The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future by Christi Nogle

With a skilled and unflinching hand, Nogle guides us through layers of time and experience in Beulah.

Jon Padgett, author of The Secret of Ventriloquism Beulah will easily prove to be one of the best horror novels (never mind debut novels) of 2022. Nogle has all the goods, a singularly weird imagination, a tremendous sense of pacing and voice, and a mastery of clarity and control on the sentence level. I won’t do the former, and I promise you I’m not doing the latter. Anyone writing a book blurb is tempted to summarize the plot and shower the book (and writer) with hyperbolic praise. This is the work of a top tier author in top form. This is not the typical mess of even the most talented writer’s first attempt at that tricky long form. My initial reaction to reading this debut novel is simply this: how in the hell could this be anyone’s first novel? It’s so assured, so masterful, so in control at every level. I’ve been lucky enough to publish Nogle’s short stories twice now, and I hope to publish her work many more times in the future. Even the Table of Contents of her latest novel, Beulah, reflects that sense of effortless ingenuity (The beginning chapter is called “When you talk to the dead”, followed by 12 month named titles, followed by the last chapter, “When you walk with the dead”). “Nogle, like all writers with a rare knack coupled with incredible skill and imagination, makes everything she writes look easy and effortlessly ingenious. She lives in Boise, Idaho with her partner Jim and their gorgeous dogs. Her short stories have appeared in over fifty publications including PseudoPod, Vastarien, and Dark Matter Magazine along with anthologies such as C.M Muller’s Nightscript and Flame Tree’s American Gothic.Ĭhristi is a member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and Codex Writers’ Group. Christi Nogle’s debut novel, Beulah, is out now from Cemetery Gates Media and her collection The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future is coming in early 2023 from Flame Tree Press, to be followed by Promise (mid-2023) and One Eye Opened in That Other Place (2024).

The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future by Christi Nogle