New Loves: Some of My New Favorite Writers

I have a tendency to explore new reads at length. In a way, I'm restless and I'm always looking for new writers (new to me) , and so I am constantly experiencing a sense of literary wanderlust. I consider readers of this variety to be voyagers. Here are a few writers I have recently gotten into:

Ronald Kelly: I've been reading his short stories lately and I think most of them are awesome. I personally like his supernatural horror better than his psychological ones (although I think "Grandma's Secret Recipe" is one of his very best). Overall, he has a way of conveying the sinister that is striking. Some of my favorite stories include "The Cistern," "Ms Abigail's Delicate Condition, " "Cumberland Furnace, " and "The Thing at the Side of The Road." Some of these are poignant, some are deeply unsettling, some are just nasty. It's would be easiest to find his collections Dark Dixie, Cumberland Furnace, and Twilight Hankerings in Kindle or audiobook formats.

R Chetwynd-Hayes: I mentioned him earlier but I want to give a shout out to a recent volume of his that was just released called
Gaslight, Ghouls, and Ghosts which contains some of his best work. It's a beautiful book and worth the price. It was released by PS Publishing,. Here is the link:
https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/gaslight-ghosts--ghouls-a-centenary-celebration-r-chetwynd-hayes-hardcover-ed-by-stephen-jones-4842-p.asp?v=0&variantid=4843

Bill Pronzini: I got into his work last year starting with his collection of horror and dark suspense stories Night Freight. I've read over a hundred of his short stories since and I think he is one of the best storytellers out there today. His twists are often difficult to predict, his mysteries are engaging and he plays fair, and he's entertaining to a fault. Currently, I'm reading The Running of Beasts (so far, so good) but his collections Night Freight, Case File, Small Felonies, Graveyard Plots, and Scenarios are excellent.

Brian Lumley: reading his work has become something of an addiction. His Cthulhu mythos stories are great fun ("Haggopian, " "Lord of the Worms," and "The Horror at Oakdeene " are some of my favorites ). His Tales of the Primal Land are reminiscent of Robert E Howard's Hyboria but they are tied closely to days of Cthulhu during the early history. His non-mythos stories are also entertaining and worth checking out. I am also big fan of his Titus Crow novels who is my favorite character in the psychic detective subgenre. The short stories tend to be of the traditional psychic detective variety but the novels remind me of a mix of Dr Who and Edgar Rice Burroughs but with Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones as the arch-villains. Overall, Lumley's is really cool.

Every now and then I will make posts like these because I think it's my duty to share my enthusiasm and spread the word. Give some of the works a shot.

Written by Nicholas Montelongo