Book 10 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! Still way behind but I might still be able to pull it off.

This will be a relatively short post, as I just wrote an article for Dead Reckonings about Laird Barron’s latest collection of horror fiction, Not a Speck of Light, that just came out last month — and I don’t want to repeat myself!

I’ve written about Laird Barron’s fiction a number of times on this blog, and he’s been one of my favorite authors of horror since I first came across his story “The Redfield Girls” in the 2010 anthology Haunted Legends. I’ve also had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with him on social media and, I like to think, at least casual friends. I’ve enjoyed each of his short story collections and he brings a unique flavor of weirdness to horror fiction.

Barron diverted his focus to crime novels after the release of his 2016 horror anthology Swift to Chase, so it was nice to see him return to the horror genre. That isn’t to say that he wasn’t writing horror: he had stories published in a variety of places from 2015-2021, and these are the stories that appear in Not a Speck of Light.

Without going into too much detail (again, saved my words for Dead Reckonings), I can say that the tales include monsters, ghosts, apocalyptic events, cosmic horror, and some strangeness that I don’t even have good words to describe. It is another fantastic collection by Barron. Perhaps the best praise I can give it is that it got me reading again after slowing down significantly in the middle of the year.

So, if you enjoy strange and unsettling horror fiction, I can recommend Not a Speck of Light!