Today I allow my fellow Tales of Darkness and Dismay author, Autumn Christian, loose on my blog. Welcome, Autumn...
I’ll be honest, I’ve had to rewrite this blog post about four times. I’m nervous about the face I present to the Internet, and as a former closet writer I’m just getting used to talking about my writing to strangers. As a twenty-two year old, I don’t feel inclined to offer writing advice like some kind of pulp war hero, nor am I yet past the phase where I can promote myself without feeling an odd sort of unworthiness. My girlfriend recently took me to her aunt’s house for Christmas dinner. I felt like a strange creature in my doc martens and lace dress, sitting at the dinner table squeezing the tablecloth between my fingers.
“Congratulations on Autumn’s new book!” said this foreign family as they toasted me with wine and I tried to smile but instead hid my face into my shoulder.
“What kind of book is it?”
“Horror fiction,” I said, voice quiet, and the subject was quickly changed.
Nevertheless, I’m pleased to announce the release of my e-novella from Dark Continents, A Gentle Hell, which is part of the Tales of Darkness and Dismay. It can be purchased from amazon here. A Gentle Hell is comprised of four dark fiction short stories. Described as “surreal,” “beautiful and melancholy,” and “The Thinking Person’s horror”:
In They Promised Dreamless Death a salesmen sells sleep with the promise of a better life, but what dreams lurk beneath the substrate of consciousness for those who take it are stranger than they ever imagined.
In Your Demiurge is Dead, while the world adjusts to the death of God and the new reign of the Triple Goddess, Charles hunts for an Oklahoma murderer and is forced to confront his religious ideals when he encounters a new prophet.
The Dog That Bit Her, is the story of a neurotic young woman who gains freedom from her co-dependent marriage with the bite of a rabid dog.
And in the semi-autobiographical The Singing Grass, the artist and the writer converge at a meadow haunted by a carnivorous deer and the burnt monsters that show them the consequences of an artistic life.
If you’d like to follow me around the Interwebs, you can find me at my website autumnchristian.net, on twitter at @autumnxtian or on facebook.
- Autumn
Doesn't matter what age you are, if you've put together a book and published (published!) you have some advice to give, at the very least. I don't know why horror is so shunned. People obviously enjoy it else there would be no horror. Keep plugging along, Autumn. Your writing is already poetic and fluid, even at *22*.
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