Written with the haunting lyricism of early Clive Barker and with the poetic prowess of Kathe Koja, Garrett Cook's Charcoal is an elegantly beguiling tone poem of trauma and suffering. To miss out on this masterpiece would be to miss out on watching a master craftsman at work. An utterly bewitching read.
-Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
With echoes of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, Garrett Cook's poetic, lyrical Charcoal explores with a licentious butcher's cruel insight the bloody thread that connects the darkness in man, the darkness in the medium by which art is created, and the darkness in art itself.
-Matthew M Bartlett, author of Gateways to Abomination
Garrett Cook's prose is meticulous and beautiful.
- Lori Bowen, director of I am Monster
A whirlpool of consciousness, smoothly drawing you in and then sweeping you along in ever-faster tightening spirals to plunge into a dark, mind-blowing vortex.
- Christine Morgan, author of Lakehouse Infernal
Charcoal nails the pain that every artist knows - the agony of creation and the despair of grasping for recognition -- and lays it bare on the page, naked and shrieking, like nothing before.
--Bitter Karella, Hugo Award Nominated creator of The Midnight Society Twitter
Charcoal expertly weaves different levels of reality, going from past to present to canvas to dream
-Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands
Charcoal is full of brilliant darkness and on-point observations about people, trauma and the ways we interact with problematic art. Gothic, nightmarish, and feels very much like falling into a historic painting of hell.
- Madeleine Swann, author of The Sharp End of the Rainbow
