Tag Archives: horror

Conner on the esoteric christian podcast The Light In Everything talking about the spiritual truths of horror.

16 Jan

Friends,

I’m so honored to be on one of my favorite podcasts, The Light In Every Thing, talking about horror with AEWCH 181 guest, Rev. Patrick Kennedy!

The Light In Every Thing is a podcast of the Christian Community; which is the non-dogmatic christian tradition developed in consultation with Rudolf Steiner, with over 100,000 members worldwide and churches on six continents.

I discussed this topic at length on AEWCH 201, a solo episode. But here, Patrick and I go deep into how, exactly, horror relates to Christ and the spirit. It was such an enlivening conversation for me.

Listen, enjoy, share,
X
C

***

Here’s the description of the episode:

What begins to unfold and unfurl when we explore the presence and meaning of horror in art, in life and in the story of Christmas and Epiphany? We hope you will join us for this nearly two hour conversation between Patrick and Conner Habib. Its a wide-ranging conversation that takes us down many paths, including the call to christen Paganism and the wild nature spirits in our time, all while Conner and Patrick begin to uncover the meaning of the horrific elements woven into the mystery of Christmas and Christianity.

Many of our listeners will already know Conner from when Patrick was interviewed on his podcast, Against Everyone with Conner Habib. Conner is truly a rare voice in our time, connecting with people in the arts, sciences, philosophy, politics, music, literature, and spirituality and sharing these deeper conversations built on honest thinking and compassionate listening. Conner has schooled himself in entering what is often uncomfortable, uncommon territory and finds true treasure there.

One of those ‘territories’ is horror.  A long time fan of horror fiction and film, Conner is also a published author, with his first full-length novel, Hawk Mountain, releasing in July of 2022.  You can hear his own uninterrupted reflections on the value and power of art that includes the element of horror in this episode from his podcast.

In our conversation, we turn our attention to the Christmas mystery and look to understand the presence of horror – of true darkness – at the birth of Christ.

The festival of Christmas in its full form is not a one day event. It begins on the Holy Night of the 24th and lasts over twelve days, culminating in the festival of Epiphany on January 6th. Spiritually, there is a profound path taken from the shepherds, angels and peace of Luke’s gospel on Christmas Day to the Kings, the star and Herod’s massacre of children to protect his power and crown as described in Matthew’s gospel.  From the paradisiacal innocence of Christmas we are led into the depths of moral darkness, danger and threat to the child, the true king, who is born.  All of these “icons” of Christ’s nature foreshadow what we will all turn our attention to during Holy Week and Easter. The Christian story is told, without doubt, with profound elements of horror.

But why? And why does the genre of horror itself seem to be growing in popularity in mass culture?  What is it that is revealed in the art of horror that has a role to play in our human becoming?  What is it in the reality of true evil in our time that has to do with the new appearance of Christ?

A great and hearty thank you to Conner Habib for his willingness to explore these questions with us.

New Year’s and Epiphany blessing to you all!

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NEW STORY: “TELL SOMEONE” in the STINGING FLY (plus a little good HAWK MOUNTAIN news)

16 Nov

Hey there friends,
Just a heads up that my story, “Tell Someone”, is in the latest issue of the Stinging Fly, which you can order here.

“Tell Someone” is the story of two brothers – Luke and Adam – and a terrible family secret which haunts every corner of their lives. It’s a very very dark story. Darker than Hawk Mountain, even. If that’s possible.

Speaking of Hawk Mountain, the audio book was just named one of Audible’s Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2022! If you haven’t yet read it or listened to it, you can buy it here (and if you sign up for Audible, you get a free download). I narrate it, so you can enjoy my sweet soothing voice in your ears, telling you a story that massively messes up your mind. Enjoy!
X
C

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On the occult significance of horror on AEWCH 201! PLUS: my horror recommendations

28 Oct

AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 201:

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF HORROR

SUPPORT AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB

If you don’t already, please do the following to keep AEWCH going:

  • Give via patreon – Patreon.com/connerhabib – this is the best way to support the show
  • Tell people about the show and, if it feels okay, to support it on patreon (especially if you already know your pals are fans of the show but don’t support it).
  • Give the show a 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts.
  • Tweet and Insta quotes from and thoughts inspired by episodes (with a link!)

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

Happy Halloween, friends,
As we move into a new chapter of AEWCH, I wanted to start off with something both eternal and of the moment: horror.
Horror has played such an important part in my life since childhood, and continues to grow in its influence on me. But I find most explorations – especially academic ones – into horror a bit banal. Can we think of horror beyond its political/economic function and metaphorical value? What does it do to us spiritually and culturally? What does it offer?
I’m very excited to share this episode with you.

PLUS: new theme songs by Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance! 

A two part (weird!) conversation episode coming up, starting next week!
XO
CH

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Horror, hometown nazis, & Hawk Mountain.

27 Aug

Friends!
In addition to my upcoming September UK tour, I wanted to give you some info and links to AEWCH/Hawk Mountain stuff.

First, a wide-ranging discussion about horror I had on the This Is Horror podcast, which was really great. The guys have a patreon which deserves more supporters; they’re really bringing voices in horror forward!

A very short article I wrote about growing up in racist, claustrophobic small-town  Pennsylvania and how that influenced Hawk Mountain in the Journal.ie – here’s an excerpt:

“In my town, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. We were land-locked, far from any cities except the post-industrial landscapes of shattered factory windows and fenced-off parking lots that made up Allentown and Bethlehem.
There were diners open all night and those were saving graces. Kids met and sat in booths, drinking coffee and eating breakfast food, talking about whether or not God was real and what post-punk bands from DC we liked.
We would joke about gruesome things. A favourite prank was concealing a packet of coffee creamer with your hand and rubbing your eye vigorously until the packet burst, the false white of your eye spilling across your fingers.
We skipped school and gathered under the bleachers at the football game and got drunk and high at parties. Some kids started shooting up and selling heroin, and in our final year, it seemed like all the golden favoured kids, good-looking bullies who got good grades and played sports, started doing coke.
I was lonely and didn’t want to do coke, so I set up punk rock shows and started a record label. There are probably easier ways to not be lonely, but I didn’t know them. The shows were loud, crowded, sweaty. They were dotted with Nazis, who showed up everywhere, and you’d be too afraid to kick them out. They were our classmates, after all. They’d pass you in the hall the next day.”

A feature on me in Gay Community News (GCN) here in Ireland – you know, one of those free gay magazines? But this one is really good. That’s me holding, um, me, in GCN in the pic up there.

A great review of Hawk Mountain in Books Ireland (“Conner Habib has written a debut novel which has the style, elevated prose and assurance of a much more experienced novelist.”)

As for AEWCH, I just wanted to give you a heads up about the three great episodes coming up… queer podcasters, an Italian philosopher/theologian, and an esoteric healer… all leading up to a massively special episode on AEWCH 200.

Can’t wait.

CH

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Why (horror) fiction matters with Caitlin Doughty and Mark O’Connell on the latest Against Everyone With Conner Habib!

2 Aug

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

The only way Against Everyone With Conner Habib exists is through its relationship with its listeners.
Do you enjoy the show? Does it inspire new thoughts and conversations in your life?
If so, SUPPORT THIS PODCAST via Patreon

Friends,
So happy to share an extended contemplation about fiction and this podcast, and then one of my very favorite book tour events with you: a live conversation about horror, transhumanism, and Hawk Mountain in Dublin with your fav death expert Caitlin Doughty and nonfiction writer/cultural critic Mark O’Connell.

It was a sold out event and one of my favorite on the tour, which will continue in the UK in September. (I’ll also post one of the other tour dates as exclusive content for patreon patrons only.)

SHOW NOTES

WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ?
One of the greatest horror novels – which, like Hawk Mountain is also not really a horror novel – is Disgrace by JM Coetzee. Don’t read anything about it, just get it and read it. It’s incredible.4

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO?
I talked about the horrors of technologies – as well as its occult promise and beauty – with anthroposophist writer Andrew Linnell on AEWCH 183.

MORE ON CAITLIN AND MARK
If you follow the links to their respective AEWCH episodes you’ll find lots there -here’s Caitlin Doughty on AEWCH 174 and Mark O’Connell on AEWCH 105.

More soon, friends,
CH

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EVENTS: Three (very different!) Dublin HAWK MOUNTAIN happenings! With special guests Caitlin Doughty, Sarah Maria Griffin, Una Mullally, and Mark O’Connell

25 Jul

Hey there friends,
Wanted to let you know that there are three Hawk Mountain events coming up in Dublin, and each one is very different.

1. A book launch at the legendary Hodges Figgis with my friend Una Mullally on WEDNESDAY, JULY 27 This is a reading in the standard sense. I read the book, I answer a few questions, we hang out, we drink wine! To go to this FREE event, email ldermody@penguinrenadomhouse.ie and say you’re coming by! (you can cut and paste/ use this text – just include your name: Hi I’m excited to attend the Conner Habib event on the 27th. Thanks!)

2. I’ll be talking horror and darkness in fiction with author, podcaster, and tarot reader Sarah Maria Griffin, on FRIDAY, AUGUST 5 at  Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). Here’s the link! The event is FREE and will be awesome.

3. My event on THURSDAY, JULY 28 with Caitlin Doughty and Mark O’Connell is SOLD OUT! But go to one of the other two with the also awesome AEWCH guests here!

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HAWK MOUNTAIN IS NOW AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE IN THE US! Listen to Una Mullally interview me about it on the latest episode of AEWCH!

5 Jul

Friends,
Hawk Mountain is now available in the US in book and audio formats!

(Irish/UK/Australian readers, you have a couple more weeks to preorder/wait until it comes out on the 21st!)

So…I made myself the guest, and my friend and collaborator Una Mullally, who is an expert interviewer, asked me the questions. This was an extremely satisfying conversation — the kind of experience I always hope my guests will end the show feeling — and I’m honored to have had it. What comes up? The horror of high school, Kate Bush, the mystical presence of animals, Meister Eckhart, the soundtrack to my novel, time and manipulation, and more.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a better interview, to be honest.

And? THERE ARE NO SPOILERS! Somehow she managed to turn this into a great conversation about literature without messing with it.

The US tour starts next week, and I’ll post a normal ep then too. Until then, enjoy, and go get the book and come to the readings and tell your pals and say hello!

Love, CH

ORDER HAWK MOUNTAIN

Bookshop.org US  • Amazon US  • Barnes & Noble • IndieBound • Hudsons

PREORDER HAWK MOUNTAIN in IRELAND/UK/AUSTRALIA RELEASE DATE, JULY 21

Amazon UK • bookshop.uk  • The Gutter Bookshop

COME SEE ME ON TOUR:

PRAISE FOR HAWK MOUNTAIN

Starred reviews in Kirkus  • BookPage  • Publisher’s Weekly  • BookList

One of the New York Times’s 12 Books To Read in July 2022

“Hawk Mountain is a suspenseful, shocking and ultimately poignant study of anguished conflict, both domestic and internal. Incisively written and intensely imagined, it’s the novelistic debut of a real original.” – Ramsey Campbell

“The opening lines of Hawk Mountain plummet you into an atmosphere of creeping dread and precarious restraint that won’t let up until the final, shocking moments.” – Caitlin Doughty

“A moving and unflinching portrayal of a man caught in a trap of his own making, but willing to do almost anything―to almost anybody―if it will keep him from having to face up to himself. Hawk Mountain is a wonderfully bleak and beautifully written debut.” – Brian Evenson

“A brilliantly disturbing, expertly crafted literary noir that will stick with you long after you put it down. Conner Habib has written a flawless meditation on the fruitless, but eternally human, effort to kill off the parts of ourselves we cannot love―literally and metaphorically. I love this book.” – Sara Gran

“Hawk Mountain is deft horror, made of precise strikes into our most vulnerable psychic terrain… Finally, a horror story that knows cisheteropatriarchy is the villain!” – Andrea Lawlor

“Tender, horrifying, utterly transfixing.” – Kelly Link

“Dripping with menace from the first page, this story of childhood enemies meeting up fifteen years later is utterly enthralling. Brilliantly written with homoerotic undertones, this savage tale is uncompromising in its reflection of teen friendships and isolation, and unflinching in its examination of the delicacy of the human body. There is gold among the gore. I found it compelling, shocking, and beautiful.” – Liz Nugent

“Conner Habib writes with an hallucinatory precision, and a kind of merciless humanity, about the poisonous work of repression. His forebears-Poe, Highsmith, even classical tragedy-are clear, but his originality is clearer still. Hawk Mountain is a work of strange, glittering darkness.” – Mark O’Connell

“A deeply disturbing yet, somehow, soaring novel I won’t soon forget. It plumbs the depths of traumatized characters trapped within our damaging culture. I couldn’t look away, even when I was looking from between my fingers.” – Paul Tremblay

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A big box of…MY FIRST NOVEL! arrived today!

9 Jun

Holy shit friends it’s my BOOOOOOK! It comes out from Norton on July 5 (Doubleday/Penguin in Ireland/UK/Australia July 21), so preorder to have it delivered on pub date and be the coolest literary horror reader on your block.  Here’s how to order from Amazon and indie booksellers!

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You can now preorder my debut novel, Hawk Mountain, today!

15 Apr

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

Friends,
Here’s a special episode of Against Everyone With Conner Habib about my debut novel of psychological tension, desire, and violence, Hawk Mountain. I read from the novel’s first pages, I talk about how it came together, about being a writer, and also about a blurb from one of my heroes which is still blowing my mind.

Importantly, though, I also talk about preorders! Preorders are so important to an author, a fact which I just discovered since, uh, I’ve never published a book before. But anyway, instead of just saying “it’s important,” here’s why.

WHEN YOU PREORDER MY BOOK YOU

  • Boost the first week of sales! Preorders are tacked on to the first week of sales figures, which are key in how much publicity/promotion the book gets.
  • Get all the right people talking about the book! This includes distributors and publishers in foreign countries, then media and…well, you can see where this is going. A book with strong pre-sales enters into the world dancing!
  • Get bookstores and organizations interested in events with me. Which means there’s a better chance that I’ll come to your town*
  • Get the book right away! Like, right away. The day it comes out with some sites below.

SO PREORDER HAWK MOUNTAIN HERE!
US RELEASE DATE, JULY 5

Bookshop.org US – The site is the site I use for all book recommendations, since it supports independent bookstores. When you order a book from Bookshop, it finds the closest indie store and sends it to you from there. It works just as well as Amazon 99% of the time, in my experience.

Amazon US – the big cheese, of course. The best thing about ordering from Amazon is that you’ll get it day of publication.

Some other sites: Barnes & Noble • IndieBound • Hudsons 

IRELAND/UK/AUSTRALIA RELEASE DATE, JULY 21

Amazon UK • bookshop.uk

The Gutter Bookshop – Ireland only. If you want a signed copy from a local store in Dublin, order from this gay-owned shop!

Look, obviously I think my novel is good, but if that’s not enough to convince you, here’s some of the advanced prasie:

“Conner Habib’s debut novel is a bleak, dark adrenaline rush.”**
  – Clive Barker

“Hawk Mountain is a suspenseful, shocking and ultimately poignant study of anguished conflict, both domestic and internal. Incisively written and intensely imagined, it’s the novelistic debut of a real original.”
  – Ramsey Campbell

“The opening lines of Hawk Mountain plummet you into an atmosphere of creeping dread and precarious restraint that won’t let up until the final, shocking moments.”
  – Caitlin Doughty

“A moving and unflinching portrayal of a man caught in a trap of his own making, but willing to do almost anything―to almost anybody―if it will keep him from having to face up to himself. Hawk Mountain is a wonderfully bleak and beautifully written debut.”
  – Brian Evenson

“A brilliantly disturbing, expertly crafted literary noir that will stick with you long after you put it down. Conner Habib has written a flawless meditation on the fruitless, but eternally human, effort to kill off the parts of ourselves we cannot love―literally and metaphorically. I love this book.”
  – Sara Gran

“Hawk Mountain is deft horror, made of precise strikes into our most vulnerable psychic terrain… Finally, a horror story that knows cisheteropatriarchy is the villain!”
  – Andrea Lawlor

“Tender, horrifying, utterly transfixing.”
  – Kelly Link

“Dripping with menace from the first page, this story of childhood enemies meeting up fifteen years later is utterly enthralling. Brilliantly written with homoerotic undertones, this savage tale is uncompromising in its reflection of teen friendships and isolation, and unflinching in its examination of the delicacy of the human body. There is gold among the gore. I found it compelling, shocking, and beautiful.”
  – Liz Nugent

“Conner Habib writes with an hallucinatory precision, and a kind of merciless humanity, about the poisonous work of repression. His forebears-Poe, Highsmith, even classical tragedy-are clear, but his originality is clearer still. Hawk Mountain is a work of strange, glittering darkness.”
  – Mark O’Connell

“A deeply disturbing yet, somehow, soaring novel I won’t soon forget. It plumbs the depths of traumatized characters trapped within our damaging culture. I couldn’t look away, even when I was looking from between my fingers.”
   – Paul Tremblay

I can’t wait to share my first novel with you, friends. Please do get your copy preordered today!
C

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PRE-ORDER my debut novel HAWK MOUNTAIN today!

19 Nov

Friends, my debut novel of murder, desire, and high tension, Hawk Mountain, is out from W.W. Norton in the US and Penguin/Doubleday in Ireland and the UK next July, but if you pre-order it now, you get it delivered straight to your door the day it comes out (or maybe even earlier, since Amazon sometimes surprises you with early delivery!). I can’t wait to share this novel with the world. I’ll be posting some videos, podcasts, and interviews about the book and writing it in the days to come. But be one of the first people to read the book by clicking one of the following links and ordering it!

Indie bookstore-supported bookshop.org
From Amazon

Here’s the description:

An English teacher is gaslit by his charismatic high school bully in this tense story of deception, manipulation, and murder.

Single father Todd is relaxing at the beach with his son, Anthony, when he catches sight of a man approaching from the water’s edge. As the man draws closer, Todd recognizes him as Jack, who bullied Todd relentlessly in their teenage years, but now seems overjoyed to have “run into” his old friend. Jack suggests a meal to catch up. And can he spend the night?
What follows is a fast-paced story of obsession and cunning. As Jack invades Todd’s life, pain and intimidation from the past unearth knife-edge suspense in the present. Set in a small town on the New England coast, Conner Habib’s debut introduces characters trapped in isolation by the expansive woods and the encroaching ocean, their violence an expression of repressed desire and the damage it can inflict. Both gruesome and tender, Hawk Mountain offers a compelling look at how love and hate are indissoluble, intertwined until the last breath.

Can’t wait for you to read it, friends!
XO
CH

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