Black Lung

My short story, "Black Lung", has recently been published in the new issue of the UK's premier horror magazine, Black Static, and as usual I'm blogging just a few lines about the birth of the story. Be aware there may be spoilers for those who have yet to read it.

As I've blogged before, many of my ideas stem from titles, and in this case black lung was the name we attributed to our new neighbour's mother who visited over the course of a few days back in the summer and who smoked outside their back door which meant the smoke drifted up and into our bedroom window and wasn't particularly pleasant. I can't remember which of us christened her that name, but it struck me as a good title for a story.

The main crux of the story, however, came from a dream. In 2012 my first ex-wife - the mother of my eldest daughter - took her own life. From time to time I dream about her, not always unpleasantly, but there was one particular occasion where the dream affected me with such melancholy that I knew I needed to write about it. As in the story, within the dream we noticed each other, hugged and chatted, and she was completely unaware that I knew she was dead (in the dream itself I knew she was dead - but also that she wasn't yet dead in the dreamworld, that was to come). I felt an unbearable sadness upon waking because her unawareness was a painful innocence, the dismantling of hope.

The 'dreamlike' quality to the 'dream' is fairly accurately described in the story, as is the notion of the bridge, which - in a waking state - seems an obvious representation of the world of the dead. Within this construct I placed an antagonist, Black Lung, on the human side of the bridge. Thus the two halves of the story idea joined.

Hopefully the story works without this background and I've been able to convey the melancholy with universal appeal. Personally, it's one of the most intense stories I've ever written, although without that connection it might come across no more than fluff.

These instances elucidate what I realise I already knew. Ondine is two weeks away from death and she is unaware of it. But I am aware. I am tragically aware. She looks at me and smiles and I remain brutally aware.

The November–December issue has new dark fiction by Ralph Robert Moore, Usman T. Malik, Simon Bestwick, Annie Neugebauer, Andrew Hook, Aliya Whiteley. The cover art is by Ben Baldwin (for 'Drown Town' by Ralph Robert Moore), and interior illustrations are by Ben Baldwin, Tara Bush and Dave Senecal. The usual features are present: Coffinmaker's Blues by Stephen Volk and Blood Pudding by Lynda E. Rucker (comment); Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray reviews); Case Notes by Peter Tennant (book reviews), which includes an extensive interview with James Cooper. More details including purchase info here.

Finally, I wrote "Black Lung" whilst listening to the album "Initials B.B." by Brigitte Bardot on a loop.

Cover Art - Church of Wire

Just a quick blog post to reveal the cover art (by Iain Robertson) of my new novel, "Church Of Wire", which will be appearing from Telos Crime early 2015. It's the second in a series of neo-noir crime novels featuring my PI, Mordent. The third in the series has already been written and I'm currently midway through the fourth. Would be interested in any comments on the cover. The book can be pre-ordered here.

Burning Daylight

My short story, "Burning Daylight", has recently been published in the second issue of the excellent Confingo magazine, and as usual I'm blogging just a few lines about the birth of the story. Be aware there may be spoilers for those who have yet to read it.

Most of my fiction stems from the title, and rather embarrassingly I must confess the term burning daylight came from the TV show, "Dog The Bounty Hunter", where Dog - as usual - was trying to track down a bail jumper and time was running out. "C'mon, we're burning daylight here!" he shouted, as I scribbled down the potential title. (I will point out I was watching this at work and it was not a programme of choice!)

For a while I wasn't sure what kind of story it might relate to. "Burning Daylight" initially struck me as a potential vampire story, but I don't write many of those and it didn't appeal. So I began to think of the concept of burning daylight in Dog's context, that of wasting time. What wouldn't want to waste time? Something that didn't have much time. Like, for example, a mayfly.

In my story the main characters might quite simply be mayflies in a human context or humans in a mayfly context. Either way, the pulse is for procreation at a fantastic rate! Blame wikipedia for any scientific errors - although, of course, it's not a factual piece. I'm particularly pleased with the ambiguity in this story, and all comments will be gratefully received.

After what seemed like an age the final girl stood against the gym wall. Dr Thirst tied a facemask behind his head and nodded to Sir and Miss and to the nurses. From their pockets they produced identical facemasks and attached them; Sir and Miss fumbling with some difficulty. It was clear they hadn't done this before.

Confingo #2 was published on 30th October and as well as my piece contains fiction by Hayley Jones, Helen Anderson, Benjamin Schachtman, Anna Chieppa, Craig Ballinger, Richard Foreman, and Adrian Slatcher, with poetry from Ben Parker, Changming Yuan, Vanessa Gebbie and Ludmilla Mason; and photography from Zoe McLean, Ruth Fletcher and Rebecca Driffield. More information can be found here.

The Opaque District

Recently my short story, "The Opaque District", appeared in Horror Uncut, a collection of austerity stories published by Grey Friar Press. As with previous posts I've decided to explain the background to the story for those interested to know. Beware, there may be spoilers if you haven't read the piece.

I originally became aware of the anthology via correspondence with one of the editors, Joel Lane, who asked me to take part when we were discussing his possible contribution to an anthology I was editing, "punkPunk!". As many readers of this blog will know, Joel died unexpectedly in November 2013 (I wrote about this here), but the anthology continued through the co-editor, Tom Johnstone. The theme of the anthology was austerity and horror, how the two can combine, interplay, react. Tom has written a detailed background to the gestation of the anthology within the book, so I won't go into too much detail here. The other contributors include Joel Lane, Simon Bestwick, Priya Sharma, John Llewellyn Probert, Stephen Hampton, Gary McMahon, Anna Taborska, John Howard, Laura Lauro, Stephen Bacon, David Williams, Rosanne Rabinowitz, John Forth, David Turnbell, Alison Littlewood, and Thana Nirveau - so this is an anthology well-worth picking up.

My story stemmed - as they often do - from the title. I can't remember where it originated from, but "The Opaque District" was looking for a story for some time. Perhaps strangely, perhaps not, it reminded me of Joel's story, "The Lost District", and when I was approached for a piece for Horror Uncut it leapt out at me as the perfect title for the piece. My idea was that the financial breakdown had become so complete that there were now queues to join the queues, that society had broken so totally that the nature of human relationships had mutated in that we could barely speak to one another, and that a mythical land might exist where none of it had ever happened. Weaving into this some psychosis (Cotard's delusion, where an individual increasingly believes they do not exist - perfect for this piece), I ended up with a reality/unreality story where wish fulfillment battles austerity and the only possible escape is through fantasy. I personally think it's an odd little piece, and I hope that you like it.

Finally, I wrote the entirety of the story listening to Jay Malinowski's "Bright Lights and Bruises" on repeat.

Norwich Zine Fair

Last weekend we attended the Norwich Zine Fair at the arts centre. We've previously attended other zine fairs at different locations with mixed results. What usually happens is that the number of sellers outnumber the number of attendees and if we managed to sell one or two copies of my partner's Fur-Lined Ghettos magazine then we consider ourselves lucky. It's more of a networking thing, but even then the variety of zines can be quite disparate and the opportunities for cross-promotion are slim. And in addition, we've found that our zine with it's particular brand of surrealism doesn't fit into the local literary scene. Because of this, we set up at the arts centre will little more than hope in our hearts and no great expectation.

How wrong could we be?

Perhaps it helped that the organisers had decided to use our latest cover art for the poster, perhaps it helped that we bought some mini-easels to better display the magazine, maybe it assisted that I left Sophie alone to man the table whilst I tried to entertain our 2yr old in the nearby library, but whatever happened something was very clear by the end of the day: Norwich finally appreciates what Fur-Lined Ghettos is all about!

We sold 19 copies. That's NINETEEN copies. That's now helped to fund #6. That's pretty incredible.

So, thanks to everyone who picked up an issue (or two, or three, or even four). We hope you enjoy the read.

The number of sales has meant we are now in short supply of most of our back issues. Please consider making a purchase before it's too late! And as a teaser, here is the cover art for #6 which we hope to have available Dec/Jan. We are still open to submissions.

FantasyCon 2014

Last weekend saw the annual convention of the British Fantasy Society, FantasyCon, in York. I was pretty excited as I hadn't been to York for a long while, was looking forward to catching up with my writer friends, and as my partner had been away for a couple of weeks it was going to be cool seeing her again too.

We arrived in York around 1pm on the Friday after an easy, sun-filled drive. We were staying at a hotel ten minutes walk from the convention at a fraction of the cost. The very friendly landlady broke all data protection rules by telling us the names of her guests who were also going to the convention: Gary Couzens, Trevor Denyer, Gavin Williams, and Charles Black (plus the names of other guests who it turned out weren't convention-goers). Quite amusing.

It was a quick stroll through some 1970s council housing replete with washing lines towards Platform 1 of the train station and then into the Royal York convention hotel which was directly by the station. We registered and then headed to the dealer's room, dropping some copies of my novel and our Fur-Lined Ghettos magazine on the TTA Press table as arranged with the amiable Roy Gray. Then, as usual, some time was spent saying quick hellos to old friends such as Allen Ashley and Sarah Doyle (who were excited about their poetry collection being launched that weekend - the cover is sublime), David Rix (from Eibonvale Press who is publishing my collection, "Human Maps", next year and who has some great preliminary cover ideas), Chris Teague, Alex Davis, Alison Littlewood (always great to hear about her recent successes), and Simon Bestwick (whose novel, "The Faceless", I read earlier this year and loved).

Checking the programme we decided to pop into York for a bit. It looked beautiful. The old city wall was impressive, as was the general ambiance. We had a delicious ice-cream and then wandered back to the convention where we chatted outside with Trevor Denyer on the terrace.

First item on our agenda was the tribute to Joel Lane. Stood in a particularly noisy bar area, with a game show on the other side of the partition, writers including Mark Morris, Conrad Williams, Jonathan Oliver, Simon Bestwick, Peter Coleburn and Ramsey Campbell read excerpts from his work and provided anecdotes. It was a strange event, neither a wake nor overly sentimental; but of importance to remember Joel whose absence at FantasyCon was always apparent and who is sorely missed.

After this we caught readings with Simon Bestwick and Rosanne Rabinowitz before heading down to the poetry event hosted by Allen Ashley. My partner, Sophie, read two of her surreal erotic poems, and was her usual nervous self (which, for me, adds to her performance). We also enjoyed the other readings - a great mixture of genre and non-genre pieces.

Tired and hungry we headed out around 9:30 for some food, weaving our way through idiots dressed as traffic cones, and eventually seating ourselves in Nandos as a safe option. By the time we were out of there it was after 11 and - tempted as we were to head back to the convention - decided an early night was best. It would have been earlier if after walking back through the station and car park the cycle gates were unlocked, but nevermind, the circular walk did us good.

After a full breakfast Saturday we wandered around York in a wet drizzle before getting to the convention mid-morning. It was becoming apparent that some people I had hoped to see and catch up with weren't attending: Neil Williamson, Nina Allen, Douglas Thompson, and Graham Joyce which was a shame. We hung in the dealers room for a bit and had a long chat with Cat Sparks and her partner Rob Hood who were over from Australia before going to Gary Couzens' reading, followed by Allen Ashley and Sarah Doyle's joint poetry reading. As with yesterday's readings, it's always great to hear stories come alive from writers I respect. And then came my own reading scheduled for 2pm.

I had intended to read from the crime novel, "The Immortalists", but decided that morning to read a new short story, "The Day My Heart Stood Still", after timing myself and realising I could run through it in the 16 minutes allowed (it was also 'fantasy', after all). I had a reasonably sized crowd and the story was well-received. I do like public readings as it's always great to get a reaction which otherwise you wouldn't receive. I was particularly pleased to chat to Jason Gould after the event, a writer I've 'known' since the mid-nineties but who I had never met.

From there we popped back to our hotel to catch up on some sleep before returning early evening and meeting up with Gary Couzens, Trevor Denyer and Rosanne Rabinowitz for a tasty Italian and good conversation at Strada. From there we headed back to the hotel and decided to go to the disco where it turned out Gollancz had put a tab of five grand behind the bar (we only managed to get a couple of freebies it went so quick). Spoke briefly to Linda Rucker about her Black Static column, then Helen Whates invited us over to their table where we chatted - over the music - to Ian Whates, Steve Mosby, Donna Scott and Neil Bond (with his Sultans of Ping FC t-shirt), and Mark West. Eventually we danced to Blondie's "Heart of Glass" - the first and probably only time we will ever dance in public!

The following day we spent a couple of hours in the dealer's room, having sold some of my novel and our magazine. There was an unpleasant incident which marred the day, but I won't document this as we are resolving it separately with the committee and it's under discussion (it involves no one we knew personally). I did have a brief and interesting chat with screenwriter, Stephen Volk about the difficulties getting anything made. After the dealer's room closed we had more ice-cream in York and lunch at Nando's, before returning to the hotel. Chatted to Adam Nevill about his novels and future projects (always intelligent and thoughtful conversations), and then to John Travis about freelancing, Terry Grimwood, and Victoria Leslie (about writer retreats), before waiting for the awards. Had hoped for "Rustblind and Silverbright" to win best anthology as my story, "Tetsudo Fan", opens the book, but it was not to be. A list of the winners is here. I always like waiting for the awards, regardless of whether I'm up for anything, because it affords a proper conclusion to the event. But as soon as they were done we had to get out of the door. Apologies for missing anyone I didn't get the chance to speak to, and also apologies for missing anyone off this report who I did speak to.

It wouldn't be a convention without returning with an armful of books. This year I bought "Where Furnaces Burn" by Joel Lane, "Drive" by Mark West, "The Rhymer" by Douglas Thompson, and "The Violent Century" by Lavie Tidhar. I also picked up freebies of "Shadowplay" by Laura Lam, "Exquisite Corpse" by Poppy Z Brite, and "Havana Noir" edited by Achy Obejas.

The five hour journey home was eventful when our headlights failed, but we got home ok.

Overall, it was a great event. The weather on the Friday and Sunday was beautiful, we got the chance to explore York, and to chat to old friends and make new ones alike. It's always wonderful being in a creative environment when everyone you speak to gets what you do! We can't wait til Nottingham next year.

Unfortunately, FantasyCon was also tinged with sadness: Graham Joyce had been due to host the event, but had to withdraw due to illness. It is with great sadness that I heard Tuesday night that he died. Graham was a much-loved human being, a great writer, and a champion of good causes. On occasion he was very supportive of my own writing and also of Elastic Press when I was in publishing. His death is a great loss and my condolences are with his family and friends. Our world is lessened with his absence.

Periscope

My short story, "Periscope", has recently been published online at Perihelion SF (you can read the whole story from that link), and as usual I'm blogging a few words about the creation of the piece for those who might be interested. Please note, there will be spoilers so it's probably best to read the story before reading this blog.

This particular story was written a couple of years ago and has taken a while to find the right home. Because of this, I find my memory to be a little sketchy as to its birth. I certainly remember having the title - a simple word with much potential - for some time. And once I had the name of the main character (Dr Swe Swe Win) I also had the setting for the story (Myanmar) which added colour to the piece.

The periscope in the title is a device through which the future can be glimpsed, like a machine for scrying. The 'twist' in my story is that the Dr is the only one who can see the future through the device and the information received is completely random - snapshot glimpses of a future without any indication of a date. The 'previews' he receives are therefore more or less useless, yet prevailing governments seize on his visions, desperate to have the upperhand in a world that's gone to pot. This macro world view is counteracted by the micro, the Dr's thoughts on his current relationship and his questioning of what in fact is reality.

I personally think it's a story which improves with each reading. So don't just read it once, read it twice!

Here's an extract: The periscope Dr Swe Swe Win had designed was mammoth and steel, circular in nature, with mirrors at every conceivable angle. He wasn't sure of the science in it because he hadn't expected it to work, but similar to scrying the periscope delivered images directly to the eye of the beholder. Nostradamus used a bowl of water to see the future whilst he was under trance. Dr Swe Swe Win had the periscope.