INTRODUCTION


"The Secret Life of Laird Barron" was a collaborative project orchestrated by John Langan, author and personal friend of Laird. He explains how the project came about in the story notes for his contribution to the project, "June, 1987. Hitchhiking. Mr. Norris.", later published in his collection The Wide Carnivorous Sky:

[...] a couple of years ago, when the bottom dropped out of Laird's life and he found himself in a bad place, it was inevitable that I would think of horror as a way to cheer him up. Specifically, in an echo of the "Jack Haringa" project, I contacted the writers I knew and who knew Laird with the proposal that, on a given day, we should post on our blogs excerpts from The Secret Life of Laird Barron.


"Kill Jack Haringa on Your Blog Day" took place on March 7, 2008. Twenty-eight of the stories were collected in the book Jack Haringa Must Die! (Merricat Publications, 2008), including Laird's "The Lonely Death of Mr. Haringa".

I've collected here, to the best of my abilities, links to the stories that were written for this project which are still available on-line. While it is popularly believed that nothing on the internet is ever truly gone, there are limits to what a layperson can hope to retrieve once a website, page, or entry has been removed. 

They have been organized in loose chronological order, based on the events described, where possible. All were posted on March 16, 2011, except where noted.

 STORIES

"The Secret Life of Laird Barron 1"

http://jplangan.livejournal.com/69961.html 
16 MARCH 2011
John Langan

 

  • The introductory post, in which author John Langan presents the concept, links to the other contributors' stories, and starts the ball rolling.

"The Secret Life of Laird Barron"

http://www.natesouthard.com/2011/03/16/the-secret-life-of-laird-barron/
16 MARCH 2011
Nate Southard

"Laird Barron Makes Me Feel Mighty Real"

http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1609420.html
16 MARCH 2011
Nick Mamatas

  • One of the videos which was originally imbedded in the post has been removed from the hosting site (YouTube). The others, in the interest of posterity, are (in order): "yes sir i can boogie st" (baccara); "U O Me Waldolala" (Luv); "Sussa Appinnagu" (Nuuk Posse).

"The Secret Life of Laird Barron"

http://handful-ofdust.livejournal.com/385153.html
16 MARCH 2011
Gemma Files

"Laird Barron, Misfit"

http://bluetyson.livejournal.com/238543.html
17 MARCH 2011
Blue Tyson

  • To my understanding, Blue Tyson's participation was spontaneous rather than planned.

"The Secret Life of Laird Barron 2"

http://jplangan.livejournal.com/70195.html
16 MARCH 2011
John Langan

  • Langan's contribution was included in his 2013 collection, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus Press, New York, 2013).

"The Secret Life of Laird Barron"

http://leethomas.livejournal.com/187352.html?mode=reply
16 MARCH 2011
Lee Thomas

"The Real Dogs"

http://www.demontheory.net/the-real-dogs-4/
16 MARCH 2011
Stephen Graham Jones

"An entry from The Secret Life of Laird Barron"

http://mroctober.livejournal.com/391819.html
16 MARCH 2011
Steve Berman

  • The link provided by John Langan does not work. The story was easily found on Steve Berman's livejournal however.

"The Secret Life of Laird Barron"

http://www.strantzas.com/2011/03/secret-life-of-laird-barron.html
16 MARCH 2011
Simon Strantzas

"The secret dream of Laird Barron"

http://nathanballingrud.com/2011/03/16/the-secret-dream-of-laird-barron/
16 MARCH 2011
Nathan Ballingrud

"That World, and the Fireworks"

http://mssrcrankypants.livejournal.com/124355.html
16 MARCH 2011
Jack Haringa

"The Man With The Barbed-Wire Eye-Patch"

http://americanfrankenstein.blogspot.ca/2011/03/man-with-barbed-wire-eye-patch.html
16 MARCH 2011
Norman Partridge

"On This Red Night, All the World's a Page"

http://lonesome-crow.livejournal.com/317577.html
16 MARCH 2011
Michael Kelly

"Show Me the Gun-y: A Laird Barron Adventure"

http://onemoreshadow.livejournal.com/100114.html#cutid1
16 MARCH 2011
Ian Rogers

"The Secret Life (and Death) and New Life of Laird Barron"

http://www.richardgavin.net/2011/03/secret-life-and-death-of-laird-barron.html
16 MARCH 2011
Richard Gavin

"An Entry from the Secret Life of Laird Barron"

http://orringrey.com/2011/03/16/an-entry-from-the-secret-life-of-laird-barron/
16 MARCH 2011
Orrin Grey

"How I Survived the Cowboy Movie
[or When the Barron Opened His Eye]"

http://thisyellowmadness.blogspot.ca/2011/03/how-i-survived-cowboy-movie-or-when.html
16 MARCH 2011
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

"The Beard Out of Space"

http://nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com/648571.html
16 MARCH 2011
Nicholas Kaufmann

"a man what ran the iditarod and wrote of disquieting things"

http://lokilokust.livejournal.com/307840.html
16 MARCH 2011
S.J. Bagley

"Fear & Loathing in Alaska"

http://www.briankeene.com/?p=6016
16 MARCH 2011
Brian Keene

  • The story is no longer available on the website linked above. A copy was available on archive.org.

"Excerpt from the Secret Life of Laird Barron"

https://thelittlesleep.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/excerpt-from-the-secret-life-of-laird-barron/
16 MARCH 2011
Paul Tremblay

"1.16.11"

http://michaelcisco.blogspot.ca/2011/03/11.html
16 MARCH 2011
Michael Cisco

"The Secret Life of Laird Barron"

http://parttimedriver.livejournal.com/62689.html
16 MARCH 2011
F. Brett Cox

"The Secret Life of Laird Barron Day!"

http://www.openaudreysdoor.com/2011/03/the-secret-life-of-laird-barron-day/
16 MARCH 2011
Sarah Langan

"Put Another BARRON On the Fire"

https://www.facebook.com/notes/joepulver/putanotherbarrononthefire/10150112344520741
18 MARCH 2011
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

"The Carmine Smuntz"

http://kurtdinan.wordpress.com/
16 MARCH 2011
Kurt Dinan

  • The original site is no longer extant, but Kurt has re-posted the materialhere, on his new site.

"Lunch With Laird Barron"

http://jeffford2010.livejournal.com/37156.html
16 MARCH 2011
Jeffrey Ford

  • The original post has been deleted. Archive.org does not have a copy of the page. Blue Tyson [BT110317] has the original title but no other content.
  • The author confirmed that he had no copy of the story, when contacted [personal communication, March 2016].

"Laird Barron: What is He? Should We Worry?"

http://will-ludwigsen.livejournal.com/
16 MARCH 2011
Will Ludwigsen

  • The original post has been deleted. Archive.org does not have a copy of the page. Blue Tyson [BT110318] has the original title but no other content.
  • The author confirmed that he had no copy of the story, when contacted (personal communication, March 2016).

COMMENTARY

"My many covers, blown"

http://imago1.livejournal.com/86693.html
16 MARCH 2011
Laird Barron

"Eighteen,"

http://imago1.livejournal.com/87050.html
17 MARCH 2011
Laird Barron

"Episode 43: Live With Gary K. Wolfe, Karen Burnham,
Jeffrey Ford, and Liza Groen Trombi"

The Coode Street Podcast (51:25 - 52:50)
19 MARCH 2011
Jonathan Strahan et al.

The relevant part of the podcast is short, so I've transcribed it here:

Jeffrey Ford: "Recently I was involved in this project, 'The Secret Lives of Laird Barron'. A bunch of us wrote stories about Laird Barron, alright, these secret lives that he had. For your listeners, Gary and Jonathan, I'm telling people to go check out Kurt Dinan's blog, and his piece, which is a multi-media thing, which reminded me of the old 'zines because he's got this... I'm not even going to tell you what it is. Just check that out. You'll see that it reminds you of those old 'zines in the way that they intersperse pictures and text and so forth."
Jonathan Strahan: "I have to say, having met Laird a couple of times, he does strike me as the kind of guy who looks like he could have had a couple of secret lives."
Gary K. Wolfe [?]: "He is a dramatic presence, that's true."
Jonathan Strahan: "For those of you who have never seen him: he's a very hale, hardy-looking guy with a big, bushy black beard... and an eye patch. And he lives somewhere up in the woods outside Seattle or somewhere. So I assume every now and again he looms out of the dark in the morning mist with an axe in his hand and says: 'good morning'. And somebody dies spontaneously of a heart attack, just like that." 
Gary K. Wolfe [?]: "He basically is 'Winter's Balm: The Movie'. He's the sweetest guy. He's soft-spoken and he's thoughtful, and he's very well-read."
Jonathan Strahan: "He is, yes."

FINAL WORD

John Langan believes the effort was a success, writing (in The Wide Carnivorous Sky):

They did cheer Laird up, so mission accomplished [...]