Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women blog tour Sept 21st – Oct 12th  Part two of four.

By Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn

Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women is an anthology of Southeast Asian horror which subverts expectations of Asian women and their place in society. It brings to light the furious and restless spirits which sometimes lie behind the smiling facade of quiet submissiveness and familial duty. 

Edited by award-winning author and editor Lee Murray, and published short story author and editor Geneve Flynn, the anthology was released by Omnium Gatherum on September 26th, 2020, and features esteemed authors of dark fiction such as Rena Mason, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Christina Sng. 

It has been called an “instant classic” by Nightmare Feed, and “one of the best anthologies of 2020” by Pseudopod.

This series of four blog posts introduces the editors and contributors, and reveals the inspiration behind the fourteen dark stories which feature in Black Cranes. In this post, we meet Geneve Flynn and Grace Chan.

GENEVE FLYNN is a freelance editor from Australia who specialises in speculative fiction. She has been a judge for a key Australian horror award and a submissions reader for a leading Australian speculative fiction magazine. Her horror short stories have been published in various markets, including Flame Tree Publishing, TANSTAAFL Press, and the Tales to Terrify podcast. 

She loves tales that unsettle, all things writerly, and B-grade action movies. If that sounds like you, check out her website at www.geneveflynn.com.au

Geneve is Chinese, descended from a long line of fierce Hakka women; however, the fire seems to have skipped a generation with her. She has Fuzhou blood on her father’s side. She was born in Malaysia, where ghosts and spirits are just as real as everyday folks, and where duty can be just as airless and oppressive as the humidity. She now lives in sunny Brisbane, where she sometimes forgets that she’s Asian at all. 

Geneve’s first story “A Pet is for Life” follows the pitiless Japanese spirit Kuchisake-onna as she plays out her legend, seeking out a victim to torment and finally kill. But she encounters something that even she is unable to best: an animal rescuer.

Geneve shares how that story came about:

GENEVE FLYNN: This one was spurred by a friend’s description of a waking dream he’d had. He walked past a mirror one day, yawning, and it looked like his reflection was screaming. I promised him I’d write a story about that moment. 

I’d been researching Asian horror and urban myths and the story of the kuchisake-onna, the split-mouthed woman, struck a chord. I’d also been reading a lot of animal rescue stories, and I was fascinated by the drive of the hero complex. These ideas came together in my brain soup, and this is the story that resulted. 

I was lucky enough to workshop this story with Deborah Sheldon, a wonderful dark fiction author and my mentor during an Australasian Horror Writers’ Association mentorship. She whipped my writing, and this story, into shape. 

In Geneve’s second story “Little Worm,” Theresa bitterly agrees to return home to tend to her ageing mother who acts in increasingly strange ways, and is visited by an eerie, misshapen child. Then she learns of the ghastly covenant her mother made in order to bear the weight of self-sacrifice.

Here’s the story behind “Little Worm”:

GENEVE FLYNN: While writing another short story—“The Pontianak’s Doll,” I came across the toyol baby, or kwee kia, as it’s known in Chinese mythology. It prickled the skin across my scalp and I just knew I had to write about it.

As an Asian woman in a western world, I know firsthand the tug-of-war between filial piety and individualism. 

I wanted to explore the complicated emotions that rose from that conflict, and I wanted to examine the experience of being a female in a Chinese family. Most girls didn’t go to university or have careers when my mother was growing up. It was assumed that my clever, ambitious mother would have no other future than the dutiful daughter and subservient wife. There was no room for her dreams and aspirations. In this story, I imagined what would happen if those dreams and aspirations took form and became monstrous. 

I’d intended to write a story about a mother figure who was oppressive and unbending and cold (not at all like my real mother), but instead what emerged was a love letter of sorts to the complexity and strength of women in Chinese families. 

GRACE CHAN (gracechanwrites.com) is a speculative fiction writer. Her family migrated from Malaysia to Australia before her first birthday. She writes near-future science fiction about medical technology, far-future landscapes of strange worlds, and psychological horror where the real and the unconscious bleed together. 

Her writing can be found in Clarkesworld, Going Down Swinging, Aurealis, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and Verge: Uncanny. She was shortlisted for Viva la Novella VII. Her short story “The Mark” has been nominated for the 2019 Aurealis Awards Best Horror Short Story. 

In her other life, she is a doctor. 

In Grace’s first story “Of Hunger and Fury,” Fiona returns with her husband to her home town on the anniversary of the murder of a local young woman. Reality, the past and the present bleed together until Fiona’s story becomes the young woman’s and together, they seek retribution and furious release. The story explores the cost of integration and the sense of being unmoored when part of a diaspora.

Grace reveals why she wrote “Of Hunger and Fury”:

GRACE CHAN: I wanted to write a ghost story. An eerie, gothic, sensual, Malaysian Chinese ghost story. I also wanted to write about women who’ve subjugated their own needs to others’—especially women caught between two cultures. There are several women in the story, although some are less visible. “Of Hunger and Fury” was difficult to write; it felt raw and scary and wrong. My story aims to be metaphorical and impressionistic, not explicit or didactic. I’m not trying to impart a lesson, but to inject you, the reader, into Fen Fang’s body: so that you can feel her feelings, grapple with her reality, and scramble as it distorts.

“The Mark,” Grace’s second story, explores grief turned to madness. After aborting one child, Emma suffers a miscarriage. On the surface, Emma’s life has returned to normal; but beneath the veneer, a powerful current of dissociation and guilt is dragging her under. 

Here’s what inspired “The Mark”:

GRACE CHAN: The seed for “The Mark” was the Capgras delusion: a phenomenon I’ve always found fascinating, complex, and haunting. I wanted to delve into, and wrest back control of, the loneliness, grief, and powerlessness of the underrepresented, marginalised, unseen woman.

At the time, I was inspired by works like “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Alias Grace, both of which challenged notions of womanhood, social roles, unreliability, and madness. I was also deeply moved by women I’d encountered in my life and my work, who’d experienced subjugation in ways large and small, and crafted their own subtle resistances.

Stay tuned next week for part three of the blog series, which will feature Angela Yuriko Smith, Elaine Cuyegkeng, and Christina Sng.

Thanks for joining us for part two of the blog tour for Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women. If you’d like to read the stories mentioned here, head to the link below.

BLACK CRANES: TALES OF UNQUIET WOMEN edited by Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn

RELEASE DATE: 26/09/20

GENRE: Horror

PUBLISHER: Omnium Gatherum

AVAILABLE HERE: https://omniumgatherumedia.com/black-cranes

Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women blog tour Sept 21st – Oct 12th. Part one of four.

By Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn

Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women is an anthology of Southeast Asian horror which subverts expectations of Asian women and their place in society. It brings to light the furious and restless spirits which sometimes lie behind the smiling facade of quiet submissiveness and familial duty. 

Edited by award-winning author and editor Lee Murray, and published short story author and editor Geneve Flynn, the anthology will be brought out by Omnium Gatherum on September 26th, 2020, and features esteemed authors of dark fiction such as Rena Mason, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Christina Sng. 

It has been called an “instant classic” by Nightmare Feed, and “one of the best anthologies of 2020” by Pseudopod.

This series of four blog posts introduces the editors and contributors, and reveals the inspiration behind the fourteen dark stories which feature in Black Cranes. In this first post, we meet Lee Murray and Nadia Bulkin.

LEE MURRAY is a multi-award-winning writer and editor of science fiction, fantasy, and horror (Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows) and a three-time Bram Stoker Award® nominee. 

Her works include the Taine McKenna military thrillers (Severed Press), and supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra, co-written with Dan Rabarts (Raw Dog Screaming Press), debut short story collection, Grotesque: Monster Stories (Things in the Well), as well as several books for children. She is proud to have edited fifteen speculative works, including award-winning titles Baby Teeth: Bite Sized Tales of Terror and At the Edge (with Dan Rabarts), Te Kōrero Ahi Kā (with Grace Bridges and Aaron Compton), and Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror (Adrenaline Press). She is the co-founder of Young New Zealand Writers and the Wright-Murray Residency for Speculative Fiction Writers, and HWA Mentor of the Year for 2019. In February 2020, Lee was made an Honorary Literary Fellow in the New Zealand Society of Authors Waitangi Day Honours. Lee lives over the hill from Hobbiton in New Zealand’s sunny Bay of Plenty where she dreams up stories from her office overlooking a cow paddock. Read more at www.leemurray.info 

Lee is a third-generation Chinese New Zealander, the granddaughter of a former general of Chiang Kai-shek and his beautiful young opera singer wife, who immigrated to New Zealand nearly a century ago. Then, shockingly, their Kiwi daughter, her mother, rejected the match they’d arranged for her, announcing instead that she would marry a European. This sent the family into a tailspin. But her parents defied all expectations, thriving at the intersection of those two cultures in a marriage which would span fifty-five years and fourteen days. While she has credited her love of story to her father, she is especially grateful for the life lessons inferred by her mother, Pauline, and her grandmother, Wai-Fong, two tiny women with huge capacity for humility, dignity, and resilience. 

In Lee’s first story “Phoenix Claws,” Lucy introduces her latest boyfriend to her Chinese family at a dim sum brunch. When Fin fails the chicken-feet test, a family custom which has weeded out past suitors, Lucy soon discovers that choosing between tradition and independence has inescapable consequences.

Lee shares the inspiration behind her story:

LEE MURRAY: “Phoenix Claws” is a contemporary tale of Chinese-New Zealand comic horror with a touch of magical realism. My mother broke the Chinese tradition of arranged marriages a generation ago, with family members going on to select their own life partners (and make their own mistakes!) from that pivotal moment; nevertheless, the first time a prospective partner meets the family is always an awkward occasion. Will the parents like them? What if that person unwittingly stomps on an important tradition? Will they fit in? It’s a meeting fraught with anxiety because we want the people we love to be accepted and cherished by our families. In my own family, an unwritten ritual involving chicken’s feet simply multiplies the awkwardness.

Lee’s second story “Frangipani Wishes” travels from China to New Zealand, following a woman’s journey and the hungry ghosts that haunt her. The daughter of a minor wife in a wealthy family falls pregnant and is thrown out onto the street. She seeks out the matchmaker and immigrates to New Zealand with her new husband. What follows is the tragic culmination of resentment and cultural displacement.

Here’s how “Frangipani Wishes” was born:

LEE MURRAY: “Frangipani Wishes” is one of those stories I knew before I was born; one that was revealed to me in the rhythm of my mother’s heartbeat and in the echoes of her sighs. Later, when I had grown, I heard it in the closing of doors, in the scuff of a suitcase, and the low hum of a ceiling fan. It is a story flung onto the street, ejected from the cycle of love and betrayal, whispered among families (those entangled repositories of secrets), conjured from visits to the twin bays of Hong Kong and Wellington, and captured in the fleeting joyful scent of frangipani, carried like a wish on the wind.

NADIA BULKIN writes stories, thirteen of which appear in her debut collection, She Said Destroy (Word Horde, 2017). Her short stories have been included in editions of The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, The Year’s Best Horror, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. She has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award five times. She grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia with her Javanese father and American mother, before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska. She has a B.A. in Political Science, an M.A. in International Affairs, and lives in Washington, D.C. Read more at https://nadiabulkin.wordpress.com/

Nadia’s story “Truth is Order and Order is Truth” is set in historical Indonesia and is a dark retelling of the story of Princess Dhani. Driven from her home by the betrayal of the prime minister and her two half-brothers, Princess Dhani travels to her ancestral home of Jungkuno, reclaims who she is, and returns to exact bloody retribution.

Nadia shares what shaped her story:

NADIA BULKIN: I’d been trying to write about the Queen of the South Sea for a while, but I never centred her, and I never got her right. When I was a kid, my parents and I went on vacation to one of the beaches she supposedly frequents—Parangtritis—and my dad freaked out when he realized my mother was wearing turquoise (green is her favourite colour, so she’ll take you if you’re wearing it). My dad was a lapsed Muslim, not partial to the supernatural, and this was the only time I ever saw him “believe.” (Nothing happened to my mother, by the way, other than food poisoning.) The opening to use a Lovecraftian context—which is all about power sliding toward the other, the feared—made me realize that my previous stories never gave her enough power and agency. I sought to change that in “Truth Is Order and Order Is Truth.”

Stay tuned next week for part two of the blog series, which will feature Geneve Flynn and Grace Chan.

Thanks for joining us for part one of the blog tour for Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women. If you’d like to read the stories mentioned here, head to the link below.

BLACK CRANES: TALES OF UNQUIET WOMEN edited by Lee Murray and Geneve Flynn

RELEASE DATE: 26/09/20

GENRE: Horror

PUBLISHER: Omnium Gatherum

Pre-orders for Black Cranes are available here: https://omniumgatherumedia.com/black-cranes

Writing. What a strange word. It brings out many emotions. Fear. Dread. Joy. Comfort. Organization. For each person, writing has such a different meaning. For me, writing has always meant a multitude of things: Escape. Freedom. Release. Process. Sometimes, there aren’t even words. What exactly do I mean when I say that? Well…for someone like me who creates worlds using a pen and paper (actually, a laptop but you get the drift), writing can be my greatest enemy, my worst fear, my most passionate lover, or a portal to another realm.

For as long as I can remember, I used to write stories. My pre-teen years saw notebooks filled with anguished stories about dogs who gave their lives for their owners or wolves who could speak to each other…in English, mind you. My teenage years saw journals that were filled to capacity with fan fiction regarding whichever movie character or famous persona I was most attracted to at the time. But then, something odd happened. I started college with every intent of becoming a famous pop singer and making millions of dollars doing it. Writing wasn’t something I really thought about much. For someone like me, though, where “writing” is more than just a word, it’s not something one can just set aside. There are worlds that we’ve glimpsed, worlds that have stories attached to them, that need to be written. And when a story or a character creeps into one’s brain, it can’t be turned away or politely dismissed. No. That’s not how it works. And at the age of nineteen, I found myself at such a point.

Two female characters kept pushing themselves into my mind, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting, their story. I ignored it. I held it at arm’s length without really looking at it. But when vivid pictures begin playing through the mind like a movie, there really isn’t anything to be done except to watch them and interpret them using a pen and paper or a Microsoft Word document. So, I found I myself doing just that. It took longer than a decade to write the first installment of their story. I stopped for long periods. I edited and changed things that didn’t feel right. I wrote an entire other series. And yet, I always found myself drawn to these two females. I couldn’t get it out of my head that I needed to tell their story. Dueling Fates became that first part of their story and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

So we come to the truth most writers must face, whether they ever publish their scribbles or not. Writing is a gateway to another realm. It can take hold of a person, creating an obsession, until it comes pouring out of their fingers onto a keyboard. Sadly, many choose not to write those stories. They view their writing as poor or silly or any number of other lies we tell ourselves because we don’t believe in our own worth. And yet, there are characters that take hold of a person, filling in the crevices within that person’s creative persona, hoping that one day, their story will be told. For me, that is what writing is. I have the gift of seeing into other realms, which leads to the job of telling people about those realms. Of course, whether those realms exist within our own minds or on some very real dimension…well, that’s for the reader to decide.

For fans of GOT and Throne of Glass, comes fantasy novel Dueling Fates by Stephanie M. Allen. Read on for book details, and an exclusive excerpt!

Dueling Fates

Publication Date: June 30th, 2020

Genre: Fairy Tale/ Fantasy

Publisher: Liminal Books

In the world of Erez, three kingdoms share a tentative peace. In the far west, Princess Isemay yearns for much more than frilly dresses and etiquette classes. While her twin sister, Alena, prepares for life as a monarch in a neighboring kingdom, Isemay roams the woods with her loyal cheetah, hunting dagger strapped to her belt. It’s only when two surprising visitors arrive at the castle that Isemay must come to terms with her royal future – and a secret magical heritage. Now engaged to the king of the east, Isemay prepares for a position she never wanted.

After saying good-bye to all that she loves, Princess Alena travels north in trepidation – fully prepared to marry a spoiled prince she does not desire and usurp the throne from his insane father who does not deserve it. But when tragedy strikes at her wedding ceremony and she is wrongfully imprisoned, she can only hope that her hurried plea for help will reach her father in time.

Frantic to save her sister – and against the wishes of her betrothed – Isemay joins the army sent to free Alena. A mysterious encounter with a dragon in disguise leaves her with a warning that her life is in danger – but can it save her from the battle to come?

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54331802-dueling-fates?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=xgU80HqKgn&rank=2

Purchase Link:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BTH488Q

Excerpt:

Reaching the first tree, Isemay gently placed her palm on the rough bark and scanned the shaded area directly in front of her. The bright sun made it difficult to see much detail in the shadows, but her eyes adjusted quickly. Golda stood perfectly still next to her, one paw lifted off the ground, the bushy fur around her neck raised higher than normal. Movement to the left caught Isemay’s eye. She yelped in fright at what she saw.

A huge black wolf, larger than any she had ever seen, was standing a mere ten feet away, piercing yellow eyes trained on her. A low rumbling sound was vibrating from its chest and its lips were lifted in a snarl.

“You really can’t make this stuff up…”

BY Edward Daniel Hunt

As a writer I am often asked where I get the ideas for my stories and novels and if I make it all up. I think all fiction writers no matter what the genre are influenced by their life experiences and relationships as well as what’s going on in the world around them, and I’m no different. Writers can exaggerate or distort or completely change an incident or character and call it artistic license. Examples in my writing would include the unsolved homicide in the beginning of my novel Penance which was loosely based on a homicide from many years ago that I really don’t know any of the details. The body being found in a quarry in Quincy is based on bodies actually being found in that quarry. 

The massage parlor featured in several chapters of Penance was based on one in Maine that was raided and shut down years ago before I lived in Maine. Again I didn’t know anybody that worked there and most of the details are fiction. In reality, working there was probably much more horrible than I described it.   

The novel I’m working on now, 96 Tears, opens with a woman’s husband burning the cabin they live in down while she and her four year old son are still in it, she survives, the son doesn’t. This was based on an incident I was told about of one of my former employee’s husband trying to burn down their cabin with her in it. No one was hurt in that incident. Rumor has it that they got back together.

On a lighter note, as noted in Penance, there really have been several Elvis impersonators working for tips by having their pictures taken with tourists at Old Orchard Beach. These impersonators were of the fat Elvis in his later years. The crack about hygiene was creative license although I do remember one of them as being a heavy smoker and smelling like a barbecue.  Also on a lighter note, in 96 Tears, a prison inmate named Weasel commented that one of the first things he was going to do after being released was visit that topless donut shop. He was very disappointed when told that it had been burned down. There really was for a short time a donut shop in a small town near Augusta, Maine that featured topless waitresses. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to go there. [For research purposes.]

One last incident I’m trying to work into my writing: Last year we spent a week in Bar Harbor at my favorite hotel, the Bar Harbor Inn. Right on the water, great food and great service but one of the things I really appreciate about it is its history. Checking in I was expressing this to the young clerks behind the counter about the Inn being a former speakeasy for the rich during Prohibition and even further back when President Taft visited the Inn and gave a speech on the lawn. The three clerks just stared back at me blankly. One commented she didn’t know that. I walked away beginning to doubt myself. The next morning on my way to breakfast I noticed a picture on the wall of President Taft giving a speech outside the hotel, dated 1914. Feeling vindicated, I hurried over to the reception desk and was pleased to see that one of the clerks from the previous day was there. I asked her to come look at the picture and she humored me and came.  She stared at the picture for a few minutes, then turned and said: “And you were here then?”

You really can’t make this stuff up.

Penance

Publication Date: April 2, 2020

Genre: Thriller/ Suspense/ Crime Fiction

PENANCE is the first book in a series of crime novels featuring retired Boston homicide detective John Gilfillan. This story is about the race to find Lori Doyle. Ten years ago, Lori, as a teenager, witnessed a killing. Today, she has established a new life for herself and her daughter in Maine under an alias. Unbeknownst to her, all that’s about to change, as some are seeking her out to do her harm and some to do her good. A page-turner to keep you in suspense until the end.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086R51W78/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Add to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52793519-penance?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=IPtz7Ljbeh&rank=1

Excerpt

Marcy had never been more scared in her life. She truly believed he would have cut off one or both of her breasts if Paulie hadn’t walked in. There was nothing behind those eyes, no emotion, no caring, and no fear. Marcy had been around some scary guys in her life, including Tommy, his father, and some of the others. Tony was different. There didn’t seem to be any feeling behind his actions. No hesitation. No nothing.

She knew she had to reach out to JoJo and warn her that her worst freaking nightmare was heading her way. JoJo picked up on the first ring. There was a lot of noise in the background. Marcy held the phone slightly away from the side of her tender, bruised face.

“JoJo, this is Marcy, and you need to listen to me!” she blurted. “A guy named Tony, looked Italian, was just here, and scared the crap out of me! He’s crazy; broke my nose, cut my breasts and threatened to cut them off. I thought I was dead! He kept asking about Lori Doyle. I had to give him something. You’re next! He knows you work at Sallie O’s. Get out of there, while you can!” She was out of breath from talking so fast.

“Hey, thanks for the heads up, but an Italian in South Boston isn’t going to do very well. I’ll let my boss know and some of the regulars. They don’t like outsiders coming in here period, let alone stirring up shit.” JoJo sounded slightly sub­dued. Concerned, but not like her usual self; medicated maybe.

“JoJo, I was never more scared in my life! You be careful. You don’t know what he’s like. If you can get a message to Izzy, do it; she’s on his list too. Hey, I know you just lost Frankie and don’t need this mess but you’ve got to get away. This guy’s beyond crazy!” The whole thing replayed again in her mind and she felt like she might start crying again.

“Well, I’d like to see him go after Izzy. Izzy’s been hooked up with Tommy for a while now. Tommy can take care of himself,” JoJo said matter-of-factly.

“Please. Please JoJo, listen to me: he’s like nothing you’ve seen before! He’s an animal, no feelings, no fear! Please, you’ve got to get away now!”

Finally responding to the fear in Marcy’s voice, JoJo hes­itated. “Okay, Marcy…I’m glad you’re okay and I’m really grateful for the heads up. Really.” Marcy wracked her brain for the words to convince JoJo of the danger she was in. Before she found any, there was a click as JoJo terminated the call.

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How to build a fictional world within a realistic frame  – a reflexion on my City-States cycle.

By: Seb Doubinsky, author of “The Invisible”, Meerkat Press.

Hi! My name is Seb Doubinsky, and I am a dystopian fiction writer. All of my eight novels take place in a parallel world of city-states, that share some of the same history line as ours (Colonization, World War Two, space conquest, for example), but differ in their political structure, which resembles those of the Antique city-states like Babylon, Ur, Athens, Rome, Tenochtitlan, etc.). My city-states are both cities and the territories attached to them, like the real city-states from our own world. What’s more, they operate within strategic and political alliances, such as the Western Alliance, the Chinese Federation, the Slavic Confederation, etc. 

I have been asked many times how this universe came to mind. My first major was history, and I was always fascinated by the parallels one could draw between the past and the present, especially under different forms and expressions. For instance, if power has always been the dominant force of any society, so has been the struggle against it. By free associating one of my cities, New Babylon, with the ancient structures of ancient Assyria, for example, you come with a central power that can only survive through a tight control of its vassal cities. And it supposes very subtle politics as if you are too domineering, you risk revolt, and too loose, you risk to lose your influence. History thus helps me keeping my realism in check when it comes to geopolitical situations, which there are many of in my cycle. For instance, in The Invisible, which takes place precisely in New Babylon, one question arises about the possible hostile intervention of an “allied city” in the city’s internal affairs. What should it do? Denounce it? Pretend to ignore it? As you will see when you read the novel, diplomacy is a really tricky business, even in fiction.

My city-states are also constructed, internally, socially, politically on real systems, both past or contemporary, but slightly transformed. In Viborg City, for instance, in which my novel White City takes place, people are divided in three classes: Cash, Credit and NoCred. New Samarqand, in The Song Of Synth, is a traditional kingdom with intern democratic and religious struggles. Fiction is therefore both realistic, because it reminds the reader of familiar structures, but also dystopian in the fact that they are highly exaggerated, yet considered as “normal” by the protagonists.

This world of city-states is thus a world floating between reality and fiction, hanging between reminiscence and imagination – a mirror of our own reality if we could walk through a mirror without realizing it and felt that everything “made sense” although it is at the same time alien and sometimes uncanny. A world where violence and mystery are tightly connected, a maze with invisible walls one calls “fiction”.

THE INVISIBLE by Seb Doubinsky

RELEASE DATE: 8/11/20

GENRE: Speculative Fiction / Dystopian / Detective Noir

BOOK PAGE:  https://www.meerkatpress.com/books/the-invisible/

SUMMARY:

The Invisible is a masterfully written dystopian noir in Seb Doubinsky’s City-States Cycle books. It’s election time in New Babylon, and President Maggie Delgado is running for re-election but is threatened by the charismatic populist Ted Rust. Newly appointed City Commissioner Georg Ratner is given the priority task to fight the recent invasion of Synth in the streets of the capital, a powerful hallucinogen drug with a mysterious origin. When his old colleague asks him for help on another case and gets murdered, things become more and more complicated, and his official neutrality becomes a burden in the political intrigue he his gradually sucked into. Supported by Laura, his trustful life partner and the Egyptian goddess Nut, Ratner decides to fight for what he believes in, no matter the cost.

BUY LINKS: Meerkat Press | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

EXCERPT

1

Ratner walked into the interrogation room, followed by Captain Eris Jordan. He had asked her permission to interrogate one of the suspects in her Synth investigation. She had called him a couple days later and given him a time and a room number at the police station. Ratner had then informed Flowers, who told him he should talk to Commissioner Thomsen too, as the dealer had been arrested on his turf. Ratner had promised, but “forgotten” to comply. F*ck Thomsen, f*ck that little incompetent pretentious *ssh*le, he had thought. It seemed that wherever he went, he ran into that nasty idiot.

The suspect was a law student, twenty-four years old, described as Caucasian in the old racist terms, pale and nondescript in Ratner’s own categories, looking both scared and dejected. The prison’s dark blue suit contrasted violently with the general feeling of weakness projected by his demeanor, but matched nicely the dark circles under his eyes.

Ratner presented himself, but Jordan didn’t. They had probably met before. The interrogation was courteous, the suspect obviously frightened and eager to cooperate. Definitely not your usual hardened dealer type, Ratner thought as he took notes of times and places. The kid explained that he got the batch of pills at a party organized by a fraternity on campus last July. He had asked around for some Synth and a girl had told him she had some. Ratner asked for a description. Tall, blonde, short hair, blue eyes, white tee, jeans, sneakers, foreign accent. She said her name was Vita. Good-looking, but not cute, he added, as if it helped. “We made a composite,” Jordan whispered in Ratner’s ear. “Doesn’t help much. I’ll show it to you later.”

They had gone to the parking lot and she had given him a pill. The price was cheap and the kid thought about buying some for his friends and ended up getting a whole bag. She had given him a phone number to call in case he wanted more.

Ratner glanced at Jordan, sitting next to him.

“We checked it. Disposable phone. Disconnected.”

The city commissioner nodded.

The kid had quickly sold his batch and made a good profit. So he called and met her again, in the parking lot of a cinema downtown. And a last time, one month ago, in another parking lot, behind another cinema. Her hair had grown, he noticed. But she still had an accent.

“What kind of accent?” Ratner asked.

“I don’t know. German, maybe.”

“We checked with the New Berlin embassy and the visa service,” Jordan said. “But no real match. Or too many, if you will. I mean, blonde, blue eyes, and an accent—seriously? And of course, no girl named Vita on their lists.”

“What about the composite?”

Captain Jordan turned on the tablet she had brought along and pressed and swiped a couple of times until a face appeared. The kid extended his neck to look at it too.

“Yeah, that’s her,” he said, although nobody had asked him.

Ratner looked at the image.

Jordan was right. Could be anybody.

Ratner’s phone suddenly vibrated. A message. He took it out and looked at the screen. It was from Valentino. He wanted a place and a time to meet. Today. Ratner typed a time and Le Robespierre as a place. What the hell. At least he would get good music and a decent beer if the info was bad or useless. And he was sure he wouldn’t run into Thomsen there.

2

Thinking of the devil, Ratner mused as they walked out of the interrogation room to find Commissioner Thomsen waiting for them outside. He was obviously fuming, although he couldn’t vent his anger at Ratner, as the city commissioner was his superior. His tight face was flustered, the gray eyes icy behind the small rectangular glasses. You could feel him struggling not to explode. In a way, it was a funny sight. To Ratner at least.

“Captain Jordan, there is a strict chain of command in my department (he stressed the my so much Georg had to suppress a chuckle) that I would like you to observe. I should have been informed of this interrogation, and your attitude will be duly noted in the report I shall send to DA Flowers.”

Thomsen turned around, diva-like, and left them in the long corridor. He walked fast, like a cartoon character, and let the door slam behind him.

“And hello to you too,” Ratner mumbled, winking at Jordan. “Don’t worry, Flowers is a close friend of mine. I’ll take the blame.”

The captain shook her head. “Ah, no worries. He’s just a f*cking *ssh*le. Nobody likes him. He only got where he is because he’s good at licking *sses. Certainly not because of his competence.”

Ratner nodded. Yes, he would definitely have to invite her over for dinner. They would all have plenty of things to discuss.

Giveaway

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“FEAR minus DEATH equals FUN.”

I didn’t write that. I saw it on Disney+, in fact, on a show called “The Imagineering Story.” It’s a documentary about how Walt Disney and his employees designed the Disney parks, including the thrill rides.  “FEAR minus DEATH equals FUN” was their approach to creating many of the rides, including roller coasters like Space Mountain.

My name is Michael Clark, and I subscribe to that theory. I love a good ghost story as long as it’s not gratuitously morbid–I want to feel the hair rise on the back of my neck. Do horror stories scare you away? I don’t want to do that. I want to give you a thrill like the adrenalin rush of a good roller coaster—don’t worry, when it’s over, you’ll be safe and sound.

I like eerie, and I like chilling. I love ghosts as opposed to monsters or demons. Do bad things happen in my books? Sure, but no more than you might read in a crime novel, and it’s never for the sake of vulgarity. Did you like the movie The Sixth Sense, or maybe Silence of the Lambs? That’s what I’m going for—a top-notch thriller that could stand with these great stories. Did I achieve my goal? That’s for you to decide. Just know that you’re not getting a slasher or teen horror, you’re getting psychological horror wrapped into a ghost story-mystery with a twist or two. Thanks for your time!

The Patience of a Deadman

Publication Date: April 15, 2019

Genre: Horror/ Paranormal *Author has described it as more “chilling than gory”.

He just spent everything on a house in disrepair, but he didn’t know someone was waiting inside.

Tim Russell just put his last dollar on a handyman’s dream; a quaint but dilapidated farmhouse in New Hampshire. Newly single after a messy divorce, his plan is to live in the house as he restores it for resale. To his horror, as soon as the papers are signed and his work starts, ghosts begin to appear. A bone-white little boy. A woman covered in flies. Tim can’t afford to leave and lose it all, so he turns to his real estate agent Holly Burns to help him decide whether he has any shot at solving his haunted problem. Can they solve the mystery before he loses his investment…or maybe his life?

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52786022-the-patience-of-a-dead-man

Available on Amazon!