Tag: Countdown to Publication

Corpse Road Blues countdown: 3, Her Saving Grace

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Welcome back! And if you’re new to my origin story posts, thank you for joining us.

Her Saving Grace is for anyone who has a little voice whispering doubts inside their head. You know the one. You’re trying to convince yourself that you have a handle on things, sure, but the quiet mutterings are tiny sharp teeth gnawing at your nerves. They coat that frayed network with acidic spit, and dissolve your self-esteem, your fragile confidence, what little self-worth you have left. The terrible voice is there 24/7, taking everything and giving nothing, not even the briefest respite from its unhurried consumption of you.

Probably like yourself, that voice stays with me. So this story is a little bit of a ‘fuck you’ to anxiety.

For those still out there in the dark, Corpse Road Blues is my short fiction collection, due for release on 28th February from Demain Publishing. The fifteen stories in the book look at what it means to be haunted; what drives an apparition to cling to this earth, to those still living; is there a way to be rid of a tortured soul, and is that what we really wish for?

If you’d like to read Her Saving Grace, you can pre-order Corpse Road Blues here.

Corpse Road Blues countdown: 4, Addressing the Heart

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Thanks for coming back. And if you’ve just joined us, welcome. Okay, day 14, and it’s the turn of Addressing the Heart, the second story in my collection, Corpse Road Blues, due for publication on the 28th February from Demain Publishing.

The spark that gave Addressing the Heart life was a conversation with a friend. We got to talking about mobile phones over at their place one evening. At the time, I was one of the few who hadn’t caught up with the technology, sticking with an old Nokia that was only good for texting and calling—just what I needed it for. My friend and his partner were trying to convince me otherwise by raving about the latest model from a popular brand. With some excitement, they mentioned that they were able to track each other on their new phones. The idea that both wanted to track their partners, and were indeed happy to be tracked, disturbed me enough to scratch black ink onto paper.

Of course, Addressing the Heart became much larger than a story about phone tracking. Over the years, I’ve flirted with the idea of possession, demonic or otherwise, in my work, and I saw that this story – through the process of drafting – lent itself to that topic. Here, I’ve hopefully approached spirit possession from a less used angle.

Addressing the Heart is a tale about letting go, love, and humanity, and a definite favourite with my beta readers.

If you’d like to read the story, you can pre-order Corpse Road Blues here.

Corpse Road Blues countdown: 5, When the Sun Shines

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Corpse Road Blues is my short fiction collection that’s due for publication on the 28th of February from Demain Publishing. The fifteen stories in the book look at what it means to be haunted; what drives an apparition to cling to this earth, to those still living; is there a way to be rid of a tortured soul, and is that what we really wish for?

Leading up to the release of Corpse Road Blues and beyond, I’ll be posting a series of blog posts revealing the inspiration behind each story. Welcome to the countdown, it’s a pleasure to have your company.

When the Sun Shines is the first story in the collection, and remains one of my personal favorites.

The first story I ever published was an epistolary piece about a disappearance. The magazine that published it was the product of one woman working all the hours to put together a bunch of weird stories, every month (I think), for readers of speculative fiction. I was nineteen at the time, and I don’t have my contributor’s copy anymore, nor do I remember the title of that magazine or the story, but I do know that the work was about a portal in a pond. I always wanted to explore this idea further. I just didn’t realise it would take another thirty years.

There’s something about finding the peculiar and the horror in the ordinary that appeals to me, and a lot of my fiction deals with this. The portal I imagined for When the Sun Shines took the shape of that transient body of water: the puddle. I love how puddles appear in liminal places like pavements and roads and abandoned sites, the middle of fields after a heavy storm. They are often gloomy, but can be uplifting, too. They invite the child in everyone to splish and splash in their shallow bodies. I’m also delighted by the word itself, pud-dle. Puddle. It sounds like a resigned, self-effacing state of mind, or a humorous mess. Certainly not murderous.

That had me thinking. Soon I picked a particular puddle, then added a chunk of reality that has hopefully transformed the story into a gut-wrenching tale of grief, sibling rivalry, and ultimately, acceptance.

If you’d like to read When the Sun Shines, you can pre-order Corpse Road Blues here.