Terie Garrison

I've just heard that my old friend Terie Garrison passed away this morning from cancer.

We'd lost touch and hadn't spoken for a number of years, but Terie was someone to whom I still owe a huge debt of thanks. For about six years I regularly attended the South Manchester Writer's Group; Terie was the first person I knew from the group.

An American expatriate, Terie had been brought up an evangelical Christian, but had been excommunicated and was now a Wiccan (if I recall correctly.) She had an official letter of excommunication from her church, which she took some pride in; she occasionally joked about providing copies of the same letter to her friends (with their names in place of hers, of course) to be framed and hung about her home.

She could be quick to take offence at times, but she was funny and, more to the point, a good friend. It was Terie who administered a dose of tough love and hard-headed advice to me when I was at a difficult and painful point in my life. It was also Terie who helped get me out of a prolonged and miserable creative rut by introducing me to the works of Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg, through which I rediscovered the sheer pleasure of writing. My first collection, A Hazy Shade Of Winter, was dedicated to her.

Terie made her living as a technical writer, and also penned a number of YA books, including Changing Gears and the DragonSpawn quartet. I don't know too much about her life over the last decade; I drifted away from the writer's group and lost touch with all but a few of the people there. I got a call a few weeks ago to say that Terie was very ill; the hope was to arrange one last gathering of her friends for a sort of 'living wake.' Unfortunately, Terie was too ill for this to be arranged.

She passed away, as I said, this morning, and although I hadn't seen her in years I miss her already. Very much.

Farewell, Terie. If there's anything else after this life, may it be full of joy and peace.

Things Of The Week 3rd June 2019: Dennis Etchison, Kirkus Reviews, Weirdbook and The Harrowing

Dennis Etchison. Photograph by Lisa Morton.

There was sad news this last week, with the passing of Dennis Etchison, one of the finest short story writers the weird fiction field has ever produced. I've been rereading his short story collection The Dark Country over the past few days, and remembering why, with stories such as 'The Dead Line', 'You Can Go Now', 'Sitting In The Corner, Whimpering Quietly' and 'Daughter Of The Golden West.'
I didn't know Etchison at all personally, and met him very briefly once, at World Horror Con in Brighton in 2010. I'd meant to sign up for his Kaffeeklatsch, but left it too late. I had a copy of The Dark Country that I'd picked up in a Brighton charity shop for about 50p, but I'd forgotten to bring it with me to be signed. I found a copy for sale at the convention and bought that instead - the same edition, but it cost £10! He came into the bar at one point, looking for a carrier bag with some items of his in it. I found it, and asked him to sign my book. He did...

....And that's my Etchison story, unfortunately. But I'd read and loved many of his stories, and he was one of the great writers in our field. Lisa Morton knew him considerably better, and has some words here.

On a happier note, it's been an eventful week here at Castle Bestwick.

And Cannot Come Again is a Kirkus Reviews pick for June, alongside Georgina Bruce's This House Of Wounds and Songs For The Unravelling Of The World by Brian Evenson.

And, after a looong drought on the acceptance front, I finally sold a story this year! 'Whitsun' will appear in Weirdbook #46, released in mid-2020. Many thanks to Douglas Draa for giving it a home.

The latest instalment of my mediaeval horror story The Harrowing is up on my Patreon page. I'm making Book One of the serial free to readers for June as well - feel free to check it out, and if you enjoy it and want to follow Godric's journey across the devastated North, you can do so for only a dollar a month.

What's New? with Laura Mauro

Laura Mauro started writing short fiction in 2012 and hasn't stopped since. Born in London, England, her stories have appeared in Black Static, Interzone, Shadows & Tall Trees, The Dark and a variety of anthologies. Her debut novella 'Naming the Bones' was published in 2017. Her short story "Sun Dogs" was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and "Looking for Laika" won the 2018 British Fantasy Award in Short Fiction. She loves Finnish folklore, Japanese wrestling and Russian space-dogs. She tweets at @lauranmauro

1) So, what’s new from you?So you might have heard in passing that I’ve got a little book coming out soon. My debut short story collection Sing Your Sadness Deep is being published by Undertow Publications, which is incredibly exciting. I’m especially thrilled about it because Undertow were actually the ones who published my first ever short story back in 2012 (‘Red Rabbit’) so it feels like something of a homecoming for me. The collection includes two completely new stories, titled ‘The Pain-Eater’s Daughter’ and ‘In the City of Bones’. The latter is the most recent story I’ve written, and like many of my other stories it’s about one of my weird obsessions – this time, about number stations.

2) How did it come about?
For ‘In The City of Bones’ - I’ve had an image in my head for a long time: a woman in some kind of cabin or shack, completely alone, as in apocalyptically alone – nobody else for miles around. It’s pitch dark, and it’s snowing. As she looks out of the window, she can see a shadowy figure approaching her, walking through an abandoned children’s playground. The number stations came later, largely because visualising this scene gave me the creeps, and number stations also give me the creeps. So I figured that if you smush two creepy things together they accumulate an even greater creepiness. Hopefully my maths is sound.

3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.
It sort of happened organically. I spent a lot of time listening to number stations and wondering what kind of utility they might have outside the popular explanation (it’s thought that they are coded messages used to communicate with spies in the field). Once I’d figured out the purpose they serve in the story, I then built up the rest of it. I found a suitably empty, apocalyptic location (Kadykchan, an abandoned city in far east Siberia). It turns out that this place already comes with its own horrific lore – it’s built on the Kolyma Highway, which was built by prisoners from Stalin’s gulags. Forced to work in terrible conditions – east Siberian winters are extremely harsh – a great many prisoners died, and because it was impractical to dig graves in the permafrost their bodies were interred into the road itself. Because of this, the Kolyma Highway is known as the Road of Bones. From that point on, the story basically wrote itself.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?
There was a lot of miscellaneous research on subjects I found fascinating. Researching Kadykchan was fascinating – you can find lots of photographs from people who’ve been bold enough to explore the region and drive the Road of Bones between Yakutsk and Magadan. One of the coolest things was finding a photo of someone’s abandoned home, still full of their belongings, and working the title of one of their books into the story. It was quite uncanny in a way, as I’d pictured the children’s playground in my original vision, and photos of Kadykchan tend to feature an abandoned playground quite prominently. Researching Siberian climate and fauna was really interesting as well. It’s the kind of landscape you can be quite poetic about.

5) What was the toughest part of it?
The protagonist is living with a congenital skin condition called Harlequin Ichthyosis, which is something I came across during my years in an antenatal clinic – no actual cases as it’s very rare, but plenty of literature. It’s quite a shocking condition when you first encounter it – google with caution as the pictures can be intense. Babies born with this condition have incredibly thick skin, almost like plate armour, which tends to split and crack painfully – the word ‘Harlequin’ refers to the appearance of the cracked skin, like a jester’s motley. There was a time when Harlequin Ichthyosis was a death sentence, and afflicted babies rarely lived beyond a year. These days, as we gain more and more understanding of the condition there are more and more cases of sufferers surviving into adulthood. The protagonist is one of these adult survivors. It was really important to me to make sure I got the facts right regarding living with this condition, so the research was far more intense.

6) Is there a theme running through it?
I think the overall theme is about people who don’t fit into the world, and how those people often find one another. To be honest, that might be the accidental theme of my entire collection. It’s a subject I know a lot about.

7) If you had to sum this story up in three words, what would they be?
“They’re coming home”

8) Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?
“Sing your Sadness Deep” is available to pre-order here in both paperback and hardcover, and eBook will soon be available too. It’s going to be released around July, so very soon! I hope people will like it….!

What's New? with Priya Sharma

Priya Sharma’s fiction has appeared venues such as Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark and Tor. She’s been anthologised in several of Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year series, Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series, Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, Steve Haynes’ Best British Fantasy 2014 and Johnny Main’s Best British Horror 2015. She’s also been on many Locus’ Recommended Reading Lists. “Fabulous Beasts” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She is a Grand Judge for the Aeon Award, an annual writing competition run by Albedo One, Ireland’s magazine of the Fantastic.

She is a Shirley Jackson finalist and Locus Award finalist for “All the Fabulous Beasts”, a collection of her some of her work, which is available from Undertow Publications.

1) So, what’s new from you?

A short story called “Feral”.

2) How did it come about?

It’s my twisted version of the old “raised by wolves” story. The idea has been bothering me for a long time. I can’t elaborate too much for fear of spoilers. It’s a love story, of sorts. I also wanted to explore our perception of choice about how we live.

3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.

I do a lot of research for my stories, most of which doesn’t make the final version of the piece. I like the journey that it takes me on- it opens up new avenues within the narrative and adds texture to world building. A tiny detail can make the lie that is fiction seem more real. For “Feral”, I read about wolves, wild children and looked at photos of minimalist houses.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?

My favourite part of any story is when I’m at the peak of the proverbial hill. I can look back at what I’ve written and forward to see how the rest of it needs to fit together, but there’s still room to explore. Something new might happen that will surprise me. It’s also easier to reverse engineer from here, before things are complete, putting in strands and connections that add another level of depth.

5) What was the toughest part of it?

At the peak of the proverbial hill, when I’m worried that it’s all rubbish! That’s when I need to hold my nerve. For me, it’s never the situation, it’s always about where I am mentally. I make my own hell and paradise with so many things.

And re-edits. When I’ve done so many that I can’t see the story clearly and just have to trust it.

6) Is there a theme running through it?

Freedom, or lack of it. Also, love. Pesky love.

7) If you had to sum this book up in three words, what would they be?

“Run, sister. Run.”

8) Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?

It's in “The Porcupine Boy and other Anthological Oddities”, edited by Christopher Jones. It’s out at some point soon from Crossroads Press. Chris has kindly given me permission to talk about it here.

Nearing The Halfway Point

Current mood.

We're almost at the end of May (both the month and the Prime Minister.) Not halfway through the
year yet, but getting there. So, not a bad time to take stock of where things are.

Healthwise, it's not been the best year. I spent the first couple of months of it virtually bedbound with agonising knee pain (and with codeine medication for it leaving me wiped out half the time and with my sleeping patterns completely banjaxed), and been off work with anxiety for the last week. As a result, I've piled on a lot of the weight I lost last year. Next month, I'm heading back to Slimming World, where I'll start to put the damage right.

Not been a great year story submissions wise either - in fact, I haven't had a single acceptance all year, with stories I was very pleased with repeatedly knocked back. But that has had the effect of making me reflect on what I write and why, and made me determined to strive for excellence in my work. The last couple of years have also reminded me, very strongly, that I do what I do because I love it. And if I don't love what I'm doing, I shouldn't be doing it.

I hit a crisis point last year, where I realised I'd lost all sense of direction in terms of novel writing - the old, perennial trouble of trying to write what I thought was popular instead of what I needed to write. Two things helped me resolve it. One was realising that the projects of mine my agent was the most excited about were the ones I'd written out of sheer love and passion - the ones I'd thought no-one would be interested in. The second was asking myself one very simple question:

"If you could only write one more novel, what would it be?"

As it turned out, the answer was the novel that I'd been writing - but very differently from how I planned it. What was to have been a bog-standard psychological thriller became something else - a ghost story, a love story, a horror story... it's very rough at the moment (and not even fully typed up from Dictaphone notes) but it's something different.

I've written two novellas this year, as well, while also working on The Song Of The Sibyl, the huge

quarter-million word epic. There has been a shedload of work to do on that (two novels' worth, effectively!) but it's close to being finished and sent off to The Agent.

In addition, my Patreon is running and bringing in a stream (well, trickle) of income, featuring the ongoing serial The Harrowing.

One thing I was determined to do in 2019 was to write a screenplay; I've been working on something, a little bit of a time, in between work on the novel; slow going, but it's taking shape.

So, a lot of work, that will hopefully pay off in the future.

But there are also good things happening this year.

The big one, of course, is And Cannot Come Again, due out from ChiZine Press soon, complete with an Introduction by Ramsey

Campbell and blurbs from Angela Slatter, Reggie Oliver, Gemma Files and many, many more. The paperback will be released on the 11th July; if you can't wait that long, the ebook version will be available from the 18th June.

July will also see the release of A Love Like Blood, consisting of my novelettes Fitton's Ghost and Burns The Witchfire, Upon The Hill. It'll be launched at Edge-Lit in July - and who knows, there may be some copies of And Cannot Come Again available too.

Another good thing happened a couple of weeks ago, when Ellen Datlow's anthology The Devil And The Deep, featuring my story 'Deadwater', won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology. Congratulations to Ellen and the other contributors!

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print so far. Now on with the rest of the year.

What's New? with Damien Angelica Walters

DamienAngelica Walters is the author of the forthcoming The Dead Girls Club, Cry Your Way Home, Paper Tigers, and Sing Me Your Scars, winner of This is Horror’s Short Story Collection of the Year. Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Autumn Cthulhu and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda’s Song, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and Apex Magazine. Until the magazine’s closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two rescued pit bulls and is represented by Heather Flaherty of The Bent Agency.

1) So, what’s new from you?

My forthcoming novel, The Dead Girls Club. The official cover copy from the publisher:

Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face...

In 1991, Heather Cole and her friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. Obsessed with the macabre, the girls exchanged stories about serial killers and imaginary monsters, like the Red Lady, the spirit of a vengeful witch killed centuries before. Heather knew the stories were just that, until her best friend Becca began insisting the Red Lady was real--and she could prove it.

That belief got Becca killed.

It's been nearly thirty years, but Heather has never told anyone what really happened that night--that Becca was right and the Red Lady was real. She's done her best to put that fateful summer, Becca, and the Red Lady, behind her. Until a familiar necklace arrives in the mail, a necklace Heather hasn't seen since the night Becca died.

The night Heather killed her.

Now, someone else knows what she did...and they're determined to make Heather pay.

2) How did it come about?

I had an image of a woman receiving a half-heart necklace in the mail, a necklace she knew no one could’ve possibly sent to her. And from there, I saw four girls sitting in a dark basement, telling scary stories. It didn’t take long to realize that it was a more mainstream novel, something with a psychological suspense backbone.

3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.

The novel has two timelines – now and 1991. I wrote the opening scene as described above, which takes place now, and then wrote the entire past timeline. When that was finished, I returned to the present.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?

When the pieces of the two timelines fell into place, fitting together like a puzzle.

5) What was the toughest part of it?

The past timeline was fairly easy to write, inasmuch as any writing is easy, but the present timeline was another matter. Figuring out who was behind the central mystery and why was difficult, and then it ended up changing because it didn’t quite work. Even after that was sorted, getting all the clues and red herrings in place was tricky.

I ended up rereading many of my Agatha Christie novels during the process, taking note of how she hid things, both true and false, within the narrative.

And lastly, because of the story changes and the subsequent revisions, making sure nothing was left that referenced anything that was ultimately changed or deleted. (And never mind that I’ve gone through it with a fine-toothed comb, I’m still terrified that I missed something.)

6) Is there a theme running through it?

Indeed, but I’ll leave that for a reader to uncover.

7) If you had to sum this book up in three words, what would they be?

Every truth lies.

8) Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?

It will be released in hardcover and ebook on December 10, 2019 and is up for preorder now at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. And if you’re a NetGalley reviewer, it’s available for request.

What's New? with Ray Cluley

Ray Cluley is a British Fantasy Award winner with stories published in various magazines and anthologies. Some of these have been republished in ‘best of’ volumes, including Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year series and Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror, as well as Steve Berman’s Wilde Stories: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction, and Benoît Domis’s Ténèbres. He has been translated into French, Polish, Hungarian, and Chinese. Water for Drowning was short-listed for a British Fantasy Award for Best Novella and is also currently available as an audiobook. Probably Monsters, his debut collection, was short-listed for a British Fantasy Award for Best Collection and is available from ChiZine Publications.


1) So, what’s new from you?
There are a few things.
One of them, 6/6, a limited-edition chapbook from Black Shuck Books, is due out in June. As much as I’d love to talk about that, the nature of the story and the details of its presentation are hush-hush at the moment. Let’s say it’s a sort of found-footage story and leave it at that. You can pre-order it here.
I have a second collection out there under consideration, but I don’t want to jinx it by saying much more. Fingers are crossed. It’s a quieter, more subtle collection than Probably Monsters, with thirteen stories in all.
My most recent story ‘Adrenaline Junkies’, should be appearing later this year in an anthology I’m quite excited about, and I can talk about that one. The anthology goes by the wonderful title of Porcupine Boy and other Anthological Oddities.

2) How did it come about?
Christopher Jones invited me to submit a story via Facebook Messenger. He’d recently suffered a terrible near-death experience that brought life into perspective and as he’d always wanted to edit an anthology, he made it a new priority. I was fully onboard with that as a reason to produce a story.

3) Tell us about the process of how you created it.
Well, considering how the anthology came about, I wanted to write something using a near-death experience. Using a sequence of flashbacks, and a mix of past and present tense, I wanted to tell two stories – one is the here and now of the horror the story, the other, the flashback stuff, addresses the idea of your whole life flashing before you before you die. For the narrator, the best of that life was the time spent with her lover. So I essentially write two stories, one about skydiving and monsters, the other about a beautiful relationship and loss. The former required a great deal of research, the latter merely meant imaging the worst and writing it down.

4) What was your favourite part of the process?
Usually, the answer for this would always be ‘the writing part’. I love it. But this proved to be a very tricky story to get down in the end, and in the end I spent much longer editing and redrafting than I did any of the writing. What I do always enjoy, though – and this story was no exception – is the research part. I loved researching skydiving and other extreme sports, as well as Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula. And the monster stuff is always fun.

5) What was the toughest part of it?
The writing was tough due to the mix of past and present, and for a short while at the beginning of the process, settling for an appropriate narrative perspective. Writing two different stories was fine but finding a suitable way to splice them together proved a bit of a challenge, particularly coming up with transitions that allowed for a cohesive, believable structure. That took way more time than it should have. Christopher was very patient with me – I’m very grateful that he gave me the time to produce a story I’m happy with instead of one ‘that’ll do’.

6) Is there a theme running through it?
The anthology is unthemed, but as noted above, using a near-death experience felt appropriate to me for my contribution, and although it’s very much a horror story, I also wanted something with a ‘seize the day’ mentality (in fact, its working title for a while was ‘Carpe the Fucking Diem’). I thought of all the things on my own bucket list and went from there, creating a story about a group of adrenaline junkies. For one of them, each death-defying rush is a coping mechanism regarding her cancer, her attempt to seize the day and seize it often, while she still can. For the narrator it’s about maintaining a link with her lost lover. As a result of this loss she’s reluctant to start a new relationship, so her carpe diem moment focusses on that, the idea of moving on after grief. For all the nasty stuff in the story, I’m hoping there’s a very positive message, too.



7) If you had to sum up this story in three words, what would they be?
Seize the day. (If I’d had four words, they would’ve been carpe the fucking diem!)

8) Where can/will we be able to get hold of it?
I’m not sure of the publisher yet – it may even be that Christopher is going it alone with this project, considering the personal nature of it – but no doubt I’ll shout about the where and when and how much via social media nearer the time. I’ve seen a few of the names involved, though, and can safely say there will be plenty of reasons why people will want Porcupine Boy and other Anthological Oddities in their lives…