Corey's Stories #2 - with Thomas Ha

How To Talk To People Who Say They Don’t Like Short Stories:

So, I've been thinking of new ways to talk to people who "don't like short stories." (Notice the quotation marks :) ). I feel like this discourse doesn't happen as much in other mediums. Like if you're a painter. No one says, wow that's a beautiful landscape you've got there...but I really think it should be on a canvas that is eight feet taller.

...that would be a hilarious interaction.

The way I've been thinking about this lately is in comparison to television series versus movies. People go into a movie having an expected length for its run time, just as people who watch a season of something know there will probably be about X episodes for the entire arc. I feel like people should view short stories and novels in a similar light. Sometimes I'm in the mood for something longer and drawn out (TV Series/Novel) and sometimes I want something shorter I can consume in one sitting (Movie/Short Story). I never hear people saying things along the lines of "Hey, I enjoyed that movie, but I would have really preferred if it was actually twelve hour-long episodes. I couldn't get connected to the characters unless I spent a third of my work week with them." That would be crazy. And I know people are always going to have opinions, and that's cool, like what you want to like, but the general complaint I hear about short stories is this comparison to novels. And I'm over here like JUST ENJOY THEM EACH AS SEPARATE THINGS...THEY BOTH HAVE DIFFERENT PURPOSES...YOU CAN LOVE BOTH...FIND JOY WHERE YOU CAN THESE DAYS… 

So I guess this is all to say, next time you're talking to someone who says they dislike short stories for XYZ reason, pull out the movie/TV show comparison and see if you can convert them to the church of short stories. We have fancy vestments and never require tithes. 

Thomas Ha’s Top Five:

This month, I'm wicked excited to share Thomas Ha's five favorite short stories. Each month I will have another author on here doing something similar...and most of them will have cool new collections out or on the way, so that will be fun.

I had the privilege of reading Thomas's Uncertain Sons a few months back for the book buzz panel I was on at StokerCon's Librarian's day. Here's what I had to say:

Thomas Ha is one of my favorite new short story writers on the scene. I spend my life trying to find writers who fit somewhere between Kelly Link, Karen Russel, Laird Barron, and Nathan Ballingrud…and do you know where I’d place Thomas Ha??? Smack dab in the middle of them. If that doesn’t sell you on this, then I don’t know what will. This is dark sci-fi at its finest. Or maybe it’s Quiet Horror…or Weird Fiction…or…does it really matter? Every story in here is beautiful! Families live beneath the earth in relative comfort as an apocalypse sprawls above. A man has to trek across a warped landscape filled with hungry monsters to put his father’s memory to rest. A father and son encounter what feels like the strange futuristic folk horror cousin of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. There are weird altered creatures, strange rituals, collapsing worlds, endearing father-son relationships, the slightest hint at connected tales, mechanized books, unfortunate artists, and so much more. 

This is one of my most anticipated collections of the year and hopefully it will be one of yours too.

Thomas Ha’s Top 5 Stories

5 Recommended Short Stories

"Kino" by Haruki Murakami in Men Without Women

In some ways, this is a quintessential Murakami story, but in others it's not. Like many of his shorts, there's a sort of melancholy loner protagonist surrounded by strange occurrences as he deals with the dissolution of his marriage. But lurking underneath that is an unsettled pain that can't express itself. It results in a very sudden, almost ghostly ending that is equal parts sad, unsettling, and abrupt. The power of that ending, and how different it is from his others (save maybe one or two I can think of) is what continues to make me think about it, even years later.

"The Death of Dr. Island" by Gene Wolfe in The Best of Gene Wolfe and The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories

It's very difficult to pick a favorite Gene Wolfe story. I could have picked just Wolfe stories for all five recommendations. But this may be one of his very best. Possibly lesser known than his other "Island" story that precedes this one ("The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories") but won Wolfe his first Nebula, this is a piece that really blew me away and made me a fan for life. A boy with a troubled past and a strange brain condition is trapped in a far future psychiatric facility that seems to be a kind of sentient island, along with a scarily violent man and a depressed, sometimes incoherent girl. There are a lot of themes about institutionalization, individuals versus systems, and the human ability to survive or sometimes rage against trauma. It's such a brilliant world, peppered with cool technological ideas and such sharply realized characters. Very dark and melancholic in its resolution and laments the things that society seems willing to sacrifice. One of many of Wolfe's mind-blowing novellas.

"The Tooth" by Shirley Jackson in The Lottery and Other Stories

Shirley Jackson is a horror icon for many reasons. Her dark humor, her insights about individuals and communities. But I really don't know anyone who describes the anxiety of moving about people, crowds, and unfamiliar environments as well as she does. "The Tooth" is ostensibly about a woman going into the city to visit the dentist. And it may just be my extreme fear of the dentist, or my absolute discomfort with crowds, but this disorienting trip, where the main character has her senses compromised and gradually becomes unmoored, really freaked me out more than any of her other stories, including "The Lottery." This is a story made in a lab specifically for people with anxiety and trust issues.

"The Hero as Werwolf" (not a typo!) by Gene Wolfe in The Best of Gene Wolfe

Okay, why not, one more Wolfe story. Very dark from the get go: it follows a murderous protagonist living in a crumbling society where most people have evolved into a higher class, but some have been left behind to continue on as creepy cannibals and thieves in the shadows. Something like Bloodborne meets Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. The sheer number of concepts and details about the twisted world would be enough to populate a novel, if not multiple novels, but (almost thankfully, in some ways) gets limited and concentrated to just this short story.

"The Evening and the Morning and the Night" by Octavia Butler in Bloodchild and Other Stories

A novelette about a terrible disease and the way it reshapes society. This was one of the first Butler stories I read. This one is gut-wrenching, not just because of the ideas and the characters, but for really putting readers in the minds of people whose lives are limited by a disease that threatens to rob them of their autonomy and dignity. Having loved ones with forms of disability and difficulties navigating exclusions from society, I am always particularly interested in the way writers consider or portray these ideas. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but there is a depth and nuance to the way Butler handles these topics that made it hit particularly hard. I'm not sure it's one people talk about as much, but it might be one of my favorites.

About Uncertain Sons

(Pre-Order Here:  https://undertowpublications.com/shop/uncertain-sons)

This collection is a multi-genre group of stories that don't always fall easily into one category, but on the whole, tend to span the borders of sci-fi, weird horror, and dark fantasy. If I were forced to choose one and recommend a piece to readers, I'd cheat slightly and say it depends. If you're looking for a gradual introduction to some of the themes and ideas I tend to write about, I would recommend "Window Boy," which was originally published in Clarkesworld Magazine. It's a near-future story about a boy in a house, talking to a boy outside the house. There are familiar touchstones and set dressing in that one that make it a little easier to slip into before things get strange. But if you're looking for something that really sums up the collection and don't mind a little disorientation, I would recommend the titular novelette "Uncertain Sons." That one takes place in a far-gone decayed world, where a group of men wander dangerous foothills surrounded by all kinds of nasty creatures. It's dark, but I think also focuses on the virtues and beauties of human relationships and the ways those might carry people through the worst of situations. So yeah, one recommendation that's really bifurcated into two recommendations! Hope you enjoy it/them.

Exciting Book News!

Last week, Eric over at Cursed Morsels Press did the cover reveal for our split collection with Tiffany Morris! It's called The Writhing, Verdant End! It's all eco horror and it comes out on December 9th. The cover art was done by Lou-Ellen Allwood and the lettering was done by Alan Lastufka for Shortwave Press. The cover image comes from my novelette, The Final Sight, that kicks off the collection. I'm so stoked about the art...it's pretty perfect for my little binocular-gazing sad skeletal dudes. This is probably my strangest publication to date and I loved writing it. 

Here's the back cover copy:

An ailing community traverses a chasm of nightmare animal amalgams to reach the lush paradise beyond. Lovers in a plant apocalypse fight for survival and search for meaning in the face of immeasurable loss. Reunited friends resurrect an extinct bird through grisly sacrifices that bring about unexpected consequences.

The Writhing, Verdant End collects weird ecological horror stories by Corey Farrenkopf (author of Living in Cemeteries and Haunted Ecologies), Tiffany Morris (Green Fuse Burning), and Eric Raglin (Extinction Hymns), exploring the awe, terror, and strangeness of the natural world in dire times.

If that sounds interesting to you, here's the pre-order link HERE!!!

Corey’s Story

And here's your Corey Story for the month. I wrote this one a while back and really enjoyed the ambiguous angle of it (and the fun messing around with the photo album structure)...but I'm not sure most of the people I sent it to really knew what was going on here...and maybe that's because I made it too ambiguous...I do that sometimes...I do love to be vague :)

So, if you want, feel free to leave a comment telling me what the heck was actually happening in those pictures, that would be cool. It's always fun to hear what people get out of one of your stories!

Found Photos

Mae finds the photo album in her mother’s room after the funeral, hidden in the clutter beneath her bed. Earlier that morning, she decided to sort through the more personal spaces while her brother, Scott, cleared the basement. 

There is a lot of work in excavating a vacated life.

The years on the photo album read 1971 to 1981 in embossed pink. The album starts the year Mae was born, ending the year she reached middle school. 

Mae’s family was never one for photography. They hadn’t owned a camera as far as she could remember. 

Sitting cross legged on the yellow carpet, she spreads the plastic covers across her knees, flipping to the first page. 

Where she expects to find photographs of a hospital room, a baby swaddled in pink, her father in pale nurse scrubs, she finds her parents standing beside a camper ratcheted onto a pickup truck. Her father has long sideburns, her mother that same golden hair people always compared to dead grass. They smile at the camera, her mother definitely not pregnant, her father holding a beer with one hand, her mother’s hip with the other. Enormous pine trees compose the background, an impenetrable darkness between them.

Mae flips ahead, teeth clenched, palms going sweaty, feeling the slippery plastic slide through her fingers. She squints at the people before her as if she doesn’t recognize them. Her mother sits by a campfire, wearing a black bikini top and floral skirt, a crown of daisies twined in her hair. The pink edge of someone’s fingertip hovers in the corner of the shot. Mae’s father stands a ways off, by the pines, turned away from the camera as if in mid conversation with someone out of the shot. He’s shirtless, has something akin to tattoos scrawled over his chest. 

Mae’s father didn’t have tattoos.

He was an accountant. 

Mae anxiously flips ahead, chewing her lip, searching for an image of her mother with a baby bump, at a lamaze class, clothes that once fit now stretched taut against her stomach, but there are none.

A number of black photographs compose three pages. There are two tiny specks of red in each, like eyes glowing in the gloom. In the final blackened shot is a sliver of silver, almost like a smile emerging from the curtain of night. Mae can’t be sure. She tells herself her parents hadn’t realized they were taking the shot, or whoever was holding the camera hadn’t known there was still film in the camera. 

“But why keep them?” she asks out loud.

Flipping forward, she finds a picture of an unfamiliar woman standing outside a single-story ranch, rose bushes lining the front deck, her hair a similar curly black mess like Mae’s. The woman is short, her eyes tired as she smokes a cigarette, peering over her shoulder into the house.

Mae hesitates in turning the next page, but she gives in as the taste of bile climbs her throat.

The next photograph is of the same house, at night, a welcoming orange light spilling from the windows, casting illuminated rectangles across the grass. There’s a man and woman inside. He holds a baby to his chest. She cuts a steak placed on the kitchen table, knife sinking into rare meat.

The next photo is of her father, holding the same blood-slick knife, in the same warm orange glow of the house, but he is alone, just a light fixture overhead, a stretch of cabinets thrown open over his shoulder, contents in disarray.

On the opposite page is an image of Mae’s mother holding a baby as she glides back and forth in a rocking chair. The baby is crying, pink in the face. Mae’s mother is laughing, mouth open, something red and pulpy on her cheek, eyes half lidded as if stoned. A candle burns on a table to her left, the wax black, the flame’s tongue a slick of silver. Mae peers down at the baby, the river of tears, the dimple on her right cheek she, too, possesses.

Mae slams the album closed and hurls the plastic pages under the bed in which she believed her mother died, a sob clawing at her throat. 

She sits, shaking in the center of the room, carpet fibers wearing her knees raw.

After a few minutes, when the tears subside, she stands and walks towards the door.

Scott can find the album on his final sweep of the house, Mae tells herself. He isn’t sentimental. He won’t riffle through the pages, won’t line the dates up with his big sister’s birth. He’ll just throw the album away as if it means nothing more than the stack of old TV Guides in the living room. It will end up in the rental dumpster, then the dump itself, then the incinerator where everything will burn. 

Mae won’t be able to char the images from her mind, bury them beneath a layer of ash, but at least she’ll never see the remaining photos, the life she can’t remember bleeding into the life she can. She’ll never know who carried the camera, never know who sank the knife into who’s chest.

And it’s better that way. 

Scott was born only a few years after Mae.

The cover dates paint a nightmarish calendar.

Corey’s Recommendations:

And I know Thomas has given you a lot of great reading recs for your month, but I always have to add one or two of my own to the mix.

Have you read Sarah Pinsker's Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather published over in Uncanny Magazine and in her collection Lost Places. Well, if you haven't, it's a treat. It's a story that takes on the form of a chat room discussion about this folkloric song that a number of people are researching. There are myths surrounding it...particularly dark myths...and we get to follow along as this group of very dedicated songbirds search for the true meaning of the song, much like a contemporary version of Alan Lomax, the famous ethnomusicologist. This one does so much with the form and is so quietly spooky (which is always the way to my heart) that I can never recommend it enough.

And while we’re talking about Sarah Pinsker, I also want to mention her novelette (??? again, I’m bad at counting words) Two Truths and a Lie. You can find it over at Reactor.com or in the same collection as Oaken Hearts. This one is about a woman, Stella, who has to return to her childhood home town to help clean out her friend’s deceased brother’s hoarder house. While there, she jokes about this kids creepy local TV show (reminiscent of those found in Creepypastas) she’s made up…only for her friend to be like, NO THAT’S REAL! And Stella has to go investigate it…and eventually learns how her life was hauntingly connected to the show. It’s such a perfect story. You will love it!

What am I up to the next few months you might ask?

Upcoming Events:

If you've made it this far, thanks again for stopping by…I will probably make these a little shorter in the future…WOW THIS IS LONG! I hope you get some excellent short story reading out of all those words. Get excited for next month. We will have Kristina Ten stopping by with her five favorite stories and a little bit about her own forthcoming collection, Tell Me Yours, I'll Tell You Mine. And of course I'll have another story for everyone. Be well and I hope you have some chill downtime to spend with a book or two this September.

-Corey

And links to my Books! Can’t forget that!

Haunted Ecologies

Living in Cemeteries