Blood Fugue by Joseph D’Lacey

Blood Fugue by Joseph D’Lacey

Published by Proxima Books

November 2012

ISBN 978-1907773372

A rural American community is content in its ignorance of malevolent forces in nearby woods kept in check by Jimmy Kerrigan. But he’s overwhelmed, misunderstood, and beguiled to the point where the town might be lost. The key is a giant intriguing tree and its erotic, mythical secrets. “Joseph D’Lacey rocks!” – Stephen King.

Reviewed by Geoff Nelder

Fugue is a wonderful word to use in a title. Fugue for a Darkening Island by Christopher Priest for example. However, it isn’t just in the title in Blood Fugue, but as a premise. Fugue in the non-musical sense relates to a loss or change in identity, Jimmy Kerrigan isn’t human in the normal  sense, and yet he is one of the good guys. So was his father, also Fugue, or was until he transformed into another stage. The novel reaches into our souls and either takes or plants emotions of fear and a kind of holistic unMother Nature from the woods into our veins vicariously through the characters in Blood Fugue.

Most of the action, reaction, fear and hope occurs in the forest. It reminds me so much of the Mythago Wood series by Robert Holdstock, but the horror in D’Lacey’s novel digs deeper, and the writing more subtle and literary. I have a fascination with forests ever since I bivouacked in snowbound Cranham Woods, Gloucestershire, as a young boy scout for my woodland badge. Hence I wandered through the woods in Blood Fugue with knowing familiarity, and that was my mistake. Now I cannot visit my favourite local forest, Delamere, without a primed flame-thrower. Whereas before, the gnarled boughs, pine aromas, whirling acer seeds were a source of admiration and delight, they now represent danger, evil. From being a well-balanced individual, I am now Dendrophobic. Thanks.

Even Jimmy Kerrigan, our lone wannabe saviour, is surprised to learn that in his woods is a giant tree. At first intrigued, he becomes afraid. Fearful for the safety of the exploring family he is compelled to rescue and also for the townspeople of Hobson’s Valley. What is it about giant trees? That one of Jimmy’s is a Cthulhu meets Sherwood – terrifying. I encountered a giant tree in Kill Bill Wood this summer. Ah, no, Kit Bill Wood, you know – near Over Kellet near Carnforth. A great Ash tree has marked a boundary there for centuries and lives on to watch over transgressors. I hugged it, because I had yet to read Blood Fugue.

D’Lacey is a master of fine character detail. Shopkeeper Randall had spatulate fingers – where the ends are wider – murderers’ fingers. It made me look carefully at mine. To show readers the setting of Jimmy’s place the reader is treated to what he imagines his visitors see and think. An expert example of vicarious Show – rare to see it done so well. Blood Fugue could be criticised for being too incredible but to me disbelief is suspended for a moment enough for it to all be true!

If you enjoy eroticism in the woods, being terrified in an arboretum, and want a horror story, beautifully written yet will shake you to the core, then read Blood Fugue by Joseph D’Lacey.

Snake Eyes by Joseph D’Lacey

The award-winning writer of that jaw-dropping horror book, Meat, has released two novellas in one book – ebook. Grab it today!

Snake Eyes by Joseph D’Lacey

Ebook and paperback

 

File Size: 552 KB

Print Length: 139 pages

Publisher: Crossroad Press & Bad Moon Books Digital Edition edition (April 12, 2012)

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services

Language: English

ASIN: B007TW8N60

ISBN-13: 978-0-9837799-7-1

If there is a New Wave science-horror-fiction sub-genre then Snake-Eyes would be its cutting edge. The reader is treated to a smorgasbord of hallucinatory ideas with a logical surprisingly sane spine. Joseph D’Lacey can write grisly horror as demonstrated in the acclaimed Meat novel but the tone, while horrific and nightmarish is more subtle. Robert Johnson is a family man, trying to be successful at his accountancy career, or is that his narcotics enforcer job, but then where has his family gone? Not to worry, they exist – in a fashion. Starting with giant spiders the arachnid theme travels either just behind or in front of Johnson through the tiers of his existence. Keeping with the spiders, this story is a web of ideas that will pull you along, screaming, puzzled but with an eventual resolution.

D’Lacey writes horror with a literary pen. I wish I’d thought of ‘a parting of minds’. He also is a master of sensory Show, using senses of smell and touch to excellent effect. Good to note too that his characters react to those sensory experiences.

Spoiler warning: I’ve read many generation ship stories, but none quite like this one. From Harry Harrison’s Captive Universe, Brian Aldis’ Non-Stop and many others are enjoyable takes on the theme and often you wonder how a contemporary writer can find a new angle. This story has. And for those collectors of zombie tales, this isn’t one. There are former humans that become animated known as revenants, but they learn to run after Johnson and we all know that zombies can’t run.

There’s a shorter bonus story bundled with Snake Eyes – A Trespasser in Long Lofting that explores what happens when a well-endowed demon crashlands in your neighbourhood. A tale of tremendous and lascivious fun.

The Garbage Man by Joseph D’Lacey

I was sent a pre-published copy of The Garbage Man by Joseph D’Lacey, the author of the ground-breaking horror novel, Meat.

Reviewed by Geoff Nelder

 

ISBN: 9781905636471

Publisher: Bloody Books May 2009 or earlier

 This book is to be released in the spring by Bloody Books / Beautiful Books at http://beautiful-books.co.uk/bloodybooks.html 

Back in the early 1970s I was one of the first school teachers of environmental science. Born as a hybrid from geography and biology, the subject my students studied involved them working on a farm, studying the weather, plotted global climate change and air pollution. They planted trees, and measured environmental features like rivers and air pollution. We wore masks, wellies and hardhats to visit Yorkshire’s largest landfill site. Those students had read Clive King’s Stig of the Dump (1964) and so has Joseph D’Lacey as evidenced by his homage by naming a landfill gateman as Stig.

While I taught those students my wife taught at Oldham’s Breezehill School, which hit the headlines when the pupils weren’t allowed onto their playing field. Why not? Because it was built on a completed landfill site and the anaerobic subterranean layers of soil and fermenting waste generated methane that bubbled up through to the playing fields above. Kids with matches enjoyed the phenomenon until the authorities stepped in. When we consider what is thrown into landfill sites, legally, illegally and damned strange it is surprising that new forms of life haven’t grown from the neo-primeval soup. That is what happens in The Garbage Man. Not just a horror story but a warning.

An additional ingredient to the mix of landfill chemicals is required to create gruesome creatures, and that is imagination. Joseph D’Lacey has imagination to the nth power, and uses it to generate this novel of disparate characters that are spun into a profound yarn. The giant test tube of the landfill produces creatures unseen before. Their use of garbage components gives them attributes not possible with purely organic beings and there is a moral imperative behind them suggesting they might inherit the Earth if…

Initially I worried that there were too many main characters, nine not including the fecalith: a sentient monster formed from both human and inhuman garbage, reclaiming the Earth from the waste-makers. Of the more human characters we have Richard, a family man struggling to combat his incipient paedophiliac urges. His is a potentially fascinating character but sadly that perverse aspect isn’t explored – maybe in another book. Mason Brand is a kind of Earth – Gaia hero in that he alone appreciates the awfulness of landfill but also the bio-power in the ecosystem. These characters live in their own sub-plots but it is the same town and so they interact sooner or later sometimes with unexpected consequences. The female characters are particularly intriguing and as three dimensional as you’d find in any great novel: Agatha, who with her preferred street name of Aggie is the only townsperson to escape. Being a teen beauty she made a spirited but brutal life as a model in the smoke, but she returned a wiser woman a few months later only to face the zombies. Which was worse, the city human S&M abusers or the small town landfill monsters?

This isn’t a zombie story. Well it is, but much more so. James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia (Earth as a superorganism) hypothesis will find much to appreciate in The Garbage Man, as will any reader with ecological roots.

Taking the writing style beyond the ordinary, D’Lacey crafts phrases I wish I’d written. For example: ‘A crumbling farmhouse cupped in the palm of the land.’

Also: ‘…sky-written across the blue of his mind…’ and I know I’ve experienced Ray’s sensation when he ‘…made his feet walk to the bar while the rest of him seemed to stay in the beer garden.’

We have stylish writing serving up plates of horror and with gore for relish; who could ask for more? The title belittles the content – I would have called it Gaia’s Revenge.

 In a few days I’ll place here my review of a more subtle horror from friend of Joseph D’Lacey, Bill Hussey. His The Absence is a touching, poignant and literary horror you mustn’t miss.

FantasyCon – the aftermath

The mathematics is simple. Only 4 books sold, and one magazine. I gave away a bunch of Escape Velocity magazines as promo to interested Con attendees. There were hundreds of science fiction but mostly fantasy fans that crowded the Britannia Hotel on James Street, Nottingham. It’s a grand hotel with sweeping stairs, large rooms and galleries. Showing its age a little but that adds to its charm. I stayed mainly in a large room decorated with cloth-covered tables on which booksellers displayed their wares like in medieval Nottingham. Our wares were books, magazines, small sculptures and art pieces. I shared my table with Steve Upham’s Screaming Dreams. Although my Exit, Pursued by a Bee came out this summer as did Allyson Bird’s book, it was hers that got the successful launch. One of the problems of having an overseas small press as publisher is their British authors can’t easily have a launch. Allyson did a reading of her excellent anthology, Bull Running for Girls, and there were posters for it all over the hotel. Tip to Nelder: in future put up posters and scatter flyers. I did bring two hundred flyers on friday afternoon and was told they’d be put in the goody bags everyone receives, but my goody bag didn’t have one, so I don’t know where they went to.

FantasyCon, like other conventions are excellent for networking with other like and unlike-minded people. Neil Marr, the publisher of BeWrite Books told me to say hello to John Grant aka Paul Barnett for him. John is a legend with many awards to his name. His father Christmas beard and hair and high wit makes him a beacon. After a brief chat during which he was impressed Neil had read his Dragons of Manhattan new release, John bought a signed copy of my Exit! Highlight of the day – one of them. A Bewrite cover artist is Steve Upham who also is a cover artist for Twisted Tongue magazine and ezine, and they’d last week accepted my short story, Brothers’ Largesse, a parody on the Big Brother reality phenomenon as applied to the planet. Twisted Tongue publishes poems by Catherine Edmunds who is friend to Kay Green, who occupied the dealer’s table just behind me!

I was intrigued by flyers all over the convention advertising a fantasy event in my home city of Chester next June. I found one at a table for drinks I shared with a Newcastle woman with a terrific literary style in our Orbeters groups - Jenny Adams (highlight 2). It was only when I got home that I looked them up. Aetherica is run by a group one of which is the lovely redheaded Rachael Livermore. We are now facebook friends but she and her friends were at FantasyCon! Tip2 for Nelder: don’t be shy slow in introducing yourself to folk. Tip3: remember Tip1.

Another highlight was meeting up with two new authors from small press Bloody Books. Meat is a grimly fascinating book by Joseph D’Lacey that makes Soylent Green feel like half a premise. Joseph is a great character, courageous and forthright, just like his book. Bill Hussey was there too with his Through a Glass Darkly. I enjoyed that book too – anyone who likes travelling in the mysterious ghostly dimensions would. Thanks for the chat lads. We thought I might get more sales if I changed my name to Goff van Nelder.

Highlight # 3 or is it 4 was having a langorous chat on literary style with the delicious Suzanne McLeod

It was only when I followed up a discussion with Rachael Livermore of Aetherica that I found out she had a camera taken overnight. My cash float, Ally’s posh signing pen, and books walked off on their own and a projecter was pilfered. Umm – not by attendees we think. The main feeling from the con was one of positve contacts and a boost to each other’s creativity.