‘I still don’t understand,’ Liva said. ‘Why did he do it?’
‘He kept a book of his own,’ I said. ‘I read it. Some of it. It was a mess. You know the legend of Meriasen of Kyr?’
‘She kept her heart in a cage, didn’t she?’ Liva said.
‘Yes. And there’s other legends like that – people keeping their hearts somewhere else so they can’t be hurt, or killed. Sulvan believed them. Or believed some version of them. When Deralis told him she didn’t want to take his contract offer, didn’t even want him coming around anymore, he convinced himself that she’d hidden her heart from him, that she’d put it somewhere else. Because really, in her real heart, she had to love him. Because he wanted her, she had to want him back. She was only pretending she didn’t, hiding her heart.’
‘But that…’ Liva shook her head, gripping Deralis’ hand more tightly. ‘That makes no sense.’
‘It made sense to him.’
‘He killed them all, looking for my heart. Thinking I’d wake up, and tell him I loved him, tell him it had all been a mistake.’ Deralis started to cry. Again. ‘Those poor women. If I’d known, I could have pretended … told him I loved him, waited for a chance to get away. Every time I woke up I just begged him to let me go, I didn’t know what was happening. It’s my fault he kept killing. If I’d just known.’
‘No.’ Liva and I spoke together. We looked at each other, and she gestured for me to go on.
‘It’s his fault,’ I said. ‘His. No-one else’s. His fault he couldn’t take no for an answer, and his fault he’d rather murder than admit the person he wanted might turn him down. Just his.’
‘At least you got to Jacinth before they burned the body,’ Deralis said. ‘Is she…’
‘So far as I know she’s fine. She doesn’t remember any of it – which is probably just as well,’ Liva said. ‘And Babylon managed to talk to that councillor and get the records of her identity removed, so no-one’s going to wonder why she’s walking about. Amazing how effective just mentioning fruit can be.’
‘You and Tarek did brilliantly,’ I said. They had, bribing the guards at the public morgue to get Jacinth’s body before they burned it. Getting it to Sulvan’s, and especially the next bit, which was messy. But now Jacinth was back home with her little boy, and Sulvan’s workshop had, unfortunately, burned to the ground. Along with whatever was in it. Apart from a few books that might have found their way into Tarek’s collection.
‘He’s a bit useful, that young Tarek,’ I said. ‘He might never have done it before, but he did all right.’
Deralis gave a shadow of her usual smile. ‘He’s not so bad, is he?’
‘Quite cute, actually,’ I said. ‘In a fresh-faced virgin sort of way. And he’s been working ever so hard. Perhaps he could do with a little recreation. What do you think?’
Liva rolled her eyes. ‘Is she always like this?’ She asked Deralis.
‘I don’t know why she thought she needed me to find clients for her,’ Deralis said.
‘Actually I think I might offer him a freebie,’ I said, ‘what with him coming heroically to the rescue and all.’
Deralis ran her fingers over the scar again. ‘Mine doesn’t feel any different. I wonder if Jacinth’s does.’
‘No reason why it should,’ I said. ‘There was nothing wrong with his heart.’
Indiana Jones and the Pyramid of Envy
Alasdair Stuart
From: The Pseudopod Tapes, Volume 1 Originally appeared on episode 266, February 3rd 2012, Mentor by Sean Eads)
On more than one occasion I’ve found myself talking to friends whose careers are by my lights, inconceivably successful. Seriously, these are people with multiple books published, multiple irons in the fire, people who are on the other side of the divide to me, fiction writers who’ve not only got books published but have been paid by other people to write books about their characters.
Tie-in fiction has a bad rep but done right isn’t just an interesting extension of a TV show or movie, it’s a fascinating opportunity for experienced authors to stretch their legs and newcomers to gain valuable experience. Don’t believe me? Go ask any author who worked on the Virgin or BBC Books Doctor Who range whether they regret it. Tie in fiction is a fact of life and we can either sneer at it for not being ‘proper’ or accept it and the talented authors and enthusiastic readers it brings with it. Here endeth the rant. Someone get me a step ladder, this soap box is tall.
I’ve had this conversation with multiple authors and each time I’ve had it it’s been about how much they wish they had someone ELSE’s career. Someone they know who writes movies, who works in TV, someone with the right book deal as opposed to A book deal. It’s both colossally frightening and oddly reassuring. It’s frightening at first because we’re clearly never happy, even when we have what we want. Someone else is always going to have more chips than you, or be better off, or happier and underneath it all is the burning conviction that YOU ARE BETTER THAN THEY ARE AND IF THE MAN DID NOT HOLD YOU DOWN THEN ALL WOULD TREMBLE AT YOUR NAME. Or something like that. It’s ridiculous and unfair and untrue but it’s there and if you keep using people who work on a different level to you as success criteria then please take this complimentary Pseudopod whiffle bat and go bean yourself in the head nineteen times every time you do it. Trust me. Also, notice the whiffle bat is used. Hi. When I’m not presenting Pseudopod my hobbies include Half Life 2, Judo, Thai Boxing and kicking my own ass.
Let’s look at oddly reassuring next. The simple truth is if everyone does this then it means we’re not broken and by we? I mean you and me. We are programmed, conditioned at least, to want more than we have no matter what because that’s a good foundation for a survival instinct. Terror, as a friend of mine once said, shows you’re workin’ and that’s a comfort at least. Everyone feels like that, everyone has the ‘fat kid at the disco’ moment where you look at the people around you and despair that you’ll ever be as good as they are.
This is why authors find it so difficult to accept the success of their peers. We’re all locked in a room with our own version of the creative process and the choice is simple, either we take control of it or the process takes control of us. The artist by definition is translucent, the mirror held up to nature that Shakespeare talked about, but once the artist becomes invisible?
You’re in trouble. Once all you are is a hand to hold the pen you’re a piece of architecture rather than an individual, frantically searching for where to fit, what shape to fold yourself into to fit there. There’s bravery in that level of surrender to the craft but there’s horror too and plenty of it. It’s a level of subversion of the self which is tantamount to suicide and suicide of identity as much as physicality and that well... there’s brave and then there’s that’s not me. You make what you make, your art is your own and if there’s no commercial or critical success from it it’s still your art and there is worth in that beyond anything else. You do what you have to do, you pick your battles, pick your losses and get the art on the page whatever the page is. You win just by showing up, you win massively by keeping showing up. So keep showing up.
About the Skulk
EDITORS
Jenny Barber
Jenny Barber is an author and editor of fiction and non-fiction in multiple genres. She is constantly thwarted in her ambition of being Queen of Everything by the annoying lack of sufficient hours in a day. It’s bad universe planning and Something Must Be Done.
She is the co-editor (with Jan Edwards) of Wicked Women (Fox Spirit Books) and The Alchemy Book of Ancient Wonders and Alchemy Books of Urban Mythic (The Alchemy Press) and has previously edited an assortment of British Fantasy Society publications and her own magazine Here & Now. She writes various SFF found online and in multiple anthologies, and has manifested the persona of Ann J. Clark to write myth and magic related non-fiction including Let’s Try Tarot, Let’s Tr
y Cartomancy, Let’s Try Dowsing and the forthcoming Let’s Try Runes.
She can be found at her website www.jennybarber.co.uk or on Twitter, Instagram & Tumblr as @jenqoe
Jan Edwards
Jan Edwards has edited anthologies for various presses, notably Fox Spirit, The Alchemy Press and the BFS for over twenty years, including: (co-edited with Jenny Barber) Wicked Women, Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders and APBO Urban Mythic 1&2. The Alchemy Press book of Horrors (co-edited with Peter Coleborn) is due out in November 2018. Several of her anthologies have been shortlisted for awards.
Jan is also a writer of short fiction, which can be found in many crime, horror and fantasy anthologies. Her fiction has appeared in books as diverse as The Mammoth Book of Moriarty, Terror Tales of the Deep and the Dr Who DVD and anthology Daemons of Devil’s End; some of those tales have been collected into: Leinster Gardens and Other Subtleties and Fables and Fabrications. Her supernatural crime novella ‘A Small Thing for Yolanda’ appears this year in Into the Night Eternal: Tales of French Folk Horror.
Her novels include Sussex Tales (winner of Winchester Slim Volume award) and more recently, Winter Downs: Bunch Courtney book #1 (crime novel; winner of the Arnold Bennett Book Prize). In Her Defence: Bunch Courtney #2 is due out late in 2018. Jan is also a recipient of a BFA Karl Edward Wagner award.
Blogsite: http://janedwardsblog.wordpress.com Twitter: @jancoledwards
Margrét Helgadóttir
Margrét Helgadóttir is a Norwegian-Icelandic author and anthology editor living in Oslo, Norway. Her stories have appeared in a number of both magazines and print anthologies such as In flight literary magazine, Gone Lawn, Luna Station Quarterly, Tales of Fox and Fae and Girl at the End of the World. Her debut book The Stars Seem So Far Away was published by Fox Spirit Books in 2015 and shortlisted for British Fantasy Awards 2016 as Best Collection. She’s currently working on her second book, a novel.
Margrét is editor for the anthology Winter Tales (2016). She is also editor of the anthology series Fox Spirit Books of Monsters, 7 volumes published between 2014-2020. Both African Monsters, Asian Monsters and Pacific Monsters was shortlisted to British Fantasy Awards as Best Anthology (2016, 2017 and 2018). The short stories in her anthologies have also been shortlisted to several awards, including Caine Prize for African Writing (2017), Aurealis Awards (2018) and Sir Julius Vogel Awards (2018). Margret was also awarded with Starburst Magazine’s Brave New Words Award in 2018 for her editor work on Pacific Monsters.
Margrét can be found: @MaHelgad or https://margrethelgadottir.wordpress.com
K.A. Laity
K. A. Laity is an award-winning author, scholar & critic. Her books include How to Be Dull, White Rabbit, Dream Book, A Cut-Throat Business, Lush Situation, Owl Stretching, Unquiet Dreams, Chastity Flame, and Pelzmantel. She has edited My Wandering Uterus, Respectable Horror, Weird Noir, Noir Carnival and Drag Noir, plus written many short stories, scholarly essays, songs, and more. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
Website: http://kalaity.com
Darren Pulsford
Daz can normally be found glaring at a Fox Spirit submission or joyfully adding brackets to spreadsheets; it came as quite the surprise to find himself an actual Editor. It’s moderately exciting, as it goes.
When not doing All The Things behind the scenes, he likes to noodle on stringed instruments, read a variety of diverse genre titles, and will eventually finish the Lego Castle he has in his head. He has a real job too, but don’t we all?!
Mhairi Simpson
Mhairi Simpson is a fantasy writer (mostly blood and inner demons) and inveterate traveller (mostly Europe and South America). An only child who grew up in boarding schools and with a background in modern languages and paper pushing, Mhairi has spent most of her life with words on a page, leading her to realise her best shot at faking sanity is to be a full time author/editor. She is most effectively bribed/tamed/friended with dogs. Large, fluffy dogs. Chocolate also works.
Adele Wearing
Governing the universe with a fist of iron, Adele Wearing was one step away from godhead when a devious fox spirit vomited in her path, giving rise from its leavings to the beast that is Fox Spirit Books. Diverted from her careening path to world domination, she was forced to build a new mission, this time with the devilish bricks of genre fiction. The foundations are sturdier, the aim noble, and she will stab out the eyes of all who challenge her. Kneel before her and weep your allegiance, lest the juggernaut of her fancy destroys your very soul.
AUTHORS
James Bennett
James Bennett is a British writer raised in Sussex and South Africa. His travels have furnished him with an abiding love of different cultures, history and mythology. His short fiction has appeared internationally and the acclaimed Chasing Embers is his debut fantasy novel. James lives and works in Barcelona, Spain, and is quite aware that these bios can’t keep up with him.
Chasing Embers and Raising Fire are available now. The next volume Burning Ashes comes out in November 2018 from Orbit Books. www.orbitbooks.net
Further information available at:
http://curia-draconis.blogspot.co.uk
Or feel free to follow him on Twitter: @Benjurigan
Or join on Facebook: fb.me/Benjurigan
Carol Borden
She had walked away from it all. She didn’t want any more trouble. She was over the thrill, the adrenaline humming in her veins. All she wanted was drinks with little paper umbrellas on the patio by the pool. Until she saw the woman again. The woman said, “Just one more job.” The woman said, “We’ll hit the big time.” The woman showed her the layout right there by the pool. And Carol Borden was right back where she always was. You can read her stories in several Fox Spirit Books collections. And you can read her writing about other things at monstrousindustry.wordpress.com and www.culturalgutter.com
Sarah Cawkwell
Sarah has been writing for publication for seven years and her published works contain, among other things, Space Marines, daemon queens, talking shields, alternative histories of Britain and the American West, hapless adventurers, cowboys, aliens, a man who has a monster under his bed, blood elves and a horse called Solomon Smith. All of this makes the Day Job of Information Analysis seem pretty tame in comparison, but don’t be fooled – there are great adventures to be found in pivot tables.
Some of that last sentence may be exaggerated.
Sarah lives in the North East of England with her husband, two cats and a house filled with DVDs that nobody ever watches twice. When she isn’t writing, she’s reading, shooting a bow or attending LRP events.
Catch her at: https://pyroriffic.wordpress.com
KT Davies
KT Davies was born in West Yorkshire has a degree in literature, a comic collection, an understanding partner, two savage children, two crazy dogs, and a demanding cat.
Website: http://kdavies.net
Tracy Fahey
Tracy Fahey is an Irish writer of Gothic fiction. Her debut collection, The Unheimlich Manoeuvre, first published in 2016 and reissued by the Sinister Horror Company in 2018, was nominated in 2017 for a British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. Her short fiction has been published in fifteen US and UK anthologies and her work has been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. In 2016 two of her short stories, ‘Walking The Borderlines’ and ‘Under The Whitethorn’ were long listed by Ellen Datlow for The Best Horror of the Year Volume 8. Her first novel, The Girl In The Fort (Fox Spirit Press) was published in 2017. ‘The Cillini’ which appears here will feature in her next collection, New Music For Old Rituals, which will be released in late 2018 by Black Shuck Books. She is currently working on her third collection, I Spit Myself Out.
More information is available on her website at
www.tracyfahey.com
AJ Fitzwater
AJ Fitzwater is a dragon wearing a dapper meat-suit, l
iving between the cracks of Christchurch, New Zealand. Their work can be found in venues of repute such as Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Glittership, Shimmer Magazine, and Giganotosaurus. They survived the trial-by-wordfire of Clarion 2014. Many thoughts are dragged through their timeline at @AJFitzwater. For more info, whisper
pickledthink.blogspot.com into the void.
Li Huijia
Li Huijia is a full-time shop girl and freelance writer living in Singapore. She writes mostly prose, and sometimes dabbles in poetry. She also likes fairytales, folklore, and pottering about in the kitchen. Her work has been published in Noir Carnival, Eastern Heathens: An Anthology of Subverted Asian Folklore, this is how you walk on the moon: an anthology of anti-realist fiction, Inheritance: An Anthology, Pacific Review and Open Road Review. You can find her online at
www.jjawrites.com
W.P. Johnson
W. P. Johnson is a musician and the author of the short story collection The Eight Eyes That Watch You Die. He currently lives and works in Philadelphia. You can follow him on social media via the moniker @americantypo.
V.C. Linde
V.C. Linde has been writing poetry for most of her life in a wandering variety of styles and now writes custom written poems for international customers. She has been published in the anthology Dark Currents and won the 2012 NYT Found Poetry competition.
Steve Lockley
Steve Lockley is the author of around a hundred short stories, a number of which are collected in Always a Dancer & Other Storie (Fox Spirit). His novels include The Empty Chair (based on the popular tv series Ghost Whisperer) and with Steven Savile, The Sign of Glaaki. Steve is one of the 12 authors who got together under the pen name of Rowan Casey to write the Veil Knights urban fantasy series. He is forbidden on pain of death from revealing which of the titles he is responsible for, but anyone who checks the book descriptions shouldn’t have too much trouble working out which one it was. Steve also writes occasional music reviews for FolkRadio UK and can usually be found in the bar at Fantasycon. This year he officially becomes an old git. His (very) occasional blog can be found at https://stevelockley.blogspot.com
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