Will > Books: fantasy‎ (112)

… just after Christmas, Alice Webber started to get sick. She complained of pains in her sides like needles being pressed there. When they lifted h

… just after Christmas, Alice Webber started to get sick. She complained of pains in her sides like needles being pressed there. When they lifted her shirt, there was a pinprick rash and blood welling up as if the skin had been broken. A few days later she started vomiting. By this point Alice was too weak to get out of bed so her mother put a bowl beside it. When she came to empty it, she found watery bile and clots of black hair, like you’d pull out of a plughole. Another time Alice coughed up a handful of sewing pins bent into strange shapes. She developed a fever which made her start seeing things. She got delusional.”
“In what way?”
“Alice told her parents that a witch was spying on her through the chimney breast. She said the witch had a black tongue and her face was ‘all on upside down.’

“She was saying such odd things. At school, then here at home. Sometimes it was like she was listening to music you couldn’t hear, you know? I’d catch her just staring at the fireplace and her lips were moving but no sound was coming out. When I asked her what she was doing, she said”—here Lisa sighs, fretful and ill at ease. It’s clear she isn’t comfortable talking about this—“she said that the dead wanted her to open her throat.”

For a moment I think she is speaking—I can see her shoulders twitch, her mouth slowly moving—but the voice I hear is slurring and thick, heavy. Like a throat full of molasses. It is a language I don’t recognise, Germanic maybe. The words spread like a ripple, like oil on water, dark and tainted. It fills me with something icy and unknowing and I taste the bitterness of bile in the back of my throat.

If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Daisy Pearce was born in Cornwall and grew up on a smallholding surrounded by hippies. She read Cujo and The Hamlyn Book of Horror far too young and has been fascinated with the macabre ever since.
Daisy began writing short stories as a teenager and after spells living in London and Brighton she had her first short story ‘The Black Prince’ published in One Eye Grey magazine. Another short story, ‘The Brook Witch’, was performed on stage at the Small Story Cabaret in Lewes in 2016. In 2015 The Silence’ won a bursary with The Literary Consultancy. Later that year Daisy also won the Chindi Authors Competition with her short story ‘Worm Food’. A further novel was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Award…Daisy currently works in a library where she stacks books and listens to podcasts on true crime and folklore.

Interview
-----Bloody Good Reads - Chapter 109 - Daisy Pearce - audio – 38:38 – on writing what she loves

Items of Interest from the author
-----Crime Reads - DAISY PEARCE ON POLTERGEISTS, MISOGYNY, AND COMING OF AGE IN A FRACTURED WORLD
-----Short story - The Brook Witch - linked from her website
-----Short story - The Spirit of Christmas - linked from her website

There’s no reason why I’m not screaming. I consider what it might look like, for a moment. I could run out of my apartment barefoot, find a kind-lo

There’s no reason why I’m not screaming. I consider what it might look like, for a moment. I could run out of my apartment barefoot, find a kind-looking (handsome?) stranger on the street and beg for their help. But the truth is, I'm not the naked girl. I’m Dr. Frankenstein—this is my creation.

“You’re real,” I whisper, but I don’t know if I’m trying to convince him or me.

I think we’re all kind of blobs in a way. - from the Debutiful interview

Maggie Su is a writer and editor. She received a PhD in fiction from University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Indiana University. Her work has appeared in New England Review, Four Way Review, TriQuarterly Review, Puerto del Sol, Juked, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She currently lives in South Bend, Indiana, with her partner, cat, and turtle.

Every dog has the Growl in it, no matter how big or little, how scruffy or cute, how pampered, old, or toothless. Every dog has in the first wolf b

Every dog has the Growl in it, no matter how big or little, how scruffy or cute, how pampered, old, or toothless. Every dog has in the first wolf barely coaxed to a campfire. Maybe we never have a chance to use it in our kind lives, and our humans would never suspect. But if we do, it’s because none of us, not a single pup, has forgotten the first campfire. And though we have taken on many jobs for our humans since then, there is one that is summarized in the Growl.
This One Is Mine to Protect

Ninety percent of magic is public opinion.

The Wizard of Oz is arguably the first modern American fairy tale, and Dorothy one of the first prototypes for the army of empowered, female YA protagonists we have today. And growing up as a rural girl in Nebraska—one hop north of Dorothy’s Kansas—it’s no surprise then that I was desperately obsessed with the story. I always wanted to find the rainbow, yellow brick road, or magic slippers that would take me somewhere else. I always wanted to pay homage to Oz, and as a lifelong dog lover, it felt natural that Toto’s perspective was the way into a whole new view of the classic story. - from the Writers Digest interview

Imagine the flattest, grayest, most cornfed place you can imagine. Now add depression and life wrecked by late-stage capitalism. That’s Kansas. It’s like the dull beginning of every ad for pharmaceuticals right before Xylohappitoxin or whatever fixes everything. Sure, I make the best of it. Stealing socks and digging in old lady Brumley’s garden. But me and Dorothy are meant for bigger things, like destiny and boss battles and whatever that “Likeandsubscribe” stuff is the glass-people are hype about. - from the Fresh Fiction piece

When Frank L. Baum sat down to write the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, his country was in a state of turmoil which might seem very, very familiar to us these days. Economic and international pressures were ripping apart the perceived stability of the middle class. Hotly contested initiatives like the silver standard are referenced in Dorothy’s own silver shoes (changed to ruby for the technicolor movie). Populist leaders are lambasted in characters like the Cowardly Lion and the Emerald City itself can be read as a giant allegory to the capitalist power of Wall Street in Baum’s era. Oz was never a sterile product of pure imagination. The books reflected Baum’s opinions on the realities of the world. - from the Nerd Daily piece

You ever feel trapped in a family you don’t belong in? In a place that’s just so . . . so that it’s suffocating? That you know there’s more, so much more, out there, and it’s worth seeing, and every day you wake up in the same bed is like drowning a teaspoon at a time? I never wanted—I just . . .” She took in a sharp breath, catching herself. Her gaze refocused away from the window and back on me. For a flicker beat she looked like a duotype print of Dorothy. Hair obscured in soft shadow, a dark wardrobe that could have included the ratty tee Dorothy slept in when she finally peeled off the hoodie on the weekends . . . and a face so full of hunger-pang sadness, it could swallow the world with those wide eyes.

This is the thing tall people, even tall dogs, never understand. Everyone looks at the world from three, four, even five feet up in the air. That’s where all the deception is. Everyone makes sure things look nice from that angle. Tables are kept tidy. Skirts are pressed. Floorboards are swept. Railings are dusted. Everyone wants to make a nice impression, tell a nice story from their point of view.
But when you see the world from five inches off the ground? That’s when you get the unvarnished truth.

A. J. Hackwith (she/they) is (almost) certainly not an ink witch in a hoodie. She’s a queer writer of fantasy and science fiction living in the woods of the Pacific Northwest with her partner and various pet cryptids. A.J. is the author of a number of fantasy novels, including the acclaimed LIBRARY OF THE UNWRITTEN fantasy trilogy. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise writer’s workshop and her work appears in Uncanny Magazine and assorted anthologies. Summon A.J. at your own peril with an arcane circle of fountain pens, weird collections of rusted keys, and homebrew D&D accessories.

Harmony thought about cats as she rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Her favorite cat was the one that used to get stuck on top of a

Harmony thought about cats as she rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Her favorite cat was the one that used to get stuck on top of a telephone pole in front of the house where she grew up. At least once a month in the warm weather, she’d hear the neighbor kids yelling, “Cat’s on a pole!” as they gathered around to taunt the poor thing.
Harmony would watch the scene from her kitchen window, and a couple of times she tried to thought-talk the cat down. “Are you out of your mind?” the cat would answer. “They’ll kill me.”

When he was forty-three, he met Judy. By then, construction work had taken second seat to massage therapy, where he discovered he had a gift.
He didn’t understand how it worked; he just knew that when he touched people, his hands grew hot, his heart exploded, the room filled with colors, and sometimes helpers in subtle bodies would instruct him where to touch. And the clients felt better.

[In therapy] I was talking about how I reacted to various people in the office. There was one guy there who wanted an office wifey. I couldn’t stand this guy. Every time he would approach me it was like I was getting slimed with ectoplasm. Etheric gunk would come over me. I wanted to take a shower.

What was extraordinary were her colors—raw red and orange energy around her torso, a deep indigo, bluer than the bottom of the ocean with radiant purple wafting through it vibrating so fast above her head it made him feel faint just to watch it. But watch it he did. How could he not? Her desire was direct and raw.

Betsy Robinson was raised an atheist and went on to make her living as a writer and editor of spiritual subject matter: as managing editor of Spirituality & Health magazine for six and a half years and as an editor of spiritual psychology and books about shamans and traditional healers.

I had the unpleasant feeling that I was riding straight down a giant throat.

…the woods of Gallacia are as

I had the unpleasant feeling that I was riding straight down a giant throat.

…the woods of Gallacia are as deep and dark as God’s sorrow.

…I recognized the smell of livrit, our beloved national paint thinner, made from lichen, cloudberries, and spite. No Gallacian soldier would be without a bottle, in case we ever need to remember what we’re fighting for. (Mostly the opportunity to be somewhere that has better liquor.)

The greatest city in Gallacia is fine, I suppose, but I didn’t feel the need to linger. Imagine if an architect wanted to re-create Budapest, but on a shoestring budget and without any of the convenient flat bits. While fighting wolves.

The silence didn’t feel peaceful. It felt thick. Like a layer of fuzz on your tongue after a hard night of drinking, which you can’t see or touch but you can damn well taste. There weren’t even any birds singing.

A forty-minute drive from the volcanic Mount Etna, Becchina should have been alive.
Instead, it was the corpse of a town that didn’t even realize i

A forty-minute drive from the volcanic Mount Etna, Becchina should have been alive.
Instead, it was the corpse of a town that didn’t even realize it was already dead.

A low scritching noise caught his attention, and he swung the flashlight beam down to the right, where the natural tunnel and the man-made wall formed a dark and jagged corner. Tiny, putrid-yellow eyes glittered in the shadows.
“Jesus Christ!” Tommy hissed, jerking backward in revulsion as the flashlight beam illuminated the foot-long rat crouched in that corner.
Silent, twitching, the rat stared brazenly up at him, unafraid. It watched him with apparent disdain, as if to let Tommy know that he was the intruder here, not the rat.

The world seemed to be unraveling every day. American culture seemed to be rotting from the inside out, manipulated by an amoral oligarchy whose worst enemy was young people who didn’t want to play their game, and Kate and Tommy were happy to be counted in that category. The irony had not been lost on them, that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had been defined by people leaving the so-called Old World to seek their fortunes in the New World, and now she and Tommy were doing the opposite, seeking new life in the Old World. But they both believed that earlier generations had it right—a slower life, a smaller circle, a focus on home.

The rats are like fingers.
No. That’s not right. Fingers can reach out, can grasp and extend. The rats are not like fingers at all. They are periscopes, like those on submarines, each able to give its captain only a limited view of the world above. From their place below, among the dead, the lost ones can see only as far as the rats can see. But they are patient, and so they wait. And they let the rats run.

A voice crying out. Tommy frowned, wondering if that had been a dream or if it had been what woke him.
The wind gusted, rattling the window in its frame. He listened to see if the cry would come again but heard nothing beyond the sighs and creaks of the old house.

Golden is a monster of an author who got started, and found success, very early. He has a gazillion publications to his credit and an army-size host of teleplay credits from his years writing for Buffy with Joss Whedon, and plenty more. And then there are the comics. You may have heard of Hell Boy, among those. Here is a list of what he has published, from Fiction DB. I personally think he has elves, or more likely, goblins, chained to computers in his basement helping him crank out such volume.

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

“How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won’t smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible....

…beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid.

…the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet-we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together or go down to the Duke’s—we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces.

…as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.

“Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be.”

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

The sea whispers, faint. It sounds like pages shuffling. A seal barks. I lick a finger and test the breeze. The wind is in the east. A moment late

The sea whispers, faint. It sounds like pages shuffling. A seal barks. I lick a finger and test the breeze. The wind is in the east. A moment later it comes, mournful and high. The stones are singing and I feel it, at last, that I’m home. I listen for a time, despite my tiredness. I think, if heartbreak had a sound, it would be just like this.

She can smell him the way wild animals smell prey.

The visions don’t frighten me anymore. I can usually tell what’s real and what isn’t.

The leaves of the sugar maple whisper—under it, there’s a high-pitched whine, a long shrill note like bad singing…it sounds like all the things you’re not supposed to believe in—mermaids, selkies, sirens…’What’s that sound?’ It seems like it’s coming from inside of me, somehow. Dad pauses in the act of unlocking the door. ‘It’s the stones on the beach. High tide has eaten away at them, making little holes—kind of like finger stops on a flute—and when the wind is in the east, coming over the ocean, it whistles through.’

Sometimes her mother talks to Pearl in the night. She learns to keep herself awake, so she can hear her. It always happens the same way. Rebecca’s coming. It starts with the sound of the wind roaring in Pearl’s head, just like that day on the mountain. And then Rebecca’s warm hands close over her cold ears.

I suffer from hypnagogic hallucinations. They started when I was about 13, taking the form of a hand in the small of my back as I was falling asleep, shoving me out of bed really hard. I knew there was someone in the room and I knew they didn’t mean me well. With the information I had at the time – pre-Google as well – there was no other explanation for it, was there? I think it’s probably the deepest chasm I have ever looked into. There’s nothing comparable to it in the daylight world. - from the 9/26/22 Guardian interview

Writers are monsters, really. We eat everything we see.

The book is a mirror and I am stepping through the looking glass.

‘Writing is power,’ she says. ‘Big magic. It’s a way of keeping someone alive forever.’

I think about our three names, us kids, as we were. ‘Wilder,’ I whisper to myself sometimes. ‘Nathaniel, Harper.’ We’re all named after writers. It’s too much of a coincidence. Harper. Wilder. Harlow. The names chime together. The kind of thing that would never happen in real life but it might happen in a book.

‘You wanted to live forever,’ Harper says gently. ‘You both did, you and Wilder. That’s all writers really want, whatever they say.

I wake to the sound of breath. No hand caressing me, this time. Instead I have the sense that I am being pummeled and stretched, pulled by firm hands into agonizing, geometrical shapes. I scream but no voice comes from my throat. Instead, an infernal scratching—horrible, like rats’ claws on stone, like bone grinding, like the creak of a bough before it breaks. Or like a pen scratching on paper.

The power of this tale is the fact that nearly everyone on the planet knows the story, even though few have actually read the book. For the Victorian

The power of this tale is the fact that nearly everyone on the planet knows the story, even though few have actually read the book. For the Victorian reader, Stevenson hides the twist of the book until near the end. For those readers, Hyde and Jekyll were two men until Jekyll’s confessional letter sets them straight. - from the intro

He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.

Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time. - from the Northwestern article linked in EXTRA STUFF

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” - Alice in Alice in Wonderland

in one of my more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size; it was large, firm, white and comely. But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.

The spirit of a chief, you see, is a powerful thing. The skull became a head again when it was lifted from the grave . . . resurrected.”
“Resurrect

The spirit of a chief, you see, is a powerful thing. The skull became a head again when it was lifted from the grave . . . resurrected.”
“Resurrected?” she echoed.
“Alive again,” he said, his voice measured and grievously low, prolonging every word. “But not like it was before. Not like the old chief. It’s angry now that it’s been ripped from its rest. And ravenous. Hungry for revenge. It’ll eat anyone it encounters. It’ll tear flesh from bone.”
“How?” she said.
“It rolls, gathering mud and moss on its decaying flesh.”

Black bark to her sides and ash beneath her feet, she smelled the earthy odors of dirt, mud, burnt wood, and something so vile her stomach turned. It was the same smell the wind had wafted her way on the nights she’d been chased. Only the odor was stronger now. Inescapable.

She said Frog exemplified transformation. He entered life in one form and left it in another. From egg to tadpole, to tadpole with legs, to amphibian with tail, to tailless frog, he was never the same. He began life in water, only emerging once he was his true self. He symbolized change, rebirth, and renewal, and his spirit could bring rain.
Anna stared down at the ill-fated frog. The reservation was transforming. The asphalt beneath her feet was evidence of that. And yet the very symbol of change had become a victim of it. The absurdity didn’t escape her.

A Chicago native, Nick Medina is an author and college professor of public speaking and multicultural communication…Nick’s first short story was published in 2009 and he has since had dozens more published by West Pigeon Press, Dark Highlands, and UnEarthed Press, in addition to outlets in the U.S. and the U.K., such as Midwest Literary Magazine, The Washington Pastime, The Absent Willow Review and Underground Voices.

in every fairy tale girl who is saved is the one who rescues herself.

people in love were such fools, the

in every fairy tale girl who is saved is the one who rescues herself.

people in love were such fools, they made up excuses, they wound up doing as they pleased no matter how much good advice they been given.

I think it's a bad idea to write for the moment because the moment passes so quickly. The other thing about time is that what's right and what's good and what's accepted suddenly becomes not. I thought about that with the way women were treated in "The Scarlet Letter," the way that the Puritans blamed women, and they believed in original sin and that women were responsible for that because of Eve. It all changed, but then it changes back. And then it changes again. A lot of the things that women are coping with right now are not that different, really. The judgment against women. - from the Salon interview

This new book [The Invisible Hour] actually takes place in a town where I wrote a book of connecting stories about called The Red Garden, so it's the same place. It's just a novel that takes place in that town. - from the Salon interview

“Q: Did you set out to write a novel so deeply rooted in women’s empowerment? How did it evolve to include time travel?”

“A: I started to think about The Scarlet Letter and how modern-day issues for women are not that foreign from issues in that time period. I’m not certain I realized when I first read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great novel what the deeper meaning of his heroine’s situation is—she has no say over her body or her choices and yet, she does make her own choices. It’s a very brave book.
I’ve always wanted to time travel and been drawn to books about time travel. I think during the time of Covid, when I was writing this, more than ever I want it to be in another time period.” - from A Conversation with Alice Hoffman, an appendix in the book

I’d heard of curses—the storybooks are full of them—but this was the first time I’d seen one in action.

Yo

I’d heard of curses—the storybooks are full of them—but this was the first time I’d seen one in action.

You never know where the trapdoors are in your life, do you?

I love all the stuff that Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian and some of the characters in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, who would find these strange deserted cities, monsters and things. I thought it’s kinda like fairy tales. And I started to kinda get interested in that, and I thought maybe I could combine those two things, Maybe I could take the whole fairy tale riff. - from the Losers Club interview

…these books, particularly the Edgar Rice Burroughs books, like John Carter of Mars…they’re supposed to have this hero who’s like, muscular, you know, he played football in college and at the same time he’s got a brain, he’s handsome and got a cleft chin and all that good stuff and I thought I’d like to write a character like that. I’d like to write a character, who’s big, tough, tall, strong, who’s smart, but I want to give him a dose of reality. If he’s a kid, a younger man, who as a younger kid put dogshit on a bad teacher’s windshield, and glued somebody’s ignition shut. In other words I wanted him to have an anti-Disney kind of thing in there. - from the Losers Club interview

I tried to put in every goddam fairy tale I could think, including Ariel, the mermaid from the Disney film. - from the Losers Club interview

As a kid, I liked all the stories by Robert E. Howard, and I liked Edgar Rice Burroughs. One of the greatest things is The Land That Time Forgot. The story starts with a narrator who finds a manuscript on the beach. The narrator says, to you, the reader, read five pages and I will be forgotten. To me, that’s what fiction’s all about. Particularly fiction where a lot of stuff happens and where you’re kind of on an adventure, and you say to yourself, What I would like to do is for my readers to forget all their problems for a while, and just relax and get totally immersed in the story and get carried away to a different world. - from the Losers Club interview

The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do.

It is a cliché to say that a building’s windows look

The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do.

It is a cliché to say that a building’s windows look like eyes because humans will find faces in anything and of course the windows would be the eyes. The house of Usher had dozens of eyes, so either it was a great many faces lined up together or it was the face of some creature belonging to a different order of life—a spider, perhaps, with rows of eyes along its head.

The mushroom’s gills were the deep-red color of severed muscle, the almost-violet shade that contrasts so dreadfully with the pale pink of viscera. I had seen it any number of times in dead deer and dying soldiers, but it startled me to see it here.

It was a joyless scene, even with the end of the journey in sight. There were more of the pale sedges and a few dead trees, too gray and decayed for me to identify…Mosses coated the edges of the stones and more of the stinking redgills pushed up in obscene little lumps. The house squatted over it all like the largest mushroom of them all.

…so I was reading old pulp, basically going, is there anything here that grabs me that I can see a story in. And I happened on Usher and I was like, I haven't reread any Poe in a while. And I read Fall of the House of Usher and it's obsessed with rotting vegetation and fungus. And it's really short. And they don't explain hardly anything…I wanted to know what was wrong with Madeline Usher because you get buried alive, that is a problem. And so I started reading about catalepsy which is what it was diagnosed as at the time and also fungus, there was just so much about fungus and I'm like, okay, obviously these two must be linked somehow.; - from the LitHub interview

Gallacia’s language is . . . idiosyncratic. Most languages you encounter in Europe have words like he and she and his and hers. Ours has those, too, although we use ta and tha and tan and than. But we also have va and var, ka and kan, and a few others specifically for rocks and God… And then there’s ka and kan. I mentioned that we were a fierce warrior people, right? Even though we were bad at it? But we were proud of our warriors. Someone had to be, I guess, and this recognition extends to the linguistic fact that when you’re a warrior, you get to use ka and kan instead of ta and tan. You show up to basic training and they hand you a sword and a new set of pronouns. (It’s extremely rude to address a soldier as ta. It won’t get you labeled as a pervert, but it might get you punched in the mouth.)

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. - from The Fall of the House of Usher

T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon. In another life, she writes children's books and weird comics, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections

In June of 1896, Potter visited her mentor, George Massee, at Kew Gardens, where he showed her mushrooms grown under glass. He boasted that one of them “had spores three inches long.” Potter then jokes that they are both turning into mushrooms:

I opine that he has passed several stages of development into a fungus himself—I am occasionally conscious of a similar transformation

The dead don’t walk. Except, sometimes, when they do.

It is a cliché to say that a building’s windows look like eyes because humans will find faces in anything and of course the windows would be the eyes. The house of Usher had dozens of eyes, so either it was a great many faces lined up together or it was the face of some creature belonging to a different order of life—a spider, perhaps, with rows of eyes along its head.

The mushroom’s gills were the deep-red color of severed muscle, the almost-violet shade that contrasts so dreadfully with the pale pink of viscera. I had seen it any number of times in dead deer and dying soldiers, but it startled me to see it here.

It was a joyless scene, even with the end of the journey in sight. There were more of the pale sedges and a few dead trees, too gray and decayed for me to identify…Mosses coated the edges of the stones and more of the stinking redgills pushed up in obscene little lumps. The house squatted over it all like the largest mushroom of them all.

…so I was reading old pulp, basically going, is there anything here that grabs me that I can see a story in. And I happened on Usher and I was like, I haven't reread any Poe in a while. And I read Fall of the House of Usher and it's obsessed with rotting vegetation and fungus. And it's really short. And they don't explain hardly anything…I wanted to know what was wrong with Madeline Usher because you get buried alive, that is a problem. And so I started reading about catalepsy which is what it was diagnosed as at the time and also fungus, there was just so much about fungus and I'm like, okay, obviously these two must be linked somehow.; - from the LitHub interview

We used to joke that of the three of us, I could kill you up close, Tinbu could kill you from another ship, and Dalila could kill you from a differ

We used to joke that of the three of us, I could kill you up close, Tinbu could kill you from another ship, and Dalila could kill you from a different city three days later.

I’d grown up feeling terribly unusual; out of place and never at peace with the fate afforded young girls. In a hidden corner of my heart, I nursed embarrassing dreams. That I was not the child of my parents, but the daughter of a tribe of female warriors who flew upon winged horses. Or I was heir to a hidden sea kingdom below the waves, and the whispered sighs I heard from the water when we sailed and the strange lightning in the distance were not natural weather phenomena but magic, my true family calling to me. Then I grew into an adult. One who learned the hard way that if there was magic in this world, it could be as brutal and cunning as the worst monsters out of a fairy tale.

Easily one of the most enjoyable topics to research was criminal activity—specifically overwrought stories and urban legends about criminal activity—in the medieval world. All the cons, tricks, and poisons in this book are pulled from history: there’s actually a thirteenth century charlatan’s guide (recently translated into English by the Library of Arabic Literature) which discusses both the three cups game still used to swindle gullible tourists today and the numerous knock-out drugs Dalila employs. The guild Dalila hails from—the Banu Sasan—was also real, or as “real” as the fantastical odes recited about it were. - From the Fantasy Hive interview

Let’s talk about the night I accidentally married a demon.

So many of the characters in this book are coming to terms with past misdeeds or trying stick to a more righteous path and then you have this utterly selfish, sexy creature of chaos and trickery just waltz in and repeatedly betray them to save his own skin and spin “a better story.” And that’s the very point of him—he’s not human, he’s very much meant to be a relic of a forgotten age when people did tell stories of meddling, petty gods and monsters, a supernatural aspect that naturally feeds on human ambition and wouldn’t even understand why he’s expected to feel remorse for doing so. It was fun to create such a foil for Amina herself and really delve into the almost alien psyche of such a being. - from The Fantasy Hive interview

The largest pearl in the world; a miniature moon said to have been snatched from the sky by a lovelorn fairy and gifted to Queen Bilqis, who made it the centerpiece of her crown. A gem believed to bestow upon its owner countless wishes, supernatural sight, and unending good fortune.

I straightened up with care, pinching my brow to keep black spots from dancing before my eyes.

“What about you, Lady Dalila?” Noor asked. “Is there anyone back home you are eager to return to?”
Dalila picked at her teeth. “I had to abandon a time sensitive experiment with extremely promising indications as a knock-out gas.”
“For pain relief,” I amended quickly. “Dalila is our…healer.”
Noor’s brows rose slightly. “Ah, yes. Majed speaks frequently of how you ‘healed’ him when you first met.”
Dalila rolled her eyes. “It was hardly the worst of my poisons. There are some physicians who actually believe it beneficial to vomit blood every now and then. It balances the humors.”

When I started working on Amina, the goal I had for myself, and I think I wrote this in the author’s note at the end, was that I wanted to make it completely historically accurate—outside of the plot. I did a ton of research. There’s been an incredible amount of new work done on the medieval Indian Ocean, but you’re still looking at 12th-century texts. It’s almost 1,000 years ago, and there is a great limit to what we know. - from The Portalist interview

“Oh, those weren’t humans. Those were daevas.”
“What in God’s name is a daeva?”
He held up a hand. “You don’t want to know, trust me. More overdramatic creatures have never existed. And they’re not even the worst ones here. Everyone likes to complain about humans, but let me tell you…spend a couple centuries with the inhabitants of the unseen realms, and you’ll be aching to haunt a mortal latrine.”

I wanted to travel the world and sail every sea. I wanted to have adventures, to be a hero, to have my tales told in courtyards and street fairs where perhaps kids who’d grown up like me, with more imagination than means might be inspired to dream. Where women who were told there was only one sort of respectful life for them could listen to tales of another who’d broken away—and thrived when she’d done so.

In the early days, the wall of thorns had been distressingly obvious. There was simply no way to hide a hedge with thorns like sword blades and ste

In the early days, the wall of thorns had been distressingly obvious. There was simply no way to hide a hedge with thorns like sword blades and stems as thick as a man’s thigh. A wall like that invited curiosity and with curiosity came axes, and it was all the fairy could do to keep some of those curious folk from gaining entrance to the tower.
Eventually, though, the brambles had grown up around the edges—blackberry and briar and dog rose, all the weedy opportunists—and that softened the edge of the thorn wall and gave the fairy some breathing room. Roving princes and penniless younger sons had been fascinated by the thorns, which were so obviously there to keep people out. Hardly anybody was interested in a bramble thicket.

How does anyone manage? There are too many streams and they all flow and all of them could be good and there’s no way to know. How does anyone ever choose to do anything?

One thing I like to do with fairy tales is to look at them and go “How can I make this even worse?” - from the Grim Dark interview

Being a knight isn’t about being religious, you know, so much as it is to figure out what to do with your extra sons so they don’t tear up the family seat. Every now and then someone gets the idea we should start chopping each other’s heads off, but in practice, the Pope squats in Rome like a spider and the caliphs glare at one another over their walls, and the rest of us get along as best we can with each other.”

Practical overworked middle-aged women basically keep the world running…And being myself a rather frumpy middle-aged woman, I write stories about people like me partly because they’re very much who I can write, but also because I want those women to have stories. Sometimes we read fantasy stories in order to pretend we’re someone else, but sometimes we read fantasy stories in order to pretend that people like us can have adventures too. Mind you, if the readers ever get tired of reading about middle-aged gardeners, I’m probably in trouble, but so far, so good. - from the Grim Dark interview

“There’s a very high wall,” said Halim, “according to the imams, called al-A’raf. Between hell and paradise. And if you haven’t been good enough or evil enough to go one place or the other, you live in this wall. But even those people will eventually enter paradise, because God is merciful.” He jammed his chin onto his fist and gazed at Toadling. “It seems like you’ve been stuck in that wall for quite a long time now . . . That’s all the theology I’ve got in me, incidentally, so I hope it’s useful.”
Toadling sighed. “I would like to climb down from that wall,” she admitted.

Here’s what I can say with some certainty. Something is happening. Case in point: WZPE’s AM news show usually ends at 8am. Not today. They’ve basic

Here’s what I can say with some certainty. Something is happening. Case in point: WZPE’s AM news show usually ends at 8am. Not today. They’ve basically got the phone lines wide open, and people are calling in by the hundreds. The last caller just sobbed, “They’re dead, they’re dead, they’re dead,” and disconnected.
There are TV and radio stations all over the state that just . . . aren’t on the air at all.
From my window, if I elevate my chair, I usually have a great view of the mile-long gridlock at the intersection of Monaghan and Wolcott. The traffic lights there aren’t even working, but the intersection’s just . . . dead. No cars that I’ve seen.
Usually by now my upstairs neighbor is jazzercising. But the whole building is strangely subdued. I haven’t heard a single other person.
Perhaps it’s my overactive imagination . . . but I really don’t think that’s the case.
If you have any information about what might be happening, I’ll see you in the comments.
—Posted by Eli Broder, 7/4/25 9:12am

A large room, lined with storage bins and shelves, has been transformed into a morgue. Shoved along the west wall are gurneys bearing zippered white bags. Human-sized bags, arranged haphazardly, as though they were rolled into the room and released to drift where they may. Which is exactly what happens next: An orderly in a white smock bangs into the room through an adjacent door, back first, then drags a fresh gurney into the room, pivots, and releases it, sending it spinning across the floor. It thumps into another gurney, and both roll in separate directions. The orderly, not pausing to admire his handiwork, disappears through the door again.

Santa Mira felt like a fun nod to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, a huge influence on the show. And we think it’s a cool tradition that many writers and creators have used the same town. - from Paul Semel interview

After working on The Edge Of Sleep for so long, and in so many different iterations, we needed a fresh set of eyes. Jason had some really creative and cool ideas to expand the story. - from the Paul Semel interview

“Mama,” Davy, the child, moans.
“This is your fault,” the beast says. Its trunk searches out Davy’s face, presses slick against his cheek, exhales hot, sour breath into his hair. “I warned you, didn’t I.”
Davy looks down at his pajama shirt. Something beneath bulges. Utter panic consumes him as he clutches at his shirt, trying to hold it away from his skin. He looks wildly at the thing above him.
“I can’t stop it now,” the elephant grunts. Its mouth unhinges, and a thick river of mustard-colored bile streams onto Dave’s legs. “I wouldn’t if I could. You aren’t a good boy.”
Davy, blinded by pain, cups his hands over his chest in time to catch the small elephant that bursts from his breastbone. Yellow foam rises in Dave’s throat; he can’t clear it to breathe.
The small elephant stretches in Davy’s little palms, glistening and damp. Davy’s vision blurs; he’s suddenly terribly sleepy, and his hands fall limp.

Perseus…has no interest in the well being of any creature if it impedes his desire to do whatever he wants. He is a vicious little thug and the soo

Perseus…has no interest in the well being of any creature if it impedes his desire to do whatever he wants. He is a vicious little thug and the sooner you grasp that, and stop thinking of him as a brave boy hero, the closer you’ll be to understanding what actually happened.

Who decides what is a monster?

‘If you get trodden on by a giant or a god – which wouldn’t be intentional on our part, incidentally – but in the heat of battle one of us might step in the wrong place and there you’d be. . . . Well, would have been. Anyway, it would be painless. Probably very painful just before it was painless, but not for long.’… ‘Come on. If you do die, I’ll put in a word for you to get a constellation. Promise.’

He’s just a bag of meat wandering round, irritating people.’

“Come.” John Pinten turns and puts his palm against the hull. “Do as I do.”
Mayken crawls forward and puts her palm next to his, flat against the pl

“Come.” John Pinten turns and puts his palm against the hull. “Do as I do.”
Mayken crawls forward and puts her palm next to his, flat against the planks. She sees how much smaller and cleaner her hand is. Too clean for a cabin boy. But John Pinten doesn’t seem to notice.
“She’s all that lies between us and the deep dark fathoms of the sea.” John Pinten’s voice grows quiet, grave. “Can you feel the ocean pulling at the nail heads, pressing against the planks, prizing the caulking? The water wants in.”

Old superstitions are rife now. The sailors lead the way. Words must be chanted over knots. Messmates must be served in a particular order. A change of wind direction must be greeted. Portents are looked for and translated. The cut of the wake noted. The shape of clouds debated...A lamp taken down into the hold will now burn green. Monstrous births plague the onboard animals. Their issue is hastily thrown overboard to prevent alarm. Eyeless lambs. Mouthless piglets. A litter of rabbits joined together, a mass of heads and limbs. The gardener harvests fork-tailed carrots from his boxed plot outside the hen coop.
“It’s the way of long journeys,” says Creesje. “They alter what people think and see.”

There are many layers to this child: undergarments, middle garments, and top garments. Mayken is made of pale skin and small white teeth and fine fair hair and linen and lace and wool and leather. There are treasures sewn into the seams of her clothing, small and valuable, like her.
Mayken has a father she’s never met. Her father is a merchant who lives in a distant land where the midday sun is fierce enough to melt a Dutch child.

Gil is made of pale skin and red hair and thrifted clothes. His shoes, worn down on the outsides, lend an awkward camber to his walk. Old ladies like him, they think he’s old-fashioned. Truck drivers like him because he takes an interest in their rigs. Everyone else finds him weird.

The physical research helped. “Bumping my head about 400 times as I walked around the ‘Batavia’ replica, it really helped to get a physical sense of the life. The same with the island, walking around and seeing the barrenness and feeling the elements.” - from The Bookseller interview

“How do you describe dread, Gil? That’s what the bunyip is: an attempt to give fear a shape.”
Gil thinks on this.
“Everyone’s fear looks different,” Birgit continues. “So everyone’s creature looks different. But they all eat crayfish, women, and children. That seems to be universal.”
“They’re just warnings for kids. Not to play near water or talk to strangers.”

Today an image slips through the carefully constructed peace . . .
Pale sand beneath my feet, a blue-green ocean, foam nibbling at my bare toes. Be

Today an image slips through the carefully constructed peace . . .
Pale sand beneath my feet, a blue-green ocean, foam nibbling at my bare toes. Behind me, a castle—ornate turrets dotted with pale pink shells, a drawbridge made from delicately curved driftwood, beneath it, a moat where tiny paper boats rock in the breeze. A wave gathers on the horizon. It grows taller and white horses gallop across its face. When the wall of salt water strikes, the castle will be destroyed and with it a treasure, something precious . . .
The vision disintegrates. Ghostly lips brush my cheek. I know what’s coming next. A whisper I’ve heard intermittently my entire life.

“It’s important you understand that I don’t have a clear definition for what I do. Psychics use their intuition or spiritual guides to gain information about the past, present, or future. Mediums are channels that deliver messages from those who have passed over. I’ve been called a psychic-medium, and that’s as good a definition as any. But the truth is that I’m not sure why I hear voices, see images, sing at times, or scribble notes—it just happens and I can’t tell you how because I truly don’t understand it.”

One of the seeds that started this novel with my fascination with imposter syndrome—the inability to believe one’s success has been legitimately achieved or deserved. I wanted to create a character, Sylvie, on the cusp of achieving great success but who doesn’t quite believe she deserves it. I made Sylvie a psychic as that gift is controversial—the perfect job for someone doubting her abilities due to all the critics! - from Hey It’s Carly Rae interview

the stories we tell from childhood that have shaped who we are – are based on old and sometimes faulty memories. It’s up to each of us to decide what to accept or discard from our origin stories and to decide who we ultimately want to be in life. - from the Jean Book Nerd interview

What surprised me most about writing Some Of It Was Real was that I thought my research would lead me to a conclusion about what I believe. I watched documentaries, movies, and TV shows about psychics, clairvoyants and mediums and read studies and articles written by individuals whose goals are to prove the supernatural is a hoax. But in the end, the only real conclusion I drew was that some of it might be real. - from Thoughts From a Page Podcast

Nan Fischer is the author of Some Of It Was Real (July 2022, Berkley Publishing), and the young adult novels, When Elephants Fly and The Speed of Falling Objects. Additional author credits include Junior Jedi Knights, a middle grade Star Wars trilogy for LucasFilm, and co-authored sport autobiographies for elite athletes including #1 ranked tennis superstar Monica Seles, Triple Crown race winning jockey Julie Krone, Olympic gold medal speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, legendary gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi, and Olympic gold medal gymnasts Nadia Comaneci and Shannon Miller.

Once war is on men’s minds, Selica had said, it festers within, claiming them.

For a soldier to le

Once war is on men’s minds, Selica had said, it festers within, claiming them.

For a soldier to let his enemy live despite the entrenched inclination to kill touched my heart with a flame. And as he looked out on our land, on the people dying and bleeding on it, no matter if they were Russian or Mongol, I saw pain, deep and endless and raw, open inside him like a ravine about to swallow us. There was light there, light that left me hopeful. Perhaps life, possibly even goodness, did exist, even in a soldier, and it prevailed in the world after all.

I had written two books that had gone nowhere. Totally uninspired, almost desperate, I turned to the Russian folktales I had grown up with as a child. Baba Yaga loomed large in these stories—her elusive and mercurial character, her enchanting chicken-legged hut, her terrific mortar and pestle mode of transport, her sharp tongue and fearsome appearance, unsurprising for a woman of knowledge living alone in the wood.
As it turns out, some scholars believe the Baba Yaga we know—the old, ugly hag from the fairy tales—is based on, or is a descendent of, a fertility and earth goddess worshiped by ancient pagan Slavs. I was instantly fascinated by how a goddess could become a witch and just knew I had to write a book not about the infamous hag, but about the little-known woman named Yaga.
- from the Writer’s Digest interview

After I had witnessed my first birthing not ten years into my life, Mokosh had explained to me the intricacies of lovemaking and child making. “Though immortals can birth other gods and half gods,” she had said, gently, “it is not simple for us, with mortals above all. Most of the time, it happens not. It is even harder for half gods. If it happens, it does so for a reason. It is willed by the Universe.” I had known many men over the centuries, both mortal and immortal. Not once had my trysts ended in anything other than fleeting pleasure or pointless regret. I knew it would never happen for me.

Mother had taught me the immortal side of earth magic, of doing without awareness, without feeling. With Dusha, I learned to listen to the natural world around me, not only to the sky, the trees, the waters, the very air, but also to myself.