Weird Horror #1: Weird Horror, #1

By Naben Ruthnum

Welcome to the new pulp! Weird Horror magazine is a new venue for fiction, articles, reviews, illustration, and commentary. This is the magazine of weird tales that you've been craving. A modern, inclusive, diverse array of pulp fiction and commentary.

Long live the new pulp!

Our inaugural issue features contributions from David Bowman, Shikhar Dixit, Steve Duffy, Inna Effress, Tom Goldstein, Orrin Grey, Vince Haig, Nathaniel Winter-Hebert, Sam Heimer, John Langan, Suzan Palumbo, Ian Rogers, Naben Ruthnum, Lysette Stevenson, Simon Strantzas, and Steve Toase.

Fiction: Shikhar Dixit; Steve Duffy; Inna Effress; John Langan; Suzan Palumbo; Ian Rogers; Naben Ruthnum; and Steve Toase.

Non-fiction: Tom Goldstein; Orrin Grey; Lysette Stevenson; and Simon Strantzas.

Art: David Bowman; and Sam Heimer; and Nathaniel Winter-Hebert.

Design: Vince Haig; and Nathaniel Winter-Hebert

• Language: English
• Publisher: UndertowPubs
• Release date: Oct 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005680657

Naben Ruthnum

Naben Ruthnum is the author of A Hero of Our Time, and Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race. He lives in Toronto and also writes thrillers as Nathan Ripley.

Book preview

October 2020

© Undertow Publications and its contributors

PUBLISHER

Undertow Publications

1905 Faylee Crescent, Pickering ON, L1V 2T3, Canada

Undertowpublications.com

[e-mail]

EDITOR

Michael Kelly

STORY PROOFREADER

Carolyn Macdonell

LAYOUT, Additional artwork

Nathaniel Winter-Hebert

OPINION

Simon Strantzas

COMMENTARY

Orrin Grey

BOOKS

Lysette Stevenson

FILMS

Tom Goldstein

COVER ART

Sam Heimer

COVER AND MASTHEAD DESIGN

Vince Haig

INTERIOR ART

David Bowman

Welcome to the new pulp! Weird Horror magazine is a venue for fiction, articles, reviews, and commentary. Initially, we plan to publish twice yearly—March and October.

From October 1 through to November 30 we will be open to submissions of fiction. The best way to determine what we want is to pick up an issue.

FICTION GUIDELINES

Weird Horror magazine is open to submissions of fiction only from October 1 through November 30. The submission period covers 2 issues—March and October. Fiction must be original and previously unpublished anywhere, in any format, on any platform. Please do not query about reprints.

As we’ll be reading for 2 issues, it may take the full submission period to respond. Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Please inform us if your story is accepted elsewhere. No multiple submissions. Please send 1 story.

We are actively seeking new and underrepresented voices. We accept submissions from anyone, regardless of race, gender, or sexuality.

As our title suggests, we are seeking pulpy dark fiction in the weird fiction and horror genres of 500 to 5,000 words. Monsters, ghosts, creatures, fiends, demons, etc. Dark crime. Suspense. Mutants. Killers. Ghouls. Golems. Witches. Pulpy goodness! We are hoping to bring some fun (and terror) to our readers.

Payment is 1-cent-per-word (paid via PayPal) for first worldwide English-language rights, for use in the print and eBook editions. We ask for a 6-month exclusivity. Copyright remains with the author, and a contract will be provided.

Submit stories in Standard Manuscript Format as a Word document or PDF, and e-mail as an attachment to:

[e-mail]

Please format the subject line of your e-mail thusly: Submission - Story Title - Author Name

Please keep your cover letter short. Submissions sent outside the submission period will not be read.

Please query if you have any questions.

ADVERTISING

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A full-page ad is just $60 (U.S.) per insertion. A half-page ad is $40. Ad space is very limited. We reserve the right to refuse unsuitable material. Please contact us at

[e-mail].

- Michael Kelly

BEST LEFT IN THE SHADOWS,

Simon Strantzas On Horror

KICKING OPEN DOORS TO LIGHT AND SHADOW:

THE CRESTWOOD HOUSE MONSTER BOOKS,

Grey’s Grotesqueries by Orrin Grey

KRAZY KRAX,

by Naben Ruthnum

WHITE NOISE IN A WHITE ROOM,

by Steve Duffy

THE DEVIL AND THE DIVINE,

by Inna Effress

CHILDREN OF THE ROTTING STRAW,

by Steve Toase

HER VOICE, UNMASKED,

by Suzan Palumbo

YOU CAN’T SAVE THEM ALL,

by Ian Rogers

THE NIGHT KINGDOM,

by Shikhar Dixit

WHERE THE HOLLOW TREE WAITS,

by John Langan

THE MACABRE READER,

Book Reviews by Lysette Stevenson

ABERRANT VISIONS,

Film Reviews by Tom Goldstein

CONTRIBUTORS

SIMON STRANTZAS ON HORROR

Best Left in the Shadows

IF WE’RE GOING to talk about Horror‚ be it Weird Horror, Quiet Horror, Urban Horror, Psychological Horror, Gothic Horror, or whatever your favourite kind of Horror is‚ first we have to define it. Wait! Before you stop reading: listen, I get it. The idea of defining Horror has been done. Again and again. Over and over. Since before the World Fantasy Convention was a glimmer in anybody’s eye, there were a bunch of people sitting in a circle asking: What do you think Horror is?

So, what is it? Beats me. Because Horror is just another in a long line of names for this sort of fiction, and the only people really tied to the name are people like me: folks who grew up during the great boom, when Horror was a popular marketing term used to describe what we were reading and writing. All those categories I rattled off a paragraph ago? They’re all the same Horror. The only potentially worthwhile distinction, the only true separation of Horror into different things, is the differentiation between the genre of Horror, and the lens of horror.

In the first case, Horror is easy to define: it’s a set of tropes that, when combined add a recognizable element to a story. Take one nuclear family, add one old house plus a death in the past, sprinkle in a curse and a bit of blood. Bake at 350°F for 20 minutes or until done.

The other kind of Horror, the lens of horror, is a bit harder to define because by its nature it’s undefinable. By which I don’t mean we can’t come up with some sort of definition, but rather that its boundaries can’t be so clearly mapped. Fiction written through the lens of horror is fiction that is not about tropes, but rather about intention. It’s about exploring those things and feelings that society, as a whole, doesn’t want to deal with. The fears and the jealousies and the prejudices that inform our daily lives, transformed by the magic of fiction into metaphorical creatures and forces born of another place. It’s often interstitial, often forward thinking, looking for new ways to reflect the world back to us in a way we can understand, even if that understanding is only instinctual.

But, as I said, we call it all Horror because that’s what we call it. If we were born twenty years earlier, we might call it ESP Fiction. If we were born twenty years later, we might call it Weird Fiction. It’s all the same thing under different coats of paint. We either want something new and different, or comfortable and familiar. Or, often, something between.

Because the whole idea that anything is binary is a crock, right? Can we agree on that? Horror isn’t strictly commercial, and it isn’t strictly artistic. It doesn’t just make you think, and it doesn’t just make you feel. Good Horror, like good everything else, works in the grey areas between. How close you want to get to either extreme is the only question, and the answer doesn’t always need to be the same.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just about knowing what you want. It’s about knowing where to find it. Because not all venues are equal. The more you want the fiction you read to eschew tropes and be written through the lens of horror, the more you will find yourself reading works published by small and independent presses. The major presses, those big New York publishers‚ the kind you see in movies with editors who have improbably large discretionary funds, who give their writers absurdly large advances‚ they don’t really want fiction that pushes envelopes. What they want is what has already proven to work. That which is popular and, most importantly, sells. They want fiction that has had all its sharp edges smoothed down so it will appeal to the most and widest range of people possible. They want their Horror to be relatively safe, relatively conservative, even if the stories themselves are about ugly brutal things. They don’t want challenging.

But, in my opinion, the best Horror, the best fiction written through the lens of horror, is about challenging. Words like strange and weird aren’t category names: they are descriptors. Horror fiction needs to talk about bizarre things, consider the unconsidered, and think through the unthinkable. And the best Horror fiction is about exploring. About looking into our terrors and anxieties and learning where they’re from and what they mean. It means investigating the premise of otherworldly and extrapolating from it what its existence means to us and for us, and doing so in a way that’s pretty to some, ugly to others, and grotesque to most. This is why good fiction written through the lens of horror is not universally loved or understood. It’s challenging in a way that few readers are able to rise to meet. It’s fiction that wouldn’t survive in the light of a New York Publisher. It would wither and die. It needs to stay relegated to the shadows. Like fungus, that’s the only place it can really grow.

I hear you, though. What about [my favourite author]? They work in the big leagues. They are daring, are experimental. Both scares me and makes me think. What about [my favourite author]? Your favourite author is the exception. Sure. Why not? Like what you want to like. But I think your favourite author is writing those big-league novels (and, let’s face it, they’re writing novels) that fall squarely in the genre of Horror. They are using Horror tropes and bolting them on other types of stories, transforming them into Horror. They may have found a new twist in the way they do it, they maybe have bolted Horror onto a compelling thriller, but what these stories don’t do is explore Horror. Instead, they use Horror to explore other things. The truth is they don’t need Horror to tell their stories. The Horror is a means to an end. It’s a tool in the author’s toolbox.

But what do I know, right? I’ve written horror stories for a few years, and I’ve read Horror stories for a few years longer than that, but I probably know just as little about Horror as anybody else. There are scholarly takes and philosophical takes and psychological takes. There are definitions that put it in context with all fiction that’s come before, and others that put it in context with all history that’s come before. There are as many definitions of Horror as there are stars in the sky. This is just the way I see Horror. Maybe you see it differently. I mean, I hope you see it differently, because I suspect that’s what keeps a genre vibrant: the fact it’s never just one thing. §

Grey’s Grotesqueries

By Orrin Grey

Kicking Open Doors to Light and Shadow:

The Crestwood House Monster Books

IN HIS INTRODUCTION to the second volume of Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, Ben Stenbeck, and Dave Stewart’s wonderful gothic comic series Baltimore, no less a horror luminary than Joe R. Lansdale describes the original Universal monster movies, with their wonderfully gothic sets and shifty-eyed peasants and shambling monsters and fluttering bats.

The comic, he continues, goes where your mind went when you saw those films as a kid, goes where the film didn’t, but you think it did, because at that age your mind is fresh and open and full of light and shadow, all of it moving about in savage flickers, having not yet settled and found its civilized position.

I didn’t see the Universal movies that he’s describing when I was a kid. I arrived late to the Universal monsters, to Hammer’s gothic chillers, and all of their ilk. Born in 1981, I came into the world too late to be a true Monster Kid.

By the time I was watching television, schlock pictures like Squirm and The Food of the Gods had edged out the Shock Theater package of classic Universal flicks that provided a staple for horror hosts in the late ‘50s and into the ‘60s.

In their place, I had the Crestwood House monster books. Anyone of my age and proclivities knows the books well; if not by that name, then by a simple description—orange board books with distinctive fonts and a bat-shaped logo.

Each one of them focused on a monster or a monster movie. There were books for Universal greats like Dracula, Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and also King Kong, Godzilla, The Blob, The Deadly Mantis, and so on.

There were actually two series; the better-known orange books, which covered some of the bigger names, and a second series, retitled Movie Monsters, with purple covers and an orange font that looked like a high school letter jacket. This second series dealt with lesser-known films like The Mole People, Werewolf of London, House of Fear, and sequels including Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, and Revenge of the Creature.

When I was very young, my school library had plenty of both. They are the first books I can really remember reading. The text inside, often by Julian Clare May writing as Ian Thorne, retold the stories of the movies, sure, but it also placed them in context. The Dracula one talked about Bela Lugosi and Bram Stoker’s novel and other various cinematic adaptations of the Count. Ditto all the others.

I