Sometimes, you put out a book that just blows away everything in its path.

Doesn’t happen every time and every title, just sometimes. And you can taste the excitement, smell the fever, and feel the sense of pure adrenalin coursing through your veins.

Such a book is Liz Hand’s WYLDING HALL. Just check out this review from https://riverheightsbookreview and you’ll see what I mean.

“As we now know, an encounter with the beating heart of Wylding Hall leaves no one unscathed, even—or especially—the members of Windhollow Faire.”

When a member of British acid-folk group Windhollow Faire falls to her death in London, the band’s manager decides the remaining musicians should escape to Wylding Hall and regroup. At first, it seems his idea was a good one; the ancient country estate inspires an entire album’s worth of new material, all of it brilliant. But then lead singer Julian Blake vanishes into the house without a trace, and just like that, Windhollow Faire is through.

Decades later, a documentary filmmaker sets out to discover what really happened at Wylding Hall that fateful summer. This is that story, in the survivors’ own words.

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE meets HOUSE OF LEAVES by way of BEHIND THE MUSIC, Elizabeth Hand’s contemporary gothic novella, WYLDING HALL, is pure magic—and I’m not 100% certain that’s metaphor. It’s at once the tale of an idyllic summer—full of “kingfisher days and golden nights”—and a dreadful nightmare. 

Hand writes with elegance, power, and passion about the spell that music can cast and the sorcery that is its creation. Her prose enchants from page one, transporting you to another place and time and making you resent the real world when it has the audacity to intrude.

The interview conceit is wonderfully effective at building tension; having the cast collaborate to tell the story of Wylding Hall—like a band playing a piece of music—allows Hand to dole out details like an illicit drug, causing you to hang on every word lest you miss something crucial. It also forces you to wonder whether you’re getting the whole story. Are any of the narrators unreliable? Are all of them? How could you possibly know? And Hand makes excellent use of the form to develop her cast. Each interviewee has a voice so singular you can tell who’s talking without looking at the attributing header, and you learn a lot about each character from their storytelling style. When the curtains close, you’re left with the sense you know the truth—it hovers in your periphery, but if you turn to look at it straight on, it’ll disappear. The ending’s ambiguous enough to irritate those who hate loose ends, but I actually wish Hand had been just a little more vague; what’s scarier than the unknown? Regardless, I flat-out adored WYLDING HALL. If you love music and you’re a fan of good horror, Elizabeth Hand’s latest is a must-read.

See? And this one from Gary K. Wolfe in LOCUS:

Elizabeth Hand has a peculiar talent for conjuring up imaginary works of art out of a kind of dark nostalgia for real ones. Years after reading MORTAL LOVE, I still have to remind myself that I never actually saw the mad Victorian painting at the center of that novel, and it’s easy to convince yourself that there might actually have been a long-lost children’s TV episode called “Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol.” This seems to me a crucial aspect of Hand’s work, since she writes about the arts more consistently, and more immersively, than any other fantasy writer—painting, poetry, music, theater, photography, and in the case of the novella WYLDING HALL, the British folk revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In hindsight, there was always a kind of creepy Holdstockian sense of immanence about bands like Fairport Convention or the Incredible String Band (both mentioned in WYLDING HALL), and that’s enough to make it fair game for Hand’s sensibility.

The plot is fairly straightforward. In 1972, the manager of a youthful band called Windhollow Faire rents a remote manor house, parts of which date back to the Tudors, hoping that a summer without distractions will enable the band to produce a new album. Though haunted by the memory of a band member who apparently committed suicide and their own shifting alliances and hookups, they manage to get a crude outdoor recording made. But the house has a few secrets of its own, and the band’s charismatic and gorgeous leader Julian disappears without a trace at the end of the summer--the only clue being a strange girl in white whose shadowy image appears in the background of the photo, taken by a local amateur photographer, which later serves as the album cover. The narrative is told by the four surviving band members decades later, as well as by the manager, the girlfriend of a band member who visits briefly (and later becomes a professional psychic), a rock journalist and critic who also visits, and the photographer, now an estate agent who still overlooks the property.

In bare outline, WYLDING HALL has the lineaments of a traditional English ghost story, with a rambling house complete with hidden corridors, rooms that date back centuries, and a mysterious library abandoned for decades. (It’s in that library that the journalist, exploring the house on her own, encounters the strange girl in white who serves as the novella’s signature apparition.) But with its luminous evocation of a period and place, the resonance provided by the scattered hints of what has happened to the band members in the ensuing decades, and the shift among various viewpoints (the most distinct of which are the new lead singer Leslie and the journalist), the novella gains a strange power apart from its rather restrained supernatural manifestations, a power driven by the sense of lost dreams that has always driven Hand’s best fiction.

Gee, thanks, Gary!

The signed edition is well on the way to being ‘sold out’ and the regular edition is heading that way, too. Don’t miss out. This is an ideal read for fans of that peculiarly heady and nostalgic brand of quintessential English folk/rock. Indeed, I’m reminded here of staying with Ramsey and Jenny Campbell over in the Wirral some years ago now and being rather immersed in a new compilation of The Incredible String Band’s music which I had been playing in car all the way from England’s east coast to its west . . . so much so that I couldn’t get one of the songs out of my head—I don’t recall which one. But I’m sure you can imagine my sheer delight when Jenny joined in and we sang and we smiled and then, well, we opened another bottle. This book is like that, does that same thing, works that same magic. Marvelous stuff.

We’re aiming to have a teaser pamphlet of the first few pages ready for ReaderCon—it’s at the printers right now so copies will be there, along with Liz, on 10 July through 12 July. Gee whiz, I wish I could be there. I can almost hear the refrain of Windhollow Faire . . . or maybe that’s just the wind soughing in the chimney, connecting with something up there that sounds for all the world like approaching footsteps. Brrrr!

INNSMOUTH NIGHTMARES

And even more good stuff this time out with Lois H. Gresh’s follow-up anthology to the acclaimed DARK FUSIONS. 

This all-Innsmouth anthology features original stories by leading writers of weird fiction. If you think you’ve read everything possible about Innsmouth, then you’re in for a major treat because these stories are gems.

It’s a stellar line-up that Lois has assembled—take a look:

• Windows Underwater – John Shirley
• Cold Blood – Lavie Tidhar
• Fear Sun – Laird Barron
• Thicker Than Water – Paul Kane
• Strange Currents – Tim Lebbon
• Mourning People – Nancy Kilpatrick
• The Barnacle Daughter – Richard Gavin
• Between the Pilings – Steve Rasnic Tem
• The Imps of Innsmouth – Wilum H. Pugmire
• The Open Mouth of Charybdis – John Langan
• Water’s Edge – Tim Waggoner
• Dark Waters – William F. Nolan
• A Girl’s Life – Lisa Morton
• The Sea Witch – James A. Moore
• Brood – Jason V Brock
• Gone to Doggerland – Jonathan Thomas
• The Scent of the Hammer and the Feather – Joseph Pulver, Sr.
• Baubles – Nancy Holder
• The Waves Beckon – Donald Tyson
• The Cats of River Street (1925) – Caitlín R. Kiernan
• Some Kind of Mistake – S. T. Joshi

INTRODUCTION By Lois H. Gresh

This is the book of my dreams. I’ve always been fond of Innsmouth. Directly over my desk, a painting of Innsmouth hangs on an old hook left by the former inhabitants of my house. I spend most of my life at this desk, so Innsmouth is always with me. There’s something very appealing about the tottering village and its shambling denizens, the cults, the dreariness, the turbulence of the sea, and Devil Reef.

When I proposed this anthology to Pete Crowther at PS Publishing, I told him that I wanted to produce a book brimming with extraordinary Innsmouth stories. I wanted to produce a book that I would never grow tired of reading, a book that I would read every now and then for the rest of my life. I think that I succeeded.

I requested stories from all the top writers in the weird genre. I desperately wanted Ramsey Campbell, but alas, Pete had Ramsey squirreled away writing a trilogy of Lovecraftian novels, so Ramsey was a bit tanked out to pen a short Innsmouth tale. Almost everyone else is in this book—all the writers of weird fiction that readers go ape over. Given my obsession with Innsmouth, I was sorely tempted to add a story, but in the end, decided it would be poor form to write a story for an anthology of which I’m editor.

In short, this book is a killer. Every story supplies a knock-out punch. Opening the book is John Shirley’s “Windows Underwater.” This is a fantastic fusion of everything that is classically Innsmouth but with an incredible bizarre and futuristic twist. Tight writing, a scene you won’t forget (I love it!), and a great finale. This is John Shirley at his best.

I’m a big fan of Lavie Tidhar’s work, so I figured, if Lavie writes an Inns- mouth story, it’s bound to be radically different from everything else. I couldn’t have guessed more correctly. Lavie’s “Cold Blood” is unlike anything I’ve read about Innsmouth. Truman Capote as the Ultimate Outsider comes to Innsmouth with Nelle to determine the real truth behind murder. Lavie nails Capote’s character and also nails In Cold Blood—absolutely brilliant.

Approaching Innsmouth from an entirely different angle, Laird Barron’s “Fear Sun” is futuristic technopunk-weird. It reads as if it’s the beginning of a much longer tale, one that I would snatch up and read should it become avail- able. “Fear Sun” gives us Innsmouth run by a tough-as-nuts heiress, and for good measure, Laird dishes up a super-secret mad scientist laboratory, a spook, and a Gray Eminence. The writing is pure Laird, perfect in every way.

Are you excited yet?

After reading the first three stories, you may need to calm down before continuing because the killer tales just keep coming. Or you can just plow through these gems, read to the end, then circle back and re-read the whole book.

In Paul Kane’s “Thicker Than Water,” a jittery young woman sets off with her fiancé to meet her future in-laws for the first time. Yes, they live in Innsmouth, and if you haven’t guessed, wedding bells are not exactly chiming. Paul’s depictions of Innsmouth, the water, the in-laws, and the “good provider” are spot-on. I wrote in the guidelines for this book that I wanted weird stories about water, and Paul certainly delivered.

In Tim Lebbon’s “Strange Currents,” a man is lost at sea, but does he really want to reach land? What is it about the ocean currents that drives his lifeboat? This story evokes a vague feeling of The Call of Cthulhu as well as Innsmouth.

In Nancy Kilpatrick’s “Mourning People,” a woman must tidy up her moth- er’s affairs and honor a promise that can only be fulfilled in Innsmouth. Nancy beautifully captures the chilling, weird, depressing mood of Innsmouth.

Richard Gavin’s “The Barnacle Daughter” asks the question, So who’s your Daddy, do you even know? Young Rose seeks her lost daddy—is he dead, is he alive, or is he something else? And assuming she finds him, what will happen?

Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Between the Pilings” gives us stunning images of Innsmouth and its inhabitants. In Steve’s story, a man returns to the site of a very strange childhood vacation, one that didn’t end particularly well.

In “The Imps of Innsmouth” by Wilum Pugmire, a girl awakens to the old ways of Innsmouth. Classic Innsmouth. Classic Wilum. What more could you want?

John Langan’s “The Open Mouth of Charybdis” feels a bit like a Twilight Zone tale. As I finished John’s story, the closing Twilight Zone music actually ran through my head. The moral of this story is: never vacation in Innsmouth. You can change the name of a place, but you can’t change its substance.

Tim Waggoner’s “Water’s Edge” is told in second person, an unusual approach to weird fiction. In this story, we learn what might have happened to the ordinary creatures of Innsmouth since the village’s destruction years ago. Extra bonus: guest appearance by Lord Dagon.

Also featured in Innsmouth Nightmares is a new story by the one and only William F. Nolan. “Dark Waters” is a bittersweet tale about a man who honeymoons in the wrong place. I mean, would you choose Innsmouth for your honeymoon?

Lisa Morton’s “A Girl’s Life” supplies yet another twist to Innsmouth. In Lisa’s story, a young girl enters puberty, but “the change” isn’t what you think it is.

James A. Moore dishes up dark romance in “The Sea Witch.” The poor love-sopped fellow in this tale should take a cue from the weird hag who runs the local diner, and he should run for the hills. But he doesn’t. Of course.

In Jason V Brock’s “Brood,” a local sheriff deals with bizarre corpses and a strange Area 51-like place called The Manuxet River Nuclear Complex.

Then in Jonathan Thomas’ “Gone to Doggerland,” elderly Fiona gibbers irrationally like any other senile crone—or wait, perhaps her gibbering is something else. Bonus appearance: Aquatic Ape Theory.

Next up is “The Scent of the Hammer and the Feather” by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., whose poetic prose is unlike anybody else’s working in the weird genre today. Here, he beautifully captures adolescent angst: all the loneliness, the feelings of not belonging, the questioning of one’s very existence.
Nancy Holder’s “Baubles” is a story of teenage adventure and weird romance. As an aside, would you want a gift bought in Innsmouth? After all, it’s such a cool “hippie” town. Any gift from Innsmouth must be super-cool, right?

In Donald Tyson’s “The Waves Beckon,” a nurse is fired from the Arkham Hospital and finds work at Innsmouth’s Marsh Care Facility. Oh, need I say more? If you want a fun romp, this is it.

Caitlín R. Kiernan’s “The Cats of River Street (1925)” evokes the bizarre, bleak, and decaying nature of Innsmouth. This is a beautifully written story, with Caitín at her best.

The closing tale is S. T. Joshi’s novelette “Some Kind of Mistake,” in which a born-in-Innsmouth fellow returns home to seek Maxwell Gilman, a madman who threatens all of humanity. Beware of global warming. Beware of the technologies that pollute the Earth and its waters. But beware of Gilman? Perhaps, but perhaps not.

I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed editing it. If you like tales about Innsmouth, you’re in for a real treat.

Lois H. Gresh
March 2015

That’s just about it this time save to close with a promised (threatened?) photo of me (the one with the beard) and my old friend Simon Conway, the original ‘S’ in PS (see last week’s—and other earlier editions—of the Newsletter for the full story).

Look after yourselves, have fun . . . and make sure you have yourselves some happy reading!

Pete