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WORK TITLE: Beneath
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WEBSITE: https://www.kristidemeester.com/
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PERSONAL
Female.
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CAREER
Fiction writer.
WRITINGS
Contributor of short fiction to periodicals, including Black Static, Apex, The Dark; and anthologies, including Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volumes 1 and 3, and The Best Horror of the Year Volume 9, edited by Ellen Datlow.
SIDELIGHTS
Kristi DeMeester is a short fiction and novel writer, specializing in weird, spooky, dark, and horror stories. She has published short stories for various publications, such as Black Static, Apex, and The Dark, and in the anthologies, Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volumes 1 and 3, and The Best Horror of the Year Volume 9, edited by Ellen Datlow. Her first novel is the 2017 Beneath, published by Word Horde.
In 2017 DeMeester published Everything That’s Underneath, a collection of eighteen of her short stories of loss, pain, and guilt. Likened to writers Laird Barron and Tom Piccirilli, DeMeester offers tales of characters who cannot escape the evil and madness that is afflicting them. Creatures and emotional demons terrorize people, threatening to consume them, twisting them into the unrecognizable. DeMeester disturbs with authentic characters, mothers and daughters, and everyday people, who must choose between accepting the darkness or breaking free.
DeMeester’s debut novel, Beneath, features Atlanta-based reporter Cora Mayburn following a story of a snake-handling religious cult deep into Appalachia in North Carolina in 1988. Cora sneers at the assignment because of her troubling past with an abusive preacher in her childhood. Nevertheless, she investigates and learns of the sixteen-year-old Leah McDowell, who has a red mark in her eye. With hints of the darkness to come scattered in the book, Cora slowly uncovers sinister forces among the practitioners and townsfolk, who speak in tongues, and a horrific ritual that will raise an ancient evil called the Great Worm. The evil possesses the children, who kill their parents.
Despite some genuinely shudder-worthy scenes of transformation among the children, violence, and sexual fantasies, “DeMeester has cooked up a concept that will make readers squirm, but the story lacks narrative coherence,” according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Writing online at This Is Horror, Jake Marley heaped praise for DeMeester’s upsetting and horrifying book. Marley observed: “Beneath is profoundly horrific. It is not a novel for the squeamish, shy, or easily offended. It’s full of equal parts sexuality and religion, acknowledging and coping with abuse, victimhood, and untethered impulses.” Although the book does contain dreamlike sequences that could be real or all in the characters’ imagination, Marley noted that DeMeester has an unwavering vision in Beneath that makes it a gem in the horror genre. Marley added that DeMeester delves into humanity’s worst qualities and darkness, along with taints of religious fervor and sexual appetites.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 10, 2017, review of Beneath, p. 58.
ONLINE
Kristi DeMeester Website, https://www.kristidemeester.com (January 22, 2018), author profile.
This Is Horror, http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/ (April 25, 2017), review of Beneath.
ABOUT ME
Kristi DeMeester is the author of Beneath, a novel published by Word Horde, and the author of Everything That's Underneath, a short fiction collection published by Apex Publications. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Ellen Datlow's The Best Horror of the Year Volume 9, Year's Best Weird Fiction Volumes 1 and 3, Black Static, The Dark, Apex Magazine, and several others.
She has finished her second novel and is currently at work on her third.
Kristi DeMeester is the author of Beneath, a novel from Word Horde, and the author of Everything That's Underneath, a collection of short stories forthcoming from Apex Publications.
Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year Volume 9, Year's Best Weird Fiction Volumes 1 and 3, Black Static, The Dark, Apex Magazine, and several others.
In her spare time, she alternates between telling people how to pronounce her last name and how to spell her first.
Find her online at www.kristidemeester.com.
Beneath
Publishers Weekly. 264.15 (Apr. 10, 2017): p58.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Beneath
Kristi DeMeester. Word Horde, $16.99 trade paper (314p) ISBN 978-1-939905-29-1
For her debut novel, short story veteran DeMeester has cooked up a concept that will make readers squirm, but the story lacks narrative coherence. Reporter Cora Mayburn is still haunted by the abuse that a preacher inflicted on her in her childhood when she's asked to take an assignment in Hensley, N.C., in 1988. She's given two weeks to interview Pastor Michael Wayne, a snake handler, and uncover something interesting and worth writing about. What she finds is 16-year-old Leah McDowell, who was born with a red mote in her eye and seems to be a host for something horrifying, and a town on the brink of ushering in an ancient evil called the Great Worm. Cora is only vaguely sympathetic, and she keeps offering to help Pastor Wayne even though she finds him repulsive. However, some scenes are genuinely shudderworthy, particularly those involving the transformation of Hensley's children into creatures who creatively slaughter their parents for fun, and the sweaty, gritty Appalachian setting is full of religious fervor and salacious secrets. Sex (including fantasies about a teen girl) often shares the page with violence, and readers shouldn't expect a tidy conclusion. (May)
Book Review: Beneath by Kristi DeMeester
April 25, 2017
“In her debut novel Beneath, DeMeester has sharpened the blade of her literary shovel and unearthed one of the most upsetting and horrifying tomes of dark fiction in recent memory.”
For the past few years, author Kristi DeMeester has made her mark on horror and weird fiction through short stories, creating unforgettably creepy tales of heartbreak, pain, and loss. Now, in her debut novel Beneath, DeMeester has sharpened the blade of her literary shovel and unearthed one of the most upsetting and horrifying tomes of dark fiction in recent memory.
In the late 1980s, Cora Mayburn is a journalist from Atlanta sent to a small town in North Carolina to do a report on the snake-handling fundamentalist churches of Appalachia. Almost from the beginning of the novel, though, the readers are let in on the very, very real possibility that there is a darkness in this town–one that is deeper and more powerful than anyone is prepared for. That darkness permeates the community through the children, and faith alone isn’t enough to keep the beasts at bay. With each rock Cora turns over in her investigation, a dozen more monstrosities slither out and the darkness deepens, broadens, and rises from below.
Beneath is profoundly horrific. It is not a novel for the squeamish, shy, or easily offended. It’s full of equal parts sexuality and religion, acknowledging and coping with abuse, victimhood, and untethered impulses. Beneath dips into humanity’s worst qualities and amplifies them into something darker, then shoves your face in it and forces you to see how the darkness has been here the entire time, whether you chose to acknowledge it or not. We’re avoiding spoilers beyond theme, but let’s just say that if you can imagine a trigger warning for something, DeMeester has it in her novel. In spades. Brutally, unflinchingly, and unapologetically.
If there’s a fault to Beneath it’s that DeMeester’s dreamlike prose can sometimes feel like a ball of snakes. Dreams and reality slip over each other, and it can make a reader lost in logic gaps. Is it actually happening to the characters, or are they only imagining it? Which end is the head, which is the tail? The only way to tell is to power through, sometimes for a few pages, to see the repercussions of the scene so you can parse out a conclusion.
The weird fiction novel is a hard artifact to dig up intact without it crumbling to dust, but DeMeester’s unwavering vision for Beneath makes it a gem in that genre. Religious fervor and sinister sexuality beat at the heart of this novel, and as it claws its way up to a shocking, satisfying conclusion, readers will be left breathless and altered, desperate for whatever DeMeester has planned for us next.
JAKE MARLEY