The Seers’ Table October 2016
The Seers Table!
Happy October! Give yourself a treat by picking up books by writers you haven’t read before! We have an outstanding selection of authors this month to choose from.
Linda Addison recommends:
Steven Van Patten is a Brooklyn native, raised in Fort Greene. After graduating from Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus on a full scholarship, he pursued a career in television production. When he’s not writing scary stories, he can be found stage managing various TV shows in the New York area.
The storyline of his first novel was born from watching horror movies as a child and noticing a lack of diversity, and character development when people of color were employed. So after pouring over historical research night after night, and traveling alone to various locales, including West Africa and Osaka, Japan, he wrote the first three installments of the Brookwater’s Curse vampire novel series.
After receiving much praise, several glowing reviews from various book club heavy hitters, and literary awards for each book, Steven was admitted into the HWA, which led to him being noticed by Evil Jester Press. His latest novel, Killer Genius—a book that pits a hyper-intelligent, socially-conscious female killer against a well-intentioned African-American detective—debuted at NYC Comic Con in October of 2015. Again, there was much praise …
Check out his work: Killer Genius (Evil Jester Press, 2016), Brookwater’s Curse vampire novel series (Volume I, II, III from Laughing Black Vampire Productions, LLC).
His site is at http://www.brookwaterscurse.com; twitter @SVPThinks.
Ari Drew recommends:
The Uruguayan screenwriting duo of Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues have been making big waves in horror for the past few years. Friends since childhood, Álvarez and Sayagues forged their screenwriting partnership with the Spanish-language dark-comedy short EL COJONUDO, following it up with the sci-fi short ATAQUE DE PÁNICO! (“Panic Attack!”), showcasing innovative genre stories and visually stunning cinema even with meager financial support.
The duo made their feature-length horror debut in 2013 when they scripted the Álvarez-directed EVIL DEAD, the remake of Sam Raimi‘s 1981 genre classic THE EVIL DEAD. Markedly grittier than Raimi’s original in tone, the remake elevated the duo as promising genre talents with a penchant for bold scares and gore, though not quite propelling them to household name status.
However, with the recent release of their latest horror film DON’T BREATHE, which Álvarez also directed, this may all begin to change. Boasting a tautly crafted script filled with twists that will unnerve even the most hardened of horror fans, DON’T BREATHE’s initial box office and critical success bodes extremely well for the futures of these talented individuals and mainstream horror.
Though DON’T BREATHE currently has genre fans and the general public alike clamoring for more, the duo’s follow-up has yet to be announced; Álvarez has stated in multiple interviews that they like to take their time to fully flesh out their stories before diving right in. Whatever it may be, Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues no doubt have bright futures ahead in the horror genre and beyond.
You can keep up with the latest from both Álvarez and Sayagues on their respective Twitter accounts: Fede Álvarez — https://twitter.com/fedalvar / Rodo Sayagues — https://twitter.com/rodosayagues1
Kate Jonez recommends:
Cate Gardner is a British horror and fantastical author with over a hundred short stories published. Several of those stories appear in her collection Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits (Strange Publications 2010). She is also the author of five novellas: Theatre of Curious Acts (Hadley Rille Books, 2011), Barbed Wire Hearts (Delirium Books, 2011), In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair (Alchemy Press, 2013), This Foolish & Harmful Delight (Egaeus Press, 2013), and The Bureau of Them (Spectral Press, 2015).
Her chapbooks Nowhere Hall (Spectral Press, 2011) and The Sour Aftertaste of Olive Lemon (Bucket ‘O’ Guts Press, 2009) have now sold out, and she is currently working on a novel.
“…a rising purveyor of high literary strangeness …” Publishers Weekly
Just released from Frightful Horrors Press is Shadow Moths, including the two stories “We Make Our Own Monsters,” a bizarre and creepy tale of puppets with minds of their own, and “Blood-Moth Kiss,” which provides a poignant love story set in apocalyptic times.
Cate Gardner‘s Web site is http://www.categardner.net/.
Kate Maruyama recommends:
Jewelle Gomez is a writer and activist and the author of the double Lambda Award-winning novel, The Gilda Stories from Firebrand Books. Her adaptation of the book for the Stage “Bones & Ash: A Gilda Story,” was performed by the Urban Bush Women company in 13 U.S. cities. The script was published as a Triangle Classic by the Paperback Book Club.
She is the recipient of a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; two California Arts Council fellowships, and an Individual Artist Commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Her fiction, essays, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous periodicals. Among them: The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, The Village Voice; Ms Magazine, Essence Magazine, The Advocate, Callaloo, and Black Scholar. Her work has appeared in such anthologies as Home Girls, Reading Black Reading Feminist, Dark Matter, and the Oxford World Treasury of Love Stories.
She was on the original staffs of SAY BROTHER, one of the first weekly, Black television shows in the U.S. (WGBH-TV, Boston) and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY (Children’s Television Workshop, NYC), as well as on the founding board of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). She was an initial member of the boards of the Astraea Foundation and the Open Meadows Foundation.
Her other publications include three collections of poetry: The Lipstick Papers (1980) and Flamingoes and Bears (1986), both self-published, and Oral Tradition from Firebrand Books (1995).
Jewelle Gomez Web site: http://www.jewellegomez.com Twitter: @VampyreVamp
