Reading List: The Inconsolables by Michael Wehunt

Ever since I devoured his debut, Greener Pastures, Michael’s fiction has been a huge influence and a North Star for my own work. There are very few authors I would say this about: when I hear Wehunt has a new book coming out, it’s an automatic buy. I don’t even have to read the synopsis. Not even in Stephen King do I have that much trust.

Wehunt fans (Wehunters?) like myself have been anxious for a new story collection from him for years (which is saying something for me, as generally speaking I don’t read many short story collections). Greener Pastures was published in 2016—not a full decade, but it’s felt like it. But at long last, it’s here, and it was worth the wait. Released this June by Bad Hand Books, The Inconsolables does not disappoint.

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Reading List: "The Pine Arch Collection" by Michael Wehunt (The Dark Magazine, May 2018)

Hot off the digital presses at The Dark Magazine, today I read Michael Wehunt’s new story, “The Pine Arch Collection”.

A tribute to found-footage style horror films like The Blair Witch Project, the story is presented as a thread of emails among filmmakers and a mysterious horror film group calling itself Pine Arch Research, which is “based—locally.” A representative of the aforementioned group emails filmmaker Aly Duarte an invitation to submit work to the Pine Arch Collection, a horror film series to be later uploaded to YouTube, “Cult status guaranteed.” Initial footage shows Aly’s house in a fog with strange black arms reaching up to her bedroom window. Aly is spooked by the invasion of  privacy, but like any not-famous artist, she is flattered by the solicitation for her work. She passes the email on to her friend and colleague at Georgia State University, Bobby Power. Bobby is also wary of their tactics but is intrigued until seeing the video, which gives him an understandably dreadful feeling.

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