What is Clay McLeod Chapman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes.

His entry begins:

Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson

Evenson is known for his economy. Within his stories, there's never a sentence that feels unnecessary. There's no fat to his fiction. It's all lean, efficient and effective and profoundly unnerving. His most recent collection expands upon this at such an exponential rate, which may be due to the fact that there's just as much scifi here as horror. Explorations of liminality, autonomy and parenthood run throughout. The minimalism within each sentence ended up creating a...[read on]

About Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, from the publisher:

From master of horror Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media.

Noah has been losing his polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reawakening” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of her many conspiracy theories. But when his phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles and his parents locked in a terrifying trancelike state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it.

Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.

But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart—literally—as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend glued to a screen. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn—but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?

This ambitious, searing novel from one of horror's modern masters holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.

Visit Clay McLeod Chapman's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Remaking.

The Page 69 Test: The Remaking.

My Book, The Movie: Whisper Down the Lane.

Q&A with Clay McLeod Chapman.

The Page 69 Test: Whisper Down the Lane.

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2022).

The Page 69 Test: What Kind of Mother.

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman (September 2023).

Writers Read: Clay McLeod Chapman.

--Marshal Zeringue