Schadenfreude

Visit the author’s spotlight here or find out about his novella, The Best Years of Your Life.

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‘Chris Kelso is a writer of wide and varied obsessions. InSchadenfreude he shares all of them. Like all possessed minds, his is glued together with recurring themes, and they unify this volume in strange ways. Most forms of transportation in Kelso’s world comprise metal peanut shells. And anything tubular, say a transportation artery or a sewer is presented as “ropy,” like the blood vessels into which drugs are constantly being injected. He populates Hell with pop icons (for which favour much gratitude is due). And he has performed the heretofore seemingly impossible task of coming up with interesting and original names for punk bands and their songs. This collection is just the right amount of raunchy, and is guaranteed to uplift the heart of today’s most discerningly jaded nihilist’
—Tom Bradley, author of Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch

‘Schadenfreude is more than a short story collection; it’s a way of life’
—Stewart Home, author of Red London

‘Chris Kelso is the one your mother warned you about. He is a sick, sick man—bereft of cure and heaped with symptom. His words will taint you irrevocably. Your eyes will want to gargle after reading just one of his stories. His book is unique—and that’s a good thing.’
—Steve Vernon, author of Nothing To Lose

‘Sparky, modern, avant-garde but accessible, Chris Kelso’s book is reminiscent of the most successful literary experimentation of the 60s and 70s, the sort of work that was published in the later New Worlds, but it’s also thoroughly contemporary, intimately engaged with modern life as it is right now. Kelso steams with talent and dark wit and his blend of anarchy with precision is refreshing, inspiring and utterly entertaining . . .’
—Rhys Hughes, author of Mister Gum

‘This emerging journeyman of the macabre has wormed his way into my grey-matter and continues to seep noxious ichor. I feel like I must devour him. Every little bit of him.’
—Adam Lowe, author of Troglodyte Rose

‘Chris Kelso is the finger inside of your least favourite hole giving you your most favourite sensation; Schadenfreude is the frothy evidence left behind.’
—Christy Leigh Stewart, author of Terminally Beautiful 

‘Choke down a handful of magic mushrooms and hop inside a rocket ship trip to futuristic settings filled with pop culture, strange creatures and all manner of sexual deviance. The mundane becomes the bizarre, the standard evolves into the alien, and penises and vaginas are rarely what they seem. Buckle up. Shadenfruede is indeed pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.’
—Richard Thomas, author of Transubstantiate 

‘Take Mr Kelso’s front-loaded disclaimer of dour grey moroseness with the boulder of salt it deserves. This is a jittering nightmare collection of images and events that will startle and delight you at every turn. Revolting and eerily charming, Schadenfreude will linger in your mind long after you put it down.’
—Deb Hoag, author of Queer and Loathing on the Yellow-Brick Road 

‘Schadenfreude proves, once and for all, that Chris Kelso is NOT a mannequin.’
—D. Harlan Wilson, author of Peckinpah

‘The stories in Schadenfreude are like non-Euclidean geometry: mysterious, unique and wrapped in an aura of magic and mysticism. Kelso’s prose is lean and tough and the impact these stories have on the reader prove there’s no need for gimmicks when the power of weirdness is effectively wielded.’
—Gabino Iglesias, Horror-Talk

‘Chris Kelso is a writer of almost intimidating intelligence, wit, and imagination. On every page there is evidence of a great mind at work. Just when you’re wondering if there are actually still writers out there who still feel and live their ideas out on the page, I come across a writer like Kelso, and suddenly the future feels a lot more optimistic. I look forward to seeing what he’s capable of in the longer, novel form: it’s a tantalising prospect. To wear his influences as smartly as he does – one calls to mind Burroughs, and Trocchi’s more verbose offerings – whilst remaining uniquely himself, in a writer as young as he is, is a very encouraging sign: one of maturity that belies his youth. I look forward to reading more from him in the near future.’
—Andrew Raymond Drennan, author of The Immaculate Heart

‘Schadenfreude is more than a short story collection; it’s a way of life’
—Stewart Home, author of Red London

‘Chris Kelso is the one your mother warned you about. He is a sick, sick man—bereft of cure and heaped with symptom. His words will taint you irrevocably. Your eyes will want to gargle after reading just one of his stories. His book is unique—and that’s a good thing.’
—Steve Vernon, author of Nothing to Lose

‘Schadenfreude proves, once and for all, that Chris Kelso is NOT a mannequin.’
—D. Harlan Wilson, author of Peckinpah

‘Chris Kelso is the finger inside of your least favourite hole giving you your most favourite sensation; Schadenfreude is the frothy evidence left behind.’
—Christy Leigh Stewart, author of Terminally Beautiful

‘A bewildering manuscript written in an unknown tongue and cheek. Full of pleats and petards but does not mention halibuts in any context. So don’t just read it upside down; read it upside down and inside out.’
—Justynn Tyme; The don doo-dad of dada

‘I hella dug it! Chris Kelso’s Schadenfreude is dirty, dark, and fun. This collection is a dismal delight, peppered with humor as black as plague and infused with gripping horror, for fans of macabre fiction.’
—Jonathan Moon, author of Heinous

‘Schadenfreude functions as a pathology museum never intended for those seeking to educate themselves about what may go wrong in fiction–or the world at large–but was instead constructed for the voyeur who escaped from your basement, still bound with razorwire, desperate for the ultimate degradation.’
—John Edward Lawson, author of SuiPsalms

The Blog Tour kicked off over on the Macmillan New Writers blog. Here’s a list of the other places she will be visiting over the next two weeks:

2 May – chatting about authors and elevators with Iain Rowan

3 May – discussing the difficulties of writing short fiction with Sarah Dobbs

6 May – writing comparisons with Dee Swift

7 May – deciding to not choose sides with MFW Curran

8 May – having the best coffee in West Sussex with Tim Stretton

9 May – letting Eliza Graham pelt me with questions

10 May – comic poetry with Frances Garrood

13 May – Nik Perring allows me to take over his blog and talk genre

14 May – the TTA Press blog does beetles

15 May – Long vs Short? Only Ian Hocking has the answer

16 May – A ten year anniversary of a Q & A with James Hazlehurst

17 May – A Tweeting Hijack Finale

Aliya will make each of these links live here as she goes along … we hope to see you in all these places!  And maybe even at the launch party?

This is a collection of feature-length movie scripts that employ spoken dialogue and present-tense action–but no voice-overs, narration, flash-forwards or -backs, and no stupid fucking special effects. These scripts are written, the lines delivered, as opposed to grunted or yammered or improvised. 

The actors are brilliant unknowns, never previously seen nor heard anywhere. Our Casting Director had recourse to the services of a good genetic engineering lab, a team of in vitro technicians, and a medium-large population of indentured gamete donors.

The traditional pre-digital Hollywood screenplay format is fascinating. If the prescribed font is used, and the correct margins observed (as in the layout to this book), it translates to one minute of screen time per page. Directors proceed on this assumption. There’s an uncanny precision to screenwriting that carries pleasantly over into the eyeball, as in the movie itself. It’s like a Shakespearean sonnet: our pleasure is enhanced when we see the fourteen lines, ended just so, with the final couplet nicely indented. Same idea with screenplays.

The result is a particular kind of story, with that compelling balance of dialogue and action, and tight economy of setting and exposition.

Discover Tom Bradley’s collection, Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch.

Discover Tom Bradley’s non-fiction anthology, New Cross-Fucked Musings on a Manic Reality.

Check out Crashin’ the Real or Deb’s latest book, Queer and Loathing on the Yellow Brick Road.

Check out the book launch in London

About the Book

You’re running away from something terrible. You think you’ve escaped it, this thing, but it turns out it’s waiting for you in all the places you hide: your house, your garden, a self-help group, a seraglio, the island of Zanzibar, a museum in Turin, a hot air balloon in Canada, even in the ladies’ room of your favourite nightclub. You’ve carried it into these places with you. It’s inside you. And now it’s time for it to come out.

This first collection of acclaimed short stories by Aliya Whiteley takes the reader to the strangest, deepest corners of life experience. Grotesque, unsettling, and often very funny, Witchcraft in the Harem deals with birth and betrayal, love and loss, and all the terrible thoughts we want to escape, and find still waiting for us at the journey’s end.

Acclaim for the Book

‘The experience of reading this collection is like being waterboarded by an angel. Shocking, heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, this is some of the best writing I’ve ever seen. If you like Aimee Bender or Etgar Keret, you will love Witchcraft in the Harem.’
—World Fantasy Award-winner Lavie Tidhar

RRP: £8.99 + P&P (send PayPal payment to sales@doghornpublishing.com)
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RESORT #2

tonight
the hot breeze blowing from the sea
as we walked the streets
and you asked about my unhappiness
suddenly
there were tears rolling from both our faces
my voice shaking
then you running away
to catch up with my best friend
who could never love you
and I went to a bar alone
to drown myself in alcohol
planning a beautiful suicide
looking forward to it
so close to the edge
no dread or sadness
only the promise of peace
at the end of all suffering

later
the tapping at the window
then the mattress taken to the other room
the drunken giggles
then the usual noises

walking the town until morning
I came at last to the shore
and watched an old man fishing
his face worn hard as leather by the sea
waiting for a catch which never comes
the blood sun rose up and his friends ridiculed him
a dwarf watched a couple making love in the sand
as a lone boat sailed into the burning light
and the white town around the bay shone clearly
a distant mist hovering beneath the Minoan peaks
an image of persistence in adversity, absurdity;
-I knew that old man was me.

(Read the author’s comments on the poem)

Visit The Baryon Review and The New Book Review. Ask David also features the book. You can check out the Amazon reviews here (and add your own).

If you post your own review on Amazon and post it on our Facebook page, then we’ll send you a free ebook of any one Dog Horn Publishing title. (Visit our Facebook page) Ebooks are available as EPUBs or MOBIs.

Launch Party

When:        Monday May 13^th

6 pm – 7:30 pm

Where:       Victoria Library

Join author Aliya Whiteley as she launches her latest work Witchcraft in the Harem (Dog Horn Publishing). Witchcraft is her first collection of fantasy short stories.  Reading the book has

been described by Lavie Tidhar (winner of the World Fantasy Award and British Fantasy Award) as being akin to “being waterboarded by angels”.

Aliya is an established and much celebrated author with two novels under her belt. Her short stories have won critical praise from The Boston Globe to Tangent.

There will be a short reading followed by an opportunity to ask questions and buy copies of the book. Visit aliyawhiteley.wordpress.com for more about the author.

To book your place, please email victorialibrary@westminster.gov.uk

or call 020 7641 1300 and ask for Victoria Library

Check out the flyer for the book launch here: Witchcraft in the Harem