Career
Martin is best known for writing gothic and horror novels and short stories. His trademarks include featuring gay men as main characters, graphic sexual descriptions, and an often wry treatment of gruesome events. Some of Martin's better known novels include Lost Souls (1992), Drawing Blood (1993), and the controversial serial killer novel Exquisite Corpse (1996); he has also released the short fiction collections Wormwood (originally published as Swamp Foetus; 1993), Are You Loathsome Tonight? (also published as Self-Made Man; 1998), Wrong Things (with Caitlín R. Kiernan; 2001), and The Devil You Know (2003). His "Calcutta: Lord of Nerves" was selected to represent the year 1992 in the story anthology The Century's Best Horror Fiction. [1]
In a 1998 interview, [2] in response to a comment that "Growing up in the American South [shaped him] as a writer", Martin mentioned that Southern writers Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Harper Lee, Thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner also influenced his writing. Answering a follow-up question about his literary influences, he also included "Bradbury, Nabokov, W.S. Burroughs, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, Kathe Koja, Dennis Cooper, Dorothy Parker, Dylan Thomas, Harlan Ellison, Peter Straub, Paul Theroux, Baudelaire, Poe, Lovecraft, John Lennon... I could rattle off ten or twenty more easily; they're all in there somewhere."
Martin wrote Courtney Love: The Real Story (1997), a biography of singer Courtney Love. It was officially "unauthorized", but he acknowledged that the work was done at Love's suggestion and with her cooperation, including access to her personal journal and letters. [3]
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Martin moved away from horror fiction and gothic themes while still writing about gay characters. The critically acclaimed Liquor novels—Liquor (2004), Prime (2005), and Soul Kitchen (2006)—are dark comedies set in the New Orleans restaurant world. The Value of X (2002) depicts the beginning of the careers of the protagonists of the Liquor series—Gary "G-Man" Stubbs and John "Rickey" Rickey; other stories, including several in his most recent collection The Devil You Know (2003) and the novella D*U*C*K, chronicle events in the lives of the extended Stubbs family, a Catholic clan whose roots are sunk deep in the traditional culture of New Orleans. Martin hopes to eventually write three more novels in the Liquor series, tentatively titled Dead Shrimp Blues, Hurricane Stew, and Double Shot. However, in late 2006, he ceased publishing with Three Rivers Press, the trade paperback division of Random House that published the first three Liquor novels, and is currently taking a hiatus from fiction writing. He has described Antediluvian Tales, a short story collection published by Subterranean Press in November 2007, as "if not my last book ever, then my last one for some time." He still writes short non-fiction pieces, including guest editorials for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and a food article for Chile Pepper Magazine .
Martin has often stated that, while he will allow some of his work to be optioned for film under the right circumstances, he has little interest in movies and is not overly eager to see his work filmed. In 1999, his short story The Sixth Sentinel (filmed as The Dream Sentinel) made up one segment of episode 209 of The Hunger , a short-lived horror anthology series on Showtime.
Critical essays on Martin's fiction appear in Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror (2003) by Brian Stableford [4] and The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004) by S. T. Joshi.
On June 9, 2010, Martin officially stated that he was retired from writing, in a post entitled "I'm Basically Retired (For Now)" on his Livejournal. [5] He stated that he had "completely lost the ability to interact with [his] body of work" and then went on to state that business issues were a partial cause. He also specifically mentioned being unable to disconnect from aspects of his life relating to Hurricane Katrina. He ended his statement by saying that he missed having relationships with his characters and that he did not feel the need to write for publication. Martin has since created a series of artworks themed on New Orleans and voodoo.
In 2018, Martin announced he had returned to writing with a non-fiction project entitled Water If God Wills It: Religion and Spirituality in the Work of Stephen King. [6]
In August 2023, Martin announced on his own Facebook page that he was writing fiction again, but that it would be a long time until it would be published. [7]
Personal life
Martin was born in Bowling Green, Warren County, Kentucky, at Western University Hospital. [8] He is a trans man and has written and talked extensively about transgender issues and his own gender dysphoria. [9] He is gay, and has said, "Ever since I was old enough to know what gay men were, I've considered myself a gay man that happens to have been born in a female body, and that's the perspective I'm coming from." [9] In 2003, Martin wrote that, while gender theorists like Kate Bornstein would call him a "nonoperative transsexual", Martin would not insist on a label, writing "I'm just me". [10] In 2010, he began hormone therapy, and in 2011 expressed that he would prefer to be referred to by male pronouns. [11]
On January 6, 2009, Martin was arrested at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in New Orleans as part of a peaceful demonstration in which churches in the Uptown area of the city were occupied to protest their closings. [12] In August 2009, New Orleans's Gambit publication published reader-poll results naming Martin in second place as an ever-popular "Best Local Author." [13]
Martin married his husband, photographer and artist Grey Anatoli Cross, in 2019. The couple first met in 2011. [14]
Clive Barker is an English novelist who came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories, the Books of Blood, which established him as a leading horror writer. He has since written many novels and other works. His fiction has been adapted into films, notably the Hellraiser series, the first installment of which he also wrote and directed, and the Candyman series. He was also an executive producer of the film Gods and Monsters, which won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American paleontologist and writer of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including 10 novels, series of comic books, and more than 250 published short stories, novellas, and vignettes. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards.
New Orleans is featured in a number of works of fiction. This article in an ongoing effort to list the books, movies, television shows, and comics that are set or filmed, in whole or part, in New Orleans.
Drawing Blood is a 1993 horror novel by American writer Poppy Z. Brite. Something of a haunted house tale, the novel was originally titled Birdland but the publisher retitled it to make a thin connection to Brite's first novel, Lost Souls, a vampire tale.
Cemetery Dance Publications is an American specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. Cemetery Dance was founded by Richard Chizmar, a horror author, while he was in college. It is associated with Cemetery Dance magazine, which was founded in 1988. They began to publish books in 1992. They later expanded to encompass a magazine and website featuring news, interviews, and reviews related to horror literature.
Michael McEachern McDowell was an American novelist and screenwriter described by author Stephen King as "the finest writer of paperback originals in America today". His best-known work is the screenplay for the Tim Burton film Beetlejuice.
Candles for Elizabeth (ISBN 0-9658345-8-1) is fantasist Caitlin R. Kiernan's first chapbook, released in 1998 by Meisha Merlin Publishing, shortly before the release of Kiernan's debut novel, Silk. It includes an introduction by Poppy Z. Brite. The contents of this chapbook were later incorporated into Kiernan's first short-story collection, Tales of Pain and Wonder. The author provided afterwords for each story, discussing their inspiration. According to an interview conducted by Jessa Crispin, the title is a reference to the suicide of Kiernan's close friend, Elizabeth Tillman Aldridge, in 1995. Kiernan's Alabaster, written in 2006, is dedicated to Aldridge as well. These stories were later included in Kiernan's first short-fiction collection, Tales of Pain and Wonder.
From Weird and Distant Shores is fantasist Caitlin R. Kiernan's second solo short-story collection, released by Subterranean Press in 2002. As with her first collection, Tales of Pain and Wonder, interior illustrations were supplied by Canadian artist Richard A. Kirk. The book includes thirteen stories, including a collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite and another with Christa Faust. As Kiernan explains in the collection's introduction, most of these stories were originally written for "'shared world' and 'theme' anthologies," books wherein the authors have been asked to write stories set in the worlds of other authors or stories pertaining to some particular subject, respectively. The collection is notable in that includes Kiernan's earliest published short story, "Persephone." Kiernan provides an afterword for each story.
Wrong Things is a short story collection by Poppy Z. Brite and Caitlin R. Kiernan. It was released by Subterranean Press in 2001. The cover art and illustrations were provided by Canadian artist Richard A. Kirk. Kiernan's solo contribution to the book, "Onion", received the 2001 International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Story and was chosen for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Fifteenth Annual Collection. Kiernan and Brite's collaborative story, "The Rest of the Wrong Thing," is set in Brite's fictional town of Missing Mile, also appearing in his novels Lost Souls (1992) and Drawing Blood (1993). This is the second short story the two authors have coauthored, the first being "Night Story 1973," which appeared in Kiernan's collection, From Weird and Distant Shores (2002).
Lost Souls is a 1992 horror novel by American writer Poppy Z. Brite, his debut novel. It is the only novel-length adventure of Brite's 'Steve and Ghost' characters, popularized in numerous short stories. The novel is an extended version of the short story "The Seed of Lost Souls".
Exquisite Corpse is a horror novel by American writer Poppy Z. Brite. The protagonist of the story is Andrew Compton, an English convicted homosexual serial killer, cannibal and necrophiliac. Brite has described it as "a necrophilic, cannibalistic, serial killer love story that explores the seamy politics of victimhood and disease."
Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.
Subterranean Press is a small press publisher in Burton, Michigan. Subterranean is best known for publishing genre fiction, primarily horror, suspense and dark mystery, fantasy, and science fiction. In addition to publishing novels, short story collections and chapbooks, Subterranean also produced a quarterly publication called Subterranean Magazine from 2005 to 2014, specialising in short fiction and edited by William Schafer; it had also an online direct seller. In addition to trade editions, the company produces collector's and limited editions. These books are issued with author signatures, in both numbered and lettered states, and are produced using high-grade book papers and bindings with matching slipcases and traycases.
Lisa Gracia Tuttle is an American-born science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. She has published more than a dozen novels, seven short story collections, and several non-fiction titles, including a reference book on feminism, Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986). She has also edited several anthologies and reviewed books for various publications. She has been living in the United Kingdom since 1981.
Terence William (Terry) Dowling, is an Australian writer and journalist. He writes primarily speculative fiction though he considers himself an "imagier" – one who imagines, a term which liberates his writing from the constraints of specific genres. He has been called "among the best-loved local writers and most-awarded in and out of Australia, a writer who stubbornly hews his own path ."
Wormwood, originally published as Swamp Foetus, is a collection of short stories by American horror fiction author Poppy Z. Brite. It was first published by Borderlands Press, a small-press publisher of horror fiction, in 1993. It was reprinted by Penguin Books in 1995, and reprinted and retitled in 1996 by Dell Publishing.
Are You Loathsome Tonight? is a collection of short stories by American author Poppy Z. Brite, published in 1998 by Gauntlet Press. The title is a play on the song "Are You Lonesome Tonight?," made famous by Elvis Presley, and a reference to the inner groove etching of the 1986 single "Ask" by The Smiths.
Caitlín R. Kiernan is the author of many science fiction and dark fantasy works, including fourteen novels, many comic books, and more than three hundred published short stories, novellas, and vignettes collected into twenty collections. They have also written numerous scientific papers.
The Liquor novel series is a novel series by Poppy Z. Brite. The books are linked by common characters and the setting, a New Orleans restaurant where "the potboiler meets the saucier". The series revolves around the two young chefs John Rickey and Gary "G-man" Stubbs, their restaurant and their life in New Orleans.
