Joel Lane - Böcker

WINNER OF THE 2013 WORLD FANTASY AWARDEpisodes from the casebook of a police officer in the West Midlands:A young woman needs help in finding the buried pieces of her lover... so he can return to waking life.Pale-faced thieves gather by a disused railway to watch a puppet theatre of love and violence.Why do local youths keep starting fires in the ash woods around a disused mine in the Black Country?A series of inexplicable deaths uncover a secret cult of machine worship.When a migrant worker disappears, the key suspect is a boy driven mad by memories that are not his own.Among the derelict factories and warehouses at the heart of the city, an archaic god seeks out his willing victims.Blurring the occult detective story with urban noir fiction, Where Furnaces Burn offers a glimpse of the myths and terrors buried within the industrial landscape. First published in 2012, Joel Lane’s World Fantasy Award-winning collection is a true modern classic of weird fiction that cemented his place as one of the most important and distinctive British writers of the weird.

The Autumn Myth attempts a reality check on the myths and dreams that permeate our world. It attacks the culture of political and corporate mendacity in modern Britain, then goes on to consider the more ambiguous myths that sustain our personal lives. The poems explore the human experience of time, the lessons of grief and the evocative power of music. They look beyond a bitter society governed by lies towards a more creative use of imagination. The title poem suggests that global warming has eradicated autumn – and Lane's third collection celebrates an October of the heart, a revolutionary glow."The Birmingham that Joel Lane writes about is not the one the tourist board has in mind when it pushes the charms of Britain's second city."Tribune"... his skill is to move from the story towards a verbal imagination that works its way into the heart of the story. This verbal imagination couches each story in a deft intensity. And Lane has precise trajectories for his poems, too; moving them from the bare bones to evocative and emotive endings that subtly change and deepen the reader's perspectives. These pieces are often dark pictures of the seamier side of Birmingham. 'The Rituals' depicting the beatings meted out on his wife by a man who 'kissed the blue-black runes that stood/like Braille on her damp skin', reminded me of Ted Hughes' 'Her Husband'. And the Birmingham landscape with its combination of urban abandonment and urban excess is evoked in a far drier way than his great predecessor, Roy Fisher, is wont."Ian Pople "Joel Lane's terrain is grim urban, almost unrelievedly so. It's the place that always gets it when things go wrong, even though people try to help."Acumen"Most of the poetry is about decay and disquiet; this is Joel Lane's main theme and fine strength; it is a subject to be explored."Wayfarers"In two previous collections, The Edge Of The Screen and Trouble In The Heartland, Joel Lane has quietly established a reputation as an unflinching observer of the overlooked corners of post-industrial Britain (and especially Birmingham). He's one of those poets who, you quickly find yourself thinking, ought to be better known. Perhaps, with mainstream British poetry showing signs of a renewed engagement with political reality, his moment is at hand."Matt MerrittJoel Lane's two previous collections of poems, The Edge of the Screen (1999) and Trouble in the Heartland (2004), are both published by Arc. His other work includes two novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask; a novella, The Witnesses Are Gone; and three collections of short stories, The Earth Wire, The Lost District and The Terrible Changes. He lives in Birmingham, where he works as a journalist and enjoys long walks, urban landscapes, cinemas and bookshops. His happiest hours have been spent offline.The MessageHalfway along Station Streetin the meltdown of closing time,a mute prayer is given uplike a final showing of cardsor a nest of birds, startled,trying to break from cover:four rat-arsed, deaf soccer fans,hands in the air, signing a chant.ForensicNot even in dreams, the flawlessdrift of pure white snowto hold the print or the bloodstainlike a sterile agar plate, a glass slide;even in dreams, the mark is blurredand the snow isn't clean enough. The evidence thaws into newsprintand the jury are not persuadedand the mud clinging to the streetsmight contain DNA or democracy,but no-one can make it speak.Reality is the same, but colder.

'Nothing ever changes. We just tell ourselves it does.'Set in a post-industrial landscape of the present, the near future, and the imagined, Joel Lane's seminal collection The Lost District explores human encounters with the unknown: sexual discovery, drug-inspired visions, the lonely paths of madness, and the shadow realms on the other side of death.A neighbourhood fades into corrupt echoes of itself; a porn actor's scars reveal the forces controlling his life; a musician is haunted by the madness of a deceased singer; and a man literally follows his ex-lover to the end of the world.Ranging from grim urban horror to strange erotic fantasies to bitter allegories of loss and exploitation, the stories in The Lost District link the hidden places in the urban and small-town landscapes to the secret spaces inside all of us.First published in the USA in 2006, and long out-of-print, The Lost District has never been published in the UK until now, further enforcing Joel Lane's reputation as one of the most significant and distinctive British writers of the weird.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NINA ALLANJoel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK's foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, a frank explorer of sexuality and the transgressive aspects of human nature. With a tight focus on the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham, he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction.His debut collection, The Earth Wire was first published in 1994 by Egerton Press and is reissued in paperback by Influx Press for the first time in over twenty-five years.Love and death. Sex and despair. The Earth Wire is a thrilling, disturbing examination of the means and the cost of survival.

Joel Lane (1963-2013) was one of the UK’s foremost writers of dark, unsettling fiction, a frank explorer of sexuality and the transgressive aspects of human nature. With a tight focus on the post-industrial Black Country and his home city of Birmingham, he created a distinct form of British urban weird fiction.Scar City is one of the final collections put together before his death in 2013 – with his home city of Birmingham as their nucleus, these are intense, haunting and often painful stories from a master of the short form.WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS ROYLE

Moving into an old and decaying house, Martin Swann discovers a box of video cassettes in the garden shed. One of them is a bootleg copy of a morbid and disturbing film by obscure French director, Jean Rien.The discovery leads Martin on a search for the director's other films, and for a way to understand Rien's filmography, drawing him away from his home and his lover into a shadowy realm of secrets, rituals and creeping decay. An encounter with a crazed film journalist in Gravesend leads to drug-fuelled visions in Paris - and finally to the Mexican desert where a grim revelation awaits.The Witnesses Are Gone is a first-hand account of a journey into the darkest parts of the underworld - a look behind the screen on which our collective nightmares play.

Birmingham, early 1990s. Triangle are a cult act on the post-punk scene, led by brilliant and troubled vocalist Karl - a man haunted by past violence and present danger, torn between fame and oblivion, men and women, music and silence.Triangle's bass player, David, is struggling to make sense of Karl's reality as the band start to make waves in the music scene and Karl starts to come apart in a blur of sex and drinking.First published in 2000, Joel Lane's debut novel From Blue to Black is a story of passion, blood and alcohol, broken strings and broken lives - a piercing voyage through our musical and political past that cuts to the bone.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH O’NEILLNeil is a student at Birmingham University, living a typical life of gigs, clubs, politics, sex. One night, after a row with his lover, Neil follows a stranger onto a canal towpath. The stranger turns on him and attacks, viciously carving up Neil’s face and leaving him mutilated beyond recognition. Neil’s recovery is a journey through surgical reconstruction and sexual alienation. His attempt to track down his attacker becoming a search for his own hidden, destructive self; a search that leads him to question values he had always taken for granted. First published in 2003 and long out-of-print, The Blue Mask is a hardcore emotional trip exploring the trauma of change and the nature of violence and of love.