“Thinking of reading some horror books to celebrate Halloween? We speak with an author from Calgary about his annual list of favorite horror reads.”
Listen here.
CBC Calgary Eyeopener interviews Mike Thorn about his favorite horror books
Launch discount for The Weird: A Companion (featuring a new Mike Thorn essay)
Order The Weird: A Companion, co-edited by Kristopher Woofter and Carl Sederholm, at a 30% discount using the attached flyer (offer ends May 30, 2025). This collection features contributions from Thomas Ligotti, Eugene Thacker, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, and many others (including a new Mike Thorn essay on Weird conventions in Darkest Hours).
Featuring a comprehensive editors’ introduction to the Weird as a mode engaging with forms of knowledge, transcendence, and resistance, this collection offers a broad-reaching discussion of Weird fiction, film, art, and thought. Its 31 essays explore theoretical and philosophical applications of the Weird, such as Black Metal Theory, and key Weird themes and tropes such as cosmic horror, radical embodiment and sensation, dark ecological speculation, and forms of alterity. Essays are highly varied in period focus and subject matter, ranging from early Weird works by William Hope Hodgson and Conan creator Robert E. Howard, to the surrealist paintings of Leonora Carrington, to more recent works by David Lynch, Octavia Butler, and Yorgos Lanthimos.
Craftwork S1E12: Cruel Elegance, Cosmic Pessimism, & Rust Belt Vibes w/ Paula D. Ashe
Listen to Craftwork S1E12: Cruel Elegance, Cosmic Pessimism, & Rust Belt Vibes w/ Paula D. Ashe.
In this interview, we chat with Paula D. Ashe about writer’s block, narrative movement, urban legends, and so much more.
Paula D. Ashe (she/her) is an author of dark fiction. Her debut collection We Are Here to Hurt Each Other (Nictitating Books) was a Shirley Jackson Award winner for Single Author Collection and a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. Recently, she received the Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Weird Fiction Award at NecronomiCon Providence. Paula was also an associate editor for Vastarien: A Literary Journal. She lives in the Midwest with her family.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
- Supplication – Nour Abi-Nakhoul
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- Books of Blood; The Damnation Game; The Hellbound Heart – Clive Barker
- Midnight Rooms – Donyae Coles
- Blood from the Air – Gemma Files
- “each thing i show you is a piece of my death” – Gemma Files & Stephen J. Barringer
- Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke – Eric LaRocca
- “Abed” – Elizabeth Massie
- The Scar – China Miéville
- Beloved; The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
- Song of the Tyrant Worm – Hailey Piper
- Flowers for the Sea – Zin E. Rocklyn
- Cows – Matthew Stokoe
- The Secret History – Donna Tartt
- The Color Purple – Alice Walker
- Where I End – Sophie White
The Social Commentary of DEAD SILENCE (w/Mike Thorn)
“Mike Thorn breaks down Dead Silence as we discuss The Uncanny, controlling others, the art of horror films, and look deep at the career of James Wan.”
Today on This is Horror — Meet the Writer: Mike Thorn
What first attracted you to horror writing?
Reflecting on my earliest childhood encounters with horror, I remember being initially attracted to the genre’s visual iconography, above all else. It seems impossible to separate my desire to write horror from my interest in reading horror. These two things are inextricably bound.
Review of Darkest Hours: Expanded Edition on IndieMuse
“In the short story notes, Thorn cites a lot of influences (both literary, musical and cinematic) that inform his work, but Thomas Ligotti seems to be a name that crops up throughout. While Darkest Hours covers a lot of the same themes (nihilism, anxiety, and the human condition), Thorn’s work approaches them in a far more mainstream and accessible way. Still, I think this says a lot about the prevailing tone of his work, and there are stories here that scared (‘Long Man’, ‘Sabbatical’), disturbed (‘The Auteur’, ‘Fear and Grace’) and disgusted (‘Fusion’) like few other collections have managed for me.”
Mike Thorn 