Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

Ainslie Hogarth’s Motherthing is, well, something. Told alternately from sort of stream-of-conscious first person and prose set as stage directions and dialogue, the highly odd and unreliable narrator, Abby, relates her experience with the death of her mother-in-law and the resulting fall-out in her relationship with her husband. Right from the beginning, you know that Abby is a little unhinged. She finds the idea of filling a hot tub with diarrhea amusing, and an old cookbook is her bible. We learn later she had an abusive and neglectful mother, and she wanted to connect with her husband Ralph’s mother, but that woman too was inaccessible. Abby finds solace in a client at her long-term care home, but that relationship is a little backward. Abby calls Mrs. Bondy her baby. And there is nothing Abby wants more than a baby with her perfect husband. However, Ralph is pulled into a deep depression by the suicide of his mother and her (maybe?) consequent haunting of the couple. A psychic te...

J. H. Markert’s The Nightmare Man gives you everything you want from the trope of the horror writer being trapped in a world of his own making, and then some. I remember watching In the Mouth of Madness as a teenager at the Sunset Drive-in when it was released. As far as I can remember, this was my first exposure to this trope. I’ve sought it out elsewhere as well: in horror films from the seventies and in other books. The Nightmare Man is packed not only with this classic trope, but so many others from across horror subgenres that it is an all-too-satisfying read, and I can’t wait for the sequel that is hinted at in the final chapter.  Ben Bookman is our novelist. He’s (of course) also an alcoholic (a nod to The Shining) and is having trouble keeping his marriage together after an allegation of an affair with the nanny (classic, but it becomes even more twisted later). The novel starts at a book signing of his most recent story. There, a man shoots himself in front of Ben, claim...