I was excited to see that Dan Coxon and Richard V. Hirst recently won the British Fantasy Award for “Best Non-Fiction” with last year’s important release from dead ink books, called WRITING THE UNCANNY: Essays on Crafting Strange Fiction. Coxon and Hirst’s book is an excellent anthology of mostly-UK writers sharing their strategies for writing… Continue reading Review: Writing the Uncanny: Essays on Crafting Strange Fiction (Coxon & Hirst, 2021)
Category: Fiction
Analysis of Das Unheimliche in fiction and other written narratives.
Folk Horror Expedition
I’ve been spending a lot of my research time lately investigating the subgenre of Folk Horror and enjoying what might be called the revival’s second wave, or a rising appreciation of it among cinephiles, spearheaded in recent days by the recent release of Kier-La Janisse’s documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched from Severin Films. I’m… Continue reading Folk Horror Expedition
New Online Course: “The Uncanny & The Abject”
“The Uncanny and The Abject”: Applying Psychology to Disturb the Reader Live Saturday, May 22, 5 P.M. EST — StokerCon 2021 Online Also Available Asynchronously Following the Event! Details TBA DESCRIPTION: This two hour online workshop will unravel the psychological theories of the Uncanny and the Abject. Together, we will explore how they pertain to… Continue reading New Online Course: “The Uncanny & The Abject”
Exploring Dark Short Fiction
I’ve been publishing as “Academic Advisor” to the Exploring Dark Short Fiction series of primers, put out by Dark Moon Books. Every title features a horror writer that deserves more attention particularly in the area of the short story, and includes four representative works plus a new short story they produce for the volume. I… Continue reading Exploring Dark Short Fiction
The Uncanny Mask in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Tree”
Charles Dickens is so well known for “A Christmas Carol,” that some of his other Christmas Tales are too sadly overlooked. In my favorite, the unassumingly-titled “A Christmas Tree,” the narrator muses over a tabletop Christmas Tree toy, and descends into haunted recollections about his own childhood toys and seasonal experiences in a manner that… Continue reading The Uncanny Mask in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Tree”
CALL FOR PAPERS: From Carmilla to Drusilla: Vampires Across Popular Culture (dl: Feb 15, 2018)
International Vampire Film and Arts Festival | 7-10 June 2018 | TRANSYLVANIA The third annual International Vampire Film and Arts Festival will take place in Sighisoara in Transylvania, Romania, on June 7th-10th, 2018. And to celebrate their popular fiction dual degree collaboration, WRITE TOGETHER — in which students earn an MA studying at Edinburgh Napier… Continue reading CALL FOR PAPERS: From Carmilla to Drusilla: Vampires Across Popular Culture (dl: Feb 15, 2018)
CALL FOR PAPERS: The Vampire Across Popular Culture (dl: Feb 1, 2017)
CALL FOR PAPERS CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT: The Vampire Across Popular Culture INTERNATIONAL VAMPIRE FILM AND ARTS FESTIVAL Transylvania, Romania May 25-28, 2017 http://www.ivfaf.com The second annual International Vampire Film and Arts Festival will take place in Sighisoara in Transylvania, Romania, on May 25th ‐ 28th 2017. [UPDATE: All paper presentations have been chosen for… Continue reading CALL FOR PAPERS: The Vampire Across Popular Culture (dl: Feb 1, 2017)
Mini-Review: Jamais Vu – The Journal of Strange Among the Familiar
Jamais Vu – The Journal of Strange Among the Familiar has just published its second issue, so I thought I’d mention this new forum of horror and fantasy here, as it relates to the Uncanny in its editorial mission. The journal is published by Post-Mortem Press, primarily known for their horror titles (like the fabulous… Continue reading Mini-Review: Jamais Vu – The Journal of Strange Among the Familiar
The Vampire Reborn
Boing Boing recently posted a great link to another vampire oddity that not only appropriates the popular uncanny icon of the vampire, but also that subgenre of “dolls” that for some are beautiful little darlings and for others are just too disturbingly close to real living babies — those uncanny valley dolls known as ‘reborns’.… Continue reading The Vampire Reborn
Strange Rain: An Uncanny Interactive Story for the iPad
STRANGE RAIN is a new iphone/ipad application (aka “app”) by Erik Loyer at opertoon.com that, simply, simulates looking through “a skylight on a rainy day.” Rain falls from the cloudy abyss “above” the viewer to splatter down on the glass of the device. Tilt the device and the atmosphere tilts back, too, maintaining a 3-dimensional… Continue reading Strange Rain: An Uncanny Interactive Story for the iPad