“Yes, I betrayed my children, destroyed a nation, and forgot to iron the cat, but I had a story to promote – you must understand…” Today, for October Frights – explanations, extracts, and an egg, for those who don’t know who we are…

It is a sad truth that authors strive mightily to draw attention to their work, to rise above the myriad agonised voices of other writers in a scenario reminiscent of the cries from a Circle of Hell. Embedded in the ice of insignificance, we cry out to any passing Dante or Virgil. Which gets tiring after a while.

At greydogtales we sort of gave in bothering strangers with excessive promotion about one week after starting the site. We drifted into writing about interesting weird fiction, why the Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ doesn’t make any sense if you analyse it, and lurchers.  Here we are mostly about exploring curiosities and enjoying yourself. And lurchers. Did we say that enough?

Thus, as we join the annual October Frights Blog Hop for the third time, it’s mainly because we get on with some of the people involved. More than thirty writers share their blog links and post something frighty, Octobery or similar. There are competitions, extracts and general celebrations – it’s like a cross between a yard sale and a vicarage tea party, but where the stall holders may be more worrying than the normal ones.

Our stall is the usual mess. There’s something nasty at the bottom of the bran-tub; when you thought you’d won a book, you ended up with a bag of out-of-date dog treats, and when you wanted a dog, you got a disturbing collection of strange stories. This is a Good Thing, if you like variety, but possibly not if you prefer your life tidy and well-defined.

John Linwood Grant, who runs this disaster, writes strange fiction and gets dragged around by large lurchers. Should you want to know about the dogs and not about the fiction (entirely understandable), you can find a lot of of lurcher fun through this Index link:

LURCHERS TRIUMPHANT! THE SECRET INDEX

JLG is a professional writer and editor, and also the lead editor of the magazine Occult Detective Quarterly. His fiction side includes over thirty published short stories, a novella and collection, with more on its way. As he tries to write the stories that interest him, the material is quite varied. Admittedly, murder features a lot, along with madness and the supernatural. A substantial chunk of his work is set between the 1880s and the 1920s, though he doesn’t need much encouragement to foray into more modern weird.

As part of the October Frights Blog Hop, we’re going to include some extracts which might give you a taste of what you can expect. We also have a feeling that an e-copy of his latest collection A Persistence of Geraniums and other worrying tales might be available to win through the Rafflecopter link and process. We’re never sure about these things.

THE BLOG HOP: Right at the bottom of the next few posts, you’ll see clickable links to all the other sites which are taking part, so you can have a browse around.

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October Frights Snippets

For today, here are two very different extracts to give you a taste of what old greydog writes.

An Egg

This comes from a series of short stories about a 1920s old black conjure woman, whose hoodoo and head skills take her across Eastern America, helping folk out as the need arises and turning back at least a little of the darkness…

The old woman was down by the crossroads one late day, scratching in the dirt, when the Dark Man came by. He was taller than trees, yet fitted neat enough inside a dusty brown suit. He tilted his straw hat to one side, and leaned on his stick.

‘You laying a trick in my place?’ he asked. He had a voice like corn-pipes scraping together. “Playing the crossroads without asking, maybe?”

She clicked her big teeth, and carried on what she was doing.

The Dark Man squinted.

‘That an egg in your hand, woman? Fussing with your rootwork, and spinning your tricks. Suppose you’ve got some devilry inside that egg, ready to be buried and gone.’ He shook his head, jowls loose and flapping. “Red flannel and Damnation powder, all you little conjure-folk.”

And he laughed, none too kindly.

She looked up. The Dark Man saw a broad nose, and lips which held back teeth fit for a Kentucky Derby. One eye was darker than him; the other was milk-and-honey, and where it was looking even he couldn’t tell. His crooked cane twitched, not so sure.

“What’s your name, woman?”

She straightened her back, bones creaking.

“In Pike County yonder, they call me the Negro Lady, and they don’t spit in my sight. Elsewhere, I go by Mamma Lucy,” she said. “You aimin’ to trouble me ’bout it, boy?”

Taller than trees, sly as the smallest dog, the Dark Man tipped his red straw hat to the conjure-woman.
“No, ma’am, he said, respectful.

And the dusk was empty, except for an old lady in a faded print-dress.

Some folk go to the crossroads to make a deal, they say. Silver tongues or silver strings; fortunes to be made, loves to be slighted. Others take candles and mirrors to fix a trick and make it hold.

Mamma Lucy went there because she had an egg, and she sure as hell couldn’t leave it lying round for any fool to steal.
Tomorrow she might be hungry.

You can find Mamma Lucy around, most recently in the anthology Speakeasies and Spiritualists, curated by Nicole Petit, from 18thWall Productions, and in the Weirdbook Annual- Witches, edited by Douglas Draa. More tales of the conjure-woman are on their way.

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The Jessamine Touch

This is a story rooted firmly in the Edwardian era, as are many of greydog’s pieces. Less usually for his Tales of the Last Edwardian series, this one is set in the States, in period Virginia…

Other visits to the Jessamine Garden, as I now called it, followed. He introduced me to so many plants that I lost count. It seemed that there was nothing within those red-brick walls which could not kill. Cattle grazing there would have been dead within the day, ordinary men who toyed with its contents within the hour. But the garden was less strange than the man.

My own feelings set aside, I was still fascinated as to how St Claire could be so unaffected by the poisons with which he surrounded himself. He avoided the subject at first, preferring to introduce me to other corners of his realm.

“Here, my friend.” He pointed to an attractive plant with many small leaflets. “Jequirity, or Indian licorice. Also know as the jumbie bead. If even a morsel of the small red seed is swallowed it can bring convulsions. Some Caribbean folk take this to be a sign that a jumbie, or evil spirit, has entered the person. Others say to the contrary, claiming that it wards off the jumbie.”

“You have tried it?”

He looked at me. “Of course. There is nothing here that I have not tried. Or that another bold soul could not essay for themselves with my tutelage.”

I tried to sound unaffected. “And how many have you…instructed?

“It’s been far too long. It demands utter commitment and resolve. But surely a veteran possesses these traits?”

The memory of a trooper’s parted lips; the stare of an actor outside a theater near Santa Fe. My throat became dry, and I could only nod my assent.

“Then you must gain experience,” he said, “For intellectual exploration is a sterile thing.”

“I must take poison?”

“No, I would hardly seek to end our relationship in so coarse a manner.”

“My visits are not an inconvenience, then?”

“You are curious. But I think you suffer from a malady that has curiosity as just one symptom.”

“My affliction?” I anticipated him remarking upon my leg and hip.

“Loneliness.”

I trembled.

He held up a hand. “A man who tends a garden develops an eye for rare blooms. Come, sit with me.”

An old log lay near the jequirity, and I eased myself down next to him. The afternoon sun had brought crickets and other insects to the long grass by the gravel – darnel or poison rye-grass, of course. St Claire was consistent in his plantings. The insects strummed and buzzed according to their types as St Claire rolled up his sleeves.

“Do you trust me?” His pupils were wide, despite the sun, almost eclipsing the pale blue irises of his eyes. Flexing his long fingers, he began to undo the top buttons of my shirt. I stiffened, but did not resist. I expected his touch, but when he placed the palm of his hand against my breast, I think I gave a gasp. This time he pressed down firmly and prolonged the contact. Heat again, more intense than last time. I waited, dry-mouthed, for something to happen…

“Oh.” I felt my heart flutter, its beat now unreliable, and a sense of fever, of flush. A rash had already appeared where he touched me, but more alarming was the inner disquiet, that sensation when you first feel fear–or love, I imagine. Despite my alarm I did not pull away. My pulse raced, then slowed, raced again. I knew that in some way I was being poisoned, yet I was also experiencing Julian St Claire.

“Let your heart see for you,” he whispered.

He was a fire of blood, laced with such chemicals as I could not imagine, a burning presence of fibres and arteries in a slim, quiet body…

He withdrew his fingers suddenly. Five lines of painful blisters had formed across my breast, radiating from where he had touched me. My pulse settled, faster than it had been but once more under a degree of control.

“What… what are you, sir?” I gasped.

The above extract is from the anthology, His Seed, edited by Steve Berman and published by Lethe Press. Just for a change, this happens to be an anthology of unusual gay stories. Greydog has his colourful moments.

“A tree with healing fruit is guarded by a strange creature called ‘The Wild Man.’ A new species of plant which thrives on more than water and tender loving care. These are just two of the fascinating and beautifully written stories in the latest collection from Lethe Press. From thick forests to wide-open landscapes, pumpkin patches to greenhouses, and many strange places in between, there is more to see in these author’s minds than you might expect. This is without a doubt one of the most original and well-written gay erotic anthologies I’ve read in a long time.” (Amazon review)

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Buy this book and feed a lurcher!

A first collection of Tales of the Last Edwardian is now available, entitled  A Persistence of Geraniums and other worrying tales. This collection, illustrated by Paul Boswell, pulls together some of the English side of things, with creepy or scary stories set in London, Suffolk and Yorkshire. Five-star reviews on Amazon UK and US:

“A subtle treasure.”

“…Equally filled with both darkness and whimsy.”

“A delicious mixture of ghosts, horror and mystery.”

“There is much to praise about this collection–the subtlety of the storytelling, the believability of the characters and the way their actions pushed each plot forward, the elegant prose…”

“Horror stories with a heart and a conscience.”

A world where the psychic, the alienist and the assassin carry out their strange duties whilst quiet tragedies unfold. These are tales of murder, madness and the supernatural in an Edwardian England never quite what it seems. From rural Yorkshire to the heart of the City, death is on the air, and no one can sense it better than Mr Dry, the lethal Deptford Assassin.

Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/dknZvPs

Amazon US http://a.co/3Ax8qzD

 

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Do come back for more October Frights in a day or so…

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(We’re the third ‘Leave a blog comment’ down. Maybe.)