The Teeming Brain
The blog of horror author Matt Cardin
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THE TEEMING BRAIN is the blog of writer, teacher, and musician/composer Matt Cardin. It's a blog about everything, but especially about horror, religion, philosophy, psychology, consciousness, literature, film, technopoly, apocalypse, peak oil, economic collapse, media madness, educational idiocies, cultural trends, and the unfolding of dystopian futures (and presents). The guiding thread is a voracious love of ideas.
MATT CARDIN is the author of the DARK AWAKENINGS (2009) and DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP (2002), both of which explore the intersections between religion and horror. His stories, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Icons of Horror and the Supernatural, The HWA Presents: Dark Arts, Alone on the Darkside, The Thomas Ligotti Reader, Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Dead Reckonings, Lovecraft Annual, and elsewhere. He is also a successful freelance blogger, consultant, and copywriter, and will contribute several entries, including an examination of vampires and religion, to the forthcoming reference work "Encyclopedia of the Vampire: The Living Dead in Myth, Legend, and Popular Culture," edited by S.T. Joshi.
CHECK OUT MATT'S ONE-MAN MUSICAL PROJECT, DAEMONYX.
PRAISE:
"Matt Cardin's horror stories are the real thing: works that are committed to expressing what is irremediably strange and terrible in human existence." - Thomas Ligotti, author of Teatro Grottesco and The Nightmare Factory
"Matt Cardin is one of those rare horror authors who is also a true scholar and intellectual. His studies in philosophy and religion inform his fiction, which is heavily influenced by both Lovecraft and Ligotti, and his work is usually the highlight of whatever venue it graces." - Jack M. Haringa, author, editor, critic
"Cardin ranks among the foremost authors of contemporary American horror." - Laird Barron, author of The Imago Sequence & Other Stories
"Matt Cardin's stories display a thorough appreciation of what cosmic horror is all about." - Brian McNaughton, author of The Throne of Bones
"Dark Awakenings offers the dream imagery of the best weird fiction but goes even further beyond the ordinary thanks to Matt Cardin's fierce intellect. Haunting stories and insightful essays. This is mandatory reading to prepare for the doom to come." - Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground
"It's a bold writer who, in this day and age, tries to make modern horror fiction out of theology, but Cardin pulls it off." - Darrell Schweitzer, editor, anthologist, author of Living with the Dead
"Like Lovecraft and Ligotti, Cardin excels in creating a truly terrifying atmosphere of dread and decay by revealing what may lurk just beyond our view of reality." - Durant Haire, writing for Feo Amante.com
Just nod if you can hear me…, plus Thinking Blogger Award (again!)
Hello (hello, hello)?
Is there anybody in there?
Okay, enough with the Pink Floyd. Surely my loyal readers have noticed that it’s been more than two weeks since I last posted anything here at The Teeming Brain. Please accept my apologies for the unplanned hiatus.
It’s all because of an upsurge of busy-ness that overtook me near the end of June and is currently ongoing. During the last five or six weeks of my summer break from teaching I’ve been almost as busy, if not more so, as I am when school’s in session.
Speaking of which, school starts again exactly two weeks from today. At this time of morning on Thursday, August 16th, I won’t be sitting here at home, typing on a computer keyboard, but will instead be wrapping up the first class period of the first day of the first semester of the 2007-2008 school year. So will that mean a resumption of blog activity? Only time will tell.
Time may also tell of a more substantial life change than my regular return to teaching. Something may have recently come up. But it’s uncertain at present. If you never hear me say anything else about it, then you’ll know it was merely a passing mirage.
On that tantalizing note, I’ll move on to two separate concerns:
1) I’ve just posted a brief update for those of you who are awaiting further news about the Holy Horrors anthology.
2) Late last week I was tagged — for a second time — with the Thinking Blogger Award. Being tagged the first time was flattering. Receiving such an accolade yet again tends toward explosive ego inflation. I think some deep breathing and contemplative meditation are in order, just to quell the encroaching self-satisfaction.
The blogger who gave me the award this time goes by the name Red Tory. He’s Canadian. His blog looks quite interesting. I may need to read it. In calling me out, he wrote:
“The Teeming Brain: Horror writer, scholar, musician, composer, teacher, and part-time philosopher Matt Cardin offers a provocative exploration of diverse matters of social, cultural and literary interest. A critical-thinking spiritualist, Cardin thoughtfully reflects on the complacent ‘theme park imperialism’ of post-modern America (amongst other things) with eloquence, esotericism and a sense of ‘adventurous expectancy’ as H.P. Lovecraft would have put it. “
Many thanks to you, friend, for the kind words. (And apologies if I’ve incorrectly identified you as male. Double apologies if I actually know you but don’t currently recognize or realize it.)
I haven’t done much new exploring in the blogosphere since I perpetuated the Thinking Blogger meme the first time I was tagged with it, so please just follow the link I gave to that post a few paragraphs above to read my own list of thinking bloggers.
~ by Matt Cardin on August 2, 2007.
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