ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column 

by Spencer Hamilton

Short stories are a form of magic. Perhaps dark magic, if we’re talking about horror short fiction here, though of course with SGJ we’re never talking about just one genre. For me, horror short fiction has always been that siren song, luring me out into the deep. It started with “The Tell-Tale Heart,” was re-ignited by Joyce Carol Oates’ 1966 story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” and became truly ravenous when young Spencer discovered the cosmic tales of H.P. Lovecraft and the stacks of books collecting the short fiction of Stephen King.

For Stephen Graham Jones, you could say his siren song was, of all things, the author bio of late modern writer Stephen Dixon. As the legend goes, some 30 years ago, near the beginning of his career, SGJ would seek out that author bio at the end of a Stephen Dixon short story to stare at one particular magic number: “[Dixon] has some 300 stories published.” Jones would dream of having that many of his own stories out there. And though I may not have an exact count for you, I would bet that all these years later, he does. And then some. And, SGJ being the dictionary entry for “prolific,” he did it in half the time.Continue Reading

ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column 

by Spencer Hamilton

Last time we spoke, I recommended you read my picks for what I called the SGJ Starter Pack—Night of the Mannequins; Killer on the Road/The Babysitter Lives; I Was a Teenage Slasher—and here you are now, ready for more. That, my friends, is the typical experience of a reader falling in love with the fiction of Stephen Graham Jones. When I discovered my first Jones book (one I’ll name in a future post) over six years ago, I too was hungry for more. I read eight (8!) of his books in quick succession—one of which was this column’s very first pick, Night of the Mannequins—a single-author binge I’ve never replicated until this year with, again, Stephen Graham Jones. He has a way of pulling you in, close to the characters and the inner details of their lives, while at the same time expanding your imagination greatly. In this writer’s humble estimation, Jones is singular in his expansive readability.

Continue Reading