The Ghostbusting Duo

 

There’s nothing better than reading a mystery that has a ghost or a monster in it. And that’s essentially what the occult detective genre is. A fusion of the traditional detective whodunit and the horror story.

Now, I will admit my description is a bit of an oversimplification. But for now, let’s run with it.

The prince, if not the king, of the ghostbusters is undoubtedly Jules de Grandin. Only Thomas Carnacki is perhaps more well-known.

Carnacki was the creation William Hope Hodgson. And Carnacki pastiches are almost as numerous as those of Sherlock Holmes. I’ll talk about Carnacki in another post.

Jules de Grandin and his “Watson”, Dr Trowbridge, were the creation of Seabury Quinn. They appeared in 92 stories and 1 novel, in the pages of Weird Tales magazine. From 1925 to 1951, the exploits of this dynamic duo thrilled readers of the Unique Magazine like no other.

GW Thomas, on his now defunct website, archived here, summarized de Grandin in this way:

Jules de Grandin is the master of the outrageous detective genre. Everything about him is over-the-top from his Hercule Poirot moustache to his outbursts of stilted French. De Grandin and his Watson-like companion, Dr. Trowbridge, live in Harrisonville, NJ, a town haunted by monsters, mad scientists and all manner of weird phenomena. As with Carnacki, not all of de Grandin’s adversaries were supernatural. The de Grandin stories appeared only in Weird Tales, where they were the most popular of all characters, beating even Conan the Cimmerian and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

From what I’ve read, Mr Thomas was spot on. Of all the writers who contributed to Weird Tales, Seabury Quinn was the most popular and, as a result, was paid at a higher rate.

Of all the characters to appear in WT, de Grandin was the most popular. And it was the promise of a serialized Jules de Grandin novel that held off the debt holders from shutting the magazine down in 1931.

Seabury Quinn and Jules de Grandin dominated Weird Tales. Quinn’s only real challenger was Allison V Harding in the 1940s.

Yet, Quinn was unfairly maligned and minimized by the Lovecraft Circle (because HPL didn’t like Quinn’s style and perhaps the fact that he wrote for money) and it has only been within the last dozen or so years that Quinn has come under reassessment. And I’m glad he has, because he was a good writer and should not be forgotten.

What I find interesting is that for all of de Grandin’s popularity, he was the product of having to meet a deadline. Quinn, himself, wrote:

One evening in 1925 I was at that state that every writer knows and dreads; a story was due my publisher, and there didn’t seem to be a plot in the world.  Accordingly, with nothing particular in mind, I picked up my pen and — literally making it up as I went along — wrote the first story which appears in this book.

I don’t know what collection of stories GW Thomas got that quote from, but I find it simply delightful. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

I own the 5 volume Nightshade Books edition of The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin. You can, of course, find them on Amazon.

I’ve read over a dozen of the stories and I like them. The fun quotient is high and each story will give you an enchanting hour’s worth of entertainment. What more can you ask from a story?

Should you begin reading the de Grandin tales, and I encourage you to do so, keep in mind they were written for a monthly or bimonthly magazine. The storylines are somewhat formulaic. Certainly written to an established pattern. But then, so were the tales of Sherlock Holmes’ exploits.

I would recommend not reading more than a couple stories at one sitting in order to keep their charm and appeal fresh. Plus, doing so, will give you many, many days and weeks of reading pleasure. And who doesn’t want that?

Seabury Quinn was a superb storyteller. He had over 500 publishing credits during his lifetime, and was himself a magazine editor.

Approaching Quinn as a reader, I can say that he delivers the goods. He succeeds in transporting me to another time and place, and provides the entertainment value I’m looking for.

Approaching Quinn as a writer, I sit at the feet of a master and learn the craft of how to tell a story so that it will move the reader.

Last Christmas, I read Quinn’s Roads (his classic Christmas tale) to my sister and nephew. So captivating was Quinn’s prose that my nephew, at one point, uttered an interjection of awe. If only all of us writers could have that happen!

The occult detective genre is rich with exciting and spooky and chilling stories. The exploits of Jules de Grandin and Dr Trowbridge deliver on all counts.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

The Occult Detective

 

Fear is one of our oldest emotions — if not the oldest. And fear of the unknown is one of our greatest fears.

I don’t know what I don’t know, and that lack of knowing scares us. It is primal, that fear of the unknown.

Fear, and playing on our fears, is the stock in trade of the writer of the macabre. Those spinners of stories that parade our fears before us and scare us to death — and we love it.

For all of our façade of sophistication, biologically speaking we are no different than our ancestors from 300,000 years ago. We may no longer be afraid of thunder and lightning, and we may have outgrown our fear of what’s under our beds — we are, however, still controlled by our fears.

Just look at the nightly news. Listen to David Muir’s tone of voice. He’s playing into our fears. And how often do we say, “I’m afraid…” — no matter the context?

Is it any wonder that the tale of terror, the horror story, has never lost its appeal with readers?

Of late, I’ve been reading in the Weird West and Occult Detective genres.

I grew up watching Westerns on TV, although I didn’t read any until recently. I suggest any writers reading this to pick up a few old Westerns and read them. You will quickly see how most genre fiction today is really a Western in disguise.

The Weird West, as the name suggests, infuses the old West with something weird. It could be ghosts, demons, mad scientists, monsters of one sort or another, just as long as it falls into the category of weird fiction.

The Weird West is a somewhat recent category. The earliest examples I’ve found date from the 1950s.

The Occult Detective, on the other hand, had its beginnings in mid-1800s, and picked up steam in the wake of the success of Sherlock Holmes.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been impressed with the Weird West stories I’ve been reading. They are either too weird, or they come off too campy.

On the other hand, the Occult Detective stories I’ve read have been quite good, on the whole.

For contemporary stories featuring occult detectives, I turn to the pages of Occult Detective Magazine. You can find their website here. They are the only publication totally devoted to the Occult Detective genre. It’s one super magazine, and I heartily recommend it.

Then there are the classics. Those occult detectives that began appearing in the 1890s and perhaps reached their peak in the 1940s and 1950s.

Flaxman Low probably started the subgenre, at least in the form that we know it today. He was the creation of E and H Heron. The stories are pretty good, although some readers might find them somewhat slow going. Ghosts: Being the Experiences of Flaxman Low is the only current edition I’ve found (both free and for purchase) that contains all of the stories. It is priced at present for less than $2, and that is a steal.

Thomas Carnacki, the creation of William Hope Hodgson, is perhaps the most famous of all occult detectives, and Carnacki pastiches abound. You can find the original stories at Carnacki the Ghost-Finder for free. Marcus L Rowland also provides a publishing history.

If you want the stories in book form, you can find them all in The House On Borderland And Other Mysterious Places, which is volume 2 of The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson.

Thus far, my favorite among our Fighters of Fear is Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin.

Quinn wrote some 500 stories for the pulp fiction magazines. He was Weird Tales’ most popular writer and was paid at a higher rate than any other writer published by the magazine.

Today, Quinn is little known. Which is a shame. He was an engaging, entertaining, and talented writer.

However, a large selection of his work is available for free on the Internet. And publishers are finally starting to reprint his stories. All I can say is that it’s about time.

All of the Jules de Grandin stories have been collected in 5 volumes by Night Shade Books. You can find the books on Amazon.

Flaxman Low, Thomas Carnacki, Jules de Grandin, and Occult Detective Magazine. That should be enough to get you started enjoying the spooky and sometimes terrifying weird world of the occult detective.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

Indie April Reading Suggestions - Part 2

 Richard Schwindt

Welcome again to Indie April!

This month I’m promoting the work of 13 authors who have impressed me over the years with writing that lingers in my memory. Lingers in a good way, that is.

Last Friday, I presented to you Crispian Thurlborn. Today, Richard Schwindt, who is no stranger to this blog. He is an accomplished writer, who produces non-fiction, fiction, and humor. In this post, I’m focusing on his fiction.

My first foray into his oeuvre, was the book Herkimer’s Nose. And I immediately fell in love with the book. It remains among my favorites.

Herkimer’s Nose has everything: well-drawn characters, an imaginative and creative story, sea monsters, ghosts, spies, monster hunters, and, of course, humor. What’s not to like?

I read first and foremost for the characters. And Richard is a master craftsman when it comes to creating characters that come across as real people. And even if they are somewhat over the top, they are believably so.

Humor is another thing I enjoy in a good book, and Richard Schwindt doesn’t let you down in the humor department. He’s a funny guy and will tickle your funny bone with his dialogue, character interactions, and sometimes the scene itself. He’s given me plenty of hearty laughs, and who doesn’t need that?

Aside from his extensive output of therapy and self-help books, Richard writes mysteries, occult detective, humor, horror, fantasy, and literary fiction. All are excellent reads that do not disappoint.

The Death in Sioux Lookout Trilogy

Chris Allard is a worthy addition to the ranks of the amateur detective. He’s a disgraced social worker, who finally finds work in the remote town of Sioux Lookout. He also finds murder.

The three short novels that make up the trilogy are

Death in Sioux Lookout

Minnitaki Lake Mystery

The Vermilion River Murder

Filled with richly drawn characters. These books are not only murder mysteries, they are a look into what it means to live, and also to die.

They are mysteries done right. There’s also a one volume edition.

Tony Price: Confidential

I love the occult detective genre, and Tony Price is a super occult detective. The three novellas that comprise this trilogy are just the right length to tell the story and maintain the creepiness factor.

Tony Price is a burnt-out social worker who sees monsters. In fact, he might even be a monster magnet. He also knows how to deal with monsters, as any occult detective worth his salt does.

Get the anthology volume - Tony Price: Confidential - because you will want to read these back to back. They’re that good. There’s also a prequel novella: Ottawa: Confidential. And you don’t want to miss Tony’s first monster hunt, so get this one, too.

Dreams and Sioux Nights

There’s one other book I’d like to highlight. Not only because it shows a more serious side of Richard Schwindt, but because it is just doggone good.

That book is: Dreams and Sioux Nights.

The book is a collection of short stories. But don’t be put off by that. Because the 5 stories comprising the collection are amongst the best you will ever read. Yes, they are that good. I kid you not. This is top drawer literary fiction.

Dreams and Sioux Nights concerns people and people are what Schwindt does best. Within the pages of Dreams, you will encounter people who are very real. With issues that you yourself may have had to deal with. They are moving, touching, thought-provoking. This book may just be Richard Schwindt at his best.

Richard Schwindt has something for everybody. He’s one of the foremost indie writers today. His writing is of such a high caliber that he truly deserves to be a bestseller. That he’s not reflects on the state of the marketplace and not his quality as a writer.

Take a look at his Amazon page, and treat yourself. You’ll be glad you did.

Richard’s Amazon pages

US

Canada

UK

Australia

Germany

And here is a recent interview with Richard by Rox Burkey, who is one-half of the team that writes The Enigma TechnoThriller series: https://roxburkey.com/the-real-richard-schwindt/

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

For the Weekend 9

This weekend is Halloween and I thought it appropriate to recommend something horribly spooky for your entertainment.

Crispian Thurlborn

Crispian is one of my favorite authors. If he writes it, I’ll read it. For this weekend, I recommend:

Exit. This is a slow burn chiller. Something like the twilight zone. Mysterious, with a shocking revelation at the end. Get the book at Amazon!

01134. We’ve never been so connected, yet we’ve never been so alone. We crave companionship and when we get it we’re on top of the world. When we lose it… A superb tale of psychological horror. On Amazon!

Cinder. Jill is a college student, and like all college students she needs money. Which means she takes the occasional babysitting job. And the job of watching the Comptons’s kid seems to be like any other. That is until those things desiring to ward of the chill of the coming winter make themselves known. Get it on Amazon!

Sign up for Crispian’s mailing list and get the terrifying short story “Wednesday’s Girl”.

Richard Schwindt

Richard is another author who writes outstanding fiction. If he writes it, I buy it. For this weekend, I want to draw your attention to:

Herkimer’s Nose. This was the first book I read by Richard and it’s still my favorite. A fabulous cast of characters, with lots of humor, terror, monsters, ghosts, and spies. A delightfully spooky tale, that’s at Amazon!

Tony Price: Confidential. Tony is a social worker and an amateur occult detective. If you like mysteries and monsters, this trilogy is for you. I loved it. Get it at Amazon!

Ottawa Confidential. This story is the Tony Price prequel. And very appropriate for Halloween. It’s about dogs. Well, not really. More like wolves. Well, not really that either. Just read it. You won’t regret it. At Amazon.

A Killing in Samana. Murder mystery meets occult detective. And we discover Richard’s other amateur sleuth, Chris Allard, knows Tony. Together, they solve an eerie murder case. Pick it up at Amazon.

R.H. Hale. Hale’s Church Mouse duo is an incredible work of fiction. The writing is literary, and some of the finest I’ve read. I don’t care for a lot of description, yet Hale’s descriptions mesmerize me. They set the mood and atmosphere, and establish the eerie Gothic quality that makes these books work so well.

Rona, the main character and narrator of the story, is exceedingly well-drawn. She is truly lifelike.

Sergei, the vampire and antagonist, is also very well-drawn. His character is richly complex. We hate him and we love him.

The Church Mouse duo easily makes my top ten list of recommended horror reads. They are novels you truly do want to read before you die.

Get Church Mouse: Memoir of a vampire’s servant at Amazon, along with Church Mouse - Book 2: The Change, also at Amazon.

Lastly, a bit of shameless self-promotion. Aside from my Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series, I’ve published the following stories:

Do One Thing For Me. George is old and going senile. Beth isn’t what she appears to be, but George isn’t sure she’s even real. And then she makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Or can he? Get it at the Zon.

Ancient History. Two brothers with a history, and not a good history at that. But they’re getting older and maybe it’s time to mend things. Put things right. But the ghosts think otherwise. And as one reviewer wrote: “…the ending was a shocking twist I never saw coming!” On Amazon.

Metamorphosis. I love vampire stories. And this is my contribution, to date. Devon is sick and having a mid-life crisis. His solution? Become a vampire and leave the problems behind. But his minister, who is a vampire, convinces him otherwise. Or does he? At Amazon!

What the Next Day Brings. A tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, set in 1920s Vienna. Everyone of us makes choices. Sometimes out of desperation. And starving to death, that’s what Franz does. However, as we all know, such choices often hand us more than we bargained for. Also at Amazon.

Plenty of good reading for your Halloween weekend. Enjoy!

Riffing on The X-Files

Since his debut in Nightmare In Agate Bay (January 2018), Pierce Mostyn and his paranormal investigations has been my bestselling series.

The genesis for the series was The X-Files. And while the overarching story arc of the TV series was about space aliens (a storyline very similar to the earlier TV series The Invaders), it was the “monster of the week” episodes that I found most interesting. I liked the concept of a government agent investigating those things that go bump in the night.

The biggest things that go bump in the night, IMO, are Cthulhu and his ilk. So it was only natural for me to mash up The X-Files concept with The Cthulhu Mythos, with the “monster of the week” idea finding its way into the sub-series with diabolical mastermind Valdis Damien van Dyne.

Van Dyne lets me play with the whole cryptid menagerie, much as the producers and writers did with The X-Files. Let’s face it — we like monsters. We like weird, paranormal critters and beings. And while the cosmic horror of Cthulhu and his fellow Old Ones is terrifying, there is nothing immediately scarier than a good old-fashioned monster. Hence, the perennial popularity of the “creature feature”.

On Monday, the 20th of July, you will be treated to a rare and unusual cryptid: the zuvembie. The creation of Robert E Howard, drawn from the spooky stories his grandmother told him. 

The zuvembie is a top-drawer creation, yet to my knowledge it only appeared once in the Howard oeuvre in the story “Pigeons from Hell”. I’m pleased that arch-villain Valdis Damien van Dyne learned the secret of the Black Brew and planned his zuvembie apocalypse. It will make COVID look like the common cold.

Make sure your hearing protection works, because you’re going to need it in two weeks.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy monster hunting!

Seabury Quinn

In March of 1918 a story appeared in the pages of Detective Story Magazine and the author of the story was Seabury Quinn. The title of the story was “Demons of the Night”.

As near as we can tell, “Demons of the Night” was Quinn’s first fiction sale. That sale began a fiction writing career that spanned over half a century, and saw the production of over 500 short stories and 2 novels. And those numbers don’t include his many non-fiction writings.

Seabury Quinn was the quintessential pulp fiction master, along with such greats as H. Bedford-Jones, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Robert E Howard. He knew how to craft a story that would sell and he wasn’t shy about going where the money was to be found.

In his day, Quinn was an exceedingly popular author. A Weird Tales poll of the magazine’s readers put Quinn as their number one favorite author — ahead of such luminaries as HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, and August Derleth. More Seabury Quinn stories received cover art than any other writer for Weird Tales. As I noted in another post, it was Quinn and his creation, Jules de Grandin, who saved Weird Tales from folding in the early ‘30s, which would have possibly denied us the best of Lovecraft’s work, and such talents as Robert Bloch.

So why is Seabury Quinn denied his claim to fame and basically relegated to a footnote? The answer lies with the politics of the Lovecraft Circle, specifically the machinations of August Derleth.

In order to elevate Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn became the whipping boy. Quinn was a hack and the epitome of what was bad in pulp magazine fiction. Lovecraft, on the other hand, was a genius and represented the highest ideals and possibilities of the pulp magazines. Derleth’s hero worship put the knife in Quinn’s back. And why Quinn, and not someone else? Probably because Lovecraft didn’t like Quinn’s fiction, making him an easy target.

For a long time I held to the common, albeit unfair, assessment that Quinn was a hack. I held that view until I actually read some of his stories. Much to my surprise, his stories are no worse than Lovecraft’s, or Howard’s, or Frank Belknap Long’s, to name three, and in some cases better.

Seabury Quinn was a decent, prolific, and inventive writer, much like Robert E Howard. Quinn was paid more than the other writers for Weird Tales because the magazine’s readers wanted his stories.

Now, thanks in large part to ebooks, publishers are republishing the work of Seabury Quinn, and I am very pleased to see him regaining the recognition he is due.

Yesterday, for Christmas, I received two volumes of Quinn’s work: Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales, edited by Gene Christie and published by Black Dog Books; and A Rival from the Grave, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume 4, edited by George A Vanderburgh and published by Nightshade Books. Santa was indeed good!

In short order, Seabury Quinn has become one of my favorite authors. His books stand right next to the works of Lovecraft and Howard. He’s easily their equal. Sure, he’s different from them. But that doesn’t make him a lesser writer. Seabury Quinn’s stories have immense entertainment value. What more can one ask from a writer?

As always, comments are welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

The Paranormal

Emblem of the Office of Unidentified Phenomena

I’m taking a bit of a break in our series Good Books You Probably Never Heard Of to talk about the Paranormal. Mostly because later this month I’ll be publishing the fourth Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation. And I want to share with you some thoughts regarding this category.

Back in the dark ages when I was growing up, we didn’t use the word “paranormal” all that often. We used “supernatural” and “occult”. I’m still inclined to use those words rather than “paranormal”. But I also want to sell books. And if the “in” word is paranormal - then, so be it.

Hence the series is about Pierce Mostyn’s Paranormal Investigations and not his Occult or Supernatural Investigations.

The times move on and language with them.

Today, we have paranormal everything. Just key the word paranormal into the Amazon search box. You’ll get paranormal romance, paranormal mystery, paranormal dating agency, paranormal cozy mystery, paranormal police department, paranormal PIs, paranormal reverse harem (what????), and all those shifter romances.

The paranormal, with or without magic, is hot. One of the reasons I started thinking about writing my own paranormal series last year.

A writer basically has two options when it comes to deciding what to write. Either write about what you love. Or learn to love what you write about.

I tried the latter approach a few decades ago with romance novels. What I learned was I was not going to learn to love writing about love. In fact, I hated it! And subsequently gave up on the idea.

Today, I write what I like or love to read. And that works for me. 

I enjoy writing. And I make some sales and get some KU page reads along the way. Which is also nice.

I probably won’t get rich from writing because what I like to read isn’t what is hot. I’ve accepted that. But I haven’t yet thrown in the towel on the idea that I can make some kind of livable income from writing. Which for me is basically a nice supplement to my retirement income. After all there are lots of writers who aren’t on the bestseller lists who make some decent money from their pens.

The idea for Pierce Mostyn came about while I was watching the first season of The X-Files on Netflix. The thought came to me what if there was an uber-secret government agency whose mission was to save us from… From what? I like the Cthulhu Mythos, so why not those bad guys?

The more I thought about it, the more I decided the concept worked for me. And thus Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena was born.

My first inclination was to call the investigations “occult”. Then I told myself, No, they have to be “Paranormal” if you want a chance to make some coin. And so the series became the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations.

Occult and supernatural literature - or paranormal in today’s parlance - has been popular from the beginning. Stories of monsters, demons, and ghosts. And we are still telling these stories today.

It’s great fun working in an ancient storytelling tradition with a modern twist.

If you haven’t read the Pierce Mostyn series, I urge you to give them a try. I’m quite proud of the books. As one reviewer noted, they’re, “…entertaining and action packed.” And if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you don’t have to pay a cent. Such a deal!

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

Seventeen Days…

…and counting! In 17 days the moving van will be here and a new adventure begins. For those of you who do not know, my wife and I are relocating to Houston, Texas.

She’s retiring on the 17th. She’s put in her time working for the man and is now looking forward to spending her days painting. And if we plan it right, she’ll make some money doing so. That, however, requires a business plan and she hasn’t gotten that far. Yet.

For me, though, all of the packing and sorting is basically a pain in the… I can’t focus! Too much of my brain’s RAM is filled up with wrapping paper, bubblewrap, and boxes.

My books are boxed. My paper (most of it, anyway) is boxed. Most of my pens are packed away. File drawers are empty and the contents packed in boxes.

In the chaos of moving, my writing world is upside down. And that is giving my creative brain conniption fits.

I want to write! And it seems all I’m getting done is an ever growing To-Do List.

Yes, I know: this, too, shall pass. But in the meantime, my brain is stamping its little foot and it’s not being very nice about the forced vacay.

It keeps trying to sidetracked me with plot ideas, story snippets, intriguing first lines — and boy are they tempting. After all, I could just pay the movers to pack everything. Right?

Every time I start thinking along those lines, my wallet throws a fit. And it has a much bigger voice.

What I’ve done to solve this little dilemma, is to type up a short story I wrote some time back. Typing and editing isn’t writing. And it isn’t very creative, but at least my brain now has something to do.

What I have managed to sneak in is time to read. I have discovered a new (to me) author. Richard Schwindt, out of Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He is delightfully humorous, writes about the adventures of very interesting characters, and does so with a very deft pen.

He also writes self-help non-fiction. He’s a semi-retired social worker and therapist.

Take a look at his Amazon page for some truly fab reads. I provided the link to his Amazon.ca author page, as his Amazon.com page doesn’t contain all of his oeuvre.

I’ve recently read (links are to amazon.com):

Herkimer’s Nose

Scarborough: Confidential

Sioux Lookout: Confidential

Kingston: Confidential

All four books are paranormal mysteries with intriguing occult detectives. They are only $.99 for the summer. Do pick them up. Schwindt is a delightful writer.

Now back to packing.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!