Is that a misleading title? Probably. And for that, I apologize, for I’ve always been impressed by all the Ray Garton stories that I’ve read.

Recently, I picked up a nice copy of Ray Garton’s collection, Pieces of Hate, published by Cemetery Dance in 1996 — which is 30 years ago today! My copy is number 97 of 500 signed and numbered copy of this title. The book contains just nine stories, none of which I’ve read. I own just a handful of Garton’s books, all from small press publishers — Dark Harvest, Ziesing, Borderlands Press, and now Cemetery Dance. This is but a small subset of the books published during Garton’s lifetime. He died in 2024, all too young and with many years of fiction ahead of him. So tragic.

Horror and dark fantasy is but a small subset of genre fiction, but Garton was a major name in that arena. The first Garton story I read was “Monsters” in the Dark Harvest anthology, Night Visions 6, where he appeared alongside F. Paul Wilson and Sherri Tepper. I don’t remember anything from this story, but I do remember Lot Lizards, a vampire novella published by Ziesing back in 1991. Since then I’ve picked up a few more of his books, all hardcover. His original paperback horror books are hard to find these days, as are some of his more famous (or infamous) books, like Live Girls.

With Pieces of Hate you get the stories, and that’s it. No author introductions. No afterwords, no encomia from fellow authors. Leave that to other books. I look forward to readin this book with great anticipation. I’m sure the stories will be troubling. That was the case with Lot Lizards, as it was with Trade Secrets, another of Garton’s novels that I recently read. I still have a few of his unread books in my shelves, which sometimes is a good thing. I’ve yet to come across any Garton paperbacks anywhere, but perhaps someday I’ll find more of his books, and mourn the fact that he’s no longer around.