Nancy A. Collins burst onto the horror fiction scene in 1989 with one of the most auspicious debuts in horror fiction history. Sunglasses After Dark won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First novel, and it introduced her punkish vampire, Sonja Blue, to readers. It was a hip, hard-hitting novel that showed the Splatterpunk boys a trick or two.
Collins followed up with more Sonja Blue novels and stories, as well as other horror novels like Tempter and Wild Blood. Perhaps she succeeds best with her remarkable short fiction. Her stories have never failed to shock, move, and delight me.
Though she rarely seems to get enough credit for it, Nancy's fiction, especially the Sonja Blue character, were heavily influential to the Urban Fantasy subgenre. Whether they acknowledge it or not, Laurel K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, and Seanan McGuire all owe Nancy Collins an enormous debt. Not to mention film and comic franchises like Blade and Underworld.
Collins entered the world of comics when she began writing Swamp Thing in 1991. She has been active in the medium since then, writing stories for iconic franchises like Vampirella, Army of Darkness, and Jason Vs. Leatherface.
Her novella, Absalom's Wake, was published in trade paperback in 2018, but I am just now getting around to it. It was worth the wait.
You've surely heard of Weird Westerns. Well, Absalom's Wake is a Weird Whaling story. It's an historical story that brings to mind seafaring works of William Hope Hodgson. The prose is as rich and credible as something by Dan Simmons or Robert McCammon.
Jonah Padgett is a young man who dreams of following in his grandfather's footsteps and join a whaling expedition. He does so, but life on a ship isn't as glamorous as he imagined it would be. It's dirt and squalor, back-breaking work and endless discomfort. Poor food and dubious company. Yet Young Master Padgett enjoys it all. But the sea in Absalom's Wake holds many secrets. Gods and monsters, and death from below.
Absalom's Wake is the kind of rip-roaring horror adventure yarn that is rarely written any more. This novella brims with wonder and imagination, and Collins gets all the scurrilous details right. It's a rigorous tall tale that would have been perfectly at home in Weird Tales Magazine.
Written by Mark Sieber
Collins followed up with more Sonja Blue novels and stories, as well as other horror novels like Tempter and Wild Blood. Perhaps she succeeds best with her remarkable short fiction. Her stories have never failed to shock, move, and delight me.
Though she rarely seems to get enough credit for it, Nancy's fiction, especially the Sonja Blue character, were heavily influential to the Urban Fantasy subgenre. Whether they acknowledge it or not, Laurel K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, and Seanan McGuire all owe Nancy Collins an enormous debt. Not to mention film and comic franchises like Blade and Underworld.
Collins entered the world of comics when she began writing Swamp Thing in 1991. She has been active in the medium since then, writing stories for iconic franchises like Vampirella, Army of Darkness, and Jason Vs. Leatherface.
Her novella, Absalom's Wake, was published in trade paperback in 2018, but I am just now getting around to it. It was worth the wait.You've surely heard of Weird Westerns. Well, Absalom's Wake is a Weird Whaling story. It's an historical story that brings to mind seafaring works of William Hope Hodgson. The prose is as rich and credible as something by Dan Simmons or Robert McCammon.
Jonah Padgett is a young man who dreams of following in his grandfather's footsteps and join a whaling expedition. He does so, but life on a ship isn't as glamorous as he imagined it would be. It's dirt and squalor, back-breaking work and endless discomfort. Poor food and dubious company. Yet Young Master Padgett enjoys it all. But the sea in Absalom's Wake holds many secrets. Gods and monsters, and death from below.
Absalom's Wake is the kind of rip-roaring horror adventure yarn that is rarely written any more. This novella brims with wonder and imagination, and Collins gets all the scurrilous details right. It's a rigorous tall tale that would have been perfectly at home in Weird Tales Magazine.
Written by Mark Sieber
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