Coming soon from Absinthe Books, the novella imprint of PS Publishing, is Steal Me by Helen Grant, a book for which I created the wraparound cover art:
Rowan Byrne hasn’t stolen anything for ages—not since she started to straighten her life out after a personal tragedy. But the volume she’s just picked up in the new bookshop in town seems to want her to steal it. The text is very persuasive. There’s a book for everyone in Legends—a book that will encourage their worst impulses. Steal. Fear. Burn. Kill. It’s not long before Rowan’s small town, isolated from the outside world, is descending into mayhem. Assailed by her own demons, Rowan could try to cut and run. Or she could make a stand, and try to save the community she loves…
This was a good book to work on. I’d not worked for PS for a while, and very much enjoyed Helen’s collection of stories for Swan River Press, Atmospheric Disturbances, whose cover and boards I also designed. “Legends”, the mysterious shop with the darkened windows, is staffed by a pair of elderly women who seem vaguely unreal—pleasant and helpful but not quite human, and with an undefined aura of menace. By coincidence, the previous book I worked on for PS Publishing was a fully illustrated edition of Needful Things by Stephen King, a much longer novel about a mysterious shop in a small town whose sinister/unreal proprietor and wares cause mayhem among the populace. Helen says she wasn’t imitating the King novel, and the similarities are superficial in any case. I feel she did more with the concept, and with greater economy, than the world’s most popular horror novelist (and I say this after the world’s most popular horror novelist sent his compliments for my work on his book); but then I’ve never been keen on the tendency favoured by King and others to fill out hundreds of pages with background detail and character biographies at the expense of the horror. In the past I’ve thrown the occasional barb at Mies van der Rohe’s overused quote, but sometimes less really does mean more.
Steal Me will be published in June. Don’t steal it.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Atmospheric Disturbances
• The Needful Thing
• All the Things
• Needful Things
Helen Grant is a writer who is getting better book by book. “Jump Cut” was really enjoyable and this sounds like fun. I have to disagree with you on Stephen King though, John. Yes, he can be his own worst enemy, and yes, many of his books would benefit from a trim, but it’s the depth he goes into which helps build the characters, and you really feel for them because of how well drawn they are, so that when he unleashes the horror you feel it too.
Hi Paul. I don’t expect many people to agree with my distaste for long horror novels, they obviously appeal to legions of readers. I think this is a result of a philosophical disagreement in part. In Danse Macabre King says he prefers horror stories in which the status quo is challenged then restored at the end. To do this you have to first establish a status quo, hence all the mundane description. I’ve never felt this was necessary or essential since I agree with Lovecraft that conjuring an atmosphere is of primary importance, which is why horror works so well at shorter length.