Daryl Gregory

[J-Sun]

I posted something about him in the November Book Releases thread, but that was a digression and maybe not the best place.

Anyone familiar with this author? What do they think? Did I post this in the wrong place and should it have gone in Horror? (I think he's actually a kind of diverse genre-bender, but I dunno.)

 

[GOLLUM]

I think here is as good a place as any to post this.

I have not heard of this author before.

If you can, perhaps (re)post something here to provide us with a clearer idea of what this person writes about and their particular style.

Cheers.

 

[J-Sun]

If you can, perhaps (re)post something here to provide us with a clearer idea of what this person writes about and their particular style.

Well, that's the thing: I don't know him, myself, and was asking everybody else. In the thread I linked to, I linked to the things that brought him to my attention: the anti-horror article (where that's not meant to be exactly 'against horror' but more 'inverted horror') and then the discussion of and excerpts from what was his newest book, Raising Stony Mayhall (which is Yet Another Zombie Novel, but manages to sound quite distinct from the flood) and now I hear he has a collection out.

The thing is, for instance, I love Poe but hate Barker (admittedly based on a single book and a bunch of movie commercials). I've never managed to read a King but the only based-on movie I know I like is Christine (which I like a lot). I'm just not a big horror guy, but I can get along fine with gothic spooky chilling quirky stuff or whatever. So I was mainly wondering what people thought of him in general, whether people thought he was "good" in the abstract and, specifically, whether he was close enough to my comfort zone for me to go outside it and get him.

And, of course, if he has a bunch of fans here, this would be a fine thread for those people to discusss him in.

 

[GOLLUM]

No worries.

Which barker book did you read?

 

[J-Sun]

Which barker book did you read?

This has come up before and I couldn't remember exactly and just said "one of the Books of Blood" but I got curious and looked up some covers and it appears to have been The Inhuman Condition (or Book IV in the original UK version).

A link from a link that just popped up in my RSS feeds has a review of Unpossible that makes it sound pretty cool. I think, unless somebody shows up and convinces me otherwise, that I'll give him a try.

-- How weird is that? I just followed a link from the linked article and it's talking specifically about readers 'not straying far from their comfortable niches' and 'expand[ing] your comfort zone'. That's just too on - I'll be checking him out.

 

[dask]

Just checked his home page. In addition to being a self-professed sf/fantasy writer (judging by the covers of his books he could be a horror hybrid, which is cool), he also writes comics. Probably worth checking out.

 

[spider from mars]

Just read the review of Unpossible (the short stories) at Publishers Weekly - looks really interesting. I'll definitely be trying to find a copy.