Three-Lobed Burning Eye

I have a new story out! “The Barrens” is available, free to read, in the latest issue of Three-Lobed Burning Eye. It’s great to have a story in there again!

“The Barrens” is a body horror/eco-horror sort of story. A while back I read an article about kina barrens here in New Zealand: “kina” being what we call Evechinus chloroticus, the NZ sea urchin. I do love those spiky creatures! They’re so interesting to look at. They are less interesting, though, when they turn the sea floor into desert. You see, there are lots of kina and they are very hungry, and given that we have stupidly overfished their natural predators – crayfish and snapper – the local sea urchin population has exploded.

You can eat sea urchins too, but we don’t seem to be eating enough of them. Admittedly, I’ve never had a meal of kina myself, so I’m hardly one to talk. I read that article about kina barrens, though, and immediately thought that it would make a great horror story. I don’t know why, but I had a sudden image: people with kina for eyes, sea urchins embedding themselves in sockets. Which is implausible and mostly grotesque but also such a great image, especially when the little horrors burst out.

Hence the body horror. Yeah.

Anyway, I had immense fun writing this story, so please go ahead and take a look at it, as well as all the other fantastic stories in this issue of 3LBE.

I have a new story out! And I blame Animal Planet. It’s entirely their fault. There I was, blamelessly flicking through channels on the telly, and there was a documentary on cicadas. And not just any cicadas – if I wanted just any cicadas, I could see lots of them in the back garden. (I’ve admired their split skins since I was a kid.) No, this was about periodical cicadas. Apparently, over in the US, there’s a type of cicada that swarms every 13 or 17 years. The next swarm, all those years later, is laid by the previous swarm, and all I could think as I watched this programme was “I could make a great horror story out of this!”

So, there you have it. Blame Animal Planet. This weird, gross, insect-filled body horror was inspired by them. Poor things, they probably thought they were sharing scientific and educational information, real learning opportunities. Little did they know, across the other side of world a horror writer was trawling for bait.

I kind of disgusted myself with it, apparently. I certainly made a couple of writer colleagues who were kind enough to read an early draft retch. Apparently they dislike the egg part. Ha.

Anyway, “Imago” is free to read at Three-Lobed Burning Eye. If your stomach’s strong enough, that is.