With the book launch of Best Little Witch-House in Arkham, I've been fortunate enough to pluck from one of the stranger, more perverse galaxies of the Trickyverse, One Mark McLaughlin to join us today on Writing is Tricky (WiT).
Mark is a Bram-Stoker Award-winning author (the "oscars" of horror writing if you will), witty, horrific, and hilarious.
Is he more genius than madman or more madman than genius? After reading Best Little Witch-House in Arkham, you'll understand why the answer is not important.
Read on to learn about Mark's latest book launch and stop back soon as Mark himself will be handed the reins here on (WiT) to blog something special just for demented, little us.
-Tricky
Welcome to the Best Little Witch-House in
Arkham. In this midnight den of dread and doom, you will find
twenty-five rooms, each with a story of its own to tell. Here you will enjoy a
delectable variety of otherworldly nightmares and blasphemies ... enough to
satisfy even your most eldritch desires.
Here you will find evil pop-stars longing to devour their fans.
You will meet a sophisticated secret agent in search of supernatural
super-villains.
You will learn the vile secrets of Kugappa, the writhing octopus-god,
and Ghattambah, a grotesque insect deity whose soul dwells beyond time.
You will smell the unhallowed stench of the Odour out of the
Terrible Old Man. You will drink the creamy Milk of Time, an unholy substance
which flows through the depths of a forbidden house of
horrors known as Der Fleischbrunnen. You will even travel through deep space to
a futuristic restaurant for alien connoisseurs, where you will sink your teeth
into the monstrous specialty of the house.
You will find all of these horrors, and so much more ... in the
Best Little Witch-House in Arkham. New from Wildside Press.
Check out the book (paper and on Kindle)...
Mark's Facebook page:
The Witch-house:
Mark's Bio
Author Mark McLaughlin's latest releases are the story
collection, BEST LITTLE WITCH-HOUSE IN ARKHAM, and the two-author poetry collection, REVENGE OF THE
TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER (with Michael McCarty).
Mark's fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in more
than 1,000 magazines, newspapers, websites, and anthologies, including GALAXY,
FANGORIA, LIVING DEAD 2, THE BEST OF ALL FLESH, WRITER'S DIGEST, CEMETERY
DANCE, MIDNIGHT PREMIERE, DARK ARTS, and two volumes each of THE BEST OF
HORRORFIND and THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES (DAW Books).
Other collections of Mark's fiction include BEACH BLANKET
ZOMBIE, MOTIVATIONAL SHRIEKER, SLIME AFTER SLIME, PICKMAN'S MOTEL, RAISING
DEMONS FOR FUN AND PROFIT, and AT THE FOOTHILLS OF FRENZY (with coauthors Shane
Ryan Staley and Brian Knight).
With regular collaborator Michael McCarty, he has written
MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL (their latest horror novel), PARTNERS IN SLIME (their
latest collaborative story collection, packed with monsters), ALL THINGS DARK
& HIDEOUS, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO'S CLASSROOM OF DOOM, and more.
Mark is the coauthor, with Rain Graves and David Niall Wilson,
of THE GOSSAMER EYE, which won the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Superior
Achievement in Poetry. He writes a blog on cinematic horror called
BMovieMonster. And, he is also a marketing and public relations specialist,
writing articles for business journals, newspapers, trade publications and websites.
What others are saying about Mark
What critics and colleagues have said about Mark McLaughlin's
work over the years:
"In the most devious manner, McLaughlin's stories achieve a
high degree of demonism by perpetuating a sinister 'humor' at the gallows of
the human comedy."
-- Author Thomas Ligotti
"Listen up. Noel Coward is back. Salvador Dali is back.
Dylan Thomas is back. And they're all rolled into one in the shape of Mark
McLaughlin who writes stories that are wonderfully witty, surrealistic and
ineffably strange. Absolutely fabulous. .... If your palette is jaded, come to
the feast that is Mark McLaughlin."
-- Author Simon Clark
"Mark McLaughlin's prose never disappoints. It might shock,
dismay, puzzle, leave you rolling out of your seat laughing or sitting back in
amazement, but it never disappoints."
-- David Niall Wilson
"McLaughlin's tales are laugh-out-loud assaults on
consensus reality."
-- Paul Di Filippo, ASIMOV'S
"Reading Mark McLaughlin is a little like stepping out of
the door of an airplane in mid flight. The view is pretty amazing, but the
shock of impact may do you in ... gruesome, funny and touching. Top that:
anybody...."
--Matthew Nadelhaft, TANGENT
