Risingshadow has the honour of publishing a guest post about psychological horror by Chris Morey.
Chris Morey is the editor of the Black Labyrinth imprint and the owner and publisher at Dark Regions Press.
Horror Exists Within All of Us by Chris Morey from Dark Regions Press
There have been trends in horror fiction over the past ten years: monster fiction and dystopian fiction. An abundance of apocalyptic stories often related to zombies or another cataclysmic scenario or, of course, monsters; vampires, werewolves, Cthulhu. These trends point to a common underlying thread: the desire for escape from society, normalcy and/or routine.
As fantastic and engaging as escaping from our reality can be, what about really digging into our own personal realities? What about the stories that examine what makes us who we are, the ones that shine a light into the darkest corners of our minds? The human psyche is an incredibly complex and multilayered organism that has been largely unexplored in post-modern horror fiction. This has not gone unnoticed.
Black Labyrinth is our answer. After watching these trends unfold for years, our yearning for true psychological horror fiction only grew stronger. Eventually we realized that the only solution was to publish psychological stories ourselves. Thus the ideas for Black Labyrinth formed; an imprint of ten books purely dedicated to psychological horror. Each book an original novel or novella written by one of the living masters of horror and dark fiction. Each story illustrated by surrealist artist Santiago Caruso. All offered in ebook, trade paperback and premium signed limited edition Black Labyrinth hardcovers.
The first book in the imprint, The Walls of the Castle by Tom Piccirilli was met with wide critical acclaim and contained four original illustrations and cover artwork from Santiago Caruso. The hardcovers sold out within one month of publication.
Now we’re running a campaign for Book II in the imprint by Joe R. Lansdale, award-winning author of Edge of Dark Water, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Bottoms, the Hap and Leonard series, Incident On and Off a Mountain Road and many other novels, novellas, short stories, comic books and screenplays. Joe is consistently ranked in the top living horror authors, and we’re thrilled to have him in the imprint. But to make this book a reality, we are turning to Kickstarter, and this campaign will be running until Sunday, November 10th 2013. Everyone who contributes to the campaign will receive a copy of the book.
Horror needs an injection of fresh ideas and original concepts. We’ve explored the end of the world, we’ve explored other worlds and creatures outside of our own perceptions... but what about our own realities? What about exploring our own subconscious and the demons that hide within? It seems to us that the human mind itself is a gold mine for storytelling, especially horror fiction.
Darkness exists in each of our minds, an amoeba that fluctuates in strength and intent. What could be more powerful for a story than letting this darkness consume our character, or having it spill into the “real” world?
We hope you explore these possibilities with us and bring a new story from Joe R. Lansdale; Book II in the Black Labyrinth imprint illustrated by Santiago Caruso. This is a unique project, and one that will be remembered by Lansdale fans and readers of horror and dark fiction.
Join us for the ride at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chrismorey/black-labyrinth-book-ii-joe-r-lansdale
Sincerely,
Chris Morey
Editor of the Black Labyrinth imprint
Owner and publisher at Dark Regions Press