Aliya Whiteley's Blog, page 18

The beast to be disturbed

Crowdfunding begins today for an anthology of weird fiction by women writers called Disturbing the Beast, and it has some fabulous eyeball-heavy artwork for a cover:

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This is the first book from Boudicca Press, who are dedicated to discussing the kind of subjects that deserve some weird treatment – pregnancy, for a start. Now that is a weird business.

I’ve been asked to write a story for this (I’m just polishing something for it now), and so has the brilliant Kirsty Logan; submissions are also open right now.

I’ve just had a quick check and this has already reached over 10% of its target in the first few hours, so that is a brilliant start. I think it’s going to be good. I can’t stop looking at all those eyes. Leave me alone, eyes. Right, back to polishing.

 

Skin Cover

Here it is!

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Look at the arm. I love it.

An enormous thank you to Tara Bush and Vince Haig for this cover. It’s the best.

 

Blanket coverage

I’m really happy with the design for my story Territory: Blank, which will be published in Interzone shortly. Look at this sneaky peek. It’s perfect for the story:

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I’ve also written the guest editorial for the edition, which is all about how we can’t escape certain stories.

Speaking of which, I certainly can’t escape mushrooms. I even saw them in a sort of Rorschach-blot type of test I took when I did an interview with Seth Lindberg recently. I promise you, I’m not fungally obsessed. They just keep… cropping up.

Also, I will go into more detail about this later but just so you know, there’s a magnificently successful crowd-funding going on for Unsung Stories’ latest anthology about UK folk horror, called This Dreaming Isle. It’s really no surprise that everyone is getting in on the action considering the subject and the list of authors involved. I’m excited to read it, let alone be in it, with that line up. You can back it here. And you can read a bit about why Nina Allan thinks it’s going to be an important anthology here.

And it has a great cover, of course. As all Unsung Stories books do. I’m hoping to get to show off the cover for The Loosening Skin soon. But not yet. So here’s This Dreaming Isle’s cover, with evocative artwork by Jordan Grimmer:

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Horizons and Territories

The latest edition of Far Horizons magazine is filled with treats from Unsung Stories, including short stories by Malcolm Devlin, Verity Holloway, Oliver Langmead, and me. There are also interviews, reviews, and even a sneaky extract from The Loosening Skin. The publication date for that is the end of October, so you really are getting an early look at that. Gulp.

My story in the magazine is called Chekhov’s Gun. When I was studying theatre and film I was fascinated by the rule of Chekhov’s Gun. It states that if you’re going to hang a shotgun above a fireplace in act one, somebody should have used it by act five. The trick, for me, is to make it look like the gun might not be there to fired, or else the inevitability of the gun being fired takes over everything; it’s all we can think about. But what if it’s all the characters can think about too? So I couldn’t do things by half when using that particular rule; this story contains the biggest gun I’ve ever written about. Will it get fired?

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Also, I’ll just add that I’m so pleased that my new story Territory: Blank will be published in Interzone some time soon. It’s kind of the opposite to Chekhov’s Gun. That’s all I’ll say about it for the next few months, though, until it’s out in the world. Also I’m not going to mention the possibility of an upcoming cover reveal for The Loosening Skin in the next week or so. Nothing to see here yet. *whistles*

 

A new envelope for Missives

In November 2018 Titan Books will be publishing The Arrival of Missives in the US, and they recently revealed the new cover, along with an excerpt, on Tor.com. You can go there and see it, or you can just look down now. It’s far too beautiful not to have it on my blog too. Also, it’s a great match with the US cover of The Beauty.

 

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See the shiny sticker? It says that this new US edition also comes with a novelette called ‘The Last Voyage of the Smiling Henry’, which is an adventure story that owes a debt to both William Hope Hodgson and the 1974 film ‘The Land that Time Forgot’.

Thanks to everyone at Titan, particularly the cover designer Julia Lloyd, for preparing to send it out into the US in such a smart envelope.

The weird, the cold, and the pointy

Although I’d be tempted to call myself a weird writer rather than a writer of the Weird, I’m very happy to be involved in the business of writing a story for Boudicca Press‘ upcoming anthology Disturbing the Beast. Submissions are currently being accepted and there’ll be crowdfunding to come. I’m really looking forward to seeing this project, and this publisher, go from strength to disturbing, bestial strength.

Tales from the Shadow Booth 2 is now out in the world, and I read my story ‘Ear to Ear’ at the launch last week. It was a hot day. So hot. The launch was in a basement under a pub and I thought it would be a furnace down there, so I put off descending for as long as possible only to step into a very cool pleasant spooky cave-like basement with candelabras and odd scraping noises. It was perfect. Also, I asked the barman for something cold and refreshing and he nodded sympathetically and served me the best pint of IPA I’ve drunk in a long time. So if you’re overheating in London I highly recommend a visit to Old Mary’s. It revived me enough to make the reading possible, and then two other brilliant readings followed, and the book was launched in style.

Also: Sharp Objects! I’m reviewing it over the next eight weeks for Den of Geek in the UK and US. The reviews are very spoilersome so don’t click on this link to the first one if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s far too good to spoil. Like Tennessee Williams and Thomas Harris got together in a dank pub and came up with a drinking game. That’s all I’ll say here.

 

Hiding in the Scullery

Although hiding is my default state, I will be breaking cover and can be found in the Scullery for a live reading event to celebrate the launch of Tales From the Shadow Booth vol 2. July 5th, in the evening, along with some brilliant writers that I’m excited to hear read aloud – it should be a weird and eerie evening…

You can sign up at the Facebook page. I think spaces are pretty limited so you might want to do that sooner rather than later if you’re interested.

The Scullery is underneath Old Mary’s (London, near Lancaster Gate)- take a look at the website here! Looks like the perfect venue for being Weird. And drinking cocktails. Two things that certainly aren’t mutually exclusive, in my experience.

 

Holt House in the Hand

 

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Holt House is here, and I love the way it looks. A last minute cover design change moved everything from white to black, but the malevolent eye of the house inside a rusty trap remains. And the handy pocket size means I want to carry it around all day. It’s menacing and it has that new book smell. In short, it’s perfect.

If you don’t know anything about the Eden Book Society and their quest to return old horror classics from a mythical mail-order service to modern publishing, then read a bit about it here…

And while I’m typing about strange houses with sinister old ladies inside, I should mention I wrote an article about Roald Dahl’s The Landlady for Storgy, which is available to read here. 

Entering the Shadow Booth

I remember borrowing a copy of Roald Dahl’s short story collection Kiss Kiss from the library at an impressionable age and sinking fully into its black humour, to emerge never quite the same ever again. So I’m really glad Tales From the Shadow Booth exists. The first volume reminded me of Dahl in places, and of Aickmann, and of other writers of dark, human strangeness. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it.

So it’s very good news for me that I managed to place one of my own weird stories in Tales From the Shadow Booth Volume 2, along with some great writers. I wrote ‘Ear to Ear’ with that twisted comic voice of Dahl’s firmly in my mind, and came up with a tale of butchery, cement, and hat-wearing.

Crowdfunding is going on now to pay the authors – order a copy and make us all happy. It will undoubtedly be a good read. The first one was. Plus – look at that cover! A real horror anthology blast from the past. I think I used to have one of those dolls. Terrifying.

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A Pick of Six

There are six covers by Darren Hopes in the Eden Book Society project, and they make an eerie and stylish collection. I helped to prepare* one of the novellas in this series (although I’m not allowed to say which one) and I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on the entire set.

The other authors involved are Gary Budden, Alison Moore, Andrew Michael Hurley, Jenn Ashworth and Richard V Hirst, and Sam Mills, so that should make for a very interesting selection of horror-based writing if that’s your bag. Click here to read the blurbs and see if you can guess which one is mine…

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*wrote under a pseudonym but don’t tell anyone