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Bleak Precision
Ten stories, an essay and artwork by two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, Greg Chapman. Table of Kakophony, Horror A Bleak and Depressing Look at Truth, The Pest Controller’s Wife, Fascination, Scar Tissue, Unrequited, Mongrel, Hard Bargain, Feast of Feasts, Revanj, The Family Business.
71 pages, Paperback
First published June 14, 2020
11 people want to read
About the author
Greg Chapman
102 books108 followersAustralian Shadows Award-winner***, two-time Bram Stoker Award nominee** and Ditmar Awards nominee*, Greg Chapman is a horror author and artist based in Queensland Australia.
Greg is the author of the novels Hollow House, The Noctuary: Pandemonium and Netherkind and the collections, Vaudeville and Other Nightmares, This Sublime Darkness and Other Dark Stories, Bleak Precision, Midnight Masquerade and Black Days and Bloody Nights. His short fiction has also appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines.
His artistic endeavours include designing book covers for various publishers in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He has been creating book covers and artwork for IFWG Publishing since 2013. The first graphic novel he illustrated, Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times, written by Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton, won the Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel category at the Bram Stoker Awards® in 2013.
Greg was also the President of the Australasian Horror Writers Association from 2017-2020.
*** Best Collected Work, for Midnight Masquerade 2023 Australian Shadows Awards
** Superior Achievement in a First Novel for Hollow House (2016) and
Superior Achievement in Short Fiction, for “The Book of Last Words” (2019)
* Best Artwork (internal illustrations in “Polyphemus”) 2024
Greg is the author of the novels Hollow House, The Noctuary: Pandemonium and Netherkind and the collections, Vaudeville and Other Nightmares, This Sublime Darkness and Other Dark Stories, Bleak Precision, Midnight Masquerade and Black Days and Bloody Nights. His short fiction has also appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines.
His artistic endeavours include designing book covers for various publishers in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He has been creating book covers and artwork for IFWG Publishing since 2013. The first graphic novel he illustrated, Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times, written by Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton, won the Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel category at the Bram Stoker Awards® in 2013.
Greg was also the President of the Australasian Horror Writers Association from 2017-2020.
*** Best Collected Work, for Midnight Masquerade 2023 Australian Shadows Awards
** Superior Achievement in a First Novel for Hollow House (2016) and
Superior Achievement in Short Fiction, for “The Book of Last Words” (2019)
* Best Artwork (internal illustrations in “Polyphemus”) 2024
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 8, 2020
Eight horror short stories and one essay are combined with the author’s own wonderful artwork in this collection.
These stories are dark, deep and often delightful.
I love Chapman’s mixture of realistic, ordinary characters with a surreal and sometimes grotesque twist. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope on life. What makes the stories resonate and stay with me is their connection to deeper meaning and truth about life. I know I will be pondering some of these stories long after I’ve read them.
These stories are dark, deep and often delightful.
I love Chapman’s mixture of realistic, ordinary characters with a surreal and sometimes grotesque twist. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope on life. What makes the stories resonate and stay with me is their connection to deeper meaning and truth about life. I know I will be pondering some of these stories long after I’ve read them.
August 30, 2020
Author and artist Greg Chapman was twice nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, the highest honor in dark fiction, and his newest creation, Bleak Precision, illustrates why. The chapbook collection of art and short fiction opens with a charcoal rendition of a naked woman clutching a wall in despair, a pair of wings discarded nearby. The image is both beautiful and disturbing mostly because of what’s hinted at in the details, as in the claw-like curve of her fingers into the wall. This motif of rich subtlety runs throughout Bleak quite smoothly, slithering throughout the mostly black and white art and short/flash fiction, leaving the reader and viewer uneasy if not thoroughly deliciously disturbed.
Each piece establishes an unsettling mood in a unique way. “Kakophony” presents a monologue of a child’s inability to escape the deafening sounds of abuse. “Unrequited” is a quietly unfolding pathological love letter. Anyone who can relate to being incessantly annoyed by a neighbor’s unrelenting noise disturbance will take heed with “Mongrel”; both “Scar Tissue” and “The Pest Controller’s Wife” establish progressively growing squeamishness that climax in satisfying conclusions. My favorite of the bunch, “Fascination,” is a morbidly original tale of a mortician’s daughter who becomes fixated on one of her father’s corpses and catches the attention of a morgue assistant in the process. Although we don’t spend a great deal of time with Julie and Paul, Chapman’s words paint their characters like tranquil ponds, their surfaces revealing subtle hints at the dark secrets hidden in their depths.
The author includes a bonus Ink Heist essay, “Horror Fiction: A Bleak and Depressing Look at Truth,” in which he advises fellow writers to “be bleak and depressing, make your characters unlikeable but most of all, tell the truth.” Chapman delivers on his promise, providing a literary mural of disturbing beauty in a concise and effective package.
Each piece establishes an unsettling mood in a unique way. “Kakophony” presents a monologue of a child’s inability to escape the deafening sounds of abuse. “Unrequited” is a quietly unfolding pathological love letter. Anyone who can relate to being incessantly annoyed by a neighbor’s unrelenting noise disturbance will take heed with “Mongrel”; both “Scar Tissue” and “The Pest Controller’s Wife” establish progressively growing squeamishness that climax in satisfying conclusions. My favorite of the bunch, “Fascination,” is a morbidly original tale of a mortician’s daughter who becomes fixated on one of her father’s corpses and catches the attention of a morgue assistant in the process. Although we don’t spend a great deal of time with Julie and Paul, Chapman’s words paint their characters like tranquil ponds, their surfaces revealing subtle hints at the dark secrets hidden in their depths.
The author includes a bonus Ink Heist essay, “Horror Fiction: A Bleak and Depressing Look at Truth,” in which he advises fellow writers to “be bleak and depressing, make your characters unlikeable but most of all, tell the truth.” Chapman delivers on his promise, providing a literary mural of disturbing beauty in a concise and effective package.
July 5, 2021
Bleak Precision, a collection of horror and dark fiction tales by Australian-based author and artist Greg Chapman.
There are many good stories in Bleak Precision but some of the highlights of Chapman’s work included “Kakophony”, a series of frantic conversations between an unidentified narrator and the ‘voices in her head’ and the chilling ending to silence the cacophony of screams and torment is all the more disturbing for its delivery; “Unrequieted”, a psychological exploration of the dark depths of lost love, and the disturbing lengths to replace an unrequited love with a memory; “Scar Tissue” was a skilful blend of shock horror and dark fiction that examined the need to belong, and to be normal but through the lens of a zombiesque theme; lastly, “Hard Bargain” a provoking tale of Asmael and the Mountain in Purgatory, where a deal is struck between an angel, demon and Asmael over the life deemed ‘wasteful’ by humanity.
Final Thoughts
Bleak Precision was a collection of diverse, well-written and dark tales that had the right balance between disturbing dark fiction and the shock of horror. I look forward to reading more.
Conclusion
A recommended must-read collection for those who love dark fiction, and thought-provoking horror.
There are many good stories in Bleak Precision but some of the highlights of Chapman’s work included “Kakophony”, a series of frantic conversations between an unidentified narrator and the ‘voices in her head’ and the chilling ending to silence the cacophony of screams and torment is all the more disturbing for its delivery; “Unrequieted”, a psychological exploration of the dark depths of lost love, and the disturbing lengths to replace an unrequited love with a memory; “Scar Tissue” was a skilful blend of shock horror and dark fiction that examined the need to belong, and to be normal but through the lens of a zombiesque theme; lastly, “Hard Bargain” a provoking tale of Asmael and the Mountain in Purgatory, where a deal is struck between an angel, demon and Asmael over the life deemed ‘wasteful’ by humanity.
Final Thoughts
Bleak Precision was a collection of diverse, well-written and dark tales that had the right balance between disturbing dark fiction and the shock of horror. I look forward to reading more.
Conclusion
A recommended must-read collection for those who love dark fiction, and thought-provoking horror.
August 19, 2020
Greg Chapman’s collection of art and short stories opens like a kick to the head. The first story, Kakophony, is so confronting that I found myself pushing away from the screen. The essay that follows, Horror Fiction: A Bleak and Depressing Look At Truth reads like the introduction I would have expected at the beginning of the book; Chapman notes here that his writing has often been described as bleak, depressing, and his characters unlikeable; I can’t think why, when his stories deal with uncontrollable hunger, fascination with death, and the need to sublimate others in order to survive. The images evoked are raw, even harrowing, and the artwork is, for the most part, excellent; the illustrations for The Pest Controller’s Wife even had me wanting to wipe the cockroaches off the page.
Chapman was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for his novel, Hollow House. Opening Bleak Precision is akin to leaving a nice safe street and walking into a laneway covered in blood, with body parts strewn across the way.
Chapman was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for his novel, Hollow House. Opening Bleak Precision is akin to leaving a nice safe street and walking into a laneway covered in blood, with body parts strewn across the way.
June 14, 2022
Grabbed this on the cheap on sale on Amazon. It’s a nice little collection of short stories and an essay. All the stories were actually quite well done. Will definitely read more by the author in the future.
March 22, 2024
3.5 stars. In need of a good editor.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews