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Author: Patty Templeton

I'm a writer and librarian. I like to holler and stomp and high five and write in historical settings with much blood and fantasy. Most recently, I won the 2010 Naked Girls Reading Literary Honors Award. Yes, live and literary, naked women read my story. Double heck yes, it was awesome.
An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer

An Interview with Jeff VanderMeer

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jeff-vandermeerAre you interested in ominous cities covered in creeping, mysterious fungi? What about flamboyant narrators, noir and the New Weird? Yeah? Good. Sit down a spell and have a listen to a man who has written it all – Jeff VanderMeer. The two-time World Fantasy Award winner and creator of Ambergris talked a slice of time to Black Gate about music, new writers and a hep bit of miscellaneous more.

Black Gate:  What do you think are the three best, new albums to come out in 2011?

Jeff VanderMeer: That’s tough for me because I haven’t listened consistently to a lot of music. What I can tell you is that I’m really high on The Black Keys’ El Camino, and the latest releases by Ringside, Three Mile Pilot, Steve Wynn, and the Rosebuds.

Who are three bands that you “discovered” in 2011 and now can’t live without?

I really delved back into bands I already knew, for the most part. However, I can say I can’t live without Murder by Death, Black Heart Procession, and the sadly defunct Pleasure Forever.

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The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

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The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of CuriositiesThackery T. Lambshead
Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
Harper Voyager (320 pp, $22.99, July 2011)

Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead (1900 – 2003) was a fictional collector of the arcane. His cabinet was no mere front room shelving unit of Cracker Barrel knick knacks and China plates. Think pickled punks, death rays and human skulls that scream uncontrollably during new moons. It is unclear whether Lambshead’s entire home was his cabinet, as visitors were not regularly allowed and tours were given only under duress, but it has been rumored that the whole of his estate in Wimpering-on-the-Brook, England was of museum exhibition quality. If you were speculating where the wonder-bits of the world went, the terrifying bygones, the transmundane thingamajigs – Thackery T. Lambshead had them.

Though he spent his hundred-and-three years surrounded by dangerous oddities, precarious art installments and occult objects, Dr. Lambshead didn’t shuffle off to the Greater Unknown through a latent Crowley curse, an infection from preserved plague rats or squashed under one of his many mechanical animals (rumored to be gods). He died of dishwater-dull heart failure. It’s not exactly that I rejoice in his demise…it’s just…well, now that he’s gone Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have finally been able to intensely study his collection and thereby release, The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, an anthology of what they and other artistic scholars found.

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Diana Rowland’s My Life as A White Trash Zombie

Diana Rowland’s My Life as A White Trash Zombie

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My Life as A White Trash Zombiewhite-trash-zombie2
Diana Rowland
DAW (320 pp., $7.99, July 2011)
Reviewed by Patty Templeton

Angel Crawford is a pill-popping, self-described loser who’s found naked on Old Bayou Road after an overdose, only when she wakes up in the hospital…something’s not quite right.

She never used to waft of rot.

If it wasn’t trouble enough that Angel is slowly starting to smell more and more like a pile of dead cats soaked in sewage on a hot summer day, well, she has a new job. Ok, so it’s not like Burger Bayou was taking her places, but really, who wants to work in a morgue? Angel never did, but a mysterious note informs her that if she doesn’t take the job and keep it for at least one month, she’ll go to jail. Sure, it’s delivering dead bodies and assisting in autopsies, but you don’t get paid for normal rehab. Angel takes the gig.

Soon after, fingers skull-deep during an autopsy, Angel realizes that she wants to eat brains. Justifiably, she flips. It doesn’t help when she finds another note on her windshield that reads If you crave it, eat it.

To make matters worse, somebody starts killing off all the zombies around town.

This is not your average zombie novel and it might piss off horror purists who like their monsters in predictable niches. Angel doesn’t shamble. She isn’t dull-witted. She’s not a gorehound. In fact, it’s questionable if she is even a monster. She’s a woman who’s had a lot of bad breaks in life, the most recent of which was being turned into a zombie who has to drink brain smoothies to keep from decomposing. Some folks might contend that Diana Rowland’s zombies aren’t zombies. They might be right. Angel is closer to a vampire than not, only instead of blood healing her, it’s dead people’s brains. What does it matter, as long as the story catches you?

Amidst the brain saws, busted heads and maggots, there’s the introspective story of Angel Crawford, high school drop-out and general ef-up, finally getting on a stable path. It’s not action-heavy. There are no zombie hordes. Only a woman fighting her way through everyday life, which includes a past filled with drugs, the wrong man, an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother. It’s a humorous, light-gore novel that you could probably get away with recommending to any of your friends that like both Jodi Picoult and C.S.I. Similarly, if you dig books from a zombie’s point of view, like Breathers or Warm Bodies, you’ve got a good chance of enjoying My Life as A White Trash Zombie.

brain1 brain11I give it two out of three brains. And seriously, the cover is AWESOME. Now that’s a le freakin’ sexy zombie.

WISCON SATURDAY: In Which We Encounter Monsters, Tacos, Traveling Fates & Faerieland

WISCON SATURDAY: In Which We Encounter Monsters, Tacos, Traveling Fates & Faerieland

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Terrifying banana of later acquaintance.

The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood woke with much gusto. A puppy pile was had, as was a deliciously free, Con-Suite breakfast. There was a random, rather interruptive child building a trebuchet at the table. Sadly, the trebuchet didn’t work.

[The Critic suggests that you never attempt to give C.S.E. Cooney a banana at breakfast or otherwise. She has a mild anger at bananas.]

Overlord O’Neill went down to the dealers’ room. His Saturday activities included zapping book mites with a nano-taser, shouting to all and any of the merits of Black Gate and entertaining Bradley P. Beaulieu, the author of The Winds of Khalakovo. Yes, dear reader, there were so many authors at WisCon you couldn’t itch your back without knocking one off your shoulder.

O'Neill and Beaulieu
O’Neill and Beaulieu

While O’Neill was go-go dancing and having the Drexler-Smalley debate with those that walked by, C.S.E. Cooney and I attended Monsters!, a panel exploring the fascination of anomalous villains, led by David Peterson, P.C. Hodgell, Richard S. Russell and Tuppence.

What is the definition of a monster and how has it changed throughout history? The general consensus was that a monster is that which is unexplainable, unnatural, uncontrollable and has no culture.

frankensteinToday’s monsters usually cause psychological discomfort, whereas Medieval monsters were more of a spiritual bane.

Extending the question to who can be a monster, the experiments of Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch were examined. Two continually referenced texts were On Monsters by Stephen T. Asma and The Monsters by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler.

milgram-experimentMeanwhile, Katie Redding attended the Human, Cyborg or Just Another Robot? panel that, well, I refuse to talk about. We are not convinced that our Ms. K. is all that she used to be. In fact, we think she is more. There was a mech-hole in her noggin, (think Terminator 2 where they unscrew the back of Arnold’s head) and now she can lift mid-sized sedans and calculate large sums quicker than Rain Man.

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A Talk with Amal El-Mohtar

A Talk with Amal El-Mohtar

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bghoneyWhen you taste honey, do you think of ravenfolk, the wicked and the lovely? Do you find sex, death and trickery on your tongue? Ms. Amal El-Mohtar does. Amal was given 28 vials of honey. She tasted one vial per day over the course of one month and wrote down her impressions – some days in prose, others in poetry. These writings have been published as The Honey Month.

Seriously, you should buy the book for “Day 27: Leatherwood Honey” alone. It made me gasp. Never mind “Day 11: Blackberry Honey” wherein the universe reminded me what it’s like to have a poem bust open a heart ventricle and fill it with breath-catching melancholy.

Black Gate found Amal wandering in our godswood. We yelled, “HALT, TRESPASSER!” not knowing who she was. As we ran at her ready to tackle, she pulled an ancient blade from behind her back and, well, hmm, embarrassing though it be, we were unarmed. As it’s our swindling nature to distract folks with words we sat down and began to ask her questions. Ms. El-Mohtar very kindly answered these instead of chopping off our heads and we forgave her for trespassing in our godswood.

Here is our chat with Amal El-Mohtar:

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