Publisher: JournalStone - https://journalstone.com
Cover Art Red: Cover Artist is Mikio Murakami. His design work can be found on Instagram at @silentqdesign
Synopsis:
Dave Gallagher mows the lawns and digs the graves at cemeteries in his hometown on Cape Cod. He also keeps the peace between the ghosts inhabiting those cemeteries. In the world of Living in Cemeteries, wrongdoing is atoned for by a person’s descendants. Spirits decapitate relatives of serial killers and lay pox blankets over men responsible for the Trail of Tears. The only way Dave can learn of his pre-ordained death is by traveling the New England countryside, visiting haunted cemeteries, asking familial ghosts what fate has in store. A gruesome death, or a happily-ever-after with his longtime girlfriend, Jessica? Marauding Spirit-whipped bulls and deadly nightshade, a doomed roommate and a wayward crypt-sleeper each derail Dave’s path to understanding, but nothing presents more of a challenge than his silent, long dead father. The man’s refusal to speak leaves Dave wondering what evils his parents committed. How dark is the shade cast by his family tree? The only way to find out is to speak to the dead, but Dave’s not always going to like the answers he receives.
"Does friendship/love or ghostly determinism rule the day? The spirits are alive on Cape Cod in Corey Farrenkopf's LIVING IN CEMETERIES. A strange, beguiling, ghostly romp that reads as though Wes Anderson novelized Peter Jackson's The Frighteners. I'm here for it."--Paul Tremblay, the nationally best-selling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts
"The writing seethes and smolders; darkly vibrant and alluring as an epic contemporary fantasy should be. Farrenkopf is set to wow a few people with Living In Cemeteries." Laird Barron, author of Not a Speck of Light (Stories)
In Living in Cemeteries, Farrenkopf takes reality, deftly shakes up its bottle, and adds one fantastical element that changes the whole formula. An enticing and ultimately compassionate debut that uses death as a means to think through the myriad possibilities of life. - Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
A deeply human novel. At its heart, Living in Cemeteries is a story about the care we owe to each other, whether living and dead. The best speculative fiction holds a mirror up to our society and our values, and Farrenkopf understands that perfectly. - A.C. Wise, Author of the Ghost Sequences
“Imaginative and totally engrossing, Living in Cemeteries is a compelling debut from a truly unique and inventive voice. A curious tale about morality and atonement, this book invokes the charming familiarity of Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novels as well as the macabre eeriness of Nathan Ballingrud’s horror-specific work.” —Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
"How Corey Farrenkopf managed to write a novel that’s simultaneously bighearted, wise, unnerving, and a wildly hallucinatory exploration of grief and love, I have no idea. But he did it with Living in Cemeteries, and it’s fantastic." -Keith Rosson, author of Fever House
A horrifying and thought-provoking premise presented with humor and heart. A contemporary Lincoln in the Bardo taking place in a world different from our own in one crucial way. How would people behave if they knew their descendants would be punished for their sins? How would you live if you knew what was coming for you and when? --Sarah Pinsker, Hugo and Nebula-winning author of Lost Places and A Song For A New Day
"In Corey Farenkopf’s Living in Cemeteries, fine writing and a macabre imagination combine to tell a wholly original love story of life in death.” — Jeffrey Ford, author of Ahab’s Return and Big Dark Hole.
Living in Cemeteries is a horror love story, a haunting tale that followed this reader into the dark. In the tradition of Peter S. Beagle and Neil Gaiman, Corey Farrenkopf deserves his own place on any list of great graveyard fiction. I loved it! -M. Rickert, author of The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie
“An assured, haunting debut full of prose that bristles and pops, LIVING IN CEMETERIES cements Corey Farrenkopf’s status as one of the horror genre’s most promising and original voices.” — Andy Davidson, author of The Hollow Kind
"Living in Cemeteries conjures a death-haunted version of our world where vengeful Spirits lurk and the dead speak. Farrenkopf writes with humor and heart, and like all good speculative fiction this vision reflects our own reality with plenty to say about how we grieve but also how we love and live." - Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout
“Farrenkopf has powers of conjuration on par with David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, and Clive Barker. But Living in Cemeteries is much much more than its magic tricks. Farrenkopf grounds the supernatural with real emotion in a beautifully tactile world.” - Daniel Hornsby - author of Sucker: a Novel
“A lush confrontation with grief, Living in Cemeteries grounds the uncanny in the everyday. Farrenkopf knows our sweat drips through this world into the next, our very existence just a permeable reality.”
- Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold
With echoes of Karen Russell and Ray Bradbury, Farrenkopf paints a world in which one can come to know the manner of their death, the how and why, all of it, but asks if the pursuit of such knowledge is the best use of our dwindling time. Reading this made me want to live more in the present, and was a reminder that we have neither the past or the future, but only the current inhale…exhale. —Scott J. Moses, author of Our Own Unique Affliction
"With supernatural strangeness and an abundance of heart, Farrenkopf beautifully captures how our obsession with death--both loved ones' and our own--can stop us from truly living."
-Eric Raglin, author of Extinction Hymns
“Corey Farrenkopf’s Living in Cemeteries perfectly captures that uneasy feeling of life on the precipice of "What comes next?" Through a wonderfully, and at times gruesomely, literalized exploration of how the sins and obligations of the past claw at us from beyond the grave even as an uncertain future beckons, vengeful Spirits aren’t the only things haunting Farrenkopf’s debut novel— there’s genuine hope and beauty out there, too.” - Gordon B. White, Bram Stoker Award Finalist and Author of Gordon B. White is Creating Haunting Weird Horror
How would we live if we knew when we will die? In this unique and tender debut novel, Corey Farrenkopf explores how our lives impact those we leave behind, giving us a sharp lens into his characters’ emotions as they cope with the vengeful spirits that stalk them. Living in Cemeteries unearths our dearest wishes, our sharpest anxieties, and our deepest fears of death. —Michael Wehunt, author of Greener Pastures and The Inconsolables
Author Bio:
Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Gabrielle, and their tiny dog, Ooli. For a number of years, he worked as a landscaper in the historic cemeteries of Harwich, Ma, but now he’s a librarian. Books > Graves. His writing has been published in / is forthcoming from The Deadlands, Nightmare, Vastarien, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Southwest Review, Bourbon Penn, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere. He has a mini collection of stories in Seasons of Severance alongside Sara Tantlinger, Red Lagoe, and Jessi Ann York published by Cemetery Gates Media. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on TikTok at @CoreyFarrenkopf or on Instagram at @Farrenkopf451 or, if all that isn’t enough, on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com.