Have You Read This? Joe Hill's Strange Weather

The book in this month’s Have You Read This, Strange Weather, seems like a no-brainer in a season where I was, honest to God, wearing a t-shirt last week and worrying about windchills getting to single digits for this one. It most certainly fits this time of year, but I had actually planned on writing about Joe Hill’s novella collection for a while now. I had read a few of Joe Hill’s works, from his seminal graphic novel collection Locke & Key to his short story collection 20^th Century Ghosts. Sure, Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, as synonymous with horror as Hulk Hogan is with pro wrestling, but reading him for so long has meant that I have got to see him grow quickly as a writer and move ever so slowly out of his father’s shadow.

One could argue that the stories in this collection are held together by the subject of weather. Storms, in particular, are incidental plot devices in the first two tales, while the latter ones uses clouds and rain more extensively. The stories here really run the gamut between fantastical nostalgia to apocalyptic horror to real world suspense. The four stories chosen for this collection show how Hill has grown as a writer in different areas.

The first in the collection, “Snapshot,” is the most reminiscent of Hill’s father, using a mystical object to explore the real world terror of loss. Like any of King’s child protagonist, Michael has trouble fitting in, but this story is also about finding connections in the little moments we have with others and the horrifying consequences of having those moments with someone taken away. This story should resonate with anyone who has ever lost a loved one, particularly if that someone was stolen by degrees.

“Loaded” is a tale of real world terror that deals with the current epidemic of gun violence. There is no need for magic or demons from the Macroverse for horror when you have a man with a lot of anger and access to automatic weapons. “Loaded” not only pulls its horror from the headlines of school and office shootings, this piece also jabs at the media for being all too willing to put the “good guy with a gun” on a pedestal after he foils a shooting. As more of his story unravels, so does his sanity until he becomes a very bad guy with a gun.

“Aloft” is the piece that feels the most like Hill’s unique voice, not as much horrifying as it is fantastic, particularly when first-time skydiver Aubrey becomes stranded on a cloud that serves as both concierge and jailer, giving him whatever it can form from its vaporous substance but not inclined to return him to Earth. Though it’s more whimsical than the other selections and a welcome break, what really helps this story stand out from just an adventure piece as he searches for rescue is the double narrative that takes place before Aubrey’s fateful jump and how the world below him influences his thoughts and actions as he is stranded hundreds of miles above it.

“Rain” is a very standard apocalypse scenario but with a very interesting premise: what if the rain that fell suddenly became lethal, no longer falling drops of water but crystalline shards of death. The protagonist Honeysuckle is interesting and she encounters several oddball characters who help her but who also have no qualms about being violent now that society and civility is on the decline. This story also borrows from our world by referencing our current political leadership and Hill does paint a bleak picture of a world where the skies can rain death at any moment, but the end is also left with a surprisingly hopeful message, showing how people can be duplicitous and all too willing to hurt each other but are ultimately at their best when they have each other’s back.

More and more, authors are trying their hands at shorter works, churning out collections full of a multitude of stories, from novellas to short stories. Hill has demonstrated time and again that he has no shortage of imagination and can no doubt feed a reading public eager for stories that can be read during a lunch break or a wait in the doctor’s office. Even if the weather outside started raining frogs, I could relax knowing that, as the frogs pelt my window, that writers like Joe Hill will write plenty of fully-realized, well-written stories to keep me occupied, whether that storm lasts for an hour or a season.

Fearsome Five: Five Women Horror Authors to Watch Out For

As this Women in Horror Month draws to a conclusion, I must offer my apologies to any Women in Horror that I might have forgot to write about, particularly since there are so many women out there in the horror field. That’s why I’m devoting my Fearsome Five list to five women authors to definitely be on the lookout for, especially since they may be behind you. 

RIGHT NOW!

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Anyway, on with the list.

5) Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire. Two different personas in the same person, the team of Seanan McGuire and her pseudonym Mira Grant has whatever kind of horror you’re looking for. Seanan has you covered if you like paranormal adventures, particularly in her Ghost Road series series about a ghostly hitchhiker, and Mira has you covered if you like your horror more crimson, whether its zombies from her Newsflesh series series to mermaid (yes, mermaids) in Into the Drowning Deep.
4) Ellen Datlow: Not as known for writing as she is for editing, but she has edited quite a few stunning anthologies, including for the Best Horror of the Year series. She has edited anthologies focusing on everything from Halloween to the sea to dolls. As the gateway to many of the authors I myself have recently discovered, Ellen Datlow is definitely a name you want to know if you want to sample the different horrors out there.

3) Tananarive Due: Not a new author but definitely one who has consistently produced unsettling southern Gothic horror since the ‘90s. While not the household name of Koontz and King, she is definitely well-known as an African-American horror writer who penned such well-known tales as The Between and  The Good House, combining societal issues, the African-American experience, and supernatural terrors to create fiction that enlightens as well as frightens. As more and more diverse writers from all walks of life enter the horror field, it is important to remember those who helped pave the way.

2) Yoko Ogawa: Japanese horror, or J-Horror, has created its own horror niche in American cinema, but authors like Ogawa join the ranks of Koji Suzuki, author of the Ring and Dark Water, to bring a different flavor of horror to American shores. While she is known for writing thrillers, Ogawa’s short story collection Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales seems like a compact read, but these stories weave together and twist themselves into a demented tapestry. She’s one to watch if you prefer your horror to build slowly but disturb profoundly.

1) Gwendolyn Kiste: She’s a relative newcomer who burst onto the scene with her short story collection And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, but Kiste stood out for me, and signaled big things for her future, with her debut novel The Rust Maidens. Part dark fairy tale, part coming-of-age story, this story covers everything from far-out body horror to the real life horrors of economic collapse. So many different ideas and aspects are woven together to create a story that’s both horrific and beautiful, both tragic and uplifting. It’s really what good horror with a fully-realized setting and characters should be.

Have You Read This? Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers

Becky Spratford has a great blog about readers’ advisory and horror. Truthfully, her blog serves as an inspiration for my own little shadow library in cyberspace. Within her blog or when she gives Readers' Advisory talks to other libraries, she describes horror as thus:

“Horror is a story in which the author manipulates the reader's emotions by introducing situations in which unexplainable phenomena and unearthly creatures threaten the protagonists and provoke terror in the reader.”

The underlined part is important because, by limiting her definition to stories that “provoke terror,” it gets to what many would call a fundamental experience of reading horror: actually being scared. Many stories, though, get put in the horror category because they have ghosts or witches even though they might be romance, suspense, or in this case a return to one of  Joe Lansdale’s best stories. Joe Lansdale’s Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers has the same comedic tone as his truly excellent short story “Bubba Hotep,” but it also falls well into the genre of action adventure.

Like many horror/action hybrids, this novel has its share of vampire-like creatures as well as ghosts and zombies, but it focuses on a supersecret organization dedicated to protecting America from supernatural incursions. It almost sounds like Clive Cussler crossed with Stephen King, except for the fact that one of their greatest assets is the King of Rock N’ Roll himself, Elvis Presley. And there are vampires, but they don’t sparkle, and they don’t brood. What they do is suck blood until people are pretty much empty Caprisun containers, still somehow alive but able to be rolled up like a sleeping bag.

Yes, this novel is an official prequel to one of Lansdale’s greatest stories—which can be found in The Best of Joe Lansdale, if anyone’s interested. People familiar with the Oceans movies might recognize the formula of getting a team of individuals together, each with a specific set of skills, and set them against something, only this is no casino they’re knocking over but the queen of vampires Big Momma.

While it doesn’t always have the sweet sentiment of Bubba Hotep, save for when Elvis talks about his Mama’s soul, used by Colonel Parker to blackmail Elvis into serving the team, this tale is still an entertaining blend of Lovecraftian horror, vampire hunting, sorcery, and what many readers would see in Lansdale’s mystery series Hap and Leonard. You might picture the narrator simply regaling this story on a back porch, iced tea or beer in hand, you’ll marvel at the amount of smart one-liners that put many action movies to shame. In short, you might find the sensibilities of this story to be—I so hope I’m the first to use this word—Lansdalian. While it might not have you sleeping with the lights on, it does offer a enjoyable, schlocky adventure for cinephiles who are nostalgic for ‘70s and ‘80s horror that was more excessive than ethereal and who love movies that have more explosions than expositions.  

New Arrival: Our Lady of the Inferno

Some of you who are reading this may remember the ‘80s, or at least saw a few movies that visited this decade, one known particularly for excess. The clothes had shoulder pads, the hair stretched to the heavens thanks to innovations like Aqua Net, and, in the words of Wall Street’s Donald Trump template Gordon Gecko, greed was good. People were wanting what the decade promised. Many also wanted something different from their horror. This was reflected in the horror subgenre splatterpunk. Splatterpunk, and its writers, was also never afraid to go big. Creaking doors, buttoned-down spirits, and quietly disturbing scares, said splatterpunk writers, weren’t going to cut it in this decade. These stories didn’t shy away from the violence or the viscera. Stories were a loud as a heavy metal guitar riff and as gory as a slaughterhouse floor before the cleanup crew.  Critics of the genre say that splatterpunk was loud but also dumb, sacrificing character for cruelty. Luckily, Preston Fassel, in his ‘80s nostalgia trip of a novel Our Lady of the Inferno, creates a love letter to the 80’s, of its culture and its horror, while telling a solid character-driven story.

The plot of this book is enough for make Joe Lansdale, he of mummy-fighting retirement home residents, do a double take. Ginny Kurva is the archetypal hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, but also one who can kick your teeth in. What she can’t take down with her karate skills are her various demons, including her growing dependence on alcohol. Ginny attempting to overcome these demons, even as she plays a parental figure to her sister and the fellow working girls she protects, is just one narrative thread in this book. The other belongs to Nicolette Aster, a waste plant supervisor whose power suits and reserved, efficient demeanor has made her a well-trusted employee but hides a madness she sates by capturing victims on the street then hunt them down in the landfill she supervises, her own personal labyrinth. Fassel makes clear who the hero and villain are in this novel. Ginny has a lot of great asides where she comes off as both capable and compassionate, from tender moments with her paraplegic sister, to trying to teach her working girls German and getting them to enjoy book club. Nicolette begins the book as a well-respected employee who is straining to contain her homicidal impulses to the point until her succumbing to it is pretty much a given. It takes a bit to finally get these two women together and have their fight to the death, but the reader does get a chance to know both very well before their paths finally intersect. Not shying away from blood in many of the book’s scenes, Fassel really shows off his affinity for epic brutality in the final battle, enough so that the final scene pays homage to splatterpunk’s blood-soaked roots.

One final character in both these women’s tales is the setting, not only the city of New York they both inhabit but the decade. Fassel shows a real flair for including details about the decade, from Flashdance to the space launch of Sally Ride, even incorporating it into a tender moment in the book. The Times Square of the ‘80s was known more for its seedy underbelly rather than its shimmering lights. The dirty, dangerous, and exciting city Fassel depicts is one that both characters belong in. Both Ginny and Nicolette grow tougher in the jungle of Times Square in the ‘80s, but only one will be able to walk away from it.

Screen to Scream: The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House is a novel that writers like Stephen King cite for inspiration whenever they decide to make up a building, fill it with ghosts, and then have people haunted by the ghosts inside the house as well as the ones inside their minds. Hollywood has gone back to this haunted house many times, with a movie made in 1963 and a special effects extravaganza in 1994 that featured Liam Neeson before he revealed his particular set of skills and Owen “Wow” Wilson. The newest adaptation in the form of a TV series from Netflix is more than just a pale imitation or cash grab. It also showcases the psychological underpinnings that are frequent with Jackson's novel.

One reason that Shirley Jackson’s novel is so well-respected and gets recycled again and again is that it’s not just a ghost story. Indeed, there is no ghost actually seen in the novel despite the readers being told time and again by Dr. Montague the evil reputation of this place. For those of you that don’t know the original, Dr. Montague brings in three strangers to help him explore whether Hill House’s reputation as a haunted house is warranted. In the book, he serves as both mentor and expository device explaining the house’s history, but it is Eleanor that is the book’s main protagonist. It is through her eyes that readers watch what is happening in Hill House. Eleanor is a woman who has experienced little in life save for caring for her sick mother. What begins as a grand adventure for Eleanor becomes a series of erratic behaviors and ultimately madness. Hill House doesn’t claim Eleanor in a supernatural sense but it has captivated and imprisoned her mind within its walls. In a cinematic landscape full of jittery CGI spirits, Jackson deftly only requires pounding on the wall and strange messages to show what Hill House is doing to Eleanor’s mind, and readers don’t need to see a ghost to know that Eleanor is being tormented.

The new series from Netflix is fan-service for those who enjoy the novel, but it is also much more. Eagle-eyed viewers can try to spot the many ghosts that showrunner Michael Flanagan left for readers to find even as they notice characters and scenes that are callbacks to the original novel. Even if the series didn’t have the Hill House name attached, even if it didn’t borrow their characters’ names, this story is a unique ensemble drama on the effects of trauma, the narrative jumping back and forth between the past and present to show what has marked the Crain children and what continues to define them well into adulthood. All the children have their own ways of coping with what went on in that house, from Shirley completely repressing and refusing to discuss it to Luke turning to drugs. Older brother Stephen is writing about their experiences but in a fictionalized way that doesn’t really give him closure. The children are not confronting their experiences in Hill House largely thanks to the dad who has kept secrets about their mother and about the house from them. Much like how Jackson lets “her” Eleanor be the readers’ eyes, the viewers are given a chance to see what has broken each of the Crain children both in the house and outside of it. Eleanor was doomed because she was alone, even with three other people with her. The Crain children are each trying to process their trauma alone, but it is when they come together that the possibility of healing finally emerges. The old argument of book vs. movie is one that will continue as long as books are made into them, but both series and film should be enjoyed as their own entity without the pressure of having to choose.