We’re back for our latest look at the trials and tribulations of what happens when you submit a story to a magazine or an anthology. Come with us into the murky world of editing, where we shall reveal… something vaguely relevant, maybe. And very little of what follows will do you any permanent damage. So that’s good.

We’ve looked at hundreds of submissions in the last few months alone, many for Occult Detective Quarterly, some for an anthology, Their Coats All Red, and even a few for other mysterious projects and private critiques. Today’s reflections are based on all of these, but mostly on the experience of editing Occult Detective Quarterly – a matter of sheer numbers.

Last time on ‘So You Want to Submit a Story…’ we mentioned three areas – Lovecraftian horror, Victorian & Edwardian period stories, and Clive Cussler Syndrome, aka the art of over-description. This time we’re raising a few more issues you might want to consider when you submit a story to any magazine, anthology or similar creature.

What follows isn’t really aimed at the seasoned writer. Unless you’re so seasoned that you fear you’re fossilising. Nor do we pretend to be authorities on this sort of thing. We merely offer a few observations, which are meant to be helpful (that’s what they all say), and let you decide what you want to do. That way we end up in fewer court cases.

Firstly, we must raise an over-arching problem, the bane of many editors’ lives…

The Mystery Parcel

People do not follow the guidelines when it comes to the subject line of submission e-mails. Why is this important? With hundreds of emails, they have to be assigned to the right folders. If the subject line doesn’t say whether it’s a story, art or non-fiction, each email has to be opened to assign it. If there isn’t a title given in the subject line, then the editors and subs readers have to search and match the story to the name of the e-mail sender.

So we might get an email from hellkitten47 at aol.com, with no subject other than (maybe) the project name. We don’t know what’s attached, and if it’s a story, we don’t know what the story is called. There might be a story called The Lecherous Leprechaun by Amelia Susan Standish (Mrs). Or maybe a charcoal sketch of Sherlock Holmes eating a radish. It may even be cunningly disguised spam. Who knows? The temptation, which we try to resist, is to bin it.

Put simply, when you submit a story, absolute adherence to guidelines like this is the way to make sure that you at least end up in the correct folder.

That’s out of the way, then. So here are two other topics – The Strange Incident, and The Distressed Dame. These both relate to stories that we’ve had to reject. The first is general; the second is rather specific. If you disagree, feel free to comment – you may well know more than we do.

The Strange Incident

This is when you submit a story that doesn’t really have anything to it in terms of plot and internal drive. Typically, a Strange Incident story describes an event which may be unusual or unexpected, or an encounter where the sense of the weird predominates. It’s more of a situation report or an observation than a structured tale. ODQ receives a number of these, some of them really interesting. But…

You may have produced an unusual mood piece, but you have to be a pretty good writer, able to deliver high quality characterisation and atmosphere, to get away with it for publication. Some of what you might call the New Weird writers can do it. But we’re not all them.

And the longer the story you submit, the more any weakness here become apparent. Sometimes a short story can get away with sheer atmosphere. Sometimes.

We’re not against vignettes and slices of the strange, of mood pieces and almost poetic fragment. We love some of them, but this isn’t about individual taste. It’s about getting published.

On the whole, most magazines and anthologies are looking for something which does have a certain drive to it, which will satisfy the broad range of readers. They might take tales which are stylish meditations on the weird, but you have to research the market to know that it’s what they particularly want.

So if you must explore the strange incident, it has to be impressively done. Something odd which happens down the road is… just that, usually. Think about whether your submission is more of an exemplar of style rather than a story for which someone would pay. Because that’s the bottom line in many markets.

We had to decline a number of stories, even though they revolved around a weird concept which was different from the usual. We were actively looking for this sort of thing, and were always disappointed when we had to let one go. The point is that almost invariably in these cases, the concept was more interesting than the story. And that’s a hard one.

We wouldn’t want to discourage the flow of new ideas and approaches in weird literature. All we can ask is that when it comes to formal submissions, you consider aspects such as:

• Is this particular story the right vehicle for your concept?
• Do other people have any chance of grasping what you’re trying to express?
• Is it paced so that readers don’t merely drift away?
• Have you honed your writing skills enough yet to do your ideas justice?

If you submit a story which demonstrates a Yes to the above, you’re motoring, and in with a chance.

The Distressed Dame

Raymond Chandler is dead. Here’s one which hits ODQ a lot, but will happen when you submit a story to pulp, crime and mystery magazines as well. Whilst Pulp and New Pulp are popular, in a broader magazine there will only be room for one or two classic-style stories. The Private Investigator of the 30s, 40s and 50s is an iconic figure, and much loved, but he or she can also be a tired cliché.

This is a hard one. It can be done. With humour, or with a cunning twist or two, new life can be brought to the trope of the client turning up, and the PI getting drawn into a dangerous game. However, without twists, the world cannot bear many more strange women walking into offices unannounced, seedy offices which have ‘seen better days’, or PIs whose best friend is their Colts and their bottle of Jack Daniels.

That striking woman turning up can be a story killer to editors. It’s an image beloved of Bogartian cinema, and is so over-used that it easily becomes ludicrous. Here’s a quick checklist:

• Legs of an unfeasible length
• Breasts akin to geological promontories
• Dress or outfit which is tight, expensive, or both
• Hair which only comes in raven black, gleaming blonde or red
• Eyes which pierce or captivate rather than look at you

We get it. The approach is used to signal that we’re in that Pulp-y place, but it’s getting harder to cut it with that these days. Every so often a story will be satisfying enough, and the familiarity of an old trope will be pleasing. But are you sure you can carry it off?

If you’re not, adapt and invent. If you must have ‘a dick and a dame’ (excuse our language), entangle them in a new way. Revive old Chandler to do something different.

You can find other greydogtales musings on writing for publication kicking around the site, as in the How to be a Bestselling Author series. Some of them may not be entirely serious, of course…

Occult Detective Quarterly will be open for submissions again on February 1^st, which will be flagged up in the ODQ section on this site and on the Facebook Group (no more subs until then, please).

Their Coats All Red, a very specific concept anthology, has its own Facebook Group, Imperial Weird, and guidelines which can be found here:

New Call for Stories: Their Coats All Red

We’ll return, dear listener, in a couple of days with more of the weird, in one form or another. And we’re delighted to say that Issue One of Occult Detective Quarterly is even now winging it’s way around the world. There’s a link on the right hand side bar, as usual.

Yes, for all the horror fans out there it’s our least comprehensible headline yet. Hurrah! There’s a lot going on, and we need to catch up, so here are a few things you might like. We’re enjoying a new South American illustrated project by Matias Zanetti, starting to read Turn to Ash Issue 2 with Jonathan Raab, and updating you on Sheridan Le Fanu. So we’d better get on with it, backwards as usual…

The Irish Weird

A few days ago we were talking about styles of dark fiction, and drifted across H P Lovecraft, M R James, and the Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (see sneerwell and verjuice – the school for weird fiction). As you do. Not long after, Brian J Showers, that erudite owner of Ireland’s most excellent Swan River Press, called in to mention that Jim Rockhill’s essay on Le Fanu and HPL was included in the anthology Reflections in a Glass Darkly. This volume also reproduces M R James’s entire lecture on Le Fanu.

Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu, by Gary William Crawford (Editor), Jim Rockhill (Editor), Brian J. Showers (Editor) was a Bram Stoker Award nominee –

“In this volume, the first collection of essays about Le Fanu, three distinguished scholars have amassed a wealth of material on every aspect of the author’s life, work, and influence.”

Enthusiasts of early supernatural writers, Le Fanu, and those interested in Le Fanu’s influence on the development of weird and supernatural fiction, can still get hold of a copy here:

reflections in a glass darkly

We strongly recommend browsing Swan River Press’s own back catalogue as well, for it contains many wonders.

swan river press main site

Our own current read from Swan River is The Dark Return of Time, by R B Russell, which is apparently being filmed right now, with Eric Roberts, Adrian Paul and Matthew Ziff, amongst others.

“Flavian Bennett is trying to leave his troubled past behind when he goes to work in his father’s British bookshop in Paris. Soon after he arrives he witnesses a violent crime in which a mysterious customer, Reginald Hopper, may be implicated. Hopper involves Flavian in his search for The Dark Return of Time, a rare and strange book which he thinks will provide the key to unlock his past.”

imdb

Given our known Jamesian interests, Brian added this:

“…On the topic of Le Fanu and James, did you know that Le Fanu originally coined the phrase “pleasing terror”? You’ll find it in, if memory serves, ‘All in the Dark’.”

Which we didn’t know, having failed to click with the novel in question. All in the Dark (1866) is not one of Le Fanu’s best works, sadly, and was poorly rated by both Lovecraft and James.

MRJ, as we said before, did have some Le Fanu favourites; HPL seems not to have got on well with the Irishman’s work, though may not have read some of his best stuff. James had to confess on this one:

“Weakest of all the novels is All in the Dark – a domestic story with a sham ghost: an offence hard to forgive in any writer but much harder in Le Fanu’s case, seeing that he could deal so magnificently with realness without incurring any more expense.”

Royal Institution of Great Britain, March 16th, 1923

On the plus side for Le Fanu, he wrote many far better works, some of which we should cover here at some point. Given our involvement with Occult Detective Quarterly,  we should especially talk more about his ‘occult detective’, Dr Hesselius.

In the meantime,  why not take a break and listen to his Madam Crowl’s Ghost instead.

Incidentally, ‘A Pleasing Terror’ is also the title of the collection from Ash Tree Press, which includes:

“…all of M. R. James’s writings on the supernatural. In addition to the thirty-three stories from the COLLECTED GHOST STORIES, this volume includes a further three stories, seven story drafts left amongst his papers, all of his introductions and prefaces to his various collections, and his article ‘Stories I Have Tried to Write’. In addition, there are the texts of the twelve medieval ghost stories discovered and published by James, all of his articles about the ghost story, and his various writings on J. Sheridan Le Fanu.”

a pleasing terror

Hello, Caller – Are You Still There?

Turning to something completely different, this week we received an early copy of Issue 2 of Turn to Ash, a new magazine of dark fiction and horror. We mentioned Issues 0 (yes, really) and 1 in our interview with its presiding genius Benjamin Holesapple last Autumn (see the name’s benjamin…). This time it’s a themed issue, with the stories based around callers to Chuck Leek, a radio show host. As the original guidelines said:

“Charles “Chuck” Leek hosts The Late Night Leak – AM radio’s home for conspiracy theorists, monster hunters, spirit mediums, aliens, demons, angels, black-eyed children, shadow people, lizard people, time travelers, and anyone else who may go bump in the very darkest hour of the night. Tonight, Chuck is hosting an open lines show, and he wants his listeners to call in and tell him about their strangest, most terrifying, unexplainable experiences. Broadcasting from WORN 1600 AM in Orion, deep inside the haunted Ohio valley, Chuck wants to hear from YOU!”

Whilst the bulk of the fiction in Turn To Ash 2 follows this device of those who ring in to Leek’s show, the issue is anchored by a somewhat different perspective from Jonathan Raab. Jonathan Raab is the editor-in-chief of Muzzleland Press and the author of The Lesser Swamp Gods of Little Dixie, The Hillbilly Moonshine Massacre, and Flight of the Blue Falcon.

Probably not without relevance, the protagonist of Lesser Swamp Gods is a conspiracy theory radio show host turned county sheriff, Cecil Kotto, who finds himself thrust into the depths of a horrifying occult mystery.

Raab’s contribution here is a story about Chuck Leek which weaves its way through the issue, and provides a neat contrast to the other tales. Here’s what you’ll find within:

Cold Call Part I — Jonathan Raab
The Sun Screams in Retrograde — Rebecca J. Allred
The White Factory — Kurt Fawver
A Room with Two Views — Joanna Michal Hoyt
Lullabies from the Formicary — Betty Rocksteady
Cold Call Part II — Jonathan Raab
Rails — Thomas C. Mavroudis
Midnight in the Desert — Joseph Pastula
Cold Call Part III — Jonathan Raab
All that Moves Us — Evan Dicken
When the Trees Sing — S. L. Edwards
Cold Call Part IV — Jonathan Raab
OGRE — Joseph Bouthiette Jr
The Merger — A.P. Sessler
Death Run — Martin Rose
Cold Call Part V — Jonathan Raab

In addition there’s an interview with the talented Matthew M Bartlett, who we also talked to last Autumn, and some interesting essays on horror, the media and radio. A fine package, basically.

turn to ash store

And Turn to Ash 1 is still available from Amazon:

turn to ash 1 amazon uk

The Royal Road

Finally, we return to one of our favourite places, South America, where as far as weird, dark comics and art stand, you can’t go wrong. Argentina in particular is a hot-bed of talent, and many of our friends such as Diego Arandojo, Sebastian Cabrol and Pablo Burman (to name only a few) have been on greydogtales before.

We often ask if English language editions of their work are available, and that nice chap Matias Zanetti contacted us to say that his new project is indeed on-line and readable either in Spanish or English. So we had to have a look.

Camino Royal, or the Royal Road, is a new comic linked loosely to the Tarot and readings. The first issue offers a speculative, dystopian tale, set in a world where an infection has spread throughout humanity, and the survivors struggle to stop themselves degenerating. There’s something wrong with the water – or is there?

Fear of the Modified outside their walls is rife. One protagonist believes that the Modified may represent a new future; the majority of people want to ignore them or cure them. El Camino Real was the Inca road system’s backbone, as the Spanish colonial powers of South America named it, but here it refers (we think) more to a route or journey of discovery.

As Matias says in his introduction:

“Each episode’s narrative structure, its characters, even the genre they belong to are created through the interpretation of three Major Arcana cards, chosen through fate and guided through our intentions.”

The striking cover is by Hugo Emmanuel Figueroa, and the interior full colour art is by German Genga.

Camino Real 1 is available from Holograma Comics on-line, on the basis that you pay what you think is appropriate. It’s interesting and enjoyable, and we definitely want to know what happens next.

Camino Real #1: Treshold

We’re nearly out of time. Issue 1 of Occult Detective Quarterly is shipping in the next few days, and we need to update you soon on plans for the next few issues.

Not Quite Award Winning

Plus, as there’s a couple of days left, we’ll once again nag you to vote for greydogtales in the Preditors & Editors Awards under Best Review Site. Why should you do such a mad thing? Because little bits of such recognition allow us more access to the cool stuff and cool creators we drag on board. That way everybody wins, so every vote really does count. Click that link for a feel-good moment…

critters web-site awards (open until 14th January)

What would you choose for your daily dose of weird fiction? Insane Lovecraftian gibberings as minds break down on exposure to cosmic horror? A growing sense of futility and failure when the truth of the world reveals itself? Or perhaps a lingering, bitter-sweet recognition that we are not meant to know what existence really is, but that we must persevere regardless? And while we’re asking questions, what has Peter Cushing got to do with writer Sheridan Le Fanu and his great-uncle? Come inside, stranger, and sit yourself down on this oddly-shaped iron chair…

Why We Don’t Know What We’re Doing

Greydogtales is not one of those gosh-darned clever literary sites. We don’t worry about genre questions a lot, but we like to poke a stick at things now and then. Last year we ran five particular ‘weird fiction’ features which garnered an unexpected amount of attention, and we thought we’d revisit those articles very briefly, a final farewell. And add new stuff, some of our usual semi-scholarly quotes, and peculiar trivia, because… because it’s what we do.

Each of those features considered aspects of weird fiction and its writers, from old-timers H P Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber, to current explorers John Langan and Michael Wehunt. In the process we travelled with some unexpected bedfellows, such as Lodovico Ariosto and G K Chesterton. We’ll start gently with a musing or two on the subject at hand…

There is no definition of the genre, if it is a genre at all. Maybe it’s an animal that you only recognise when you see it, different for each person. Apart from the broad themes we mentioned at the start, ‘weird fiction’ can include:

• Transgressive horror stories questioning current social mores;
• Ghost stories which break the traditional boundaries, questioning the nature of who haunts who;
• Re-interpretations of classic horrors, even vampire tropes, which twist the roots of where such fears come from;
• Dark fantasy tales which shed the typical pseudo-Medieval trappings;
• Questioning speculative fiction along the lines of Philip K Dick, Zelazny, and Delaney;
• Bizarro works of satire and subversion;
• Magical realism and surreal visions stemming from writers like Kafka and Borges.

We can try and say that modern weird fiction has a predominant psychological element, that we are the monsters, but that doesn’t pin anything down either. The weird tale of the early Twentieth century had its psychological nightmares; today’s fiction has its physical monstrosities. Quiet horror is another term for some contemporary weird fiction, but can be surprisingly hard to define as well.

So we don’t really know what we read or what we write, in short. China Mieville expressed one view in the Guardian newspaper:

“I don’t think you can distinguish science fiction, fantasy and horror with any rigour, as the writers around the magazine Weird Tales early in the last century (Lovecraft in particular) illustrated most sharply. So I use the term ‘weird fiction’ for all fantastic literature – fantasy, SF, horror and all the stuff that won’t fit neatly into slots.”

May 2002

In his extended essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, H P Lovecraft himself laid out the genre as he saw it back then:

“The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain – a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”

1927, revised 1933/34

And we featured Lovecraft in our top three features last year…

Blasphemous Polyps – Quick Sale Due to Incipient Insanity

Musing on H P Lovecraft’s work and his impact on weird fiction is a popular past-time, though not without its pitfalls. In May 2016 we opened up the topic of New Lovecraftian weird fiction, mentioning Paula Guran’s Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, and were delighted that John Langan and Michael Wehunt provided us with exclusive comments on their contributions to the anthology.

cthulhu may not live here any more

Add in Bobby Dee’s Sex and Cthulhu Mythos, and we had a major spike in website hits. Which was nice.

In July we dared to question Great Cthulhu Himself, and looked at the mythological basis of two maritime monstrosities who populate weird fiction and fantasy, Cthuhlu and the Kraken. Spoiler: Our conclusion was that neither are perhaps as ‘squiddy’ as people think – and that Alfred Lord Tennyson is still a good read.

krakens and cthulhus – squids no more

The other HPL-related feature we ran which broke the usual records was our inadequate contemplation of the connections between theosophy and weird fiction in December. Assisted again by scholar Bobby Dee, who provided some fascinating HPL letter extracts, it’s a subject which deserved far more time. We peppered it with as many notional fancies and trivia as we could fit in, and received a lot of interest in it.

h p lovecraft and the lords of venus

When Irish Eyes are Scary

On to some olden days connections now. Re-reading the HPL essay reminded us that the term weird fiction is supposed to have originated with Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73), author of such scary stories as “Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter” and “Green Tea”.

Lovecraft wasn’t a great Le Fanu fan, though he thought Green Tea superior to the other pieces he’d read by the Irishman. If you’re interested, you can read a discussion of HPL’s exposure to Le Fanu on the wormwoodiana site here:

wormwoodiana

M R James, who would not perhaps have wished to be included in the weird fiction movement, said of Le Fanu (lecture to the Royal Institution of Great Britain):

“Only one novelist known to me ever refers to Sheridan Le Fanu as an acknowledged authority or master in the particular line to which he devoted himself: the name of this writer is respectable but not more. It is James Payn. Probably if the works of Andrew Lang ever have a concordance made to them, the name of Le Fanu will be found to occur in it. But the fact remains that Le Fanu is not at the moment the occupier of any particular pedestal. There has never been a boom in his writings. I am not anxious for one, though if it comes I shall be prepared to concede the great author of booms, Poet Gosse, several points or bisques.

I do not then claim for this author any very exalted place, but I desire to advance the claim that he has attained supremacy in one particular line: he succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer.”

March 1923

If Le Fanu can be seen as a Founding Father of weird fiction (rather than merely as someone who coined the phrase), it’s because he tended to imply his monsters bit by bit, and let the style and tone of the story do its work. And maybe the subtle disquiet used in some of his stories did help shape later works by other writers. From James again:

“…how does he contrive to inspire horror? It is partly, I think, owing to the very skilful use of a crescendo, so to speak. The gradual removal of one safeguard after another, the victim’s dim forebodings of what is to happen gradually growing clearer; these are the processes which generally increase the strain of excitement. “The Familiar” and the concluding chapters of Uncle Silas are the best specimens of this. And again the unexplained hints which are dropped are of the most telling kind. The reader is never allowed to know the full theory which underlies any of his ghost stories, but this Le Fanu has in common with many inferior artists. Only you feel that he has a complete explanation to give if he would only vouchsafe it.

“Who was the person who, in Uncle Silas, was heard to say “Fly the Fangs of Belisarius”? Where did Minheer Vanderhausen take his wife to? What was the rationale of the mysterious coach and the lady and her servants who brought Carmilla the Vampire to the house where she was to find a new victim? And what exactly was it that passed when Lewis Pyneweck and the hangman came to see Mr Justice Harbottle? We are never told. The trick of omission or suppression may be used in a very banal fashion, but Le Fanu uses it well.”

ibid

(Quotes copyright N J R James, full lecture notes text available courtesy of Ghosts and Scholars archive – james on le fanu )

In 2014, Swan River Press of Dublin released the commemorative anthology Dreams of Shadow and Smoke, which featured ten new tales of the fantastic and macabre written in celebration of the bicentenary of Dublin’s “Invisible Prince”. It’s unfortunately out of print, but does lead us to one of our surprise successes of the year, where we celebrated Swan River’s new edition of The Pale Brown Thing. This was Fritz Leiber’s ‘precursor’ or ‘companion’ to his justly celebrated novel Our Lady of Darkness, a book which should be read by all weird fiction enthusiasts. You can read all about it here:

the pale brown thing & a dose of de quincey

The last feature which entered our Top Five came from the same roots as we started with today- what is weird fiction? So we stood up and named five books which may not be found on the usual lists, each of which is part of, or has contributed to the development of, this beguiling non-genre. Again, we had a most positive response.

five weird fantasy books not on fantasy lists

And that’s our round-up of the five most popular weird fiction posts on greydogtales during 2016. So there.

Graphic and Novel

Whilst we’re on the topic, we almost opened a can of weird worms after we interviewed Paul St.John Mackintosh in October. We’re not cautious in the fiction we consume (or produce, for that matter), but we try to keep greydogtales itself accessible to all tastes. Paul’s fascinating collection Blowback contained two or three stories which despite the quality of the writing were hard to discuss directly on the site because of the subject matter. This sparked a discussion about weird fiction – what it was for and how far it should go.

Paul, who is a delight in debate, and not a shy communicator, then wrote a piece for his own blog which explored some interesting points.

“Primarily, I want to expand on what I’ve been saying about quiet horror, compared to other types of horror. This isn’t intended as a blanket criticism of quiet horror as a sub-genre (whatever my reservations about pressing any definition of a sub-genre into service as a marketing category), but more as a prophylactic against lazy, pedestrian, or otherwise imperfectly realized quiet horror, as well as a reminder that other styles of horror do exist, with reason. If anything, it’s a plea for some – but not all – quiet horror writers to spread their wings and raise their game, as well as a cautionary note about the sub-genre’s shortcomings.”

You can read the whole piece here:

quiet horror-unquiet horror-disquieting horror

And our original interview with him is below:

transgressions, lovecraft and inner demons

The Pre-Stoker Awards

We’re now planning our 2017 programme, and… what? Peter Cushing? Oh yes. Well, you remember that Le Fanu chap, from above. He also wrote the famous Carmilla vampire novella (1871-72), which came well before Bram Stoker’s Dracula and included some serious lesbianic themes, although expressed carefully for the sensibilities of the time.

20^th century film adaptations have variously toned down or ramped up the overt lesbian aspects. Possibly the most familiar version will be the Hammer Film Productions, released as The Vampire Lovers (1970). This starred Ingrid Pitt in the lead role, Madeline Smith as her victim, and, of course, Peter Cushing. Vampire Lovers is sometimes described as part of the Karnstein trilogy of films, which includes Lust for a Vampire and Twins of Evil.

Not only was Cushing also in Twins of Evil, but he has an earlier connection to the works of the Le Fanu family. The noted playwright Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (1751– 1816) was Sheridan Le Fanu’s great-uncle, and The School for Scandal is amongst those works of his which are still well known.

This play, first performed in 1777, introduced the conniving characters Lady Sneerwell and her cousin Miss Verjuice, though sadly Verjuice was written out in some revisions. Sheridan was one of those constant tinkerers.

“The School for Scandal is the quintessential creation about people blabbering about people. Here is sham, snobbery and betrayal in full regalia…”

Critic Alvin Klein

It’s a witty play and observant even now, with only the odd dodgy bit. And would you believe it, Peter Cushing was in it many decades ago, performing as part of the Old Vic company with none other that Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. There’s proper trivia for you, dear listener.

In the next week or so: All sorts of strangeness, but probably something on Adam Nevill’s new book Under a Watchful Eye. And don’t forget to make it look as if you’ve voted for greydogtales as mega-best website in the Critters awards. It only takes a quick email adress to make us famous-ish…

critters web-site awards (open until 14th January)

Twiglet was a dog. A classic dog, the sort you got in Enid Blyton books. She had that certain smell when she got wet; she was full of adventure and eager to explore with her so-called master (me). She passed on in July 2016, at the age of sixteen plus, and left a large, chocolate labrador shaped hole behind. So it seems fitting, six months later, to celebrate the unexpected last three years of her life, when she suddenly found herself part of a lurcher pack. Which must have been a bit of a surprise.

She’d already had a strange association with one lurcher. Jade was a Bedlington x wolfhound x greyhound sort of a lurcher, one of those mixes you can’t ever fully identify. For thirteen years, Twiglet lived in a home with no definite alpha dog. Jade was crackers. High prey instinct, tendency to bite the calves of people she didn’t know, neurotic enough to throw herself through a window-pane to get at the postman, and so on. A night-pacer, never settled, and too unsure to be boss. Even the behaviourists were a bit flummoxed by her.

Twiglet loved Jade in her own loyal way – even though they would fight if one of them felt trapped. We came home one day to find that they’d got stuck in the bathroom together, and the walls were sprayed with blood. I’ve seen hack-and-slash horror films which paled in comparison. We’d only been out for an hour or so, but they’d managed to jam the door shut after them and go to it with a vengeance. It was one of those scenes where the police pathologist looks at the ceiling and says “From the length of the blood spurt, the victim was *alive* when the knifeman struck!” Thankfully, it turned out to be from those sort of ear wounds which bleed a lot but don’t even need tape or stitches.

Despite this, if Jade was outside and dinner was served, Twiglet would bark to tell her (and us). She signalled every opportunity for food or walkies so that Jade knew what was happening. And she kept us updated on how Jade was doing. The most touching moments were when the old lurcher started to lose the use of her back legs. After that, if Jade collapsed in the garden, or upstairs, Twiglet would come to us and bark until we went and picked Jade up. “What’s that, Lassie? Mr McGregor has fallen down the old mine shaft? We’re on our way.”

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising then that when we lost Jade (also at about sixteen years), our chocolate labrador went into a distinct decline. She started peeing inside sometimes, moping around the house, and lost much of her vigour. We thought it could be her own gradually failing physical health, but it was more psychological. She was mourning.

It should be said that Twiglet was a stubborn dog. Mind-numbingly obstinate, in fact. If she wanted a cup of tea (which she always did), she would sit and stare at me for at least half an hour until I gave in and passed the cup down to her. If she wanted to go somewhere, she would shove me and the furniture out of the way.

We planted seriously prickly, thorny bushes in key parts of the garden to channel her. She slammed her way through the densest, spikiest hedging imaginable, as if it were candyfloss. She lay down where she chose. In doorways, on the bed, on your feet. It didn’t matter what you said to her, or how much you attempted to use ‘training’. She did what she wanted, when she wanted.

But we wanted her to be happier, and to recover from the loss of Jade. There was something which Twiglet needed, and we were pretty sure that it was canine companionship. We tried introducing her to a puppy, but she was having none of that. A rescue worker suggested that we let her enjoy her ‘golden years’ as she was, alone, but that didn’t feel right.

So we looked out for another dog, maybe an adult who would be more ready for an old dog’s ways. Another labrador, perhaps, or a placid animal who wouldn’t be bothered, and wouldn’t bother Twiglet. We would let them meet a number of times on walks, have a new dog around more in stages, and maybe she would accept another presence in the house, after a while…

Which is why we suddenly ended up with two large, highly active longdogs we’d never met, driven hundreds of miles on spec from the other end of the country. Obviously. Being a devout lurcher enthusiast, I confess that I was a major moving force, though the Editor-in-Chief had to admit that they were appealing. I loved Twiglet, but boy, these two were too good to miss. Mega-fabulous deerhound/greyhound crosses, urgently needing a new home, factory-set for long walks and wild runs.

(We were fortunate in our back-up, as well. Lurcher Link helped with every stage, and organised a foster so that all possibilities were covered. They were thorough in all the right places, and incredibly helpful. More at lurcher link online )

Don’t get me wrong. We had discussed at length, and were prepared for, the possible downside. Twiglet backed into a corner and snarling, fights for dominance, even Twiglet refusing to bond at all. We couldn’t entirely dismiss that buried fear that it would make her feel that she was no longer important and push her into a faster decline. If Jade had been hard work for her, then what was this fresh Lurcher Hell we’d concocted for a tired old lab, content to snooze in her basket for the rest of her days? Two Jades at once, two longdogs who were pre-bonded and didn’t need her in the way.

At the same time, she wasn’t thriving as she was, so…

Twiglet’s reaction to this momentous event couldn’t have been more surprising. Unlike her previous responses, she was interested in these two. Within days, all thoughts of tentative foster were over. Django and Chilli were staying. Within weeks, everything had changed:

• Her continence and her mood improved visibly;
• She jostled at the food bowls to get her portion of raw food, as if she’d been raised on it;
• She queued up at the door to have a walk with the lurchers, even on days when she was wobbly on her pins;
• Recognising Chilli’s dominance, she and Django became immediate buddies, even to the point of snoozing together while Chilli claimed the best chair.

It also highlighted how disturbed Jade had been. These two were well-balanced little donkeys. Django was perhaps the Jade that Twiglet had always secretly wanted – less mad, more comfortable to doze with, and totally disinterested in fighting, biting or throwing a wobbly. By the end of the first month, Twiglet had become an honorary ‘lurcher’, as much a part of the pack as anyone.

And she became leaner and fitter on the bones and raw food diet. We’d had doubts about shifting her to it at her age – thirteen or fourteen. Not only did she love it, but she shifted from Poo Categories 3 and 4 to a permanent Category 5 (see lurchers for beginners: poo for more graphic details). That was, to be honest, a big bonus for all humans concerned. A big, semi-continent labrador is not always the sort of talking point you want at dinner. There are only so many smells you can blame on your guests. “Been at the sardines again, Lady Fortescue?”

I miss Twiglet dreadfully, even six months after her death. You do when you get so close to a dog. I spent more time with her than I did with any human. The great thing, however, is that the longdogs gave her a new lease of life. A few weeks before we got Django and Chilli, the vet had warned us that she might not see the year out. Instead of fading away, she had three and a half more years which were lively, full of canine companionship and healthy competition.

Sometimes, whether by accident or design, you find out that you did the right thing. Farewell, little juggernaut of my heart.

Back in a couple of days with the weird stuff. In the meantime, do vote for greydogtales as a jolly nice website at the Critters Awards. All they ask for is an email address, and it might mean Django gets an extra chicken carcass…

critters web-site awards (open until 14th January)