Out of the Darkness - Author Roundtable
Hellooo!!!
Last week saw the launch of the Out of the Darkness Kickstarter raising funds for a new short story anthology led by Dan Coxon from Unsung Stories. Today I’m lucky to hear from five authors who will be featuring in the anthology talking about their own story, the attraction of the short stories and which ones frightened them the most.
For your chance to get hold of a copy of this anthology (plus some other lovely rerads then please go to Out of the Darkness: an anthology of horror and dark fantasy by Unsung Stories — Kickstarter for more details.
Aliya Whiteley
What is your story called and what is it about?
I wrote a story called ‘The Chorus’ and it’s set in a version of our world where nearly everyone has an inner chorus – a calming set of voices in their mind, singing, or babbling, that reassures them all the time. It’s assumed that everyone has a chorus, really. Nobody gives this amazing gift much thought. The story deals with what happens in a new relationship when one partner reveals to the other that they have never had a chorus.
What led to this choice of fear?
That’s not an easy question to answer, as I wouldn’t want to label what the story means! Hopefully it’ll speak to people in different ways.
What do you enjoy about writing a short story?
When I manage to get it right, it’s incredibly satisfying, and it becomes bigger than the few thousand words I’ve used, somehow. It can have a precision and power far beyond its word count.
Where can we find out more from you?
I’ve got a new novel out from Solaris at the moment. It’s called Skyward Inn: sort of a weird SF first contact story. It’s got a brilliant cover. And I’m always putting up new info at www.aliyawhiteley.wordpress.com.
What is the short story that scared you the most?
When I first read Robert Aickman’s ‘The Swords’ it did something strange to me. I don’t think I’ve ever quite recovered.
Tim Major
What is your story called and what is it about?
My story’s called ‘Goodbye, Jonathan Tumbledown’. It’s about a man’s discovery of a strange online marketplace that allows him to sell personal items and, along with them, his memories associated with those objects. Given that he’s suffered with depression all his life, and given his guilt about his behaviour over the years, he sees this loss of memory as a benefit. But it soon becomes clear to his son that he’s selling off far more than his memories – his father is losing himself.
What led to this choice of fear?
A lot of my stories relate to identity, and the fear of losing it, and also the effects of your behaviour on those closest to you – those sorts of concerns have occupied me since I became a father myself, I suppose. In this story I was interested to what degree some aspects of mental health issues might be a fundamental part of your character, and whether simply attempting to obliterate them, as opposed to acknowledging, addressing and resolving them – might actually have malign effects.
What do you enjoy about writing a short story?
I enjoy writing any fiction, though I can’t deny there’s a pleasure in completing a project in a few days as opposed to many months, as with a novel! I love that short stories provide chances to try out concepts that interest me, which might warrant only a single scene or many thousands of words, which means avoiding any agonising about whether the concept warrants an investment of time. Sometimes it turns out that the idea is bigger than I realised at first – two of my novels began as short stories.
Where can we find out more from you?
My website is www.cosycatastrophes.com, where you’ll find a full list of my books and short stories and how to get hold of them (if you want). I also tweet @onasteamer .
What is the short story that scared you the most?
When I was perhaps eight or nine I read a story, maybe in one of the Pan horror anthologies borrowed from my sister, in which somebody had a recurring dream of being tied face-up in a desert, staring up at the sun with their eyelid muscles severed. I had nightmares about it then, and I still do occasionally nowadays. I’ve often wondered about tracking down the story, but a larger part of me never wants to read it again. These days, I’m more scared by less gruesome concepts, I think – such as memory loss, or loss of control – which brings me all the way back to my short story in this anthology.
Eugen Bacon
What is your story called and what is it about?
‘Still She Visits’ – it’s a story of a migrant’s mental health, grappling with the death of her sister from AIDS back home in Africa. Now all she feels is angry and helpless.
What led to this choice of fear?
There’s a lot of stigma is associated with HIV and mental health. This story helped me address it, and to realise how angry I was about my sister’s death.
What do you enjoy about writing a short story?
A short story is immediate, a point in time. It is fluid, intense. The feeling in ‘Still She Visits’ is both cathartic and therapeutic.
Where can we find out more from you?
Website: eugenbacon.com
Twitter: @EugenBacon
What is the short story that scared you the most?
‘Still She Visits’ for its brutal honesty in grappling with death, and what might be perceived as ‘negative’ emotions. The story is a slap, a reminder that it’s okay to feel.
Ashley Stokes
What is your story called and what is it about?
The story is called ‘Replacement Bus Service’. It’s about a young woman called Georgia who is woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night. A friend is in trouble and Georgia has to dash across country to help. However, at the railway station she finds no trains are running. There follows a journey by replacement bus so stressful reality either breaks down or catches up with Georgia.
What led to this choice of fear?
The spur was two hellish train journeys I took in recently years, one to Leeds and one to Nottingham, both from Norwich where I live. Something in the hours of staring out at bleak black fields for seven hours stared back. Originally, I intended ‘Replacement Bus Service’ to be a short prose-poem mood piece or index of story glimpses a bit like the introductions I had written for Unthology 9 and 10. When Dan Coxon asked me if I could write a story for Out of Darkness, the creative agenda helped me flesh out a story of possession. It was the intersection of those two things that galvanised the story.
What do you enjoy about writing a short story?
They are all crisis, all surge.
Where can we find out more from you?
I have a website – www.ashleystokes.net – but it is geared more to my ghostwriting. I am also on Twitter: @AshleyJStokes, and Instagram: @ashley.j.stokes.
What is the short story that scared you the most?
‘Doctor Lorcrian’s Asylum’ by Thomas Ligotti. It’s not even a story. It’s true. Just go outside and stare into the upper rooms.
Verity Holloway
What is your story called and what is it about?
‘The Forlorn Hope’ is set during an alternative Napoleonic War where monstrous creatures called billywitches are sacking cities. Captain Matilda Cross is signing up for the first wave in a siege against an invaded settlement – they called this ‘the forlorn hope’; you either die or get a promotion – and we soon learn she’s driven to prove herself at almost any cost. We learn about Matilda’s mother, vanished for some years now, and the paranoid fantasies that kept Matilda tied to her apron strings. Letters arrive from Matilda’s old flame, Lady Fitzmichael, who claims to be watching her ‘with a million eyes’, promising to reveal a secret to Matilda if only she’ll put down her sword and come home.
What led to this choice of fear?
I’m fascinated by the anxiety that there could be some fatal flaw inside of us, programmed into our DNA, biding its time, and how that fear can sometimes lead us to fulfil that imagined destiny. Matilda is terrified she’ll become her mother, to the point that sensible self-preservation and the love of friends become loaded with insinuation and threat. I love working with characters who have that drive to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, whatever their motivation.
What do you enjoy about writing a short story?
I actually hate writing them! I find short stories harder than any other form, which makes it extremely annoying that I keep having ideas for more. I really envy writers who don’t agonise over them. Having said that, I like the moment when you have enough material to start chopping back. In the pruning you start to see your original point coming through after so many hours of faffing around. It’s a calming feeling I don’t get anywhere else.
Where can we find out more from you?
I wrote a novel called Pseudotooth which also tackles mental health issues through a dark fantasy lens. Although it’s not an autobiographical book, I wrote it while I was going through the NHS mental health system from my late teens onwards. It was a place to put all those messy feelings. Aside from fiction, I write about history and folklore. Mostly recently, you can find me in Hellebore Zine talking about haunted churches. My website is www.verityholloway.com and I’m on Twitter as @verity_holloway.
What is the short story that scared you the most?
Lately, it’s ‘What The Girls Are Doing’ by Hailey Piper. I love the horror of suspecting you’ll never have any privacy, never escape childhood. Hailey did a wonderful job of creating that claustrophobia.
