In this interview, Randy Nikkel Schroeder talks about noir, character possession, Biblical frisson, and so much more. Listen here.
Randy Nikkel Schroeder is the author of Arctic Smoke (NeWest), Crooked Timber: Seven Suburban Faerie Tales (Green Magpie), and over fifty published short stories. In his spare time, he is professor of English, Languages, and Cultures at Mount Royal University.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Queenpin; The Turnout; You Will Know Me – Megan Abbott
Poetics – Aristotle
Book of Greek Myths – Ingri d’Aulaire & Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
Dave Robicheaux novels – James Lee Burke
The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know – Shawn Coyne
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover
Red Dragon – Thomas Harris
Winter’s Tale – Mark Helprin
The Lottery and Other Stories – Shirley Jackson
Rose Madder – Stephen King
Mystic River – Dennis Lehane
The Magician’s Nephew – C. S. Lewis
Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for Page, Stage, and Screen – Robert McKee
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different – Chuck Palahniuk
Co-hosted by Mike Thorn and Miriam Richer this podcast will feature conversations with writers of all narrative genres about craft, technique, and process. Watch this space for updates. Follow on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
I read 101 books in 2023. Here are my favorite first reads (pre-2023 releases only).
The top twenty are organized chronologically (I restricted myself to one per author). The rest are organized by authors’ last names.
Top twenty:
The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851) Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert (1856) The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins (1860) Roderick Hudson, by Henry James (1875) Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy (1891) Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by M. R. James (1904) The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton (1905) The Listener and Other Stories, by Algernon Blackwood (1907) The Subjugated Beast, by R. R. Ryan (1938) Native Son, by Richard Wright (1940) The Hounds of Tindalos, by Frank Belknap Long (1946) Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil (1947) The Road Through the Wall, by Shirley Jackson (1948) Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin (1956) The Wapshot Chronicle, by John Cheever (1957) The Collector, by John Fowles (1963) Julia, by Peter Straub (1975) The House Next Door, by Anne Rivers Siddons (1978) The Ceremonies, by T. E. D. Klein (1984) Soul/Mate, by Joyce Carol Oates [as Rosamond Smith] (1989) Paradais, by Fernanda Melchor (2021)
Other standouts:
Poetics, by Aristotle (335 BCE) Inner Experience, by Georges Bataille (1943) Weird Mysticism: Philosophical Horror and the Mystical Text, by Brad Baumgartner (2021) Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica (2017) The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories, by Algernon Blackwood (1906) The Lure of the Unknown: Essays on the Strange, by Algernon Blackwood (2022) Drop City, by T. C. Boyle (2003) The Hungry Moon, by Ramsey Campbell (1986) The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares (1940) The Wapshot Scandal, by John Cheever (1964) Falconer, by John Cheever (1977) Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi (2019) A Short History of Decay, by E. M. Cioran (1949) The Vet’s Daughter, by Barbara Comyns (1959) The Juniper Tree, by Barbara Comyns (1985) Americana, by Don DeLillo (1971) The Names, by Don DeLillo (1982) God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, by Vine Deloria Jr. (1972) The Lost Daughter, by Elena Ferrante (2006) The Magus, by John Fowles (1965) Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill (2005) The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, by Amitav Ghosh (2016) Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, by J. Jack Halberstam (1995) Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris (1981) Last Summer, by Evan Hunter (1968) The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson (1949) Hangsaman, by Shirley Jackson (1951) The Bird’s Nest, by Shirley Jackson (1954) Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing, by Stephen King (2000) The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle (2016) The Moral Essays, by Giacomo Leopardi (1832) Hieroglyphics and Other Essays, by Arthur Machen (2022) Burnt Offerings, by Robert Marasco (1973) The Beetle, by Richard Marsh (1897) A Century of Weird Fiction, 1832–1937: Disgust, Metaphysics, and the Aesthetics of Cosmic Horror, by Jonathan Newell (2020) A Garden of Earthly Delights, by Joyce Carol Oates (1967) Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, by Joyce Carol Oates (1993) The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art, by Joyce Carol Oates (2003) Jack of Spades, by Joyce Carol Oates (2015) The Anthrobscene, by Jussi Parikka (2014) Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, by Paul Schrader (1972) EcoGothic, edited by Andrew Smith and William Hughes (2013) The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies, by Clark Ashton Smith (2014) Motley Stones, by Adalbert Stifter (1853) Marriages, by Peter Straub (1973) Koko, by Peter Straub (1988) Sides, by Peter Straub (2007) After Life, by Eugene Thacker (2010) Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene, edited by Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles (2021) A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, by Kathryn Yusoff (2018)
“Over the past few years I’ve had the privilege of enjoying an ongoing dialogue with one of my major creative influences, award-winning writer Kathe Koja. Two years ago, she and I discussed genre and process during the virtual launch for my second short story collection, Peel Back and See. Last year, we discussed our work’s relationship with cinema for In Review Online. While brainstorming about topics for future conversations, we decided to pursue the concept of numinosity: its permutations in literature in film and the role it plays in our own creative projects. This article is the result of our email thread on the subject.”
From the Airdrie Echo: “On Saturday at 11 a.m., we have another author reading, for adults this time, with Calgary horror author and film critic, Mike Thorn.
Thorn is the author of two short story collections, Darkest Hours and Dreams of Lake Drukka & Exhumation, and his film critiques can be found in several publications.”
Join us Saturday October 19, 2019 at 11:00am for the APL Author Series with Mike Thorn. Come enjoy open discussion and reading with the author and refreshments.
Mike Thorn is the author of the short story collection Darkest Hours.
His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies and podcasts, including Dark Moon Digest, The NoSleep Podcast, DarkFuse, Unnerving Magazine, Turn to Ash, and Tales to Terrify. His film criticism has been published in MUBI Notebook, The Film Stage, The Seventh Row, Bright Lights Film Journal and Vague Visages.
He completed his M.A. with a major in English literature at the University of Calgary, where he wrote a thesis on epistemophobia in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness.
Mike Thorn 