Looking for something to read? No, we thought you weren’t, but we don’t listen anyway. So today we offer signposts for two weird works that are here, and two that are yet to come – a bit like ghosts at Christmas, or maybe plagues. Maybe those weren’t the best analogies, after all. Yet stay, grim visitor, and check out news of Skelos’s return, the Test Patterns anthology, and a Ravenwood Special, plus haunted words and houses from Angela Yuriko Smith…
Occult Detective Quarterly Presents
Not enough? Then before we begin on the four publications mentioned above, let’s announce a brand new anthology coming in 2018 from the Occult Detective Quarterly stables. ODQ regularly gets asked if will run longer fiction; sometimes writers send it anyway but it can’t be fitted in, and others bemoan the lack of markets for anything with a bit of meat/soya to it. We’re talking 8000 words plus.
Is there a genuine interest out there? ODQ hopes to find out through a new Kickstarter campaign, which is being run specifically to help support a first anthology of novelette and novella length fiction – ODQ Presents.
The stories, from experienced writers, are in the bag. The campaign offers a range of goodies, including ODQ Presents itself in eformat or print, subscriptions to ODQ at reduced prices, and more. Do check it out. Your support will:
- Ensure that the first ODQ Presents succeeds!
- Open up a potential new market for longer fiction.
- Increase the chances of commissioned illustrations for every story.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/280674519/occult-detective-quarterly-presents
A Home of Shadows
One book that is already here is Escape Claws, a quite unusual and moving collection. Not so long ago, we had the pleasure of hosting three dark poets – Ashley Dioses, Anita Stewart and Angela Yuriko Smith (A Horror of Poets http://greydogtales.com/blog/horror-poets/)
We’re always pressed for time and space, but we will mention Angela’s recent book Escape Claws in slightly more detail, because it’s somewhat different. If Ashley goes predominantly for the weird and dark, with a shimmer of the classic weird poets like Clark Ashton Smith, and Anita constructs short sharp bites of disturbing horror, Angela goes here for something deeply personal and haunting. Literally. From the introduction:
“All the houses I can remember living in were haunted. Of course, my memories are that of a child’s so perhaps what I remember won’t be scientifically provable facts. It is, however, the way I remember it, and that’s how I’m telling it— the truth I remember as a child.
“Some of it seems pretty unlikely. There are parts I don’t believe, even though I remember them. I am recounting it the way it unfolds in my mind, weaving the stories I’ve been told with the things I remember. This isn’t everything I remember. I’m keeping some things in reserve. For now, the focus on just four houses and the things I can’t explain.
“To understand these stories and poems, I need to tell some of my family history. Some of this is crazier than I could ever make up as fiction, even though you will find whispers of this story woven through everything I write. I don’t believe in pure fiction. It’s all just different shades of truth. So to begin, here is the story from the beginning I know—at the Kayoda House*. What I know is based on research and memory, both of which are fallible.”
*The Kayoda (or Kyoda House) relates to a possibly haunted site in Okinawa, the subject of a mixture of local lore and urban myth.
In Escape Claws, Angela covers four US houses where her family lived – in Kentucky, Wyoming, Tennessee and Maryland. Through short essays, images and poetry, she explores the houses and her recollections of her experiences in them, including an exorcism, strange visions and doorways filled with distorted light.
“Another memory that can’t be true: I’m sitting in front of our large, picture window on the floor. My dad sits behind me in an armchair. We are waiting for my mom to come home from work at Johnson and Johnson. I know that’s where baby powder comes from. We sit like this every day.
“I know my father is afraid. I can see it when I turn to look at him. Behind him is a destroyed man. Half of his face is missing and it reminds me of the hole in the kitchen floor. He is wearing a green uniform that is torn up. I’m pretty sure my dad knows that man is there by the way he is refusing to look anywhere but at the window.”
From Evansville, Kentucky
Between her honesty about what may and may not have been real, and illustrations of her early family life – not always comfortable ones – we are given a fascinating collection which stimulates the imagination and provokes personal reflections from the reader.
Item four.
Small pot made of
of unknown material.
Dark, heavy metal, possibly lead
embossed in a design of spider web.
The spider is a latrodectus
from the family Theridiidae
and she is wearing her hourglass backwards.
Two salamanders form the handles.
Fascinating, despite the widow’s error.
From Bric-a-brac
You can find Escape Claws here:
http://a.co/eWP9ytCThe Ghosts of Halloween
Also available now is the Ravenwood Halloween Special, which echoes Ravenwood Quarterly 2 from last Autumn, being another vibrant magazine collection of strange fiction and verse. And it has a striking cover again, this time from Mutartis Boswell. Our only complaint so far is that a lot of these writers are relatively young. Talent should not be in the hands of the young, but should be hoarded by old monoliths like greydog. Obviously.
Table of Contents
Samhain Remembered – K. A. Opperman
A Summoning – S. L. Edwards
Trick or Death – Calvin Demmer
Jakob’s Yard – Andrew Bell
The Great God Belial – Michael Shultz
Heiya Hush Ya – Donald Armfield
The Score – Brandon Barrows & Steve Rupp
A Place of Escape – Rob F. Martin
Apex Predator – Julie Frost
A Witch’s Necromancy – Ashley Dioses
These Guys – Russell Smeaton
Moundbuilders – Kevin Wetmore
Repeat by DJ Tyrer
The Goblin of Tara – Ashley Dioses
Walking the Veil – S. L. Edwards
Weatherall – Diane Arrelle
The Headless Horseman – K. A. Opperman
The Skull Beneath the Skin – Ashley Dioses
Cover art by Mutartis Boswell. Seek out the Ravenwood Halloween Special at the links below.
http://a.co/0wCCL67Those Things Which Are Yet to Be
We end with two weird wonders which will be available soon. We have advanced copies of both of them in our paws, and will be finding time to read them ‘any day now’, as we tell absolutely everyone. Sometimes it’s even true.
The Bones of Skelos
One is the third issue of Skelos – “A horror and fantasy journal featuring short fiction, essays, poetry, reviews, and art by both seasoned pros and talented newcomers”. This is a solid issue packed with a range of temptations, so until we’ve read it all, here’s the Table of Contents to give you an idea:
Fiction
Ten Thousand Drops – John R. Fultz
Cats of Dornishett – Michelle Muenzler
Book of Blasphemy – Keith Taylor
The Collection – Rhonda Eudaly
The Muttwhelp – Edward M. Erdelac
The Killing – Scott Cupp
Edderkop – Lynne Jamneck
Curse of the Dripping Blade – Christopher Fulbright
Fat Charlie – S. Boyd Taylor
Invitation to Dine – Cynthia Vespia
Last Pale Light in the West – Josh Rountree
Dead River Revenge – Part 1 – Chris Gruber
Pawns in the House of Ghosts – John C. Hocking
Poetry
The Prideful Scribe – Ashley Dioses
By the Deep-Green Sea – Peter Rawlik
Woman in the Feathered Mask – K. A. Opperman
Destroyers – Wade German
The Last Battle – Aurelia Wilder
Rogue – Chad Hensley
Jirel – Pat Calhoun
With article and reviews in addition to the above, Skelos #3 will be out soon.
Dad, The Screen’s Gone Weird
Our other forthcoming pleasure is a launch anthology from a new gang, Planet X Publications. Test Patterns, edited by Duane Pesice and introduced by Michael Adams, includes some great and striking writers of the weird.
It would be quite inappropriate to single out any one of them, and so we offer a particular round of applause at the presence herein of Matthew M Bartlett, who we love (but not carnally, not with our back problems). His particular wry, dark style of fiction always stirs our cockles and exercises our mussels. As for the other fine folk, read ‘em and quiver.
We quote from the introduction:
Sometime after the creature features and midnight movies, you begin fading in and out of conscious reality until you wake at last to find the broadcast day is done, the station has signed off for the ight.
A standard test pattern glares out at you from the screen.
Disappointed your trip didn’t take you farther into those outer reaches of consciousness, you begin to debate the merits of finding your bed when you begin to notice… changes… in the image.
There is something else there, something just past those familiar predictable graphics and gradients, another vestigial transmission trying to break through… it’s there, past the surface of the screen, and if you stare long enough, focus deeply enough, you’ll see it, the programming that rides in the interstices of the carrier wave. You are on the precipice of discovery, the television has become the medium in a great electronic summoning…
Test Patterns includes:
D.L. Myers — The Stars are Black
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. – The Woman in the Forge of Saturday Night
Scott Graves – Evidence of Absence
William Tea — I Am Become Death
Philip Fracassi – The Judge
Sarah Walker – The Snake Beneath My Skin
Ashley Dioses – The Hands of Chaos
Peter Rawlik – The Nomenclature of Unnamable Horrors
Sam L. Edwards – Golden Girl
Brian O’Connell — Scenes From a Forgotten Diorama
Jill Hand – You Can’t Go Wrong With Grass-Fed Beef
Ruth Asch – Abettor
Pete Carter – Work Group
Sean M. Thompson – The Cliffside Tavern
Scott Thomas – One Evening in Whitbridge
Nathan Carson – The Velveteen Volvo
Frederick J. Mayer – Outre Non-limitations
Frederick J. Mayer — The Kumiho Question
Can Wiggins – I’ve Lived in This Place a Long Time
Frank Coffman – The White Terror
John Claude Smith – Symptom of the Universe
Scott J. Couturier – Sustenance of the Stars
Rob F. Martin – Alien Shore
Adam Bolivar – Ye Hermit’s Lay
Don Webb – Bridge
Russell Smeaton – Balls
Matthew M. Bartlett – Call Me Corey
Cody Goodfellow – Hero Mother
Mark Rainey – Red-Eye
K.A. Opperman – Séance
Duane Pesice – Looking for Ghosts
Outro – Duane Pesice
Test Patterns will also be available to buy quite soon. And if we find time to say something more about Skelos #3 and Test Patterns further down the line, we will do so…