Born Today: The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future

My second book, a collection of weird horror stories, is out in the word officially today, February 21, 2023

"An astonishingly original collection of dark tales - mysterious, haunting, challenging and disturbing, written in crystalline prose as compressed as poetry. Read and then reread and be doubly rewarded!" 

-- Ramsey Campbell, author of Fellstones

Very excited to announce that my second book and first short fiction collection is officially available today! It’s a collection of horror stories, but as readers are noting, the stories are strange, surreal, and sometimes experimental. I would call them weird horror.

First and foremost, THANK YOU to everyone who has already read, blurbed, reviewed, pre-ordered, or helped promote the book! tBOOP, tWOOF’s Goodreads reviews are looking great so far!

I hate to ask, but if you have reviewed, could you take a moment to copy and paste your review over to Amazon? This will help more people see the book.

If you haven’t gotten a copy of the book, there are so many options:

• Flame Tree Press (direct from the publisher)

• Simon and Schuster’s landing page links to all the other online sellers

• You can request it from your local bookstore or library!

• If you want a signed copy from me, you can fill out this form. I am getting low on paperbacks but still have a few, and I have it in hardcover as well.

"Christi Nogle's The Best of Our Past, The Worst of Our Future is unsettling and terrific short fiction in the vein of Shirley Jackson."

– Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

"Christi Nogle uses lush, inventive descriptions with surreal touches to create stories which both haunt and surprise. Her voice is distinctive, her characters richly and deeply portrayed. I was swept away."

-- Steve Rasnic Tem

If you want to check out a longer early review, see this one from H.V. Patterson at Dreadfulesque or this one from Zach Rosenberg at Horror DNA. Zach was the onne who dubbed the book tBOOP, tWOOF, too!

There is an interview with Ivy Grimes at Hypes and Archetypes, as well as several more appearances and interviews coming soon. I would love to be a guest on more podcasts and do more interviews if anyone is wondering, and my preferred contact is Twitter DM or http://christinogle.com/contact/

“Just as you think you have a handle on what a Christi Nogle story might be, you turn a page and are surprised anew. Enigmatic, surreal yet shockingly visceral, often rooted in a deceptively familiar domesticity turned nightmarish, these strange and unsettling tales unfold in lyrical prose that belies their savagery. The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future is a haunting and memorable debut.”

--Lynda E. Rucker, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Moon Will Look Strange and You'll Know When You Get There

"THE BEST OF OUR PAST, THE WORST OF OUR FUTURE brings to mind Big and Little Edie from Grey Gardens, but toss in some paranormal, tons of creepiness, and a Brian Evenson-esque descent through thick dread. Each story is gloriously laced with it." 

-- Stephanie Nelson, author of The Vein

The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future contains seventeen stories, including original stories, stories from hard-to-find and out-of-print publications, and reprints from publications such as Nightscript, PseudoPod, and Vastarien.

The stories here were written from 2016 all the way to 2021, so the collection represents six years of my work!

"Without a doubt, Christi Nogle is one of my favorite new voices in horror. Her fiction is by turns devastating, horrifying, and beyond beautiful. With her collection, The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future, she's created something truly remarkable, the kind of horror that's filled with grit and heart. Don't miss this book; it's sure to be one of the very best collections of 2023." 

-- Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens and Reluctant Immortals

This, my first collection, is dedicated to my partner, Jim Clinton, who encourages me to space off and go into my own little world of reading and writing every day.

My beloved mother, Pat Hobbs, read every one of the stories in this collection, which makes The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future particularly special to me.

"Sophisticated, psychological horror that enfolds the reader in a shroud of fear. The Best of Our Past, The Worst of Our Future transported me into unfamiliar and terrifying worlds where the usual laws of nature don’t apply. Suspenseful, scary, addictive." 

-- Catherine Cavendish, author of Dark Observation

"In this stunning collection, the familiar takes on strange and unsettling proportions. Christi Nogle’s stories are crisp, uncanny, haunting, and utterly captivating, with echoes of Shirley Jackson resonating through Nogle’s sharp and distinctive voice. Though I wanted to devour them, these are stories that deserve to be savored. The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future is truly weird fiction at its finest."

—Jo Kaplan, author of When the Night Bells Ring

Many thanks to the readers and editors of the periodicals, anthologies, and podcasts in which many of the stories first appeared. Each time someone else found value in one of these stories, it helped me to take my work more seriously. Their editorial comments also helped me learn more about polishing my work. Special thanks to those who have published more than one of my stories: the podcasts PseudoPod, Tales to Terrify, and The Wicked Library as well as the presses Cthonic Matter (Nightscript), Grimscribe Press (Vastarien), Underland Press, and Flame Tree Publishing (American Gothic and Chilling Crime Short Stories).

My short story writing group members Samuel M. Moss, Ken Hueler, J.A.W. McCarthy, the late Scott Wheelock, and several Codex Writers group members helped with these stories, as did several members of Moanaria’s Fright Club writing group. My writing journey also owes much to my local Sawtooth Alliance of Women Writers (Elizabeth Barnes, Steph Cox, Carmen Morawski, Heidi Naylor, Isabelle Shifrin, Heather Sinnes, Abby Wolford, and L.M. Zaerr).

"Christi Nogle takes readers on a dark yet wondrous journey through perils, horror, and thrills in this extraordinary debut collection. Behold the timelessness of these lives, these tales!"

 -- Eric J. Guignard, award-winning author and editor, including That Which Grows Wild and Doorways to the Deadeye

Thank you so much for reading all of these gushings about the book! A collection like this takes a lot of time to write, edit, and produce, and again, I am so excited that it’s going out into the hands of more readers today!