Robert Dunbar's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-pines"
still more about my WILLY
This is more of a footnote to my earlier blog than a separate posting. As sensational as the reviews for this book have been, the "reader comments" here at Goodreads have been just as remarkable. Even the few negative remarks are in their own way (oddly) gratifying.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
THE SWAMP STOMP / Part One
or “How I Found a Topic (but Lost my Mind) in the Pines”
Here, rancid air hangs heavily in a void, its texture thick, liquid, clinging. In a night full of the hot smells of decay, this humid oppression amplifies the dripping, clicking noises: the moldy rasp of dead leaves stirred by tiny animals, the constant murmur of a brook threading the loamy ground, the oozing splash of something that moves heavily through water.
There is no moon, and clouds screen the light from the stars.
Sunk in the still and viscous murk, the trees become vague shapes. Silent. Waiting. The ragged leaves of swamp elms hang as motionless as insects in a web. Slowly, the trees begin to glow.
http://www.amazon.com/Pines-Robert-Du...
According to Amazon, The Pines is now in its eleventh edition. Actually, I’m aware of two other editions, which I only found out about by accident. (Oh, what a joy it was to work with Leisure Books!) My point is that this brings the total to thirteen. My lucky number!
Set in one of the old, vanished shanty towns of the New Jersey pine barrens, the novel employs the legend of the Jersey Devil as a metaphor for human evil and debasement. (For committed horror geeks – like myself – I chronicle my adventures researching the lore in Vortex.) But when THE PINES first appeared in print, I soon found myself in the thick of a different sort of nightmare. My novel had been hacked to pieces by editors who appear to have been motivated by equal parts malice and incompetence, something I didn’t discover until I held a copy in my hands.
I’ll never forget that moment. My first book – it should have been a thrill.
Instead, I got sick. Literally.
Let's not even talk about the bloody stump on the cover.
Okay, so I should have been tougher. Yes, I was a little on the naïve and vulnerable side, but the book had not been edited so much as censored. Who wouldn’t be upset? Even my African-American heroine had suddenly become white. (Seriously? They edited her melanin?) But enough of the text survived, apparently – though I couldn’t see it at the time – to make an impression. To my utter shock, reviews from non-genre sources were immediately sensational.
“Not only a superb thriller but a masterpiece of fiction.” ~ Delaware Valley Magazine
“Dark, foreboding, menacing, eerie … seductive.” ~ The Philadelphia Inquirer
“At last, the Jersey Devil has come out of hiding.” ~ Atlantic City Magazine
Almost from the first, the book became something of a cause célèbre. (Or perhaps I mean bête noire: I get my French terms mixed up.) For every critic who raved about its qualities, another would shriek that the book had no right to exist. I didn’t know what to think, and truthfully much of it barely registered. With huge sections of text missing, I thought the plot incomprehensible.
All right, I tried to get over it. (What were my options?) And the press attention was not altogether unpleasant. Suddenly, I was doing television appearances and radio interviews and being profiled by newspapers. My photograph even showed up on the cover of a writers magazine. (Leisure Books seemed oddly resentful about all this, as though it represented a source of unwanted notoriety, and they always insisted that none of it translated into book sales. Have I mentioned how much fun it was to work with them?) For me, this was all new terrain. There I was at conferences, sitting on panels with famous authors whose work I’d been enjoying for years, answering questions and talking about the importance of constant reading across the literary spectrum, the need for writers to immerse themselves in literature, to hone their craft, and the overwhelming importance of having artistic rather than merely commercial goals. Then I nodded and smiled like a holy fool, waiting for thunderous approval.
The reaction was immediate all right: it was as though I’d spit on motherhood and the flag.
Literature? The very idea!
They were outraged, and if the book took on a life of its own, so did this backlash. I was mystified. At the first conference where I appeared as the guest of honor, an angry little man actually circulated a petition that denounced my being allowed to “pervert the genre.” One line I’ll never forget: “Obviously, Leisure Books doesn’t think normal people read horror.”
Ah.
A light went on. Finally.
(I’m a little slow sometimes.)
To their credit, a host of genre sources came to the book’s defense.
“Full of chilling surprises.” ~ Cemetery Dance
“Vivid and unnerving.” ~ The Scream Factory
“Brilliantly written and superbly plotted.” ~ The Nightmare Express
My relationship with fans has been a bit uneasy ever since. (Of course, I’ve always maintained that I’d much rather have readers than fans, another area in which I seem to be out of step with the times.) Many years would pass before I’d work in the genre again. The trauma of having my book destroyed by the publisher exhausted me, and the death of a loved one that summer left me in a state of nearly paralytic depression. The Mystery of the Disappearing Royalties, combined with the overt hostility of so many in the horror community, didn’t help.
But then the times were right for depression. Living through the AIDS fatalities in the nineties was like surviving a war. (In 1995 alone, more than 50,000 people died of the disease.) New York especially was devastated, but all big cities were hard hit. People still lament the way the arts suffered, but this impact wasn’t only caused by the loss of so many painters and musicians and writers and actors. Legions of people who appreciated their efforts also vanished, people who understood the ballet, who attended plays, who read and discussed books. Good books. Intelligent books. Challenging books. Culturally, the impact was … well, think ‘giant meteor crater.’ And voids tend to get filled. In my particular genre, a reactionary faction came to dominate. Never forget that with greater intellectual sophistication comes greater appreciation for diversity, but the reverse is also true.
It was a full decade later before a restored edition of THE PINES gave the next generation of magazines a chance to log in.
“A work of art.” ~ Shroud Magazine
“Smart … poetic ... intense.” ~ The Fright Site
“Among the classics of modern horror.” ~ Weird New Jersey
Can you blame me for feeling vindicated? A new novel (The Shore) was the first real indication that I was recovering emotionally. (More about that in Part II.)
By now, the new conservatism had begun to be reflected in an endless array of horror novels about American families menaced by some alien thing. Never mind the kind of monster – vampire or witch or werewolf – all plots hinged on destroying the different. This grew monotonous almost at once, and the exaggerated veneration of normality disturbed me profoundly. (I never really considered the market for this type of fiction to be readers so much as consumers.) Seldom does real art celebrate conformity. Isn’t it strange how much easier it is to gain acceptance for outsider characters in other genres? Detective fiction has long championed the loner of questionable social status, and science fiction has a fine tradition of unconventional heroes and heroines. But horror? I can’t be the only one less than fully invested in the spectacle of the status quo being maintained.
For me, the monster is always the lonely one, unloved and unwanted. The outcast. Even as a child I knew where my sympathies lay. Dracula wasn’t a monster so much as a villain out of Victorian melodrama – foreign and mustachioed – a stale template even then. Of course, the hero would rescue the damsel in the nick of time. Was there ever any doubt? Ah, but with the Frankenstein creature … nothing could be certain. Adam was soulful. He was morbid and abject. To this day, he remains a classic outsider, the suffering archetype at the heart of so many truly great novels. What could be more terrifying than all that pain? The monster is among the most supremely tragic – and most intensely human – of literary characters. All he wants is to belong. And he never can. No one will ever acknowledge his humanity. He suffers because he’s different.
Here, rancid air hangs heavily in a void, its texture thick, liquid, clinging. In a night full of the hot smells of decay, this humid oppression amplifies the dripping, clicking noises: the moldy rasp of dead leaves stirred by tiny animals, the constant murmur of a brook threading the loamy ground, the oozing splash of something that moves heavily through water.
There is no moon, and clouds screen the light from the stars.
Sunk in the still and viscous murk, the trees become vague shapes. Silent. Waiting. The ragged leaves of swamp elms hang as motionless as insects in a web. Slowly, the trees begin to glow.
http://www.amazon.com/Pines-Robert-Du...
According to Amazon, The Pines is now in its eleventh edition. Actually, I’m aware of two other editions, which I only found out about by accident. (Oh, what a joy it was to work with Leisure Books!) My point is that this brings the total to thirteen. My lucky number!
Set in one of the old, vanished shanty towns of the New Jersey pine barrens, the novel employs the legend of the Jersey Devil as a metaphor for human evil and debasement. (For committed horror geeks – like myself – I chronicle my adventures researching the lore in Vortex.) But when THE PINES first appeared in print, I soon found myself in the thick of a different sort of nightmare. My novel had been hacked to pieces by editors who appear to have been motivated by equal parts malice and incompetence, something I didn’t discover until I held a copy in my hands.
I’ll never forget that moment. My first book – it should have been a thrill.
Instead, I got sick. Literally.
Let's not even talk about the bloody stump on the cover.
Okay, so I should have been tougher. Yes, I was a little on the naïve and vulnerable side, but the book had not been edited so much as censored. Who wouldn’t be upset? Even my African-American heroine had suddenly become white. (Seriously? They edited her melanin?) But enough of the text survived, apparently – though I couldn’t see it at the time – to make an impression. To my utter shock, reviews from non-genre sources were immediately sensational.
“Not only a superb thriller but a masterpiece of fiction.” ~ Delaware Valley Magazine
“Dark, foreboding, menacing, eerie … seductive.” ~ The Philadelphia Inquirer
“At last, the Jersey Devil has come out of hiding.” ~ Atlantic City Magazine
Almost from the first, the book became something of a cause célèbre. (Or perhaps I mean bête noire: I get my French terms mixed up.) For every critic who raved about its qualities, another would shriek that the book had no right to exist. I didn’t know what to think, and truthfully much of it barely registered. With huge sections of text missing, I thought the plot incomprehensible.
All right, I tried to get over it. (What were my options?) And the press attention was not altogether unpleasant. Suddenly, I was doing television appearances and radio interviews and being profiled by newspapers. My photograph even showed up on the cover of a writers magazine. (Leisure Books seemed oddly resentful about all this, as though it represented a source of unwanted notoriety, and they always insisted that none of it translated into book sales. Have I mentioned how much fun it was to work with them?) For me, this was all new terrain. There I was at conferences, sitting on panels with famous authors whose work I’d been enjoying for years, answering questions and talking about the importance of constant reading across the literary spectrum, the need for writers to immerse themselves in literature, to hone their craft, and the overwhelming importance of having artistic rather than merely commercial goals. Then I nodded and smiled like a holy fool, waiting for thunderous approval.
The reaction was immediate all right: it was as though I’d spit on motherhood and the flag.
Literature? The very idea!
They were outraged, and if the book took on a life of its own, so did this backlash. I was mystified. At the first conference where I appeared as the guest of honor, an angry little man actually circulated a petition that denounced my being allowed to “pervert the genre.” One line I’ll never forget: “Obviously, Leisure Books doesn’t think normal people read horror.”
Ah.
A light went on. Finally.
(I’m a little slow sometimes.)
To their credit, a host of genre sources came to the book’s defense.
“Full of chilling surprises.” ~ Cemetery Dance
“Vivid and unnerving.” ~ The Scream Factory
“Brilliantly written and superbly plotted.” ~ The Nightmare Express
My relationship with fans has been a bit uneasy ever since. (Of course, I’ve always maintained that I’d much rather have readers than fans, another area in which I seem to be out of step with the times.) Many years would pass before I’d work in the genre again. The trauma of having my book destroyed by the publisher exhausted me, and the death of a loved one that summer left me in a state of nearly paralytic depression. The Mystery of the Disappearing Royalties, combined with the overt hostility of so many in the horror community, didn’t help.
But then the times were right for depression. Living through the AIDS fatalities in the nineties was like surviving a war. (In 1995 alone, more than 50,000 people died of the disease.) New York especially was devastated, but all big cities were hard hit. People still lament the way the arts suffered, but this impact wasn’t only caused by the loss of so many painters and musicians and writers and actors. Legions of people who appreciated their efforts also vanished, people who understood the ballet, who attended plays, who read and discussed books. Good books. Intelligent books. Challenging books. Culturally, the impact was … well, think ‘giant meteor crater.’ And voids tend to get filled. In my particular genre, a reactionary faction came to dominate. Never forget that with greater intellectual sophistication comes greater appreciation for diversity, but the reverse is also true.
It was a full decade later before a restored edition of THE PINES gave the next generation of magazines a chance to log in.
“A work of art.” ~ Shroud Magazine
“Smart … poetic ... intense.” ~ The Fright Site
“Among the classics of modern horror.” ~ Weird New Jersey
Can you blame me for feeling vindicated? A new novel (The Shore) was the first real indication that I was recovering emotionally. (More about that in Part II.)
By now, the new conservatism had begun to be reflected in an endless array of horror novels about American families menaced by some alien thing. Never mind the kind of monster – vampire or witch or werewolf – all plots hinged on destroying the different. This grew monotonous almost at once, and the exaggerated veneration of normality disturbed me profoundly. (I never really considered the market for this type of fiction to be readers so much as consumers.) Seldom does real art celebrate conformity. Isn’t it strange how much easier it is to gain acceptance for outsider characters in other genres? Detective fiction has long championed the loner of questionable social status, and science fiction has a fine tradition of unconventional heroes and heroines. But horror? I can’t be the only one less than fully invested in the spectacle of the status quo being maintained.
For me, the monster is always the lonely one, unloved and unwanted. The outcast. Even as a child I knew where my sympathies lay. Dracula wasn’t a monster so much as a villain out of Victorian melodrama – foreign and mustachioed – a stale template even then. Of course, the hero would rescue the damsel in the nick of time. Was there ever any doubt? Ah, but with the Frankenstein creature … nothing could be certain. Adam was soulful. He was morbid and abject. To this day, he remains a classic outsider, the suffering archetype at the heart of so many truly great novels. What could be more terrifying than all that pain? The monster is among the most supremely tragic – and most intensely human – of literary characters. All he wants is to belong. And he never can. No one will ever acknowledge his humanity. He suffers because he’s different.
THE SWAMP STOMP / Part Two
or “Up to My Neck at the Shore”
Something pale shimmered in the swells. He squinted. Even on such an overcast day, the bay glittered. The object bobbed between two of the boats. Stooping, he strained to make it out. Some sort of fish, belly up among the pilings? Squid-like, the thing wavered down, now visible, now gone. He crouched at the edge of the rotting dock.
The surface stirred as a swell approached, sloughing sideways like an aquatic serpent. He bent to prod the object with his cane, to bring it closer, but with the perversity of things in water, it twisted the other way, and he shivered, leaning further.
Something watched him from the water.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...
“This book is so stupid I can’t even understand it.”
Zen-like in its purity, that’s still my all-time favorite “reader” comment for one of my books on Amazon. And what’s to be made of this statement (also from Amazon)?
“I hate all that prose and literary stuff. I just wants me some horror.”
So disheartening. I’ve often wondered what a novel should be if not literary. Musical? Athletic? Also I get sick of reading that “Dunbar obviously doesn’t even know what horror is supposed to be.”
Let me guess. Is it "supposed" to be stupid?
“Who does this Dunbar think he is?”
(Sorry. Can't help you there.)
So many years had passed between books: I had to wonder whether I could pick up the thread. And the initial responses to this sequel to The Pines were not encouraging. If anything my anti-fans had grown more incensed with the passage of time, because by now my work had also been stigmatized as “difficult.” One woman on Amazon railed at length about my books being too complicated to read in front of the television. Clearly, she felt betrayed by this, as though Horror itself had let her down. I began to wonder if a readership for adult horror like The Shore even existed.
Good reviews seemed only to fan the flames of outrage.
“A classic. Dunbar is a master.” ~ Nights & Weekends
Message boards and horror sites now sported warnings that no one should buy my books (because I was ‘perverting’ the genre), while others publicly insisted that all my good reviews were evidence of a conspiracy. For weeks, one gentleman on Shocklines, a popular genre community board, kept calling me “deformed and retarded,” really working himself up into quite a state. I never understood what the poor soul was on about, but the level of discourse spoke volumes.
Again, the genre presses rather heroically stepped in.
“This is the way great horror should be written.” ~ HellNotes
“Fresh and fascinating.” ~ Famous Monsters of Filmland
“This intense and wholly original novel is one of the best to come out of the horror genre in years.” ~ Dark Scribe
Art should provoke, and I choose to believe that such angry responses mean I’m doing something right. What’s the Churchill quote? Words to the effect that having enemies proves you stand for something...
Never mind. I hate being so combative all the time. It's really not my nature. Maybe it’s just that I got off on the wrong foot with people. (I excel at this.) For every critic who raved that my books were "much better than the average horror" novel – not the most tactful of compliments – scores of aficionados of the genre vented their resentment at the very notion. Who does Dunbar think he is?
But is it really so objectionable a concept that Horror should also be literature?
Extraordinary talents have flourished in the darkness, artists of the caliber and diversity of Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury and Algernon Blackwood and Robert Aickman. Consider the works of Franz Kafka or Gustav Meyrink. What are they if not literary horror? Yet the L word is still routinely applied in a pejorative sense. One flouts this mandated mediocrity at one’s own peril.
Still… there’s a reason I stay.
Years ago, I began to hear from readers who told me that they had “just about given up” finding dark fiction intended for intelligent adults. These folks kept me going, because their responses to my work could be passionately appreciative. What else does a writer live for?
Perhaps I am combative after all, and – yes – it’s worth the battle. Over the years, I’ve so often been moved by the praise of readers, my feelings only enhanced by the fact that the individuals making such comments tend to be articulate and insightful – exactly the readership I’ve always sought.
Sought? Summoned.
Conjured.
Believed in as an article of faith.
These are the readers I envision when I sit down to write. Whenever one of them declares some novel of mine to be among the finest books they’ve read, it constitutes validation on a profound level… if only because there’s not a vanilla character to be found anywhere in my work.
This gives me hope. Perhaps the genre isn’t as reactionary as it seems. Perhaps culturally we are at last emerging from a dark time, like some noble monster groping toward the light.
Something pale shimmered in the swells. He squinted. Even on such an overcast day, the bay glittered. The object bobbed between two of the boats. Stooping, he strained to make it out. Some sort of fish, belly up among the pilings? Squid-like, the thing wavered down, now visible, now gone. He crouched at the edge of the rotting dock.
The surface stirred as a swell approached, sloughing sideways like an aquatic serpent. He bent to prod the object with his cane, to bring it closer, but with the perversity of things in water, it twisted the other way, and he shivered, leaning further.
Something watched him from the water.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...
“This book is so stupid I can’t even understand it.”
Zen-like in its purity, that’s still my all-time favorite “reader” comment for one of my books on Amazon. And what’s to be made of this statement (also from Amazon)?
“I hate all that prose and literary stuff. I just wants me some horror.”
So disheartening. I’ve often wondered what a novel should be if not literary. Musical? Athletic? Also I get sick of reading that “Dunbar obviously doesn’t even know what horror is supposed to be.”
Let me guess. Is it "supposed" to be stupid?
“Who does this Dunbar think he is?”
(Sorry. Can't help you there.)
So many years had passed between books: I had to wonder whether I could pick up the thread. And the initial responses to this sequel to The Pines were not encouraging. If anything my anti-fans had grown more incensed with the passage of time, because by now my work had also been stigmatized as “difficult.” One woman on Amazon railed at length about my books being too complicated to read in front of the television. Clearly, she felt betrayed by this, as though Horror itself had let her down. I began to wonder if a readership for adult horror like The Shore even existed.
Good reviews seemed only to fan the flames of outrage.
“A classic. Dunbar is a master.” ~ Nights & Weekends
Message boards and horror sites now sported warnings that no one should buy my books (because I was ‘perverting’ the genre), while others publicly insisted that all my good reviews were evidence of a conspiracy. For weeks, one gentleman on Shocklines, a popular genre community board, kept calling me “deformed and retarded,” really working himself up into quite a state. I never understood what the poor soul was on about, but the level of discourse spoke volumes.
Again, the genre presses rather heroically stepped in.
“This is the way great horror should be written.” ~ HellNotes
“Fresh and fascinating.” ~ Famous Monsters of Filmland
“This intense and wholly original novel is one of the best to come out of the horror genre in years.” ~ Dark Scribe
Art should provoke, and I choose to believe that such angry responses mean I’m doing something right. What’s the Churchill quote? Words to the effect that having enemies proves you stand for something...
Never mind. I hate being so combative all the time. It's really not my nature. Maybe it’s just that I got off on the wrong foot with people. (I excel at this.) For every critic who raved that my books were "much better than the average horror" novel – not the most tactful of compliments – scores of aficionados of the genre vented their resentment at the very notion. Who does Dunbar think he is?
But is it really so objectionable a concept that Horror should also be literature?
Extraordinary talents have flourished in the darkness, artists of the caliber and diversity of Shirley Jackson and Ray Bradbury and Algernon Blackwood and Robert Aickman. Consider the works of Franz Kafka or Gustav Meyrink. What are they if not literary horror? Yet the L word is still routinely applied in a pejorative sense. One flouts this mandated mediocrity at one’s own peril.
Still… there’s a reason I stay.
Years ago, I began to hear from readers who told me that they had “just about given up” finding dark fiction intended for intelligent adults. These folks kept me going, because their responses to my work could be passionately appreciative. What else does a writer live for?
Perhaps I am combative after all, and – yes – it’s worth the battle. Over the years, I’ve so often been moved by the praise of readers, my feelings only enhanced by the fact that the individuals making such comments tend to be articulate and insightful – exactly the readership I’ve always sought.
Sought? Summoned.
Conjured.
Believed in as an article of faith.
These are the readers I envision when I sit down to write. Whenever one of them declares some novel of mine to be among the finest books they’ve read, it constitutes validation on a profound level… if only because there’s not a vanilla character to be found anywhere in my work.
This gives me hope. Perhaps the genre isn’t as reactionary as it seems. Perhaps culturally we are at last emerging from a dark time, like some noble monster groping toward the light.
THE SWAMP STOMP / Part Three
or “Taking it to the Streets”
Legends linger in the dark places of this earth...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pines-Rober...
After more than twenty years, The Pines continues to attract new devotees… and new detractors, many of whom still sputter in outrage.
It also still garners sensational reviews. Go figure.
Weird, isn’t it? There’s been a gold-embossed leather-bound volume, a limited-edition hardbound collectors’ edition, mass-market paperback editions, and now “rebranded” paperbacks and ebooks from 47North. (This publisher is also talking about audio books and translations and, since they’re a subsidiary of Amazon, presumably have the resources to make such things happen.) Early on, I created a trailer. If you're curious, you can check it out at http://youtu.be/qjchi9VScG4.
Happily, the bad old days are over. For so many years, I had to advise readers NOT to purchase these books, since no royalties were being paid to authors. (Have I mentioned how much fun it was to work with Leisure Books?) Finally, I can recommend both The Pines and its sequel, The Shore.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...
There’s also a trailer for The Shore here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIJsF...
THE PINES centers on Athena Lee Monroe, a displaced person eking out a marginal existence in the New Jersey pine barrens. It also introduces her son Matthew, a boy with a strange affinity for the forest. There’s a presence in those woods, an influence. This remains a key theme, and those elements (and some of the characters) resurface in The Shore, with the setting moved to a desolate beach town on the edge of the woods.
If I feel connected to a specific tradition, it’s that of all those writers who told tales of the ancient, sentient forest. Something lurks in those shadows, something that destroys … or seduces.
I wanted THE SHORE to continue the storyline while staying as far from the tone of the first book as possible. I mean, THE PINES seethes. It’s all steamy summer nights. The emotions are scalding and miserable, and the (frequent) sexual encounters are tawdry. Everyone drips with sweat, and the air roils with insects. Despite the meanness of their situations, some of the characters possess a sort of innate nobility, which has nothing to do with conventional morality. (It’s not the heat, it’s the lucidity.) They redeem themselves. They make sacrifices for love. They grow. And die (some of them). If THE PINES seems to be occurring in an equatorial jungle, THE SHORE may as well take place on a polar icecap. A winter storm menaces a beach town. The people barely speak. They huddle and harbor secrets. And die (some of them).
No vanilla “heroes” here. My people are always more likely to be minorities or outlaws of one type or another. These are the people closest to my heart, my soul, and I believe this continues to cause a substantial amount of the provocation experienced by so many “fans” of the genre. Some people will resist the very notion of diversity with their last breaths.
And so the battle rages on. The novel I’m working on now, the final section of the trilogy – THE STREETS – finds characters from both earlier books struggling in a very urban environment. They won’t give up without a fight either.
Legends linger in the dark places of this earth...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pines-Rober...
After more than twenty years, The Pines continues to attract new devotees… and new detractors, many of whom still sputter in outrage.
It also still garners sensational reviews. Go figure.
Weird, isn’t it? There’s been a gold-embossed leather-bound volume, a limited-edition hardbound collectors’ edition, mass-market paperback editions, and now “rebranded” paperbacks and ebooks from 47North. (This publisher is also talking about audio books and translations and, since they’re a subsidiary of Amazon, presumably have the resources to make such things happen.) Early on, I created a trailer. If you're curious, you can check it out at http://youtu.be/qjchi9VScG4.
Happily, the bad old days are over. For so many years, I had to advise readers NOT to purchase these books, since no royalties were being paid to authors. (Have I mentioned how much fun it was to work with Leisure Books?) Finally, I can recommend both The Pines and its sequel, The Shore.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shore-Rober...
There’s also a trailer for The Shore here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIJsF...
THE PINES centers on Athena Lee Monroe, a displaced person eking out a marginal existence in the New Jersey pine barrens. It also introduces her son Matthew, a boy with a strange affinity for the forest. There’s a presence in those woods, an influence. This remains a key theme, and those elements (and some of the characters) resurface in The Shore, with the setting moved to a desolate beach town on the edge of the woods.
If I feel connected to a specific tradition, it’s that of all those writers who told tales of the ancient, sentient forest. Something lurks in those shadows, something that destroys … or seduces.
I wanted THE SHORE to continue the storyline while staying as far from the tone of the first book as possible. I mean, THE PINES seethes. It’s all steamy summer nights. The emotions are scalding and miserable, and the (frequent) sexual encounters are tawdry. Everyone drips with sweat, and the air roils with insects. Despite the meanness of their situations, some of the characters possess a sort of innate nobility, which has nothing to do with conventional morality. (It’s not the heat, it’s the lucidity.) They redeem themselves. They make sacrifices for love. They grow. And die (some of them). If THE PINES seems to be occurring in an equatorial jungle, THE SHORE may as well take place on a polar icecap. A winter storm menaces a beach town. The people barely speak. They huddle and harbor secrets. And die (some of them).
No vanilla “heroes” here. My people are always more likely to be minorities or outlaws of one type or another. These are the people closest to my heart, my soul, and I believe this continues to cause a substantial amount of the provocation experienced by so many “fans” of the genre. Some people will resist the very notion of diversity with their last breaths.
And so the battle rages on. The novel I’m working on now, the final section of the trilogy – THE STREETS – finds characters from both earlier books struggling in a very urban environment. They won’t give up without a fight either.
THE ME OF NOW
Writers don’t get to talk about their work much. (Go ahead. Try to interject an anecdote about “character development” or “plot logic” into a conversation. Watch how bored civilians get. And how quickly.) But what else can a writer even talk about? I mean, this is me. This is my life. It’s what I do. If I remove myself from the conversation, I’m left just smiling and nodding.
Fascinating, yes. Uh huh.
Connections are… difficult. You can see people staring at you, but you can’t really see them. You’re really trying to work out that awkward bit of dialogue in chapter fourteen.
Interesting lifestyle choice.
I figured, maybe if I gave all my readers a heads up all at once…
Okay then. At this point, I’m desperately and completely consumed by “Tremble.” No, it’s not a drug. Not exactly. It’s the working title for my new novel. And it is of course killing me. After the last one, I thought I’d write something, you know, easy. Lots of action. An actual monster. Basic situation: a gang of characters barricaded in an old dark house, just trying to survive the night. Hell, just trying to survive. Then I got this really clever idea. Really really clever. I know, I thought to myself, I’ll make them all trash characters. You know? The sort that get disposed of early in a horror movie? Yes, that’s the way to go.
I must be out of my mind. Was I concentrating on unlikable characters to keep myself from becoming too close with these persons? Why did it never occur to me that – hey – these are my people? Suddenly, I am totally involved in their struggle.
Like I said, it’s killing me. It’s also taking me a lot longer to write than it should. There are a few reasons. I started a major editing assignment. Then I let myself get talked into writing a short story that floated off on a tangent… and then another tangent… and then…
And then there’s THE PINES and THE SHORE, two-thirds of my trilogy. For years, they’ve been comfortably ensconced at 47North (with the final part of the series at long last appearing at Uninvited Books). This didn’t seem to bother any of the editors at 47North, but it was sort of driving me a little crazy. There’s a reason I’m bringing this up now. After just a few months of my nagging them, they’ve agreed to release the books. So here I am, finally (finally!) consumed with rewriting and editing and working on the layout and cover (to match THE STREETS). Will they eventually be sold as a boxed trilogy set? It could happen. Will there be signed hardback collector copies? There’s an awful lot of work involved in this.
(Oh, and by the way, my novel THE STREETS is currently available for reviewing at Netgalley. It’s free, but if you’re not a member you’ll need to create a profile. The link for my book is here: https://www.netgalley.com/widget/open...)
A whole new website for Uninvited Books is also being developed. I’m excited.
That’s pretty much it with me, though it feels a lot busier. Oh, wait, the first foreign language version of one of my books is approaching as well. My novel WILLY is being released by Good Kill Edizioni (Rome), the editor of which called it “awesome.”
All right then. I’m pleased.
Back to work.
Fascinating, yes. Uh huh.
Connections are… difficult. You can see people staring at you, but you can’t really see them. You’re really trying to work out that awkward bit of dialogue in chapter fourteen.
Interesting lifestyle choice.
I figured, maybe if I gave all my readers a heads up all at once…
Okay then. At this point, I’m desperately and completely consumed by “Tremble.” No, it’s not a drug. Not exactly. It’s the working title for my new novel. And it is of course killing me. After the last one, I thought I’d write something, you know, easy. Lots of action. An actual monster. Basic situation: a gang of characters barricaded in an old dark house, just trying to survive the night. Hell, just trying to survive. Then I got this really clever idea. Really really clever. I know, I thought to myself, I’ll make them all trash characters. You know? The sort that get disposed of early in a horror movie? Yes, that’s the way to go.
I must be out of my mind. Was I concentrating on unlikable characters to keep myself from becoming too close with these persons? Why did it never occur to me that – hey – these are my people? Suddenly, I am totally involved in their struggle.
Like I said, it’s killing me. It’s also taking me a lot longer to write than it should. There are a few reasons. I started a major editing assignment. Then I let myself get talked into writing a short story that floated off on a tangent… and then another tangent… and then…
And then there’s THE PINES and THE SHORE, two-thirds of my trilogy. For years, they’ve been comfortably ensconced at 47North (with the final part of the series at long last appearing at Uninvited Books). This didn’t seem to bother any of the editors at 47North, but it was sort of driving me a little crazy. There’s a reason I’m bringing this up now. After just a few months of my nagging them, they’ve agreed to release the books. So here I am, finally (finally!) consumed with rewriting and editing and working on the layout and cover (to match THE STREETS). Will they eventually be sold as a boxed trilogy set? It could happen. Will there be signed hardback collector copies? There’s an awful lot of work involved in this.
(Oh, and by the way, my novel THE STREETS is currently available for reviewing at Netgalley. It’s free, but if you’re not a member you’ll need to create a profile. The link for my book is here: https://www.netgalley.com/widget/open...)
A whole new website for Uninvited Books is also being developed. I’m excited.
That’s pretty much it with me, though it feels a lot busier. Oh, wait, the first foreign language version of one of my books is approaching as well. My novel WILLY is being released by Good Kill Edizioni (Rome), the editor of which called it “awesome.”
All right then. I’m pleased.
Back to work.
Closer and Closer
The Pines Trilogy keeps getting closer to actually happening.
Keeps.
Actually.
It’s like a fantasy. (For me anyway.) I find myself picturing new versions of all the three books with gorgeous matching covers. I imagine them revised (in bits, here and there) and most importantly re-edited. Especially THE PINES. Don’t get me started.
What’s happened to make this possible?
THE STREETS, final part of the trilogy, continues to attract excellent reviews, and – quite recently – the rights for THE PINES and THE SHORE were returned to me by 47North. (I asked for them, begged for them. They were nice about it … eventually.) As you can imagine, I’m very pleased about this. The new covers for the editions are beautiful, deep, atmospheric. I’m very pleased about my recent rewrite for THE PINES, and the new version of THE SHORE is cooking along nicely.
Currently, only the first and third entries in the trilogy are available at Amazon, but the new version for the middle part will be along soon ... in a couple of weeks probably. There’ve been a million challenges in this process. Again, don’t get me started. It’s all been daunting to say the least. But the number of errors (and the ham-fisted editing) couldn’t be permitted to stand. After all these years, the text has finally been corrected. Another month and all three of the books will be available at Amazon as paperbacks and ebooks.
I’m excited.
Now… about those new reviews…
Here’s a couple of them.
“A densely populated and intricately plotted work of fiction, whose complexity is magnified by the Hemingway-like concision of Dunbar’s prose… evokes the pleasurable difficulty of reading such heavyweights as Southern Gothic scribe William Faulkner… As an individual novel, it’s excellent; but taken as a whole, Dunbar’s Pines Trilogy stands among the genre’s most finely crafted contemporary series.”
~ Unnerving Magazine
http://www.unnervingmagazine.com/sing...
“What Dunbar does best in The Streets is redefine the word "Monster." Monsters are not only humanized, they are celebrated. They love and are loved. The reader can gaze on the Monsters and see their beauty.”
~ Mrs. Hoskins Summer Reading
https://www.facebook.com/Mrs.HoskinsS...
"Fascinating ... richly written ... prose capturing the beauty and horror weaves within the narrative to spin a yarn that is unforgettable."
~ MBLiterary
https://www.mbliterary.com/single-pos...
“A remarkable example of a thoughtful and talented writer engaged in pushing the boundaries of the genre.”
~ Horror Novel Reviews
http://horrornovelreviews.com/2016/02...
“Dread-inducing, yet remarkably life-affirming ... with amazing depth and emotion.”
~ Nameless Digest
http://www.namelessdigest.com/2015/11...
“Dunbar shows considerable skill … mixing both genre and literary influences into a style all his own.”
~ This Is Horror
http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/look-ou...
Did I mention that I’m very pleased?
Keeps.
Actually.
It’s like a fantasy. (For me anyway.) I find myself picturing new versions of all the three books with gorgeous matching covers. I imagine them revised (in bits, here and there) and most importantly re-edited. Especially THE PINES. Don’t get me started.
What’s happened to make this possible?
THE STREETS, final part of the trilogy, continues to attract excellent reviews, and – quite recently – the rights for THE PINES and THE SHORE were returned to me by 47North. (I asked for them, begged for them. They were nice about it … eventually.) As you can imagine, I’m very pleased about this. The new covers for the editions are beautiful, deep, atmospheric. I’m very pleased about my recent rewrite for THE PINES, and the new version of THE SHORE is cooking along nicely.
Currently, only the first and third entries in the trilogy are available at Amazon, but the new version for the middle part will be along soon ... in a couple of weeks probably. There’ve been a million challenges in this process. Again, don’t get me started. It’s all been daunting to say the least. But the number of errors (and the ham-fisted editing) couldn’t be permitted to stand. After all these years, the text has finally been corrected. Another month and all three of the books will be available at Amazon as paperbacks and ebooks.
I’m excited.
Now… about those new reviews…
Here’s a couple of them.
“A densely populated and intricately plotted work of fiction, whose complexity is magnified by the Hemingway-like concision of Dunbar’s prose… evokes the pleasurable difficulty of reading such heavyweights as Southern Gothic scribe William Faulkner… As an individual novel, it’s excellent; but taken as a whole, Dunbar’s Pines Trilogy stands among the genre’s most finely crafted contemporary series.”
~ Unnerving Magazine
http://www.unnervingmagazine.com/sing...
“What Dunbar does best in The Streets is redefine the word "Monster." Monsters are not only humanized, they are celebrated. They love and are loved. The reader can gaze on the Monsters and see their beauty.”
~ Mrs. Hoskins Summer Reading
https://www.facebook.com/Mrs.HoskinsS...
"Fascinating ... richly written ... prose capturing the beauty and horror weaves within the narrative to spin a yarn that is unforgettable."
~ MBLiterary
https://www.mbliterary.com/single-pos...
“A remarkable example of a thoughtful and talented writer engaged in pushing the boundaries of the genre.”
~ Horror Novel Reviews
http://horrornovelreviews.com/2016/02...
“Dread-inducing, yet remarkably life-affirming ... with amazing depth and emotion.”
~ Nameless Digest
http://www.namelessdigest.com/2015/11...
“Dunbar shows considerable skill … mixing both genre and literary influences into a style all his own.”
~ This Is Horror
http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/look-ou...
Did I mention that I’m very pleased?
THE PINES TRILOGY
My trilogy -- THE PINES, THE SHORE and THE STREETS -- is finally completed. The novels have been extensively revised, and all now have beautiful matching covers. (The flock of birds on each cover is, indeed, the same photograph, digitally altered. In case you were wondering.) Chas Hendricksen did the artwork, and I think you can see why I'm so pleased with them.
The books are featured on the new website (also extensively revised) for Uninvited Books, complete with reviews, interviews, and synopses.
www.UninvitedBooks.com
Drop by. (At least to see the covers in close up!) Let me know what you think.
The (undying) Pines
All these years after this book was released, and I’m still amazed by the intensity of the new reviews. (Actually, I'm just as amazed by the fact that there are new reviews.) Kevin Lucia’s sensitive and deeply emotive response appeared last week online at Cemetery Dance (Revelations). I found it especially moving because of my appreciation for Lucia’s writing.
https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/...
I had much the same reaction (for much the same reason) to Mike Thorn’s review at Unnerving Magazine last year.
“Challenging and rewarding… Dunbar’s Pines Trilogy stands among the genre’s most finely crafted contemporary series.” ~ Unnerving Magazine
May such responses continue to appear!
https://www.cemeterydance.com/extras/...
I had much the same reaction (for much the same reason) to Mike Thorn’s review at Unnerving Magazine last year.
“Challenging and rewarding… Dunbar’s Pines Trilogy stands among the genre’s most finely crafted contemporary series.” ~ Unnerving Magazine
May such responses continue to appear!
