I went to the Arctic Circle because of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. I went there to work on a novel, too, but I wouldn’t be writing a novel—wouldn’t even still be a writer—without Lovecraft. While in the Arctic, I thought about Cthulhu. I carried a protective charm a friend had stitched for me in case I encountered any Old Ones. I stared into the fissures of three-hundred-foot-tall glaciers and expected to see a tentacle lash out before slithering back into the dark, icy recesses. And every so … [Read more...] about Things American: At the Mountains of Loneliness
Loneliness
The Five Star Hotel of Bangkok
Everyone laughed about its name. In the 90s, the old concrete building had been a brothel, but it was now owned by a dreadlocked Israeli living out his dream of running a cut-rate hostel-cum-bar. For 100 baht, you rented a cinderblock room in one of the top three floors, a little box with exposed electrical wires and fluorescent lighting that flickered like life was quivering out of the tubes every time a semi clattered past. For 150 baht, the Israeli rented you a mattress. Nightly, the first … [Read more...] about The Five Star Hotel of Bangkok
Online Fiction Interview: David Naimon
David Naimon's "The Battle" is an oddball buddy tale of sorts set in a Black Sea bunker in some not-too-far-off future. The stakes are high—international tensions run deep as global warming has opened the arctic to shipping lanes—and Sergei, Naimon's protagonist, is charged with monitoring the progress of Russian submarines as they stake claims on the seafloor. This story has the distinction of being the ASF online exclusive in which the least actually happens, and yet, as Naimon told us in the … [Read more...] about Online Fiction Interview: David Naimon