NYRSF Readings Series Post-Halloween Spookiness Featuring Authors John Langan and Nicholas Kaufmann

John Langan at NYRSF Reading in November 2014. Photo by Mark Blackman.

John Langan at NYRSF Reading in November 2014. Photo by Mark Blackman.

By Mark L. Blackman: On the evening of Tuesday, November 4 (Election Day, which is far scarier than Halloween), the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series offered a double treat of spookiness and chills with horror authors John Langan and Nicholas Kaufmann. Held at the Series’ current venue, the low-ceilinged basement (variously the “downstairs cabaret”, the “dungeon” or the cellar, it was “a good venue for horror writers,” pronounced Langan) at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art (aka Gallery La La) on Sullivan Street in Manhattan, the event was guest-hosted by former Series curator, book/audiobook reviewer Amy Goldschlager.

Unafraid, Jim Freund, the Series’ Executive Curator and the host of WBAI’s long-running Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (broadcast and streamed Wednesday nights/Thursday mornings from 1:30-3:00 AM), as well as host of the Hugo-winning Lightspeed Magazine Podcast, welcomed the audience and guests, and announced upcoming NYRSF readings. Tuesday, December 2 will be the Series’ annual Family Night, as traditional, featuring Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, at the Commons Brooklyn, 388 Atlantic Ave., a manageable hike from the Barclays Center. The Series returns to the SGDA on Tuesday, January 6, 2015, presenting Sarah Pinsker and Daniel José Older. April’s readings have been dubbed “Sam-Enchanted Evening”, featuring Samuel R. Delany and Sam J. Miller. (Yes, Chip has in the past been called Sam and even Sammy.)

Taking the podium, Amy Goldschlager introduced the first reader of the night, Bram Stoker Award, Shirley Jackson Award- and Thriller Award-nominated author Nicholas Kaufmann, who read an excerpt from his new novel, Die and Stay Dead, a follow-up to Dying is My Business (St. Martin’s Press). Opposed by a small group seeking a perilous grimoire, necromancy intrudes on a fannish (or perhaps, in this context, mundane) event, a medieval festival in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park (the Battery is really down) in the form of mind-controlled living dead called revenants. The situation is further complicated by the presence as well of a flash mob of fake zombie walkers, and, in the confusion, the protagonist is abducted by the necromancer’s real rotting corpses.

After the intermission and a raffle (the prizes were a signed copy of Kaufmann’s print-out of the piece just read and Langan‘s most recent collection of fiction, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies, Hippocampus Press, 2013), Goldschlager delivered a fondly “passive-aggressive introduction” of the evening’s concluding reader. John Langan shared a selection from “Children of the Fang,” an original novella set to appear in Ellen Datlow’s upcoming anthology Lovecraft’s Monsters. In it, a pair of grown siblings revisit the eerie old house they were raised in and hear from their ancient grandfather tales of frightful doings, subterranean cities and homicidal hippies.

As traditional at NYRSF Readings, the Jenna Felice Freebie Table offered giveaway books, and refreshments (cider, cheese, crackers and Kit-Kat bars). At the front table, books by Langan and Kaufmann were for sale.

The audience of about 30 included Richard Bowes, David Cruces, Derrick Hussey, Kim Kindya, Gordon Linsner, James Ryan, Terence Taylor and Nick’s mom. After the chairs were origami’d, the readers and members of the audience adjourned to the SoHo Room, a nearby bar for dinner and drinks.