Word Horde is proud to present the latest from Bram Stoker Award-winning author Nicole Cushing, Mothwoman, a novel about family, grief, aliens, mental illness, trauma, sexism, the Mothman legend, Covid, and the encroachment of unreality into American political life.
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
Scott R. Jones’s Stonefish hits the streets today. Look for it where better books are sold.
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).
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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.
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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!
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.”
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.”
“A wholly erratic and unstable narrator drives this kooky, outlandish tale. […] Cushing constructs a convincing portrayal of someone rationalizing away their lunacy […] but Cushing keeps it lively with clever parody.” —Publishers Weekly
“Cushing has once again delivered an original story that’s hard to define, yet manages to bring the chills in a way all its own and seldom seen in genre novels. Don’t miss this.” –Nick Cato, The Horror Fiction Review
“…it is my opinion that A Sick Gray Laugh is Cushing’s masterpiece. […] this is the best horror novel I’ve read all year, and I strongly suggest you check this out as soon as you can.” –Scott Kemper, Signal Horizon
Award-winning author Noelle Cashman is no stranger to depression and anxiety. In fact, her entire authorial brand, showcased in such titles as The Girl with the Gun in Her Mouth, Leather Noose, and The Breath Curse, has been built on the hopeless phantasmagoric visions she experiences when in the grip of paranoid psychosis. But Noelle has had enough, and, author brand be damned, has found help for her illness in the form of an oblong yellow pill, taken twice daily.
Since starting on this medication, Noelle’s symptoms have gone into remission. She’s taken up jogging. She’s joined a softball team. For the first time in Noelle’s life, she feels hope. She’s even started work on a nonfiction book, a history of her small southern Indiana town.
But then Noelle starts to notice the overwhelming Grayness that dominates her neighborhood, slathered over everything like a thick coat of snot, threatening to assimilate all.
From Bram Stoker Award-winning author Nicole Cushing comes A Sick Gray Laugh, a novel about madness, depression, history, Utopian cults, literature, sports, and all the ways we struggle to stay sane in an insane world.
Coming this August: The new novel from the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Mr. Suicide, Nicole Cushing.
Award-winning author Noelle Cashman is no stranger to depression and anxiety. In fact, her entire authorial brand, showcased in such titles as The Girl with the Gun in Her Mouth, Leather Noose, and The Breath Curse, has been built on the hopeless phantasmagoric visions she experiences when in the grip of paranoid psychosis. But Noelle has had enough, and, author brand be damned, has found help for her illness in the form of an oblong yellow pill, taken twice daily.
Since starting on this medication, Noelle’s symptoms have gone into remission. She’s taken up jogging. She’s joined a softball team. For the first time in Noelle’s life, she feels hope. She’s even started work on a nonfiction book, a history of her small southern Indiana town.
But then Noelle starts to notice the overwhelming Grayness that dominates her neighborhood, slathered over everything like a thick coat of snot, threatening to assimilate all.
From Bram Stoker Award-winning author Nicole Cushing comes A Sick Gray Laugh, a novel about madness, depression, history, Utopian cults, literature, sports, and all the ways we struggle to stay sane in an insane world.
“Nicole Cushing comes in smart and hard, skilled and strange times three. Many aspire. But you can’t fake this kind of weird.” –John Skipp, author of The Art of Horrible People
“Novels don’t come much more transgressive than this one, folks. Got a taboo? Watch Nicole Cushing grin while she dances all over it. In other hands that might be reason enough for the witty Mr. Suicide to exist. But this is more and better than that — a truly nightmare world, richly imagined, told to us in a canny, subversive second-person voice that makes you, the reader, the hero of this tale, like it or not. That it also manages to be ultimately life-affirming is yet another wonder.” –Jack Ketchum, award-winning author of Off Season and The Girl Next Door
Cover Art by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen Cover Art and Design by Matthew Revert
We’ve just kicked off our biggest Goodreads Giveaway yet, with copies of Michael Griffin’s The Lure of Devouring Light, Livia Llewellyn’s Furnace, Orrin Grey’s Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts, Ross E. Lockhart’s Cthulhu Fhtagn!, and John Langan’s The Fisherman up for grabs. All you have to do is click through, sign up for Goodreads (if you haven’t already), and enter to win. On the Summer Solstice, June 20, we will select winners and ship books (July 4 in the case of John Langan’s The Fisherman).
In other news, The Driftless Area Review just posted a new interview with the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Mr. Suicide, Nicole Cushing, wherein they discuss conventions, “likeable characters,” Louisville, KY, and the definition of evil. It’s a great read.
And you can now read the title story from Livia Llewellyn’s Word Horde collection, Furnace, courtesy of the folks at Weird Fiction Review. Llewellyn’s Shirley Jackson Award-nominated story “Furnace” originally appeared in the Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.-edited Thomas Ligotti tribute anthology The Grimscribe’s Puppets. Read it here.
A hearty congratulations to Nicole Cushing, whose Word Horde debut Mr. Suicide was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel this weekend at StokerCon in Las Vegas. Here’s a photo of Nicole holding her haunted house, courtesy of Rhonda Rettig:
It’s been quite a journey over the year since Mr. Suicide was released, and at times we wondered if Mr. Suicide might be too controversial, too transgressive, for the Stoker Awards. We’re pleased to have been proven wrong in that respect. (You sickos!)
We’d also like to say thanks to a number of people for their roles in bringing Mr. Suicide to you: Nicole Cushing, for writing a book that was impossible to put down; Zach McCain, for that haunting cover; Shannon Page, for copyediting; Sean M. Thompson, for publicity; authors Jack Ketchum, Billy Martin (AKA Poppy Z. Brite), and Ray Garton for reading and blurbing the book; Publishers Weekly, for a review that felt more like a warning; the members of the Horror Writers Association, for voting for Mr. Suicide; and you, the reader, for all you do to support Word Horde authors. We couldn’t do it without you.
Mr. Suicide is available wherever better books are sold. Ask for Mr. Suicide by name at your favorite bookstore!
Earlier this week, Sean M. Thompson sat down with Mr. Suicide author Nicole Cushing, to ask her a few questions. Here’s what Nicole had to say:
What made you want to join with Ross and the Word Horde?
Finding a publisher who is a good fit for you is somewhat analogous to dating: once you’ve been doing it awhile you know what you like, what you need, and what you should run from.
Ross is excited about books that take chances and don’t necessarily follow the conventions of the tentpole projects released by corporate publishing. So, artistically, we’re on the same wavelength.
At the same time, he struck me as someone who knew the business end of things pretty well and was committed to helping offbeat books maximize their audience. (That impression is, if anything, only reinforced by the work I’ve done with him since signing on.)
So, what’s not to love?
What do you feel the role of genre is in fiction?
Genre labels can help readers find books they may end up loving. They also help writers find publishers (and vice versa).
I know some people find genre labels to be limiting or even counterproductive, but I think genre (and subgenre) labels give us a helpful shorthand method of describing various types of fiction and the communities that love them.
Why is transgressive literature necessary?
Because it’s the only tool that can accurately communicate the emotional core of certain extreme experiences. In my opinion, conventional literary approaches fail when they attempt to depict trauma, poverty, addiction, underground subcultures, homelessness, violence, and certain varieties of mental illness.
At best, they can only get to the periphery of such experiences. Not the core. And so, they let down readers (particularly the readers who have lived through such extreme experiences and know their emotional textures). People who have lived through the worst that life can dish out deserve fiction that tells the truth about how the world (at its absolute worst) really works. So do people who haven’t lived through such experiences, but have curiosity about them.
Increasingly, American culture feels a need for all art to be created according to the polite, considerate, and safe dictates of the superego. But I suspect the best works of dark fiction come from the id.
The short answer is…life. Mr. Suicide is a warped, funhouse mirror depiction of how I (and some of my classmates) grew up.
The main character is a composite. Some aspects of him are autobiographical, some are drawn from my memories of troubled family members, but others (including some of his most disturbing facets) come from a boy I knew in high school who said outrageous things that–even after all these years–I can’t forget.
It’s like I had a blister on my brain for the last twenty-five years. Mr. Suicide was one of the ways in which I lanced it.
I also should acknowledge the influence of a brief talk given by Jack Ketchum called “Writing from the Wound”. (You can find it on YouTube or in the archives of the Odyssey Writing Workshop podcast.) After listening to Jack’s talk, I felt I had no choice but to “go there”.
What are some of your favorite transgressive novels?
Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr., The Maimed by Hermann Ungar, Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite, The Folks (a novella) by Ray Garton, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (a story collection) by Tadeusz Borowski, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and Excrement (a memoir) by Crad Kilodney.
What have you been working on lately?
I’ve been working on the last bit of polishing of my story collection The Mirrors (in preparation for its impending, official release). I’ve sold a novella called The Sadist’s Bible (which I can’t say much about, until the contract is signed). Speaking of contracts, I just signed one with Dark Regions Press to provide a novella (as yet untitled) for their forthcoming anthology I Am the Abyss.
I continue to write nonfiction articles for the UK-based horror film magazine Scream.
Also, I’m working on a novel tentatively called Knife & Wound and I’ll be contributing short stories to a number of anthologies in the coming months.
It’s a full plate, but I’m excited and grateful to have so much work.
What scares you?
I have the same fears everyone else does. I pride myself on my ability to look my own mortality in the eye (without resorting to belief in an afterlife). But the truth is I’m just as scared of dying as anyone else. I’m also scared of the inevitable death of my loved ones. I’m not crazy about heights. Hell, I’m even scared of the possibility that one day I’ll face financial struggle again.
Nothing too noteworthy, there.
But I do have my oddball (perhaps irrational) fears, too. For example, I’m scared of the U.S. falling into an economic or political crisis during my lifetime. I also have a variety of strange, entirely irrational, idiosyncratic anxieties that have sometimes made my life a bit difficult. And I’m scared of things no self-respecting horror author should admit they’re scared of. My hubbie and I once had a skink in our basement that scared the shit out of me. Loud, sudden noises have sometimes gotten to me, too.
I hate to admit these things. It makes me sound like such a wimp. It makes it sound like I can dish out fear but I can’t take it. So I’ll finish this interview by talking about something that highlights my status as a badass. I’m not afraid to be rude to door-to-door salesmen, religious proselytizers, or politicians. I once told a group of political canvassers who defied the “no soliciting” sign on my door that I would make sure to vote against their candidate simply because they bugged me. (I wouldn’t really vote on that basis, but it was worth saying it just to see the expression on their faces!)
Ask for Mr. Suicide where better books are sold, or order Mr. Suicide direct from Word Horde.
One of the most influential and transgressive horror writers of the last few decades has high acclaim for Nicole Cushing’s forthcoming Word Horde debut, Mr. Suicide:
“This tale of a damaged and murderous child is the most original horror novel I’ve read in years. Cushing’s prose is rapid-fire, grisly, and passionate.” –Poppy Z. Brite, author of Exquisite Corpse and Lost Souls
