She Said Destroy

by Nadia Bulkin

Overview

A dictator craves love--and horrifying sacrifice--from his subjects; a mother raised in a decaying warren fights to reclaim her stolen daughter; a ghost haunts a luxury hotel in a bloodstained land; a new babysitter uncovers a family curse; a final girl confronts a broken-winged monster... Word Horde presents the debut collection from critically-acclaimed Weird Fiction author Nadia Bulkin. Dreamlike, poignant, and unabashedly socio-political, She Said Destroy includes three stories nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, four included in Year’s Best anthologies, and one original tale, with an Introduction by Paul Tremblay.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939905338
Publisher:	Word Horde
Publication date:	08/20/2017
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Nadia Bulkin writes scary stories about the scary world we live in, three of which have been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. Her stories have been included in volumes of The Year's Best Horror (Datlow), The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (Guran) and The Year's Best Weird Fiction; in venues such as Nightmare, Fantasy, The Dark, and ChiZine; and in anthologies such as She Walks in Shadows (winner of the World Fantasy Award) and Aickman's Heirs (winner of the Shirley Jackson Award). She spent her childhood in Indonesia with a Javanese father and an American mother, then relocated to Nebraska. She now has a B.A. in political science, an M.A. in international affairs, and lives in Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Paul Tremblay

Intertropical Convergence Zone

The Five Stages of Grief

And When She Was Bad

Only Unity Saves the Damned

Pugelbone

Red Goat, Black Goat

Seven Minutes in Heaven

Girl, I Love You

Endless Life

Violet is the Color of Your Energy

Truth is Order and Order is Truth

Absolute Zero

No Gods, No Masters

Editorial Reviews

…[a] striking debut collection…

The New York Times Book Review - Terrence Rafferty

★ 07/03/2017
Bulkin’s superior debut collection contains 13 weird and disturbing stories, three of which are Shirley Jackson Award finalists. In the creepy “Pugelbone,” a community living in warrens has decayed in terrible ways, and a woman tries to get her young daughter back after protecting her against a creature that’s haunted the woman since she was a child. In “And When She Was Bad,” the lone, and utterly lonely, survivor of a massacre by a winged creature takes an unusual sort of revenge, turning the “final girl” trope on its head. In the oddly bittersweet “Endless Life,” the ghost of a maid, mistaken for the spirit of a ruthless general, haunts room 305 of the Hotel Armitage and fades into obscurity as the hotel crumbles around her. Bulkin takes roads less traveled, uncovering the things that squirm in the dark while daring readers to look away. There are visceral elements, but she doesn’t need to rely on blood and gore to convey a sense of horror, and haunting, lyrical prose elevates these sterling tales. Bulkin serves up cerebral horror with plenty of bite. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Weird fiction has been stuck in the era of new-fangled radio sets and fifteen-cent pulp magazines for ninety years. Finally, Nadia Bulkin has come to drag us kicking and screaming into the horrors of The Endless Now with a collection of hip, ultracontemporary, politically astute, and chilling stories." --Nick Mamatas, author of I Am Providence and The Last Weekend

"Bulkin delivers a dose of delicious darkness with her debut collection." --World Fantasy Award-winning editor Silvia Moreno-Garcia

"An expert balance of the fantastic and horrific, She Said Destroy is a prime example of how modern fabulism continues to reinvigorate and reinvent all modes of speculative fiction. This book is inventive, insightful, and inspiring, not to mention unnerving. The stories inside deftly blend the horrors of the cosmic with those of the personal, evoking awe both terrifying and sublime. Nadia Bulkin's writing is beautiful, exciting, and a stellar contribution to the field of fantastic literature." --Simon Strantzas, author of Burnt Black Suns

"I’ve been telling people about Nadia Bulkin since the moment I read the first short story of hers I ever ran across, ‘Intertropical Convergence Zone,’ and apparently, this sets me apart from exactly no one. Which is only as it should be--Nadia is the coming storm, a 21st-century baby whose particular brand of politicalpunk witchcraft should determine the way the wind blows over horror’s next few decades. She's exactly the sort of fabulist we most deserve, especially in this potentially catastrophic era... one who casts a cold, assessing eye over the wreckage before cobbling it together into the image of some loathsome new god, the kind that runs on blood worship and drunken karmic nihilism. And when we're all down in the mud crying and cutting each other like good little cultists, pinned flat by the weight of her shadow, I can only aspire to be the first to admit we did this to ourselves." --Gemma Files, author of Experimental Film

"The dark stories of She Said Destroy are harrowing, astute tales of horror and the fantastic, vagabond journeys through the regions and classes of today's world, alongside the forgotten and the monstrous. Bulkin's craft is an enlivening, challenging, and distinctive voice that lingers long after reading, and reshapes weird fiction each time. --Andrew S. Fuller, author, editor Three-lobed Burning Eye magazine

"Nadia Bulkin's unique, intelligent voice captured me the first time I read one of her stories. She's never let me down since!" --Paula Guran, editor of The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror

"Nadia Bulkin writes prose like a scalpel, deftly slicing to the beating hearts of her characters and the dilemmas they confront. Impressive in subject and setting, these stories range far and wide through literary and cultural history to find the darkness that threads through the (post) modern world. As substantial a debut as I’ve seen, and highly recommended." --John Langan, author of The Fisherman

From the Publisher