Tag: The Dark Magazine

SFF, Short stories

The Lending Library of Final Lines

OJ

I have a new story out! “The Lending Library of Final Lines” is free to read online at The Dark. I’ve had a few stories in The Dark now, and I always appreciate being published there – they routinely have stories that I wish I’d written myself, so I’m always excited to see what’s in their new issues.

“The Lending Library of Final Lines” is one of a short series of stories set in the same world, including “The Better Part of Drowning” and “The Ouroboros Bakery.” The setting is a fantastical street constantly threatened by magic and giant carnivorous crabs. Most of what I write is science-based climate fiction, or something along those lines, so these stories are a sort of palate cleanser for me. Just something completely different, because if I write the same thing all the time I get a bit bored. It’s a chance to play, too, with all sorts of characters.

Clytie, the protagonist of “Lending Library,” is incurious, indifferently violent, and about as far from my usual scientist-type of character as you can get. Magical streets have retail workers too, and they exploit them as well. Even so, Clytie’s better off than some. At least she’s out of reach of the crabs…

Horror, Short stories

Worm Blood

OJ

I have a new story out! It’s called “Worm Blood,” and it’s free to read in issue 71 of The Dark Magazine. I’ve had several stories in that magazine now, and they’re one of my favourite markets.

As you can probably tell from the title, worms play a big part here. It’s a squirmy rural horror story where something terrible has gone wrong on the farm. I can’t honestly say it’s my usual sort of horror story, but I like to try new things and so disgusting creatures that crawl out of holes in the back paddocks fit the bill. For me, though, there’s got to be more than disgusting creatures in a horror story. After all, I’m a biologist at heart, so even supernatural worms must have something about them that’s interesting or appealing if they’re going to be the real centre of the story. These don’t, so they aren’t. What’s more important to me is why they’re there, disturbing the locals and destroying crops, and just what those locals are going to do about it.

I should say at this point that apparently, over in Australia, exist giant Gippsland earthworms that can apparently grow to over three metres long and a couple of centimetres thick, and if you think seeing these delightful creatures is not on my bucket list, you probably don’t know me very well yet. (Though I will say the Gippsland earthworms are much less horrific than the worms of my story, who have no redeeming features whatsoever… )

SFF, Short stories

Otto Hahn Speaks to the Dead

OJ

I’ve a new story out! “Otto Hahn Speaks to the Dead” is free to read at The Dark. It’s lovely to have another story with them – they’re a market I really enjoy.

“Otto Hahn” is one of my science history stories. I’ve a particular interest in writing these, and I’ve always found the science that took place during the World Wars particularly fascinating… mostly because of the ethical issues that result from both gas and atomic warfare. Otto Hahn had the opportunity to work on both. In WW1, he worked with Fritz Haber to weaponise chlorine gas, which honestly is something I find very hard to forgive. It’s tempting to think that he learned from the consequences of his actions, however, because when WW2 rolled round and he had the chance to work on researching the atom bomb (for the Germans, as opposed to the Manhattan Project) he ultimately refused to do so.

Interestingly, as a German scientist he helped his colleague, Lise Meitner, escape the Nazis – as a Jewish scientist, she was certainly in danger from them. Meitner, who with Hahn discovered the process of nuclear fission, was offered a place on the Manhattan Project as well. She refused, on moral grounds. I’ve been thinking of doing another story about her to bookend this one, mimicking its structure and theme.

Anyway, take a look at it and see what you think.

Horror, SFF, Short stories

The Little Beast

OJ

I’ve a new story out!

Well, it isn’t really new. “The Little Beast” was originally published back in 2017, in the anthology Respectable Horror from Fox Spirit Books. It was a great anthology to be a part of, but I’m happy to say that the story has been reprinted in this month’s issue of The Dark, making it free to read online for the first time.

“The Little Beast” is inspired by my least favourite fairy tale. Come at me, all you Beauty and Beast fans, but Beauty creeps me out. She always has. There’s something so unrelentingly good about her. Now I’ve nothing against good characters usually, in fact I tend to like and admire them. But sometimes goodness is so ostentatious you start to wonder if it’s a put on – like a politician kissing babies – and not to be trusted.

It’s the rose bit that always made me suspicious. “Oh, I just want a rose, Daddy!” At which point I bet the poor man cringed in himself, because over long distances a rose is the worst of presents. Can you imagine trying to keep a cut flower in good condition after several days of an overland trip, taken on a horse and cart most likely? It doesn’t bear thinking about. And there’s Beauty, smirking in the background like butter wouldn’t melt, getting all the credit for wanting this simple little gift that ensures her poor bloody father has to think about her every single second of that trip back, lest that simple little rose gets bruised or dry or the petals start to fall…

Horrible girl. There’s something extremely disturbing about her.

Horror, SFF, Short stories

The Better Part of Drowning

OJ

I’ve a new story out!

“The Better Part of Drowning” is free to read in this month’s issue of The Dark Magazine. It’s been a while since I’ve had a story in The Dark (back in 2014, with “Tommy Flowers and the Glass Bells of Bletchley”) so it’s great to be back in there again.

“The Better Part of Drowning” is all giant, creepy, child-eating crabs, and what it’s like to have to live with them – to prey on them, and to be preyed on by them. Believe it or not, it’s set in the same world (on the same street!) as my recent story “The Ouroboros Bakery”, for all that they’re very different stories. It’s a world I plan to spend a lot more time in, with a series of interlinking shorts. Two more of these stories are in the pipeline – the crabs make a reappearance in my upcoming story “Sugar Ricochets to Other Forms” (in the Mother of Invention anthology), and the Lady of Scales is the subject of “The Temporary Suicides of Goldfish”, soon to appear in Kaleidotrope.

But, to the crabs…

Alix was never sure what kept the groaning rickety-spider of a dock up, unless it was the mussels that swarmed over the piles, turning them to hazards that could slice a swimmer open. The divers were all over scars from waves and mussels, always being pushed into shell sharp as knives and leaving their blood to scent the water.

“You kids be careful you don’t draw the crabs!” If she heard that once a day she heard it fifty times, and each time she had to smile over the slicing pain and wave up, because coins weren’t thrown to kids who wailed. Wailing made her choke if she tried to dive anyway, and there were always kids enough to squabble over coins so tears did nothing but anchor her to surface and starvation and blind her to the sudden scuttle of predation.

Don’t draw the crabs, they always said, and smiled as they said it, because it was entertaining to see kids dive in crab beds, and entertaining to see the bloodshed when they were slow enough for catching. Alix didn’t blame them for that. She’d never been able to look away either, no matter how much bile rose in her throat, the metal taste of panic.

Crabmeat, crabmeat. It was their own little circle of carnivorism, the smallest crabs providing one and the smaller kids the other. Not that the biggest of the scuttlers couldn’t take a man full-grown, but usually the bigger you got the more sense you had, and the more the habit of watching claws kept them away from bone…