The Gate Theory

"We're all in pain. We try to keep the gates closed by falling in love, travelling, avoiding responsibility, getting drunk, taking drugs...anything to lose ourselves. But the dull ache remains in each of us. These stories are about the gates opening." The Gate Theory holds six tales by award-winning Australian author Kaaron Warren. Each story resonates with the pain of living.

“The Gate Theory is a perfect example of Kaaron Warren’s accomplishment in converting different themes and subjects into dense and powerful fiction. Her stories have the tendency to insidiously crawl under the reader’s skin, slithering unnoticed until they find a place from where one is unable to shake them loose after reading.”  —Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews

“Kaaron Warren is without doubt one of the world's leading writers of dark fiction, and The Gate Theory showcases her talent perfectly… Her prose is powerful, her sense of place is evocative and her imagination knows no bounds. This is the kind of book that you will remember long after you finish reading the last story.”  —M R Cosby, Stranger Designs

“Each of these stories stretches the boundaries of both storytelling and character. Warren’s is a unique voice in horror. She has an ability to take us to places so utterly disturbing yet simultaneously so mundane and believable, that you start to look at people you meet with a sidelong glance. I call it The Warren Perception. It’s unavoidable. Read her work and you will start to look at people as she does. This is not necessarily a good thing, but it’s fascinating.”  —Alan Baxter, Thirteen O’Clock

“Gaze Dogs, like the other stories in this fine collection, captures the elusive quality of a dream: the strong, darkly surreal images, but also the resonant feeling. So often—in stories, as in dreams—the feeling dies away and only the image remains, a husk that has lost reference to its once-valuable contents. The power of Warren’s stories is to hold onto both simultaneously, giving us the image–feeling complex in all its potency, and nightmares all the more frightening for being only half glimpsed.”  —J. Ashley Smith, Spook Tapes

Kaaron Warren is the author of the novels The Grief Hole, Mistification, Slights, and Walking the Tree, and the short story collections Dead Sea Fruit, The Grinding House, and Through Splintered Walls. She lives in Australia.