After the People Lights Have Gone Off Paperback – September 30, 2014

I never thought I would find a short story writer who could offer my hardened, adult self the same chills and thrills the same way old school Stephen King did with my 12 year old self.SGJ delivers the goods with horror that lurks in the margins, in those little spaces between lines, between pages, in the unsaid. And isn't that what good horror does? It creeps up on you, and never shows its face, leaving your mind to do the real dirty work.Like King, he finds terror in the mundane--a cardboard box, an IR thermometer, the sound of a wheelchair's wheel. Like King, his stories set up final passages that always linger and sometimes stun.Unlike King, the prose is far more poetic, and the stories are less straightforward and on-the-nose as some of my old favorites like "The Jaunt" and "I Am the Doorway."But I'm a more mature reader now, and harder to scare, and as my tastes have developed for higher-level horror, the kind that engages the mammalian brain, distracting it so that the lizard brain is more vulnerable, I keep finding myself looking forward to every new SGJ story and collection.There's plenty to love here, and knowing how prolific he is as an author, thankfully I can comfortably predict that there will be more to love in the pipeline, always.

Stephen Graham Jones is at again, writing faster than fans can read and publishers would like. This time, SGJ gives us a collection of 16 stories coming from various scary persuasions: ghosts, vampires, werewolves, haunted houses, and even some aliens. The title alone creeped me out; “people lights” imply something looking at your house, something that isn’t “people.” The cover image, too, is frightening--we see a person through a broken window, so the image creates a fore-, middle-, and background. Ingenious for a book cover, really, as the perspective makes readers wonder who’s looking at whom.Before I started People Lights, my most recent SGJ experience was this summer when I picked up Growing Up Dead in Texas (MP Publishing, 2012), a nonfiction work that read like fiction: things too weird to be true, people who are larger than life. I didn’t finish SGJ’s memoir, though, because it seemed like he forgot someone was reading. Settings I couldn’t picture, people I couldn’t remember, farming terms I didn’t know, and perspectives that were missing. Occasionally, SGJ appears to write for an audience of one.Read the full review at The Next Best Book Club blog!http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/melanie-reviews-after-people-lights.html

This is the first writings of Jones that I have read. I actually purchased this collection of horror/weird stories. Because of Laird Barron's comments. So I assumed that if he was impressed, well than I would probably like the stories. I would say overall, this was for the most part true.First things first, is I have to say that Jones is a very good writer, and it is obvious by the depth of some of these stories that he is a very intelligent man. Most of the stories in this collection I wouldn't label as "horror" as they just really aren't that scary or even really creepy. Just weird, but being that there a few stories which do have the element of horror, at least one for sure, then well, you can't just call the whole collection "Weird Fiction", as they share the same covers.I did enjoy the book, but it wasn't good enough that I can see myself reading any more of Jones anytime soon, though I may revisit one or two of the stories in this collection sometime in the future. Not much of the material has much, if any, re-read value for me.Now, this may be more because I am a huge horror junkie, especially when it comes to stories by writers such as Lovecraft, Barron, Ligotti, or even Barker. So if you know anything about those authors it will certainly give you an idea of the kind of Horror that I tend to like. Jones I wouldn't classify under this.But I would still recommend this book to those whom enjoy horror, and weird fiction, but maybe enjoy stories that are a bit more just atmosphere creepy and not the intense, and marrow deep kind of the authors I mentioned above.Overall, this is a solid collection of stories, from a skilled author. Just not my cup of tea.

Haunted houses. Vampires. Werewolves. Want, dread, and ghosts living with both. A life traded for peace of mind. A proposal from the devil, a promise maybe, hope, and a cancerous tumor. A life for a life. A mistake. A prejudice. A regret seething with rabies. Yes, all the traditional macabre tropes are here, all the monsters represented, but these stories go far beyond, into Twilight Zone depth. They are Sinewy. Worth a bit of chewing on even after you've finished reading. I liked to read one a day so that I could think about it for a while before I started the next one. These stories are quite suspenseful, but not in a blood and gore jump out at you way. The orchestration is subtle in the way each story twists around its truth. Twists around the things we don't want to do but feel we have to do. The things we feel compelled to keep secret. Definitely a book for true Gothic Fiction lovers. Very impressed here.

S.G.J. does what he does well. This is pretty good horror/sci.fi. He does the short story proud.I just finished it! Solve For X is still creeping beneath my skin. I cannot get this story out of my head. It is amazing. Math--the scariest monster of them all--Brilliant!!!! The title story is super creepy, too, and brilliantly told. Stephen G. Jones is an artful, poetic, concise writer, raising the bar for horror/sci.fi writing high into the alien filled sky. I can't wait to read my next S.G.J. work of art!!!

Stephen Graham Jones continues to baffle me as his reader—confuse me with emotions few others can draw with their words. His stories are so human, so heartbreaking, and yet I’m left with a sense of wonder and awe. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.

Solid scary stuff.