If you’re a deep reader, especially horror, and you don’t know the name John Boden, learn it. I urge you. I have been reading John and getting to know him the past year after picking up his book, Jedi Summer in a large stack from Richard Chizmar’s Cemetery Dance table the day I was privileged to meet him and Billy Chizmar, whose fate in this game hints of similar fortune as his renowned dad.

Boden blew me out of the water with Jedi Summer and the timing was close to his next release, Snarl, which was utterly moving in its tragic designs. Now Boden strikes again with another release through Chizmar’s decades running house of horrors. Cemetery Dance has released a Stoker Award-worthy collection of Boden’s short works with his savagely witty title, The Etiquette of Booby Traps.

Boden and poet Michael Branscáth are probably the most unheralded American greats of my generation. Guys I have gotten to know better and know they are like me and share my experiences coming of age, same as Richard Chizmar. I feel brotherhood with all of these dudes for the places we lived and seen, the things we’ve done, the music, films and books we share a love of.

As a reader, you will seldom find writing of Boden’s caliber turning twisted imagery into gorgeous horror prose. As a writer, my guts often writhed with envy reading these stories spanning John’s publication history, but mostly I cringed with a love of Boden’s ballsiness to make you FEEL, even to weep from his visceral textures and at times shocking climaxes. I kept saying to myself, “Keep elevating your craft, Van Horn, because you MUST.”

The flavor of this post is full-on ass-kissery and I can live with that. This was my job once as a music and film journalist and when a band came across my desk who wanted it more than others, who went the extra mile to count, I made it my mission as the critic to boost them as high as my pen could. I can tell you I told two bands on the spot after playing their slots they were going somewhere huge. In the case of Trivium, I told Matt Heafy and Corey Beulieu at age 18 they would rule the world. They proved me right in a hurry.

John Boden, my friends, is horror’s true reigning poet Laureate. He is Joe R. Landsale’s immediate peer. He is that Trivium of the written word. My literary agent friends, seek this man out and make him an offer. I’m that serious.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.