New Story Published

New (at least, new to publication) story has found itself a home in Robbed of Sleep Volume 5, published by BigHugeGiant (@bighugegiant) and edited by Troy Blackford, who can be found lurking on Twitter under the handle @TBlackford3.

'Mr. Chop's House of Credit' is a story I wrote some time ago and it's always been a fond favourite, but has never found a home. Maybe its mix of gore and humour isn't for everyone, but if you like the idea of a pawnbroker's with a penchant for human organs, then it will be for you.

According to our editor, this latest anthology offers:

"Thirty-three fearful, fretful, and freakishly fanciful stories fresh from the minds of some of today’s most unstable speculative fiction authors"

I do so like this description of us RoS lot.

Click here for the e-version. Print to follow very soon.

New Story Out

The Morpheus Tales Taboo Special issue has landed! My story 'Apron Strings' is amongst the pages of what promises to be, "No limits, no holds barred." @morpheustales

I'm pretty pleased with this story. It shaped itself quite naturally around a quick snippet from a friend. She had just given birth to her son. The midwife asked if she wanted to keep the placenta. The midwife still had her own son's placenta in her freezer 22 years later...

From the publishers:

"The free preview of the magazine is available here:
https://issuu.com/morpheustales/docs/taboo_special_issue_preview

The ebook in various formats is available here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/648109?ref=morpheustales

The ebook will also be available on amazon for the kindle soon.

The printed digest size edition is available here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/stanley-riiks-and-ken-goldman-and-adrian-ludens-and-sheri-white/taboo-special-issue/paperback/product-22778122.html

The printed perfect-bound edition is available here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/stanley-riiks-and-ken-goldman-and-adrian-ludens-and-sheri-white/taboo-special-issue-perfect-bound-edition/paperback/product-22778129.html

10% off print copies for a limited period!"

Squishy Pages

A smushing of short stories is now a complete collection. Break out the glitter and Jaffa Cakes.

Yeah, an unpublished collection, but it's mine, it's gross and it's dark. And funny in a way that a really noxious fart makes you laugh and retch at the same time. I've spent a long time hunched over this laptop or scribbling in B&M notebooks and then carving it up with red ink until it's taken a nice twisted shape, like a cherry blossom tree subjected to bindweed. 

Side note: 

I've long-since discovered that chain coffee shops are not the place for writing and plotting. For a start, who has a spare £4 for a bitter creamy frappemoccaccinolatte when fun writing takes hours and a bitter creamy frappemoccaccinolatte takes about fifteen minutes to drink? 

And, also, these shops are choked with office workers, hipster students and yummy mummies so it's not the best place to slam your fist down on the table and shout:

'Of course! Eric and Lauren didn't know they were brother and sister until after their first child was born!'




I mean, you could. But who has the time to explain?

And if you did, most people don't like discussing incest plot twists over blueberry muffins.

Glad I'm not most people.




So, a preview of story gunge to come:

• A small South Bank pawn shop that focuses their business on human organs

• A woman getting over a particularly sickening break-up bumps into one of her students at the GUM Clinic

• A palliative care nurse is spending the last hour of her shift concentrating more on her patient's earrings than her patient

• A man frozen in a coma from catching snowflakes on his tongue

• A psychiatric registrar doing a rotation with a maverick consultant in behavioural therapy

• A man addicted to A&E

• A couple who find that their newborn gives them a new taste for life

• An artistic mother intent on fashioning a famous life for her perfect daughter

• A teenage boy at his girlfriend's wake who is more distracted by his erection than by mourning relatives

And more!

Now, time to edit, edit, edit. And drag a worthy synopsis together. And find an agent or publisher. And maybe have a blueberry muffin, because now I'm sort of hungry. 

Barista! Fetch cake! And a maroon gel pen!

People Are Strange

Am pleased to report that a short story rattled off a couple of weeks ago ('Apron Strings') was accepted for its target publication, Morpheus Tales.

They'll be publishing a special Taboo Issue in July/August so more links and such will follow, but I'm pretty pleased about this one, mostly because the story flowed easily to the page and I seemed to hit the mark of what the editors were looking for.

A re-read does spy sentences that I wouldn't mind tightening, but I'm still pleased.

It's horror, it's sort of disgusting (depending on your threshold) and I personally find it funny. But, then, I am a bit strange...

Hungry for a story, anyone?

Nerdy, Dirty, Inked and Curvy

As part of my post-diagnostic care following my autism diagnosis, I have been working very hard to see the differences and not the disabilities. So, for example, instead of being continually frustrated that I cannot see 'the big picture' of a situation, I am now relishing that I can spot small details and how they connect that others may not. 

'Different not less.' Blah blah blah. 

For example, I asked a client if they would like a Hep C test in case their tattoos had been kitchen scratch jobs. The person looked suspicious. 'How do you know I have tattoos?' I glanced at him again. 'I can see them under your shirt,' I said. 

This person was wearing a long-sleeve shirt and I could see just a flash of black line work before their hand started, but it told me enough that they probably have at least one large tattoo, which are expensive and not many people I come across in any walk of life have the money for sleeve tattoos. So. Has it been done by a mate in a dirty kitchen with a machine bought from Amazon and so would they therefore like to be tested for BBV?

I digress. As part of embracing the differences, I have been pushing myself to go beyond my circumvented world (on the proviso I can return as suddenly as I choose). 

I wrote a horror/taboo story for an open submission call that had The Fiancé squirming when he asked to read it and looked at me with disgust. Showing someone my work is a big step because even fifteen minutes away from the laptop and I began to see syntax I could correct, plot that could be better juggled and imagery that could have more bite. Editing never stops. But I did submit it.

I began to get the blank spaces filled in on my arms with small tattoos that are not deep/meaningful/dark/worthy of commentary. They're cute, colourful and silly. And the artist was also crazy about The Offspring, too.

I won a Gift of Confidence boudoir (read: underwear) photography shoot with a local studio. I have never ever neverevernever been the kind of person to strip down to Batman knickers, raise my arms and cock a hip. But after finding solace with a make-up girl who geeked out with me about Xbox One (note: must finish Limbo) and a photographer who had orange hair, I was doing just that.

I'm getting older and I have to start taking more chances before I am unable to. 

Of course, there is inevitable fallout from being bolder. Submitting work risks rejection, getting 'cute' tattoos risks looking stupid and having photos that show my body risks feeling odd when I go to the Viewing Session.

 

But all people experience these risks of chances. 

There was one more significant instance of embracing the difference rather than the disability that may have triggered my weekend of doing Social Things. I was on a break with a co-worker, the same age as my mother, and in a roundabout way I explained I had Asperger's Syndrome. Directly, she asked exactly what that was (staff have recently had autism training). I explained it was a high-functioning form of autism, more hidden, not always as obvious. She asked what the symptoms were. Surprisingly, I talked openly about my sensory issues, my problem with socialising and making new friends, eye contact and how even when happy I may appear to act around 14. I explained meltdowns and what stimming is. She said it sounded very debilitating. I stated that yes, sometimes things get worse and I explained my rituals with leaving the house and multiple checkings, especially when stressed. What my own stimming and meltdowns looked like.

She clapped me on the shoulder when we walked back into work and said I handled it all very well. I made sure I didn't wriggle where she'd touched me and smiled.

So, I have that member of staff to thank for my busy albeit risk-fraught weekend. And it's a fucking shame because it's taken me 8 whole months before I could properly talk to my co-workers and back and forth freely and have them laugh even if I misinterpreted things. It's a fucking shame because I'm moving to a new job in a couple of weeks and no team will be this noisy, foul-mouthed and tender-hearted. They've done more for me than they know. Not just in learning very, very fast about managing substance misuse clients. But with integrating with a completely different career path and types of people. People who use the phrase 'You utter thundercunt' as freely as 'Is it raining outside?'

To my team: 

#Amwriting

Two stories knocked out for recent submissions. Two others remain under consideration. Two others published recently. It would be nice if publishers still took on collections of short stories because I've clocked up over 90,000 words of the bad boys, but until that era comes again I'll print and staple them for my friends, my poor poor friends who were expecting...nicer stories. 

I'm rediscovering a real joy (does that sound right?) for horror-speculative fiction. Weirdness, grossness, what-the-fuck-ness. It's what I'm all about right now.

One story clocked in at just under 10,000 words (perhaps I got lost with the plot) and another just under 2,000 (perhaps I never found the plot). 

We'll see what the editors think. I quite liked them, but would love any feedback and a chance for editing with fresh eyes. We shall see.

Now. Recently I watched Sinister. Since the age of 15, I've struggled to watch horror films. I can read it, write it, discuss it and not be disgusted when a client shows me a video on their iPhone of their leg being operated on. But viewing a horror film, particularly one with a supernatural element, freaks me the fuck out. Give me straight up psychological gore any day.

But I got through Sinister, albeit looking through an inch gap of the blanket draped around my head. I earned my bravery hugs. I thought that at a 15 rating it couldn't scare me that much. I stand (and shiver) corrected.

I bought What Really Frightens You? on a whim at Asda. The blurb sounded good (horror writer throws out a call for readers' fears and then all hell lets loose) and the cover seemed to imply excellent effects.

I switched it off within five minutes. I genuinely thought the beginning was a spoof, like a film within a film. The next scene of exposition was a huge infodump, somewhat akin to a porn film trying to ram (pun intended) a plot line into the next gratuitous hour or so. Even the acting and camera work screamed of an open casting call and being shot in a trailer in a motel-ridden part of Hollywood.

So what really frightens this reader? That I paid five fucking quid for that DVD and now I can't return it because I took the plastic off.

Crossover: Colossal Fun or Rat's Nest?

In my ongoing little quest, whereby I have lost many a dinky shoe in quicksand, to write something that can hold my attention longer than 20,000 words (without resorting to fluffing from there on) I am abandoning all the ridiculous notions I've picked up over the years of what 'good writing' looks like, what 'worthwhile writing' looks like and what 'sellable writing' looks like. I'm going rogue.

Of course, it would be more than delightful to be a published novelist, to have my stories looked upon with an air of validity. But, by thinking so highly of those things I have managed to squidge out the fun of the actual thing: writing. Since studying Creative Writing, all I have done is worry about the final 'thing' when the 'thing' is not even written.

Stupid. Incorrect. Whoops. Where did I ever pick up such bollocks? Answers on postcards to my tutors and careers guidance at school.

Now I'm throwing out all earlier efforts of what I thought fiction to be, where I thought I MUST be literary, where I thought I had to have a dazzling message burning into the retinas of Dear Reader. Instead I am going to have fun. Even if this new project is never published, is never even sent out to publishers, I am going to write it and enjoy it. I will take all the things I love, the strange things I have seen, the noise of places I've been and some seriously messed-up ideas of entertainment and grab it around the throat. What could possibly be more satisfying?

Back to the basics of writing for love, for the ride, for the thrill. Not with those dirty words 'editing', 'plotting', 'motifs' or 'marketability' sending copious amounts of nose blood onto the keyboard. The only dirty things here will be a special counter for the amount of times the word 'fuck' appears in the text.

Locate all previous 'manuscripts' [emits dark chuckle]. Ctrl + A. Del. Ctrl + N.

A new thing, now. Something that takes me back to my first loves: horror and comedy. The things that had my poor parents dragged into school because of Wednesday Adams attitude and chainsaw-heavy stories. Something that indulges my childish humour, my love of the shock and allows obsessional interests research to be fully indulged.

Basically, if Stephen King angrily rammed his car into Jasper Fforde's head and then they both went out and got drunk on Absinthe, ate too much cheese and headed out to save the world with quips and knives from hoards of deluded Londoners. That sort of thing.

Will it sell? Doubtful. Will I enjoy it? Oh, God, yes. This is something I am going to LOVE writing. 

Organ pawning, Rippology, bounty hunters, tattoos, lollipop ladies, kebabs and strangely cold steel cupboards, this is going to be something that will make me laugh. 

And then consult a psychiatrist as to if I should be laughing.

Let's Get Cracking

Recently two short stories have fallen into publication, which has been nice. Three more are now under consideration by magazines and I have another one to write for a particular submission call. 

All are horror-speculative fiction. Interestingly, I was very into horror until I was 15. So interested that my primary school staged an intervention due to the frightening stories I was writing at 8:30am. I blame Christopher Pike and the Point Horror series.

Now I'm turning modern-day mental health and mental health care into something that perhaps others can relate to. Something that makes people nod in recognition, makes them recoil in horror, hopefully makes them laugh and then suddenly cry (or vomit). 

Is this a soapbox novel? Am I screaming for change in the guise of fiction? No. I'm turning my misplaced decade into something that reflects horror, humour, fear, and surrealism. And I am sad that it is grounded in reality.

I've tried hard to explain what it means to be locked up on a psychiatric ward to many people. How the place of safety for the most acutely unwell has an invisible set of rules, consequences and punishments. How, if you are autistic and don't know, this is definitely not the best place unless you are a severe danger to yourself or others. Was I? Well, clearly I was deemed so, but on reflection, the multiple misdiagnoses are what kept me locked up and what kept me rotating back to the wards. A discreet red flag on my file that indicated that if this person is unreasonable, just order a Section. 

I once said it was like prison. I know people who've been in prison. It's not like prison. It is a separate set-up. I said to staff once that I felt I was in prison. They laughed and said, 'Free food, laundry, TV. It's not prison.' I stated that you have that in prison and we all have locks on the doors.

But the distinction is pecking order. In prison there is a strong hierarchy of earning respect. Groups, gangs, organisations. On wards, some people are so snapped off from this reality, that they aren't interested in what is going on. The people you do speak to, you have to watch. Some people lie and manipulate as per their condition, some people are here and are from complete poverty and will steal your cigarettes, money, socks, soap (no lockable areas in the curtained off bedspaces). Some may become temporary friends. But there is no strong hierarchy because some people can barely take care of themselves. On the ward, you need to watch your back for violence or stealing because you can't be sure the staff will be there to watch your back. Friendships on wards, made in extremis, rarely survive on the outside. But in prison, where you aren't encouraged to get too friendly with the guards, here we were all playing the staff. Showing them our good sides so that we could get leave, not be checked when we brought in contraband.

Why did we do this? Probably rebelling. Most of us were on Sections. Staff could take our phones, our belts, our lighters if they deemed it in our interests. If someone died in front of us, we were not counselled or debriefed. If we found someone cutting patterns into their arms and we called for a nurse, we got no support. When we witnessed a late night seizure and the night nurse didn't know who the person was, but you were punished for dragging the nurse by the sleeve to the right bedspace. If there were no beds and we slept on mattresses on consulting room floors, that was thought to be okay. To be discharged after three months with no warning when you crave routine and planning...no, this did not sit well.

We hated the medications that made us wet the bed, lactate from our nipples and make us cry, wondering if we had breast cancer. We hated the predatory agency workers who seemed more interested in sex than our care. We kept trying to escape because that is the natural instinct when locked up. We hated that eight versus one, use of headlocks and locks that we warned would break our arms if we struggled, were considered okay. In the mornings, we would count our bruises and name them after the nurse who gave them to us.

A type of prison, then. Even down to the kangaroo courts of a MHA Tribunal. Reminiscent of Josef K's ordeal.

Now, I sometimes go to wards in a professional capacity to see my clients. I feel my stomach crunch when I go down the corridors, when I see people drifting around dayrooms, bored and angry. 

These are the practical things of being on a ward. The physical stuff. It doesn't even cover the reasons that brought you there or what is inside people's head, struggling to come out. All you see are people walking around naked or putting spoons in their knickers and you do mental gymnastics to work out how this person got to this point. Why they have been left in the same clothes for three months.

So, now I am untangling it, flattening out crumpled mental notes into a story that will not show the healing side of mental health care, but the bare reality of what it is. No bias, truly, just factual research blended into a modern-day horror story. 

Angry? Of course. Hung-up? No. It happened and it's fantastic story fodder.

Robbed of Sleep: Issue 4

Another story has found its way into an anthology. 'Damaged' is in Robbed of Sleep: Issue 4 - An Anthology of the Horribly Strange and Strangely Horrible.

Our editor, Troy Blackford, @TBlackford3, describes the contents as:

Twenty-four fresh tales of the exotic, the fearful, and the downright nonsensical from some of the best and brightest voices emerging in horror and speculative fiction today.

Ain't that nice? It's doing very nicely in the Horror Anthology chart and last I heard was holding steady against contributions from Stephen King and Neil Gaiman.

So it's available now in paperback and on Kindle. Click away...

Shortlisted

I am officially on the shortlist for an anthology of Manchester-linked short stories, being edited by The Manchester Speculative Fiction Group, entitled Revolutions! with my story 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want' - yes, a Smiths lyric. How clever.

I've bounced off a longer short story to a magazine I greatly enjoy, but the chances are never great as I think my style is not their style. As evidence, so far they have rejected me 5 times. But, still, I try. So very few short story magazines out there.

Another entry for the end of this month ready to be emailed off, once some little Sharpie drawings have been scanned, Photoshopped, and put together nicely.

A big short story competition the same time every year rolls around. Bugger that if I'm entering again. It's very...high-brow. In other words, I don't understand any of the damn stories that win. Are they meant to be so obtuse, to have no undercurrent of tension, no discernible resolution? Is that a publishable short story? Am I muppet for not understanding them? In that case, I'm fucked so I'll save myself £17 and not enter.

I am 50+ words into a novel. Again. I write quickly, but this does not make for good writing. It makes for great fun, great brain-scratching, but more time must be loaded into thought, editing, slowly walking around it and studying it from many angles.

This sudden huge word count has been accomplished simply by scrapping the load of utter, utter crap from the beginning of the year (what was I thinking, seriously?), realising what was just padding, and how the same scenes, the same middle of each 'novel' is always the same, whatever plot I employ. This is a story I feel I have to write, and write correctly, so that I can stop circling around it and write something NEW! Imagine: the same damn story in your head for years that you can't purge. Like a reoccurring boil that you finally realise needs a surgical excision. 

It is frightening how very, very wrong you can be about a novel's potential, about its readibility, even its credibility. Rose-tinted glasses perched on a nose shoved against the page. You don't see anything except one damn word at a time.