Review: Joe Koch | The Wingspan of Severed Hands

Shock and awe. Beautiful and grotesque. These are just a few of the words I could use to describe Joe Koch’s The Wingspan of Severed Hands.

The story takes the insidious concept of the yellow sign from Robert W. Chamber’s mythos he created for his short story collection The King in Yellow. The author uses such vivid imagery and lyrical prose to describe the most depraved and macabre scenes. I’m really into Koch’s writing style, and I learned several beautiful new words (fascia, instar, puerile) to add to my vocabulary.

It seems almost unnecessary to summarize the plot here, as the synopsis from the back of the book does that fine justice. What cannot be synopsized is the feeling and atmosphere created by the wordcraft employed here. There’s really not enough I can say about the fucking poetry in Wingspan. Please do yourself a goddamn favor and pick up this book. If you’re a fan of Robert W. Chambers, cosmic horror, body horror not unlike what you might find in the Saw franchise (but even saying that feels like a real disservice to the author—their prose is so much more amazing than any of the writing in any of those movies, but I couldn’t think of anything better to describe some of the more visceral scenes in the book, and goddamn it’s good), and just quality weird fiction, readdddd it. Now. It’s unlike anything else you’ll ever read. Also look at that cover art!

What am I doing?

I started this blog to share written and visual works that are still mostly all in my head. I haven’t written creative fiction I wanted to share with anyone in at least ten years, and I’ve recently found myself compelled to write. More than that, I want to write and then show it to people.

a picture for reference of me not knowing what I’m doing

I think a big part of me has always been looking for a creative outlet that suits me. I’ve always believed that I have a lot inside that is screaming for expression, but I’ve never been able to find a medium that can encapsulate it. I’ve started six short stories over the past month, and they’re each coming along at their own pace.

I recently decided to do some writing exercises by choosing a prompt from a collection called Dog Doors to Outer Space (ed. Amy M. Vaughn) a couple times a week and just see what happens. I started and finished my first prompt tonight. What I had imagined ending up being sort of flash of micro fiction somehow turned into 1.2k words. I wrote a short story based on what would happen if you started receiving by mail all the trash you had thrown away in your life. It was fun, and something I probably would have never considered writing about myself.

I’ll post that story sometime in the next few days. I still have work to do on the site. I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s ugly, but I’m all out of design ideas. Oh well.

I might use this platform as a space for more traditional blogging as well. I recently told a friend it has been quite a while since I felt confident sharing my thoughts and feelings online, but now that I plan on sharing things that came from inside of me, I may as well share the feelings that swirl around my brain with all the weird ideas in there. We’ll see what happens.

It’s close to midnight when I’m writing this. I hope anyone who stumbles upon this is having an okay day. The world is shit, but we can overcome some of that horror by helping each other find joy with a little bit of art and a whole lot of heart.

Evan

PS: I don’t generally find myself to be as cheesy as I was in that last paragraph there. Forgive me. But there’s a fucking pandemic happening and the U.S. is in shambles. Let’s be cheesy.