Читать книгу In the Language of Scorpions - Charles Allen Gramlich - Страница 6

INTRODUCTION

Tales with twists and chills, dark deeds and eerie atmosphere await you just a few pages ahead. Charles Gramlich offers stories that go in unexpected directions, then take abrupt turns, and from there they make another left. The only certainty as you turn the next few pages is that you will encounter tales that will make you shiver.

Charles Gramlich has written in many genres. Tales in which men carry swords and tales in which men carry guns. He brings a powerful sense of storytelling and a gift for language to each, but the collection you hold features work he’s produced in the horror genre. Charles proves here he is a master of the short tale of terror as well.

Brace yourself, dear reader. You’re about to be strapped to a chair and fed relentless, unflinching fiction. You’ll get no mercy here, so don’t expect any.

Not the kind of treatment you’d expect from a polite professor of psychology, but Charles is living proof of what I’ve believed for a long time: horror writers are some of the nicest people you’re likely to encounter. Dark impulses are dealt with on the page—saved for the page, in fact—where stygian ideas will serve the ultimate master and purpose, The Story.

Charles is as supportive of other writers as he is dedicated to the craft. He’s quick to leave a comment of encouragement on a blog and quick to offer ideas and other support, and I can attest personally to his hospitality.

We met sometime right after the first fish decided to leave the primal muck and check the weather on the beach. It was at the New Orleans Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival.

My old friend and collaborator Robert Petitt and I were having beers in the hotel bar and talking over a Robert McCammon story. Turned out the guy next to us had read it too. That was Charles, and we’ve been buddies ever since.

Another year at NOSFF or maybe it was when World Fantasy was in New Orleans, Charles and I got away from the activity for a while, picked up New Orleans poor boy sandwiches and sat in his room full of books at his house for lunch.

It was everything you’d expect a writer’s lair to look like. Pulps and classics filled his shelves, and beyond the capacity for the shelves, books of all styles and genres were arranged in neat stacks with an organization that made me envious. Robert E. Howard to be sure—Charles is a major Howard fan and a significant contributor to REHupa—but tales of terror and mystery as well, purchased new or discovered in long, careful searches through New Orleans used bookshops.

I tell you that to note again what a nice guy Charles is, but also to observe that the magic in those books is reflected in the pages ahead. Charles has read voraciously, and just like those tellers of tales who’ve come before, he’s absorbed the old and dreamed new dreams, dark dreams herein, carrying on the legacy of the campfire tales and the early pulps, while infusing new energy and vision.

It’s all fresh, new, exciting, sprinkled with the flavor of the things Charles loves and that we all love. It reflects that aforementioned devotion to craft, and an endless energy and enthusiasm for fomenting fear.

So, are we clear? Charles Gramlich: nice guy, voracious reader, great writer. Brace yourself. It’s about to get brutal.

Sidney Williams

2010