We Are All Completely Fine

World Fantasy Award WinnerShirley Jackson Award WinnerHarrison was the Monster Detective, a storybook hero. Now he’s in his mid-thirties and spends most of his time popping pills and not sleeping. Stan became a minor celebrity after being partially eaten by cannibals. Barbara is haunted by unreadable messages carved upon her bones. Greta may or may not be a mass-murdering arsonist. Martin never takes off his sunglasses. Never.No one believes the extent of their horrific tales, not until they are sought out by psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer. What happens when these seemingly-insane outcasts form a support group? Together they must discover which monsters they face are within?and which are lurking in plain sight.

Publishers Weekly

“This complex novel―scathingly funny, horrific yet oddly inspiring―constructs a seductive puzzle from torn identities, focusing on both the value and peril of fear. When enigmatic Dr. Jan Sayer gathers survivors of supernatural violence for therapy, she unwittingly unlocks evil from the prison of consciousness. Harrison, a cynical monster-hunter, wallows in lethargy. Suicidal Barbara burns to read the secret messages inscribed on her bones. Cantankerous Stan is the lone survivor of a cannibal feast. After paranoid Martin sees slithery spirits lingering around volatile Greta, a powerful young woman decorated with mystically charged scars, ancient evils usher the rag-tag survivors to a battle with the Hidden Ones, exiled deities trapped in prisons of flesh. Gregory’s beautiful imagery and metaphors bring bittersweet intimacy and tenderness to the primal wonder of star-lit legends. Isolated people, both victims and victimizers, are ghosts in a waking world, blind to their encounters with living nightmares. Blending the stark realism of pain and isolation with the liberating force of the fantastic, Gregory (Afterparty) makes it easy to believe that the world is an illusion, behind which lurks an alternative truth―dark, degenerate, and sublime.”

Library Journal

“. . . a clever and creepy horror tale . . .”

Ellen Datlow, Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and International Horror Guild award-winning editor of The Best Horror of the Year series Selected as the Horror After Dark Top Horror Read for 2014

“Clever, and filled with the creeping dread of what’s in the flickering shadow next to you and what’s just around the corner that suffuses the best horror. I loved it.”

Horror After Dark

“[Gregory’s] plotting, characterisations, and yes, the writing itself, is all that good. In short, this one completely blew me away. . . .”

Tim Powers, award-winning author of Declare and The Stress of Her Regard

“Charming and horrifying―you won't be able to stop reading it.”

Joe R. Lansdale, author of Cold in July and the Hap and Leonard series

“Daryl Gregory's We Are All Completely Fine is bitchin' fun and as wicked and strange as a motorcycle leap through a ring of fire without your pants on. Loved it.”

Seanan McGuire, author of the October Daye series and Half-Off Ragnarok

“Daryl Gregory is a writer I would happily follow into any dark place he wanted me to go. This is a labyrinth of a story, intricate as a spider’s web―and like a spider’s web, each piece informs the whole. Beautiful.”

Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Red Planet Blues

“A superb, haunting tale by one of our very best writers. Gregory’s characters are already in therapy; you may want to join them after reading this spicy, disturbing mélange.”

SFRevu

“[Gregory] is a truly gifted writer and We Are All Completely Fine is just more evidence to the fact.”

Daytona Beach News Journal

“. . . funny in that dark and sarcastic way only people faced with unstoppable horror can be funny, and when you’re finished you’ll wish there was more.”

Fantastic Reads

“Lovecraft meets Cabin in the Woods in this tale of survivors of various supernatural horrors who come together in a support group to try to heal. . . . fascinating”

Paul Goat Allen, Barnes & Noble.com

“Gregory (Pandemonium, The Devil’s Alphabet, et. al.) has done it again with yet another singularly unique, genre-blending masterwork about a support group of victims of paranormal violence who realize that their nightmarish traumas are all related. This creepy concoction of supernatural fiction, mystery, and horror is a dark little literary gem that readers will absolutely cherish.”

Locus

“[Gregory’s] most tightly constructed and compulsively readable novel to date, and a small gem of what we might call post-horror horror.”

The Book Smugglers

“I read this book in two hours on the plane home from Loncon and just holy shit. It is gripping from start to finish.”

LitReactor

“We Are All Completely Fine is something refreshing and unique―a short horror novel that is as much about relationships and people learning from one another as it is about the horrors that they are ultimately facing. . . .”

Bookworm Blues

“. . . a little horrific, quite deep, and plenty surprising.”

Thinking About Books

"We Are All Completely Fine is a remarkably seductive piece of supernatural horror, drawing the innocent reader into the web by dealing with a familiar situation. . . . fascinating and engrossing. . . "

SF Book Reviews

“This book is fast-paced, creepy, suspenseful, and yet surprisingly uplifting, with fleshed out characters I genuinely cared about. . . . This book is seriously awesome. Someone chain [Gregory] to a desk so he stops doing anything other than write.”

Bibliotropic

“What this all comes down to is that if you’re a fan of horror, or of anything Daryl Gregory has written elsewhere, or just of fantastic novellas that demonstrate exemplary storytelling, then you ought to read We Are All Completely Fine.”

Bibliophilic

“Not for the faint of heart, We Are All Completely Fine is a great read!”

Out of My Mind

“I’ve not encountered many authors in the horror genre who flex literary muscle as well as Gregory. His approach was perfect for the story vehicle.”

MT Void

“Gregory does a masterful storytelling job here. . . .”

Buzz Feed

“A must read”

Relentless Reading

“. . . brilliant, creepy. . . .”

Horror After Dark

“This novella is mindboggling in it’s scope, a too brief glimpse into a ‘mythos’ as staggering as Lovecraft’s. The seed from which a thousand nightmares can spring, an unexplored jungle of imagination that bodes well for stalwart explorers of horror! Highly recommended!”

Read or Dead

“Intriguing world building, characters tinged in tragedy, a history of darkness and things on the periphery.... this is an awesome novella. . . .”

My Bookish Ways

“This is a scary, funny, bittersweet, fantastic book, and Gregory’s imagination is twisted and wonderful.”

Not Yet Read

“. . . creepy paranormal elements and wonderful writing. . . ”

The Shed

“We Are All Completely Fine is not your typical horror novella. Yes, it is dark and creeping with mysterious dread, but it is also charming, clever, and even hilarious at times. . . [It] is an intricate story that uses metafiction as a way to self-reflect on the horror genre tropes we have all come to love, while paralleling them with a stark realism. . . . The premise of the novel is a fresh take on the horror genre and speaks to our society’s fascination with wanting to know, from a safe distance, what it is really like for survivors of such trauma as we empathize with their pain. The novella is a quick read that both casual horror fans and hardcore horror fans alike will enjoy.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1There were six of us in the beginning. Three men and two women, and Dr. Sayer. Jan, though some of us never learned to call her by her first name. She was the psychologist who found us, then persuaded us that a group experience could prove useful in ways that one-on-one counseling could not. After all, one of the issues we had in common was that we each thought we were unique. Not just survivors, but sole survivors. We wore our scars like badges.Consider Harrison. Once upon a time he’d been the Boy Hero of Dunnsmouth. The Monster Detective. Now he was in his mid-thirties and spent most of his time not sleeping. On the patient information form he’d filled out for Dr. Sayer, under job title he had written "nightmarist." He thought that would be an amusing conversation starter. He told the doctor that his primary reason for joining the group was to maintain his access to a variety of antidepressants and sleep aids. His psychiatrist would not renew his prescriptions unless he went into therapy.And yet: Harrison was one of the first to arrive at the building for the first meeting. Dr. Sayer’s office was in a two-story, Craft-style house on the north side of the city, on a woodsy block that could look sinister or comforting depending on the light. A decade before, this family home had been rezoned and colonized by shrinks; they converted the bedrooms to offices, made the living room into a lobby, and planted a sign out front declaring its name to be "The Elms." Maybe not the best name, Harrison thought. He would have suggested a species of tree that wasn’t constantly in danger of being wiped out.

About the Author

Daryl Gregory is the award-winning author of We Are All Completely Fine, Pandemonium, The Devil’s Alphabet, Harrison Squared, and Raising Stony Mayhall, which was named one of Library Journal's best books of the year. His comics work includes Planet of the Apes and Dracula: The Company of Monsters (with Kurt Busiek). His forthcoming novel, Spoonbenders, is a comedic tour de force starring a family of misfit psychics. Gregory lives in Oakland, California.

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