Five minutes with Anna Reith, 2012 Bloody Parchment runner-up

I must admit I become a bit of a fangrrrl whenever I see anything with Anna Reith's name on it. She really is that good, and I just about faint when I see her submissions in my inbox. So it came to no surprise when she turned out to be a runner-up in last year's Bloody Parchment short story competition. So, a big welcome to Anna on my blog.

What planted the seed for your story?

Courting Seraphs is loosely inspired by the concepts found in On the Origin of the World, one of the Nag Hammadi scriptures, which presents a very different version of the creation story to that found in the Bible. I wanted to take some of those ideas and explore what happened if, not only were they true, but one person was caught up in them, holding secrets that can never be shared. So… a bit like a spy thriller, but with Gnostic philosophy instead of sensitive government information.

What are some of the themes you treated in your tale? 

There is plenty of material out there in fantasy, horror, and weird fiction in terms of immortality and timelessness. I wanted to touch on those things in Courting Seraphs, but from a slightly different angle. Today, we’re bombarded with a ridiculously huge volume of information, images, and experiences. Through technology, we have access to more information than we could assimilate in a lifetime, and I think that’s something that’s fundamentally overlooked in stories that deal with immortality. As human beings, do we have a finite limit for how much we can experience, and how much we can hold in our heads? And, if we cross that limit, how long will it be until we come apart at the seams?

What are the hallmarks of a great horror/dark fantasy author and story? 

What I love about horror and dark fantasy is the breadth of possibilities. We are very complex creatures and—in the right light—we’re capable of making almost anything macabre, just by the way we think about it. The shadows around the campfire, the knotted, finger-like twigs of trees against the window… these are all creations of the human mind. I think my favourite creepy tales are the ones that explore that potential within us, and let the strange and the unseen leach into the everyday. After all, what’s scarier than suddenly realising the malign in something mundane?

How do you approach your creative process? 

With coffee. No… well, yes. Ideas are a permanent swirl, and I am forever scribbling notes down on the backs of things, but as soon as I have the basic shape of a story—or at least a firm grasp on one scene that the rest of it will grow from—I like to sit down and beat it into shape. As I suffer from CFS/M.E., that can be quite laborious, but I think there’s no substitute for applying proverbial glue to the seat of the pants and getting on with it. I really only use outlines occasionally, preferring to let tales grow organically and, because so much of my work tends to involve strong characterisation, I often find that it’s the way people spark off each other that drives my stories forward.

What are you working on now? 

Right now, I’m working on a handful of very interesting projects, including a dark fantasy novel titled Making the Days, which—a little like Courting Seraphs—deals a lot with what’s real, what’s not real, and the places people fall in between. I’m also working on the first in a sci-fi series set in a large and complex universe; something of a labour of love, as the original unfinished manuscripts were left to me by my late cousin, who had been working on them for several years. I will have a poetry collection out later this year and, though it’s probably a bit early to really announce it, I have just started preliminary work on a sequel to my genre-bending glam-rock-paranormal-murder-mystery, Dead in Time, which is currently available to read for free on Wattpad, where I’ve been a featured author recently.

As ever, further details on what I’m up to can be found on my website, www.annareith.co.uk, where I have some further free reads available. Both Dead in Time and Black Ice: collected stories, a compendium of dark short fiction, are currently available in digital and print formats.

You can also find me on tumblr and Wattpad.

Icy Sedgwick, Bloody Parchment 2012 finalist

The talented Icy Sedgwick is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but she writes some of the most charming, inventive and enthralling stories I've encountered in ages. She's a regularly contributor to the #FridayFlash phenomenon, and I'm overjoyed that she submitted her story, Protection, to the Bloody Parchment short story competition, and that it was well received by the judges. Welcome, Icy! What planted the seed for your story?

I was listening to a piece by Mussorgsky and it ended with a tolling bell. I just sat back and listened, and the mental image I got was of a small village, besieged by some menace, and the bell was a warning that trouble was coming. The rest of it just sprang from that! I'm not particularly musical but sound has a very specific way of generating images in my head that I can turn into stories.

What are some of the themes you treated in your tale? 

I don't specifically think about themes while I'm writing, but looking back on the story, I suppose my biggest concern was that of the outsider, and how they can be treated by their society – until their unique skillset is required by that society, and the community expect help. Should the outsider get involved anyway, or refuse the help that they never had?

What are the hallmarks of a great horror/dark fantasy author and story? 

I think imagination is key to dark fantasy, and a good story should take you somewhere that you've never been before. Horror should be something that above all horrifies. Some people seem to think that means being gory or explicit, and while that's part of horror, that's also the kind of thing to which you can become desensitised, so I feel that telling a chilling story is harder. Not everyone is going to be grossed out by something gory, so you need to find that key to tapping into what freaks someone out.

How do you approach your creative process? 

It depends on what I'm doing, really! But nine times out of ten, I'll come up with an idea, roughly sketch out the beginning, middle and end, and then just go for it. I let it all splurge out, and then I go back and tidy it up. I've tried outlining my work but I get so tied up in knots over it that I end up writing nothing at all, so it's better for me to just have a rough idea where I want to go.

What are you working on now? 



I'm in the last edits stage of a dark fantasy novella called The Necromancer's Apprentice, which is essentially what might have happened if Disney had swapped their sorceror for a necromancer, and the helpful brooms for bloodthirsty mummies!

You can follow me on Twitter @icypop, and both my pulp Western novella, The Guns of Retribution, and my collection of shourt stories, Checkmate & Other Stories, are available for Kindle from Amazon.

Richard Godwin's One Lost Summer #interview

This isn't the first time Richard Godwin's visited my spot, and I hope it's not the last either. Today we're chatting about his most recent release, One Lost Summer. So, welcome, Richard. Tell us a little more about Rex Allen. What does this "star quality" he finds attractive in women stem from and why is he drawn to it?

Rex Allen arrives in a new neighbourhood in a heat wave, clearly a troubled man. When Evangeline Glass invites him to one of her summer parties he becomes obsessed by her. He is convinced she is someone other than the person she pretends to be. He is fixated by her star quality.  I will let Rex tell you in his own words, since the novel is narrated by him:
 "Stars have a rare quality, an ability to take away the smallness most men feel. They’re more corrupt than us, but the corruption is better hidden, and their appeal is a lie, the biggest drug you will ever know."

And, without giving spoilers, tell us more about Evangeline. What does Rex hope she sees in him? 

Evangeline is extremely beautiful and alluring. She is married to Harry, possessive domineering Harry who has a dubious past, and she throws parties every week one summer while London blazes in a heat wave. The novel is set in Shepperton, an area just outside London, close to the famous Pinewood film studios. Evangeline is extremely confident and already a star among her friends. The things she is hiding are not the things Rex thinks she is. It is not so much that Rex hopes she will see anything at all in him, he describes himself as a "an empty proposition, plundered and lost", but that he thinks she is someone else, and it is that other person he is trying to reach through her.

How does Rex (or even does he) justify spying on Evangeline? Are there any insightful incidents you can relate here? 

Much of the novel is about the irrational inside peoples' lives. I believe that despite our improbable rationalism and reliance on a scientific paradigm in the modern era we are still driven by irrational urges. Rex has to spy on Evangeline, he would even say she asked him to do it because she is addicted to attention. Again I will let Rex answer in his own words:

"I can say now I hadn’t planned the purchase. But that day the sound started again. It was as familiar as an itch. It wouldn’t stop. It was like a million cameras on a photo shoot. It was incessant, nagging, and I knew it wouldn’t let up until I stood one step away from the world.

That afternoon I ordered the Red One Mysterium X cinema camera. It shot at 4k resolution and would provide the kind of quality I needed."

The press release tells me that One Last Summer is haunting. What makes it so, in your opinion? 

It is haunting in the sense that Rex is haunted and he is trying to find his way back. The novel is imbued with the lingering scent of a familiar perfume that evokes sudden memories. Perhaps also the style in which it is written:
"I zoomed in on her, caressing her skin with the lens. I entered her world like a hummingbird penetrating a flower, my heart beating like rapid wings. She existed in my watchfulness and awoke my desire."

Is there a particular scene that stands out for you that best portrays the relationship between Rex and Evangeline?

There are a few, because much of the novel is the drama played out between them as they hold clandestine meetings and she acts out Coral for him, in the process discovering herself.  There is a key moment in the novel when Evangeline begins to ‘get’ Coral and doesn’t like it:

She stood up and walked over to me. She laid a warm hand on my shoulder and seemed to be trying to penetrate me with her green eyes.
“It’s as if you want me to pour out some hidden content of my being. You need to tell me about her, Rex, tell me about Coral.”
“She is beautiful, sensual, men desire her, and she exploits her beauty to get what she wants.”
For a moment I thought she saw the camera. She turned and looked at the dresser, then walked to the window.
“And what does she want, Rex?”
“Everything, Evangeline.”
“I see her as corrupt.”
“She may well be.”
“Because you’re corrupting me by doing this, that is what this is about. It’s like you want me to be aware of sin.”
“You’re already aware of sin when you see Michael.”
“It’s just an affair, Rex, a simple matter, unlike this. I leave him behind when I return to Harry.”
“I’ve seen you at your parties, Evangeline, you’re playing a role.”
“No, that’s what you want me to do.”
“You’re the Evangeline that Harry wants, but what about the other one?”
“There isn’t another one. You’re talking about that bitch Coral.”
As she invented her, so she found her. I knew she’d fit the part.
She left at four. I let her keep the outfit.

You can find out more about Richard Godwin at his website.
Follow him on Twitter.
One Lost Summer is available at all good retailers and online at
Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, The Book Depository and Waterstones.

BIO
Richard Godwin is the author of critically acclaimed novels Apostle Rising and Mr. Glamour. One Lost Summer is his third novel. It is a Noir story of fractured identity and ruined nostalgia and available at all good retailers and online here.

He is also a published poet and a produced playwright. His stories have been published in over 29 anthologies, among them his anthology of stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man. Apostle Rising is a dark work of fiction exploring the blurred line between law and lawlessness and the motivations that lead men to kill.

Mr. Glamour is about a world of wealthy, beautiful people who can buy anything, except safety from the killer in their midst.

Richard Godwin was born in London and obtained a BA and MA in English and American Literature from King's College London, where he also lectured.

You can find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net, where you can also read his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual interviews with other authors.

Five minutes with Diane Awerbuck, Bloody Parchment 2012 finalist

Diane Awerbuck is well known in South African literary circles, and I was overjoyed when she entered our competition last year. Her story, which appears in Bloody Parchment: The Root Cellar and Other Stories, is visceral and rather unsettling. A big welcome to Diane.

What planted the seed for your story?

I knew someone who'd had mouth cancer. They really did cut off her tongue – or the front part. It seemed...atrocious; Biblical; ultimately useless.

Most of the Obs details in the story are real: I just saw or heard them because I walked up and down that road a lot. (I've only recently bought a car.)

The Viola character is also the woman in my novel, Home Remedies, which is the story of her crazy middle age. Duiweltjie is about her later infirmity: the injury to her mouth is significant.

What are some of the themes you treated in your tale?

The disempowerment of disease; the surge of power you feel as a young person in the face of someone decrepit; the comfort of birds when you are confined; revenge; cruelty; helplesssness; memory; our inability – as Hirst has already said – to really conceptualise death.

What are the hallmarks of a great horror/dark fantasy author and story?

An image that resonates, so that when you yourself visit the place you remember the narrative. The story overlays the ordinary reality with the surreal or hyper-real. This is not to say that banality is not horrific: of course it is.

How do you approach your creative process?

I'm dormant in summer. In autumn I get lazy. In winter I get so irritable I churn out a book that purges the me-grims.

What are you working on now?


A novel called The Little People, about a cameraman in the film industry and a psychic. They are filming a documentary about the alleged possession of Matric girls in a Kimberley boarding school. It's also to do with the water crisis that happened there last year, and the disused mines, the weirdness of the Northern Cape, like Area 52. But in a fun, happy way.

Short Story Day Africa is also coming up in June, and I'm involved there 

The Left Hand of Calvus by LA Witt #review

Title: The Left Hand of Calvus
Author: LA Witt
Publisher: Riptide Publishing, 2012

Saevius is a veteran of the arena, but as a gladiator, he’s not master of his own fate. When he’s sold to a Pompeiian politician to work as a bodyguard, he’s cautiously optimistic about his future. But this good fortune doesn’t last, as he soon finds out that Calvus is playing a dangerous game, which might have fatal consequences for Saevius. Caught up in the sticky web of intrigue, Saevius is tasked to discover with which gladiator Calvus’s wife is having an affair.

Saevius now finds himself acting as an agent for Calvus in the ludus of the lanista Drusus, who has a reputation for being cruel. Yet Saevius is unaccountably drawn to the master on whom he’s been employed to spy. No man can serve two masters, and at some point Saevius will have to betray one of them. But making that decision is not going to be easy.

While this is ostensibly a m/m tale, if you’re looking for scenes of hot, pumping action, you’re going to come away empty-handed. (No pun intended, LOL.) What you will get, however, is a story brimful of tension, and that is, in itself, a reward. Also, kudos to the author for dumping a huge reveal later on in the story. I totally did not see that one on the horizon and it put an entire different spin on the tale that left me grinning like crazy.

Most of all, I loved Saevius as a character. He’s been there, done that, and bears the scars. He’s a man who gets on with the job and has realistic expectations about people and situations. Much of his conflict is related to loyalty. Scenes where he has to get over being the new guy in the ludus and wins the grudging respect of his fellow gladiators – that was awesomely done. Also, the careful dance he has keeping both Calvus and Drusus happy – nerve-wrecking.

LA Witt makes me feel like I’m *there* in the story, that these things actually happened to *real* people. Which means that you’re not going to find larger-than-life characters here with epic stories of derring-do. Everyone’s got flaws. Everyone’s got issues. Pompeii is dirty and full of perils for the unwary. And Saevius is a man who’s trying to do the right thing while keeping his head on his shoulders, almost literally in some situations.

In any case, if you’re a big fan of historical stories set during ancient times, be it watching Spartacus on telly or reading classic Mary Renault, then this story will possibly bite you in all the right places. I am loving the living hell out of Riptide’s Warriors of Rome series, and this title just underscores the fact that they’re onto a very good thing. More please!

Toby Bennett, Bloody Parchment 2012 winner

Toby wowed the judges with the 2011 SA HorrorFest Bloody Parchment competition. It therefore comes as no surprise that he pulled out the stops and went on to win the 2012 competition. His creepy tales bear a creepy kind of whimsy that is inimitably Mr Bennett's, and he's definitely one worth watching out for. He entered two stories into the competition, and both made the final cut. That says something. (Buy links here...)

So, Toby what planted the seed for your tales?

It started with the thought of pale white fingers (white as worms) digging through someone’s wall and snow balled from there. I thought of somewhere dark and musty that might fit the fingers and The Root Cellar was born. So yeah in this case I literally did plant something in the earth – and it grew.

My second story, Wants and Needs really came out of an exercise in trying to make a new type of monster. I was enjoying playing with the different monster tropes but I didn't want to write a story about a ‘standardized’ monster. I also started asking myself ‘what really defines a monster?’ Observant readers may notice this as a kind of running theme through my work. I find it very simplistic to assume that the ugliest protagonist with the most claws is always going to be the real villain of the piece. I like to blur the lines between what’s horrific and what’s human.

What are some of the themes you treated in your tale?

Well I guess there’s the obvious theme of what happens when something sneaks through the wall to try and eat small children – and who hasn’t thought about that at some time? – but the deeper themes are about growing up and the endless cycle of change and corruption that we call daily life. Hopefully it will be apparent to the reader that this is about more than just the bogeyman; it’s about the monsters that shape us all. Oh and it’s about being scared and alone in the dark, which come to think of it, is a pretty good metaphor for life anyway.

In Wants and Needs I think one of the major theme’s I examine is how easily we can confuse our basic drives and also how selfish and cruel the ways we love can be. For an emotion that is supposed to be about others it’s amazing how many times what we call love turns out to be all about ourselves.

What are the hallmarks of a great horror/dark fantasy author and story?

A truly great horror story you say? Why anything that leaves its vict– woops! I mean reader– in a state of barely controlled panic for an hour or two after they’ve read it. If you’ve just read a story that makes you want to check under the bed or make sure the closet door is firmly shut, it’s probably a good one. I won’t define what that story should be about or how it should be written because that can be very subjective; that said, are you happy with your feet sticking out from under the covers like that? The dog’s been very quiet but that rustling in the ceiling keeps getting louder... Or is the sound coming from behind you? Stop reading and get out, get out now before… perhaps that sandwich was poisoned – it could be too late anyway so you might as well keep reading.

How do you approach your creative process? 

With flare and panache I hope (though before I get too full of myself I had to look up how to spell the word ‘panache’ … let’s hope it means what I think it means and isn’t some kind of stylised facial hair). For me the creative process doesn’t bare too much analysis (or to put it another way I don’t want to get too anal about it!) I just do what the voices tell me and they steer me right about seventy percent of the time… though I only have their word for that come to think of it.

What are you working on now? 

I’m quite excited about my current project, without giving too much away I am working on a serialised novel with my fellow author Benjamin Knox… Alright I’ll give it all away, it’s a futuristic dystopian setting where a large part of a mega city has succumbed to a plague that turns its victims into shambling distorted monsters and if early indications are anything to go by it’s going to kick gluteus than a low GI diet… what? Oh it’s gluten? Story’s still going to be cool though… the voices told me.

To date I have written seven novels and a collection of short stories check out the kindle store on Amazon to get your paws on my work.

Five Minutes with Zane Marc Gentis, Bloody Parchment 2012 finalist

There's no denying that Zane Marc Gentis has a way with words. Indeed, his short story, Heirloom, which appears in Bloody Parchment: The Root Cellar and Other Stories, he ventures forth into some truly unsettling territory indeed. So, Zane, what planted the seed for your story?


It’s probably a little creepy to say a story about a taxidermy girl was inspired by my girlfriend, so I’ll insinuate it instead. We were getting ready to go out, and she’d been working on her hair and said it had a ‘rag-doll’ quality to it. That set some of the creative cogs in motion. Cursed dolls and animated puppets are an old horror staple, so I knew there was something else I wanted to do with the concept, but wasn’t quite sure what yet. It wasn’t until I saw Coraline again and remembered that a taxidermist friend of mine uses buttons for eyes that all the pieces came together.

What are some of the themes you treated in your tale?


I wanted to write a story that was Lovecraftian in theme without being obvious. One of his central tropes is a distinguished family with a dark secret, Rats in the Walls being a good example. In this story that takes the shape of the deceased uncle with a collection of weird and eerie artefacts.

At the same time, I liked the juxtaposition of beauty and horror. Something that looks beautiful yet represents the monstrous is more interesting to me than straight-up frights. In this story’s case, what you see isn’t disturbing, it’s knowing what the object represents. Horror isn’t necessarily tied to external objects, but internal concepts or notions. True horror, in that sense, is something that we carry with us, and comes from inside.


What are the hallmarks of a great horror/dark fantasy author and story?


I’m biased in favour of body horror. The loss of control and subversion of normality really sell it to me. That’s probably a dead (ha) give-away that I’m a control freak and moving the sandwich meat out of alphabetical order scares me more than vampires ever will.

Part of the seduction of horror in general is that a happy ending isn’t assured. That means there’s the possibility for tragedy. If you have characters the reader can empathise with, the tragedy begins to matter. Their struggles and tension then become our struggles and tension, the frights and failures become that much more real.


How do you approach your creative process?


It generally starts with a single idea or question. This idea worms its way around in my head, and I play with it, adding more as the inspiration grows. Often I’ll cannibalize elements from my unpublished works.

At some point, the inspiration becomes too much and the idea needs to express itself. You feel like you’re going to explode if you can’t get it out with writing, or drawing, or…something. So I sit down and start writing until it’s done.

Typically the end of the story comes first in my head. Then I pick a beginning, and pin-point a few essentially landmark moments in the story. The rest of the plot writes itself as the writing veers between the landmarks. I like to give the piece the ability to surprise me, and find it comes out a lot stronger for it.

I wait between rewrites, giving myself emotional distance to be able to work out what’s good and what’s garbage in the current piece. Once something halfway decent has been achieved the rewrites stop and the edits begin.

I’d like to pretend I have a more sophisticated method, like something an intelligent person with seven middle names and twelve titles might have come up with. This is the method that’s worked so far, so I’m sticking by it.

What are you working on now?


The current WIP is a novel called Letters to Kitty. Our protagonist wakes up in a bathroom without any idea who he is, where he is, or whose blood is on his hands. He’s plagued by visions, and being hunted by beings who appear to be more than human. His quest for identity becomes a race for his survival as he puts together the pieces of his past, present and future. The reception from my beta readers so far has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s a stand
alone novel with the potential for two sequels and an expanded world, but right now I’m focussed on just finishing it before I plan too far ahead.