The Shadow of the Horned One (It's Probably Just a Bloke In A Hat)

OK, everyone, I have a confession. I may come across as a glamorous, urbane sophisticate, but in reality I have a terrible secret. I grew up going to British folk festivals. Worse, now that I am a legal adult in control of my own destiny, I still do. By choice.

Broadly speaking, I have spent my entire life surrounded by the folk traditions of the United Kingdom. The dancing, the songs, the stories, the rituals…. which are fun, and ludicrous, and beautiful, and occasionally a little unhinged.

As you may know by now, I also love horror stories. So it’s rather surprising how long it took me to cotton on to Folk Horror

There is a tweet, from me, at the end of 2020. It had been a difficult year - not as bad for me as it was for many others, but still a difficult year. In the no man’s land between Christmas and New Year (when all of the UK’s festival plans had been abruptly upended and cancelled), I was in the mood to be delighted by something. Anything.

On the 28th of December, I tweeted (approximately):

“Thanks to @Pseudopod_org, and their excellent audio version of The Slow King, I have just discovered that Folk Horror is a thing and I am very much here for it. I'm downloading The Fiends in the Furrows while stirring gravy on the hob...”

I was, too. I remember standing there with a wooden spoon in one hand and my phone in the other. The author of the The Slow King replied to assure me that absolutely, the genre was a thing. And I’m sure the gravy tasted better for having a good dollop of arcane stirred in. I’ve since been to several workshops on Folk Horror by the excellent Alex Davis (he runs courses and everything), and would like to reiterate that I’m still very much here for it.

The landscape of Folk Horror is much broader than I’d imagined it (and as far as I can tell, looms pretty large in film and television, which is an area I rarely stray into). I suspect I like my Folk Horror kind of traditional: rural, pagan, quiet. Woven with folklore and old tales, with the horror waiting for you by a dilapidated stile.

Which obviously explains why I set my first Folk Horror story in various locations, including both KFC and B&Q. The story also contains inflexible opinions about interior decor, some mild church vandalism, and a non-existent Labrador dog.

The lovely people at Frost Zone Stories have included my story - called Bone, Salt, Iron - in their first collection of “dark fiction and quiet horror”. If you’d like to read it, you can snag a copy from Frost Zone’s site.

In the meantime, watch out for those fields. They probably are out to get you.

"The Sin Jar" and "Switching Sides"

I have not been doing a terribly good job on blog posts lately. But fear not - what I have been doing is persuading people of the publishing sphere that they want to unleash my stories onto the world.

Quite some moons ago, the lovely people at All Worlds Wayfarer published a story of mine in issue V of their magazine of speculative fiction. Now, after a little hiatus at the end of 2021, All Worlds Wayfarer is back in business with issue XII.

Although I’d say that AWWF is always worth buying, this issue will include a new story of mine, called The Sin Jar. You can get an e-book copy of issue XII from AWWF directly, or from Amazon, or for a limited period of time can read the story free on their website.

If you read the story free, it’d be lovely of you to chuck a quid in their Ko-Fi tip jar, if you’re able to do that.

In a manner that will doubtless surprise anyone who knows what a super-slick publicity machine I am, I think I actually forgot to mention that I’d had a story in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, issue 87, last month.

ASM is the inflight magazine of Andromeda Spaceways, a company which has been providing intergalatic travel for an impressive twenty years. As they proudly advertise: “We'll get you there ... sooner or later”. The magazine editorial describes my story, Switching Sides, as “cheeky”.

My story involves serious crime, cold-blooded murder, jewellery theft, and a sub-oceanic spa. And quite a lot of tea, much of which ends up on the floor. It is, ahem, not the most serious thing I have ever written.

New Story: Other Lives

According to a vast and slightly complex spreadsheet I keep, I first started submitting stories to magazines in 2013. I sent off around ten, and then stopped abruptly - probably because the company I was working for collapsed, and I had to divert my energy into finding, and then learning, a new job.

I didn’t pick up again until 2017 (six submissions) and 2018 (thirteen). Then, halfway through 2019 I got the most amazing email: someone actually wanted to publish something! Not only was it my first publication, it was in a magazine which I loved reading: Luna Station Quarterly. I was terribly excited about it at the time, and then again when I got the real, live, paper version in the post.

LSQ remains one of my favourite publications; every few months they print a selection of brand new stories from female-identified writers. Their most recent edition - number 50 - is an extra-length issue to celebrate the anniversary.

I’m honoured to be included in their pages again. My short fantasy piece Other Lives is up there in the table-of-contents, rubbing shoulders with beautiful love stories and weird tales of aliens on earth. I highly recommend getting yourself a copy - or at least reading a few stories from the website. Links to purchase, or to read, are all here .

People sometimes ask me if it’s OK to share links to my stories (with friends, or on Facebook, etc). To which the answer is yes! Yes, please do - the more the messier merrier.

New Story: Jeremy Sleeps

I’m always delighted to have a new story published, but it makes me particularly happy when something I’ve written appears in a magazine I love. I’ve been a regular reader of the Electric Spec for a while, and I look forward to each new edition. Each quarter, they publish a small, tightly-curated selection of high-quality speculative stories.

The May 2021 issue lands today, ready to “examine the nature of relationships from unique perspectives only the imagination can offer“, and includes my short fantasy story Jeremy Sleeps.

I’m fascinated by sleep, and our relationship to it - you can read some of my thoughts on sleep, and how it relates to the story, in an Electric Spec blog post from earlier in the month.

I would also like to say to anyone who is of approximately the same age and musical inclination as me: sorry about the Pearl Jam earworm.

The Failed: An Unexpected Success

Headline news: I have a new story published! The Failed appears in the second issue of the Interstellar Literary Review.

The Failed is a story I thought would probably never be published. Although I was very proud of it, even I had to admit that it was on the quirky side, and that its subject matter would make it a pretty hard sell in most markets.

Then I saw a tweet from Interstellar, which linked to a “submissions wishlist”. Most magazines will give you a broad brush outline of what they want - or occasionally a very narrow definition of what they accept - and suggest you read previous issues to form your own ideas.

Although Interstellar also publish conventional guidelines, this wishlist was different. Multiple people from their masthead had jotted down what they, personally would like to see - covering tone, sub-genre, setting, and a few super-specific details. In itself, the list was a great source of ideas. Bit more importantly, one person wanted something that sounded, to me, like The Failed.

As a side note, the experience of working with Interstellar as been lovely. They mailed me to tell me that they would like to publish my story (which obviously disposed me well towards them!) but also sent detailed feedback from a couple of their readers, should I wish to act on it. The feedback was actually very useful and constructive - when I replied with my updated draft, I asked the Editor to pass on my thanks to one reader in particular for their comments.

It turned out to be the person whose wishes I had been deliberately aiming for :-)

There is always a home for every story. Finding it, however, can be a huge challenge. I’d love it if more magazines published wishlists!