Occultation and Other Stories

Occultation and Other StoriesOccultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron

At one point, I assumed Laird Barron was a peer of Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber because his name came up so often when I researched Lovecraftian writers. Of course, I realized my mistake, but I think that informs you about how esteemed Barron is in Lovecraftian circles. So, it was only a matter of time before I dove into some of his work.

In Occultation and Other Stories, Barron presents an array of macabre tales that manage to avoid easy categorization. The story that spooked me the most in this collection was The Broadsword. It’s a tale where the protagonist is an older gentleman hearing people talk about nefarious doings in his apartment’s vents. Things get freakier from there. I enjoyed a ton about this tale, but what stuck with me the most is the fact that The Broadsword effectively recreated the feelings I got while devouring The Whisperer in Darkness for the first time.

Catch Hell and Mysterium Tremendum worked in similar ways for me. They conjured feelings I associated with classic horror stories, but Barron made them feel fresh in his voice. It was also a lot of fun to see “The Black Guide” used in Mysterium Tremendum after reading about it in Paul Tremblay’s Growing Things and Other Stories last month.

Two stories that felt intensely unique were Strappado and – -30- -. Strappado is essentially a tale about a man seeing a Banksy gone wrong. While – – 30 – – deals with the ecology of an area that has something unknown wrong with it. It reminded me a little of Jeff VanderMeer’s (who is thanked in the acknowledgements section) Annihilation, but this was published four years before that. Barron does some of his most effective work when he writes about nature, and I assume that his time living in Alaska probably gave him a unique perspective on the subject.

Lastly, Barron often challenges traditional Lovecraftian tropes. His protagonists come from different ethnicities and genders and go beyond the typical Lovecraftian type, and he deals with sex and sexuality in every story, something often avoided in Lovecraftian yarns. Besides sex, insects also seemed to show up to some degree in every story in this collection, but I’m not sure if that’s a coincidence or not. Bugs certainly play a huge role in Occultation’s first story, The Forest. In that opening story, Barron also has a character named Toshi, whom I assumed was partially inspired by famed Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi.

Overall, I enjoyed all these stories, and I’d like to revisit them to work through the nuts and bolts of how Barron writes. One of the pains of working forty-hour weeks and listening to everything on audible is that I don’t get to underline and mark up the text in front of me. Perhaps I’ll seek out a physical copy of Laird Barron’s Occultation and Other Stories to do just that.

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Growing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay

Growing Things and Other StoriesGrowing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay

There’s a fun diversity of narrative forms on display in Paul Tremblay’s Growing Things and Other Stories. Notes from the Dog Walkers gives us a story told exactly how the name indicates. Nineteen Snapshots of Dennisport is a yarn unwound by descriptions of old photographs. A Haunted House Is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken is a choose your own adventure. Tremblay also gives the reader stories that defy easy subgenre categorization and transcend typical tropes by being more nuanced and layered than expected. My favorite stories in this collection all have a Weird/Lovecraftian vibe, which is fitting since I just saw Tremblay at NecronomiCon in August. Notes for “The Barn in the Wild,” Where we All Will Be, and Our Town’s Monster are three that I loved, but my absolute favorite was Something About Birds. This is a story about a story with references to other stories, and I just marveled at how well crafted, entertaining, and unique it was. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I consumed it. It’s a must-read. So, to end this nutshell review, I must ask, “would you prefer talons or beak?”

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Choose Your Own Ending – Shower Scenario

Hi Everyone,

I’d like you to write an ending for the flash fiction below in three sentences or less. Drop your conclusion in the comments. Feel free to do anything you can imagine in those three sentences.

I was inspired to create this post because I recently finished Paul Tremblay’s Growing Things and Other Stories. In that collection, he has a choose your own adventure narrative called A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken. I’ve also been itching to try writing a tale in the second person, and this seemed like a good opportunity to give it a go.

The Story So Far…

Work was hell. Heaven is returning to an empty apartment to dwell in solitude for the evening. You shower to remove the filth of the day. There were too many mistakes to count. You shower to enjoy the heat and steam. A little pleasure makes the day’s missteps easier to accept. You shower to forget. Not that anyone else will. The water pressure doubles as a massage. It’s one of the few good things about your apartment complex. As you close your eyes and lather up your face with liquid soap, you hear the squeak of the bathroom door opening. No one else has a key to the apartment. A footstep echoes off the tile floor outside the shower. Your heart pounds so hard you worry it might burst from your chest. Leaning forward, you let the stream of water rinse your eyes of soap. You open them to see your black shower curtain blocking your view of the potential intruder. There’s only one option left. You…

Black Shower Curtain

Here are two awesome responses I got on Twitter.