Black Static #70 (July-August 2019)

By TTA Press

The July-August issue contains new cutting edge horror fiction by Ralph Robert Moore, Kristi DeMeester, Steven J. Dines, Jack Westlake, Cody Goodfellow, Steven Sheil, and Natalia Theodoridou. The cover art is by Jim Burns, and interior illustrations are by Richard Wagner, Vincent Sammy, Sebastain Mazuera, and Ben Baldwin. Regular features: Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore; Notes from the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker; Case Notes book reviews by Georgina Bruce, Mike O'Driscoll, Andrew Hook, Daniel Carpenter and others (including interviews with Nathan Ballingrud and Nicholas Royle); Blood Spectrum film reviews by Gary Couzens.

The cover art is 'Stheno' by Jim Burns

Fiction:

I Write Your Name by Ralph Robert Moore
illustrated by Ben Baldwin

A Crown of Leaves by Kristi DeMeester

Pendulum by Steven J. Dines
illustrated by Vincent Sammy

Glass Eyes in Porcelain Faces by Jack Westlake
illustrated by Richard Wagner

Massaging the Monster by Cody Goodfellow
illustrated by Sebastian Mazuera

The Touch of Her by Steven Sheil

The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Saved by Natalia Theodoridou

Features:

Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker
NOT A LOTTERY

Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore
I'LL BE WATCHING YOU

Reviews:

Case Notes: Book Reviews

Mike O'Driscoll: Sefira & Other Betrayals by John Langan • Andrew Hook: Jutland by Lucie McKnight Hardy; Broad Moor by Alison Moore • Daniel Carpenter: Pharricide by Vincent De Swarte (translated by Nicholas Royle) • Georgina Bruce: The Girl in Red by Christina Henry; Sealed by Naomi Booth; Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud • Nicholas Royle interviewed by Andrew Hook & Daniel Carpenter • Nathan Ballingrud interviewed by Georgina Bruce

Blood Spectrum: Film Reviews by Gary Couzens

The Andromeda Strain • Def-Con 4 • I Am Mother • The Rain • Bloom • Don't Look Now • The Sender • Demonlover • Who? • November • Donbass • American Horror Project Volume 2 • When A Stranger Calls • Double Face • The Woman in the Window • The Perfection • Mega Time Squad • Beyond the Sky • Escape Room • Killer Party • Heretiks

• Language: English
• Publisher: TTA Press
• Release date: Jul 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463375006

TTA Press

TTA Press is the publisher of the magazines Interzone (science fiction/fantasy) and Black Static (horror/dark fantasy), the Crimewave anthology series, TTA Novellas, plus the occasional story collection and novel.

Book preview

BLACK STATIC 70

JULY–AUGUST 2019

© 2019 Black Static and its contributors

PUBLISHER

TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, UK

website: ttapress.com

email: [e-mail]

shop: shop.ttapress.com

Books and films for review are always welcome and should be sent to the above address

EDITOR

Andy Cox

[e-mail]

FILMS

Gary Couzens

[e-mail]

STORY PROOFREADER

Peter Tennant

SUBMISSIONS

Unsolicited submissions of short stories are always very welcome: tta.submittable.com/submit

SMASHWORDS REQUESTS THAT WE ADD THE FOLLOWING:

LICENSE NOTE: THIS EMAGAZINE IS LICENSED FOR YOUR PERSONAL USE/ENJOYMENT ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE RE-SOLD OR GIVEN AWAY TO OTHER PEOPLE. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE THIS MAGAZINE WITH OTHERS PLEASE PURCHASE AN ADDITIONAL COPY FOR EACH RECIPIENT. IF YOU POSSESS THIS MAGAZINE AND DID NOT PURCHASE IT, OR IT WAS NOT PURCHASED FOR YOUR USE ONLY, THEN PLEASE GO TO SMASHWORDS.COM AND OBTAIN YOUR OWN COPY. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE HARD WORK OF THE CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS.

BLACK STATIC 70 JULY-AUGUST 2019

TTA PRESS

COPYRIGHT TTA PRESS AND CONTRIBUTORS 2019

PUBLISHED BY TTA PRESS AT SMASHWORDS

CONTENTS

Stheno-bw.tif

COVER ART

STHENO

JIM BURNS

lyndarucker-contents.tif

NOT A LOTTERY

NOTES FROM THE BORDERLAND

LYNDA E. RUCKER

RalphRobertMoore-contents.tif

I’LL BE WATCHING YOU

INTO THE WOODS

RALPH ROBERT MOORE

I Write Your Name.tif

NOVELETTE ILLUSTRATED BY BEN BALDWIN

I WRITE YOUR NAME

RALPH ROBERT MOORE

crown-of-leaves.tif

STORY

A CROWN OF LEAVES

KRISTI DeMEESTER

PENDULUM artwork 2.tif

STORY ILLUSTRATED BY VINCENT SAMMY

PENDULUM

STEVEN J. DINES

glass eyes (a).tif

STORY ILLUSTRATED BY RICHARD WAGNER

GLASS EYES IN PORCELAIN FACES

JACK WESTLAKE

massaging-the-monster.tif

STORY ILLUSTRATED BY SEBASTIAN MAZUERA

MASSAGING THE MONSTER

CODY GOODFELLOW

touch-of-her.tif

STORY

THE TOUCH OF HER

STEVEN SHEIL

STORY

THE SUMMER IS ENDED AND WE ARE NOT SAVED

NATALIA THEODORIDOU

sefira-contents.tif

BOOK REVIEWS

CASE NOTES

GEORGINA BRUCE, MIKE O’DRISCOLL, ANDREW HOOK & OTHERS

killer-party-contents.tif

FILM REVIEWS

BLOOD SPECTRUM

GARY COUZENS

NOTES FROM THE BORDERLAND

LYNDA E. RUCKER

lyndarucker3supercropped.tif

NOT A LOTTERY

By the time you’re reading this, the 2018 Shirley Jackson awards should have been announced. This year, I had the honour of being a juror for this award. I thought it might be interesting for readers of this column who haven’t been on juries (which I assume is most people) to get some insight into what this is like. Every award has a different set of processes for arriving at a shortlist and a final list of nominees, but I would guess that ultimately the juror’s experience is somewhat similar.

This was a brilliant experience on a number of fronts – I got to know my four excellent co-jurors, Chikodili Emelumadu, Gabino Iglesias, Kate Maruyama, and Michael Thomas Ford (we were, apparently, a particularly chatty bunch); I read a ton of excellent books and stories; and, well, I got to have a hand in choosing who would be the recipients of my favourite genre award. Did all of my picks win? No, not all of them even made the shortlist – and this was true for all of us. Did some of my picks win? Yep. Did we end up with a shortlist and a final list of winners I’m happy to stand by? Yep.

Unlike some of the other genre awards, the Shirley Jacksons are an entirely juried process. While some other awards arrive at a shortlist with some input from members or the general reading public, for the Shirley Jacksons, jurors do all the reading to arrive at a shortlist of nominees and, ultimately, winners. Publishers are invited to submit works they think are appropriate, and as jurors, we are also encouraged to make recommendations, as is the board.

I used the word honour but the other feeling I had in addition to that was an overwhelming sense of responsibility. We all know what it’s like to see a shortlist of nominees and wonder why certain works didn’t make it. There are a lot of reasons why this might happen, the simplest and most straightforward (although not the most common) being that the publisher did not submit the work, despite requests. This was definitely the case with at least a few works that I’m aware of (and more than one I suggested) that I feel would have been strong contenders.

But there are a lot of other reasons as well. Five jurors bring five different sensibilities, different approaches to the award and different tastes. One thing that really struck me was the degree to which reading for an award is both an objective and subjective process. There is a lot of objectively good work out there. There was work I loved that some of my fellow jurors didn’t connect with and vice versa. That’s the point at which subjectivity kicks in; in the end, when I whittled it down to all the work I felt was excellent, my votes went to the books and stories that I just straight-up loved as a reader.

The Shirley Jacksons are awarded to literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic, but this is still a pretty broad category of fiction. In choosing the works for the shortlist and the final award, there’s an acute awareness of what would be, you know, Shirley-like. Past a certain point, this, too, ultimately becomes subjective. One need only look at the wide range of reactions to Mike Flanagan’s riff on The Haunting of Hill House for Netflix to see that opinions differ widely as to what constitutes a Shirley Jackson-like work. (For the record, I enjoyed Flanagan’s interpretation overall; I felt it started off weakly, had some incredible work in the middle, and lost its way entirely with the final episode, which was decisively not at all Shirley-like. Others have, as you’ll no doubt know if you spend any time on social media, differed.)

As jurors, we disagreed very mildly in a few cases as to whether certain works were quite fitting for the award, but this was only a matter of degrees and more part of our general discussion – there weren’t major disagreements about any of the strong contenders being wildly inappropriate. A few publisher submissions clearly were – we got some great straight-up crime novels, for example, but among those, I was looking for the ones that had a strong psychological element, and in particular examined the psychology of women, as this was a major theme of Jackson’s work. There was some very good dark science fiction that just didn’t quite feel right for the award to me. It’s good for publishers to try to submit only things that fall within the award parameters, and it is certainly kinder to the jurors, but every jury is different and there is also something to be said for publishers not taking a book out of the running without giving it a chance.

There is honour, there is responsibility – there is also a sense of mild terror. Terror of the ever-increasing stack of Things To Be Read that seems to be growing before your very eyes, and terror of missing something, getting it wrong. There were days when I received as many as ten or more novels in the mail, and this was on top of the novellas, novelettes, anthologies, collections and short stories, many of which were available only in e-form (so while I would occasionally look at the intimidating stacks of books around me and try to talk myself down from a growing panic, I would remember all the other works sitting in folders on my computer). Sometimes I would pick up books and flip through them and think no this is all wrong but you feel compelled to give everything a chance, at least a few pages. Of course, I didn’t think that every single thing I read was good, but overall, I found I developed an incredible empathy for all the writers, an awareness that every submission we received represented someone’s hopes and hard work. As a fairly grumpy reader even at the best of times, I still kind of wanted to give everyone a participation trophy.

Selections for nominees and winners are made via a process of weighted votes, which can be confidential or shared with fellow jurors according to preference. In some of the categories, I knew immediately on reading a work that I wanted it to win; in others I was less certain.

In all, the process was rewarding and exhausting, and I would recommend that all writers sit on a jury at least once. I discovered some amazing publishers and writers I’d previously either been unaware of or who were just on the periphery of my awareness. Being a juror is also really stressful and insanely time-consuming, and I’m looking forward to getting back to my own reading and writing.

As someone who’s been nominated for precisely one award in twenty years of publishing fiction (the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story in 2015, which I also won), I know how frustrating it can feel to never end up on a shortlist. But my own experience as a juror tells me there are so many variables that go into making a work an award-nominated, award-winning one. I also believe that awards highlight not the best work of the year but some of the best work of the year, because of that element of subjectivity. There’s no single best work in any category, and brilliant work will always be left off the list. It’s lovely to be nominated and to win, but not being nominated is not an indication that your work is poorer or held in less esteem by your peers. Awards are wonderful – if I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have agreed to be a juror – but they are not the only measure of excellence, and you shouldn’t overfocus on them to the detriment of your other accomplishments as a writer.

In the end, I just hope Shirley would have been happy with the choices we made.

INTO THE WOODS

RALPH ROBERT MOORE

RalphRobertMoore-woods2.tif

I’LL BE WATCHING YOU

All we know is what we see. But we have no idea what sees us. Windows let us look outside. But they also allow others to see inside.

The other day we were preparing dinner. I rehydrated some guajillo chilis. Mary roasted three poblanos, peeled off their crinkly charred skin, scooped out the clingy inner seeds. Chopped up an onion and green bell pepper. As I dumped the debris from our food prep into the right side of our stainless steel sink, I ran the cold water tap, reached my hand over to the wall switch, flipped on the garbage disposal.

Familiar whir, solids spinning into storms, but above that whir, a metallic clanging. Fuck. Shut off the disposal, found a flashlight in one of the kitchen drawers. Slanted its light down into the sink’s drain. Shining the yellow inspection around the depth of the drain, and down there, to one side of the wet blades, a silver curve. I maneuvered the yellow circle some more, leaning my eyes further into the sink. Squinting, recognized the familiar face.

Tried pushing my right hand down past the hard circle of the drain, but the spread of my knuckles was too wide, hand too big to bully down past the drain’s opening. I looked over at Mary, who had pulled a slab of pork shoulder out of the fridge, lifting her chef’s knife. I hated asking her to slide her slimmer hand down into the drain, but there was no other way to lift out George Washington. As she snaked her bare hand down, past her knuckles, past her wrist, part of her forearm, my heart was in my forehead. If for any reason the garbage disposal suddenly came on, even though there would be no reason for it to…

She dropped the nicked-up quarter on our black kitchen counter.

Back when we lived in Mariner’s Island, a suburb of San Francisco crisscrossed with canals populated with ducks vocally appreciative of the chunks of white bread we’d toss towards their waddlings, we spent a lot of time in bed reading tabloids. Famous actress X cheated on her husband with a dog groomer. Famous actor Y participated in an orgy with three pizza delivery guys. Talk show host Z holed up in a seedy Sunset Boulevard motel room shooting up speedballs with a transvestite. One of the tabloids, Star Magazine, had personal ads at the back of each issue, one of the categories being recipes. We thought, this might be an easy way to make some money. Paid for a listing in the magazine, titling our ad, Recipes Grandma Was Too Timid to Make.

Got a lot of responses, but when we sat on our unmade bed and opened the envelopes, out of two hundred responses to our ad, there was only one legitimate mailing. From a Mrs Fetty in a mid-western state. All the rest were chain letters telling us something terrible would happen to us if we didn’t forward their letters to ten other people. Mrs Fetty enclosed, tucked within the center of her folded-over letter, three green dollar bills, which we thumb-tacked to our white wall as a point of pride. Someone we don’t know sent us money! (A year later, we had to pull the bills down from their blue thumb tack, when we went through a period where we were low on cash.) Since she was the only person who wrote us, we decided to customize our recipes just for her. We didn’t have a Vegetables section. We had a Fetty Vegetables section. Our recipe for Corn Confetti became a recipe for Corn Confetty. And on and on.

You can be in a jungle, you can be on a subway, you can be online, and what’s frightening is when someone or something suddenly notices you. Focuses on you. If you’re watching an orange tiger pad through green ferns, that’s fine. But if those golden eyes with their vertical black irises suddenly spot you, that’s a problem. If a deranged man is sitting in a subway car, spitting chicken bones into his take-out container, and sees you staring at him, you’re in trouble. If someone online with greater technical skills than you possess becomes aware of you, starts hacking your identity, that’s an issue.

You watching the world is great. A sunset, summer rainfall, squirrel on a limb rippling her uplifted tail. There is an eeriness when the world suddenly watches you. It’s a great effect often used in horror.

In Kingsley Amis’s 1966 book The James Bond Dossier, he talks about how unsettling it is that Bond is escorted by Dr No’s minions into a room that already has candles lit everywhere. As if everyone working for Dr No already knew Bond would be captured, and would need to have his jail cell illuminated. In 1998’s The Truman Show, every decision Jim Carrey makes is controlled by forces outside his knowledge. He’s the star of a TV show he doesn’t know exists. In ‘Signs and Symbols’, Vladimir Nabokov talks about a son who is incurably deranged in his mind. "…the patient imagines that everything happening around him is