Welcome
to the new Horror Lit series, where over the next year I'll be
exploring the lost pages of the horror-lit paperback originals of the
eighties and nineties! The idea for this series was inspired by my
own interest in going back to some of the horror novels I missed
reading in the heyday of the horror paperback book-publishing era –
an era in which I discovered Dell's “Abyss” line of horror lit
and authors like Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee, Rex Miller, Richard
Laymon, John Skipp & Craig Spector, David J. Schow, Graham
Masterton, Dennis Etichson, Joe R. Lansdale, Chet Williamson, Zebra
Horror, Leisure Horror, and TOR Horror – the last of which has
actually posted a short blog on their website where editors and
writers revisit and review some of the old TOR Horror paperback
titles of the eighties – and which in itself was mostly responsible
for re-igniting my passion for these novels upon accidentally
discovering TOR Publishing's blog (while searching for
who-knows-what-now on the internet). Even more recently, horror
author Grady Hendrix had his book “Paperbacks from Hell”
published by Quirk Books, which only served to fuel the fire of my
rediscoveries of these dark, forgotten, and creative treasures.
First embarking on my own personal dust-collecting minor collection
of TOR novels, I went for the ones that had remained unread, at the
back of my bookshelves, for the past 19 years... I decided I'd go in
alphabetical order. First up: Scott Baker's “Webs”. This was a
fantastic one for me to start with as Baker's narrative is deeply
hallucinogenic without alienating the plot nor the reader – about a
professor who takes a new job and is put up in an out-of-the-way
house on a huge property. From their, his hypnotic madness begins to
increase along with the spiders, the stress, his sexual situations
and the emotional breakdown of his relationships (including his
insane wife whom he has locked up in an asylum and communicates with
via compulsive letter-writing), and the possible murder of one of his
colleague who was last seen on his own property. A fair breeze to get
through, I went right ahead and jumped into Ramsay Campbell's “The
Doll Who Ate His Mother”, which was one of two Campbell books
(along with “The Face that Must Die”) at a used bookshop during a
cross-country summer roadtrip over a decade ago. Like “Webs”,
Campbell's “The Doll Who Ate His Mother” has a
horror-hallucinogenic quality to it, although Campbell expertly keeps
his plot entirely rooted in worldly reality. Everything that occurs
during an amateur investigation by the lead character following the
severing and theft of her brother's arm (during a car accident in the
middle of the night) all seems plausible within the horror-world
Ramsey Campbell has easily constructed for us, with the virtuoso
stroke of his proverbial pen, it's only when I mentally stepped back
from “The Doll Who Ate His Mother” did I realize that his prose
has completely lulled me into the action of his seductively haunting
fiction.
Following these first two reads, I found myself back in the used
bookstores, where I was now on the rabid lookout for more TOR Horror
treasures from yesteryear. And certainly, I found them. Committing
myself as of this month (October, 2017) to reading 50 pages of these
horror-lit paperbacks per night, I have managed to devour W.K.
Jeter's “Dark Seeker”, which was yet another paranoid
hallucinatory horror story, this time about of group on
Manson-cult-like murderers who were all psychically connected by an
experimental drug conceived by the American government, before moving
directly onto F.W. Armstrong's wild, sexy, and humourous vampire
novel “The Devouring”, which is by far the most fast-paced and
fun of the group of old TOR Horror novels I've recently gotten myself
into. I was so into this one, despite the dwindling hours of the
night, that I read 50 pages of this on top of the final 30 pages from
Jeter's “Dark Seeker”. I'm very excited to get back into the
exploits and shenanigans of the teenage vampire and the psychic
investigator as Armstrong's story is so far going like a twisting
rollercoaster. So, to be continued...
Welcome
to the new Horror Lit series, where over the next year I'll be
exploring the lost pages of the horror-lit paperback originals of the
eighties and nineties! The idea for this series was inspired by my
own interest in going back to some of the horror novels I missed
reading in the heyday of the horror paperback book-publishing era –
an era in which I discovered Dell's “Abyss” line of horror lit
and authors like Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee, Rex Miller, Richard
Laymon, John Skipp & Craig Spector, David J. Schow, Graham
Masterton, Dennis Etichson, Joe R. Lansdale, Chet Williamson, Zebra
Horror, Leisure Horror, and TOR Horror – the last of which has
actually posted a short blog on their website where editors and
writers revisit and review some of the old TOR Horror paperback
titles of the eighties – and which in itself was mostly responsible
for re-igniting my passion for these novels upon accidentally
discovering TOR Publishing's blog (while searching for
who-knows-what-now on the internet). Even more recently, horror
author Grady Hendrix had his book “Paperbacks from Hell”
published by Quirk Books, which only served to fuel the fire of my
rediscoveries of these dark, forgotten, and creative treasures. 
First embarking on my own personal dust-collecting minor collection
of TOR novels, I went for the ones that had remained unread, at the
back of my bookshelves, for the past 19 years... I decided I'd go in
alphabetical order. First up: Scott Baker's “Webs”. This was a
fantastic one for me to start with as Baker's narrative is deeply
hallucinogenic without alienating the plot nor the reader – about a
professor who takes a new job and is put up in an out-of-the-way
house on a huge property. From their, his hypnotic madness begins to
increase along with the spiders, the stress, his sexual situations
and the emotional breakdown of his relationships (including his
insane wife whom he has locked up in an asylum and communicates with
via compulsive letter-writing), and the possible murder of one of his
colleague who was last seen on his own property. A fair breeze to get
through, I went right ahead and jumped into Ramsay Campbell's “The
Doll Who Ate His Mother”, which was one of two Campbell books
(along with “The Face that Must Die”) at a used bookshop during a
cross-country summer roadtrip over a decade ago. Like “Webs”,
Campbell's “The Doll Who Ate His Mother” has a
horror-hallucinogenic quality to it, although Campbell expertly keeps
his plot entirely rooted in worldly reality. Everything that occurs
during an amateur investigation by the lead character following the
severing and theft of her brother's arm (during a car accident in the
middle of the night) all seems plausible within the horror-world
Ramsey Campbell has easily constructed for us, with the virtuoso
stroke of his proverbial pen, it's only when I mentally stepped back
from “The Doll Who Ate His Mother” did I realize that his prose
has completely lulled me into the action of his seductively haunting
fiction. 
Following these first two reads, I found myself back in the used
bookstores, where I was now on the rabid lookout for more TOR Horror
treasures from yesteryear. And certainly, I found them. Committing
myself as of this month (October, 2017) to reading 50 pages of these
horror-lit paperbacks per night, I have managed to devour W.K.
Jeter's “Dark Seeker”, which was yet another paranoid
hallucinatory horror story, this time about of group on
Manson-cult-like murderers who were all psychically connected by an
experimental drug conceived by the American government, before moving
directly onto F.W. Armstrong's wild, sexy, and humourous vampire
novel “The Devouring”, which is by far the most fast-paced and
fun of the group of old TOR Horror novels I've recently gotten myself
into. I was so into this one, despite the dwindling hours of the
night, that I read 50 pages of this on top of the final 30 pages from
Jeter's “Dark Seeker”. I'm very excited to get back into the
exploits and shenanigans of the teenage vampire and the psychic
investigator as Armstrong's story is so far going like a twisting
rollercoaster. So, to be continued...
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