Starless Night by Stephanie Flint & Isaac Flint

The Flints combine the action and politics of supervillains and superheroes teaming up against a common threat with the uncertainty of someone who cannot trust their own mind, creating science-fiction that is both fast-paced and emotive. This is the third book in the Distant Horizon series and refers to events in the Glitch series. Possible …

Will You Enjoy This Post Before You’ve Read It?

One of the online communities I'm in is engaged in the discussion of the difference between preference for the familiar and prejudice. Instinctively, we recognise there is a difference but where it lies can be much harder to pin down. For me, the starting point is pre-emptive denigration. We all have preferences, both general and …

The Vanishing Woman by Doug Peterson

Peterson weaves historical fact with strong inference and complex characters, creating a tale that is more engaging than dry narrative but all the more harrowing for being true. The child of a slave and her master, Ellen Craft was born with skin as pale enough to seem white. Pale enough that she and her husband …

A Sprained Ankle of a Deal

After going into extra time, COP26 has produced a result. A result that has been cast as great or terrible by different sources. I'm still pondering the nuances but my immediate impression is that it's as good as falling from a second-storey window and spraining one's ankle. Imagine falling from the window, that hollow sensation …

Wormking by Sebastian Leyendecker

Leyendecker fuses visceral cosmic horror with the tropes of Cold War espionage thrillers, raising questions of whether the right thing is sometime also the immoral thing. After helping defeat the creature in the sewers, Simon has been accepted into the Nocturne Society as Brockmann’s official partner; so, when Brockmann spots hints that a parasitic creature …

Pear Chutney

While the variable weather earlier this year delayed it, we have another stonking pear crop this year. Unfortunately, I've also been slightly ill so today has been the first day I've been healthy enough to chutney-ficate and my head is still slightly muzzy. So, rather than a inflict incoherent rambling on you, a reprise of …

WICKERPEDIA, ed. Kristin Garth & Nick Morrissey

Mixing perspectives on the power of belief, both good and bad, to shape lives with attempts to capture the experience of believing, the Garth and Morrissey create an experience as filled with poetry, awe, and horror as the films that inspired it. This anthology features twenty poems, five flash fictions, three articles, and two pieces …

Modem Prometheus: #HuntingParty

My friend Neil Murton—who it has never been confirmed is a hat possessed by a magpie steering a stolen body—wrote the script for the inaugural episode of the Modem Prometheus podcast. Twenty-one minutes of urban folk horror, ancient British legend painted on a canvas of Sinclair's city-as-ritual. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-oV7Zq1D7k

Vegas Valkyries by Cynthia Vespia

Vespia mixes aspects of Norse mythology with a modern Las Vegas, creating an urban fantasy tale that will appeal to readers who enjoy a fresh take on well-known tropes. This novel is the second in Vespia’s Vegas Vendettas series. Reading beyond this point is gambling on spoilers for the first book. When Sigr, Kava, and …

Green Joy

The Green Party Conference was last weekend, marked—among other things—by the first speech of Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsey as new Co-leaders of the Party. As the last forever years show, pretty speeches don't necessarily result in progress, but I found this one inspiring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzuf9Ikv6eg I love the clear enthusiasm to learn the lessons of …