nightscript

Reflecting on MURKY GLASS

/ Clint Smith / Leave a comment

I’ve experienced a hectic stretch in this, the first quarter of 2023.  Though I’ve been concluding and reconfiguring several writing products, most of these distracting demands have been rather conventional (read:  occupation-based chores).  Nevertheless, I’ve been accompanied by companions to fend off the fiends of discouragement. While Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer occasionally provides doses of sardonic consolation, it’s the familiar voices of my contemporaries which have, lately, resonated with more clarity.

I recently finished C.M. Muller’s Murky Glass:  A Novel of Horror For Young Readers.  Despite the occasional, possibly convenient, claim that we “grow out of” certain childhood proclivities, the truth is that artists never fully remove their fingers from the pulse of those loves.  

Murky Glass is not so much a reflective love letter to our collective literary lanterns (though there exists an overarching nod toward Something Wicked This Way Comes), rather, it provides a circumstantial landscape where, well, magic emerges.

There’s been some discussion (rumors?) of the discontinuance, or possibly the hiatus, of the Nightscript series, which has, presently, generated eight volumes; and with each volume, Muller has amplified the voices of, in many cases, unknown writers whose work deserves a stage, while simultaneously distilling an impressive reputation.

Writer David Surface recently referred to Muller’s Nightscript as “legendary.”  And that’s accurate.  As an independent press, Muller has steadfastly maintained both his artistic vision and his dependable commitment to quality.   

For over a decade, and in addition to his own collections of tales, Hidden Folk and Secondary Roads, Muller has produced several projects, what I would classify as contemporary classics:  Oculus Sinister, Twice-Told, and the approaching Come October.  Chthonic Matter is Muller’s latest undertaking, what is slated to be a quarterly publication, each installment containing eight stories from the “darkside.” 

With Murky Glass, Muller is extending his reach to not only cleverly acknowledge the beloved, horror-rooted accords of our predecessors, but to wave in and welcome the next permutation of eager readers.

Something Abides After Such Horror: a Review of Daniel Mills’s Collection, AMONG THE LILIES

/ Clint Smith / Leave a comment

I initially became acquainted with Mills’s work back in 2014, when I picked up a copy of The Lord Came at Twilight (Dark Renaissance Books), a collection that, I might note, continues to garner much (and well-deserved) praise.  (Bonus:  each story in this volume is supplemented by an illustration by M. Wayne Miller.)  Not long after, I was privileged to have a story appear along with Mills in the inaugural installment of C.M. Muller’s annual anthology, Nightscript (Chthonic Matter, 2015); and it was with the tale therein, “Below the Falls,” that I grew piqued by the author’s storytelling strength.  Among the Lilies (Undertow Publications, 2021) is his latest fiction collection.

Cover art by Yves Tourigny

Using the term “channeling” when assessing Mills’s work, I intend it devoid of pejorative.  Daniel Mills writes without emulation, but his style taps into a medium of Kodachrome antiquity, conjuring an aesthetic of arresting sagacity.  

One can find a number of stories that are period pieces, of a sort — stories that, while paying reverence to traditions ossified by Hawthorne, Bronte, and Brockden Brown, operate as an enhancement to the forms of the Gothic and nineteenth-century supernatural horror.  Mills acknowledges this in sly blips, communicating to his audience, “We talked of music and literature and I admitted even my love of Poe and Hawthorne and to the escape I had found in romances of the darkest character” (“Lilies”).

Other tales, though, are robust in their modern mode.  I’d point to “The Lake” and (a dark little ditty with which I’m particularly enamored) “Dream Children”; I’ve been unable to cast light onto the surface of water at night without a stitch of icy unease since reading it.  The collection is capped off by the impressive novella, “The Account of David Stonehouse, Exile,” which originally appeared as a standalone volume published by Dim Shores in 2016.

Regardless of the era Mills places his readers, he conducts his literary tours with a professorial lack of pretension, revealing stories that are sharp and crisp — tales that hum with neon solemnity.

After all this time, I find Mills’s writing creatively nourishing, and I believe unacquainted readers will find his skills, as one of his characters puts it, “not inconsiderable.”  Conversely, to his steadfast friends:  those who know this, know.  I’ve stated it elsewhere, but it bears repeating:  Deft and unsettling, Daniel Mills’s Among the Lilies is a haunting enhancement of modern horror fiction — an electrically delicate collection of specters.