The Teeming Brain

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