Aliya Whiteley's Blog, page 8

Peachy

It’s not out until September, but it’s probably okay to get excited now about an anthology of short stories featuring the kind of morally grey and probably a bit weird ground I like. I’ve contributed a story that touches on my love of superheroes. It’s called Peach Pit and it’ll be published by Dzanc Books in the US. Here’s a link, and here’s the cover:

In these sixteen stories, we see women at their most monstrous—as con artists and murderers, cutthroats and scalpers, ruled by ambition and grief and spite. Characters for those tired of being told to play nice. Dressed to the nines in morally gray, the stories in this anthology comprise an envelope full of teeth: each one distinct, unsettling, and sharp enough to rip out a throat.

I think there are some fun rewards for pre-ordering, too.

Travelling Objects

A gorgeous Czech language edition of Skyward Inn has been published, and I wanted to show off a copy:

It’s very strange to think of all the words inside that small book flowing from my head to a translator, and then on to these pages. Many thanks to all at Solaris who arranged it, and translator Mirka Palkosková.

Speaking of small items that contain meaning, I’m working on a new writing experiment this year involving flash fiction. I’m a little rusty, but I’ve made it through January and I’m hoping to update the blog every week with a new piece. It’s on a page called Small Objects – you can see the tab for it at the top of this page, I think, if you want to check in and see how it’s going. It might get weird. Let’s face it, everything else does.

Haunting Time

There are many ways to be haunted, and here’s a good one – take my online workshop in writing about spooky houses, and I’ll spend a couple of hours looking pale and scary on your screen while we create buildings in which we wouldn’t want to live. Places for ‘How to Inhabit a Haunted House’ can be booked as part of the New Nightmares 6 week horror writing school organised by Alex Davis throughout February and March.

You can see the full workshop schedule here. I think it’s going to be lots of fun.

My favourite reads of 2022

Was I distracted? For some reason I read a lot less than usual this year, and didn’t finish many things that I started. I blame myself. I think I’ve played a lot more games, board and video, and had a resurgence of watching older horror films that I hadn’t seen in years. Hammer and Universal monsters were great company, along with the works of John Carpenter and Roger Corman. I even treated myself to The Masque of the Red Death on blu-ray for Christmas, and it might make for perfect New Year’s Eve fare, along with a glass of good red wine and some choice nibbles. Anyway. Reading often got relegated to the last thing I did at night, a half-hour spent with whatever awaited me on the TBR shelf.

But there were nights when I started something, read an opening paragraph that hit me unexpectedly, and everything else got put on hold for that story. There’s nothing else like a good book. No intermediary, no other vision, no camera cutting away or swelling soundtrack. Nobody else in your imagination with you. Where does the author go? Are they beside you, as you walk through the created landscape? I’m not sure whether we are in their world, or the author enters ours. Some place between the two, maybe.

I felt that strongly when, early on in 2022, I read Martin Machines’ Gathering Evidence. I became so involved in that novel that I felt as if I was dreaming it. It’s a wonderful balance of realities and strangeness, and things that can’t quite be put into words by one voice alone. The author brings so much, the reader brings their own thoughts and feelings, and the result is spectacular.

Things that can’t be seen and must be imagined dominated Francesco Dmitri’s Never the Wind. That book had pages that seduced me and pages that terrified me. It’s very beautifully written, letting us breathe into the gaps between childhood and adulthood, sight and blindness, reality and fantasy.

A novel that seemed to be much more straightforward at first glance was Rachel Cusk’s Second Place, but there is just so much to unpack there that I could read it many times over and still feel no closer to nailing down that story about an artist who takes up an invitation to stay with an older woman. Few fictional relationships feel as dense and demanding and prone to sudden shifts in meaning as this one.

If Cusk’s book dealt in the power of the moment we live in, Shola von Reinhold’s Lote was sharply, magically funny about the past and how we translate that into inspiration and motivation, artistic or otherwise. And Iain Reid’s Foe also made me laugh out loud, detailing a journey that needs to be undertaken for reasons that become more and more sinister. I love that space in which a reader is both entertained and highly wary, like a practical joke that might, in a heartbeat, go so very wrong.

That’s the past and present represented on the page, but what about the future? EJ Swift’s The Coral Bones has such an expansive, wise, warm vision of what awaits us from near to far times, and it does that incredibly difficult thing of weaving together different perspectives without making any of them feel forced in order to contrive meaning. And while the last thing I wanted to read was a book about a virus, I ended up getting hooked by Phase Six by Jim Shepard, which fixed a serious and determined gaze upon possibilities, small and large, within the interconnected world we inhabit.

What else from writers that I don’t yet know well? Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies, My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley, and The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara all gripped me, one after the other, in the autumn. I want to read more by all three voices.

Other voices were much more familiar to me. The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch, and William Golding’s Darkness Visible, for instance – great books that I hadn’t got around to reading before by some of my very favourite authors. And only this month I finally got around to Cinema Purgatorio by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, bringing me back to my love of that brightly lit screen, and all the ways that cinema can hold us captive. It’s a wonderful read, and mentioning it here also gives me a chance to say how much I will miss Kevin O’Neill’s marvellous gift. Nemesis the Warlock in particular was one of my early favourites from my 2000AD-shaped childhood.

And something I discovered this year that brought back the joy of mad genre inventiveness was Chew, by John Layman and Rob Guillory. I absolutely love the idea behind this – a detective that gets psychic impressions from things that he eats. This means he has to eat some fairly unsavoury stuff to track down criminals, and there’s a lot of nasty stuff, brilliantly drawn. I had a blast, and I think Roger Corman would have made a wonderful film out of it. But, in the absence of that, I’ll slink into the new year with The Masque of the Red Death for company, and with a TBR shelf waiting for me. Here’s to a wonderful start to 2023 for you, and to finding great new worlds to walk through, alone and with others.

A Christmas Yarn

Have you ever bitten down on wool? 

He lost his scissors, that Christmas Eve, and had to stick the final strand in his mouth, sawing it between his teeth until it separated and gave. A nugget of fluff lodged itself behind his tongue. 

He took himself off to the bathroom, used floss, rinsed, spat. Glanced in the mirror, then looked away, determined not to dwell on time creeping in. Back to the front room, overlooking the street that led to the square. The streetlights would stay on for a while yet. He pictured the other villagers in the Golden Lion, celebrating, or going round each other’s houses, talking, as loud and sure as the television, talking of things they would do or could buy in the new year. Everyone keen about what could be bought and paid for. He switched off his own television, to be free of its noise, and looked at his work.

It was one long strand, five stitches across. He had turned the needle as he added rows, then formed each long strip into balls. He had used whatever wool he could get. Good yarn was expensive, but some colours never cost much: bright green and dull brown, the knots tight where he had joined them together. So many shades, rolled and stacked. He took the last from the armchair and placed it on top of the pyramid. 

It was time to execute the plan.

Ten years, it had taken him, knitting away in front of adverts for mobility aids and bingo. Every stitch had been counted. Over time, his house had begun to fall into disrepair. Most of us didn’t see it. The ones who did, commented on the state of it. But not on the man within.

The village is small.

Even so, his was a huge task. Incredible, really, to get it done.

He checked the doors, turned off the lights – the pyramid hulking in the corner, from floor to ceiling, a presence all its own – and climbed the stairs. To bed. He switched on the alarm clock for the first time in years. Dawn would do. He guessed at when that would be, worried about it for a while, his head against the thin pillow, and finally fell asleep. 

We are guessing at how that final night went. About it all, really. We don’t know him well, so we can only imagine what he did. Does it sound accurate to you? We know he’s been here a long time, and it turns out that this was never our village, but his. We fought to keep it unchanged. We organised appeals against housing estates, and expansion plans, and kept the neighbourhood watch alive with our own time and effort. How many ways are there to keep others out? To be invisible to time, to movement?

He awoke warm to the sound of the alarm, switched off the clock, and realised he had left the electric blanket on all night. He rolled his eyes at the expense, not wanting to admit he was pleased with what could only have been an unconscious decision. When there’s only one of you, you play hide and seek with yourself. You tuck things away, and pretend you are not there, or that there’s more of you to be found. He pushed himself up from the bed, risked a glimpse through the curtains. He had guessed right; it was just before dawn. 

He dressed in best – a suit that hadn’t been taken out of the wardrobe since his wife’s funeral, ten years ago. She used to be the knitter. Jumpers, gloves. Complex stitches. He only picked up the habit for the comfort of the noise, after she’d gone. The needles sitting on the bare chair, that’s what he couldn’t stand. He added a tie, a silk one. Best clothes, it seemed, dated as much as anything else. Was nothing free from age?

To work. 

He felt his way downstairs, along the dark hall, and used the toilet. It took time for the flow to start, and then he tucked himself away carefully, used to the sensation of never quite being finished. He collected the first ball from the pyramid, struggled into his warm jacket, and left the house.

First, he unspooled to the gatepost, wrapped around it, turned to the left, and up the path of the next house along. He had talked to his new neighbours every now and again – new! He scoffed at himself. They must have been there for five, six years. In that time they’d said, ‘Morning,’ and ‘Cold out,’ and even taken his bin to the kerb for him sometimes. They were good people. They just didn’t see him. He felt no qualms as he threaded his knitted rope through their door knocker and along their fence. He remembered the people who had lived there before. And before. And before.

The next house, feeding out the rope. Wrapping it around.

The next house.

He wound his way along the path he had already laid out in his head, tying it all in place, connecting everything together.

The next house, then to the corner, including the wing mirrors and bumpers, each car incorporated. There were so many more cars than there used to be. This street was once wide. Then, one day, there wasn’t enough room for one man to walk along the pavement. On he went, slow, consumed by the task, as the dawn arrived. He was happy, working every house into his pattern, making his way down to the square.

There used to be carol singing on the square on Christmas Eve, and his wife had always knitted him a new scarf to wear. The café opposite the bus stop opened late, and sold hot chocolate, with a touch of something from under the counter to keep out the cold. We would have liked to be part of that – why were these traditions lost? We wish we could tell him now: we could be the kind of people who sing outside, in the cold, wrapped up warm. 

He connected the café to the bus stop, and across the street to the butchers and the barber, along the row of private houses and through the alleyway to the 1970s estate with the apple trees and cherry trees spaced regularly in front of each house. The trunks were waiting for his wool. The lamp posts and post boxes too, the gates, the fences, the planters. They all wanted his touch. The children’s slide at the little park, then back behind the church and through the iron ring handles on the main doors, over the gravestones, to the line of yew trees and the war monument. To the square once more, to the café, where a light had been left on by the counter, and a sign on the door read 

NOTHING VALUABLE LEFT INSIDE OVERNIGHT

Maybe he sang a song as he worked. Maybe he murmured a magic spell as he wove us into our houses. 

At the south of the village, along the awnings of the charity shop and the minimarket, maybe he paused, and thought of us, and wondered if the village really would be better without us all.

The rope unwound smoothly, easily, no hitches. 

He was so pleased with his handiwork. His body, usually sore, uncooperative, was up to the task. He took it further, out to the bigger houses with stretches of lawn, dotted with trampolines and water features. Two cats were calling to each other, across an avenue; they stopped, and stalked off in different directions as he approached. Back to their cat-flaps. Back to the safety of the warm and well-known, and then he wanted to be home too, but he pushed on, pushed through, and wrapped us all, many times over, with his wool. He’d overestimated, and made too much rope. When he returned to his own front door he let the final balls fall, by the broken birdbath, and in the light of the very early morning he considered the job done.

We are in his world now.

We see him pass by sometimes, from the living room window, and we call to him. Either he can’t hear us, or he’s ignoring us. Or maybe we’re invisible now. We think he’s made us invisible. The village belongs to him alone. He walks with his head up, a slow pace, taking his time on the streets he knows so well. 

The doors and windows barely open; the wool will stretch a little, and we have slid scissors into the gaps and tried to snip free. When the scissors broke, we used our teeth. 

We try to bite our way free, and the wool rubs in our mouths, is tacky on our tongues. The squeaky roughness sounds in our heads as we saw with our incisors, try to chop with our canines. When we can’t stand it any more we take a break, eat leftover turkey or piles of pudding, or play a party game or two. Then we return to the wool, and start again. We think maybe a thread by the kitchen window is fraying. There’s a chance the whole thing will snap, the tension broken, and the red rope will fall down, cover the ground with a new pattern, lose its spell.

If that happens, we’ll go round to his falling-down house. We’ll bring gifts, and tell him he looks well. We’ll see each other. We’ll promise to sing in the square sometimes. 

2022: The Year of Long and Short Sight

There’s a sweet spot, about a foot from my nose, where I can read without my glasses. Further away, and everything is a blur. Closer, and the letters start swimming around, forming their own patterns. But in that sweet spot, everything gains clarity, and there’s no effort to seeing the words on the page.

The trick is to hold the book in a certain position. If only my arms didn’t get tired. If only I didn’t want to also read things that were far away, or up close. If only I didn’t like the strange patterns letters can make when I’m not paying attention. It should be so much easier to only concentrate on this place, these words. That’s a trick I’ll have to master.

Anyway. Looking back over my unfocused writing year, I’m surprised to see some things swim into view. The paperback releases of both Skyward Inn and The Secret Life of Fungi were very exciting moments (complete with lovely new covers) and I had the thrill of being able to find things I’d written in both the fiction and non-fiction shelves of the local bookshop. I signed a few copies, and spent a bit of time visiting first one, and then the other, feeling quite pleased with myself.

*

Most of the new short stories that found their way out into the world this year had certain themes running through them. See if you can spot them.

Knotlings (The Dark) was the tale of a woman with a strange habit who passes it on to her son – but such things don’t always bring a family closer.

Cold Trade appeared in F&SF magazine, and it’s about aliens who trade across worlds, reducing everything to a transaction until some unhelpful feelings start to crop up on an ocean world, with uncommunicative monsters of the deep thrown into the mix.

In Beneath Ceaseless Skies, my story Rich Growth was set in a place where expensive and unusual flowers grow – but if you don’t pay attention, they can be fatal. How to pass on that knowledge to those who come after you?

Plans for Expansion was narrated for the Drabblecast as part of their HP Lovecraft month. Beware entering the ancient castle, lest you lose your sanity. Only £5 entry fee a time.

Another podcast appearance at Fictionz – my tale of a decapitated head that appears in the bedroom of an underachiever, From the Neck Up, was given an airing.

A few stories from last year found their ways into ‘Best of’ anthologies, which was lovely. Fog and Pearls at the Kings Cross Junction was published in Year’s Best SF & Fantasy 2021, and More Sea Creatures to See now appears in Best of British SF 2021. It’s so good when stories have a life beyond that first publication, and go on to find new readers.

*

Skyward Inn made the shortlist for both the Arthur C Clarke award and the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel, and I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Clarke award presentation, and get a wander around the new exhibition of science fiction at the London Science Museum. It was a brilliant night. I also managed to turn up at FantasyCon, the British Fantasy Society convention, and I even unexpectedly found myself on a panel talking about the language of horror with amazing writers such as Priya Sharma and Laura Mauro. Great company, and an interesting subject to chat about.

Where else did I pop up? On BBC Radio 6 Music, talking to Lauren Laverne about fungi for her Monday morning Supernature slot. We chatted about where you can find fungi (answer: everywhere). And I taught an online workshop at the National Centre for Writing about subverting the demands of genre. We had a really fun time doing some exercises where you swap from one genre to another, and everyone produced some great opening paragraphs of stories.

It was a quiet year for Interzone magazine, which is going through some exciting changes, but my regular column Climbing Stories did make an appearance, on the subject of consumerist alien deities, and there are a few more columns lined up for next year’s issues. It’s great to continue to be a part of Interzone.

*

Writing-wise, it’s been a quiet year for news of upcoming projects, but I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to share some exciting things in the new year. I have been working away on two novels, including a co-operative work that has been a joy. It has energised me and taught me all kinds of things, and has been a brilliant experience. The other novel has been a mess of grand intentions leading to a spectacular bout of weirdness, taking up a lot of time and energy. Phew.

Short stories have been written, too, and they should be popping up in a few anthologies and magazines throughout the year. I’m really pleased to have a story coming up in the last ever issue of Black Static, too. That’s been an important magazine for me, providing a home for me since I started writing. I’ll be very sad to see it end.

What else? I’ll teach another workshop in March, this time firmly in the horror genre. I think tickets are still available if you’re interested.

And I’ve got the urge to write some flash fiction. Maybe 2023 could be my year of finding that sweet spot, not too close and not too far away, where I concentrate on the here and now a little bit more, and try to see things clearly.

I’ll post about my favourite reads of 2022 at the end of the year, but for now, have a brilliant Christmas, and thanks for reading.

Unexpected Expanding

I don’t know how I managed to miss this, but while I was paying no attention the Drabblecast ran a story of mine for their regular Lovecraft month, which can appear at any time and stay for many months, sometimes. I love that kind of month. I’m always very pleased to be Drabblecasted, particularly on the horrible end of stories. This one, Plans for Expansion, is a tale inspired by my walks around Portchester Castle, which is a place with a lot of history and a big helping of strange.

Plans for Expansion is what happens when the tourist trade meets a very old, very powerful place with a history of interesting inhabitants.

You can listen to host Norm Sherman do a great job of reading the story, or you can find a written version, if you’re in the mood for horror, at the link above.

Seeking out good horror

I’ve been in the mood for finding great horror.

I definitely go through phases with horror, and I’m writing a horror short story at the moment, and thinking about a workshop I’m giving next year on the subject, so I’m definitely in the horrible swing of things. It’s mainly Hammer and Amicus when it comes to things to watch, so I’m on the nostalgic end of the experience right now. It’s so odd how horror becomes comforting with familiarity.

Anyway, with great timing Ellen Datlow has released her longlist for the best horror of the year, and I was thrilled to see three of my stories on it. Thanks very much to Ellen, who has provided recommendations for a lot of great anthologies, collections, and singular stories I want to read. If you’re in a horror mood too, you can maybe seek out some things from the list, or get the Best Horror of the Year Vol 14, which is available now.

My stories of note were:

Soapstone, in the Beyond The Veil anthology from Flame Tree Press. It’s a quiet story of being frozen in grief and not knowing how you can hide from certain realities.

A Taste for Paste, in the They’re Out to Get You! anthology, edited by Johnny Mains. I had a blast writing this. When big opportunities come along, sometimes a person has to change a lot to be ready to accept them. Maybe a magic paste will help the process. Or not.

Envelope can be found in the US edition of The Loosening Skin. It’s set in the same world, and features a few of the Stuck Six, living in their new skins and trying to find ways to move on. I don’t usually return to ideas, but I’m glad I went back to that world of skin-shedding for a final think about the horror of leaving all love behind. I still think about it a lot.

And now I’m off to watch Quatermass and the Pit again to help with the new thing I’m writing. Strange things can be found in the cold underground. See you in December.

The return of scary fog

I think this is a bit late, but I’ve only just noticed that Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 has been released, and it features my story Fog and Pearls at the King’s Cross Junction. This is an e-book only publication this year, and it’s got lots of wonderful writers in it, such as Tade Thompson, Sofia Samatar, Michael Swanwick, Yoon Ha Lee and more.

Here’s a link to go take a look, and here’s a quick review from Black Gate.

Fog and Pearls at the King’s Cross Junction first appeared in London Centric: Tales of Future London, by NewCon Press, which is a little bit ironic since it’s a story set in the past, during the Great Smog of London in 1952. Impossible to see, torture to breathe, there’s a place not far from the train station that offers a safe haven to those travellers stranded in the smog. Or does it?

I’ve always wanted to put that at the end of a blurb. Or does it? Brilliant. You can see why I’m not usually encouraged to write them.

Boris Karloff’s Possibilities

I had such a brilliant time at the Clarke Award ceremony, and cheered for Harry Josephine Giles’ win with Deep Wheel Orcadia, which is such a beautiful and meaningful book. A worthy winner.

Thanks to everyone who sent me messages and wished me luck; it was not to be, but I got to be in such good company, and also to walk around the Science Museum’s exhibition ‘Voyage to the Edge of Imagination’. It featured many amazing things, but my personal favourite was the costume Boris Karloff wore to play the monster in Frankenstein. That tatty, holed, huge outfit sat alongside so many shiny objects. Science fiction ages with us, and sometimes faster or slower than us. Frankenstein now feels both ancient and ageless.

Back to the future. Now I can stop thinking about us all being alone together at Skyward Inn and move on, and there’s quite a lot of exciting news coming up shortly. I’ll start with an upcoming short story, Possibilities are Endless, which will be published in the final Black Static. Here’s a sneak peak of the stunning artwork by Richard Wagner.

Black Static has been a big part of my writing life. Seeing my first strange stories appear in it, featuring monsters or seaside hotels or both, was thrilling. I’m very pleased and very sad to be in the last edition.

Here’s a link to pre-order the final edition.