Do you like exciting new weird fiction magazines, packed with great stories, features and art? Of course you do, unless you’re here for the lurchers, in which case hang in there until next week. Today, dear listener, we have the pleasure of welcomingSkelos to the neighbourhood. And do we give this a quick mention and run away? No, we do not. Instead we have a cracking interview with Jeffrey Shanks, one of the masterminds behind Skelos. And we throw in some Conan the Barbarian trivia – and even music – afterwards, of course.
I’m going to astonish everyone today by posting a few serious notes on how not to submit a story to a magazine or anthology. There will be a distinctly low level of the usual sarcasm, irony or outright lies. Nor will I suggest that anyone should give up hope and consider a career in plastering. Besides, high quality plastering is quite difficult.
always remind yourself of what you are doing, in case you get distracted
Do I have any justification for my comments? The answer is a resounding Possibly. I sell the majority of my own story submissions (a statement which will inevitably result in a string of dismissive outright rejections) – and then there’s the process of long-listing for a magazine, which has highlighted a lot of simple problems that others face. Continue reading So You Want to Submit a Story?→
When we were very young, there were small, devious goblins living in the grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs which adorned our rickety farmhouse. And possibly in the old mahogany armoire as well, underneath the fusty blankets. Slugs the size of bananas crept nightly across the stone-flagged floor to investigate the dog bowl, and the kitchen smelled of pigeon innards. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
a goblin, speaking to one of our reporters yesterday
Anyway, where were we? Today we’re all about recent weird fiction and interesting books again, in an almost regular feature which we’re going to start calling “None of our Long Articles or Interviews Are Ready Yet”. But we do it because there’s so much good stuff coming out these days. Yes we do, cross someone’s else’s heart and look the other way.
An August Chiller
First up is the new book by a writer we’ve come to admire, having devoured his unusual novel The Surgeon’s Mate: A Dismemoir. We interviewed him not so long ago, and now his latest book A Brutal Chill in August is available for pre-order, to be published on 30th August.
The world is full of stories concerning Jack the Ripper (not that they’re all bad, just that the sheer volume dilutes attention from the better ones). Alan M Clark brings new life to this area by writing what are essentially historical novels which explore the horror and darkness of the real lives of the women killed by the Whitechapel Murderer (alan m clark on greydogtales). It’s a valuable and deeply researched approach, and we doubt that ABrutal Chillin August will disappoint. Check here for UK purchase details.
If this is your scene, either as a reader or as a writer interested in period detail and attitudes, Alan has also been blogging, section by section, about Jack London’sPeople of the Abyss. You can check out where he’s got to here:
All greydogtales listeners will know that we have an inexplicable connection to Argentina – we can’t remember how it happened but we ended up enthralled by the sheer creativity of the comics and graphic novel people over there. One such chap is Luciano Vecchio, working with Totem Comics – he does some cool work, which can be seen on-line. Yes, it’s in Spanish, but the art is great in itself. This one’s Tribu Escondida – the Hidden or Unseen Tribe.
We’re also told that HOUNDS, a graphic novel which we have mentioned before, should be available on-line in the next few weeks. An Argentinian masterpiece of classic supernatural/occult detective tales, newly interpreted by some of our favourite artists, including Sebastian Cabrol, we have some links which we’ll post when the graphic novel is up. Editorial Pictus tell us that there’s no English translation yet, but that they hope to look into this eventually.
Bleak, Bleak, Bleakity-Bleak
Rich Hawkins, that surprisingly non-Argentinian writer, has shocked the world of bleak and apocalyptic horror this year by turning into a novella engine. We say shocked in the full knowledge that there’s probably another verb but that one will do for now. ‘Mildly intrigued’ has no headline value. Rich is a fine writer, though he doesn’t half kill a lot of people, and there are usually many tears before bedtime. Rich has recently been putting out glimpses of horror direct to Amazon, ranging from shorts such as Fallen Soldier to full novellas like Scavengers. Deathcrawl is his latest one:
“When the village of Beacon Fell is hit by an epidemic of violence, Jed Kittridge is one of the few people immune to the bloodlust that has turned his friends and neighbours into killers and rapists. Insanity fills the air. Friends become enemies. And in the aftermath of such death and destruction, all that matters is survival… because the world will never be the same again.”
Although most of our Friday nights are like this, we shall read with interest.
No? Well, you have to like Flann O’Brien, we suppose. The title’s merely an excuse to celebrate more goodness from that stylish Irish publisher Swan River Press. Their main August release is You’ll Know When You Get There, by Lynda E Rucker, the award-winning American writer. Inside, you’ll find nine unsettling stories of loss and the unusual, with an introduction by Lisa Tuttle.
Lynda Rucker said of her work, in a 2013 interview:
“I think that (a sense of inevitability) is a feature of a certain type of horror, and it is often a feature of the horror that I write. In a way, I suppose, it sort of violates a central principle of storytelling in which the protagonist needs to keep making an effort to solve the problem—the active protagonist, if you will. My protagonists often, though not always, tend to be more doomed than active.
“This is actually a really interesting question, and I’m going to have to think about it some more; I have a sense that if the protagonist is really active, the story sometimes becomes something other than horror, but I’m not sure about that!”
It’s on the Top Shelf in a Brown Paper Cover, Madam
Something which probably deserves a whole article in itself is the sudden arrival of many new dark, weird and horror magazines, both in print and on-line. This year sees the launch of Skelos, Gamut, Ravenwood Quarterly, Vastarien, Turn to Ash – and Occult Detective Quarterly (surprisingly co-edited by the old greydog himself in one of those ‘oh, why not’ moments).
We have a detailed interview/feature with Jeffrey Shanks of Skelos coming to greydogtales soon, and we’ll cover Ravenwood Press’s plans later in the year. You can always find out more about Occult Detective Quarterly’s progress above right, where we stick regular updates, or you can join the Facebook group here:
Gamut is on-line only, and dedicated to the noir side, whilst Vastarien is intended to cater for the needs of those Ligottian lovers of the literary and liminal (smart stuff). We shall investigate and report back in another post.
As for now, let’s give a quick nod to Turn to Ash. This is a print-only horror fiction zine, with its first issue due out at the end of this month and out to preorder on Amazon in the last week of August. Turn to Ash Volume 1 includes:
A Scent of Sage by Jason A. Wyckoff
The Monster I Became by Betty Rocksteady
Collectable by Tim Jeffreys
While the Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder
The Hunter by Terrence Hannum
Sod Webworms by Adrian Ludens
Hollow-Eyed Boys by Jordan Kurella
Chelsea Grin by Michael Kelly
What Makes a Shadow by J. Daniel Stone
The Recovered Journal of Marius Vladimirescu, Last of the Clown Hunters by Andrew Wilmot
So Dreamy Inside by C.C. Adams
The Mother Chase by Alana I. Capria
A Tooth for a Tooth by Matt Thompson
You can find out about the magazine at their website:
Yes, there’s lot more out as well, but we only have two researchers and they’re both longdogs. So other gems will have to wait. We can admit that our current reading list includes:
Dinosaur Valley, by K H Koehler, which looks like pulpy fun;
Black Propaganda, which you might call challenging and transgressive (it’s not for the faint-hearted), by Paul St John Mackintosh;
Lost Girl, by Adam Nevill, which basically looks like it’s going to be a Damn Good Book.
And we just finished Cult of Chaos, by Shweta Taneja, a rollicking good psychic/supernatural adventure through tantrik territory with a cool female protagonist. We ought to try and talk to Ms Taneja some time.
Off to the North Sea for two or three days to run the longdogs while it’s still technically Summer and the ice floes are being held at bay. Back by the middle of next week, and thank you all for listening…
A short diversion, dear listener. We’ve had a lot of weird books here recently, so we’re lurchering today. We’re going east, in fact, to the North Sea and the long sands of the Holderness coast. And you get longdog photos, as well as some pontificating about folklore in the Wolds. Huzzah! Puppies…
the sand-people
Though it’s not exactly puppies, only Django and Chilli charging around (all pics are clickable for a larger size, by the way). Every summer we let them loose on the shores and in the rolling fields of the Wolds, where we rarely see another dog and they don’t need their muzzles. Nidderdale, where we normally like to go, is sheep country. The longdogs are fine with stationary or ambling sheep, but start to look over-excited if a sheep runs, and we don’t risk things like that. The car-boot isn’t big enough to smuggle large quantities of mutton.
django remembers that he can’t drink seawater
Much of the coastal Wolds is straightforward agricultural land – wheat, barley and potatoes, and there are so many sandy stretches and coves that there’s always somewhere free. We also go there for the hundreds of caves and strange rocky formations. This is partly for the editor-in-chief to take photos, partly because we assume that one day we’ll find a bearded thug dragging a case of old rifles out of a cave. Then we’ll be in the newspapers, with a quote saying that he’d have got away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling dogs.
chilli takes a breather
Chilli has some sort of internal switch – as soon as her paws hit sand, she goes wild and charges around, trying to get Django to run and play immediately. And Django is a doofus. He sniffes bushes, clumps of grass, potters around and only later realises that he could be playing cavalry.
a semi-sea-dog
But he does like the sea, even though he still can’t work out why it tastes funny. He’s a happy splasher, not an Olympic swimmer, running after bits of seaweed, throwing water up in the air with his long muzzle and generally being Djangoid.
hot dog day
Cliffs are the editor-in-chief’s other delight. This is handy, as greydog himself is severely acrophobic and has fits just watching other people teeter on the edge of 300 foot sheer drops. So dogs and old man hide in the long grass whilst Eagle Scout One careens around near edges.
two fine detectives, trying to spot a potato field
“Oooh, look, I can see seals! Is that a seal right under this crumbling cliff edge with huge warning notices on it?”
“Maybe. Yes. I don’t know. Aaargh.” the bold writer replies, cowering on his knees.
As Chilli also likes climbing cliffs, and does so every time we look in another direction, it is clear that only two of the four of us have any real sense. Or, looking at Django upside down in his chair, perhaps one and a half of us.
chilli also remembers things. in this case, that she doesn’t do fetch.
We went to view the Gypsey Race as well, the river which spells doom or great events to come when it rises in full flood. Often a lot of it is underground, but then it rises suddenly and covers its whole run for a while. JLG himself mingled blood with the ‘Woe Water’ when he was a child, impaling his foot on a spike on its bed, and is thus destined to sink down every so often and almost disappear – although this may be something to do with his slipped disc.
“(The Gypsey Race) ran as a flood before the Black Death, before the Civil War, at the execution of Charles the First, in 1861 the year of the bad harvest, the two World Wars and also the bad winters of 1947 and 1962.
“But in 1530 it was lucky for Prior Willy from Bridlington when he was chased by wicked fairy types at Willy Howe because he managed to jump his horse over the stream and escape his pursuers (fairy folk can’t cross over fast-flowing water!) The stream also gave a good fortune to Queen Henrietta Maria when she sheltered in its banks at Beck Hill from cannon balls whilst in Bridlington in 1632.”
Bridlington Free Press
below flamborough lighthouse
The Prior above would presumably have been William Browneflete, who was confirmed in his office in 1521. Willy Howe is a fairly well-known tumulus/barrow mound in the area, though no conclusive remains have ever been found in it, and some suggest that it might have been used as a ceremonial spot or meeting place rather than for a specific burial. There are many tales about it – this one’s from William of Newburgh’s 12th Century History of English Affairs (a good source for all sorts of weird lore)
willy howe c. john phillips
“A certain rustic… going to see his friend, who resided in the neighbouring hamlet, was returning, a little intoxicated, late at night; when, behold, he heard, as it were, the voice of singing and revelling on an adjacent hillock, which I have often seen, and which is distant from the village only a few furlongs. Wondering who could be thus disturbing the silence of midnight with noisy mirth, he was anxious to investigate the matter more closely; and perceiving in the side of the hill an open door, he approached, and, looking in, he beheld a house, spacious and lighted up, filled with men and women, who were seated, as it were, at a solemn banquet.
“One of the attendants, perceiving him standing at the door, offered him a cup: accepting it, he wisely forbore to drink; but, pouring out the contents, and retaining the vessel, he quickly departed. A tumult arose among the company, on account of the stolen cup, and the guests pursued him; but he escaped by the fleetness of his steed, and reached the village with his extraordinary prize. It was a vessel of an unknown material, unusual colour, and strange form: it was offered as a great present to Henry the elder, king of England and then handed over to the queen’s brother, David, king of Scotland, and deposited for many years among the treasures of his kingdom; and, a few years since, as we have learnt from authentic relation, it was given up by William, king of the Scots, to Henry II, on his desiring to see it.”
Sadly the Race was low, and somewhat odiferous around Beck Hill where Henrietta Maria sheltered, so we let it sink again and went off with the longdogs to find more sand, most of which came back in the car.
the author and his research team in retreat
We have urgent reading and writing to do, so must stagger off. See you in a couple of days with curios and curiosities, but no cats…
swan river press
