So, like…where have I been?

So some of you might wonder why it’s been four years, since 2018’s The Fairies of Sadieville, since I’ve had a new novel out. What could I have been doing? There’s a few answers to that. In the summer of 2018, I lost both my mother and my ten-year-old son. The double-whammy of losing both my past and future within … Read More

Raney and the road not taken

****Trigger warning for racism.**** I’ve had one legitimately wealthy relative: for the sake of this, we’ll call her Aunt A. She was my godmother, and since she never had any children of her own, she a) saw me as a substitute, and b) had no idea how to relate to a child. She’s the reason I hate squash to this … Read More

“A Slight Hint of Lackadaisical Summer Torpor”: John Hartness on Writing and Publishing Southern Horror

Everyone knows the giants of southern literature, because they’re also giants of literature, full stop. William Faulkner, Walker Percy, Harper Lee, Robert Penn Warren, and so forth are perennials in lit courses and high school English classes. When it comes to horror, though, there isn’t the same respect. New England gets Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft, but names like Manly … Read More

“Don’t you think I’m taking this really well?”

Recently filmmaker Lexi Alexander tweeted: “The ‘nagging wife of cop who‘s trying to catch serial killer’ trope has to die. Look…there’s no woman who prefers a serial killer roaming around if it means a few hours more with the husband. Doesn’t happen. Male fantasy.” I first encountered this trope at age 14, in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Roy … Read More

Chatting at the Bottom of the Lake

Steven Stack is an internationally-produced playwright for teens and middle-schoolers, and a full-time acting teacher for kids. He’s also one of my best friends, and he’s just published his first novel, The Bottom of the Lake. Here we discuss the fairly unique project of turning a play into a novel. Me: You’ve written many plays, so why did you decide … Read More

The Unexpected Return of Dakota North, part 2

In an earlier post, I talked about the Marvel comic Dakota North, which ran for five issues in the mid-80s and is now the subject of a brand new collection, Dakota North: Design for Dying. Now Dakota’s creator and writer, Martha Thomases, has been kind enough to talk to me a bit about Dakota’s origins. You wrote about the fashion … Read More

The Original Story about Mount Horeb’s Psychic Boy

When I wrote about this in an earlier post, I offered to post my transcription of the original newspaper articles, if anyone was interested. Thanks to all who said they were. Here you go. Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wis, Thursday afternoon, April 1, 1909 Headline: MT. HOREB MYSTERY STILL BAFFLING ALL EFFORTS TO SOLVE IT Sub-headline: Residents Divided on Question … Read More

The Unexpected Return of Dakota North, part 1

Addendum: R.I.P. Stan Lee.  The mid-1980s, when I was a serious comic book fan, was a great time for taking risks: it gave us Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and Miracleman; Neil Gaiman’s Sandman; Frank Miller’s Daredevil and The Dark Knight Returns; and significant runs in all the major series, many of which have turned up as the plots of … Read More

Mount Horeb’s Psychic Boy…or Not

When you’re an author of fantasy and horror, and you live in a small town like Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, it’s inevitable that you get requests like the one I recently received from our library director, Jessica: “I have a spooky question for you.” She presented me with a badly-faded microfiche printout (see above) of a news story from 1909, about … Read More