I want this to be a platform for EVERYONE within the horror community; authors, publishers, bloggers, reviewers, actors, directors, artists. I could go on, if you work in the genre then you are more than welcome to apply for the job.
The rules are quite simple…
You are invited to imagine yourselves as warden for an old graveyard, and choose eight books, preferably horror/dark genre, to take with you to cover your shift; here you can discuss why you chose the books.
As well as the books, wardens are allowed one song/album to listen to. Again, an explanation for this choice is required.
You must also discuss one luxury item you can bring, which must be inanimate and not allow communication.
If you’d like to take part in The Graveyard Shift then please submit an application to gavin@kendallreviews.com
A new shift is about to begin. The warden for the week’s #GraveyardShift is…
Kathe Koja
From acclaimed author, Kathe Koja comes the highly-anticipated paperback reissue of her award-winning horror classic The Cipher.
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Awards, finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and named one of io9.com’s “Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm.”
With a new afterword by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag.
“Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive.”
When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas, and his feral lover Nakota, allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. “Wouldn’t it be wild to go down there?” says Nakota. Nicholas says “We’re not.” But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.
You can buy The Cipher from Amazon UK & Amazon US
The Cipher: Kathe Koja
An Excerpt
Nakota, who saw it first: long spider legs drawn up beneath her ugly skirt, wise mouth pursed into nothing like a smile. Sitting in my dreary third-floor flat, on a dreary thrift-shop chair, the window light behind her dull and gray as dirty fur and she alive, giving off her dark continuous sparks. Around us the remains of this day’s argument, squashed beer cans, stolen bar ashtray sloped full. “You know it,” she said, “the black-hole thing, right? In space? Big dark butthole,” and she laughed, showing those tiny teeth, fox teeth, not white and not ivory yellow either like most people’s, almost bluish as if with some undreamed-of decay beneath them. Nakota would rot differently from other people; she would be the first to admit it.
She lit a cigarette. She was the only one of my friends who still smoked, without defiance or a guilty flourish, smoked like she breathed but not as often. Black cigarettes, and sweetened mineral water. “So. You gonna touch it today?”
“No.”
Another unsmile. “Wiener.” I shrugged. “Not really.” “Nicholas Wiener.”
So I didn’t answer her. Back to the kitchen. Get your own mineral water. The beer was almost too cold, it hurt going down. When I came back to the living room, what passed for it—big windows, small floor space, couch, bed and bad chair—she smiled at me, the real thing this time. Sometimes I thought I was the only one who ever saw that she was beautiful, who ever had. God knows there wasn’t much, but I had eyes for it all.
“Let’s go look at it,” she said.
The one argument there was no resisting. Quietly, we had learned to do it quietly, down the stairs, turn right on the first landing (second floor to you), past the new graffiti that advised LEESA IS A HORE (no phone number, naturally; thanks a lot assholes) and the unhealthy patina of aging slurs, down the hall to what seemed, might be, some sort of storage room. Detergent bottles, tools, when you opened the door, jumble of crap on the floor, and beyond that a place, a space, the dust around it pale and easily dispersed.
Behold the Funhole.
“Shit,” Nakota said, as she always did, her prayer of wonder. She knelt, bending low and supporting herself on straight-stiff arms, closer than I ever did, staring at it. Into it. It was as if she could kneel there all day, painful position but you knew she didn’t feel it, looking and looking. I took my spot, a little behind her, to the left, my own prayer silence: what to say before the unspeakable?
Black. Not darkness, not the absence of light but living black. Maybe a foot in diameter, maybe a little more. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you looked at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive, not even something but some—process. Rabbithole, some strange motherfucking wonderland, you bet. Get somebody named Alice, tie a string to her . . . We’d discussed it all, would discuss it again, probably tonight, and Nakota would sit as she always did, straight-backed as a priestess, me getting ripped and ripping into poetry, writing shit that was worse than unreadable in the morning, when I would wake—more properly afternoon, and she long gone, off to her job, unsmiling barmaid at Club 22 and me late again for the video store. She might not come again for days, or a day, one day maybe never. I knew: friends, yeah, but it was the Funhole she wanted. You can know something and never think about it, if you’re any good at it. Me, now, I’ve been avoiding so much for so long that the real trick becomes thinking straight.
Beside me, her whisper: “Look at it.”
I sometimes thought it had a smell, that negative place; we’d made the expected nervous fart jokes, the name itself—well, you can guess. But there was some kind of smell, not bad, not even remotely identifiable, but there, oh my yes. I would know that smell forever, know it in the dark (ho-ho) from a city block away. I couldn’t forget something that weird.
For the millionth time: “Wouldn’t it be wild to go down there?”
And me, on cue and by rote, “Yeah. But we’re not.”
Luxury
Let’s start with the luxury item: a large, very large, endlessly refillable container of coffee, perfect to keep myself alert through my shift.
Books
First book is the one I need the most: a notebook. There’s absolutely no telling what I might see in the graveyard, and I’ve got to be able to make notes in a hurry. Or leave one, in case something, you know, happens to me.
Second book is the one I’m most looking forward to: Maryse Meijer’s The Seventh Mansion, due out in early September. Full disclosure, I’ve read this one in ms, but I’m so much looking forward to spending time again with the inimitable teenage Xie and his otherworldly friend and lover, P., and with Meijer’s mercilessly graceful art.
Third book is one I know well: Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. Another sui generis teenager like Xie, Riddley must make his way through a world of the future where everything reeks of the past, and no bones are quiet anymore. Hoban’s language here is exceptionally rich, and its darkness will keep me company.
Fourth book is one I’ve been needing to read: Watchmen. Graphic novels are a difficult format for me—I love the art but deplore the necessity for word balloons—but having recently been wooed into the form by Greg Rucka’s The Old Guard, I’m ready to meet Dr. Manhattan face to face.
Fifth book is an apparitions’ handbook: I’m thinking maybe the Weiser Field Guide to Ghosts, that begins with a highly useful and sensible quote from Mo-tzu, who asks “If, from antiquity to the present . . . men have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voices, how can we say that they do not exist?” If a spirit does choose to manifest, I’ll want to know with whom I’m dealing (or who’s dealing with me).
Sixth book has to be the bible of the haunt, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Queen Shirley is the best possible companion for a stint like this.
Seventh book is the unnamed but never forgotten ghost story anthology in which I first read “The Red Lodge,” H.R. Wakefield’s story of an enterprisingly evil house that knows how to get rid of its unwanted tenants, especially the tenants’ kids. Reading it as a kid was an extra bonus!
Eighth book has to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, that respectful and helpful guide to the bardo and the lands beyond, that will prove to be the best help possible if, for whatever reason, I don’t make it back from my shift. Check between the pages for a note . . . .
Album
And the music that accompanies all this is Iggy Pop’s fabulous and mournful Post Pop Depression, in collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. Hearing that deep and swaggering, ruminative voice echoing through the empty darkness and into the dawn would make any visit to the graveyard feel less like a wake and more like an awakening.
The Cipher
From acclaimed author, Kathe Koja comes the highly-anticipated paperback reissue of her award-winning horror classic The Cipher.
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Awards, finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and named one of io9.com’s “Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm.”
With a new afterword by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag.
“Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive.”
When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas, and his feral lover Nakota, allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. “Wouldn’t it be wild to go down there?” says Nakota. Nicholas says “We’re not.” But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.
You can buy The Cipher from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Kathe Koja
Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces immersive fiction performances, both solo and with a rotating ensemble of artists. Her work crosses and combines genres, and her books have won awards, been multiply translated, and optioned for film and performance. She is based in Detroit and thinks globally.
She can be found at www.kathekoja.com
You can follow Kathe on Twitter @KatheKoja
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