9/8/26
There’s a whippoorwill just absolutely going to town with his song in the woods near the house. I’ve read enough Manly Wade Wellman, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King to know that does not bode well. Hell, I read so much of them that about 20 years ago, Wrath James White pointed out to me that my work had two ‘tells’ (indicators that I did indeed write it) — the use of em-dashes, and the phrase “a whippoorwill sang its lonely song” (or a variation of that phrase). My early works were riddled with both. After Wrath pointed it out, I stopped with the whippoorwills. I kept the em-dashes, and now, thirty years later, because all of the Generative AI LLMs were fed massive quantities of Brian Keene books in their training data, the em-dash is supposedly a telltale sign of AI-written work.
But never mind all that. The whippoorwill stopped in the time it took me to write that paragraph. Either dawn is on the way or he decided to go be a grim omen at someone else’s door. Or maybe he’s just singing for America, here in the last days of this 250-year experiment in democracy.
~
Women In Horror Year: Day 121
Around Eldritch Corners by Christine Morgan
With strange aeons... where twin suns sink and towers rise behind the moon... in dark and lonely places when the stars are right... from the deadly light amidst black seas of infinity... unto a world which now trembles...
Yes, it's cosmic, it's mythos, it's Lovecraftian/Chambersian, it's overwrought language and indescribable horrors. But it's also twisted takes and irreverent pastiches, with weird kids and lovelorn sequels. It's ancient times, different histories, and distant futures. It's cats and cults and candles, odd architecture, mysterious tomes.
It's a collection of sixteen stories by Splatterpunk Award-winning author Christine Morgan, inviting you to take a peek... AROUND ELDRITCH CORNERS
For twenty-some years, there were two truths with Generation Hex (the name I have begun using when talking about my generation of horror fiction writers) — Mary SanGiovanni was the undisputed Queen of Cosmic Horror and Christine Morgan was the undisputed Queen of Extreme Horror. I heard somebody say in an interview recently that “you don’t get Hailey Piper and Judith Sonnet without Mary SanGiovanni and Christine Morgan” and when I heard that, I pumped my fist and shouted “Amen!”
When you look back at the works written by the women of Generation Hex, Christine was influenced by Edward Lee just as surely as Mehitobel Wilson was influenced by the Splatterpunks. But it is important to note that it wasn’t just Lee’s indomitable gift fro grossness that Christine picked up. It was also his sense of humor, and the quirkiness that runs through all but his most serious of works. Christine’s early stuff was pastiche, the way it is for all of us. But when her own voice developed with surety and confidence, the humor, surrealism, and absolutey disgusting descriptions became her own.
All of these things are on display in Around Eldritch Corners — a short story collection that showcases an evolution for the writer. Yes, there are some Extreme Horror stories herein, but the book is way more Cosmic Horror than Christine’s fans might expect, exploring not just the territory of Lovecraft, but that of Robert W. Chambers and William Hope Hodgson, as well. She’s grown more daring, and more willing to experiment. With these stories, she steps outside her comfort zone — goes beyond what her audience expects from her, and invites them to come along. The results are great. A solid collection, and a notable evolution in the journey of one of the most consistent, dependable craftswomen of the last twenty years.
Around Eldritch Corners is available in paperback and eBook from Word Horde.
