My Best Reads of 2014: Fiction

Motherless Child

Glen Hirshberg

Tor Books Reprint Edition, May 2014

Originally published by Earthling Publications, Halloween, 2012

Glen Hirshberg let me down for the first time. He told me, a few years back, that he couldn’t help himself—he was writing a vampire novel that he feared was mediocre. Well, ol’ Artie lied to me. Or his fears were unfounded. Either way, mediocre, Motherless Child is not. In the novel, Natalie and Sophie, two young mothers, discover their new found vampirism, abandon their lives, and journey across the Deep South. The inherent and pervasive nihilistic sense of dread throughout the story recalls Anne Rice’s early vampire novels, with dashes of  influence from the film Near Dark (as Sean Moreland said) and a molten emotional core.

Watch How We Walk

Jennifer LoveGrove

ECW Press, October 2013

Toronto’s LoveGrove plays with time, switching from the protagonist’s upbringing in a dysfunctional Jehovah’s Witness family to her present day quest for her lost sister. The young Emilly's family unit consists of her rebellious older sister, Lenora, her alcoholic mother, and a father who also has a monkey on his back—an ambition to rise in the ranks of the Watchtower Society. Watch How We Walk hits hard, and often with agonizing accuracy, showing how the Jehovah's Witness religion breaks up friendships, families and communities. It even includes a gay uncle, allowing LoveGrove to show how an entire Kingdom Hall can turn against a queer congregation member and cast them out.

What Happened Later: A Novel

Ray Robertson

Thomas Allen Publishers, August 2007

Also a Toronto author, Robertson also plays with time and italicized dialogue. He switches from the hero’s youth —Ray's youth—and infatuation with Jim Morrison and quest for Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road, to Jack in his post-On-the-Road days of desultory deepening alcoholism. Who cares if the young hero doesn’t just order a copy of the legendary book (Robertson alludes to this lack of wisdom) and that the youthful, heady passages lack much in plot? So did On the Road. The passages involving Jack are cadent, rhythmic flights of language that are pitch-perfect and well-researched. I oughtta’ know.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Michael Chabon

Paperback Edition, Harper Perennial, July 2005

Hardcover published by William Morrow and Company, New York, 1988

I have read Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Telegraph Avenue, the former of which I consider a dazzling gem. However, both novels demonstrate his talent and genius. For me, Mysteries reaffirms Chabon’s genius. He takes the simple post-college journey of protagonist Art Bechstein, dating a woman but longing for Arthur, an attractive and wealthy fellow his age, transforming it into an epic journey of emotional and sexual growth. Erudite, funny, and with a weaker ending (sometimes the reader doesn’t like the end of the road...), Mysteries is breathtaking. I was simultaneously awed. . .and envious.

Wild Fell

Michael Rowe

ChiZine Publications, December 2013

Rowe, a Toronto scribe as well, goes gothic in his second book. Jameson Browning leaves his father, suffering from Alzheimer's, in a seniors' home, and purchases an estate to start life anew. The gothic horror abounds in the abandoned northern Ontario estate on Blackmore Island, but also continues in Ottawa, Canada. Jameson narrates this daring second-person tale that kicks you in the soul on the last page. This is a ghost story, but some of the ghosts lurk in Jameson's past, one troubled by child abuse and by the ambiguity of a narrator who may not be reliable. Rowe also dapples with playing with the past and present. What is it with these fine Canadian authors and toying with time?  This is a fine and leaner follow up to Mr. Rowe’s first horror novel, Enter, Night.

Best Reads of 2014: Comic Books - Joe Hill's Locke & Key

To kick off my favourite reads of 2014, I am starting with comic books, the Locke & Key series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, now collected in six beautiful trade paperbacks.

The short version

The fabulous Kinsey, older brother Locke, and their younger brother, Bode.

It's a great, immersing series. Three siblings, Locke, Kinsey and their baby brother, Bode, along with their grieving and self-medicating mother, move back to Keyhouse in Lovecraft, New England. The kids  soon discover that the residence contains magical keys that can open to doors to other places, or erase memories or do other fantastical things. They must defend themselves and the keys against a demon bent on acquiring them and letting loose more badness into the world. Their daily life is imperilled in horrible and fantastical ways.

Niggly details

Admittedly, Hill doesn’t know much about hockey—a subplot features an entire hockey team sporting Jason-Voorhees-style goalie masks. The story is also a little reminiscent of weekly TV episodes in places, with intense inter-familial going-ons.  Other critics have complained that the series starts slow, but it's all set-up for  later pay-off. Patience, kiddies.

What I like

That said, Rodriguez’s highly stylized art is gorgeous, their use use of panels is innovative (splash page, background, side bar—you name it), and Hill merrily chugs the plot along with well-defined, imperfect characters. There are also plentiful nods to 1980's pop culture and horror icons, predominantly H. P. Lovecraft mythos.

Hill presents an intergenerational struggle against evil, with plentiful flashbacks (His dad loves doing that, too, coincidentally, but Hill is damn good at it, too.). Hill has a fondness for bonding characters when they are kids, as King does in IT. And Hill also throws in a life-altering event in their youth; however, have no worries, there is no orgiastic plot point as there was in King’s IT. This flashback-and-old-evil-and-intergenerational storytelling is layered, a la Sandman (by Neil Gaiman) and thoroughly immersing.

I’ve read Hill’s story, “My Father’s Mask”, also about a disturbed family and young hero, and I must say that I like what he does. However, by entering the comic book medium, he is doing the King storytelling tradition one better. While Stephen King has adapted many works for comic books, Hill created this baby.

And this baby deserves a second read—a rarity for someone with my tight schedule.

Sean Moreland publishes in Black Treacle Magazine

I got some great news from a colleague recently, but could not reveal it until now. The inestimable Sean Moreland has published a horror story "Moth Belly Blues", in Black Treacle Magazine's eighth volume, along with weird, wonderful work by David Annandale and J.M. Reynolds. You can download it, free, here, at the Black Treacle website. Mr. Moreland is Editor-in-Chief for Postscript to Darkness, an antho of weird horror fiction, but also a fellow member of my writers' group, The Little Workshop of Horrors. Congratulations, Mr. Moreland!

Town & Train available in Canada

Looking for a scary read, with interesting characters, and a great story?  My first horror novel, “Town & Train”, is now available to order in hard copy and kindle from amazon.ca!
http://amzn.to/1FJ6IhQ

My novel, Town & Train, is out!

As of now, I am officially a bona fide first-time novelist. My horror novel, Town & Train, is available on Amazon.com in all formats and Amazon.ca in kindle format. I owe a huge thanks to my publisher Steve Berman of Lethe Press, Matt Cresswell for his stunning design work, and Alex Jeffers for his razor-sharp, draconian copy-editing skills.

 

Here's what they're saying about Town & Train:

 

“A ticket to ride an antique train, mysterious dream visions and vanishing towns—these are the things that will set your heart racing in James K Moran's very welcome addition to small-town horror stories. Wondrously weird and eerily compelling, it is a knockout.”

—Jeffrey Round, author of the Lambda Award-winning Lake on the Mountain, the Dan Sharpe mystery series, and The Honey Locust

 

“Moran does an excellent job of conveying the desperation that drives people to seek salvation in the supernatural...”

—Publishers Weekly

 

“In his debut novel, a malevolent train controlled by a polite shape-shifting entity, threatens to seduce and destroy the small town of Brandon, Ontario. James K. Moran does a good job of establishing the town and its many characters...”

—Rue Morgue: Horror in Culture & Entertainment

 

Cover image copyright, Lethe Press, 2014.

Cover design by Matt Cresswell.

 

A train is coming.

This week, a train is coming. My first horror novel, Town & Train, is coming out from Lethe Press. There is so much in there from the 17-year-old who started the story, and much from the writer I am now. In between now and then, the new writer and the older writer have reached an understanding and brokered a deal to keep the dream alive.

Last-minute All Hallows' Eve reading

This is just a quick reminder that if anyone wants a last-minute Halloween read, my story "Drawing Out" appears in last fall's issue of Icarus, which is here. This spooky treat features a rarity - a Jehovah's Witness as the hero. When Esmerelda, an attractive young woman, appears at Frederich's doorstep on Halloween night, he must decide whether or not to help her. Then Tommy Brown shows up, a young boy with a talent for drawing and whose friends are in trouble. And, of course, on All Hallows' Eve, anything can happen...