What's New?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and I plan to make up for lost time over the coming days.  Mostly, I’ve been busy with the release and promotion of SHOEBOX TRAIN WRECK, my collection of 16 stories from Chizine Publications.  I’ve also been neck deep in a new novel, but as usual, the going is slow.  However, I think I may have turned a corner recently, though there is always the chance that I may have actually run off the road. 

What else… oh!  The new website.  If you came to this blog through the new website, then you’ve already, uh, seen the new website.  But if you found my blog the old fashioned way, please do check out the new site, here (design by the extremely talented Cesar Puch). And while you’re there, order a book (or three).  You won’t regret it.  Don’t believe me?  Check out some of the reviews, which have been very positive thus far.  I didn’t get a coveted star from Publishers Weekly, but I did get a positive review.  Booklist seemed to like it too, as did Rue Morgue.  All of this is covered over at the new site.  What’s not on the new site is the latest review from the Crow’s Caw.  It’s worth the read (hint, they liked it a lot!).

Going forward, I’m going to try to use this space more, and not just to talk about me (although there will always be copious amounts of self-love here).  I’ve recently read Holly Goddard Jones’s spectacular collection, GIRL TROUBLE, and I hope to post some thoughts on it soon.  And maybe after that, I’ll find something else to talk about (ahem, besides myself).

Best Books I Read This Year

As always, these are the top five books I read this year (not necessarily published in 2011).  In no particular order:

1. Affliction by Russell Banks

This one started slow, but wow, what a finish.  My first Russell Banks, but definitely won't be my last.  There were some amazing passages in this novel, so amazing, I actually pulled out a highlighter for much of it (something I really don't think I've ever done before).

2. The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

Thanks to Paul Tremblay for the recommendation.  Abbott is a fabulous writer who grounds the reader firmly within the psyche of an adolescent girl.  The writing is image filled and gorgeous without ever losing the all important teenage voice.  The kind of book I'd love to write.

3. Refresh, Refresh by Benjamin Percy

This fine collection features the kinds of stories I like best: edgy, violent, sometimes creepy, but always grounded by muscular, starkly beautiful prose and an acute sense of place.  My favorite "The Caves in Oregon" begins with blood leaking from a freezer and ends with a married couple traversing the caves beneath their house.  I always love stories where the strange (the caves) intersects casually with real life (the couple's devastation over a miscarriage).  Plus, the freezer bleeds!

4. Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork

This novel covers a surprising amount of philosophical and moral ground without ever becoming didactic.  It's a about a boy who teaches the people around him what it means to be a good person.  He's a high functioning-- aw, screw it.  I'm really at a loss of how to describe this one.  Just know this: it will defy your expectations, and when you're finished, you'll walk away from the novel with the realization that you've fallen in love the Marcelo and Jasmine.  And "the real world?"  You'll realize it's pretty damned overrated.

5. Joe by Larry Brown

I don't know why it took me so long to read a Larry Brown book.  I read two this year, Fay and Joe.  I liked them both, but I loved Joe.  The best thing about this book is the characterization of the title character.  He comes alive, and despite all his flaws (and he's got a ton), the reader can't help but root for him.  It seems like many of the writers I love, are able to pull this feat off.  Brown does it with a keen ear for language and some of the best dialogue this side of Elmore Leonard.  Do check out Fay, as well, but out of the two, I liked Joe better.

Sam Anderson (Tales From The Yellow Rose Diner And Fill Station)

If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to read one of Sam W. Anderson’s short stories, you know he’s a writer long on imagination and short on wasted words. His Money Run mythos is so inventive, so damned full of humor and pathos and (most importantly, I think) possibility that I can offer no greater praise than to say I wish I had thought of it myself.


Anyway, like me and the other four members of our little group, Sam wrote a tale for The Yellow Rose Diner and Fill Station. It’s one of my favorites in the book. It’s called “Hate Crimes and Therapy over Creamed Chipped Beef,” and it’s every bit as entertaining as that title suggests.


Despite this not being a Money Run Tale, all of the things that make those stories great are here: humor, pathos, an imagination as sharp as the edge of a straight razor, and that rarest of things in horror fiction—compassion. It’s obvious that Sam loves his characters, and I feel confident that the readers of his stories will too. Here’s a little taste from one of my favorite passages in the story. Check it out. You’ll see what I mean.


In his mind, he was there again, as if he could reach out and pull back the kid. He smelled the subway exhaust and dried urine; saw the grimy white and green tiles decorating the platform walls; experienced the eerie solitude of a Tuesday at two a.m. beneath the streets of Manhattan.


He’d been an NYC cop for less than a month and was working on a joint operation with the Transit Authority to crack down on subway system muggings. For the most part, it’d been pretty uneventful, but he was finally a cop. He’d survived the academy and the nonstop needling about his lack of size and fulfilled his promise. Pop would have approved. Everything in life was coming together.


Until he saw Eldrich Irons standing alone on the platform. The fifteen-year old was one of the suspects linked to the latest rash of muggings, and Darien had seen his picture a thousand times in the last month. The kid belonged to a group not organized enough to be a gang, but reportedly armed enough that they could have been.


Darien’s heart thundered and he put out his cigarette with his foot. The suspect hadn’t noticed. Instead he leaned out over the platform and looked for the next subway. His hands remained in a satin Yankees jacket and he fidgeted as if he needed a bathroom. He wore a black baseball cap, the bill turned backwards. Darien ducked behind a column. He’d wait until the train approached so Eldrich Irons would be less likely to hear footsteps.


A slight rumbling filled the space, but grew louder quickly. Darien quivered with a nervous excitement and anticipation he hadn’t felt since before his first track meet in high school. He slid from behind the graffiti-covered column and unholstered his firearm. The thumping in his chest grew so violent, it throbbed through his arms.


As the volume rose, Darien broke, his adrenaline pumping to the point he could almost fly. A set of headphones plugged the suspect’s ears. The train’s light illuminated the dark tunnel. Darien’s pace seemed to match the subway’s. As he reached for the suspect’s shoulder, the kid turned. His eyes opened comically wide, and he stepped back.


Darien missed with the first grab. As the kid fell, he reached again, but only pulled back the ball cap. A slight scream rose before the crushing of bones and the subway’s brakes.


The doors opened in unison with a loud hiss, but nobody exited the train. Did the driver not see the fall?


Darien stood with hat in hand, waiting for somebody to wake him. After a short eternity, the subway pulled away. Darien peered over the platform edge, the tracks too dark to see anything. He pulled free his flashlight. His hands shook so hard, he needed both to turn it on. When he lowered the light, he closed his eyes. He listened for any signs of life, but only heard the train in the distance. Swallowing hard, he opened his eyes and saw nothing. The body was gone. A pool of blood had formed between the tracks, and it streaked toward the departed subway.


His body went limp, as if it were he who the train had struck. He looked to his hand like the hat could bring the kid back. Through the forming tears, he saw the Chicago Blackhawks emblem.

Cover Image for Shoebox Train Wreck (and blurbs)

This week, I got my first look at the cover for my collection (March 2012, Chizine Publications), Shoebox Train Wreck.  It's a collection of 16 stories that run the gamut from literary to noir to horror to fantasy/ scifi.  Most of them have been previously published, but a few are original to the collection.  Here's the cover:

Pretty sweet, eh?  Erik Mohr did the cover, and I'm not sure I've seen one of his that I didn't like.  He really captured the overall vibe of the collection with the cover.

And what about the collection?  Well, I've had some folks read it already who have been kind enough to offer blurbs.

"Outstanding! John Mantooth is an exciting new voice in dark fiction."

Douglas Clegg

"John Mantooth's short stories crackle with intelligence and violence.  He writes about desperate and simple lives gone not-so-simple, and those lives beat with a savvy and familiar broken heart.  His down-and-out characters are ugly and beautiful, and most importantly, compelling.  John is the real deal, and I think I hate him for it."  

Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep.

"John Mantooth writes with enviable grace, vigor, ease. These stories pulsate with the inevitable pain of familial love, and loss, and the horrors of the human condition while remaining peopled with unforgettable characters who move through their lives toward moments of personal realization and doom that can only come from the Southern experience. Mantooth has here collected a group of stories that exceeds the sum of its parts. You won't regret picking up this collection and will think on these amazing and heartfelt stories long after you've closed the covers. Absolutely brilliant." - John Hornor Jacobs, author of Southern Gods, This Dark Earth, and The Twelve Fingered Boy

Hopefully, I'll have some more blurbs to post in the coming days...

Best Reads of 2010

Five best books I read this year in no particular order:

Everything Matters- Ron Currie Jr.
This book took over my life for a few days.  I was at the lake this summer, and the rest of my family couldn't figure out why I wouldn't leave the bedroom.  It's so good, it hurts to read because it makes me face my own limitations as a writer.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter- Tom Franklin
I loved Poachers, Smonk, and Hell at the Breech, but Franklin's latest may be his best.  Small town Southern gothic murder mystery wrapped in a dual past-present narrative.  Did I mention the flawless writing?

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth- Kevin Wilson
Read this: http://www.greensbororeview.org/fall-2005/birds-in-the-house.html
Most of the stories are that good.  Nuff said.  If you want more, I have a more in depth analysis here.

We're in Trouble- Christopher Coake
Read my thoughts here.  A stunning collection.  Can't wait for this guy to write a novel.

Looking for Alaska-John Green
Much like Everything Matters, this book held me under its spell for a few days.  I talked about it so much with my wife that she read it and even tried to get her book club to read it (no go; most of them had already read it and didn't like it).

Seek these out if you haven't already.

My Year in Review (2010)

It's been a good year.

Or at least a good five months.  From January to July of 2010, it was shaping up to be one of the most frustrating years since I began writing nearly a decade ago.  I was struggling to finish the novel that was supposed to be "the one."  As in the one that would get me an agent, get me published, and launch my career.  I finally finished it in April and then began the frustrating process of querying agents, some of whom requested partials or fulls, but no matter how enthusiastically an agent raved about my potential or how he or she wanted me to send them my next book, I didn't get any real bites.  At the same time, I had this short story collection sitting on my desktop and in the slushpile at one place (Chizine Publications).  It was frustrating because I kept hearing the same old mantra- Nobody buys collections.  Because of this, and because they'd had my collection for over seven months, I didn't hold out much hope that Chizine would buy it either.  And if they didn't, I had no idea where else to send it.

Enter August.  I was still querying agents, mostly those who handled young adult.  Since my novel had a 14 year old protagonist, I believed I had written a young adult book.  Yet, most of the responses I got from agents were along the lines of "if you decide to rewrite this in the kid's voice think of me."  See, I had a 14 year old protagonist but the voice was that of a thirty year old man remembering his fourteenth year.  I was frustrated and about to give up when I received an email from an agent that I didn't even query.  Her name was Beth Fleisher and she said she'd like me to send the whole manuscript to her as well as some of my short stories.  I did a little checking and saw that she was with BG Literary, and I had queried Barry Goldblatt, so I could only assume he'd passed the query and the first fifty pages onto her.  I sent her what she requested, thinking it would be another long wait followed by another positive rejection (if you're a writer, you know a positive rejection is like kissing your sister).  But lo and behold, Beth got back to me the next day with one of the most exciting phrases I think I've ever read in an email.  "Can we set up a time to talk next Monday?"

And we did.  One of the first things she told me was that my novel was not young adult.  It was literary horror.  After some reflection, I agreed, and a few weeks later, Beth was my agent.  She's been outstanding so far, offering advice and counsel on both the manuscript and all aspects of the business.  Landing Beth alone would have made 2010 my best year ever.  But it gets better.

Remember that collection?  The one I thought Chizine would never buy?  In September, I heard from Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi and they said they loved the stories and wanted to publish it.    I informed Beth and she immediately went to work ironing out the contract, which at this date is actually still being tweaked (I also learned the publishing works really, really slowly this year), but I do have a tentative release date- April 2012.

As if that wasn't enough, I also found out that one of my stories "The Water Tower" was selected for inclusion in Paula Guran's Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Prime) and another story "Long Fall into Nothing" was a finalist in the Crime Factory sponsored contest and will appear in a future issue.

So yeah, it's been a pretty good year.

A lot of news...and links

The last few months have been really cool.  Let me list the ways:

1. Haunted Legends came out.
2. "The Water Tower" was accepted for reprint in the Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror.
3. I found an agent, Beth Fleisher.  She works with BG Literary, and I couldn't be more pleased with her so far.  I just sent her the revised version of my novel, and if it meets her approval, she'll be submitting it soon.
4. Finally, Chizine Publications has accepted my short story collection, Shoebox Train Wreck to be published in Fall of 11 or Spring of 12.  Still negotiating contract stuff, so hopefully I'll know more soon.  If you aren't familiar with Chizine, they put out some of the most beautiful books.  Check their covers out here.

Some other folks have had some good times recently as well:

Sam W. Anderson has a funny (and twisted) story in the recently released Blood Lite II.

Erik Williams continues his hot streak with more best sellers at the Horror Mall.  Check out Blood Spring and The Reverend's Powder, not to mention his books available for the Kindle.

The Horror Library 4 is up for preorder.  It contains stories by Erik, Kim Despins, and Kurt Dinan.

Speaking of Kurt, his story "Nub Hut" will also be appearing in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror.

Ian Rogers has a new chapbook out from Burning Effigy Press called The Ash Angels.  It's already been very well reviewed.

Paul Tremblay's collection In the Mean Time is due out any day from Chizine.  I'm really looking forward to this one.

John Rector is still selling The Cold Kiss.  If you haven't picked one up yet, do yourself a favor and buy a copy now.  He's also got The Grove coming soon.

If I missed anyone, I apologize, but that's all the linking I can handle on a Saturday morning.