Trigger Warning

Peter Straub was born on this day in 1943. Literary Heist challenges you to write a short story, about anything, using Peter Straub as your inspiration.

Works

  • 1973: Marriages
  • 1974: Under Venus
  • 1975: Julia
  • 1977: If You Could See Me Now
  • 1979: Ghost Story
  • 1980: Shadowland (World Fantasy Award nominee, 1981)
  • 1983: Floating Dragon (Winner of the 1984 August Derleth Award)
  • 1984: The Talisman (with Stephen King, winner of the 1985 World and Locus Fantasy Awards)
  • 1988: Koko (Winner of the 1989 World Fantasy Award)
  • 1990: Mystery
  • 1993: The Throat (winner of the 1993 Bram Stoker Award[11] and 1994 WFA nominee)
  • 1995: The Hellfire Club (1996 Bram Stoker[13] and 1997 August Derleth Awards nominee)
  • 1999: Mr. X (winner of the 1999 Bram Stoker Award[15] and August Derleth Award nominee)
  • 2001: Black House (with Stephen King, 2001 Bram Stoker Award nominee)
  • 2003: Lost Boy, Lost Girl (winner of the 2003 Bram Stoker Award and 2004 August Derleth Award nominee)
  • 2004: In the Night Room (Winner of the 2004 Bram Stoker Award)
  • 2010: A Dark Matter (Winner of the 2010 Bram Stoker Award)

Quotes

  • Sometimes it is right to fear the dark.
  • Wolf! Right here and now!
  • It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps.
  • The world is full of ghosts, and some of them are still people.
  • You’ll never get anything done if you walk around with an unchipped heart.
  • To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind’s fundamental condition – irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.

Learn more about the life of Peter Straub.

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