THAT WAS 2021, THAT WAS

As 2022 kicks into high gear, I thought it might be about time to look back at what I’ve published in the last twelve months (and maybe a hint of what’s to come).

The year started with the delayed first issue of the relaunched Startling Stories from Wildside Press, and edited by Douglas Draa. The lead story was my “Cradle of the Deep” – ostensibly a Damian Paladin story it was also what they call in TV land a backdoor pilot. Leigh Oswin and Damy investigate something lurking off the US Atlantic coast on board the new, 400-foot long experimental submarine cruiser the SC-1. By story’s end the boat had been officially named the USS Oswin, much to Damy’s disgust (I think he was expecting it to be USS Paladin). Sub and crew resurfaced later in the year in The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors: A Miscellany of Monsters in “Echoes of Days Passed”, a tale deliberately constructed to mimic its Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series inspiration, with something big in the North Atlantic sinking a Royal Navy secret testbed and eating its crew, before the Oswin gets involved due to a somewhat obsessional admiral. Death and destruction inevitably follow.

There’s a third Oswin story in the works – “Drawing Down Leviathan” – about to be revised and polished, involving a worldwide, seaborne organisation with huge ships that make 1930s aircraft carriers look like pedal boats, and an aircraft inspired by a Bel Geddes design. And even though a couple of Nazis get a walk-on part, I think I’ve found my series’ main baddies.

Next up was Phantasmagoria #18. This not only had a previously unpublished sword & sorcery piece of mine – “Face of Heaven, Eyes of Hell” – but also included me being interviewed by Allison Weir. A double strike if ever there was one.

And by one of those minor coincidences, Parallel Universe Publications’ Swords & Sorceries volume 2 also published a fantasy story of mine almost simultaneously, “The Essence of Dust”, which was an old piece that consisted of the original plot and very little else, having been pretty much rewritten from the ground up. And like “Face of Heaven, Eyes of Hell” it took place in my own fictional multiverse (although I prefer the terms Internection, or the Boundless), so there were the most tenuous of links. There’s also a vague connection with some of the fantasy strips I wrote for DC Thomson’s Starblazer (and illustrated by Quique Alcatena) for those who care to look. A few months later, Swords & Sorceries volume 3 published “The Rains of Barofonn”, a follow on from “Essence of Dust”, once more an old piece that has been revised, polished and expanded slightly. The submission period for volume 4 starts on April 1^st (I hope the date’s not significant) and I will be most definitely throwing my hat in the ring once more.

Another Wildside publication edited by Douglas Draa – the Weirdbook annual, Zombies – contained “O Mary Don’t You Mourn”, a story set in mid-1860s New Orleans and featuring a Native American protagonist I dreamed up decades ago for an absolutely dreadful Western novel I abandoned halfway through (you’re welcome). He felt like the perfect fit for the story, and I may well write more Mattan fiction in the future.

Another anthology that was delayed for a year, due to the Covid pandemic, was The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror, from Skyhorse and edited by Stephen Jones. My contribution, “All I Ever See” took its title from a line in Status Quo’s early hit, “Pictures of Matchstick Men” (repurposing song titles or lyrics is something I’ve been doing for a long, long time). Anyone who’s read the story will have made the connection, I hope.

Finally there’s Gruesome Grotesques: Carnival of Freaks from TK Pulp. Editor Trevor Kennedy asked me if I’d like to contribute and I said I’d do what I could. Inspiration came from a weekend break to the Lake District. I wasn’t entirely happy when the final documentation came and I found that not only would we be staying in Blackpool (a town I have no love for, embodying as it does – in my opinion – all the worst aspects of British seaside resorts) and a Britannia hotel. Luckily, the hotel had previously been the Blackpool Hilton and the shine hadn’t rubbed off yet (although Blackpool remained Blackpool). The first night, the sound of small feet running up and down the corridor outside our room – combined with what I later realised was a slight panic attack at breakfast the first day (the restaurant became increasingly full as we finished eating, and I’d grown unused to crowds) – were the seeds which quickly grew into “Hall of Dreams” and its dark themes of childhood abuse and repressed memory. The small fictional seaside town of Byemouth was no Blackpool, though.

And that’s it for 2021. I already have a list of stories to be written, polished or edited within the first quarter of 2022. Beyond that there’s nothing planned. No doubt something will turn up. It always does.

Happy New Year!