New Book Spotlight
Death Aesthetic
A mini-interview with Josh Rountree
Tell us about your new book?
Death Aesthetic is a short story collection that centers on horror and dark fantasy stories about grief and death. These stories run the gamut from folk horror to cosmic horror, and you’ll find a lot of music, monsters, and murderers in these pages as well.
There are rock and roll stories, like “Sounds Like Forever” about a teenager in the 90s who struggles with the death of her favorite performer, and the supernatural bridge she builds to reconnect with him. And there are stories about transformation, like “The Cure for Boyhood” about the extremes a were-coyote’s parents undergo, to keep him from becoming the perfect creature he longs to be.
Many of these stories originally appeared in excellent horror and dark fantasy venues like The Deadlands, PseudoPod, Bourbon Penn, and Weird Horror, and there is one story original to the collection. “The Green Realm” is about a man whose life took a dark turn long ago, who goes chasing the past to find out how everything went so wrong. There’s a melancholy nostalgia to this one, and a darkness that underlines his motives and his memories.
And there might be a bigfoot.
What aspect of the book was the most fun to write?
I absolutely love short stories. As a writer. As a reader. They’re my favorite. So, for me, the most fun with this book was reading back through the strongest of my more recent stories, and realizing that I’d really taken a deep dive into the themes of death and transformation.
I understood on some level that this was happening, that most of my recent writing was focusing on these things, but once I began assembling these stories into a book, they came together in a powerful way for me, and I realized there was a narrative running through this book, from beginning to end. Sort of a journey through many possible afterlives and states of being.
My favorite of these stories to write was probably “Constellation Burn.” It was also the hardest. Funny how it usually works out that way. It’s a story about running away, only to find yourself in deeper trouble. A bloody and surreal tale about unsettling visitors from someplace beyond our world, set in the lonely part of West Texas where I grew up. I love the protagonist in this one, how the story changes her. At some point, I think she may pop up in another one. I’d love to find out what happens next for her.
If there is one emotion or theme that you would hope that the reader connects with, what would that be?
The overall feel of the book is very melancholy. And with this many stories that explore death and the afterlife from various angles, grief looms large over every story. But what I hope readers ultimately take away from Death Aesthetic is a feeling of hope. Despite the horror and the grieving, I think most of these stories offer a glimpse into an afterlife that’s not so scary, not something to dread.
The opening story, “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” is the darkest one in the book. Bleak and hopeless, in a way I think many of the others are not. There may be a way for the protagonist to dig their way out of their misery, but they’re far beyond figuring that out. Throughout the book, characters battle against death, explore the mystery of death, and in some cases, long for death.
But “Till the Greenteeth Draw Us Down” closes the collection with a bit more whimsy and optimism than the rest of the stories. By this point, the reader has travelled through all these dark places, swam through the deepest oceans of death, and can now resurface, a bit worse for the wear, but alive and hopeful.
So yeah, hope. Against all odds.