Month: February 2016

Review: Hoffman’s Creeper and other disturbing tales, by Cameron Trost

Hoffman’s Creeper and other disturbing tales is a collection of short horror stories from writer and editor/head of Black Beacon Books, Cameron Trost.Hoffman's Creeper

Trost’s picks for this collection cover a gamut of locations and horror subgenres. Some of the settings leap out in recognition for the familiar. There’s a very human element in many of these stories, which makes for strong fiction, especially when suspecting there might be an element of Trost exploring some of his own fears through his writing.

Hoffman’s Creeper, the title story for this collection was a delightfully dark picture of a man who preferred plants to people, including a creeper from the Australian bush, stolen from our First Peoples. Kangaroo Point is the internalised horrific imaginings of any good Samaritan.

Trost has left many of these stories open-ended. Some certainly felt like they could have been explored further to become truly terrifying. It may be that this was a lot of what he was writing previously, and outside my personal preference. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t a thrilling collection of stories to read, however.

The strength of Trost’s writing is in dialogue you can almost hear, and settings you can smell, see and feel. There’s variety in the types of horror on display, and more of the slow creeping tingle of fear up your neck.

Reading these stories, I feel that Trost’s work has evolved since he wrote them. Like any writer worth their salt, his work gets better and better.

Hoffman’s Creeper and other disturbing tales is perfect for bite-sized fiction sittings–I read mine on my train journey to work–and if you liked these stories, Cameron Trost has many more thrills to offer you.

You can find purchasing details of Hoffman’s Creeper and other disturbing tales at his blog.

Disclaimer: Cameron Trost and I have published each other’s stories. I appear in Black Beacon Books’ Subtropical Suspense with my story Downpour, and he in SQ Mag with The Church of Asag.  Read The Church of Asag here. However, I sought a copy of this for myself and my review has been in no way compelled.

 

February fun

February has been burning through the days post-haste, as if the month wasn’t already short enough. (Can you sense my panic of a wedding deadline rapidly approaching?)

But it’s been fun. I’ve been participating in Post-it note poetry month. You might have seen the poems I’ve been sharing. Post-it note poetry started out of Brisbane with Jodi Cleghorn and Adam Byatt, and is now collated by a SB Wright, or Sean Wright, who you would recognise from The Adventures of a Bookonaut blog.

I’ve been introduced to new forms–my poetry is often free form prose–which has been a great new avenue for me. Mostly I’ve been posting my own page, but there’s also a Facebook group for Post-it note poetry or you can check out the #pinp16 hashtag on Twitter to see many gorgeous poems. Below are two of the poems that people seemed to like the best: Grind & Wheel and To Sunshine. I’ll also do a wrap up at the end of the month.

Grinandwheel_SYorkston_pinp16   Tosunshine_SYorkston_pinp16

It’s also WiHM, or Women in Horror Month. It’s been great to see well-deserving writers getting the press and attention they deserve for their work and careers. And it should be every day, but it isn’t and until that day, we need to keep promoting.

Simon Dewar, editor of Suspended in Dusk, has collated a series of interviews with women from all aspects of the horror genre over at his blog. He even interviewed yours truly!

In honour of the month, I’ve been working on a disturbing short for publication; hoping I can polish it up a bit more in time for a looming deadline.

SQ Mag Edition 25 is also in the works, so I am busy getting that together.

But boy, what a fun and productive month (not to forget hectic) it has been so far!

Waking dreaming

Grief is an uncaring emotion. When you think you’re past it, it sneaks up on you years later and hits you straight in the solar plexus, leaving you emotionally bruised and struggling. It can be even worse when it hits you when you’re unguarded; when you’re low or lonely, when you have none of your regular conscious defenses.

In my case a simple conversation about beloved dogs (I believe) triggered mine; the boss and I were talking about how dogs have individual characters. Going to sleep, I wasn’t even thinking of that conversation, and besides, I like to remember Tam, my family’s first dog.

We lost Tam, our very own red dog, over 6 years ago. She lived to a ripe old age for a mid-sized dog, and she went without trauma or suffering.

Tam
Our beautiful old girl

She has been a frequent character in my dreams since we lost her. There was one time she had a very Death Becomes Her cameo, complete with cartoon-ish hole in the middle (she was happily trotting around, unawares, so it wasn’t all terrible). I often remember these dreams, so in a way it’s good to have a memory of her there.

The grief that has hit me was only a little bit about missing my first dog. It was what I said to her in the dream.

“Haven’t seen you in a while.”

And it’s true. She hasn’t been a part quite of my dreams for a good while.

It’s reality; life stretches on and you have other experiences. You won’t remember one person, entity, memory quite as frequently. And so it goes.

And that is what is driving my waking grief today.

My writer brain is trying to step outside, to think about how this applies to stories I might write. The compulsion to write is there, hence this blog post.

Grief is also tricky to capture. It’s a diverse experience, that has no time limit, few hallmarks of returning to life. It can be crushing, melancholic, hovering.

I’m feeling, wanting to talk about my grieving today. We are often encouraged to go on, ignoring that loss doesn’t follow the same course for everyone. If you do want to talk about yours here, feel free to drop me a comment. Or if you’re feeling sad but want to chat, drop me a line any way you know how.