Land of Youth

I have a story in this handsome-looking anthology from Gypsum Sound Tales called Colp Issue 1: The Passage of Time.   That great cover was done by Luke Spooner at Carrion House.

My story, 'Land of Youth', has a journalist interviewing a former film actress at her home in Ireland which she claims was built on a fairy fort and where, as a result, time gets confused. It's about how we expect our movie idols to remain ever youthful and how, in our imaginations, they kind of do.

I wrote the story shortly after hearing about the sad death of Carrie Fisher back in December 2016.  Fisher, playing Princess Leia in Star Wars, was one of my childhood crushes, and her death got me thinking about the way film stars are at the mercy of passing time like the rest of us, but at the same time immortal in the roles they play.

Twice-Told: A Collection of Doubles

When C.M. Muller announced his intention to release a doppelganger-themed anthology back in January I knew wanted to write something for it.  Never did I think I'd be heading up such an amazing line-up as the one below.  Twice-Told: A Collection of Doubles will be released in February 2019.  

“The Last Salvador” — Tim Jeffreys
“Details Which Would Otherwise Be Lost to Shadow” — Clint Smith
“Zwillingslied” — Patricia Lillie
“Static” — Chris Shearer
“Stuck With Me” — Shannon Lawrence
“The Fifth Set” — Charles Wilkinson
“Murder Song” — Craig Wallwork
“The Final Diagnosis of Doctor Lazare” — David Peak
“Endangered” — Jason A. Wyckoff
“The Half-Life of Plastic” — Esther Rose
“Eidetic” — Steve Rasnic Tem
“They Are Us (1964) : An Oral History” — Jack Lothian
“Birds of Passage” — Gordon B. White
“The Half-Souled Woman” — Nina Shepardson
“Released” — Timothy B. Dodd
“As With Alem” — Farah Rose Smith
“The Fall Guy” — Tom Johnstone
“Scordatura” — Jess Landry
“Stringless Puppetry” — C.C. Adams
“The Bath House” — Tim Major
“Picky Yunn” — J.C. Raye
“One Last Mile” — Erica Ruppert

Some thoughts on Mother!

Spoilers ahead.

After watching ‘Mother!’ I realised that I’d forgotten about all the previous Darren Aronofsky films I’d loved (Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler).  Only his two most recent films were fresh in my mind: Black Swan which I thought was interesting but flawed; and Noah, which I couldn’t see the point of at all and had actually decided was Aronofsky filling some kind of contractual obligation.  So, when I sat down to watch ‘Mother!’ - having forgotten what this writer/director is capable of - I wasn’t quite prepared for the affect it would have on me.

Brief plot summary: Jennifer Lawrence plays the adoring wife of a middle-aged blocked poet (Javier Bardem).  They live together in a gorgeous isolated mansion, which she is painstakingly renovating after it was gutted by a fire which consumed the poet’s first wife.  Out of the blue a stranger (Ed Harris) arrives at their door looking for a place to stay.  To the confusion of his wife, the poet tells the stranger to stay in the house as long as he likes after discovering the man’s a fan of his book.  The man is then quickly joined by his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) and the couple’s two quarrelling sons.  The strangers show a general lack of respect – sometimes even outright hostility - to their hosts.  The situation soon escalates to murder, then more people arrive at the house and their disrespect goes unnoticed by the poet until his wife can take no more.  When all the intruders are finally turfed out , the poet at last finds inspiration and with that a renewed passion for his wife.  However, with the publication of his poem and his wife’s pregnancy, strangers, worshippers and fans once again begin arriving at the house and the problems begin again (to put it mildly).

Never having had much interest in religion, I’m afraid I missed most of the Biblical allusions in the film.  Instead, I saw it as an allegory about fame or the quest for fame.  The poet keeps opening up his house to fans so he can bask in their adoration, heedless to the confusion and suffering of the one person who truly loves him.  This quest for fame and adoration suddenly begins to look monstrous and obscene.  Why would the poet hanker after the praise and attention of strangers who continually prove themselves unworthy whilst remaining blind to the efforts of his wife to give him a home, a life, and a family? Viewed like this, I found the film to be genuinely terrifying, and it would make anyone who’s ever chased the approval of strangers (Okay, I’ll raise my hand here) seriously question their motives.

I also couldn’t help but see the film as some kind of comment on our social media age; people opening up their lives to strangers and hankering after likes and comments.  This was most prominent for me in the film’s most disturbing scene.  After the birth of his son, the poet waits for his wife to fall asleep so he can take the baby from her arms and pass it into his crowd of worshippers (this made me think of Michael Jackson dangling his baby son off a balcony for his fans).  The worshippers again prove themselves careless and unworthy and by the time the mother re-awakens the baby is dead, his neck snapped after being passed between many hands.

The Other Side

A quick short fiction update: My story, The Other Side, about the dangers of the internet, peer pressure, teenage romance, and alternative dimensions, has been published online in Horla: The Home of Intelligent Horror.  My thanks to editor Matthew Rees for accepting this one.

Unwritten Songs

Completing my hat trick of published stories in March is 'Unwritten Songs' which appears in the new issue of Not One of Us Magazine.

'Unwritten Songs' is a story about an almost-rock star who becomes a conduit for a supernatural presence and finds himself with a hit song on his hands.

This is another of my own favourite stories of those I've written, so I'm very happy that it's found a home in Not One of Us.  It was written in June 2016, so I've waited a long time to see it in print!  A huge thank you to editor John Benson for accepting and publishing this story.  The full table of contents for Not One of Us #59 can be found here.

The story was also vaguley inspired by the life and music of this man...

You Will Never Lose Me

Very occasionally stories drop on me out of the blue, and if I'm lucky I've got a pen and paper to hand to jot the idea down before it vanishes again.  This is what happened with my flash fiction 'You Will Never Lose Me' a tale about a knife, a stolen compass, and an unusual method of revenge.  The story has now been published online in Syntax & Salt and can be read for free here.

I'm especially pleased that this issue of Syntax & Salt also contains a story by L.S. Johnson - a writer whose short fiction I've greatly enjoyed over the last few years.

Weirdbook and Wolvers Hill

More reasons to celebrate - my short story 'Wolvers Hill' will appear in the new issue of Weirdbook.  Wolvers Hill is the story of a couple - Fergus and Bisma - whose already strained relationship begins to fray further when they find themselves driving on a road they can't seem to get off, with strange noises in the distance and odd half-glimpsed figures wandering the hard shoulder.

Issue 38 of Weirdbook should be available soon.  My thanks to editor Douglas Draa for selecting my story for inclusion.