T.Errors. In the forest you are already dead, by VV.AA.

T.Errors. In the forest you are already dead It has pleasantly surprised me. And the twenty-four stories that the book compiles are reasonably varied in their register and correct in their execution. Both virtues are doubly meritorious considering that the authors involved in this anthology are, for the most part, incipient national writers.

Have no doubt: these stories, despite their conceptual modesty (or because of it), will delight lovers of the genre who read them with the appropriate expectations. So if you come to this nemorous feast looking for entertainment, you will have a blast. These pages full of hungry nature, cryptic entities, atrocious deaths and unimaginable mutations may even give you a chill.

Perhaps, yes, the whole can be reproached for the fact that, although all the pieces work, there are some that are quite superior to the rest. And the fact is that certain stories leave the somewhat frustrating aftertaste of the canonical, the formulaic or what has been experienced a thousand times before; On the other hand, a few propose moderately original premises, seek approaches from less common angles or shine thanks to inspired prose.

I especially liked the following stories:

Nor do I believe that most stories, and here I include some of those that I have appreciated the most, are free of defects. And sometimes they don’t know how to fully exploit the elements they present, or they develop their characters little. Likewise, there are those who abuse intrusive repetitions; For example, “new” appears four times on page 64, while “however” appears three times on page 249.

In summary: T.Errors. In the forest you are already dead It is a heterogeneous anthology that, despite its fluctuating quality and room for improvement, I recommend to lovers of national horror. After all, it leaves a good taste in the mouth, especially for lovers of the genre. Although somewhat irregular, all of his stories are, to say the least, entertaining, and have been executed correctly. The only drawback I would have is that none of his pieces have seemed plot-wise memorable or stylistically complex. In any case, I insist that these are, at the very least, entertaining, and some even have redeemable elements that elevate them above average.

JL: First of all, I want to thank you for your interest in interviewing me and in the work we do at the Monolith.

Talking about one is complicated, but I will say that I am someone very shy who one day got the writing bug. I have always been a fan of the horror genre and all its variants, so it was inevitable that my writing would move within those parameters. I have already had a few years of training in workshops (something that I cannot help but recommend to both new and established authors, since I believe that you should never stop learning), and my publications are limited to a good handful of anthologies, although it is possible that by the time this interview is published my first work as a solo author will already be available (I would never have imagined it would be a collection of poems). My main intention as a writer is to demonstrate that terror, the disturbing, the unusual and the surreal are not at all incompatible with good literature. Fortunately, we are experiencing a good time in this sense, thanks in part to the thriving Latin American literary scene. As for Inside the Monolith, it is an organic medium in continuous expansion and transformation. It started as a personal blog and, with the passage of time (in 2024 it will be 10 years old), it has become a digital magazine made up of fifteen writers. The heart of the magazine is made up of literary reviews (focused on the horror genre, but opening the range more and more) and opinion articles. To this we must add the audiovisual content, with the Story Forgers program as the spearhead. It is a kind of live literary workshop in which we read and analyze short stories of all kinds and which, we believe, is an original format that we have not seen elsewhere. We also have a reading club, a podcast called Territorio Extrañer, and from time to time we dare to launch calls for stories to form anthologies. The Monolith is a machinery that never stops. I hope it continues like this for many years.

STUFF: If I’m not mistaken, there is an anthology of T.Errors previous to the one I review today, published through Ediciones Medina. What made you decide to opt for self-publishing to carry out this second project? And, how would you rate the experience?

JL: Indeed. That T.Errors It was our first attempt in the publishing world. At first it was published as a free digital anthology, but one of the included authors told me that they were going to create a new publisher and that they were very interested in publishing it. Everything came to fruition and the anthology was published in physical and illustrated format. Unfortunately, the experience with the publisher was not as satisfactory as I had hoped, since it did not take long for those in charge to stop showing signs of life and, little by little, they disappeared from the map. I suppose it was one of those cases in which people without a real literary interest try to get involved in the publishing market without real knowledge of the medium. For all these reasons, although the treatment with the authors was always excellent, I was left with a bittersweet feeling.

This was the main reason for self-publishing. T.Errores: In the forest you are already dead. My goal has always been to avoid Amazon at all costs and try to assemble a product with the best quality possible. I hope I have achieved it, especially thanks to the collaborations of the people who helped me in the process. The experience, although exhausting due to everything that had to be managed, was as rewarding as it was enriching.

STUFF: When ordering the stories, did you use any type of criteria? I suspect so; The fact that “A Promise of Blood” is ranked 17th cannot be trivial, given the importance that the number has in that story. Likewise, I seemed to notice that the stories were deliberately spaced out so that those more thematically related or similar in length did not follow one another.

JL: Indeed, I believe that any work, even if it is an anthology as heterogeneous as this one, must tell a certain global story. To do this, it was essential to organize the stories in the best possible way. I confess that the case you are telling me about was totally accidental, in fact I had not noticed it until I read your question (I will deny it in subsequent interviews, hahaha), but I tried to order the stories so that the reader alternates between long and short stories, and so that the themes were never repeated.

STUFF: Will there be more deliveries of T.Errors: In the forest you are already dead? If so, what topic will they cover? Can anyone participate or will you repeat the cast of writers?

JL: With the enjoyment that this experience has given me, it is very possible that there will be more deliveries, yes. The theme has yet to be decided, although we are already considering one. Participation will be open to any author through a call and subsequent selection.

STUFF: Did you know the authors of T.Errors: In the forest you are already dead? If so, do you recommend any of his fiction?

JL: I must clarify that the selection of stories was quite honest. The stories were sent to an external person (in this case, my brother), who sent them to me without any information identifying the author. Therefore, I only learned of the authors’ identity after selecting the texts. I already knew some of them (in fact, there are three who are editors of the Monolith), but I didn’t know most of them.

Since there are so many of them, it is difficult for me to recommend works, but I declare myself an absolute fan of the work of Francisco Santos Muñoz Rico, a prolific author who brings together a series of extraordinary literary qualities. I have also read other works by Lorena Escobar (Tales of the sea is a bleeding, honest, hurtful collection of poems), by Román Sanz Mouta (his dead carpentry It’s incredible), by Verónica Cervilla (Who will take care of you is a very special novel that details family relationships from a quasi-supernatural point of view), by Pedro P. González (his novel Scar Galaxy is something out of the ordinary), etc. The truth is that it is an honor to have such a talented cast of authors in the anthology.