I’m a seasonal reader – one who makes every attempt to match what I’m reading with the weather outside.
The lead up to autumn/Halloween season is when this practice is most potent. The horror genre is sprinkled throughout the year, too, but there’s something about reading it when the leaves are changing that gives it an extra bite.
Historically, it also seems to be the time of year when I find some of the most unique scary reads: stories where the perspective feels fresh and the imaginary dark cello accompaniment playing in the background is a tasteful remaster.
Essentially: nice surprises within a genre that is already teeming with memorable tales. Black Pearls, if you will. House of Leaves, Whalefall, The Troop, Angel Down, This Thing Between Us and literally anything by Paul Tremblay all populate that unique horror/thriller list.
My latest read is the newest member of this club.
Coffin Moon by Oregon horror writer Keith Rosson was, at first, a book I started in preparation for Rosson’s visit to Jackson County Library Services. He’ll be here next week, heading up a writing workshop and an author talk at the Medford branch. I wanted to make sure that I had at least one of his seven books under my belt. I chose Coffin Moon, his latest.
Good call, I must say.
The story is what I considered a unique take on the vampire genre. Set in Portland, it tells the story of Duane Minor, a Vietnam War veteran who runs a bar in the 1970s. He lives with his wife and niece in an apartment above the bar in a life that is thrown into chaos when a man (man?) named John Varley comes to town.
The book’s surprises came in several waves. Rosson’s voice is unique and introspective, and the way he describes the emotional states of his characters is poetic, rhythmic, and relatable. There are also several moments where he uses incomplete sentences as a tool to describe scenes and moments that felt appropriate.
They felt like little afterthoughts or addendums. Editors’ notes he was giving himself that made it into the book’s final form.
A moment in the car driving is described with: Morning news is on the radio. Sports scores.
I wasn’t alive in the 1970s, and I’ve never lived in Portland, but Rosson’s descriptions of both made me feel nostalgic for both.
There’s a word for that: anemoia. Essentially: nostalgia for a place or time period you’ve never experienced.
Similarly, he paints with descriptions of places that feel quite liminal: downtown streets at night, old barns, dimly lit motels and bars. I dig that a lot, those backdrops that feel equal parts beautiful and unsettling.
All to say, Coffin Moon was a nice surprise; a memorable read that honors certain vampire tropes and dashes others to pieces while seeming to say, “But what if we did this instead?”
What started as self-imposed homework for me turned into an almost autumn-spiked delight.
And now I have a new author’s catalog to fully discover.