The August 2016 installment of The Seers’ Table
The Seers Table!
Welcome to the August 2016 installment of The Seers’ Table—the HWA’s hub for highlighting stimulating and diverse voices in horror and dark fantasy. This month we’d like to suggest an exciting group of authors whose work will enrich your summer reading.
Ace Antonio Hall recommends:
Alaya Dawn Johnson is a two-time Nebula winner, and multi-award-winning author of six novels. The Summer Prince (2013), Alaya’s debut YA novel, is a heart-stopping story of love, death, technology, and art set amid the tropics of a futuristic Brazil. Her Web site is http://www.alayadawnjohnson.com, or you can follow her on Twitter @alayadj.
Short Stories of Interest:
“A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i” – The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014. Nominated for the Nebula Award for novella.
“They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass” – Asimov’s Science Fiction, January 2013.
“The Inconstant Moon” – Tor.com, April 4, 2012 (a Zephyr Hollis novelette, prequel to Moonshine.)
“Their Changing Bodies” – Subterranean Magazine, Summer 2011
Janet Joyce Holden recommends:
Kat Howard’s short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, anthologized in best of and annual best of collections, and performed on NPR. Roses and Rot is her debut novel. She lives in New Hampshire, and you can find her on Twitter at @KatWithSword.
Roses and Rot — What would you sacrifice for everything you ever dreamed of? Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child, she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales because she couldn’t imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults, Imogen and her sister Marin are accepted to an elite post-grad arts program—Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there’s more to the school than meets the eye. Imogen might be living in the fairy tale she’s dreamed about as a child, but it’s one that will pit her against Marin if she decides to escape her past to find her heart’s desire.
Ari Drew Recommends:
J.F. Gonzalez was a Latino American author whose body of work spans horror, suspense, and the supernatural. He is best known for his visceral novel Survivor—a controversial horror story that is best described as Jack Ketchum meets HOSTEL—and the “creature feature” inspired series Clickers, co-written with authors Mark Williams and Brian Keene; both works have notably been optioned for film adaptations. Though the aforementioned efforts are admittedly not for everyone, traditional genre fans are sure to find many other works of note in his oeuvre, which includes subgenre-spanning tales of the otherworldly, serial murderers, the supernatural, and beyond. Most recently, Gonzalez’s posthumous thriller Retreat was made available in multiple formats on Amazon. Though Gonzalez passed away in 2014, he has certainly left behind a legacy in the horror genre marked by a fiery passion, bold prose and a flare for colorful narratives.
Linda Addison recommends:
Michael Boatman is an Image Award-nominated American actor, screenwriter. and novelist. Joe Lansdale praised his first collection with “Michael Boatman writes like a visitor from hell. Someone out on short term leave for bad behavior. I love this stuff.” Many multi-author anthologies feature at least one of his short stories. His “Born Again” story (Eulogies II: Tales from the Cellar) received an Honorable Mention from Ellen Datlow in The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Six.
Who Wants to be The Prince of Darkness? (Angry Robot, 2016) Lucifer is enjoying his retirement in an obscure corner of Limbo when he learns of a plot by Gabriel, the current ruler of Hell, to use humanity’s greatest weapon against it—television!
13: A Collection of Horror and Weird Fiction (Crossroad Press, 2016); 13 is a collection of horror stories reflecting various elements of the American Dream. But here, the Dream has been twisted beyond easy recognition. These tales of Americana gone hideously and sometimes hysterically wrong feature a dark parade of misunderstood monsters, homicidal heroes, invading aliens, media-friendly fiends, rogue presidents… and even an occasional zombie. For more information on his books go to http://www.michaelboatman.us.
Kate Maruyama recommends:
Daniel José Older is the author of the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, which begins in January 2015 with Half-Resurrection Blues from Penguin’s ROC imprint. Publishers Weekly hailed him as a “rising star of the genre” after the publication of his debut ghost noir collection, Salsa Nocturna. He co-edited the anthology Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History and guest edited the music issue of Crossed Genres. His short stories and essays have appeared in Tor.com, Salon, BuzzFeed, the New Haven Review, PANK, Apex, and Strange Horizons and the anthologies Subversion and Mothership: Tales of Afrofuturism and Beyond. Daniel’s band Ghost Star gigs regularly around New York, and he facilitates workshops on storytelling from an anti-oppressive power analysis. You can find his thoughts on writing, read dispatches from his decade-long career as an NYC paramedic, and hear his music at ghoststar.net/ and @djolder on Twitter.
Tom Calen recommends:
By the age of 30, Christopher Rice has published four New York Times bestselling thrillers, received a Lambda Literary Award and been declared one of People Magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive. His two novels of dark supernatural suspense, The Heavens Rise and The Vines, were both finalists for the Bram Stoker Award®. He recently entered the erotic romance genre with three works in all new series called The Desire Exchange. They include The Flame, The Surrender Gate, and Kiss the Flame. His debut novel, A Density of Souls, was published when the author was just 22 years old.
Kate Jonez recommends:
Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Paper Tigers (Dark House Press, 2016) In this haunting and hypnotizing novel, a young woman loses everything—half of her body, her fiancé, and possibly her unborn child—to a terrible apartment fire. While recovering from the trauma, she discovers a photo album inhabited by a predatory ghost who promises to make her whole again, all while slowly consuming her from the inside out. She is also the author of Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Publications, 2015), winner of This is Horror’s Short Story Collection of the Year. Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines.
