
Charcoal
Garrett Cook(Author)
Clash Books (Publisher)
Published on 19. December 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
164 pages
978-1-955904-24-7 (ISBN)
Description
Thomas Kemp, the Libertine, turned cruelty, torture and humiliation into works of art.
It was said that he had given his soul to something inhuman to be part of artistic immortality. It was said that his very ashes were used to make a set of charcoals still imbued with his spirit. When Shannon Hernandez, a traumatized and repressed art student, is tasked to draw with them by her lecherous professor, she feels a change in herself and something menacing calling out to her. She is offered a chance to create work that breaks boundaries and hearts alike but comes bound with a connection to a legacy of immortal terrors.
It was said that he had given his soul to something inhuman to be part of artistic immortality. It was said that his very ashes were used to make a set of charcoals still imbued with his spirit. When Shannon Hernandez, a traumatized and repressed art student, is tasked to draw with them by her lecherous professor, she feels a change in herself and something menacing calling out to her. She is offered a chance to create work that breaks boundaries and hearts alike but comes bound with a connection to a legacy of immortal terrors.
Reviews / Votes
"Written with thehaunting lyricism of early Clive Barker and with the poetic prowess of Kathe
Koja, Garrett Cook's Charcoal is an elegantly beguiling tone poem of trauma and
suffering. To miss out on this masterpiece would be to miss out on watching a
master craftsman at work. An utterly bewitching read."
-Eric LaRocca, author
of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
"With echoes of Rimbaud and
Baudelaire, Garrett Cook's poetic, lyrical Charcoal explores
with a licentious butcher's cruel insight the bloody thread that
connects the darkness in man, the darkness in the medium by which art
is created, and the darkness in art itself."
-Matthew
M Bartlett, author of Gateways to
Abomination
"Garrett Cook's prose
is meticulous and beautiful."
- Lori Bowen,
director of I am Monster
"A whirlpool of consciousness, smoothly drawing you in and then sweeping you along
in ever-faster tightening spirals to plunge into a dark, mind-blowing
vortex."
- Christine Morgan, author of
Lakehouse Infernal
"Charcoal
nails the pain that every artist knows - the agony of creation and the despair
of grasping for recognition -- and lays it bare on the page, naked and
shrieking, like nothing before."
--Bitter
Karella, Hugo Award Nominated creator of The Midnight Society Twitter
"Charcoal
expertly weaves different levels of reality, going from past to present to
canvas to dream"
-Joe Koch, author of
The Wingspan of Severed Hands
"Charcoal
is full of brilliant darkness and on-point observations about people, trauma
and the ways we interact with problematic art. Gothic, nightmarish, and feels
very much like falling into a historic painting of hell."
- Madeleine Swann, author of The
Sharp End of the Rainbow
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
218 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-955904-24-7 (9781955904247)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Raised on the North Shore of Massachusetts in a house half the town called haunted, Garrett Cook grew up obsessed with everything curious, monstrous and perverse as well as struggles with body image, gender role and intense trauma. He has since moved on to Portland, Oregon, where there are fewer ghosts but still a great deal of perversity. His work has appeared alongside Joe Lansdale in Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade, Michael Moorcock in Kizuna and Jack Ketchum in DOA III and James Joyce in I Transgress. He is the winner of the Wonderland award for Time Pimp and an Honorable Mention in Best Horror of the Year 7 for his story Beast with Two Backs. His work has been translated into Spanish, Japanese and Russian.