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I am about halfway through Michael McDowell’s Blackwater and it is excellent. For the most part it’s classic Southern Gothic, focused on the internecine dramas of factions within a wealthy Alabama family, and while this is interesting and well executed, when it switches into full on horror mode he’s an incredibly effective writer. There’s an “oh god what’s in the closet” sequence I read late at night and found myself skimming through because it got to me. I especially appreciate that the perpetuators of the worst things that happen are just as often human as they are supernatural. McDowell as a person is fairly fascinating- he started as a pulp horror writer in the 70s-80s, and once said in and interview “I would be perfectly willing if a publisher came up to me and said, "I need a novel about underwater Nazi cheerleaders and it has to be 309 pages long and I need fourteen chapters and a prologue.” In addition to his career as a horror/mystery writer (writing under a number of pen names) he also wrote the screenplay for Beetlejuice and contributed to that of The Nightmare Before Christmas before dying at 49 of complications related to AIDS. I’m going to stick with his books for a while, next up is his haunted house novel The Elementals. Eta: almost forgot to mention that he wrote the novelization for the movie Clue! Rain Brain fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Oct 28, 2025 |
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Oct 28, 2025 01:50
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Conrad_Birdie posted:We love McDowell here Ah crap I was preaching to the choir!
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Oct 28, 2025 15:32
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Oh no worries! I’ve been reading more horror lately as I’ve gotten kind of burnt out on sci-fi/fantasy and it’s been a mixed bag - McDowell has def been the high point by far, hence my very excited post. I’ve read horror sporadically in the past, but this current run started w/ Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, which are horror insofar as there are all the vampires, but which aren’t actually scary. I enjoy looking up the references and those led me to Nancy Collins’ Sunglasses at Night and JS Russell’s Celestial Dogs, both of which had more sexual grotesquerie then I personally care for (esp the former). Moved on to more recent stuff with Tingle’s Bury Your Gays and Cherie Priest’s It Was Her House First, they were Fine but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend. I’m waiting on Sarah Gailey’s Just Like Home to be free at the library as a friend with good taste loves it, and I figure I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and read Between Two Fires sooner rather then later. Has anyone read Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill? I deeply love Shirley Jackson, and while I think Hand’s Cass Neary books are great (I’m all for a shithead protagonist), and her Wylding Hall has some effective moments, those are pretty big shoes to fill.
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Oct 29, 2025 01:40
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