The Snow Came Softly Down
Brian J. Showers
Availability: Out of Print – Chapbook
“Small but perfectly formed, The Snow Came Softly Down by Brian J. Showers is a delightfully-produced little chapbook with its own ribbon marker and simple but effective line drawings by Duane Spurlock, containing ‘A Tale Concerning Ghosts’. You would expect from this, and from the old-fashioned typeface, that it is set in a more innocent era, and so it proves. M. R. James would probably disapprove of the decidedly benign spooks, but the tale cannot be faulted for atmosphere–especially the protagonist’s scary walk through the freezing woods on Christmas Eve. If I call the tone of the story ‘Dickensian’ it is meant as a compliment, evoking as it does those semi-mythical White Yuletides depicted on a certain type of Christmas card… but with added creepiness. Wordsworth’s poem ‘Lucy Gray’, possibly an inspiration to the tale and certainly complementing it, rounds off this charming book.” – Chico Kidd, All Hallows
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Cover art by Duane Spurlock
ISBN: N/A
Brian J. Showers
Brian J. Showers is originally from Madison, Wisconsin. He has written short stories, articles, and reviews for magazines such as Rue Morgue, Ghosts & Scholars, and Supernatural Tales. His short story collection, The Bleeding Horse, won the Children of the Night Award in 2008. He is also the author of Literary Walking Tours of Gothic Dublin (2006), the co-editor of Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (2011), and the editor of The Green Book. Showers also edited four volumes of Uncertainties anthology series, and co-edited with Jim Rockhill, the Ghost Story Award-winning anthology Dreams of Shadow and Smoke. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
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My sister’s reaction at seeing these tiny little chapbooks was, “Oh, how cuuuute!” I hadn’t expected her to be so enthusiastic – she sees the best and the worst of the books I review here – but something about the 4×3-inch paperbound, ribbon-marked books immediately endeared itself to her. Their covers are bright, with black ink illustrations. The interior paper is a warm cream color, the font slightly antiquated but quite readable. Each one of the chapbooks is an illustrated, reprinted ghost story by Brian J. Showers. The Old Tailor & The Gaunt Man was one of my favorites in Ash-Tree Press’s collection Acquainted with the Night. With illustrations by Meggan Kehrli, this story originated during a stroll through a cemetery in Dublin, according to Showers’s afterword, and it is a ghost story in the best Halloween sense: spooky, thoughtful, and warm, the kind of story destined to be anthologized many times. Tigh an Bhreithimh, illustrated by Duane Spurlock, is a traditional ghost story in which a writer heads to a remote cottage in Western Ireland to finish his novel and finds himself stumbling onto an old village secret. This is a well-crafted tale with a classic feel that avoids spelling everything out for the reader but provides enough hints for the reader to figure out the backstory on his or her own. The Snow Came Softly Down; or, The Kindness of Ghosts was inspired by William Wordsworth’s poem “Lucy Gray,” and is also illustrated by Duane Spurlock. This gentle Christmas ghost story follows one man’s nighttime walk through a haunted forest as he strives to get back to his wife and children before Christmas Day. These small volumes would make great stocking stuffers for a ghost-story-loving friend or collector of unusual books. They’re both physically and narratively charming. – The Harrow
The Snow Came Softly Down; or, The Kindness of Ghosts by Brian J. Showers. Cover art and illustrations by Duane Spurlock; copyedited by Jim Rockhill; printed by Swan River Press, Rathmines, Dublin.
002a. First Printing: Published in December 2004; A7-sized chapbook; limited to 200 copies; 150 gsm card wraps (Canford 078 Cherry); 48 pages; laser jet printed on 80 gsm paper (Adagio Ivory); black polysatin ribbon bookmark (10mm); hand-sewn, saddle-stitched binding (Gütterman Heavy Black); printed by Swan River Press, Rathmines, Dublin; no ISBN assigned.
002b. Second Printing: Published in September 2005; A7-sized chapbook; limited to 100 copies; 150 gsm card wraps (Canford 078 Cherry); 48 pages; laser jet printed on 80 gsm paper (Adagio Ivory); black polysatin ribbon bookmark (10mm); hand-sewn, saddle-stitched binding (Gütterman Heavy Black); printed by Swan River Press, Rathmines, Dublin; no ISBN assigned.
002c. Third Printing: Published in February 2007; A7-sized chapbook; limited to 150 copies; 150 gsm card wraps (Canford 078 Cherry); 48 pages; laser jet printed on 80 gsm paper (Adagio Ivory); black polysatin ribbon bookmark (10mm); hand-sewn, saddle-stitched binding (Gütterman Heavy Black); printed by Swan River Press, Rathmines, Dublin; no ISBN assigned.
“Afterword”
“The Snow Came Softly Down” was conceived during the Yuletide atmosphere at the end of 2003 and written at the kitchen table in the first stark, cold weeks of the New Year. As with “The Old Tailor & the Gaunt Man”, I wanted to write something with a familiar feeling to it—a sort of bedtime story somewhere between, I hope, H. C. Andersen and Charles Dickens.
While the story was formally conceived in 2003, its seed was planted in the winter of 2002 when I was still living in Sweden. On certain nights, I found myself driving along the desolate country roads just outside of Stockholm. Stretching out in either direction were old growth forests that, for all I knew, might have extended forever into the cold night. I always wondered what would happen if I pulled over, abandoned the car, hopped the wooden fence and strayed into the boreal shadows? What terrible secrets would I learn there? And what would I do if confronted by the ancient things that rumble through the old Swedish forests? At times like these I understand why Swedes light candles and sing songs in the dead of night to celebrate Sankta Lucia and the traditional winter solstice.
Other nutriensts that contributed to the imaginative mulch were Ichabod Crane’s terrified flight through the Headless Horseman’s hollow, William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland—one of my favourite novels—and of course Wordsworth’s poem, “Lucy Gray”, especially the second to the last stanza. I have always felt “Lucy Gray” has a vaguely supernatural element to it.
No set of comments about about this story is complete without a word on Duane Spurlock’s fine illustrations and our first collaboration together. The theme of footprints in each illustration flawlessly reflects the story’s desolate winter landscape, and the evidence of a one-time presence only serves to emphasise our isolation. The illustration of page eighteen remains one of my favourites to date. The original pen and ink, which you must see sometime, is framed and hangs in my house where the blazing and hateful eyes of the shadowy swine-things continue to give me chills
B.J.S.
February 2007
Rathmines, Dublin
