Home: Writing… took her out of herself, away from loneliness, dull But she no longer feels the need to write, having escaped Her tiny titular hometown in Texas to appear at a science fictionĬonvention. Stoller, author of a successful fantasy novel, flying from LA back to

That can be its own particular kind of hell.

Those that explore writers' lives, and in 'Flying to Byzantium,' we see I've said before one of my favorite types of horror tale are Next are a couple brief, nasty episodes, “Doll Burger” and “Community Property,” which pack a not altogether surprising punch in their final lines. I think you can guess what's going on, and what waits for Ellen at story's end. Although she liked neither spiders nor wasps, Ellen hoped that the spider would win. Circling it, chitinous body gleaming darkly in the sunlight, was a deadly black dart of a wasp.

A spider, pale as the sand, danced warily on pipe-cleaner legs. Aunt May lives in a crumbling ocean-side home and niece Ellen hopes to help. 'Bug House' begins the book, and it's a nice simple creepy-crawler reminiscent of Campbell's stories of urban blight. Unpredictable slings and arrows of the supernatural, the unexplainable, the uncanny. But she is doubly cruel, for herĬharacters suffer not just these pains but also the ineffable and Often the horror is all too recognizable: sadness, alienation, a not-belongness, modernĪnxieties and disappointments. Practitioner of a kind of horror tale I find quite satisfying: the 'punishments' her characters face are born and bred of daily weakness and insecurity, feelings suppressed and sublimated. Populated, and their final horrors sealed the deal for me. Her flawed female characters appealed to me greatly, as did the scenarios they Introduces with a light, modern touch, bespeaking more of a woman'sĮxperience than, say, a male pulp writer. Then she wraps them right up in a hellish embrace without hesitation. Mainstream contemporary writer vibe I get from Tuttle - until, as I noted, the horror starts. An astute chronicler of the female psyche, it's a Horrors that sneak up on both the character as well as the reader. Her style is clean and quiet, not obtrusive and able to convey subtle Tuttle is a master of the formula horror story, but not in a way that But last month I lucked into a copy in a used bookstore, and didn't put off reading it. Nest had already been on my to-find list, and as it was only published in the UK, I knew finding it wouldn't be easy. After reading her three impressive contributions to the third volume of the Night Visions anthology series, I realized Tuttle was a writer I needed to read more by.

A nest of nightmares by lisa tuttle