10/12/26
Okay, the move is complete so let’s blow off the accumulated dust of a few weeks and fire this thing up. Other than yesterday’s newsletter, this Blog entry will be the first thing of length that I’ve written in almost a month… which is a ridiculously long time for me. I get antsy if I go two days without writing something. These past few weeks have been tough.
The plan, for the next few weeks is to split my day by writing in the morning, and then unpacking in the afternoons. On deck for the rest of this year is a short story I owe for an anthology, the novel Laurel Hightower and I are working on, and another (still unannounced and not even given a codename yet) anthology that Chris Golden and I are editing. This will, in fact, be our fourth anthology together. There are also THE END: THE LABYRINTH Book 5, a novel called BINKY, and a sequel to ISLAND OF THE DEAD to get started. I’d hoped to be going at those this month, but the move delayed that, of course.
(It occurs to me as I write this that I should really figure out which box my whiteboard is in today and get that unpacked and hung).
In between all of that, I do have some traveling — back to Pennsylvania for a signing this coming weekend, then Atlantic City next weekend for KingCon, then Texas two weekends after that for KillerCon and my final turn cohosting the Splatterpunk Awards. I also have to drive my youngest home from college in upstate New York for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I sincerely hope to do far less signings and appearances in 2027.
In fact, since I already have a few chapters of THE END: THE LABYRINTH Book 5 and the sequel to ISLAND OF THE DEAD both written, I may begin serializing one or the other on Patreon next month, soon as Slowly We Rot is finished. Thanks again to Bryan Smith for helping me out with Patreon content during this transition. His new novel, Monstrous, is sincerily the best new novel I’ve read this year. Check it out.
I’m debating whether or not to do two spotlights a day for Women In Horror Year to get us caught back up, but for today, let’s go with…
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Women In Horror Year: Day 127
Slaves To Gravity by Somer Canon (with Wesley Southard)
After waking up in a hospital bed, paralyzed from the waist down, Charlie Snyder had no idea where life would take her. Dejected, broken, and permanently bound to a wheelchair, she believed her life was truly over. That is…until gravity no longer applied.
It started out slow. Floating from room to room. Menial tasks without assistance. When she decided to venture outside and take some real risks with her newfound ability, she rose above her own constraints to reveal a whole new world, and found other damaged individuals just like her to confide in.
But there are others things out there, waiting in the dark. Repulsive, secretive creatures that don’t want Charlie to touch the sky. And they’ll stop at nothing to keep her on the ground.
Readers new to either Somer Canon or her cowriter on this novella, Wesley Southard, might be forgiven for thinking that this volume is a great introduction to them both. I mean, in a way, it is. But their style and narrative voice when writing together is decidedly different from their solo works. Influenced by Ruby Jean Jensen (among others) Somer’s solo output is remarkably note-perfect old school horror of the type one encountered weekly on the paperback racks. Had she been born in a different time, her books would have been dominating the Zebra, Kensington, Tor, or other Paperbacks From Hell-era horror lines. Wesley meanwhile was influenced by myself, J. F. Gonzalez, Bentley Little, Ray Garton, and one can see our influence on his horror stuff (and Ray’s continued influence on the thrillers he is now writing).
Slaves To Gravity is unique in that you can’t spot any of those influences. Had they written this in the 90s, and were it a full-length novel, rather than a novella, it would have been part of the Dell/Abyss line — it’s that bizarre and transgressive. What starts out as an emotional character study of dark fantasy veers into sci-fi horror and then straight up apocalyptic horror, all in the number of pages that you can read in a day. This is stripped down and fine-tuned, with no words wasted, making for a compulsive page turner quite unlike anything else currently in print. Sadly, the book has flown under the radar ince its initial publication. Here’s hoping that with the advent of some new eyes on it, it will soar.
Slaves To Gravity is available in paperback and eBook from South of Heaven Press.
