Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Containment
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Broach, Charlee Carter
BIRTHDATE: 1952
WEBSITE: https://www.charleejacob.com/
CITY: Irving
STATE: TX
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Permanently disabled with Fibromyalgia and Narcolepsy.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
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| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2007028085 |
| HEADING: | Jacob, Charlee |
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| 053 | _0 |a PS3610.A35553 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Jacob, Charlee |
| 400 | 1_ |a Broach, Charlee Carter |
| 670 | __ |a Dread in the beast, c2005: |b t.p. (Charlee Jacob) |
| 670 | __ |a Charlee Jacob’s bibliography, website accessed Mar 13, 2007: |b 1981-1986 (published “as Charlee Carter Broach”) |
PERSONAL
Born 1952, in TX; married; husband’s name Jim.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Has also worked as a seller of designer rags and a cook.
AWARDS:Three time Bram Stoker Award winner.
WRITINGS
Contributor of stories and poems to publications including Into the Darkness, Deathrealm, Terminal Fright, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Lords of Eternal Darkness, and Tales of the Unanticipated.
SIDELIGHTS
American writer Charlee Jacob writes horror fiction, dark fantasy, and poetry. As noted on Jacob’s website, “this native Texan is best known for her graphic explorations of the themes of human degradation, sexual extremism, and supernatural evil.” She has published a score of books of short fiction, poetry, and novels, and has also published hundreds of short stories in a wide variety of magazines and periodicals.
In a Horror Writers Association Website interview with Sanda Jelcic and Alessandro Manzetti, Jacob commented on difficulties female writers experience in the horror genre: “[T]hey say that women can’t even write horror, especially using more graphic elements. I’ve been to conventions and panels, and all the time people would say that women can’t even begin to write extreme horror, because it’s so violent. You also get reactions from people reading the works thinking that women don’t write very good horror: well, some of the biggest writers out there are the women for horror! Women are still stuck in the Victim Category.” A three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, Jacob has proven these critic wrong.
This Symbiotic Fascination and Guises
Jacob’s first novel, the 1997 This Symbiotic Fascination, a tale of two warped souls, Tawne Delaney and Arcan Tyler, whose interior monsters are unlocked by common misery. Online SF Site reviewer Lisa DuMond termed this a “remarkable and sick novel.” Dumond praised “Jacob’s ear for dialogue and talent for description without the feeling of endless exposition,” further noting: “It’s a potent combination that carries the reader through passages that might be enough to turn away the most devoted fans. In another author’s hands this material might be simply rejected or ignored. It’s difficult to pass over This Symbiotic Fascination.“
Guises, published in 2002, is a collection of twenty-one short, dark stories and novellas that explore “endless variations of the masks — literal and figurative — that hide human frailties and reveal the true nature of the wearer,” according to DuMond writing in SF Site website. DuMond added: “Make no mistake; seen from the outside, there is little within these dark stories and poems that could be genuinely classified as love. Within Jacob’s lush prose there is an excess of emotion, but few would put it down to such tender feelings. In Guises, as in virtually all of her work, Jacob returns again and again to the explicit dissection of all things sexual. She handles it deftly, disturbingly, never more than a twist of phrase from another excursion into her peculiar take on sex at its most repulsive.”
Dread in the Beast and Still
Dread in the Beast was adapted from an earlier novella of the same title and traces the malevolent Mother Spirit from ancient Rome to contemporary America with is obsession with violence. Zone Website reviewer Mike Philbin had a mixed assessment of this novel, noting: “Let me first confess that I love Charlee Jacob’s writing: she is one of the truly disturbing genre writers in a torpid sea of sallow mediocrity.” However, Philbin went on to question “how … such an amazing, visceral, imaginative writer of short stories and poetry [can] compose such turgidly boring novels.” Philbin added: “Usually, I can devour a decent novel in a few relaxing days but Dread In the Beast took weeks and, in all honesty, I couldn’t even finish it. … [It] is a grim book, sure, but it doesn’t successfully revel in its grimness, displaying mostly a disgusted sneer as a reaction to its own bowel content.”
Still is a novel split in time and featuring several different main characters. In the past, Zane Mcfadden, a cop, has become obsessed by unsolved crimes in mid-twentieth century and keeps a scrap book of these awful crimes. In the twenty-first century, a horror fan receives an unusual gift–Zane’s scrapbook–and he begins displaying pictures of the final moments of these victims. And there is also an assassin who comes close to perfection in his vile trade. “Beneath it all is an exploration of human cruelty and degradation that manages to be even more shocking than what we saw in Dread in the Beast by grounding the violence in a more believable setting,” noted Horror News Website reviewer Anton Cancre, who added: “There is hope here, though it is found in paces few would bother to look. This is a woman who has taken the horrific into herself, made it a nice cozy home and still manages to dream of a better world. There is no way to not be in awe.”
Season of the Witch and Containment
Jacob’s Season of the Witch is a “book of gorgeously rendered and lusciously poeticized violence,” according to Online Cemetery Dance contributor Anton Cancre. Ads asking for people’s worst thoughts and unspeakable horrors begin showing up all over town and on television and thoughts are becoming reality in this “viciously bloody or horrific” novel, as a Ginger Nuts of Horror website reviewer termed it. The reviewer added: “Season of the Witch is one of the few experiences I’ve had with Charlee Jacob’s work but it certainly won’t be the last. It has a few rough patches but is overall a very enjoyable read and I would recommend it to any fan of hardcore, extreme horror. If you’re looking for some intense reading in this, the witching season, you’ll find it in Season of the Witch.”
Containment: The Death of Earth: A Novel and Grimoire, is, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, a “hallucinogenic meditation and commonplace book … [with] little plot in the sense of cause and effect.” Nephilim is beaten and kept hidden from a world that has been decimated by the catastrophe known as Pacifica. One-eyed, Nephilim does not know who he is or what has befallen him. Meanwhile, Nobel Prize-winner Adam Grigori is an expert on diseases and is the first to enter a devastation to help cure the sick. He has avoided catastrophe himself, but now in Italy it seems his time may be running out. The Earth, in fact seems to be on the verge of death, and now there is a race to save mankind. “Sufferings are pornographically detailed and seemingly endless,” noted the Publishers Weekly critic who concluded: “Those who recall Jacob’s Stoker-winning early work will find this disappointing book very distant from it.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, September 4, 2017, review of Containment: The Death of Earth: A Novel and Grimoire, p. 70.
ONLINE
Cemetary Dance, Anton Cancre, http://www.cemeterydance.com/ (January 5, 2017), Anton Cancre, review of Season of the Witch.
Charlee Jacob website, https://www.charleejacob.com (June 5, 2018).
Ginger Nuts of Horror, http://gingernutsofhorror.com/ (October 20, 2016), review of Season of the Witch.
Horror News, http://horrornews.net/ (October 20, 2010), Anton Cancre, review of Still; (July 5, 2014), Anton Cancre, review of The Myth of Falling.
Horror Writers Association, http://horror.org/ (June 5, 2018), Sanda Jelcic and Alessandro Manzetti, “Women in Horror Month Interview – Charlee Jacob.”
Necro Publications website, https://necropublications.com/ (June 5, 2018), “Charlee Jacob.”
SF Site, https://www.sfsite.com/ (June 6, 2018), Lisa DuMond, review of This Symbiotic Fascination and Guises.
Zone, http://www.zone-sf.com/ (May 18, 2018), Mike Philbin, review of Dread in the Beast: Novel.
QUOTE:
this native Texan is best known for her graphic explorations of the themes of human degradation, sexual extremism, and supernatural evil.
ABOUT ME
Charlee Jacob (born 1952) is an American author specializing in horror fiction, dark fantasy, and poetry. Her writing career began in 1981 with the publication of several poems under the name Charlee Carter Broach. She began writing as Charlee Jacob in 1986.
Charlee has been a digger for dinosaur bones, a seller of designer rags, and a cook, to mention only a few things. With more than 950 publishing credits, this native Texan is best known for her graphic explorations of the themes of human degradation, sexual extremism, and supernatural evil. Her first novel This Symbiotic Fascination (Necro Publications, 1997) was nominated for the International Horror Guild Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Some of her recent publishing projects include the novels Still, Containment, Vestal, and Season of the Witch all from Necro Publications. She is a three-time Bram Stoker Award winner, two of those awards for her novel Dread in the Beast and the poetry collection Sineater; the third award for collaborative poetry collection, Vectors, with Marge Simon.
Permanently disabled, she has begun to paint as one of her forms of physical therapy. She lives in Irving, Texas with her husband Jim and a plethora of felines.
QUOTE:
they say that women can’t even write horror, especially using more graphic elements. I’ve been to conventions and panels, and all the time people would say that women can’t even begin to write extreme horror, because it’s so violent. You also get reactions from people reading the works thinking that women don’t write very good horror: well, some of the biggest writers out there are the women for horror! Women are still stuck in the Victim Category.
Women in Horror Month Interview – Charlee Jacob
February is Women in Horror Month! The HWA is celebrating by posting interviews with award-winning authors. Following is an interview with Charlee Jacob, who won for Novel in 2005 (Dread in the Beast), Poetry Collection in 2005 (Sineater), Poetry Collection in 2007 (VECTORS: A Week in the Death of a Planet, co-written with Marge Simon), and Poetry Collection in 2013 (Four Elements, co-written with Linda Addison, Rain Graves, and Marge Simon).
Special thanks by Sanda Jelcic and Alessandro Manzetti for conducting this interview.
Tell us a little about your Bram Stoker Award-winning works. Inspirations? Influences? Anecdotes about the writing or critical reaction?
An anecdote? A Publisher’s editor after reading one of my books said that their readers were too stupid to understand what I was saying. Well, within next week or something I got a letter from another Publisher, a very smart person, very educated, who said “my readers aren’t stupid’. So, don’t back down, just keep doing it.
But the problem is not only publishers or editors: when I said I was a writer people said “Oh, really, you are a writer?” Then I said “I write horror” and suddenly they looked at me as I was a sort of leper or something, just because I mentioned horror.
Talk about winning the award – how surprised were you? Did winning pay off in any interesting ways?
I was absolutely stunned, I would not have expected it. My work is wreathed, it tends to be more realistic, it can be difficult to relate to readership, and sometimes to critics. But disabled as I am, because of the Parkinson, gives me now a different prospective in some way. Anyway, even if i fall a lot, I’m full of bruises and I have great troubles to deal a movement, I got strong bones, I don’t break and continue to work as to feed my passion for writing. I think this is a good pay off for my horror writing career. I hadn’t expected the Stoker to bring me riches and fame.It didn’t. I do wonder how poetry is treated in Europe.Perhaps it is as the Literary device it is intended to be.
Do you think women in horror face more difficulties than their male peers?
Yes, they say that women can’t even write horror, especially using more graphic elements. I’ve been to conventions and panels, and all the time people would say that women can’t even begin to write extreme horror, because it’s so violent. You also get reactions from people reading the works thinking that women don’t write very good horror: well, some of the biggest writers out there are the women for horror! Women are still stuck in the Victim Category.
What advice would you give to new female authors looking to break into horror?
Don’t use your real name! That was right from the guts! Just kidding, but seriously, most of the time I actually wish to had not let people right away know that I’m a woman, just because of the reactions. The name Charlee helped me in these situations. We’re a bit weird here, in the United States, and elsewhere, but not enough to believe that women could write good horror.
What new works from you can we look forward to in the future?
I started a new novel called ‘Contaminant’, about scientific experiment, basically about an electronic contaminant disease that can destroy the world. It will be published by Necro Publication by the end of August. And I’m working on a new poetry collection, which will be published when I get it to finish.
And since some months ago my collection ‘Dread in the Beast’ was published the Italian, from Independent Legions, with a good acceptance from the readers, I hope other works of mine will be translated.
Charlee Jacob (born 1952) is an American author specializing in horror fiction, dark fantasy, and poetry. Her writing career began in 1981 with the publication of several poems under the name Charlee Carter Broach. She began writing as Charlee Jacob in 1986. This native Texan is best known for her graphic explorations of the themes of human degradation, sexual extremism, and supernatural evil. Her first novel This Symbiotic Fascination (Necro Publications, 1997) was nominated for the International Horror Guild Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Her novel Dread in the Beast tied David Morrell's Creepers for first place for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel of 2005, and her poetry collection Sineater won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Poetry Collection in 2005 as well.
QUOTE:
hallucinogenic meditation and commonplace book.
sufferings are pornographically detailed and seemingly endless
Those who recall Jacob's Stoker-winning early work will find this disappointing book very distant from it.
Containment
Publishers Weekly.
264.36 (Sept. 4, 2017): p70. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Containment
Charlee Jacob. Necro, $16.95 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-944703-43-1
Subtitled "A Novel and Grimoire," this amalgamation is more properly described as a hallucinogenic meditation and commonplace book. There is little plot in the sense of cause and effect; the narrative shifts among numb protagonists, exhibiting snapshots of their extreme suffering. An unnamed boy is imprisoned and beaten by a being he calls Angel. She gouges out his right eye and hangs him from hooks before he kills her and escapes. He may be one of the nephilim, the offspring of a fallen angel and a human woman, or he may not. Meanwhile, Louise and her armless, HIV-ridden mother wander the length and breadth of Africa. Her mother dies, and Louise is taken in by a tender stranger whose memories include participation in genocide. These sufferings are pornographically detailed and seemingly endless, with no sense of developing conflict. Unmoored from authentic fears, the book's gruesome details are more escalating gross-outs than the truth of nightmares. Punctuating the hells-cape are extracts from classic works whose connection to Jacob's writing remains unelucidated. Those who recall Jacob's Stoker-winning early work will find this disappointing book very distant from it. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Containment." Publishers Weekly, 4 Sept. 2017, p. 70. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A505468077/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=d3f4eb85. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A505468077
2 of 2 5/17/18, 10:48 PM
QUOTE:
book of gorgeously rendered and lusciously poeticized violence
Review: ‘Season of the Witch’ by Charlee Jacob
Author Cemetery Dance OnlinePosted on January 5, 2017Categories ReviewsTags Anton Cancre, Charlee Jacob, Necro Publications, Reviews, Season of the Witch
Season of the Witch by Charlee Jacob
Necro Publications (September 2016)
367 pages; $15.95 paperback; ebook $3.99
Reviewed by Anton Cancre
A book of gorgeously rendered and lusciously poeticized violence. An on-the-cusp scream queen goddess of the local goth TV channel, who survived the brutal violence which tore her family apart, quite literally. A newly appeared 1-900 service that begs you to find the worst in yourself and reveal it to them. Gangs of thematically self-mutilating freaks roaming the streets. All through the background, the seductive voice of Pirsya Profana slithering between neurons. Welcome to the Season of the Witch.
If you are a fan of Charlee’s early work, especially This Symbiotic Fascination, then you’ll be happy here. That same sense of poetic indulgence, lending a feel of beauty and grace to the whole affair, pervades everything. The willingness to use that grace and beauty to portray absolutely horrendous and horrifying aspects of humanity, likewise. The willingness to be as mean and as harsh to the audience as possible, with little to no relief is just plain everywhere. Those fans, as well as the more rabid of hardcore fans, should just stop here. You want this.
However, the downsides of that same book are also present. The scattershot, seemingly directionless storytelling. The non-sequiturs on top of non-sequiturs on top of non-sequiturs that feel like excuses to throw out as many messed up images as possible, without bothering to give them a meaningful context. There’s a reason for this, as the “about the author” blurb makes it clear that this was the first, previously unpublished, novel Charlee wrote. Unfortunately, it often reads as such.
As a huge fan of Charlee’s work, I’m glad to have Season of the Witch in my collection, as it shows a broad spectrum of her growth as a writer and an artist. Also, given that we will likely never get anything new from her again, I am happy to just see any words from her at all. On the other side, I just don’t see anyone who is not a Charlee Jacob or hardcore completist enjoying it.
QUOTE:
Beneath it all is an exploration of human cruelty and degradation that manages to be even more shocking than what we saw in Dread in the Beast by grounding the violence in a more believable setting
There is hope here, though it is found in paces few would bother to look. This is a woman who has taken the horrific into herself, made it a nice cozy home and still manages to dream of a better world. There is no way to not be in awe.
Book Review: Still – Author Charlee Jacob
Anton Cancre 10/20/2010 Book Reviews
STILL
Author Charlee Jacob
Published by Necro Publications
Publication Date: 2007
Format: Black /White – 342 pages
Price: $19.95
“Photograph. Snapshot (Shot). Still.
Still. Silent. Dead.
Still. Still Life. Still Death.
He did know that the dictionary definition of ‘still life’ referred to a portrait of inanimate objects- flowers, fruit, furniture. Nothing alive, that is. And it cut him to think that this was what the person in the picture had been reduced to: and object.”
If you’ve read anything by Jacobs, there is no point in outlining the wonders that lie in wait here. Then again, if you’ve read any of her stuff then you either already have this or your taste sucks donkey nuggets. If you haven’t, I have a hard time wrapping words around the arcane magic of beauty and horror that this wonderful lady weaves. As usual for her, a simple synopsis is not easy to pull off, as we follow three apparently distinct tales. However, unlike some of her other works, this is one comes across a tad easier on unaccustomed readers since the stories stay pretty well to themselves until they are all tied in together.
We’ve got a cop, Zane Mcfadden, that has become obsessed with answering the calls of victims of the foulest forms of human degradation to the point that his family life, work and sanity are crumbling under the weight of his inability to solve their cases. We’ve got a horror fan (Peter Beta) who, many years later, receives the first guy’s scrapbook of death and dishonor who begins displaying moving pictures of the victims final moments. Finally, we’ve got what could very well be the perfect assassin (dear little Pearly). I know that you’re thinking from this over-simplified synopsis that this could very well be a Dean Koontz book but trust me when I say that there is no way that Charlee will let you off that easy.
Beneath it all is an exploration of human cruelty and degradation that manages to be even more shocking than what we saw in Dread in the Beast by grounding the violence in a more believable setting (until the final sequence, which goes totally for broke). This is, after all, a book about purely human evil and it delves into the worst forms of it without blinking. I know that she hates being referred to as Hardcore, largely because of the p*rn implications, but this novel is the epitome of what the movement is to me. Her exploration of human horror of the past as well as present, including the use of several real cases, works as a total attack on the myth of a lost time of human innocence of a current state of civilized perfection. People have always done and will always do incredibly f*cked up sh*t to each other, that old inhumanity of man to man saw, and she is rubbing our noses in it.
Her writing style here is also more direct, kind of like what Tom Piccirilli has been doing with his more recent work, taking away the shelter of the beauty of her words. Further, her now expected accompanying artwork is starker than usual, very pictorial in grim black and white. Make no mistake, this is a book that intends to wound, but she never leaves you bleeding. There is hope here, though it is found in paces few would bother to look. This is a woman who has taken the horrific into herself, made it a nice cozy home and still manages to dream of a better world. There is no way to not be in awe.
I also have to credit her with providing me with the best defense for a love of horror against those who think such things evil without resorting to psychobabble and excuses.
We’re lucky to have a talent like this among us.
Book Review: The Myth of Falling – Author Charlee Jacob
Anton Cancre 07/15/2014 Book Reviews
imagesIt’s everything you never wanted to hear or that perhaps you or somebody you knew suffered through, whether from the human misery of this universe or a criminality intruding from the supernatural. -from Essay I: The Myth of Falling
I’ve been known to mutter that one of the best reason to create art, to spin the patently unreal out of vapors and dust, is to process the incongruities of reality. To reflect and refract this perpetually shifting blob of experience into something a bit more reasonable. But what do we do when the mechanism of collection itself becomes twisted, when the funhouse mirrors begin to buckle and shift like slow-pulled taffy, in unintended and unreasonable directions. What, then, becomes of the product, the art?
I ask because I’m having a particularly tough time reviewing this work in a coherent fashion. This product of a woman whose work has always moved and often changed me. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read Soma or Vectors. Even if you do, read them again. But, due to an abominable conglomeration of illnesses, I was sure I would not have the opportunity to travel through her mind again.
What does that have to do with The Myth of Falling? Nothing and everything, as the cliché goes. It is a collection that is inseparable from Charlee herself. From a past steeped in the types of things no one should have to even be aware of, let alone experience. From a present mired in alien flesh and misfiring nerves. The lens warped enough to show the fissures in the firmament we try so hard to tell ourselves is solid.
This isn’t something that can be dealt with in the manner of most collections. There are stories here. Tight, concise bits of prose that do more in three pages than most writers can pull off in a series of thousand page novels. But there are more of what I would tentatively call prose poems, though they likely squirm their way free of that tidy cage. These beautiful and terrifying and heroically horrific tangles of words that would writhe and wrap and slink just out of the grasp of my feeble mind. Waves of emotion and sensation that I had to read three or four times just to begin to sense the outline of reason. Like walking on that putty you can make with cornstarch. And don’t be fooled when you catch that “essay” epithet; those hold some of the slipperiest thoughts of the book.
On several occasions, I was brought to tears. On others, filled with elation. Quite a few times, I got angry and frustrated while overextending myself grasping at a meaning I was sure lurked just outside of my reach. Worse, all of these experiences have blurred into each other so that I can barely distinguish what pages brought about which emotion.
What that means for you, oh dear reader, is that you will likely either consider this a work of genius or absolute bullshit. I don’t see any middle ground on that. It certainly is not a book that will engender apathy.
currently available in limited, hardback signed edition by Sinister Grin Press.
QUOTE:
endless variations of the masks -- literal and figurative -- that hide human frailties and reveal the true nature of the wearer
Make no mistake; seen from the outside, there is little within these dark stories and poems that could be genuinely classified as love. Within Jacob's lush prose there is an excess of emotion, but few would put it down to such tender feelings. In Guises, as in virtually all of her work, Jacob returns again and again to the explicit dissection of all things sexual. She handles it deftly, disturbingly, never more than a twist of phrase from another excursion into her peculiar take on sex at its most repulsive.
Guises
Charlee Jacob
Charlee Jacob is 45 years old and writes full-time in Garland, Texas. In the past, she's done stage acting, has slung hash, sold designer shoes and rags, dug dinosaur bones and run laundry through a mangler. When she isn't hiding out at home, her husband Jim and she like to look at ornate antique furniture because dead people once owned them and must have been cool. She has placed more than 450 stories and poems in such publications as Into the Darkness, Deathrealm, Terminal Fright, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Lords of Eternal Darkness and Tales of the Unanticipated.
ISFDB Bibliography
SF Site Review: This Symbiotic Fascination
Past Feature Reviews
A review by Lisa DuMond
Advertisement
Anyone interested in horror fiction today knows the name Charlee Jacob, for her frequent appearances in dark fantasy magazines and anthologies, if not for her novel This Symbiotic Fascination. The novel, and subsequent novellas, short stories, and twisted poetry, have earned her a solid fan base, and with good reason: Jacob happens to wield a very vivid and visceral imagination that translates graphically to the page. Actually, graphic is the most accurate word to sum up her style, and to clue new readers in to the NC-17 warning all of her work deserves. And Guises is no exception.
Within Guises, Jacob explores endless variations of the masks -- literal and figurative -- that hide human frailties and reveal the true nature of the wearer. From the works of art in the titular story to the seemingly surface attraction of the weary hero of "The Piper," the nature of the camouflage ranges from the breathtakingly beautiful to heart-stopping horror. And sometimes, the extremes are indistinguishable from each other. Such is the makeup of appearances.
One of the most effective stories, "The Santa Ana Winds," is a brief and chilling tale wherein it is impossible to discern how much of the masks surrounding a grieving woman are genuine and how much are a reflection of her own beliefs. Perhaps more important is the face she reveals to the nightmarish world of her existence.
In Guises, all parties are in disguise; it is recognizing that truth that is essential to drawing every nuance from the stories.
"Four Elements And An Emphatic Moon" takes the deceptive nature of exteriors to a higher level, leading readers through incarnations of the body as well as transformations of the face, in a tale of obsession and hide-and-seek across the span of history. The endlessly searching Crainte dons her masks to follow doggedly after one of the other focuses of Jacob's work: love, or at least something that looks like it from the inside.
Make no mistake; seen from the outside, there is little within these dark stories and poems that could be genuinely classified as love. Within Jacob's lush prose there is an excess of emotion, but few would put it down to such tender feelings. In Guises, as in virtually all of her work, Jacob returns again and again to the explicit dissection of all things sexual. She handles it deftly, disturbingly, never more than a twist of phrase from another excursion into her peculiar take on sex at its most repulsive.
If there is a weakness to Guises, it is the fault uncovered whenever Jacob's work is seen in collection. Taken separately, each story's impact is a solid body blow, but read in concentration the examination of sex loses its power and begins to feel like just one more obsession -- this time of the author. One begins to await the next graphic encounter with more ennui than apprehension. There is a point at which another focus would be extremely welcome, amidst the constant flogging of a mortally wounded, if not dead, horse.
Will that minor caveat turn any readers away? Hardly. Charlee Jacob has not gotten to her impressive domination of the horror field by disappointing fans, and those fans know exactly what they're getting into with Guises.
Copyright © 2002 Lisa DuMond
In between reviews, articles, and interviews, Lisa DuMond writes science fiction and humour. DARKERS, her latest novel, was published in August 2000 by Hard Shell Word Factory. She has also written for BOOKPAGE and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. Her articles and short stories are all over the map. You can check out Lisa and her work at her website hikeeba!.
QUOTE:
Let me first confess that I love Charlee Jacob's writing: she is one of the truly disturbing genre writers in a torpid sea of sallow mediocrity.
how can such an amazing, visceral, imaginative writer of short stories and poetry compose such turgidly boring novels.
Dread In The Beast is a grim book, sure, but it doesn't successfully revel in its grimness, displaying mostly a disgusted sneer as a reaction to its own bowel content.
Dread In The Beast
Charlee Jacob
Necro paperback $14.95
review by Mike Philbin
Dread In The Beast was originally a mind-expanding 16-story collection of 'hardcore horror' that I picked up at the Necro Publications stand at Horrorfind 2002 in Baltimore, MD. Four years later and here's the novel that was a short novella in that collection.
Let me first confess that I love Charlee Jacob's writing: she is one of the truly disturbing genre writers in a torpid sea of sallow mediocrity. As Ed Lee wisely points out in his extensive introduction to this novel, "If there's an ultimate dichotomy in the horror genre, it's got to be Jacob... armed with a talent to write the most beautiful prose yet using that talent to examine the most unspeakable and detestable horror."
And he's right. I've had the privilege of collaborating on short stories with Charlee Jacob. She is adept at rendering astonishing worlds of pain and suffering. She's won World Horror Association gross-out competitions, Stoker Awards and more. Among the horror fraternity Jacob can do no wrong. But she's not yet written a decent novel.
My first encounter with Charlee Jacob, novelist, was the Leisure mass-market paperback This Symbiotic Fascination. I suspected then that maybe her over-bearing editors had been a bit brutal with her, asking her to go back through her usual torrent of poetic obscenity and callous amorality and 'calm it down' and maybe try to slow the pace for the reader who isn't used to the intensity of Jacob's psycho-erotic roller coasters; stretch it all out a bit, you know. The dread in my beast points to it being all her own work, with no middleman's interference pattern. And that's the ultimate dichotomy... how can such an amazing, visceral, imaginative writer of short stories and poetry compose such turgidly boring novels.
Usually, I can devour a decent novel in a few relaxing days but Dread In The Beast took weeks and, in all honesty, I couldn't even finish it. I finally got 240-odd pages into this 350-pager and just closed the book, savagely de-motivated, not willing to read on. In all that time I'd been looking for some sort of humanity to latch onto. Some thread of realism. Some lifeline. It's not about narrative drive getting in the way of the anecdotal, the way it does with Richard Laymon's books. It's not the charm-less cynicism of so many other tired villains of dream and fantasy pumping the horror turd onto the unwarranted shelves. It's not even the ever-so-helpful dialogue Jacob employs. It's just that there are no real characters to empathise with, to hate, to enjoy the ride with. There are no intimate depictions of life's suffering reason that populated the middle third of the original Dread In The Beast collection, traumatic visions like Drunken Devils, Sainted Wives And Fire and Anna's Thesia. These were gut-wrenching visceral victims/ torturers you were really drawn along by some hidden, mysterious, inner motivation. And that's all they needed.
You've actually gotta care about the characters in a novel - it's a long way to go without feeling any emotion whatsoever for the subject of your reading. Sure, Dread In The Beast has structure; it's weighed down with leaps back and forth through history as we study the lineage of the Queen of a shit-eating tribe. And there's many a reference to ancient tribal miscellany and trivia but it's not integrated into the narrative the way say a data-bore like Chuck Palahniuk really stacks his research high. It's more in passing that we realise Jacob's 'into all that weird stuff'.
Novelists cannot afford to forget the great rule of writing - show; don't tell. It's the difference between saying, 'Oh, Jack is real evil' and showing Jack doing something really evil. I felt like this book was reminding me all the time that scatological cults are real bad and real evil. I wanted to make my own decisions as a reader but I was bludgeoned on the head by how I should have been reading it, time and again. Every piece of writing should be a very personal experience where the reader gets out of it just what s/he needs - there should be no dictatorship or command-post agenda.
Dread In The Beast is a grim book, sure, but it doesn't successfully revel in its grimness, displaying mostly a disgusted sneer as a reaction to its own bowel content. The cover by Erik Wilson is an abominable insult to the eye - the palette is all over the place, the font is awful, the filters and layout is really scruffy looking and the big green digital spray brush used to 'make the title/ author glow spookily' just looks real amateurish and because of the full-page graphic style of the chapter headings the paper edges are all stained with these dark lines sullying what should have been pristine white pages. The cover soon started to warp away from the pages and the plastic coating was rolling back already. It's a generally scrappy horrible-looking book. Dread in the Beast
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QUOTE:
viciously bloody or horrific.
Season of the Witch is one of the few experiences I’ve had with Charlee Jacob’s work but it certainly won’t be the last. It has a few rough patches but is overall a very enjoyable read and I would recommend it to any fan of hardcore, extreme horror. If you’re looking for some intense reading in this, the witching season, you’ll find it in Season of the Witch.
HORROR FICTION REVIEW: Season of the Witch by Charlee Jacob
20/10/2016
season of the witch by charlee jacob fiction review Picture
SEASON OF THE WITCH BY CARLEE JACOB
I've read a lot of work by some great authors lately, much of it as bleak and dark as it gets, some viscerally, brutally violent. But none could be said to be as dark as Charlee Jacob's Season of the Witch, and very few could be said to be as viciously bloody or horrific. Jacob is an author who never pulls her punches, willing to take risks and push boundaries that other authors shy away from and, where a lesser author might stumble, she pulls it off admirably. Think Edward Lee with the gloves off and you’ll have an inkling of what I’m talking about.
Those of us who have been reading horror fiction for a while will be familiar with the term, “unspeakable horrors.” But what does that mean, exactly? It gets thrown around a lot, both by those who write book synopses and those of us who write reviews, so much so that it’s become little more than a hyperbolic cliché and when most people see those two words together their gaze just jumps right past without gaining any context from it. But in spite of the over usage of the term, it’s the best possible term to describe the work of Charlee Jacob in general and Season of the Witch in particular.
In Season of the Witch, things start out bad—I mean that in a good way—and, when ads for X-IS-THE-DARK mysteriously appear all over town, go quickly to hell from there. The insidious phone service encourages people to call in with their most disturbing thoughts, no matter how dark and twisted and encourages them not only to talk about them but to take them even further, maybe even to act upon them. But X-IS-THE-DARK is just the beginning of the town’s woes as things begin to get stranger, more brutally violent, and ultimately intensely terrifying as the story progresses. I’m not going to make any great effort to synopsize this thing. Anyone who’s ever read Charlee Jacob’s work will know that it’s never a straight forward or simple thing to describe the plot of one of her books. They tend to have twists and turns all over the place and stories layered one upon another, and this one’s no different.
Charlee Jacob is known for scathingly visceral gore and unapologetic, frequently shocking violence and there are plenty of both in Season of the Witch. The book should be packaged with a label that warns off the faint of heart or weak of stomach, and that’s not an exaggeration. But the funny thing about her work is that while she’s in the process of disturbing, horrifying, and grossing you out, she does so with some of the most beautiful, poetic prose I’ve seen in the sort of hardcore horror she delivers. She’s a master wordsmith with a great sense of detail and unmatched descriptive prowess, her words captivating and, above and beyond the meaning of them, extremely readable. Being the poetry fanatic that I am, there were times when I became so caught up in the language that I lost the storyline and found myself having to go back and recapture the thread. Not that it’s difficult to follow, merely that I’m often easily distracted.
While it should be said that the story is a bit thin on character development, the worlds Charlee Jacob creates are fascinating and terrifying and the telling of the tale more than makes up for that minor flaw. Her settings and scenarios can compete with those of Clive Barker and are, in truth, the great strength of this or any other Jacob story. Her haunting, surreal landscape becomes one of the major players, almost a character in and of itself, and the obscene, amoral villains of the tale, while they may be off putting to those of weaker constitution, are terrifying and fascinating. Season of the Witch makes it readily apparent that Jacob doesn’t believe in limits and, while she may not be intentionally endeavoring to shock her readers, she does so with increasing frequency as the story progresses. While I’m always hesitant to use the term “splatterpunk”, it’s the most applicable genre association I can make here. This story is extreme, ultra intense horror with a massively high body count, tons of self-mutilation, and enough blood to fill a couple of Olympic swimming pools.
Season of the Witch is one of the few experiences I’ve had with Charlee Jacob’s work but it certainly won’t be the last. It has a few rough patches but is overall a very enjoyable read and I would recommend it to any fan of hardcore, extreme horror. If you’re looking for some intense reading in this, the witching season, you’ll find it in Season of the Witch.
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QUOTE:
remarkable and sick novel.
Jacob's ear for dialogue and talent for description without the feeling of endless exposition. It's a potent combination that carries the reader through passages that might be enough to turn away the most devoted fans. In another author's hands this material might be simply rejected or ignored. It's difficult to pass over This Symbiotic Fascination.
This Symbiotic Fascination
Charlee Jacob
Necro, 243 pages
This Symbiotic Fascination
Charlee Jacob
Charlee Jacob is 45 years old and writes full-time in Garland, Texas. In the past, she's done stage acting, has slung hash, sold designer shoes and rags, dug dinosaur bones and run laundry through a mangler. When she isn't hiding out at home, her husband Jim and she like to look at ornate antique furniture because dead people once owned them and must have been cool. She has placed more than 450 stories and poems in such publications as Into the Darkness, Deathrealm, Terminal Fright, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Lords of Eternal Darkness and Tales of the Unanticipated.
ISFDB Bibliography
Necro Publications
Past Feature Reviews
A review by Lisa DuMond
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This is another review that is going to come with an NC-17 rating. Come to think of it -- I would suggest shipping This Symbiotic Fascination in a reinforced paper sack. This will allow readers to receive their copy in something like anonymity and provide a handy barf bag. You'll be wishing for both by the time you read the last page of this remarkable and sick novel.
Tawne Delaney and Arcan Tyler are two of the people that society prefers to ignore. They are people of such intense loneliness that it is painful to watch; it is easier to mock them than dwell on their misery. Tawne is a towering, ape-like woman, who at 37 is still dreaming of the handsome lover who will see only her inner beauty. Arcan is a beaten, wreck of a man, but a man with honour -- an odd version of honour, considering the fact that he is a vicious, sadistic rapist.
Apart, they are the butt of every joke and cruel remark. Together, they are the couple of death. Literally.
When Tawne accepts the gift of undeath from a shift-changing stranger, she will set in motion events that will bring the monsters inside the two to the surface. In their wake, they will leave a trail of bodies and shattered lives. The bodies are the lucky ones. The hell is in surviving.
This Symbiotic Fascination is chock full of gore, sadism, murder, and rough sex. Horror doesn't come any more hardcore than this. I would venture to say that even some horror fans who think they like it uncensored and explicit will blanch at some of the scenes in this little jaunt into the darkest side. If you make it through, though, you will never forget the images Jacob lays out for you. And, with therapy, you'll be able to sleep again.
Yes, this is an unrestrained gore fest. A shocker. An outrage, perhaps, to some. But, it is more compelling than most work in this genre, or in the mainstream for that matter. Jacob's human characters appear as distinctive, whole individuals, with good sides and bad. Perhaps beyond our personal experience (let's hope), but unnervingly believable. The kind of people you see around you, pushed a bit too far, offered an irresistible chance to be on top for a change. Not so much of a stretch now?
Add in Jacob's ear for dialogue and talent for description without the feeling of endless exposition. It's a potent combination that carries the reader through passages that might be enough to turn away the most devoted fans. In another author's hands this material might be simply rejected or ignored. It's difficult to pass over This Symbiotic Fascination.
And more difficult to shrug off. I know people who would eagerly accept the horrific "life" offered by the shape-shifter. Much too eagerly.
Copyright © 1999 Lisa DuMond
Lisa DuMond writes science fiction and humour. She co-authored the 45th anniversary issue cover of MAD Magazine. Previews of her latest, as yet unpublished, novel are available at Hades Online.