Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer profile picture

Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer

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About Me

I'm a writer of dark stories -- horror, science fiction, fantasy, humor, perhaps someday westerns, and when hell freezes over....romance -- who works in the mental health field by day because, well, writing doesn't pay very well. And the publishing business drives me crazy.
I've been writing for well over thirty years, have had 4 novels and over 240 stories published in places big and small. I'm also Fiction Editor for Space and Time magazine, the longest still-active small press genre magazine around (www.spaceandtime.com) which recently changed ownership and is alive and most definitely kicking.
My most recent novel, Road From Hell, is out and available from Necro Publications (also amazon.com and horror-mall.com, where they have other books in the Max series as well as various other collections, anthologies, etc featuring my work).
Right now I have stories in the anthologies Midnight Premiere, High Seas Cthulu, Sea and Sails, Weird Tales: the 21st Century, volume 1, Damned Nation, Damned, An Anthology of the Lost, Best of Borderlands 1-5, as well as a couple of pro online sites, Heliotrope and Horror LIterature Quarterly.
Of course, there's also Dead Cat's Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show, a crazy collection/anthology/circus/medicine show/art gallery about about a cat, once sacrificed to the goddess Bast to deliver a prayer for more money, who bounced back and is doing much better now, thank you.
His adventures have been transcribed by myself as well as a host of horror's finest, including Brian Hodge, Tim Lebbon, Linda Addison, Trish Cacek, Gary Braunbeck, Jeffrey Thomas, Trey Barker, Jack Haringa, Mike Huyck, Michele Scalise, Wrath James White, Mark McLaughlin, Garrett Peck, Robert Rhine, Aaron Woorley, and is insanely illustrated by the artist and co-editor GAK, with guest appearances from Alan M. Clark, Erik Wilson and Chad Savage.
This book-making work of art is available from Necro Publications and Horror-mall.com, where they're running all kinds of discounts and specials.
A mini-collection of three long stories, The Oz Suite, is due out from Eibonvale Press. My stories are also coming up in Cemetery Dance, Dark Discoveres, and the anthologies Darkness On The Edge: Dark Tales Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, Dueling Minds and Blood and Devotion.
You can find the lastest news right here on my blog, or at www.cith.org/gerard or at my message board on Horrorworld.org, and check out Horror-Mall.com or Amazon for the books and magazines.
I'm also married to the wonderful Linda Addison, poet, mother, programmer, and first African American to receive a Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association.
I'm not an internet person. I'd rather be writing. But so many of my betters have come over here to play that I felt compelled to come over and join the fun.
Please let me know when the fun begins....
For more about my writing, check out www.gerardhouarner.com
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My Interests

Selected Bibliography

I've been writing for over thirty years, mostly short stories, so the list of publications is way too long. Following is a selected bibliography covering about the last ten years, when most of the stories that have earned Honorable Mentions in the St. Martins' Press Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, or which have been selected for "Best of" anthologies for various magazines and anthology series, were published.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOVELS

Road From Hell, Necro Publications, 11/07

The Beast That Was Max, Leisure, 6/01

Road To Hell, Necro Publications, 6/99
Leisure edition, 1/03

The Bard of Sorcery, Del Rey Books, 5/86

COLLECTIONS

Visions Through A Shattered Lens, Delirium Books, 8/02

Black Orchids From Aum, Silver Lake Publishing, 5/01

I Love You And There Is Nothing You Can Do About It, Delirium Books, 1/00
PB Delirium edition, 1/03

Painfreak, Necro Publications, 5/96

ANTHOLOGIES (editor)

Dead Cat’s Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show (w/GAK), Bedlam, 5/06

Dead Cats Bouncing, (w/GAK), Bedlam, 4/02

Going Postal, Space and Time, 7/98

SHORT FICTION

"Like Smoke Rising From the Burning Ghats," Road From Hell (hc) - 11/07
"The Stars, In Their Dreaming," High Seas Cthulu - 8/07
"Night Service," Horror Literature Quarterly 2 (online) - 7/07
"Between the Storms," Midnight Premiere - 7/07
"They Place in the Palace of My Dreaming," Heliotrope 2 (online) - 5/07
"Spider Comes Home," Weird Tales 344 - 4/07
"The Shape of the Empty Heart, Dark Acts - 10/06
"Skins," Alone on the Darkside - 9/06
“Hellbound Kid,” Dead Cat’s Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show - 5/06
“Reginald Denies Everything,” ibid
"Puss ?n Boots," ibid
"Topsy the Elephant," ibid
"Mister Wiggley," ibid
“Dead Cat's Lick,” ibid
"The Alchemy of the Towers of Silence," Damned Nation - 2/06
"Sometimes They Talk Back," Brutarian 46 - 2/06
"The Chrysalis King," Inhuman Magazine 3 - 2/06
"Bringer of the Dead," In Delirium - 2/06
"Captivity," Tales of the Unanticipated 26 - 11/05
"The Crawl," Lost on the Darkside - 9/05
"The Blind," Horrors Beyond - 2/05 - 4/05
"Chimera," Surreal Magazine 1 - 3/05
"Celebrant," Cloaked in Shadow: Dark Tales of Elves - 10/04
"The Three Strangers," The Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three - 10/04
"Dead Cat's Lick," Bedlam Press Chapbook - 8/04
“Ash Man,” Flesh and Blood 15 - 7/04
"Signal to Noise," Cemetery Dance 49 - 7/04
“No We Love No One,” Damned: An Anthology of the Lost (Necro) - 4/04
“The Pain Killer,” City Slab 4 - 2/04
“The Road’s Mobius Smile,” Bare Bones 4 - 8/03
“Eight Dead Shrimp,” Tales of the Unanticipated 24 - 7/03
“She’d Make A Dead Man Crawl,” Mojo: Conjure Stories - 4/03
“Ballard’s Books,” Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores - 11/02
“The Love in Her Regard,” Decadence 2 - 9/02
“Dead Ground,” Visions Through A Shattered Lens - 8/02
“The Changeover,” ibid - 8/02
“Out of the Shadows,” ibid - 8/02
“The Precipice, in Moonlight, Offers Its Depths,” ibid - 8/02
“Those Who Cast the Shadows,” ibid - 8/02
“Signs of Death,” ibid - 8/02
“Like Tears, Cast in the Footsteps of Her Mother,” ibid - 8/02
“Mutilation Missionary,” ibid - 8/02
“Things I Wish I Had Not Seen,” ibid - 8/02
“The Bastard,” Bastards of Alchemy - 8/02
“Memphis Blue Again,” Fantastic Stories of the Imagination 23 - 6/02
“Dead Cat and Mouse,” Dead Cats Bouncing - 4/02
“The Unborn,” Dreaming of Angels - 4/02
“The Wound of Her Making,” Dark Testament - 2/02
“CourtShip,” CyberPsychosAOD 10 - 12/01
“Countdown,” Hardboiled 27/28 - 12/01
“Here Come the Whistle Men,” Horror Garage 4 - 11/01
“When Mom Changed,” Scars - 11/01
“The Chain-Lynched Man,” Brutarian 33 - 6/01
“Dead Cat Bounce,” Space and Time chapbook - 7/00
"I Love You And There Is Nothing You Can Do About It," in I Love You And There Is Nothing You Can Do About It,
“The Abandoned Mother,” ibid
“The Good Dead,”ibid
"Not an Exit," ibid
“Visions Through A Shattered Lens,” DangerMedia (on line) - 1/00
"Night Patrol," Absolute Magnitude - 12/99
"Bags," Nasty Snippets - 12/99
“To Wake the Dead in Nypholos,” Tales from Zothique - 8/99
“Suspect City,” Midnight Hour 1 - 8/99
“The Bones of the Maker,” The Brutarian 26 - 5/99
"Let Me Tell You A Story," Palace Corbie - 4/99
Reprinted Best of Palace Corbie - 11/99
"Taking the Night Train Out of Memphis,” More Monsters From Memphis - 12/98
“Revelations,” Horrors! 365 Scary Stories - 10/98
“My Kind of Woman,” Nasty Piece of Work 9 - 9/98
“Our Lady of the Jars,” Epitaph 5 - 5/98
Reprinted, Best of Epitaphs
"Ménage a Machine," Eros Ex Machina, 2/98
"Truth and Consequences in the Heart of Destruction," Inside the Works - 12/97
"The Shape," Not One of Us 18 - 9/97
"Twelve Nights," Epitaph 2 - 5/97
Reprinted, Best of Epitaphs
"The Question Man," Wetbones 1 - 3/97
"The Virus of Memory," Year 1, A Time of Change - 1/9
"The Oddist," Epitaph 1 - 12/96
Reprinted, Best of Epitaphs
"Boxes," Aberrations 38 - 8/96
"Demons of Blood and Passion," Painfreak - 5/96
"Angel of Death," ibid
"The Beast that Was Max," ibid
"Tongue," ibid
"Trail of Pain and Letters," ibid
"Hot Thing," ibid
"Safe Word," ibid
"Painted Faces," ibid
"Painfreak," Into the Darkness 1 - 4/94
Reprinted, Best of Borderlands 1-5Specific Interests: Horror, fantasy and science fiction, and all the other ways the fantastic, the wonder and the terror of it all, can be expressed.

Also tai chi, photography, the Southwest, Native American culture, Africa, India, the natural world, New Orleans, quantum physics (like I can understand it),comic books from 60's-70's and the Vertigo line, funky toys.

I'd like to meet:

The ones who run things. Because, you know, I have issues.

Poe. Guy de Maupassant. Kafka. Lovecraft. Philip K. Dick. Not that I think I'd have fun hanging out with any of these guys. But I'd like to get a feel for them.

People who appreciate wonder and terror, and who are not afraid of books and read them. More people who've read my work and don't think I suck.

Music:

I realize this "Space" belongs to the Indie Movement, but my root thing is jazz and blues, particular the flavor of the 40's and 50's and early 60's, when the joint was jumping and the recordings were often live (Ahmad Jamal at the Pershing, Gonsalves' 27-chorus solo for Duke at Newport, Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, and on). Station of choice is www.wbgo.org - catch the live streaming.

But I also love good old rock and roll, jump blues, soul, r&b, hip hop (don't have a heart attack - go listen to Arrested Development, A Tribe Called Quest, or De La Soul, Outkast), Baroque (okay, Vivaldi), and some of that weird western stuff about death and killing and murder, as well as old school reggae/ska, New Orleans, Latin, Celtic, African, whatever it is Tom Waits does, and a lot of the stuff I discover visiting other people's pages. If it's got a beat and a soul, I can dig it.

Movies:

I generally start with Universal monsters and noir, then crawl up to Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds, Harryhausen flicks, Corman's Poe adaptations, The Third Man, Casablanca, The Maltese Flacon, and the Creature Features from the 60's which I often find better in memory than in the re-experience (though The World, The Flesh and the Devil is an underrated gem - as evidenced by the heavy-duty "hommage" paid to it in Will Smith's I Am Legend). The classic monster films like Godzilla and Them, The Body Snatchers. And, to put it all in perspective, the Marx Brothers.
I was introduced to silent films and samurai flicks by a PBS run of classics in the early 70's, and did my part to support the 42nd Street martial arts movement, as well as art house Fellini, Bunuel, Herzog (Aguirre), things like The Passenger and The Conversation, of course, La Jetée.
I love modern noir, Tarantino, Rodriguez, Spike, and those 50's noir with jazz and NYC street scenes (Odds Against Tomorrow) and some of the big glitzy sf movies as long as they're dark. Yeah, LOTR. Asian bizarre horror (thanks, Pic, for another bad habit....), martial arts, some war movies (the opening act of Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, Three Kings), Tim Burton, Guillermo del Toro, Luc Besson,Juenet, Polanski, Lynch, Terry Gilliam. Buckaroo Banzai to Blade Runner, Dune to Matrix, Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Alien/s.

Television:

Original Gangsta TV - Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Wild Wild West, Star Trek, Jonny Quest, Gigantor, 8th Man, Astro Boy, Stingray, Fireball XL5,Captain Scarlet. the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Prisoner, The Avengers, Secret Agent.
Somewhere in between there was The Rockford Files, Magnum PI when he was angry, Deep Space Nine, Dr. Who, Blakes' 7. Twin Peaks, Monty Python, Black Adder, Pee Wee's Playhouse.
Then there's the more modern ones like La Femme Nikita, Brimstone, Farscape,Firefly, Lost, Carnivale (yeah, I liked it, so what), Babylon 5, X-Files, Samurai Jack,Invader Zim, Veronica Mars, Battlestar Galactica, Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop.
For inspiration, research, and a sharpening of that most crucial sense, the one of wonder, I feed regularly on Discovery and History Channel, travel shows - particularly those rough guide types that put you right into other cultures without the tourist trappings - and public channel documentaries and science shows.

Books:

I was raised on Seuss, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Poe, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Norton, Cordwainer Smith, Roger Zelazny, Robert Howard, Bester, Lovecraft, Analog and F&SF, SF Book Club, as well as myths/fables of the world. On the literary side, there was Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies,Joseph Conrad, Camus, Kafka, Auster, Vonnegut, Heller, Graham Greene (even if he's fallen from grace). The Ballantine Adult Fantasy line provided me with my modern fantasy and horror education, but it was Tolkien who first transported me elsewhere on, oddly enough, the day of the first moon landing. I was also raised on comic books - Kirby, Ditko, Steranko and the Marvel comics of the 60's and 70's, through Frank Miller, Mignola, the Vertigo line. Charles Addams, Gary Larson Far Side, Gahan Wilson, Edward Gorey, Bucky Katt collections. These days I keep Howard Waldrop, Richard Calder, Gene Wolfe, Jack Ketchum, Cormac McCarthy, Tom Piccirilli close at hand for inspiration and to remind me that I have no chance, no chance at all.

Heroes:

The writers who hustled a living in the old pulps, early genre magazines and paperbacks, laying the foundation for today's multimedia industry of the fantastic.

Blues and jazz musicians who poured their souls out for pennies while fighting demons coming at them from all sides.

Anyone who fights to develop their creative talents, learn their craft, and put their work out there for people to experience, to love or hate.

Gahan Wilson. Harlan Ellison. Jack Ketchum.

My Blog

Media appearance and book news

Linda Addison and I will be part of the writers panel at the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in Seacausus, NJ on Sunday, June 22nd at 3:30.  Visit http://www.creationent.com/cal/fangocon/fangonj.htm ...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:33:00 PST

New site, Cemetery Dance and WHC

Hi everybody -- just coming back from a major site revamp (thanks to Marcy Italiano, who did the actual construction), so check out the new place at http://www.gerardhouarner target="_blank">www.gerar...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:36:00 PST

Holiday darkness

Happy holidays to all stopping by.... First off, quick time-sensitive announcement: Linda and I will be participating in the first Wordbridge festival in NYC, as part of Sheree Renée Thomas' "Aun...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Fri, 07 Dec 2007 07:40:00 PST

Hell, Weird Tales, a Dead Cat sale-- you know, the usual stuff

November Just in time for the holidays (if you like your holidays from Hell), Necro Publications has announced it is taking orders for Road From Hell, the final installment of the Max triology which s...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Sun, 04 Nov 2007 12:08:00 PST

Road From Hell pre-order available

Road from Hell, the resolution to the story of Max the assassin, is up for pre-order at --> -->-- www.necropublications.com/titles/rfh.htm --> --> "A fascinating and thought- provoking dark fantasy t...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:39:00 PST

Space and Time, then Garden State Horror Writers

I guess it's a good thing when there's so much news it doesn't all fit in the brain.... Space and Time, The Magazine of Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction 101 is out thanks to new publisher Hildy Si...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:48:00 PST

Halloween Horrors

An extraordinarily kind review of my story "They Play in the Palace of My Dreaming" from Heliotrpe 2 is up at tangetonline: http://www.tangentonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&am p;task=view&...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:19:00 PST

Arrrrrr, Cthulu!

Hi all If you're going back to school or work after vacation, my condolences.  If you're just hanging out waiting the weekend, thanks for dropping by!  Here's what's going in my literary mo...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:09:00 PST

Coffee, black, no sugar. Like life.

I picked six at Heidi Ruby Miller's livejournal: http://ambasadora.livejournal.com/136296.html (Leave a comment if you're inclined....) Look for Fantasist Enterprises' anthology Sails and Sorcery...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Mon, 20 Aug 2007 02:35:00 PST

Dead Cat reviews and calendar

On the Dead Cat's Traveling Circus of Wonders and Miracle Medicine Show front: Gak and I put together a little 2008 calendar card featuring a picture of ole DC and a brief promotional message on the b...
Posted by Gerard Houarner, Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer on Sun, 05 Aug 2007 01:37:00 PST