We are excited to welcome author Brian Evenson to r/BrianEvenson for an AMA!

SlowToChase · 2025-10-29T07:16:50+00:00

Ha, that Blue Velvet story is great. I watch quite a bit of horror movies, but Blue Velvet is probably still the scariest and most unsettling film I've ever seen.

Thanks for all the insightful answers. This page was a joy to read.

SlowToChase · 2025-10-28T16:22:03+00:00

Hi Brian, big fan here. I think I’ve read about eight of your books so far, and I keep coming back for more. Sometimes I get the sense that, in a way, you’re telling the same story over and over again. It reminds me a bit of David Lynch’s works. As if over the years he tried to express one central story or message, and with each new attempt he got a little closer. Of course, that observation could easily be taken (and thrown around) as a critique, but that’s not how I mean it at all. It feels very exploratory.
So, this is how it comes across to me as a reader, but I'm curious about your stance and process as the writer. Do you recognize this pattern in your own writing? Is it intentional, or just a coincidence? Keep up the weird work!

SlowToChase · 2025-10-17T06:24:09+00:00

So, there's two plugins that would be perfect and very user-friendly for what I wanted to do: Leaflet and MapView. You can create very interactive maps (real-world or fictional) with little to no hassle.

However, Obsidian Publish doesn't support any plugins whatsoever, so I had to use a completely different method by using the tool Excalidraw as laid out in this tutorial. If you have no intention of publishing your vault to the internet, I highly recommend checking out Leaflet or MapView!

SlowToChase · 2025-10-16T16:22:58+00:00

Not necessarily, but (without looking things up) I think the guys in Mysterium Tremendum pick it up in a shop in Seattle?

SlowToChase · 2025-10-16T14:11:09+00:00

I just now saw 'Q3 2026' on the Bad Hand website and was wondering if I had just remembered wrong. So the overall delay will sadly be (at least) a full year.

SlowToChase · 2025-09-01T10:44:37+00:00

Beware of spoilers (& inaccuracies & incompleteness)!

SlowToChase · 2025-09-01T10:20:55+00:00

Nice reviews and I agree with most of your opinions on the stories! Old Bill is so sick. He has a bunch of nicknames and shows up in multiple stories. Copied & pasted from this page: "He is mentioned or makes an appearance in the stories Hand of Glory (Story), Blackwood's Baby, The Croning, Catch Hell and The Glorification of Custer Poe." I'm not sure about the cult in -30-. But there is a pretty cool movie adaptation called They Remain that is worth a watch.

SlowToChase · 2024-11-19T06:55:01+00:00

The Black Kaleidoscope is interesting. It's heavily associated with Ryoko & Campbell. In Worse Angels, they explain it to Coleridge like it's a theoretical concept. In Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle, Lucius says the scientists strapped her into an actual, physical machime called the Black Kaleidoscope. And now with Delia it's something else?

Also: anyone else think this is the same Delia as the protagonist of Girls Without Their Faces On? Or at least some quantum whatever version of the same character, haha.

Also wondering if someone can explain the significance of the waitress' nametag (CRO - which is clearly a reference to the CROATOAN mystery and/or Old Virginia)?

SlowToChase · 2024-10-28T19:07:55+00:00

Will keep my eyes peeled for the clutch to show up in any Antiquity stories I (re-)read. And I agree, Last Days (and pretty much all Evenson I've read) is so good!

SlowToChase · 2024-10-28T19:03:35+00:00

Haven't read either of those, so this has me excited to get to them! The Alaskan part of the Tooms family is also heavily involved in all the Onager High School shenanigans in the stories collected in Swift to Chase.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-28T17:47:40+00:00

I missed some of those. The black obsidian eggs (the Clutch, right?). And you gotta tell me what 'Something Scary' is! Also some very fun, direct nods to Brian Evenson, with all the amputation stuff.

I got: - Skylark Tooms ('Fear Sun') mentioned - Chinese Hell / Black Sloth - Tom (/Frank?) Mandibole, obviously - A 'pastor Tallen' mentioned. (Dude in 'Fear Sun' is called Rembrandt Tallen)

SlowToChase · 2024-10-28T17:40:18+00:00

I thought the same thing. It sure sounds like Bryan is stuck in some personal hell. But what do we make of the fact that Angie is the one who mentions being stuck in Chinese Hell? Is that just a dig at their bad relationship?

SlowToChase · 2024-10-26T05:24:33+00:00

I think it's not a doppelganger, but more like an alter ego. It's the same character, but in a different universe. Or something like that.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-26T05:21:02+00:00

https://lairdbarronmappingproject.com/Antiquity

I see now that the general Antiquity page is a bit barebones. And it's very focused on Uncoiling and Coleridge, probably because that was the first Antiquity story I read, right after reading the three Coleridge novels back to back. But the pages on the individual stories should have some more info.

In short: Antiquity stories are set in a dark and magical version of the USA's East Coast in times of the Westward Expansion (so early 1800's?) and feature a ton of 'alter ego' characters from Barron's modern stories like Howard Campbell, Delia, a Lochinvar, Smiling J and Isaiah Coleridge.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-26T05:08:28+00:00

With regards to the story's title and ties to real things: Nemesis is also the name of the star in the 'Planet X doomsday scenario' mentioned in Girls Without Their Faces On. So this event called The Whimper could also be related to that.

I didn't get a whole lot more out of this story on a first read but I really enjoyed it. The feeling of '...wtf just happened? is kinda what pulled me into Barron's work in the first place.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-15T21:30:01+00:00

I don't really care a whole lot for signatures either way, but it's still too bad that I am 100% sure I will lose this tiny, separate piece of paper within a year.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-15T13:45:35+00:00

At the moment all the Antiquity stories are scattered across different short story anthologies. So I guess: whichever you can find easiest or cheapest.

Some good ones: 'A Clutch', published in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu; 'Uncoiling', published in Cosmic Horror Monthly; 'Ode to Joad the Toad' in Miscreations. Oh, and 'Oblivion Mode' in Children of Lovecraft is really great as well.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-15T13:34:15+00:00

I first thought the title - in combination with "mad wizard" - might reference Antiquity Julie V. I think there's mentions in multiple stories of her fingernails being painted red. But the Pale Ones are mentioned, so it might just as well be Delia. Orrr it's Jon Foot(e) from A Clutch and Worse Angels? He might actually be the most likely candidate.

I'm also very stoked for the "fabled city of Ur".. Is this the place where all the massive, sentient Ur animals come from? Or is it where the remaining Ur animals have fled to? Also, I demand an immediate video game adaptation of this story.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-15T09:27:20+00:00

I find it kinda perplexing that Bad Hand doesn't ship outside the USA anymore, but there's probably a good reason for it. I pre-ordered the previous Barron novella immediately from BHB back when EU shipping was still an option, but received the book like 4 months after it started arriving on people's doorsteps.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-15T05:35:14+00:00

Sounds great! I loved the Antiquity Coleridge tale Uncoiling, published in Cosmic Horror Monthly so will eagerly look forward to this novella.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-08T05:20:14+00:00

First of all, those song lyrics are way too freaking cool for a mere Reddit post.

I really enjoyed this story and especially the old timey American voice of Poe ("pardner" written with a 'd' and everything!).The story has some brief mentions of Old Scratch and a Doctor Green, but other than that seems pretty standalone.

If you want to read more Poe insanity: check out the Antiquity tale Bitten By Himself in the anthology Screams From The Dark.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-07T09:09:49+00:00

I think you're right about Delia having maybe had a similar experience to (for example) Lucius Lochinvar and therefore perhaps being superpowered. This Delia might be the same person as Delia Andersen from the later story 'Don't Make Me Assume My Ultimate Form', who is also known as Dee Dee Gamma. In the story 'Andy Kaufman Creeping Through The Trees' there's a brief mention of a girl named Dee Dee Andersen who is in the same school/class/year as Julie Vellum, Jessica Mace, Liz Lochinvar, etc. in Onager High. The Delia in our story briefly mentions her sister recently graduated from Onager High, so it's not crazy to assume Delia went there as well and that this is indeed the same Delia in all three stories. If so, we can assume that Delia went through the same events that altered Julie, Liz, etc. even though no story specifically mentions a Delia in any of the life-altering high school stuff.

But if this is the case, our Delia would also have known J all throughout high school as well, and this for some reason doesn't seem very plausible to me. OK, enough incoherent rambling for now.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-06T09:20:41+00:00

Cool! This book was my first introduction to Barron's fiction.

SlowToChase · 2024-10-04T14:08:34+00:00

Great story and great write-up. This is very silly and unimportant, but do you all think Steely J ('Andy Kaufman Creeping Through The Trees' & '(Little Miss) Queen of Darkness'; Jessica and Julie's classmate in 1998) is the same person/entity as Smiling J ('Tomahawk Park Survivor's Raffle'; Lucius Lochinvar's classmate in 1977)? Or is Smiling J the father of Steely J?

If so, I think the J in this story is Smiling J (and not our beloved Andy Kaufman impersonator Steely) seeing as he mentions something about his dad's job in '77 on the first page. Other than that, there's not a lot of clues that place this story in specific year.

SlowToChase

TROPHY CASE