Every year – no matter how extraordinary the story or stories – there are innumerable novels and anthologies that fall between the cracks. Unremarkable cover art, inadequate promotion, distribution issues, marketing miscues, or just plain bad timing – getting a stellar book exposed to the masses, and into the hands of readers who will truly enjoy it, is a much more difficult task than you’d expect: particularly if you’re a small press or a self-published author.
In my almost two decades as a book reviewer and editor for Barnes and Noble, Inc. and BarnesandNoble.com, I’ve seen hundreds of exceptional books released, some unarguable masterworks, only to sink into oblivion (see my blogs “The-Best-Fantasy-and-Science-Fiction-Novels-That-No-One-Has-Read” and “The-Best-Crime-Fiction-Novels-That-No-One-Has-Read”). I’ve also seen just as many mediocre books shoot up the bestseller lists and sell millions.
My job, essentially, is to seek out noteworthy genre fiction reads and to let you know about them – to stop them from falling between the cracks. Hence this particular blog.
Swallowed By The Cracks, the latest offering from small press Dark Arts Books, is a uniquely constructed e-anthology of first class dark fiction – ie: modern horror. Featuring four stories from four authors (Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S.G. Browne, and Michael Marshall Smith), this collection of previously published and new horror stories is impressively diverse and packs a powerful thematic punch.
Of the 16 stories included within, almost all of them could be considered potential standout selections. McMahon’s previously unpublished “Creep” is a subtle and sublime tale that follows a discontented woman slowly stalked by something she has unknowingly shaped:
“Your unspoken desire summoned me, created me from dust and darkness, inviting me inside. The constant feeling you have that something bad will happen – that’s me. I am the jinx, the genie from the bottle that should never have been opened. I am the cancer in the marrow of your bones, the toxins in your bloodstream. I know it all – I know what you want.”
“Appetite of the Cyber Tribes” by Thomas explores the dark loneliness of a gay technical copywriter searching for love on the Internet. What he finds instead is a nightmarish “myth for the wired society.”
Browne’s “Dream Girls” is set in a future where sexual gratification is accomplished by a construct that can morph into anyone you desire: a porn star, a supermodel, the barista at the local Starbucks, etc. “Masturbation and fantasizing have become as outdated as analog. The fantasy is real and attainable, only a thought away.” But attaining the ultimate sexual fantasy opens the door for other darker fantasies…
“The Stuff That Goes On In Their Heads” by Smith begins as a heartfelt story about a father and his six-year old son. “To watch your son, asleep in his comfortable bed, with a tummy full of food that you made him, and a head full of story, arm gripping a furry polar bear you bought him on a whim but to which he’d taken as if they’d been separated at birth… that’s why we’re born. That’s why everything else is worth it.” But, after the boy tells his father about being bullied at school, the story takes a shocking turn…
Other noteworthy selections include McMahon’s disturbing “My Name is Natasha Putkin,” which revolves around a girl who has been abducted and has lived in a box underneath a bed for the last seven years; Browne’s “Lower Slaughter,” a story that follows travelers who stumble into the ultimate tourist trap; and “The Dodd Contrivance” by Thomas, a decidedly Algernon Blackwoodian thriller with steampunk undertones that pits an eccentric widower against an “unholy menagerie” of otherworldly monstrosities.
The brilliance of this arrangement – four stories from four authors – is that horror fans can get a real feel for these writers’ narrative voices. It’s like four separate short story collections fused together into one anthology. It also allows readers (like me) the opportunity to discover writers that they may have yet to experience. I’m a big Lee Thomas fan (The German, The Dust of Wonderland, et. al.) and I was really looking forward to reading his contributions to this anthology but I came away with a newfound respect for the other writers, particularly Gary McMahon.
While horror is still a dynamic and evolving genre – as evidenced by this anthology – there is an undeniable stigma in the way mainstream readers perceive it. It’s so much more than just Stephen King releases – how many times have I heard people define horror by referring to Stephen King?!? – in fact, the ongoing genre revolution (particularly in paranormal fantasy) where writers have been utilizing elements from a diversity of genres is radically expanding the boundaries of and redefining modern horror before our eyes.
In the introduction, editors Bill Breedlove and John Everson described the anthology – and the current state of horror – perfectly : [Swallowed By The Cracks as an anthology that] “mixes and bends genres without apology, because boundaries are exactly the thing that fiction should break.”
That said, fans of highly intelligent and inventive dark fiction should download this e-anthology asap, before it is swallowed by the cracks. Modern horror is so much more than the latest King novel – and this anthology is a clear signpost of where it's heading.
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
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