Steve Himmer's Blog

I’m excited to share that my novel Scratch will be published in the UK this summer by Wundor Editions, the first of my books to travel abroad.

It’s a particular thrill to see it listed in Waterstones’ catalog, because their stores in Boston and Glasgow were formative places for me as a reader and writer. (And if anyone spots a copy on the shelf in Sauchiehall Street, picture please!)

At Largehearted Boy, a playlist of music to set the mood for Scratch.

At Monkeybicycle today, I’ve written about Scratch for the “If My Book” series. In case you’ve wondered what my book would be like as a bird, squirrel, fox, or other wild creature.

Thanks to Tobias Carroll at @vol1brooklyn for asking me some questions about my novel Scratch recently.

Thanks to @electricliterature for inviting me to share a list of some of my favorite novels of the wild outdoors.

My novel Scratch is published today by Dark House Press, and I hope you’ll consider taking a look.

I’d call it a literary folk horror/monster story, with deep forests and shapeshifting and animal attacks and stone walls and solastalgia and a narrator who doesn’t find human beings quite as fascinating and special as we find ourselves.  And it began with something I read in an interview with the novelist Molly Gloss years ago (in an interview about her wonderful novel Wild Life):

“Here’s what it comes down to: I want to live in a world in which it’s possible to believe in giants living deeply secret in the forests. When the wild woods are entirely gone, that possibility won’t exist for any of us anymore.”

You can order a copy from your local bookstore, directly from the publisher, or from Amazon, Powells, and all the usual places (or ask your library to add one to their collection), if you’re so inclined.

Thanks.

Bears have been lumbering into my fiction almost as long as I’ve been writing it, and my forthcoming novel Scratch is probably their ursine apotheosis — the first title, in fact, for the version I wrote as my MFA thesis, was Ursus americanus. I don’t know why I write (and read) about bears as much as I do, but I’ve decided to embrace it in the spirit of — and with apologies to — Raymond Queneau’s wonderful book Exercises in Style (and Matt Madden’s riff on it, too) by writing 99 variations of “Exursuses in wild.” And I won’t be prewriting them, either, in hopes some wild things will happen on the spur of the moment. Unless the bears turn on me before I’m through and things get all Grizzly Man.

(photo via)

My novel Scratch will be published October 11, so if you’re the sort of person who likes to be first at things this is a good time to order a copy (or to suggest your local library does). You can be first to read it, first to ignore it in your TBR pile, first to suggest it to your friends (or first not to!), first to mail it back to me with an angry note, first to leave it in the deep woods to see what the animals do to it… so many possibilities.

It’s a kind of folk horror/monster story, with shapeshifting and animal attacks and stone walls and solastalgia and a narrator who doesn’t find human beings quite as fascinating and special as we find ourselves.  And it began with something I read in an interview with the novelist Molly Gloss years ago (in an interview about her brilliant book Wild Life):

“Here’s what it comes down to: I want to live in a world in which it’s possible to believe in giants living deeply secret in the forests. When the wild woods are entirely gone, that possibility won’t exist for any of us anymore.”

You can order a copy from your local bookstore, directly from the publisher, or from all the usual places, if you’re so inclined:

IndieBound · Powells · Amazon · Barnes & Noble
Chapters/Indigo · Book Depository  · Kobo  · iBooks

Thanks.

Epigraph page from my forthcoming novel Scratch, of which the publisher is giving away a few copies.

If you’re a person who enjoys preordering books, my third novel Scratch — coming in October from Dark House Press — can now be requested from the usual sources: