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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.
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Bibliography

The Great Little Hunter
Pinspired Philippines, 2022

The Boy The Girl
The Rat The Rabbit
and the Last Magic Days
Chapbook, 2018

Republic of Carnage:
Three Horror Stories
For the Way We Live Now
Chapbook, 2018

Bamboo Girls:
Stories and Poems
From a Forgotten Life
Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2018

Don't Tell Anyone:
Literary Smut
With Shakira Andrea Sison
Pride Press / Anvil Publishing, 2017

Cupful of Anger,
Bottle Full of Smoke:
The Stories of
Jose V. Montebon Jr.
Silliman Writers Series, 2017

First Sight of Snow
and Other Stories
Encounters Chapbook Series
Et Al Books, 2014

Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop
Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013

Handulantaw: Celebrating 50 Years of Culture and the Arts in Silliman
Tao Foundation and Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, 2013

Inday Goes About Her Day
Locsin Books, 2012

Beautiful Accidents: Stories
University of the Philippines Press, 2011

Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and Horror
Anvil, 2011

Old Movies and Other Stories
National Commission for Culture
and the Arts, 2006

FutureShock Prose: An Anthology of Young Writers and New Literatures
Sands and Coral, 2003
Nominated for Best Anthology
2004 National Book Awards
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© 2002-2021
IAN ROSALES CASOCOT
Sunday, July 10, 2011

There is one simple reason why the horror stories of Yvette Tan come off with such a sense of satisfaction, and can be rightly considered as being among the best in the genre: reading her debut collection
Waking the Dead and Other Stories [Anvil, 2009], I soon realize that at their darkest hearts, these stories are really all about love and longing. The malevolence at the center of each story can be quite terrifying, but somehow Tan manages to go above the fray of mere horror to underline the human element that is at its core. This is what makes them transcendent. Consider the title story, where a lovelorn man unlocks a secret language that can summon the dead -- all to call from the other realm the woman of his affections. You read on, and you are confronted by a vast variety of horror -- both human and supernatural -- but it all goes back to this: there's one, and there's the other, and there's the longing to connect or to love, but there's the darkness between them that consumes. This is most darkly exploited in "Stella for Star," where a
tiyanak story becomes a dark fable of "motherly" love. In "Delivering the Goods," the precise and unfeeling butchering of a young boy for underworld reasons becomes a reflection for connection and fatherhood. In "Kulog," a
kapre makes a connection with a little girl, to his own detriment. In "Daddy," a father's ghost phones in, to leave one last
bilin. In "Boss, Ex?," a futuristic contraband movie chip becomes a means of dealing with the ghosts of the past, and loves lost. In the end, while you reel from the horror and the graphic details and the sense of dread of many of these stories, you are pulled in by the strange comfort of knowing that what lies beneath them is a pulsing heart -- bloodied and bruised, yes, but alive and filled with aching longing.
Labels: books, horror, philippine literature, speculative fiction, writers
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