Greenwood author Nathan Crowder is getting some new literary exposure, thanks to his chapter in the new anthology, “Close Encounters of the Urban Kind,” which was just released by Apex Book Company.
From the publisher:
We’ve all heard the stories of what happens to those who go to lovers’ lane and of the folly of flashing your lights at another car at night. We all know someone who knows someone that survived a meeting with Bloody Mary and another who picked up a hitchhiker that then disappeared. And we all know these stories aren’t true. They’re just urban legends. Right?
Wrong.
Sometimes the stories we hear are true. Often they’re more than they seem. These are the urban legends with alien explanations and the alien encounters mistaken for urban legends. The line between one and the other is so blurred in this anthology of stories about Close Encounters of the Urban Kind that you will never look another urban legend the same way again.
Crowder’s chapter, “Frames of Reference,” is about snuff films. “Everybody knows someone who knows someone who says they’ve seen a snuff film,” he says. Despite the idea of snuff films covered in TV shows such as “CSI,” Crowder says a real snuff film has never been proven to exist.
Crowder says he met the anthology’s editor at the Crypticon Horror Convention last summer and she asked him to contribute to the book. “Originally I was going to do a story on sewer gators. And at the last minute I came up with the other idea,” he says.
Crowder’s short stories have been published in a number of places, and he’s written several novels, including the super-hero novels “Chanson Noir” and “Cobalt City Blues.” His recent short story “Deacon Carter’s Last Dime” is on the storySouth Notable Stories of 2009 list.
Crowder will read from the book at the Wayward Coffeehouse, 8570 Greenwood Ave., from 8-10 p.m. on Saturday, April 10. (Also appearing will be the editor, Jennifer Brozek, and fellow authors Rosemary Jones and Erik Scott de Bie. You can buy the book at the event and the authors will be available for autographing the book after the reading.)
“I’m currently working on an urban fantasy novel set in London, which I hope to have finished in the next month,” Crowder says. “I’ve got dozens of novels lined up, it’s just a matter of which I finish first.”
