Unspeakable Horror!

Last night at Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, I had the opportunity to hear Toby Barlow speak about his new novel Sharp Teeth.  This novel is very unique because it tells the story of an interconnected set of characters in Los Angeles who can turn into dogs (lycanthropes, aka werwolves!), and the novel just happens to be written in the form of a gigantic epic poem.  Hooray!  Barlow had a number of humorous descriptions for the novel, my favorite being that he threw a couple of different genres in the blender and hit puree (I'm paraphrasing).  Basically, it's part film noir, part werewolf saga, and part epic poem. 

Barlow was a very entertaining speaker, offering a lot of interesting background stories about the writing process of the novel (in addition to an excellent poetry reading), and he delivered these stories with copious amounts of clever, wry wit.  

One of the most exciting things about this book is the fact that it was picked up by Harpercollins, which, as an ambitious horror poet myself, gives me great hope for the world of publishing.  In addition, the book is really cool: sharp, funny, engaging, and (yes) very poetic.  I was very impressed by a number of passages that Barlow read last night.  If you cut them out of the novel and pasted them on a separate page, they would definitely count as excellent stand-alone poems, and the book is filled with these passages and poetic moments. 

Purchase a copy today and support horror poetry!