What is UrbanWeird Literary?

UrbanWeird is a term I came up with to help describe my overall artistic aesthetic. My writing is heavily influenced by the New Weird literary movement that occurred at the turn of this century with the likes of China Miéville and Jeff VanderMeer. New Weird in turn is heavily influenced by the Weird writings of authors such as H. P. Lovecraft in the early decades of the 20th century. New Weird is a mixture of dark fantasy, horror, and sometimes sci-fi. Today, the newer dystopian fantasy subgenre of grimdark would probably be included in the mix. New Weird has as its motifs decadent urban settings (either real-ish or imaginary) populated with weird entities, almost always including a tentacled inhabitant here and there - a nod to Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos; hence, my tentacled logo. They are really only weird to us eavesdropping readers.

My version of the New Weird - UrbanWeird - locates itself in the über urban often in gargantuan megalopolises that are worlds unto their own populated by an almost uncountable number of cultures, sub-cultures, and sub-sub-cultures all with, to us anyway, weird cultural and physical traits. The UrbanWeird City does not have to explain itself; the reader just has to accept that that is the way things are in these wonderfully weird metropolises. The sense of uncanny will and should dominate until the immigrant reader becomes acclimated to their new literary home.

UrbanWeird, like the tradition of the New Weird and Weird, is dark, but dark with an element of camp. I am a gay male of a certain age, and I just can’t help myself by adding a soupçon of camp, albeit the dark variety. I also aspire my writing to be considered “literary speculative”, melding/smooshing the often too dichotomous fiction worlds of literary and genre. This is the reasoning for using “Literary” instead of something like “Writing” or “Fiction” for this textual aspect of UrbanWeird.

My UrbanWeird novel “Flowers Wilt, Weeds Thrive” set in the urban, and of course weird, world of Hinodé Wards is available for purchase from your favourite online bookseller here or directly from Amazon.com.

I am also serializing this and another novel “Conspiracy of False Citizens” set in the UrbanWeird world of Gwij. You can subscribe to these serializations and more through my UrbanChronicles Newsletter through the link on the right.