What is UrbanWeird Literary?

This section of my site is dedicated to my various UrbanWeird writing. Writing was actually my first creative love - before photography and painting/drawing.

UrbanWeird is a term I came up with to help describe my 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 (in opposition to high fantasy a la Tolkein), horror, and sometimes sci-fi. It has as its motifs decadent urban settings (either real-ish or imaginary) populated with weird entities that are really only weird to us readers and almost always a tentacled inhabitant here and there - a nod to Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos; hence, my tentacled logo.

My version of - 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”, combing/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.

I have written my first UrbanWeird novel set in the urban, and of course weird, world of Hinodé Wards. I am in the process of the final stages and release it into the world. I have the blurb of this novel and teaser quotes from scenes/characters for you to get a delectable decadent taste of what’s in store.

I created other UrbanWeird worlds (Gwij and Bridge Cities) from which I hope to create future novels and/or other fiction. Micro fiction of Gwij and eventually of Bridge Cities along with encyclopedic articles and maps of these UrbanWeird worlds populate this section of the site.

Come in an enjoy the weird and textual wonderland of UrbanWeird Literary through the drop-down menu on the right or the top navigation.