. Details on that, if you or a 15-17-year-old you know might be interested…

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7B: HALLOWEEN IN AUGUST
AUGUST 1 – 5
With JULIE GEEN
Guest Author: John Glover
$150                                                                                                                                        REGISTER! 

Is every day Halloween for you? This is for those of us who love the darker genres, like horror, dystopia and science fiction.  We’ll fill our notebooks without worst nightmares, alien abductions, perhaps an apocalypse or two. Expect discussions on macabre topics and an exploration of why we enjoy the dark side. We will make each other uneasy and have a great time doing it.