Here's a quick little round up of some recent publications of my weird short stories. We're taking a merry dance through a pair of unsettling villages, a tiny stone circle, and a world where all the books are wrong. Hold my hand and don't let go...
That Village
The first time (I think) that a tale of mine has been accompanied by AI 'art'. This rather gaunt lady with a wide frog on her boobs illustrates my wayward tale of rumours and mischief within an unhinged village. It spawned (so to speak) from a phase of experimentation that I went through after the exhausting end of my PhD, where I was trying to find a way back in to short fiction by resisting 'normal' forms. Here, the tale is told as an extended bit of dialogue from an unnamed villager who is rattling through the various weird traditions that occupy the time and mindframes of the inhabitants of her village, and the next village over, and the one after that, and the one after that. There's also a story that flirts its way in about murders and prisoners, and circulatory beliefs. It came second in a competition by Andromeda Magazine where the 'prize' for all three winning stories was publication. But that's OK, because entry was free. Take a look at it here, if you can bear the full-scale AI art: https://andromedamagazine.com/2024/02/27/that-village/
Stone Circle
This story emerged from the imposition of a writing constraint: to write a tale in which the main character never moves. This was perhaps another offshoot from my research about autism for the PhD. For the autistic, the world can be such a noisy, frantic, chaotic place, and sometimes the antidote to that is to find stillness, or to rest within repetition (stimming), which, as a way of anchoring, is its own version of stillness. I've been exploring the power of stillness as a constraint and this is one of the outcomes. The protagonist is in bed and discovers a stone circle has appeared around his belly button. He can't move or the stones will fall, and it's clear they are ancient and have been there for thousands of years. What next? Well, it gets trippy and surreal, but such is the way with ancient standing stones that seem to inspire strange cognitive journeys and warps in time. There's also an erection part way through that I remain unsure about, but decided to keep it in because it seemed to fit thematically. I think. Anyway, if that's not your kind of thing, it's brief and amusing, and let's leave it at that. This one was published by All Existing Mag, and its best to click on the link by my name to whizz straight down to it: https://allexistinglitmag.wixsite.com/allexisting/issue-3
The Signmaker
A tale borne from the frustrations I feel at getting shouted at every time I visit the countryside. Not from the vocal chords of angry farmers or locals, but from their signage. The countryside is littered with shouty signs that tell us not to do things. No trespassing, no littering, no camping, no fires, no access, private property, no dogs, no running, no diving, and, especially, ABSOLUTELY NO SWIMMING. I have some nascent, unformed thoughts about what this barrage of negativity does to our collective psychologies, but for now I've poured it into this spirited little tale of a village in the thrall of a Signmaker. They go to him for advice, because something rather unsettling has occurred. The tale has been published by Porridge Magazine and, I must say, the editorial process of this one was very pleasant and smooth indeed. Now shut up and do what I tell you. READ THIS STORY: https://porridgemagazine.com/2024/07/27/the-signmaker-david-hartley/
Anima: Final Draft by Sara T. Gravelly
I very rarely make my main character a writer. I've always thought of it as a bit of failure of imagination. A self-indulgent introspection that I mostly find quite dull as a reader. It works for Misery and Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation but after that it gets a bit tedious. But for this story I think I had something I needed to exorcise. After five years of intensively working on a novel for my Creative Writing PhD I found myself feeling quite demoralised by the brick wall of rejection (or, more commonly, utter silence) from the huge number of agents that I sent the work to. I thought 'PhD in Creative Writing' would be such a boon to get me through the front door but it got nowhere. I was lucky enough to have other more fulfilling and successful creative endeavours soon after, but I'm still licking those PhD wounds a bit. I think I've concluded that it's the fault of the novel which in retrospect is a bit bloated, intellectual, and overly experimental in a way that doesn't quite fit the current market. But I didn't really enjoy the experience of 'going out on sub' with agents. It's a draining slog having to pitch yourself and your work, constantly comparing your work to buzzy recent novels that you haven't read, while reading through the countless agent profiles about what they're looking for (who invariably list all the quirky SFF novels of the last decade and then say they're not looking for SFF). I got into a right funk about the publishing industry, this big self-congratulatory smug capitalistic machine that demands so much of writers and gives very little back. I've softened on it now, and will still seek an agent when I have something half-decent to send to them, but I needed to get some of those gripes out of my system. This story isn't really about that, but it has a whiff of it in the agent character. It's more about the bewildering whirlwind nature of the publishing world, and how stifling and demanding it can all get.
Happily, this one was accepted for the 'Stranger' anthology by Sans Press, an Irish indie publisher who make absolutely gorgeous books (side note; indie publishers are the absolute heroes of the book world at the moment, doing all the actual work). I'm afraid I can't give you a free link to the story, so you'll have to buy the anthology if you want to read it. Do so here: https://www.sanspress.com/shop/p/anfd-gjbrl
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