Skulls in the Stars

Thanks to Valancourt Books, I’ve been on a world horror kick lately, aided by their recent slew of foreign language horror collections translated into English, most of the stories translated for the first time. Quite recently, I read A Different Darkness by Italian author Luigi Musolino, and last year I read The Black Maybe by Hungarian author Atilla Veres, and both collections were fantastic. Both authors were featured in The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories volume 1, and this past week I picked up and read another collection by one of those authors, The Secret Life of Insects, by Bernardo Esquinca.

One bonus post for Blogtober: an old post where I look back at Poe’s surprisingly inspirational story and the now-obscure books that he references in it.

For my final day of Blogtober, I look back at another fascinating novel of horror that most people have never heard of! Richard Le Gallienne’s “The Worshipper of the Image” is a short 1899 novel that is about a man’s growing obsession with… a death mask! But not just any death mask: L’Inconnue de la Seine, the famed death mask of an anonymous beautiful woman who allegedly drowned in the Seine. The mask became the face of Resusci Anne, the CPR dummy, and is thus often referred to as “the most kissed face of all time!”

Happy Halloween, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at horror fiction and blog posts, old and new!

Doing my best to finish Blogtober, in spite of how rough things have been lately! Today I look back on Lucy Snyder’s 2015 collection While the Black Stars Burn, an excellent and haunting collection of cosmic horror that to me seem to explore vulnerability and betrayal. This was the collection that introduced me to Snyder’s work, and we became Twitter friends after that and I’ve been delighted to see her work reach an increasingly greater audience, as her recent novel Sister, Maiden, Monster has.

For day 29 of Blogtober, I thought I would look back at the stories of John the Balladeer by Manly Wade Wellman, especially since they’ve come out in a new edition by Valancourt Books!

The stories are a testament to Wellman’s love of Appalachia, and have a man known as John the Balladeer, Silver John, or simply John as their protagonist. John is a wandering mountain man who faces off against the creatures and villains of Southern folklore using his wits, his brawn, and his music!

My original post has much more of my thoughts on Silver John, and let me just note that the Valancourt edition is gorgeous, especially the limited edition hardcover, which is still available!

For day 28 of Blogtober, I look back at a fun and surprisingly clever book about a Japanese kaiju-hunting organization: Hiroshi Yamamoto’s MM9.

Ever since 2007, I’ve been sharing a list of classic horror stories free to read on the internet to provide some chills every Halloween season, and this year is no exception! The past couple of years, I decided it would be fun to come up with a theme for the season, and this year the theme is: corruption! What happens when your body gets corrupted and changed by something from outside?

The Autopsy, Michael Shea (1980). This one is rather remarkable to see freely available to read! When a number of people are killed in a mine explosion, a doctor stricken with cancer is called in to perform autopsies on the victims. However, he does not realize until it is too late that the explosion was no accident, and something horrible plans to use the doctor for its own ends. (This story appeared last year in Guillermo del Toro’s excellent Cabinet of Curiosities series.)

Another classic reblog for day 26 of Blogtober! I’ve still got a couple of new things I want to blog before the end of the month, so stay tuned!

This one is a true rarity — Not at Night was a really successful horror anthology of the 1920s, now largely forgotten. It gives a fascinating snapshot of the state of horror fiction before the rise of H.P. Lovecraft. I actually bought an original copy of it some time ago, because reprints don’t exist!