Delighted to be a part of what promises to be a superb anthology with my short story ‘In The Marrow’. Published by Dark Minds Press and edited by James Everington & Dan Howarth, ‘Imposter Syndrome’ features stories about changelings, doppelgangers, Capgras delusion and pod-people.
I’ve had a sneak preview of two of the other stories in the anthology and if they’re anything to go by, it’s going to be very good indeed.
Esteemed horror author & editor Johnny Mains has unearthed some real treasures and compiled them into an anthology – the result is A Suggestion of Ghosts, a compilation of supernatural stories by female authors, previously published but never reprinted. The stories date from between 1826-1897, putting paid to the notion that women in horror is a relatively new phenomenon. I’m terrifically excited to discover some long-hidden gems.
The book is available for pre-order from Black Shuck Book.
The British Fantasy Society recently reviewed ‘Horror Uncut: Tales Of Social Insecurity and Economic Unease’, and very kind words were said about my short story ‘Ptichka’, which appears in the anthology.
‘Ptichka’ was an interesting story to write. For one thing, it was the first time I’d ever written anything ‘to spec’ – that is, based on a subject matter specific to the anthology. The remit for Horror Uncut was a subject close to my heart. At the time, I was working in the NHS, and was in the unenviable position of watching the system dismantled piece by piece around me – the stealthy encroachment of privatised services, displacing vital NHS services and clinics deemed ‘unnecessary’. Unnecessary to whom? Care of the elderly was farmed out, the stroke unit moved and downsized. In its place, a private endoscopy suite. Staff numbers were slashed – a skeleton crew of exhausted, overworked nurses left behind, barely able to meet the essential needs of their patients, let alone find the time to offer care and support. And then, the spectre of the ‘health tourist’. This insidious myth meant that, in my area of work – the antenatal clinic – migrant women were choosing to forego important tests and checkups for fear that they might be charged money they couldn’t afford. (The fact that most of these women were, under the then-current rules, eligible for NHS care was not properly explained to them.)
This was the seed from which ‘Ptichka’ was born. It was an interesting challenge for me to bring my own personal sense of politics into the realm of storytelling. I tried to get to what, for me at least, is the heart of the matter – human beings, our lives and our health, and the simple truth I hold to that a human being’s innate worth and value cannot be defined in terms of their country of origin. As a healthcare worker my job is not to judge a person worthy or unworthy of NHS care. It is to deliver that care, and that is what I do. ‘Ptichka’ is fiction, but there’s a grain of truth in it – as is befitting a horror story, that truth is taken to an extreme, but from the NHS front lines a lot of what I wrote was scarily plausible. That’s the real horror, I think: the fact that the world I depicted in ‘Ptichka’ might some day become a reality.
The Moon Will Look Strange by Lynda E. Rucker
Short fiction collections can sometimes be hit and miss. You sometimes read collections in which only one or two stories stand out, and the rest are sort of literary white noise. This isn’t one of those collections. The author has a clear, almost conversational style of prose, the kind you can imagine works brilliantly when the stories are read aloud; it’s very effective, and allows for a creeping sense of unease lurking quietly beneath the surface of each story.
Lynda E. Rucker’s great strength, in my opinion, is creating an atmosphere of almost unbearable tension, exemplified by stories like ‘No More A-Roving’, in which a seemingly mundane situation grows stranger and stranger – you can almost feel the claustrophobic sense of dread emanating from the page, a fundamental ‘wrongness’ rather that straight-out horror which works brilliantly. ‘The Chance Walker’ recalls the deep-seated anxiety of homesickness, and finding oneself paranoid and isolated in a foreign country. ‘The Last Reel’ has a cinematic self-awareness which compliments the subject matter beautifully. My favourite, the titular ‘The Moon Will Look Strange’ is an exploration of loss and guilt and grief, a dark and moving piece which asks what extreme lengths we will go to in order to bring back a lost loved one.
My favourite horror stories are those which plumb psychological depths and ask questions of human nature and emotions, and Rucker definitely delivers on this – her stories explore the human condition every bit as much as they explore the horrific and the supernatural, and this sets ‘The Moon Will Look Strange’ apart from many of its contemporaries. An excellent collection.
No.6 by Atsuko Asano
In the seemingly utopian city of No.6, a young boy named Shion finds his perfect existence fundamentally altered by the arrival of a boy named Nezumi, a fugitive whom Shion finds injured. After sheltering Nezumi one stormy night, his life is turned upside-down – all the privileges afforded to him are mysteriously withdrawn and he finds himself at the centre of a strange conspiracy involving parasitic wasps which cause premature ageing. If it sounds bonkers, that’s because it is. But it works. The city of No.6 recalls ‘Brazil’-esque levels of control, and a populous all too happy to roll with it in order to retain their comfortable lifestyles. But outside the city, a very different world exists, and Shion soon discovers the lengths people will go to in order to keep the uncomfortable secrets about No.6 hidden.
Story aside, the manga itself is well-drawn and laid out, and although my Japanese isn’t good enough to allow a thorough translation the English script seems to be well done. Both main characters are interesting in that ‘opposites attract’ kind of way – sweet, idealistic Shion and the strange and unpredictable Nezumi, who seems as irritated by Shion as he is enamoured. There appears to be some kind of slow-building romance beneath the surface of their relationship, which is intriguing in of itself – ostensibly, this is sci-fi YA manga and same-sex romance isn’t something you see a great deal of in western genre YA, at least in the mainstream. I’ve only finished two volumes, but I’m looking forward to reading on.
Black Static issue 42
A very strong offering from Black Static this month, with several excellent stories, most notably ‘Be Light. Be Pure. Be Close To Heaven’ by Sara Saab. A truly fantastic exploration of religion and worship, featuring a strange and totally believable sect in which ritual amputation of one’s own body parts represents the truest form of piety. The prose is stunning and the story is one of the best I’ve read all year. Other stand-outs include Alyssa Wong’s ‘Scarecrow’, in which loss, love and cruelty intermingle beneath the canopy of the main character’s strange avian transformation; the weird and unsettling ‘What Happened To Marly and Lanna’ by Noah Wareness, which reads like a lucid fever-dream, and Kristi DeMeester’s ‘December Skin’, in which an unseen threat looms large and horrible like a monster on the periphery of one’s vision, and the main characters seem almost complicit. Matthew Cheney’s ‘Patrimony’ is a fascinating, ‘Dark Tower’-esque post apocalyptic tale of revenge and retribution with a suitably bleak ending. ‘Goat Eyes’ by David D. Levine and ‘The Bury Line’ by Stephen Hargadon are both good stories in their own right, but didn’t quite hit the mark for me.
Dead Funny, edited by Robin Ince and Johnny Mains 
Horror stories by comedians. It shouldn’t work, should it? But this accomplished anthology proves that not only does it work, the fusion of black humour and dark subject matter is actually really effective when handled properly. The result is a sort of textual equivalent to ‘The League Of Gentlemen’ or ‘Gareth Marenghi’s Darkplace’ – both entertaining and uncomfortable and, in some places, downright disturbing.
Reece Shearsmith’s ‘Dog’ is perhaps the best example of this – the tale of a young boy who, in retribution for his brother’s dogshit-induced blindness (a real phenomenon, by the way) goes on a crusade to hunt down the dog – and owner – responsible. The resulting narrative is both darkly humorous (little details, such as the Mr Kipling van, had me snorting guiltily) and quite horrific. Two little boys quite casually murdering women and their dogs should not make such a good story, and yet here it is.
Not all of the stories are humorous, and that’s no bad thing. Mitch Benn’s ‘The Patient’ is classic, straightfoward horror and delivers exactly what it sets out to achieve. I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening in Matthew Holness’ ‘Possum’, but it’s weirdly compelling in a nightmarish, hallucinatory sort of way. ‘Filthy Night’ is every bit as good a piece as I have come to expect from Charlie Higson, although I have previously only read his books for young adults – clearly, adult fiction is missing out on his input. And Richard Herring’s ‘Woolboy’ is a deliciously creepy ‘alone in the woods’ type affair, showcasing the dark side of knitting (no, really.)
My favourite, though, is Katy Brand’s ‘For Roger’. What an amazing story. Exploring his loft, a man finds a diary which appears to have been written by some future incarnation of himself, and which details a sequence of events he then sets out to attempt to circumvent. A strange and ultimately very touching tale, this is deftly written and had me compulsively turning the pages to find out what happened. The stand-out tale in a collection of excellent stories. Who’d have thought comedians could be so horrible?
