Tag Archives: Carrie Laben

THE HORROR BUNDLE FROM WORD HORDE

Word Horde is proud to present a collaboration with StoryBundle, curated by Molly Tanzer. Here’s Molly:

We are fortunate enough to be witnessing a lush flowering of horror. From New Weird to throwback splatterpunk, the modes and expressions of the genre these days are as diverse as its writers. Whether you’re intimately familiar with the contemporary horror field, or just looking to dip your toe in a very deep—and monster-infested—pond, this bundle of horror novels and collections from sensational independent publisher Word Horde is not to be missed. You’re sure to find something strange, something scary, something transgressive, something that jumps out at you and demands to be reckoned with.

Word Horde’s list is eclectic, in the best way. Readers will find plenty of cosmic horror here, such as Brian Hauser’s Memento Mori, nestled alongside literary works such as John Langan’s The Fisherman, and lighter fare such as my own weird western Vermilion. You’ll also find a lot of music-inspired horror such as David Peak’s Corpsepaint, Tony McMillen’s An Augmented Fourth, and Carrie Laben’s A Hawk in the Woods. If you like your horror shorter, if not necessarily sweeter, we have a few stand-out collections, too. Orrin Grey’s Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales will dazzle you, Nadia Bulkin’s She Said Destroy will rebuke you, and Livia Llewellyn’s Furnace will incinerate you from within. As you can see, every book in this bundle has been selected because it’s essential reading for the up-to-date reader of modern horror fiction.

Like all speculative fiction, horror serves as a lens; as a mirror, really. When we read horror, we read about ourselves. That’s why it makes us shiver and squirm. So, enjoy seeing yourself reflected throughout the Horror Bundle from Word Horde. Only you’ll know if you’re seeing yourself in the heroes—or the monsters.

–Molly Tanzer

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of five books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.
• Corpsepaint by David Peak
• A Sick Gray Laugh by Nicole Cushing
• A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben
• The Fisherman by John Langan
• She Said Destroy by Nadia Bulkin

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all five of the regular books, plus TEN more books, for a total of fifteen!
• Beneath by Kristi DeMeester
• An Augmented Fourth by Tony McMillen
• Memento Mori – The Fathomless Shadows by Brian Hauser
• Stonefish by Scott R. Jones
• Furnace by Livia Llewellyn
• Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales by Orrin Grey
• The Human Alchemy by Michael Griffin
• The Raven’s Table by Christine Morgan
• The Unnamed Country by Jeffrey Thomas
• Vermilion by Molly Tanzer

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com

Stonefish streets, Scratch & Dent, and Word Horde’s Class of 2019 hits Apple Books

Scott R. Jones’s Stonefish hits the streets today. Look for it where better books are sold.

Stonefish by Scott R. Jones

A missing tech mogul…
…a jaded reporter…
…a damaged AI returned from a horrifying reality…
…and something lurking in the woods.

When journalist Den Secord is tasked with locating enigmatic tech guru Gregor Makarios, he soon finds his understanding of reality under threat. At the edge of the world, surrounded by primeval forests, in the paradisiacal environs of Gregor’s hi-tech hermitage, Den learns of the true nature of our Universe.

This is the way the world ends.

Heart of Darkness meets The Magus meets bleeding-edge psychedelic gnosticism in Stonefish, the debut novel from Scott R. Jones (When Stars Are Right, Shout Kill Revel Repeat).

Some recent returns means lots of new arrivals in our Scratch & Dent section. And while the condition of these books is less than perfect, we’d still love to find good homes for them. Perhaps your home. Novels, collections, and anthologies at great prices! Help us make room for more.

Word Horde books are now available on the Apple Books ebook platform. Look for our Class of 2019: Carrie Laben’s A Hawk in the Woods, Brian Hauser’s Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows, Craig Laurance Gidney’s A Spectral Hue, Nicole Cushing’s A Sick Gray Laugh, Jeffrey Thomas’s The Unnamed Country, and more (including Scott R. Jones’s Stonefish). And we’re still uploading, so if you don’t spot your favorite Word Horde titles at Apple Books now, you will soon!

It’s not too late to read the best books of 2019!

Here at Word Horde, we think we put out some of the best books of the year. Every year. And we’re not alone in thinking this. Here’s a round-up of some of the praise Word Horde books received as we moved into 2020.

Max Booth III said the following of Carrie Laben’s A Hawk in the Woods, “Consider this book the Geek Love of witchcraft. […] This is the best debut novel you’ll read all year.” And Max also names Carrie Laben’s A Hawk in the Woods one of the best weird and dark books of 2019 for the San Antonio Current, saying, “Laben’s novel is a gloomy celebration of black magic and everything that comes with it.”

NPR and Vernacular Books both picked Craig Laurance Gidney’s A Spectral Hue as one of the best books of 2019, as did Rosanne Rabinowitz and Bogi Takács.

LitReactor called Nicole Cushing’s A Sick Gray Laugh and John Langan’s The Fisherman two of the best books of the decade!

Signal Horizon‘s Carson Winter picked Nicole Cushing’s A Sick Gray Laugh and Brian Hauser’s Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows as two of the best books of 2019

TBN Weekly recommended Jeffrey Thomas’ The Unnamed Country, as did Paul StJohn Mackintosh of Grey Dog Tales, who writes, ““This is a modern classic of writing about another country or culture on the level of Lafcadio Hearn or ltalo Calvino.”

And we had a nice write-up in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, too!

The Word Horde Interview: Carrie Laben talks A Hawk in the Woods with Amber-Rose Reed

Recently, author Carrie Laben sat down with Amber-Rose Reed to talk about Carrie’s debut novel, A Hawk in the Woods. This is their conversation.

A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben

Amber-Rose Reed: A Hawk in the Woods is your debut novel, but you’ve published a good deal of short fiction. Did you know when you began the book that it would be a novel, or did it grow out of a shorter piece?

Carrie Laben: I knew Hawk would be a book-length project right from the start, because I knew that Abby and Martha would never be coherent characters unless the reader got a full picture of their family background as well as their present-day dilemma. Also, their powers (Martha’s in particular) need a fair amount of explanation. Otherwise, they’re just two very odd women doing very odd, sometimes unpleasant things.

Amber-Rose Reed: What was your initial inspiration for this book? Was there an idea, an image, or character that struck you and drew you into the story?

Carrie Laben: The initial initial inspiration is rather spoilery — I can, however, say that I drew from several real-life news stories that made a deep impression on me when I was younger, and I wanted to investigate the emotional desperation that might make someone commit the crime that sent Martha to prison. Once I started writing, Abby made sure I never gave up. I wanted to really understand what made someone like her — not exactly a villain, but certainly no hero, and someone whose most positive and most negative traits are closely linked — tick. And I wanted to be able to explain it to other people.

Amber-Rose Reed: There are a lot of disparate threads that weave together in the novel — illness; family history, drama, and trauma; as well as prison breaks and road trips, and of course the supernatural. How did you draw those story elements together into a whole? Were there certain aspects clearer from the beginning?

Carrie Laben: There were many times during the writing of this novel that I compared it to putting an octopus into a laundry basket — no sooner would I get one tentacle in than two more would pop out!  But the family history is the body of that octopus, with everything else growing out of it, so I kept coming back to that and making sure that even the most dramatic scenes flowed naturally out of what I already knew about these characters.

Amber-Rose Reed: Abby’s voice is distinctly modern, and some of her experience is very every-day relatable (who amongst us hasn’t been mansplained to on Twitter?). However, not all of what she goes through in this novel can be live-tweeted. How did you go about balancing the tone and feel of her every-day modern life, the family history they return to, and the horror aspects of the novel?

Carrie Laben: To me, taking the Lovecraftian and folk-horror elements and putting them in the most modern possible context was part of the fun. After all, if one were to accept that folk horror, or shoggoths, or what have you are part of your characters’ universe, they have to coexist with the rest of the universe in some way. Even Twitter. Once I accepted that, the balance came naturally.

Amber-Rose Reed: You’ve mentioned the folk song “The Cruel Mother” as an influence in the creation of A Hawk in the Woods. There are scenes throughout the book that strongly resonate with that haunting, folk feel and of course, the song itself features. Can you speak to the folk horror aspects of A Hawk in the Woods, and how that framing differs from the cosmic horror elements?

Carrie Laben: Growing up in a rural area with a multi-generational farming family, there are things about folk horror that really do resonate in that setting — especially the sense that there are traditions, patterns, and boundaries for a reason, and when you violate them bad things happen. But at the same time, some of those traditions, patterns, and boundaries are themselves bad things, so it can be a lose-lose proposition. Cosmic horror, of course, holds a slightly different viewpoint — it really doesn’t matter if you follow the rules or not. Your personal virtue means nothing. Abby, as befits her role in her family, is what I think of as post-Lovecraftian as well as post-folk-horror — she really doesn’t care if the universe gives a damn about her behavior or not, and she certainly doesn’t care if breaking with tradition brings down bad things on her head, because she’s confident she can master them. She’s taking both those horror traditions as part of her heritage and turning them into something new, which incidentally is also what I see horror literature as a field doing right now.

Amber-Rose Reed: And speaking of music, do you listen to music as you write? What (else) would be on your A Hawk in the Woods playlist?

Carrie Laben: I did have a playlist as a matter of fact! I won’t bore you with the whole thing, but in addition to three different versions of “The Cruel Mother” it includes “More” by The Sisters of Mercy and “Birds of Hell Awaiting” by Marilyn Manson in a nod to Abby and Martha’s high school Goth phase, “Fly” by Nicki Minaj and Rhianna which is definitely on Abby’s workout mix,  “Barracuda” by John Cale and “No One’s Gonna Love You” by Band of Horses, and quite a bit of Nick Cave. I generally find Nick Cave/Warren Ellis film scores very productive for writing.

Amber-Rose Reed: In addition to fiction, you also write a great deal of non-fiction on nature and birding. Many of your descriptions seem to draw from that experience. How do your research and non-writing hobbies inform and/or influence your writing? And what brought you to bird-watching?

Carrie Laben: Birding is all about close observation of fleeting details, and I think that’s the number one way that it contributes to my writing. It also inspires me to pay quite a lot of attention to landscape. Something subtly wrong with a landscape, whether it’s a dead tree that keeps growing or a season that changes a bit too fast, can be a quiet but powerful way to signal a much larger problem heading for the characters.

Amber-Rose Reed: Thanks so much!

Carrie Laben: Thanks to you as well.

CARRIE LABEN grew up in western New York. She earned her BS at Cornell and later her MFA at the University of Montana. She now lives in Queens, where she spends a lot of time staring at birds.

Her work has appeared in such venues as Birding, Clarkesworld, The Dark, Indiana Review, Okey-Panky, and Outlook Springs. In 2017 she won the Shirley Jackson Award in Short Fiction for her story “Postcards from Natalie” and Duke University’s Documentary Essay Prize for the essay “The Wrong Place”. In 2015 she was selected for the Anne LaBastille Memorial Writer’s Residency, in 2018 she was a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2019 she was a resident at Brush Creek.

A Hawk in the Woods is her first novel. She is currently at work on a book of essays about urban environmentalism.

 

AMBER-ROSE REED is an avid reader and writer native to the Bay Area. She is an assistant manager at Copperfield’s Books, which nurtures her love for book culture, and studied Comparative Literature and History at San Francisco State University. Her short fiction has appeared in Eternal Frankenstein and Tales from a Talking Board.

 

 

Landing Today: A Hawk in the Woods, by Carrie Laben

Carrie Laben’s debut novel, A Hawk in the Woods, is now available. Here’s just some of the praise it has received so far:

A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben

“At once sly and grim, soberingly real and darkly fantastical, the story of the Waite sisters will haunt readers like an eerie old folk song.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“In this uncanny world, the darkest moments don’t come from the supernatural horror but from the realization that the Waites’ underlying dysfunction is a near and dear part of our own.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)

A Hawk in the Woods is wonderfully dark and spellbinding, mixing the road novel, family drama, time travel, cosmic horror, and maybe even a little Heathers. Carrie Laben is an original, compelling new voice. Consider me a fan for life.” —Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts

“Ride or die sisterhood, conjured from the bones of H. P. Lovecraft.” —Molly Tanzer, author of Vermilion and Creatures of Will & Temper

A Hawk in the Woods is a stunning, chilling masterpiece by one of the best new voices in literary horror. Searingly intelligent, gorgeously wrought, this gripping tale of two gifted, haunted sisters begins as a classic get-away story and soon unfolds into a terrifying excavation of the American dream of unbridled power. Carrie Laben writes with a ferocious grace; a master of the gothic pastoral, of the slow burn, of surprise. Carrie Laben is a monster–they don’t even make writers like this anymore. You will be reading her name for decades to come.” —Cara Hoffman, author of Running and So Much Pretty

A Hawk in the Woods is an excellent book that I couldn’t put down. The interesting characters and twisty plot created a mystery that will keep you constantly guessing at what will happen next. Laben’s strong prose and expert handling of dual storylines is mesmerizing. This book will sink its hook into your flesh and won’t let go until you finish the last word.” —Matt Brandenburg, High Fever Books

A Hawk in the Woods can stand on its own as an excellent debut. I can’t wait to read more from Carrie Laben in the future. If you enjoy family rooted witchcraft, you are going to want to pick this one up.” —Book Den

Cover Reveal: A Hawk in the Woods, by Carrie Laben

PREORDER NOW! Coming March 26, 2019. From Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Carrie Laben comes debut Novel A Hawk in the Woods, a harrowing tale of twin witches on the lam.

A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben

When newscaster Abby Waite is diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness, she decides to do the logical thing… break her twin sister Martha out of prison and hit the road. Their destination is the Waite family cabin in Minnesota where Abby plans a family reunion of sorts. But when you come from a family where your grandfather frequently took control of your body during your youth, where your mother tried to inhabit your mind and suck your youthful energies out of you, and where so many dark secrets–and bodies, even–are buried, such a family meeting promises to be nothing short of complicated…

A Hawk in the Woods is wonderfully dark and spellbinding, mixing the road novel, family drama, time travel, cosmic horror, and maybe even a little Heathers. Carrie Laben is an original, compelling new voice. Consider me a fan for life.” –Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts

“Carrie Laben is a monster–they don’t even make writers like this anymore. You will be reading her name for decades to come.” –Cara Hoffman, Author of Running and So Much Pretty

Cover by Matthew Revert

Pub Date: March 26, 2019

PREORDER TODAY

Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-46-8

Format: eBook
ISBN-13: 978-1-939905-47-5