Read 2020 - 63 - Interzone #278

Interzone #278, Nov-Dec 2018

Bit behind with this issue - she understates.

There's an excellent editorial by Tim Lees about how we need true voices in fiction. The first story in the issue, Soldier's Things is also by Tim Lees. The landmarks were familiar, but I'd no sense of geography, how one place fitted with another. A soldier returned from a war that he may or may not have experienced, returned to a world that isn't quite what he remembers. A clever look at how we cannot always trust our own memories.

Xenophobia is the undercurrent in Doomed Youth by Fiona Moore, in a story about a giant ant invasion. "Oh her again. ANT-THEM! for Doomed Youth). As it turns out, the ants aren't really the threat here.

A car's memory is transplanted into a human body in Eliza Ruslander's decidedly weird Heart of an Awl.

Now I need to check on the gammon, which is slowly boiling on the stove and is probably the size of a pea by now.

The Rise of the Review

My short story, The Drop of Light and the Rise of Dark, appeared in Black Static #45 last month. I'm still pinching myself and resisting getting this beauty framed. Here be links to reviews from some fine folk:

"This one takes a very simple seeming scenario and weaves a dark, brooding story full of menace and terror, which ushers in some real, heartfelt emotion." Paul M Feeney, Ginger Nuts of Horror.

"So that redoubled the terror of this second little girl story (here physically disabled) who imagines the eclipse never-ending as she tries to struggle downstairs to find her parents or her best friend." DF Lewis

"...Gardner keeps an extra cruel sting in her tail – a reminder that in horror, and in life, you can’t get away so easily." Gareth Jones, Dread Central.

There is also a lovely review by Jess Landry over at HELLNOTES that favourites SP Miskowski, Stephen Hargadon and Steve Rasnic Tem's stories.