Review based on the ARC text of the book

Stephen Volk has proven to be a dream interview subject - honest, open, and never afraid of ‘going deep’ in terms of talking both process and subject matter. It’s been a huge perk of writing for this site that I’ve been able to ‘discuss’, via written questions and answers, so much of Volk’s recent prose and TV output. Click through any of the links above and I think you’ll immediately get a sense of what I mean; the sheer generosity of the man with both his time and thoughts.

I mention all this because Coffinmaker’s Blues in many ways exemplifies that same generosity of spirit and ruthless dedication to honesty. Fifteen years of non-fiction, writing  columns for Black Static (and featuring a brand new, utterly essential essay on the state of play in 2019), represented by over fifty pieces that cover an incredible range of topics, from the state of the pop culture landscape (Hannibal and The Walking Dead become recurring reference points, as the essays proceed, as do musings on the present and future of the horror TV series as a format), to personal and professional influences (Dennis Wheately, Ken Russell, and Hitchcock all get their own essays), to real nuts and bolts stuff about process and career writing. 

It’s an intensely personal journey, with the above elements often interwoven as Volk describes his own writing journey through struggles with writer's block, crisis of confidence, the sinking dread caused by production notes… and, from time to time, the triumphs that make it all worthwhile. It’s intensely personal and autobiographical, with Volk frequently laying bare his own vulnerabilities and insecurities; at the same time, he’s not afraid to voice an opinion, or take a stand on issues he feels strongly about. One strand I found particularly interesting throughout was Volk wrestling with the tension between artistic freedom of expression and inclusivity; he has a strong, instinctive dislike of what he perceives as censorious attitudes, but also powerfully strong liberal instincts towards equality, inclusiveness, and combating prejudice. These are incendiary topics, and Volk navigates them with care, but more importantly with a questioning honesty that asks as much as it answers. His discussion of his occasional battles with confidence and writers block are also incredibly moving, at points; he disdains any kind of self pity, allowing instead the honest portrayal of his feelings to speak for themselves, and the essays are all the more powerful for that.

It’s far from all doom and gloom, though; Volk is a man clearly still passionate about and in love with movies and TV writing, and that passion is present throughout, whether railing against the lack of ambition in commissioning teams across the industry (alas, a constant bugbear), or falling in love with some sublime new film or show. And the essays where he revisits past masters for wisdom or inspiration are joys; Volk never ignores the flaws of his subjects, but nor does he allow them to be defined by them, or have them overwhelm the work as a whole. In doing so, he demonstrates again and again how flawed artists (and who among us is not etc.?) are still capable of making good, even great art, that speaks directly to the human condition. It should come as no surprise that the quality Volk seems to most admire in others work is the quality this book itself exemplifies; a warts-and-all, unvarnished commitment to honesty.

I found Coffinmaker's Blues to be essential reading; both as a book on writing craft and psychology, and, as a fan of Volk’s work, an opportunity to spend some quality time with the thoughts of a writer I respect and admire enormously. Highly recommended.

KP
30/6/19

Note: I will be interviewing Stephen Volk about Coffinmaker’s Blues in person at EdgeLit 8 in Derby, on 13th July. Tickets for the event are still available here: https://www.derbyquad.co.uk/whats-on/events/edge-lit-8

You know how you can tell a horror book is going to give you more to chew on than the usual assortment of ghoulies, ghosties, and long-legged beasties? When the introduction reads like a college study guide.
 
In the foreword to Farah Rose Smith’s first short story collection, Of One Pure Will (published by Egaeus Press in a hardcover edition limited to 325 copies), Fiona Maeve Geist doesn’t just ponder what it is that makes Smith’s fiction so special, she challenges us to ponder it as well. In the process, Geist brings up more questions than answers. Fitting, as Smith herself does much the same.
 
It is tempting to describe many of the stories in Of One Pure Will as plotless, but that’s not strictly true. There are no shortage of discernable plots: An avian enthusiast receives an unexpected gift of rare birds from a hated rival, but the creatures quickly taunt him to madness. A conflict between a pair of sisters—one fascinated by a twisted black tree in the nearby swampland, the other disdainful of her sibling’s “eerie nonsense”—ends in tragedy, with suggestions of an even darker history written in the earth. A woman’s lover leaves her for someone who looks just like her, acts just like her, maybe even is… her.
 
Plot, however, not a central element in many of these stories. Indeed, it is often obscured beneath lush, swirling layers of hyper-stylized surrealism. Smith’s voice takes more from poetry than traditional prose; it begs to be read aloud in order to fully savor its musicality. A few short examples:
 
“The faeries of nature know no lesser landscape than this. They crave the rainbow soil, rearing o’er the moonbeams. Not this muck, this gloom. Without wings, they strut with a measure of grief, the Eternity worm gauging their anguish, weaving frenzied fortunes through mortal horns.” (from “Of Marble and Mud”)
 
“I watched her face and saw only a shriveled garden. Dandelions growing out of crumbling granite. Weeds aplenty from the toppled tombstones. A graveyard, then.” (from “As Unbreakable as the World”)
 
“To watch such wheeling, turns, and terrors, Marchand, was a warning of such hellish tidings. The swaying flesh of harridans, unsightly, always naked at hours never slept upon… and children’s filth so thick, their form is indecipherable. Everywhere these low and lilac-scented devils attempt to steal my light, but they won’t have it. Not on this day, when I will tell you who came to see me after so many years.” (from “An Account above Burnside Park”)
 
Smith’s most profound power is in secrecy, in her willingness to withhold information from the reader. We’re not just talking minor details either but great swaths of backstory and even present action. Smith’s emphasis is often more on mood, emotion, and imagery, with precise meaning left open to interpretation. Much of the context that would allow Smith’s narratives to make “rational” sense is only vaguely hinted at, with the interest instead on capturing the grief and confusion internalized inside her characters. It’s not the world around these people that is most important, not the specific things they do or that are done to them, but rather the worlds within their sick, suffering, shadow-haunted psyches.
 
To wit, “Time Disease (In the Waking City)” is a nightmarish account of a man lost in labyrinthine metropolis of loneliness and faded memories. “The Land of Other” is a meditation on the indignities of old age as experienced by a woman whose bedridden final years are interrupted only by glimpses of a dreamlike alternate reality. “Rithenslofer (The Corpses of Mer)” is an almost apocalyptic vision of death and disaster forged in one sailor’s realization of human insignificance at the wrathful whims of a pitiless sea. Perhaps most effective of all is the collection’s title story, a heartbreaking confession about the revenants (real or metaphorical?) which torment a former family man struggling to find meaning now that he has no family.
 
Of course, not everything in Of One Pure Will is so intensely interior. “Sorcerer Machine” and “The Visitor” are among the collection’s more traditional offerings. In the former, a man staying with his recently widowed sister spends his days translating the letters of his Polish grandfather, a scientist who left behind an unearthly mechanical contraption locked away in an ominous black cabinet. In the latter, a musician dreams of songs that would change the face of rock ‘n’ roll itself… if only she could remember them once awake. One night, in that place where souls go while their bodies sleep, the musician meets a being who says he can help bring her dream-songs into the real world, if only she will help bring him there too.
 
Such tales may lack the timeless quality evident in the rest of the author’s work but they show that, when she wants to, Smith can deliver more commercial horror fare without diminishing the elegant and enigmatic qualities of her unique voice. Indeed, some readers will likely prefer the accessibility of these stories to the rest. Such offerings nevertheless prove to be the exception far more than the rule.
 
As much as Smith generally shies away from narrative explication, it’s notable that she never shies from mature treatments of heavy theme. Even at their most hallucinogenic, the tales in Of One Pure Will maintain a firm grounding in human psychology. Refer to the aforementioned deathbed degradation at the heart of “The Land of Other,” or the suicidal prostration of the protagonist in “As Unbreakable as the World.” Common across all of Smith’s work is an intense darkness, and not merely in a fantastical sense. The darkness in Smith’s fiction is the all-too-real darkness of broken hearts, of lost loved ones, of trauma and abuse and self-loathing depression.
 
And yet, it never feels nihilistic. Here, there is value in facing darkness, win or lose. Not all of Smith’s protagonists overcome the demons that plague them, but their struggles represent an unwavering drive to be heard, to matter, to love and be loved, to live.
 
“Even dark and dangerous things may be precious.” So says the narrator of the very story from which Of One Pure Will takes its name. “They instruct us as no being of light can.”

Amy Vaughn’s novella Skull Nuggets opens with a guy (willingly) getting a hole drilled in the front of his skull. He does not experience pain, more a feeling of euphoria, as the titanium tunnel is fitted after the operation, which all takes less than fifteen minutes. Afterwards the patient is left with a hole in the centre of his forehead, looking something like a third eye.
 
Freaked out? You should be, welcome to the world of ‘bizarro’ fiction where nothing is quite what it seems in a sub-genre which uses absurdism, satire and the grotesque to tell totally wild stories. At least I think this is bizarro…. Either way, Vaughan’s novella ticked all these boxes in a story I enjoyed but did not entirely understand, I got lost in sections of the plot which dipped into yoga, meditation and Eastern religions or mysticism. Parts of the plot were perplexing, but that’s the fun of bizarro, don’t expect one plus one to equal two or things to make 100% sense. Strange as it was, there was a serious message hidden amongst the hallucinatory weirdness tackling depression and paranoia as a central theme. 
 
Skull Nuggets is a totally off-the-wall story of a young man obsessed with brain mites, who dreams of getting rid of these horrible creatures and live without them for once - because if he can't get rid of them, suicide might be the only option. Yeah, he's that depressed and tried to take his life not long before the start of the book. However, he finds a place, Forato House, which specialises trepanation (drilling a hole into your forehead). This procedure is supposed to be a pain free operation (yeah, right) bring about a higher state of consciousness and rid the brain mites and the depression forever. If he has a hole in his head the brain mites, which are revealed to be a fairly recent scientific discovery, will escape to freedom and free of his brain. 
 
But just before the operation, the main character Robert falls in love with Bet, an ex-sword swallowing acrobat, and promises to help her rescue her father who is a resident at Forato House. Bet herself ends up working in Forato as a cleaner whilst seeking for her waster of a father who has issues of his own.  Along the way the reader gets a short history of trepidation, a technique which was used 2000 years ago to remove evil spirits from inside the body by drilling a small hole in the skull. I’ve no idea how much of this is based on fact, but some of it came across as a bit of an information dump.
 
I cannot say I would be first in line to experience this operation, no matter what level of enlightenment was promised. But it’s a strange story, which hangs together on the developing relationship between Robert and Bet, there are lots of other cartoony type characters thrown into the mix. Although it was fun to read, disorientating in other parts, and I found the ending to be a slight anti-climax. Although ultimately It’s not a story about finding a cure to depression, but about learning to accept it and living with it. Whether the brain mites are a metaphor for something else will be up to the reader to decide. I’m still scratching my head, maybe for brain mites?
 
I have found this quite a difficult book to review, although I had fun reading it, I struggled to put many of my thoughts on paper, probably because I did not make sense of parts of it. However, Skull Nuggets is colourful, experimental writing and I am not entirely sure what to compare to as a point of reference, perhaps Scottish author Chris Kelso or Andrew Stone whom I recently reviewed on Ginger Nuts of Horror are vaguely similar. If you’re after something really different then this very strange novella, which is most certainly not to all tastes, is a perfect place to start.
 
 
Tony Jones

​Forato House is looking for test subjects: Are you between the ages of 21 and 61? Are you depressed, anxious, unfulfilled? Join us at our state of the art residential testing facility where we have perfected trepanation, the ancient art of drilling a hole in the skull to achieve a permanently higher state of consciousness! But that’s not all! We are currently seeking individuals who wish to eradicate their neurophages. Through our proprietary process of injecting hallucinogens directly into the frontal lobe, you can rid yourself of brain mites and experience lasting bliss. Do it for science! Do it for peace of mind! Do it for the people you love!

​ Renee S. DeCamillis gives us a story pared to the bone.

Publisher: Eraserhead Press
Publication Date: September 1, 2019
 
Coming in at a shade under 24,500 words this is a quick read, made significantly quicker by the simplicity of language and rapid pace.

The somewhat unfortunate revelatory back cover blurb gives away far too much of what makes the story interesting— and it IS genuinely interesting. Although there is a strong hint in the title it doesn’t give the reason why the bone cutters are indeed bone cutters or whether it applies to people, creatures or even medical instruments. Much is left to the imagination there, and the same can be said for the general contents, but as I said, the back cover blurb says too much. That doesn’t prevent it from being a totally engrossing read.

The book itself is written in a first person point of view, which in many books can often prove problematic but not here as both the concept and narrative are fresh and it pays attention to the tenses which are sometimes the downfall of stories written in the first person. The characterisation is quirky with even the most stereotypical of them being handled with just enough description to make them believable but not enough as to bog one down in unnecessary details. There’s nothing overplayed here and I would have liked more about many of the characters, which would have taken a book double the length— a small sacrifice.

The main character’s name is kept from us for the most part, but there is no actual revelation forthcoming as to why that is, it’s just the way things are. It’s not actually meant to be a secret as it’s given in the back cover blurb, but it does add to the expectation that something more will happen from it. As the story of a young woman ‘finding herself’ in a situation she should never have been in it all kinda-sorta makes sense.

No matter what books we read there are always going to be problems, and The Bone Cutters is no exception as there are a couple of things which go against it somewhat. First of all is that the ending doesn’t do justice to the overall concept. Don’t get me wrong, the ending does work, it does resolve things, but I would have loved to have seen more of the final events in question. It’s not easy to explain things without spoilers, suffice to say that when you read it you’ll no doubt see what I mean. There’s such a clarity of writing here that it’s something more than the sum of its parts and I feel a lot more could have been done with those individual parts. The second thing really trails on from the first in that The Bone Cutters is too damned short. There are many books out there which do a lot with a novella length word count and some of those really won’t have needed 20,000+ words to do it in, yet The Bone Cutters is different as it gives the overall feeling of just scraping the bones of the story. I wanted to know more, read more and be involved more as I feel there was so much unsaid throughout. I’m not sure whether there would have been a full novel-length work here without overdoing it, yet I feel it could certainly have doubled in size without losing any of the quality. It’s actually refreshing to be able to enjoy a book so much that you were miffed when it was over. Generally I read a lot of things which I could readily edit a third of the content from without losing any of the plot, The Bone Cutters isn’t one of those, if anything it’s leaving so many interesting things untold.

As the debut novella from Renee S. DeCamillis it’s a fantastic beginning to what could prove to be a career to watch.

On our beloved Gingernut-O-Meter I’m giving this a solid 4 out of 5. Yeah, I’m punishing it for the reasons I’ve already given, but considering that I’ve never read anything which rated a 5 I think The Bone Cutters is doing just fine. It’ll be out soon, so go check it out.
 
Joe X Young.
 
Horror Writers Association member Renee S. DeCamillis is a dark fiction writer & an editorial intern at Crystal Lake Publishing.

Her debut book, The Bone Cutters, is set for release on September 1, 2019 through Eraserhead Press.
​

Dory wakes up in the padded room of a psychiatric hospital with no recollection of how she wound up there. She soon finds out she’s been Blued-Papered—involuntarily committed. When she is sent to the wrong counseling group, she discovers a whole new world of drug addicts she’d never known existed. When she learns that those grotesque scars they all have are from cutting into their own bodies, it makes her skin itch. Why do they do it?—They get high off bone dust.  They carve down to the bone, then chisel and scrape until they get that free drug. When they realize Dory’s never been “dusted”, she becomes their target. After all, dust from a “Freshie” is the most intense high, and pain free—for the carver. 
     By the end of that first meeting Dory is running scared, afraid of being “dusted”, though the psych. hospital staff doesn’t believe a word she says.  She’s delusional—at least that’s what they tell her.  They end up sending her to that same counseling group every day, though Dory knows that all those junkie cutters want is what’s inside of her, and they won’t give up until they get what they’re after.
     Like Girl Interrupted and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, The Bone Cutters is one woman’s dark and surreal experience with a madness that is not necessarily her own. 

Writers are a funny bunch; they spend their lives pouring their blood sweat tears and heart onto the page.  They give us an insight into their most private and personal thoughts, creating works that expose them to the criticism and microscopic intrusion that life in the modern world brings, I don't know how they do it. 

99.99% of the time they are a beautiful bunch of people, but we all know that one arrogant, know it all, the writer who thinks editors dilute their creativity, readers who don't get their masterpiece, and my work is a work of genius and deserves to be read by everybody type.  In my experience, they tend to be big white males, full of fake buff and bluster, depressed that their writing career has gone the way of their hair and drained out down some dirty plughole in their lonely bedsit.  

Todd Milstead is one such writer, is the dictionary had pictures in it,  arrogant would have been replaced by a picture of him.  Even before the main thrust of All My Colours  by David Quantick begins, he is already on a downward spiral chasing that literary great white whale of the Great American Novel.  With a wastebasket in his author's den filled with thousands of drafts of the first page of next great literary novel, and a marriage that is circling the metaphoric plug hole of his life in general.  But things are about to get even worse for Todd, little does he know that his rant a dinner party will set him on a quest to find a book that only he seems to remember that will take him to the pure dark heart of the great American novel.  

David Quantic is a quintessentially English writer, best known for his work on some the UK's finest comedies, he brings his trademark sense of wry, self-referential comedy to this dark and hilarious novel.  You have to wonder if his experiences of being a writer on the American comedy show Veep served as an inspiration for the plight of Todd Milstead, there is undoubtedly a degree of the fish out of the water, and I don't quite belong here to his narrative.  One hopes that he is based solely on the themes and not on how David acted during his time in Hollywood. 

Mixing biting  Delvish satire with a brooding Lovecraftian sense of foreboding, Quantick has created a novel that looks deeply into the destructive nature of artistic creation.  There is a refreshing honesty to this novel, OK Milstead goes through and does some pretty nasty stuff, but look beyond that, and you will witness Quantick bearing his soul on the page.  This is, above all a brutal warts and all look at how creative types can run the risk of losing everything to see the creations born out into the world.  

Quantick keeps the story flowing fast, with his assured use of dialogue rather than long descriptive passages to move the narrative forward, which is not surprising considering his background in script writing.  Balance the absurd, and nasty with a razor sharp wit Quantick has written a book that can be read and enjoyed by a wide fanbase.  There are enough horror and cosmic shenanigans to please the horror crowd, and there are enough humour and reflective analysis to appeal to the broader audience.  

All My Colours is also one of those books that a lot of people have a hard time identifying with, due to the lack of characters that you can root for.  Don't come into this book expecting Milstead and the other residents to be your cliched middle American polo shirt, chino wearing square-jawed protagonist, that every man secretly wants to be and who can turn women weak at the knee with just a wink of their sapphire blue eyes.  No these are a bunch of despicable reprobates,  photorealistic caricatures of everything that is wrong with the fame side of the creative world.   There is nobody to root for, but you will be rooting and tooting with laughter as you read this book.  

All My Colours is the perfect companion to TV's Black Mirror, and may just give you an insight into why authors and creatives can be a bit messed up in the head 

From Emmy-award winning author David Quantick, All My Colors is a darkly comic novel about a man who remembers a book that may not exist, with dire consequences. A bizarre, mind-bending story at the intersection of Richard Bachman, Charlie Kaufman and Franz Kafka.
It is March 1979 in DeKalb Illinois. Todd Milstead is a wannabe writer, a serial adulterer, and a jerk, only tolerated by his friends because he throws the best parties with the best booze. During one particular party, Todd is showing off his perfect recall, quoting poetry and literature word for word plucked from his eidetic memory. When he begins quoting from a book no one else seems to know, a novel called All My Colors, Todd is incredulous. He can quote it from cover to cover and yet it doesn’t seem to exist.
With a looming divorce and mounting financial worries, Todd finally tries to write a novel, with the vague idea of making money from his talent. The only problem is he can’t write. But the book – All My Colors – is there in his head. Todd makes a decision: he will “write” this book that nobody but him can remember. After all, if nobody’s heard of it, how can he get into trouble?
As the dire consequences of his actions come home to both Todd and his long-suffering friends, it becomes clear that there is a high – and painful – price to pay for his crime.

​ It’s no surprise really that Congeal from John F Leonard has gained a solid five star review from me, the man’s work just speaks to me at the soul level. His style of writing has a certain tone to it which resonates with me deeply, and his stories, his characters, they are always so ‘real’ that I instantly bond with them.

Congeal is possibly my favourite tale from John F Leonard, a sequel in some ways to The Bledbrooke Works (another wonderful tale), Congeal is a delicious post-apocalyptic outing with undertones of anti-establishment politics as well as covering the ‘is it all worth it’ questions.

I don’t know really if the anti-capitalist/anti-establishment tones were intentional, as always art is very subjective, one persons high can be another’s low. It’s not all together unlikely that my own views on the current modern world have seeped through when reading Congeal, so I apologise if I should go off on a tangent.

“She was adding to the pollution of the world when she could be adding something pure and innocent”

Amelia and Peter are running out of daylight, and energy. They bunker up in what used to be an office building, Lloyd Plaza, in hopes of safety from ‘The Clag’. A monstrosity from below, all powerful and all consuming with the intent of devouring all life on the planet, nothing can stand in its way.

Amelia, our protagonist, is very complex yet simple character, a contradiction I know, yet the way I would describe her. She has many layers, has dealt with unspeakable horrors and is still doing so, yet the simplicity of her is refreshing. She is probably one of the realest characters I have read. Her actions and choices come from a place of pure despair; she is ruined, yet somehow purified. I feel like she has gone through the ultimate trauma, and has gained a sense of clarity that few of us ever reach.

I feel I could bond with her over her guilt at working within the capitalist machine, yet as much as she despised her life before the end, she would still rather be doing that.

“Turns out that corrupt consumerism is preferable to post-apocalyptic subsistence.”

Comments about Peter being “built for this” and that she would rather just give up, it was quite tragic in a terribly understandable way. We have all become so accustomed to modern ‘pampered’ living that there are those of us who would just ‘give up’.

Personally, I felt like ‘The Clag’ was our primal selves returning to show us just how far we have strayed. The obsession with money and accumulating things has taken over our lives to the point that consumerism is actually ‘They Clag’ incarnate.

Congeal is a fantastically intricate work of art from John F Leonard. From the authors note it would seem we have more sequels in the works, and I for one cannot wait. He is a wonderfully talented writer, he never fails to impress.

​by Lesley-Ann