In his striking debut collection, Greener Pastures, Michael Wehunt shows why he is a powerful new voice in horror and weird fiction.
From the round-robin, found-footage nightmare of “October Film Haunt: Under the House” to the jazz-soaked “The Devil Under the Maison Blue,” selected for both The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and Year’s Best Weird Fiction, these beautifully crafted, emotionally resonant stories speak of the
unknown encroaching upon the familiar, the inscrutable power of grief
and desire, and the thinness between all our layers. Where nature rubs
against small towns, in mountains and woods and bedrooms, here is
strangeness seen through a poet’s eye.
They say there are always greener pastures. These stories consider the cost of that promise.
Contents:
- Of Insects, Angels, and People Too Tired to Go On, by Simon Strantzas (Introduction)
- Beside Me Singing in the Wilderness
- Onanon
- Greener Pastures
- A Discreet Music
- The Devil Under the Maison Blue
- October Film Haunt: Under the House
- Deducted From Your Share in Paradise
- The Inconsolable
- Dancers
- A Thousand Hundred Years
- Bookends
“With Greener Pastures, Michael Wehunt creates
visions of creeping dread and transfiguration that lift a trope-heavy
genre into the realm of existential poetry. There are things in here
I’ve never seen before, some of which I devoutly hope to never see
again. The stories thus collected trace a journey through the heartland
of an America that’s unfamiliar yet primordially recognizable, stripped
down to its red-soaked roots and bones–the squirming heartstrings of a
nation founded by heretics and outlaws, in all its irreligious ecstasy.
Occasional spasms of regret and terror aside, you’d kick yourself for
not coming along.” — Gemma Files, award-winning author of Experimental Film and the Hexslinger series
“Michael Wehunt’s Greener Pastures is a wonderful collection of quietly creepy tales that are mature and smart enough to let their
effects linger. An impressive debut. Just stay away from that house
where your favorite weird horror movie was filmed, okay?” — Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock
“Weird, emotionally complex, Kafkaesque, dread-filled: I might apply all these terms and more to Michael Wehunt’s collection Greener Pastures. It’s one of the finest debuts I’ve read in years. Wehunt understands
that true strangeness comes out of the personal, and that true horror is what happens during the complex interactions between real human beings. Greener Pastures is outstanding work.” — Steve Rasnic Tem, award-winning author of Deadfall Hotel, Blood Kin, and Ubo
“Michael Wehunt’s stories are a landscape of the strange and uncanny
that his characters navigate with compasses fashioned from loss, sorrow, and solitude. Often, the true horror is not what they find at the end
of the journey, but what they discover within themselves along the way.
Unsettling, emotionally resonant, and beautifully written, Greener Pastures is an impressive debut.” — Damien Angelica Walters, author of Sing Me Your Scars and Paper Tigers
“Most fiction can be categorized by its preoccupation with either
form or content. Devotees of both camps claim superiority. Yet the best
fiction — that which moves and challenges in equal measure — pushes the
limits of form while fearlessly plumbing the depths of experience and
consciousness. Michael Wehunt is tackling enormous, timeless questions
about human life — our impulse toward conflict, our lust for immortality,
our endless need for connection and communication — and simultaneously
exploring the boundaries of written expression. His experiments with
structure and language will attract notice but it’s the unsettling yet
recognizable desires driving his characters that will resonate and
linger in memory. This delightful debut collection represents the early
days of what will no doubt be a remarkable career.” — S.P. Miskowski, author of the Skillute Cycle series
