Inside the mind of author Michael Marano

My collection Stories from the Plague Years recently got a really nice review from YA horror author Daniel Kraus in Booklist:

Few horror authors are better equipped to write about madness than Marano. With an expansive vocabulary, a tenacious commitment to poetic prose, and a willingness to follow whatever discursive paths his whim takes, Marano is an acquired taste—but without doubt possessed of a unique talent. He’s at his best when striving for clarity, as in “Displacement,” the novella that anchors this book of short stories. Dean is a serial killer describing the brutal justice he handed out to those whose emotional poisons gave him a deadly cancer. It’s a tale that takes several unexpected and delicious turns, somehow combining a Poe-like belligerence and a Clive Barker–like vividness with pop-culture touchstones as commonplace as Sex and the City and Dr. Phil. The other, mostly first-person stories are hit and miss, but when they hit, they hit big: “Burden,” about the ghosts of an AIDS-ravaged gay community, possesses an unusual power, and “Little Round Head,” about a feral child raised by subterranean beasts, is nothing short of a horror classic. –Daniel Kraus

If you think I’m not stealing “Few horror authors are better equipped to write about madness than Marano”  as a tagline, you’re nuts!  Stories from the Plague Years will be coming out soon. It’s selling out fast at Cemetery Dance Publications, but you can still order copies here.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a good New Year!