Hannah Kate's Blog, page 79

Call for Submissions: Hauntings: An Anthology

Short Story Submissions Wanted

A memory, a spectre, a feeling of regret, a sense of déjà vu, ghosts, machines, something you can’t quite put your finger on, a dark double, the long shadow of illness, your past, a nation’s past, your doppelgänger, a place, a song, a half-remembered rhyme, guilt, trauma, doubt, a shape at the corner of your eye, the future, the dead, the undead, the living, a grey cat, a black dog, a ticking clock, someone you used to know, someone you used to be.

We are all haunted.

Submissions wanted for a new anthology of short stories based around the theme of haunting.

What we want: Edgy, dark and weird fiction. Any interpretation of the theme is welcome – and we have no preconceptions about what ‘haunting’ might mean. Any genre considered: dark fantasy, urban fantasy, Gothic, horror, sci fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, biopunk, dystopian, slipstream. We’re looking for original and fresh voices that challenge and unsettle. (And, please remember, we do not publish misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia or racism.)

Editor: Hannah Kate

Publisher: Hic Dragones

Word Count: 3000-7000

Submission Guidelines: Electronic submissions as .doc, .docx or .rtf attachments only. 12pt font, 1.5 or double spaced. Please ensure name, story title and email address are included on the attachment. Email submissions to Hic Dragones. Submissions are welcome from anywhere, but must be in English.

Submission Deadline: Thursday 31st October 2013

Payment: Contributor copy: 1 copy of paperback, eBook in ePub and/or mobi format; permanent 25% discount on paperback (resale permitted); 1 free eBook from our catalogue

For more information, visit the publishers’ website or email Hic Dragones

Important Information: This is a non-paying market. Hic Dragones is currently a micro-press with plans to become a small press, and we acknowledge that this is not the market for everyone. We feel that what we offer – professional and thorough developmental editing and copy-editing, support and exposure (from IRL and virtual platforms) – will benefit emerging writers; however, we welcome submissions from more established writers (see previous anthologies). We value transparency and communication, so if you would like to know more about our business model, our background or our plans for the future, please email Hic Dragones or chat to us on Twitter or Facebook.

Whodunnit: Writing Murder Mystery Games

So I thought I’d write a blog post about some writing I’ve been doing recently. I haven’t had a huge amount of time recently to work on my novels, short stories or poetry recently, mostly because of my academic work and editing/publishing work, which is why this blog has been a bit bare for a while. But I have been busy with one creative outlet, so I thought I’d share a bit of info about that.

Murder Mystery Dinner Party Games

© Robisklp | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

I first played a murder mystery dinner party game on a writing retreat in 2004. My writing group were staying in a rented cottage for a week (I think there were about 8 or 9 of us there), and there was a stack of old board games in a cupboard. Amongst these was a boxed murder mystery game, and we decided to give it a try. It was one of the commercially produced games that you can buy in shops, with printed booklets for each character and a tape to play between rounds. The whole thing was a bit of silly fun, requiring us all to improvise weird outfits from what we had available and put on daft voices. I seem to remember I did an absolutely appalling impression of Blanche Dubois (because my character was supposed to be American, and that’s the only ‘American’ accent I can do… and I can’t even do that very well). The detective on the tape kept up a commentary of terrible puns and awful innuendos. Given that we weren’t actually playing the game over dinner, but over a very large amount of red wine, much fun was had by all.

The writing retreat was an annual one, so we decided to include a murder mystery game as part of the proceedings each year. At some point over the week, after the day’s exercises and critique was done, we’d open some wine, put on silly clothes and voices, and get cracking.

These games were a lot of fun, but also a little disappointing. I’ve been a huge fan of detective fiction (particularly Golden Age detective fiction) since I was a child. It’s something I inherited from and shared with my grandma. Back in the days of terrestrial TV only, I can remember watching episodes of Agatha Christie adaptations on a Sunday night, and then getting a phone call from my grandma to see if I’d worked out who’d dunnit (she always knew, as she’d already read the books). That love of detective fiction has stayed with me, and I still adore Agatha Christie.

So when it came to the games we were were playing, I was missing something. I liked the ‘game’ aspect, but there was no ‘mystery’. I wanted clues, red herrings, mistaken identities, secrets from the past… all the things that you’d find in a traditional detective novel. And so, with a bit of trepidation, I decided to see if I could do better.

A new range of mystery games

The mystery games I’m working on at the moment will be launched in the summer by Hic Dragones. The idea is that they are fun dinner party games that will appeal to discerning fans of classic detective fiction. The plots are intended to be rich, layered and cryptic. Guests have to work out who the murderer is, but also solve the puzzle of how the murder was committed. The first one I wrote involved a murder in a seaside hotel, but with an added conundrum – the victim was seen walking around two hours after the time of death. The most recent one involved a poisoning, but with no apparent means through which the poison was administered.

Writing these games is a very unique type of challenge. I have to begin by deciding on the solution, and then work backwards from there. (I spend quite a bit of time researching different poisons at the moment, working out which one will do what I need it to do!) Like a mystery novelist, I have to plot backwards, working out when and how important bits of information should be revealed, and how many red herrings can cloud the truth.

Unlike a mystery novelist, however, I have absolutely no control over my characters! Some of the dialogue is scripted, and each round has questions to be asked and information to be revealed. But, outside of that, guests can say and do what they like (so long as they’re in character). I’ve now seen three of my games being played and each one has had more ad-libbing than I could’ve predicted, and the insertion of strange backstories that were not part of my plot! When I watch one of the trial games, it’s like being a playwright who has crafted a beautiful script – only to watch it being discarded by an enthusiastic group of improvisers. It’s a very unusual experience for a writer!

All this makes for a unique challenge. If my plots are going to be complex, then it’s vital that all the clues are revealed. In classic whodunnits, even the most throwaway line can be crucial, but when you write a murder mystery game you can’t bank on those throwaway lines actually being spoken. I’ve already had one experience of a very significant clue not being revealed due to a guest assuming it wasn’t important and not reading it out!

I don’t want guests to feel they can’t improvise and ad-lib (that’s part of the fun), but I don’t want clues to feel heavy-handed or signposted too much. So I’m developing strategies to make sure the information is all conveyed… even if enthusiastic guests go wildly off-script. These have to be subtle – and I’m not sure I want to give too many of my tricks away here! Suffice to say I have dissected the works of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham to see exactly how they do it.

I’ve had several of my games trialed by willing groups of volunteers so far, and will be continuing to put myself through the nail-biting experience of watching people play new games without being allowed to intervene. My inner diva hates this – I always feel like bursting in and saying, ‘No, no, no… you’re doing this all wrong!’ But I’ve learnt to control myself.

I’ve had some really useful feedback so far. Guests have pointed out clues that were far too cryptic, and red herrings that were too obvious. This has helped me with writing future titles immensely. But the best feedback has been about their experience of playing. My volunteer diners and hosts have all commented on the overall ‘feel’ of the nights. And I think my favourite ever comment was: ‘It’s like being a character in an Agatha Christie novel for a night.’ That really made me feel like I must be doing something right!

The next title I’m going to be writing is for the horror range – which is a bit different, and I might blog separately about that. The next classic title I’m doing will be set in the home of a 1930s industrialist. I’ve got volunteers queuing up to take part in a trial, which is reassuring. But I’m still hugely nervous. Time to get out my poison book and begin to work out how, why and whodunnit…

Giveaway: Guess the name of the werewolf and win a SIGNED copy of Wolf-Girls

Hic Dragones are doing another book giveaway this month. This time the prize is a FREE copy of Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny (edited by me!), signed by a selection of the authors.

Feral, vicious, fierce and lost… the she-wolf is a strange creature of the night. Attractive to some; repulsive to others, she stalks the fringes of our world as though it were her prey. She is the baddest of girls, the fatalest of femmes – but she is also the excluded, the abject, the monster.

The Wolf-Girls within these pages are mad, bad and dangerous to know. But they are also rejected and tortured, loving and loyal, avenging and triumphant. Some of them are even human…

Seventeen new tales of dark, snarling lycogyny by Nu Yang, Mary Borsellino, Lyn Lockwood, Mihaela Nicolescu, L. Lark, Jeanette Greaves, Kim Bannerman, Lynsey May, Hannah Kate, J. K. Coi, Rosie Garland, R. A. Martens, Beth Daley, Marie Cruz, Helen Cross, Andrew Quinton and Sarah Peacock.

To enter:

All you have to do to enter the competition is GUESS THE NAME OF THE WEREWOLF!

Give our little lycanthrope a name!

Enter your name suggestion in the Rafflecopter box below, and one lucky person will win a signed copy of the book and a little lycanthropic bonus. International entry permitted, and the prize will be shipped direct to wherever you live. The competition ends on April 29th, and we’ll announce the winning entry shortly after that.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hic Dragones presents… Twisted Tales of Cannibalism

Thought I’d post something about an event I’m co-organizing in Manchester on Wednesday 24th April. It’s a free event, and will feature three fantastic UK writers. If you’ll be anywhere near Manchester on the 24th, you should come along…

A night of dark horror fiction with Conrad Williams (Blonde on a Stick, One, The Unblemished), Stephen McGeagh (Habit) and Harry Whitehead (The Cannibal Spirit), presented by Hic Dragones and Twisted Tales.

Cannibalism disrupts our relatively stable position at the top of the food chain. From Jeffrey Dahmer to Hannibal Lecter, cannibals are the subject of popular fascination in both fiction and crime reports. However, they have a much longer heritage and their monstrous appetites can make them seem something both greater and lesser than human. Join Twisted Tales and Hic Dragones for an evening of readings by authors known for their cannibal fiction, before engaging in discussion about this primal taboo.

Hic Dragones is a small press publisher and events organizer based in North Manchester. This event is a tie-in with the Cannibals: Cannibalism, Consumption and Culture conference running on 25-26th April 2013. For more information about this conference, please visit the website.

Twisted Tales is an award-nominated series of horror readings based in the North West, with the aim of promoting the best of 21st century horror through engaging the public in a series of dynamic literary events. Now entering into its third year, Twisted Tales has worked with a range of top authors, including China Miéville, Sarah Pinborough, Ramsey Campbell, Jeremy Dyson, Adam Nevill, Stuart MacBride, Graham Joyce, Alison Littlewood and many more. For further information, please visit the Twisted Tales website.

Online Ticketing for Hic Dragones Presents… Twisted Tales of Cannibalism powered by Eventbrite

Coming Soon…

So, this post is about a book I’ve recently edited, rather than a book I’ve written, but I’m so excited about it I thought it deserved a post!

Aimee and the Bear is the absolutely stunning debut novel by Toby Stone, to be published by Hic Dragones in February 2013. It’s a dark (sometimes very dark) fantasy story about a troubled young girl who makes a dangerous journey into the world of her imagination. Stuffed to the brim with echoes of Oz, Wonderland and 100 Aker Wood – but with its feet firmly in early twenty-first-century Manchester - Aimee and the Bear is no children’s story. It’s captivating and unsettling piece of Manc magic realism that’ll change the way you look at teddy bears (and Russian dolls) forever.

Aimee and the Bear is being launched on February 7th 2013, at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester, with readings and wine reception. It’s a free event, and there’s more details on the launch party website. If you can make it, it’ll be a great night. If you can’t make it, I strongly recommend you get hold of a copy of the book as soon as you can!

Dark Chaucer: An Assortment

Edited by Myra Seaman, Eileen Joy and Nicola Masciandaro

When I set up this new website, I intended things to be easy to compartmentalize. I write academic articles as Hannah Priest and creative poetry and prose as Hannah Kate. And yet, here I am, plugging a creative piece I wrote under the name Hannah Priest. Ah well…

I have a prose poem entitled ‘Unravelling Constance’ in a new collection from Punctum Books entitled Dark Chaucer: An Assortment. It’s creative response to Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale (from the Canterbury Tales). Here’s a short extract:

She came from the sea, mazed, amazed – masen – confused, bewildered, senseless. Deceived, deranged, crazed. They stopped and asked her who she was. When they stopped and asked her who she was. When they stopped and asked her who she was, she said she did not know. She said she was so mazed in the sea, that she forgot her mind. Her mind – mynde – seat of memory, faculty of memory, individual remembrance. Reason, understanding. Will, desire, purpose. She forgot her mind, when she lost herself. Constance forgets Constance. Constance is lost. Distress teaches us to be inventive, says the nightingale, but blank Constance does not invent.

Dark Chaucer: An Assortment is now available in both print and digital formats. The open-access eBook is available for free, and the paperback edition is priced at $15 – both are available direct from the publishers. If you download the eBook, please also consider making a donation to support the publishers in fostering and developing new and innovative scholarship.

About the book:

Although widely beloved for his playfulness and comic sensibility, Chaucer’s poetry is also shot through with dark moments that open into obscure and irresolvably haunting vistas, passages into which one might fall head-first and never reach the abyssal bottom. Opting to dilate rather than cordon off this darkness, this volume assembles a variety of attempts to follow such moments into their folds of blackness and horror, to chart their endless sorrows and recursive gloom, and to take depth soundings in the darker recesses of the Chaucerian lakes in order to bring back palm- or bite-sized pieces (black jewels) of bitter Chaucer that could be shared with others… an assortment, if you will. Not that this collection finds only emptiness and non-meaning in these caves and lakes. You never know what you will discover in the dark.

About the publisher:

Punctum Books is an open-access and print-on-demand independent publisher dedicated to radically creative modes of intellectual inquiry and writing across a whimsical para-humanities assemblage. For more information, please visit the Punctum Books website.

The Next Big Thing

So… I have a new blog… ta da! (This a blog about my creative writing; if you’re looking for stuff about my academic work, it’s on the She-Wolf blog.) Of course, as soon as it was up-and-running, I couldn’t think of a single thing to blog about. But with perfect timing, the wonderful Rosie Garland tagged me on The Next Big Thing blog hop, so I get to spend my first post on the new site talking about my first novel, Yonec.

I’ll then tag five more writers who will post their responses next Wednesday.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Yonec is a contemporary retelling of a twelfth-century poem by Marie de France. Marie’s poem tells the story of a young woman who is given in marriage to a jealous and greedy old man. He becomes so obsessed that she will be unfaithful that he locks her in a stone chamber and forbids her to see anyone. The young woman is so distraught that she prays for someone to rescue her; in answer to prayers, a hawk flies into her prison and transforms into a handsome knight. Marie’s poem is one of my favourite pieces of medieval poetry, and I wrote about it in my PhD thesis (and have written an article on it since). At the same time, it is also a story of domestic abuse (something I have some experience of, unfortunately), and so the idea of retelling it as a contemporary urban fantasy novel just seemed to make sense.

What genre does your book fall under?

The book is YA, as I find that genre more enjoyable to read (and write), and it made sense to keep Marie’s heroine as a young woman. It’s a dark urban fantasy, and it has a couple of good-looking, mysterious young men. But I’m reluctant to say it’s a paranormal romance, as I think it’s more a quest for the heroine.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

That’s a really hard question, because the characters have their own faces in my mind. I can’t imagine them with other faces! So I guess I’d say someone unknown, someone who’s not associated with another role.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Amy knows that something is wrong with her world, that something is wrong with her: will the mysterious (and sexy) new student at her college help her work things out or are things are about to get worse? (I cheated and used a colon and a run-on sentence. Sorry.)

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m hoping to find representation for the novel, or to go with a smaller press that considers unagented manuscripts. I’m just about to start another round of submissions. I have considered self-publishing, but the time and energy I would need to promote and sell the book is beyond me. I run a small press, and spend a large part of my time working on the business of publishing and selling other people’s work. I’m only one woman!

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

It took almost exactly a year. I wrote it during the final year of my PhD, which was an interesting contrast to my academic writing.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My first inspiration was Marie de France, of course. But I hadn’t really considered writing YA until I read Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely series and Holly Black’s YA fairy novels. When I put these together with my desire to write a novel that touched on the experience of domestic abuse, the idea for the novel was pretty much there.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

That depends on what your interests are! The sexy fairy love interest takes his top off a lot. There are pyromaniac banshees and fascist kelpies. There’s some decapitation. There are a couple of geeky in-jokes for medievalists. Take your pick.

My writers for next Wednesday are:

Toby Stone

J.K. Coi

Stephen Morris