Dark 'n Stormy Night Author Series Back at Central Oregon Coast, Albeit Digital

Published 09/23/21 at 12:56 AM PDT
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Lincoln City, Oregon) – The 18th annual Dark & Stormy Night series returns to the central Oregon coast this October, albeit online. A good mystery is hard to pass up, and even with COVID, Lincoln City's Driftwood Public Library could not let these riveting moments with authors go. Live events will take place via Zoom at 4 p.m. each Thursday, starting October 7. Most presentations will be recorded for later viewing as well. (Above: comic book writer Sue Deconnick)

All of this began 18 years ago, when the library teamed up with Marcy Taylor to bring Northwest mystery writers to the Oregon coast. The first event was a rousing success, spurring the festival on each October since then.

During 2020's pandemic height, it was forced into a scaled-back form, but otherwise it's continued it's expansion to include science fiction, fantasy, and horror, with all them mashed together on occasion.

Caitlin Starling will be returning to open this year's series on October 7th. Caitlin closed the series in 2019 and recorded a reading for Oregon coast audiences last year. This year sees the release of her newest novel, The Death of Jane Lawrence, just two days before appears with the library's event.

Described by Publisher's Weekly as “intricately plotted [and] deliciously bonkers”, The Death of Jane Lawrence is an updating of the classic haunted house tale: Newly-married Jane visits her husband's ancestral home following an accident, despite being warned not to. Something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall. At night, strange figures stalk the halls, and Jane catches glimpses of a beautiful red-eyed woman in mirrors and windows. Augustine claims she was a patient of his who died two years before, but unexpected house guests tell a different story: her name was Elodie Lawrence, and Augustine believes he killed her.

Soon, Jane is fighting for her sanity and her life, drawn into a world of secret societies, theoretical mathematics, impossible magic, and rituals gone wrong. And now that the secrets of Lindridge Hall have met her, they're not about to let her go.

The series continues on October 14th with a visit from Karen Thompson Walker. A former editor at Simon & Schuster, Karen was born in San Diego, earned her degree in English and creative writing at UCLA, and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Oregon in the Creative Writing department. She is currently the author of two novels. Her 2012 debut, The Age of Miracles, chronicles the fictional phenomenon of "slowing", in which one Earth day begins to stretch out and takes longer and longer to complete. Her most recent book is The Dreamers from 2019, a science-fiction novel that details an ominous sleeping virus that sweeps over the fictional town, Santa Lora, in Southern California. The story follows a group of college students and families, and explores their experiences with everlasting sleep and heightened dreams. Walker was awarded the Bomb “best fiction prize, and was awarded a Sirenland Fellowship.

Matt Fraction

On October 21st, the Oregon coast venue welcomes back comic book writers Matt Fraction & Sue Deconnick. Both have written extensively for the Marvel comics universe, as well as for DC, Image, and Dark Horse comics, and both have been nominated for or won multiple awards including the Eisner, the Inkpot, and the Hugo. They are married and have two children and together run the production company Milkfed Criminal Masterminds, Inc, home to comic series such as Bitch Planet, Casanova, Ody-C, Pretty Deadly, and Sex Criminals. Milkfed is currently developing television with Legendary TV.

Gabriel Urza will close the series on October 28th. Gabriel's family is from the Basque region of Spain, and he lived there for several years himself. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Politico, Guernica, and elsewhere, and he is the author of two books. All That Followed is a psychologically twisting novel from 2015 about a politically-charged act of violence that echoes through a small Spanish town; a debut novel that the New York Times Book Review called "a triumph." In 2019 Gabriel published the novella The White Death: An Illusion, the story of illusionist Benjamin Vaughan, who dies under mysterious circumstances at the height of his career and whose brief life is chronicled by an unnamed narrator who encountered Vaughan as a boy. Urza earned his law degree form the University of Notre Dame and spent several years as a public defender in Reno, Nevada. He currently teaches fiction in the MFA program at Portland State University.

To join the live Zoom presentation, please contact the library at librarian@lincolncity.org or call 541-996-2277 prior to the event. Recorded presentations will be available on library's YouTube channel and Facebook page.

All events in the Dark & Stormy Night series are free to the public and made possible by ongoing generous support from The Driftwood Library Foundation. Questions about the series may be directed to Ken Hobson at Driftwood Public Library: 541-996-1242 or khobson@lincolncity.org. Driftwood Public Library is located at 801 SW HWY 101 in Lincoln City on the 2nd floor of the City Hall building, across the street from Burger King and adjacent to McKay's Market.

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