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As to tasters or downloads as promotional device, I can say it worked....I bought Blindsight by Peter Watts because I was able to read some of his work and felt that I enjoyed his style enough to give him a try. Now, it is understandable that the marketing model Peter Watts uses may not be for everyone....but it did work in my case (due in great part to our limited income and me being a bit culturally out of touch).

Recommendations help too, of course.... ;)

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I've bought a lot of books after reading excerpts and stories online. Haven't read much of Watts...need to rectify....




QUOTE=shivering;45409]As to tasters or downloads as promotional device, I can say it worked....I bought Blindsight by Peter Watts because I was able to read some of his work and felt that I enjoyed his style enough to give him a try. Now, it is understandable that the marketing model Peter Watts uses may not be for everyone....but it did work in my case (due in great part to our limited income and me being a bit culturally out of touch).

Recommendations help too, of course.... ;)[/QUOTE]

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Thanks, Ally. You've done well with your covers, that is certain.

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I'm reading The Imago Sequence at the moment. Slowly. Carefully. Sometimes I let a few days pass between stories, simply because the experience is so intense and, to be honest, disturbing, I'm simply unable blithely to proceed as if nothing has happened. I'm thrilled by the language, the combination of genres, the imagery, the amount of realistic detail, the diverse settings... Masterly.

I suspect I'll need some time to think and recuperate after The Imago Sequence. So Occultation is a book I'll treat myself to in a few months' time...

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Jezetha said what I came here to say. I am finally getting around to reading The Imago Sequence and Other Stories myself, and I'm absolutely floored. "Hallucigenia" is one of the best stories I have read in ages. I look forward to rereading it many times over the coming years.

How did I go so long without reading Mr. Barron? I don't know, but I am plowing ahead full force. Occultation sits on my nightstand, waiting. Unlike Jezetha, I have little self-control and even less patience. The lizard brain demands more, and a gluttony of epicurean reading shall ensue.

Tip of the hat to Mr. Joe Pulver for imploring me to move Imago to the top of my To Read list. Thanks for the sage advice, sir!

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I'm extremely impressed with this collection, halfway through as I am.
I was worried that it would be a rehashing of The Imago
Sequence (which is a brilliant collection, by the way), since I thought I detected a somewhat limited range in that collection, somewhat like a mixture of (later) Lovecraft, Blood Meridian and crime noir, tougher-than-tough guys drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes like it's oxygen finding themselves knee deep in a cosmic nightmare.

That formula is a very effective one, but I feared that it would somewhat hamper his progress as a writer. It's - luckily - present here as well, but the range and style and scope have expanded vastly. A wider range of narrators as well.

And most important: Barron is simply a very, very skilled writer, both with regards to style and with regards to inserting subtle hints which will eventually collapse into a living nightmare. Barron's writing has evolved in very interesting ways, and I think he may be the best pure horror writer since Ligotti. Any writer who can write a story about sex with Satan (not related to the song by Piledriver) and the demonic offspring which is actually very good is a tremendously good writer.

The novella "Mysterium Tremendum" is my favourite, along with "The Lagerstätte" (which takes place in an urban environment - and I who thought that he was at his best, like Blackwood, when being in the outside) and "The Forest". I could hardly sleep after reading "Mysterium Tremendum", and it's a long time since that happened due to weird fiction (or, come to think of it, it happened with Crisp's "Ynys-Y-Plag" as well, but before that, something like it hadn't happened in years).

A brilliant collection so far.

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Publisher Weekly
"Why I write: Laird Barron"
By Laird Barron
July 12, 2010

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...rd-barron.html

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For the podcast junkies (like myself) out there, Barron got interviewed on the Lovecraftian Obsession podcast.

http://www.thecthulhucult.com/lovecr...rd-barron.html

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Rather late in the day, I've just started a real-time review of OCCULTATION here:
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/...-laird-barron/