8-9 July 2013 at St John's College, Durham University
MEMSA is proud to announce its seventh annual postgraduate conference, an event designed to bring together postgraduate and early career researchers in interdisciplinary dialogue. This year's topic is the Mutilated Body, where delegates will explore aspects of destruction, disability, and personhood in the medieval and Early Modern periods, investigating medical humanities and hagiography, as well as interpretations of the conceptualisation of mutilated corporeality, as typified by books, the nation-state and kingship, or Christendom. Keynote speakers will be Professor Faith Wallis (McGill University) and Professor Charlotte Roberts (Durham University). Delegates will also have the option to tour the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition, following a talk by Professor Richard Gameson (Durham University).
Please click here to register online.
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Liturgy in History: International Study Day
Call for Participants
We are delighted to announce a call for participants for Liturgy in History, an international study day for graduate students and early career researchers at Queen Mary’s Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.
Liturgy in History: a full-day workshop exploring liturgy in practice in the medieval and early-modern periods.
When: Tuesday 19th November, 9:30 – 17:00 (lunch provided)
Where: Queen Mary, Mile End Campus, room tbc
One of the most exciting developments in medieval, renaissance and early modern studies over the past decade has been a renewed historical appreciation of liturgical sources. Liturgies, so crucial to understanding the lived experiences of religion, were seedbeds for cultural production across Europe, and were deeply contested in the changing confessional landscapes of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Liturgy in History will provide a unique opportunity to engage with liturgical sources and access the expertise of researchers in the field.
Three speakers – Professor Nils Holger Petersen (University of Copenhagen), Professor Emma Dillon (King’s College London) and Dr. Beth Williamson (University of Bristol) – will guide participants through the structure and formulae of liturgical sources. The musical, visual, architectural and performative aspects of the liturgy will all be carefully considered and approaches to liturgy re-interrogated. The day will culminate in a trip to a nearby renaissance church which will help situate them in their context. We would be delighted to welcome international participants and students from diverse disciplines, to reflect the multidisciplinary focus of the day itself.
Participants will not only have the opportunity to learn more about the current state of liturgical research but will also be given the chance to offer their own insights into this pivotal aspect of medieval and early modern studies.
Please see below for a provisional schedule of the day.
If you would like to join us please email Hetta Howes. Attendance will be free of charge, but places are limited to ensure discussion and participation, so it is essential that you book your place.
Liturgy in History International Study Day, 19 November 2013
9:30–10:00 – Registration, tea and coffee
10:00–11:15 Professor Nils Holger Petersen (University of Copenhagen): An introduction to the structure and formulae of liturgical sources in the Christian West
11:15–11:25 – Coffee break
11:25–12:30 Professor Emma Dillon (King’s College London): Sung components of liturgy – how was liturgy was presented and experienced in medieval and early modern Europe?
12:30–13:10 – Lunch
13:10–14:25 – Dr. Beth Williamson (University of Bristol): Space and Sight in the Liturgy
14:25–14:35 – Coffee break
14:35–15:25 – Prof. Miri Rubin: Round Table discussion
15:25–17.00 – Visit to an historic church to consider liturgy within a church, how religious changes affected ritual, and to experience liturgical music from across the period
We are delighted to announce a call for participants for Liturgy in History, an international study day for graduate students and early career researchers at Queen Mary’s Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.
Liturgy in History: a full-day workshop exploring liturgy in practice in the medieval and early-modern periods.
When: Tuesday 19th November, 9:30 – 17:00 (lunch provided)
Where: Queen Mary, Mile End Campus, room tbc
One of the most exciting developments in medieval, renaissance and early modern studies over the past decade has been a renewed historical appreciation of liturgical sources. Liturgies, so crucial to understanding the lived experiences of religion, were seedbeds for cultural production across Europe, and were deeply contested in the changing confessional landscapes of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Liturgy in History will provide a unique opportunity to engage with liturgical sources and access the expertise of researchers in the field.
Three speakers – Professor Nils Holger Petersen (University of Copenhagen), Professor Emma Dillon (King’s College London) and Dr. Beth Williamson (University of Bristol) – will guide participants through the structure and formulae of liturgical sources. The musical, visual, architectural and performative aspects of the liturgy will all be carefully considered and approaches to liturgy re-interrogated. The day will culminate in a trip to a nearby renaissance church which will help situate them in their context. We would be delighted to welcome international participants and students from diverse disciplines, to reflect the multidisciplinary focus of the day itself.
Participants will not only have the opportunity to learn more about the current state of liturgical research but will also be given the chance to offer their own insights into this pivotal aspect of medieval and early modern studies.
Please see below for a provisional schedule of the day.
If you would like to join us please email Hetta Howes. Attendance will be free of charge, but places are limited to ensure discussion and participation, so it is essential that you book your place.
Liturgy in History International Study Day, 19 November 2013
9:30–10:00 – Registration, tea and coffee
10:00–11:15 Professor Nils Holger Petersen (University of Copenhagen): An introduction to the structure and formulae of liturgical sources in the Christian West
11:15–11:25 – Coffee break
11:25–12:30 Professor Emma Dillon (King’s College London): Sung components of liturgy – how was liturgy was presented and experienced in medieval and early modern Europe?
12:30–13:10 – Lunch
13:10–14:25 – Dr. Beth Williamson (University of Bristol): Space and Sight in the Liturgy
14:25–14:35 – Coffee break
14:35–15:25 – Prof. Miri Rubin: Round Table discussion
15:25–17.00 – Visit to an historic church to consider liturgy within a church, how religious changes affected ritual, and to experience liturgical music from across the period
Impossible Spaces Launch Party
Friday 19 July, 7.00-9.00pm
Free entry
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
3 Cambridge Street
Manchester M1 5BY
United Kingdom
Join us at the launch of Impossible Spaces, a new collection of short stories from Hic Dragones.
Sometimes the rules can change. Sometimes things aren't how they appear. Sometimes you can just slip through the cracks and end up... somewhere else. What else is there? Is there somewhere else, right beside you, if you could only reach out and touch it? Or is it waiting to reach out and touch you?
Don't trust what you see. Don't trust what you hear. Don't trust what you remember. It isn't what you think.
A new collection of twenty-one dark, unsettling and weird short stories that explore the spaces at the edge of possibility. Stories by: Ramsey Campbell, Simon Bestwick, Hannah Kate, Jeanette Greaves, Richard Freeman, Almira Holmes, Arpa Mukhopadhyay, Chris Galvin Nguyen, Christos Callow Jr., Daisy Black, Douglas Thompson, Jessica George, Keris McDonald, Laura Brown, Maree Kimberley, Margret Helgadottir, Nancy Schumann, Rachel Yelding, Steven K. Beattie, Tej Turner and Tracy Fahey.
Free event, with wine reception from 7pm. Readings from Douglas Thompson, Rachel Yelding, Tracy Fahey, Jeanette Greaves, Nancy Schumann, Jessica George and Hannah Kate. Launch party discount on book sales and competition/giveaways.
Free entry
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
3 Cambridge Street
Manchester M1 5BY
United Kingdom
Join us at the launch of Impossible Spaces, a new collection of short stories from Hic Dragones.
Sometimes the rules can change. Sometimes things aren't how they appear. Sometimes you can just slip through the cracks and end up... somewhere else. What else is there? Is there somewhere else, right beside you, if you could only reach out and touch it? Or is it waiting to reach out and touch you?
Don't trust what you see. Don't trust what you hear. Don't trust what you remember. It isn't what you think.
A new collection of twenty-one dark, unsettling and weird short stories that explore the spaces at the edge of possibility. Stories by: Ramsey Campbell, Simon Bestwick, Hannah Kate, Jeanette Greaves, Richard Freeman, Almira Holmes, Arpa Mukhopadhyay, Chris Galvin Nguyen, Christos Callow Jr., Daisy Black, Douglas Thompson, Jessica George, Keris McDonald, Laura Brown, Maree Kimberley, Margret Helgadottir, Nancy Schumann, Rachel Yelding, Steven K. Beattie, Tej Turner and Tracy Fahey.
Free event, with wine reception from 7pm. Readings from Douglas Thompson, Rachel Yelding, Tracy Fahey, Jeanette Greaves, Nancy Schumann, Jessica George and Hannah Kate. Launch party discount on book sales and competition/giveaways.
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
CFP: Stage the Future: The First International Conference on Science Fiction Theatre
Saturday April 26, 2014
School of English, University of Royal Holloway
Keynote Speakers:
Jen Gunnels (New York Review of Science Fiction)
Dr. Nick Lowe (University of Royal Holloway)
Science Fiction Theatre doesn’t officially exist. You won’t find it listed as a sub-genre of either science fiction or theatre and you won’t find it on Wikipedia (though you will find a 1950s TV series with the same title – luckily, there is a theatre entry in the SF Encyclopaedia). Apart from that, there seems to be only one book on the subject so far, called “Science Fiction and the Theatre” and that was more than twenty years ago.
And yet Theatre itself was born out of the Fantastic. It began as a religious ceremony filled with metaphysical concepts and mythological beings, and it went on with fairy tales (especially as children’s theatre) and fantasy (see A Midnight Summer’s Dream, Faust, and many more), never denouncing its mystical roots. Even when it seemed to convert to Realism, it gave birth to the Absurd. Still one cannot help but notice that, though its performance has undergone major changes in the digital era, thematically theatre seems hesitant to take the next big step and follow cinema and literature to the science-fictional future.
This is strange because there have been many science fiction plays, some of them quite important in the history of theatre. Consider Beckett’s Endgame and its post-apocalyptic setting. Consider Karel Čapek who actually coined the term “Robot” in his science-fiction play “R.U.R.”, recently added to Gollancz’s “SF Masterworks” series. Consider even Rocky Horror Show and the Little Shop of Horrors.
But in the end, even if there was none of the above, even if there had been no robots, aliens or demigods in theatre so far, now would be the time for them to dominate the stage. In the age where real robots are sent to Mars, in the age of Star Wars, Avatar and the Matrix (and so many superhero films every year), theatre cannot stay behind.
This conference is the first of its kind and hopes to raise awareness of the need for a new theatre that is already here; a theatre that has its roots in the past and its eyes on the future.
This event aims to bring together scholars, critics, writers and performers for the first international academic conference on Science Fiction Theatre. Papers are welcome on any topic related to speculative theatre. Topics might include, but are not limited to:
-Depictions of future times
-Utopia and Dystopia
-Proto-science-fiction in theatre
-Ancient Speculative Theatre (Prophets, Monsters, Gods)
-Theatrical adaptations of science fiction novels and films
-Science and Theatre
-Science and the Human
-Performing the Non-Human and the Post-Human
-Temporality, SF and Theatre
-Dramaturgical Analysis of the Unknown
-Space Opera and Science Fiction Opera
-Theatre and the Weird
-Other fantastical theatres (Horror, Fantasy, Supernatural)
The conference welcomes proposals for individual papers and panels from any discipline and theoretical perspective. Please send a title and a 300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper along with your name, affiliation and 100 word professional biography to the conference convenors by 28 February 2014.
The conference is organised by Christos Callow, PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Lincoln and Susan Gray, PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Royal Holloway.
School of English, University of Royal Holloway
Keynote Speakers:
Jen Gunnels (New York Review of Science Fiction)
Dr. Nick Lowe (University of Royal Holloway)
Science Fiction Theatre doesn’t officially exist. You won’t find it listed as a sub-genre of either science fiction or theatre and you won’t find it on Wikipedia (though you will find a 1950s TV series with the same title – luckily, there is a theatre entry in the SF Encyclopaedia). Apart from that, there seems to be only one book on the subject so far, called “Science Fiction and the Theatre” and that was more than twenty years ago.
And yet Theatre itself was born out of the Fantastic. It began as a religious ceremony filled with metaphysical concepts and mythological beings, and it went on with fairy tales (especially as children’s theatre) and fantasy (see A Midnight Summer’s Dream, Faust, and many more), never denouncing its mystical roots. Even when it seemed to convert to Realism, it gave birth to the Absurd. Still one cannot help but notice that, though its performance has undergone major changes in the digital era, thematically theatre seems hesitant to take the next big step and follow cinema and literature to the science-fictional future.
This is strange because there have been many science fiction plays, some of them quite important in the history of theatre. Consider Beckett’s Endgame and its post-apocalyptic setting. Consider Karel Čapek who actually coined the term “Robot” in his science-fiction play “R.U.R.”, recently added to Gollancz’s “SF Masterworks” series. Consider even Rocky Horror Show and the Little Shop of Horrors.
But in the end, even if there was none of the above, even if there had been no robots, aliens or demigods in theatre so far, now would be the time for them to dominate the stage. In the age where real robots are sent to Mars, in the age of Star Wars, Avatar and the Matrix (and so many superhero films every year), theatre cannot stay behind.
This conference is the first of its kind and hopes to raise awareness of the need for a new theatre that is already here; a theatre that has its roots in the past and its eyes on the future.
This event aims to bring together scholars, critics, writers and performers for the first international academic conference on Science Fiction Theatre. Papers are welcome on any topic related to speculative theatre. Topics might include, but are not limited to:
-Depictions of future times
-Utopia and Dystopia
-Proto-science-fiction in theatre
-Ancient Speculative Theatre (Prophets, Monsters, Gods)
-Theatrical adaptations of science fiction novels and films
-Science and Theatre
-Science and the Human
-Performing the Non-Human and the Post-Human
-Temporality, SF and Theatre
-Dramaturgical Analysis of the Unknown
-Space Opera and Science Fiction Opera
-Theatre and the Weird
-Other fantastical theatres (Horror, Fantasy, Supernatural)
The conference welcomes proposals for individual papers and panels from any discipline and theoretical perspective. Please send a title and a 300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper along with your name, affiliation and 100 word professional biography to the conference convenors by 28 February 2014.
The conference is organised by Christos Callow, PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Lincoln and Susan Gray, PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Royal Holloway.
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
CFP: Caietele Echinox/Echinox Journal - Fantasy and Science Fiction
Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Caietele Echinox
Volume 26 (2014)
Caietele Echinox/Echinox Journal is a biannual academic journal in comparative literature, dedicated to the study of the social, historical, cultural, religious, literary and arts imaginaries. It is edited by Phantasma, the Center for Imagination Studies of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. It is accredited by ERIH (European Research Index for the Humanities – NAT) and CNCS (The Romanian Nacional Council for Scientific Research) and indexed in EBSCO Publishing, CEEOL (Central and Eastern European Online Library), MLA International Bibliography and FABULA.
The possibility to build other worlds, different from those we live in, is emphasised in two important streams of modern literature: fantasy and science-fiction. Fantasy literature became famous in the second half of the 20th century. Developing the theoretical hallmark set by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” (1947), researchers like C. N. Manlove, W. R. Irwin, Eric S. Rabkin, Roger C. Schlobin, Brian Attebery, Rosemary Jackson, Kathryn Hume, and more recently Lucie Armitt and Farah Mendlesohn tried to define this type of literature, by establishing its historical and cultural roots, and disclosing fictional/ rhetorical/ imaginary mechanisms that enable the construction of “secondary worlds” (in Tolkien’s own words). There are still questions that need answers and any theoretical contribution and attempt to clarify concepts in this field are welcome. How do space and time function in fantasy fiction? Which methods and concepts work best to interpret this type of fiction? How far can we go to establish its roots? How did the narrative structure of fictions about possible and impossible worlds change throughout time? What kind of relationship can emerge between fantasy literature, the digital environment that creates alternative worlds, and the filmic portrayal of well-known stories such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Neverending Story, Harry Potter, and so on? What relevance does fantasy literature have for the modern and postmodern individual?
In what concerns the science-fiction literature, the call envisages papers focusing both on different subgenres of SF and on the borderline works between SF and other genres. The first category includes articles that discuss and analyse works by the so called ‘Hard SF’ authors (such as, but not limited to, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, David Brin, Gregory Benford, Hal Clement or Stephen Baxter), ‘soft’ and social SF that revolve around themes connected to economics, social sciences, political science, psychology and anthropology (Arthur C. Clarke, The Strugatsky Brothers, Stanislaw Lem, Janusz Zajdel), utopian / dystopian fiction (developed by or related to George Orwell, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Doris Lessing, Aldous Huxley or Karel Capek), Cyberpunk, Biopunk, Steampunk and Dieselpunk fiction (William Gibson, Steve Stiles, Bruce Sterling, Neil Stephenson, Pat Cadigan, and others), feminist SF (Ursula Le Guin or Margaret Atwood), time travel narratives similar to those written by H.G Wells, military SF (John Ringo, David Drake, David Weber or S.M Stirling), uchronias and alternate history novels (Ward Moore, Philip K. Dick or Murray Leinster), superhuman or apocalyptic Science-Fiction (Olaf Stapledon, A.E van Vogt, George R. Steward or Ridley Walker) or Space Opera (L. Ron Hubbard, Edward E. Smith or Joss Wheedon). Bordeline SF includes horror stories by authors that have incorporated in their narratives science fictional elements (such as Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe), works that combine SF with fantasy elements (Ann McAffrey), or with mystery (Kurt Vonnegut and others).
Deadline: January 1, 2014
Please follow Echinox Style Sheet
Send your papers to Corin Braga
Caietele Echinox
Volume 26 (2014)
Caietele Echinox/Echinox Journal is a biannual academic journal in comparative literature, dedicated to the study of the social, historical, cultural, religious, literary and arts imaginaries. It is edited by Phantasma, the Center for Imagination Studies of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. It is accredited by ERIH (European Research Index for the Humanities – NAT) and CNCS (The Romanian Nacional Council for Scientific Research) and indexed in EBSCO Publishing, CEEOL (Central and Eastern European Online Library), MLA International Bibliography and FABULA.
The possibility to build other worlds, different from those we live in, is emphasised in two important streams of modern literature: fantasy and science-fiction. Fantasy literature became famous in the second half of the 20th century. Developing the theoretical hallmark set by J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay “On Fairy-Stories” (1947), researchers like C. N. Manlove, W. R. Irwin, Eric S. Rabkin, Roger C. Schlobin, Brian Attebery, Rosemary Jackson, Kathryn Hume, and more recently Lucie Armitt and Farah Mendlesohn tried to define this type of literature, by establishing its historical and cultural roots, and disclosing fictional/ rhetorical/ imaginary mechanisms that enable the construction of “secondary worlds” (in Tolkien’s own words). There are still questions that need answers and any theoretical contribution and attempt to clarify concepts in this field are welcome. How do space and time function in fantasy fiction? Which methods and concepts work best to interpret this type of fiction? How far can we go to establish its roots? How did the narrative structure of fictions about possible and impossible worlds change throughout time? What kind of relationship can emerge between fantasy literature, the digital environment that creates alternative worlds, and the filmic portrayal of well-known stories such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Neverending Story, Harry Potter, and so on? What relevance does fantasy literature have for the modern and postmodern individual?
In what concerns the science-fiction literature, the call envisages papers focusing both on different subgenres of SF and on the borderline works between SF and other genres. The first category includes articles that discuss and analyse works by the so called ‘Hard SF’ authors (such as, but not limited to, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, David Brin, Gregory Benford, Hal Clement or Stephen Baxter), ‘soft’ and social SF that revolve around themes connected to economics, social sciences, political science, psychology and anthropology (Arthur C. Clarke, The Strugatsky Brothers, Stanislaw Lem, Janusz Zajdel), utopian / dystopian fiction (developed by or related to George Orwell, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Doris Lessing, Aldous Huxley or Karel Capek), Cyberpunk, Biopunk, Steampunk and Dieselpunk fiction (William Gibson, Steve Stiles, Bruce Sterling, Neil Stephenson, Pat Cadigan, and others), feminist SF (Ursula Le Guin or Margaret Atwood), time travel narratives similar to those written by H.G Wells, military SF (John Ringo, David Drake, David Weber or S.M Stirling), uchronias and alternate history novels (Ward Moore, Philip K. Dick or Murray Leinster), superhuman or apocalyptic Science-Fiction (Olaf Stapledon, A.E van Vogt, George R. Steward or Ridley Walker) or Space Opera (L. Ron Hubbard, Edward E. Smith or Joss Wheedon). Bordeline SF includes horror stories by authors that have incorporated in their narratives science fictional elements (such as Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe), works that combine SF with fantasy elements (Ann McAffrey), or with mystery (Kurt Vonnegut and others).
Deadline: January 1, 2014
Please follow Echinox Style Sheet
Send your papers to Corin Braga
Friday, 24 May 2013
Win SIGNED copies of three amazing novels
Following on from their Twisted Tales of Cannibalism event in April, Hic Dragones has SIGNED copies of three fantastic novels to give away. Enter via Rafflecopter at the end of this post (international entry welcome).
Blonde on a Stick, by Conrad Williams
An extraordinary killer, the Four-Year-Old, has arrived in London, and is hell-bent on destruction. No sooner has PI Joel Sorrell been approached by the mysterious Kara Geenan, who is desperate to find her missing brother, than an attempt is made on his life. When Kara vanishes too, it becomes clear that this is no routine job. Something is casting a long, long shadow over the case, and Joel must travel north, to a past he was desperate to forget, in order to find out the truth. As those close to Joel are sucked into his nightmare, he knows he must track down the killer fast if he is to halt a grisly master plan - even if it means sacrificing his own life.
The Cannibal Spirit, by Harry Whitehead
George Hunt has a white father and a native mother. A shaman and chieftain among his people, the Kwagiulth, helplessly he has watched them die-from disease, warfare, alcohol, despair-as their world is besieged by the arrival of the twentieth century and the encroachments of the young country called Canada. Yet he is also an assistant to the famed anthropologist Franz Boas, and a collector of native artefacts for the white man's museums. He inhabits both worlds, looking in and looking out, at peace in neither. A bear of a man, he is imposing in body and intellect, yet prone to fits of wild rage. When his son dies of tuberculosis, and he insists on performing the funeral rites of his mother's people, George provokes the fury of the missionaries and the Indian Agents, and sets in motion a chain of events that forces him to defend what is most important to him; not only with blade and rifle in the remote fastness of the northern British Colombia coast, but also with his wits and precarious dignity in a Vancouver courtroom. Masterful, unforgettable, and utterly gripping, The Cannibal Spirit broods with nostalgia for a passing world and pounds with relentless tension. Based on the life of the real historical figure George Hunt, this astonishing evocation of the fog-wrapped forests of the northwest coast, and the heedless bustle of the arrival of modernity in the midst of an older, beleaguered way of life, tells the story of the grappling of two civilizations in the life of one man.
Habit, by Stephen McGeagh
Manchester, the present. Michael divides his time between the job centre and the pub. A chance meeting with Lee, an introduction to her ‘Uncle’ Ian, and a heavy night on the lash lead to a job working the door at a Northern Quarter massage parlour. After witnessing the violent death of one of the ‘punts’, Michael experiences blood-drenched flashbacks and feels himself being sucked into a twilight world that he doesn’t understand but that is irresistibly attractive. When he eventually finds out what goes on in the room below 7th Heaven, Michael’s life will never be the same again. Think Bret Easton Ellis. On a writing break in the north of England. And all he packed was Fight Club and some early Stephen King novels. Stephen McGeagh’s powerful debut will stay with you for a long time.
Enter the giveaway now...
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Blonde on a Stick, by Conrad Williams
An extraordinary killer, the Four-Year-Old, has arrived in London, and is hell-bent on destruction. No sooner has PI Joel Sorrell been approached by the mysterious Kara Geenan, who is desperate to find her missing brother, than an attempt is made on his life. When Kara vanishes too, it becomes clear that this is no routine job. Something is casting a long, long shadow over the case, and Joel must travel north, to a past he was desperate to forget, in order to find out the truth. As those close to Joel are sucked into his nightmare, he knows he must track down the killer fast if he is to halt a grisly master plan - even if it means sacrificing his own life.
The Cannibal Spirit, by Harry Whitehead
George Hunt has a white father and a native mother. A shaman and chieftain among his people, the Kwagiulth, helplessly he has watched them die-from disease, warfare, alcohol, despair-as their world is besieged by the arrival of the twentieth century and the encroachments of the young country called Canada. Yet he is also an assistant to the famed anthropologist Franz Boas, and a collector of native artefacts for the white man's museums. He inhabits both worlds, looking in and looking out, at peace in neither. A bear of a man, he is imposing in body and intellect, yet prone to fits of wild rage. When his son dies of tuberculosis, and he insists on performing the funeral rites of his mother's people, George provokes the fury of the missionaries and the Indian Agents, and sets in motion a chain of events that forces him to defend what is most important to him; not only with blade and rifle in the remote fastness of the northern British Colombia coast, but also with his wits and precarious dignity in a Vancouver courtroom. Masterful, unforgettable, and utterly gripping, The Cannibal Spirit broods with nostalgia for a passing world and pounds with relentless tension. Based on the life of the real historical figure George Hunt, this astonishing evocation of the fog-wrapped forests of the northwest coast, and the heedless bustle of the arrival of modernity in the midst of an older, beleaguered way of life, tells the story of the grappling of two civilizations in the life of one man.
Habit, by Stephen McGeagh
Manchester, the present. Michael divides his time between the job centre and the pub. A chance meeting with Lee, an introduction to her ‘Uncle’ Ian, and a heavy night on the lash lead to a job working the door at a Northern Quarter massage parlour. After witnessing the violent death of one of the ‘punts’, Michael experiences blood-drenched flashbacks and feels himself being sucked into a twilight world that he doesn’t understand but that is irresistibly attractive. When he eventually finds out what goes on in the room below 7th Heaven, Michael’s life will never be the same again. Think Bret Easton Ellis. On a writing break in the north of England. And all he packed was Fight Club and some early Stephen King novels. Stephen McGeagh’s powerful debut will stay with you for a long time.
Enter the giveaway now...
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Interview with Rosie Garland
Today's post is an interview with novelist, poet, singer and performer, Rosie Garland. Rosie has enjoyed an eclectic career, ranging from singing in post-punk gothic band The March Violets, through touring with the Subversive Stitch exhibition in the 90s to her alter-ego Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen, cabaret chanteuse and mistress of ceremonies. She has published five solo collections of poetry and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have appeared in a number of anthologies and collections. She is winner of the DaDa Award for Performance Artist of the Year and a Poetry Award from the People's Café, New York. She also won the Mslexia Novel competition in 2012 and her debut novel The Palace of Curiosities was released in March 2013 by HarperCollins.
I first met Rosie when we were both involved with Commonword, in Manchester, and our work was included in the Transparency poetry anthology. We also worked together on the Hic Dragones Wolf-Girls anthology, which included Rosie's short story 'Cut and Paste'. Recently, Rosie wrote a guest post for a short blog series on women and body hair that I hosted on this site.
Today though, I want to find out more about Rosie's award-winning debut novel, The Palace of Curiosities.
She-Wolf: Hi Rosie - welcome back to the She-Wolf blog. Shall we start with a brief introduction? Why don't you tell us a bit about yourself?
Rosie Garland: I'll try to keep this brief! As it says on my book blurb, I have always been a cuckoo in the nest. I've been writing and performing for as long as I can remember – I've recently found a stash of miniature books I wrote for my dolls, and an early performance memory is playing an Elf Queen in school at the age of five. I sing as well – whether that's in post-punk gothic band The March Violets or alternative cabaret character Rosie Lugosi. I've published five solo collections of poetry and my award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized.
SW: Life sounds pretty exciting, then!
RG: Life has been particularly exciting since I won the inaugural Mslexia Novel Competition in 2012. As a result, my debut novel The Palace of Curiosities was published in March 2013 by HarperCollins. And in 2010 I was given the all-clear from throat cancer. So all in all I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
SW: Let's talk about The Palace of Curiosities, what's the book about?
RG: The Palace of Curiosities is set in early Victorian London. It is about what it’s like to live on the boundaries of what is perceived as human, the struggle to remember and hang onto who and what we are, and just how important that is. It is told through the eyes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and is interwoven with the story of Abel, who is also an outsider – just not in such an obvious way. But both of them are freaks of nature, and both are searching for escape. The novel explores life on the fringes of society, what it means to be different, and traces their struggle for self-discovery on the boundaries of what is perceived as human.
SW: Where did the idea come from? Were there any particular sources of inspiration?
RG: I was inspired by the life and struggles of Julia Pastrana, a nineteenth century Mexican woman completely covered with thick hair. However, The Palace of Curiosities isn't a re-telling of her story. I wanted to create new characters, and the result was Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the mysterious Flayed Man. It's set in an early Victorian sideshow, but unlike a number of other circus novels (like Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus) I wanted the 'freaks' to speak for themselves. They tell their own story – it felt very important that they spoke in first person rather than having someone else speak for them.
SW: Did you do much historical research?
RG: The question of research is one that could be discussed for hours, and each writer would have a different approach! It's true that I am fascinated by history, and read a lot of non-fiction for pleasure. However, I am very careful not to fall into the trap of letting research dominate. That way I'd not get any writing done...
SW: Between The Palace of Curiosities, your story in Wolf-Girls and your guest post on this blog, I'm noticing a bit of a theme... what is it that fascinates you about hairy girls?
RG: Women's relationship with their hair is particularly fraught – we mustn't have too much, and we sure as hell shouldn't have too little. I discovered this when I was diagnosed with throat cancer whilst working on the first draft of the novel. I lost all of my hair, and lived the reality of female baldness, which I discovered was just as laden with judgments about what is acceptable and what is 'freakish'.
SW: Did that have an impact on the creation of your protagonist, Eve?
RG: This informed and influenced the creation of Eve. I took the concept of female hairiness to its logical extreme. Eve has hypertrichosis, a condition where the entire body is covered in a thick mat of hair. Her 'difference' is overwhelmingly visible, yet she is determined to get by on her own terms. She does not shave herself to pass for human. She fends off exploitation, discovers fulfilment, self-expression and self-reliance. I've been told that Eve's hairiness can be seen as an interesting analogy for being queer in a heteronormative world. I'm happy if she makes one person think about what it means to be female and have body hair.
SW: The Palace of Curiosities is certainly making its mark - top of the Waterstone's hardback fiction chart and nominated for the 2013 Desmond Elliott prize in its first couple of months - but could you tell me a bit about the book's 'birth'? How did it get from idea to the top of Waterstone’s charts? Was it an easy journey?
RG: How long have you got? I'll give the short version of what has been a very long journey. I'd been with an agency for twelve years, and had given them four novels. But however hard I tried (and did I try), however hard I worked on editorial suggestions, nothing seemed good enough. Twelve years of can-you-make-it-more? can-you-make-it-less? No one could accuse me of not trying.
SW: That sounds pretty dispiriting - you must've felt like giving up at times.
RG: I had pretty much given up on the idea of writing fiction. My agent had stopped replying to my emails and my confidence was shot. I realized that if I was going to get anywhere it would be under my own steam. So I entered the Mslexia Novel Competition. And won it. That was the turning point. It boosted my confidence as a writer more than I can describe. It's taken twelve years to get to this point – a bumpy and at times demoralizing ride, with a lot of rejections.
SW: But an amazing result, after all that?
RG: This news is, quite simply, breathtaking. I'm still pinching myself to check it isn't a dream.
SW: You're known for many things (music, poetry, performance, short stories, essays... the list really does go on...), what made you decide to make the move to novelist?
RG: It wasn't something I consciously sat down and decided to do. When I'm asked 'how long have you been writing?' the answer is 'always'. I wrote my first novel when I was aged nine. It was a thrilling adventure involving super-heroines battling sharks and other dangers. With pictures.
SW: Do you find novel-writing different to other forms of writing?
RG: It's very different to writing poetry. An easy answer would be to compare a novel to a marathon and a poem to a 100 metre sprint – but that's not quite it. Sure, a novel takes far longer to write (unless you are a very slow poem writer indeed). The only way I can describe it is that it feels like I use different parts of my brain when writing poetry and fiction.
SW: I'm interested to know what sort of things you like to read. You mentioned reading non-fiction for pleasure, but do you have any favourite fiction writers?
RG: I'm an avid reader of non-fiction, especially the history of medicine. But I have very eclectic tastes – maybe it's easiest if I say what is currently on my bedside table: Tove Jansson's Tales from Moominvalley, a History of Ossuaries, Sarah Hymas's poetry collection Host, Ivor Brown's Chosen Words, Aesop’s Fables, and The Friday Gospels by Jenn Ashworth.
SW: Quite the eclectic collection! So... what's next from Rosie Garland? Can we look forward to another novel?
RG: Most definitely! I don't just have any old novel deal with HarperCollins, it's a two-book deal. I am currently very busy on the second. Don't want to say too much about its themes yet, but it will involve people who don't fit. As I've said elsewhere, I'm interested in characters who won't (or can't) squeeze into the one-size-fits-all templates they have been provided, and the friction that occurs when they try.
SW: Cool - I'll look forward to finding out more in due course. Thanks for talking to me today, Rosie. Before you go, I'd be mad not to ask one final question (even if it is a bit of cliché... do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?
RG: Don’t give up. If you are determined to be a novelist – do it. Practise your craft. Find ways to nourish and support yourself. Don’t just accept feedback - seek it out and use it. In addition – when faced with a decision, I have this question I ask myself. How long will I be dead? It helps get me off my arse. Cancer sure put things in startlingly clear perspective. There's nothing like getting a glimpse of your sell-by date to provide a boot up the backside. Don't put it off. Write that poem, that novel, that opera, that play. Do it now.
The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland is published by HarperCollins and available now from all good bookshops.
I first met Rosie when we were both involved with Commonword, in Manchester, and our work was included in the Transparency poetry anthology. We also worked together on the Hic Dragones Wolf-Girls anthology, which included Rosie's short story 'Cut and Paste'. Recently, Rosie wrote a guest post for a short blog series on women and body hair that I hosted on this site.
Today though, I want to find out more about Rosie's award-winning debut novel, The Palace of Curiosities.
Rosie Garland: I'll try to keep this brief! As it says on my book blurb, I have always been a cuckoo in the nest. I've been writing and performing for as long as I can remember – I've recently found a stash of miniature books I wrote for my dolls, and an early performance memory is playing an Elf Queen in school at the age of five. I sing as well – whether that's in post-punk gothic band The March Violets or alternative cabaret character Rosie Lugosi. I've published five solo collections of poetry and my award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized.
SW: Life sounds pretty exciting, then!
RG: Life has been particularly exciting since I won the inaugural Mslexia Novel Competition in 2012. As a result, my debut novel The Palace of Curiosities was published in March 2013 by HarperCollins. And in 2010 I was given the all-clear from throat cancer. So all in all I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
SW: Let's talk about The Palace of Curiosities, what's the book about?
RG: The Palace of Curiosities is set in early Victorian London. It is about what it’s like to live on the boundaries of what is perceived as human, the struggle to remember and hang onto who and what we are, and just how important that is. It is told through the eyes of Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and is interwoven with the story of Abel, who is also an outsider – just not in such an obvious way. But both of them are freaks of nature, and both are searching for escape. The novel explores life on the fringes of society, what it means to be different, and traces their struggle for self-discovery on the boundaries of what is perceived as human.
SW: Where did the idea come from? Were there any particular sources of inspiration?
RG: I was inspired by the life and struggles of Julia Pastrana, a nineteenth century Mexican woman completely covered with thick hair. However, The Palace of Curiosities isn't a re-telling of her story. I wanted to create new characters, and the result was Eve, the Lion-Faced Girl and Abel, the mysterious Flayed Man. It's set in an early Victorian sideshow, but unlike a number of other circus novels (like Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus) I wanted the 'freaks' to speak for themselves. They tell their own story – it felt very important that they spoke in first person rather than having someone else speak for them.
SW: Did you do much historical research?
RG: The question of research is one that could be discussed for hours, and each writer would have a different approach! It's true that I am fascinated by history, and read a lot of non-fiction for pleasure. However, I am very careful not to fall into the trap of letting research dominate. That way I'd not get any writing done...
SW: Between The Palace of Curiosities, your story in Wolf-Girls and your guest post on this blog, I'm noticing a bit of a theme... what is it that fascinates you about hairy girls?
RG: Women's relationship with their hair is particularly fraught – we mustn't have too much, and we sure as hell shouldn't have too little. I discovered this when I was diagnosed with throat cancer whilst working on the first draft of the novel. I lost all of my hair, and lived the reality of female baldness, which I discovered was just as laden with judgments about what is acceptable and what is 'freakish'.
SW: Did that have an impact on the creation of your protagonist, Eve?
RG: This informed and influenced the creation of Eve. I took the concept of female hairiness to its logical extreme. Eve has hypertrichosis, a condition where the entire body is covered in a thick mat of hair. Her 'difference' is overwhelmingly visible, yet she is determined to get by on her own terms. She does not shave herself to pass for human. She fends off exploitation, discovers fulfilment, self-expression and self-reliance. I've been told that Eve's hairiness can be seen as an interesting analogy for being queer in a heteronormative world. I'm happy if she makes one person think about what it means to be female and have body hair.
SW: The Palace of Curiosities is certainly making its mark - top of the Waterstone's hardback fiction chart and nominated for the 2013 Desmond Elliott prize in its first couple of months - but could you tell me a bit about the book's 'birth'? How did it get from idea to the top of Waterstone’s charts? Was it an easy journey?
RG: How long have you got? I'll give the short version of what has been a very long journey. I'd been with an agency for twelve years, and had given them four novels. But however hard I tried (and did I try), however hard I worked on editorial suggestions, nothing seemed good enough. Twelve years of can-you-make-it-more? can-you-make-it-less? No one could accuse me of not trying.
SW: That sounds pretty dispiriting - you must've felt like giving up at times.
RG: I had pretty much given up on the idea of writing fiction. My agent had stopped replying to my emails and my confidence was shot. I realized that if I was going to get anywhere it would be under my own steam. So I entered the Mslexia Novel Competition. And won it. That was the turning point. It boosted my confidence as a writer more than I can describe. It's taken twelve years to get to this point – a bumpy and at times demoralizing ride, with a lot of rejections.
SW: But an amazing result, after all that?
RG: This news is, quite simply, breathtaking. I'm still pinching myself to check it isn't a dream.
SW: You're known for many things (music, poetry, performance, short stories, essays... the list really does go on...), what made you decide to make the move to novelist?
RG: It wasn't something I consciously sat down and decided to do. When I'm asked 'how long have you been writing?' the answer is 'always'. I wrote my first novel when I was aged nine. It was a thrilling adventure involving super-heroines battling sharks and other dangers. With pictures.
SW: Do you find novel-writing different to other forms of writing?
RG: It's very different to writing poetry. An easy answer would be to compare a novel to a marathon and a poem to a 100 metre sprint – but that's not quite it. Sure, a novel takes far longer to write (unless you are a very slow poem writer indeed). The only way I can describe it is that it feels like I use different parts of my brain when writing poetry and fiction.
SW: I'm interested to know what sort of things you like to read. You mentioned reading non-fiction for pleasure, but do you have any favourite fiction writers?
RG: I'm an avid reader of non-fiction, especially the history of medicine. But I have very eclectic tastes – maybe it's easiest if I say what is currently on my bedside table: Tove Jansson's Tales from Moominvalley, a History of Ossuaries, Sarah Hymas's poetry collection Host, Ivor Brown's Chosen Words, Aesop’s Fables, and The Friday Gospels by Jenn Ashworth.
SW: Quite the eclectic collection! So... what's next from Rosie Garland? Can we look forward to another novel?
RG: Most definitely! I don't just have any old novel deal with HarperCollins, it's a two-book deal. I am currently very busy on the second. Don't want to say too much about its themes yet, but it will involve people who don't fit. As I've said elsewhere, I'm interested in characters who won't (or can't) squeeze into the one-size-fits-all templates they have been provided, and the friction that occurs when they try.
SW: Cool - I'll look forward to finding out more in due course. Thanks for talking to me today, Rosie. Before you go, I'd be mad not to ask one final question (even if it is a bit of cliché... do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?
RG: Don’t give up. If you are determined to be a novelist – do it. Practise your craft. Find ways to nourish and support yourself. Don’t just accept feedback - seek it out and use it. In addition – when faced with a decision, I have this question I ask myself. How long will I be dead? It helps get me off my arse. Cancer sure put things in startlingly clear perspective. There's nothing like getting a glimpse of your sell-by date to provide a boot up the backside. Don't put it off. Write that poem, that novel, that opera, that play. Do it now.
The Palace of Curiosities by Rosie Garland is published by HarperCollins and available now from all good bookshops.
Monday, 6 May 2013
Contributors Wanted for Two Academic Collections
A couple of things to mention: these are academic collections, and I am looking to hear from people whose research interests mesh with the collections' focus. The collections are at the proposal stage, and will be pitched to an established UK academic publisher once the contents are finalized (details to follow). The majority of the collections' contents are already finalized, so it may be that I already have a chapter on your proposed subject. If you have any questions, it's best just to get in touch with me.
Afterlife of Alice edited collection
A collection of essays exploring interpretations and adaptations of Lewis Carroll's Alice novels. This collection is inspired by the Hic Dragones Afterlife of Alice conference, which ran in December 2011.
What I'm looking for: essays on adaptations, interpretations or the use of elements from Carroll's novels in 'popular' or 'high' culture. For instance, John Logan's Peter and Alice, psychedelic Alices, Alice merchandise and collectibles, Fifty Shades of Alice in Wonderland, fan fic, non-Anglophone Alices (except Japanese).
What I'm not looking for: essays on Carroll's novels or translations, essays on adaptation theory (though more than happy for essays to use this as a framework), essays on Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell, essays on Gothic subcultures and fashions, essays on Disney.
Timescale: I'll need an abstract of 300-500 words ASAP, and then deadline for full chapter (7000 words) can be negotiated.
Afterlife of Dorothy edited collection
A collection of essays exploring interpretations and adaptations of L. Frank Baum's Oz novels. This collection is inspired by the Hic Dragones Afterlife of Dorothy conference, which ran in February 2013.
What I'm looking for: essays on adaptations, interpretations, revisions or the use of elements from Baum's novels in 'popular' or 'high' culture. For instance, The Wiz (I would really like a chapter on this!) , fan fic, graphic novels, non-Anglophone Dorothys.
What I'm not looking for: essays on Baum's novels, essays on the MGM film adaptation, essays on Gregory Maguire's Wicked novels and the musical adaptation, essays on Return to Oz or Oz: The Great and Powerful.
Timescale: I'll need an abstract of 300-500 words ASAP, and then deadline for full chapter (7000 words) can be negotiated.
If you're interested in contributing to either collection, please email me (Hannah Priest) in the first instance. Just introduce yourself, give me an idea of your research background/interests and let me know what your proposed chapter would focus on. We can take it from there.
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Hic Dragones presents... A Night of Strange and Dark Fictions
as part of Prestwich Book Festival
Monday 27th May, 7.30pm
Prestwich British Legion (near Heaton Park tram station)
225 Bury Old Road
Prestwich M25 1JE
Tickets £6 (+ booking fee) in advance from the festival’s Eventbrite shop
Come and listen to some of the finest and strangest authors writing in the UK today. What do they have in common? They’ve all been published – at one stage or another – by North Manchester’s strangest publishing house, Hic Dragones. And they’re together in Prestwich for one night only.
Rosie Garland:
Manchester-based Rosie Garland has published five solo collections of poetry and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized. She is an eclectic writer and performer, ranging from singing in Goth band The March Violets to her well-loved stage persona Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen. The Palace of Curiosities (HarperCollins) is her debut novel.
.jpg)
Toby Stone:
Toby Stone is a Whitefield-based novelist who also teaches in North Manchester. Toby went to the same school as Batman (Christian Bale) and Benny Hill. As an adult, Toby has been a toy-seller, an Avon lady, double-glazing Salesman of the Week, a mortgage broker, a suspicious barman, a school governor and a bingo caller. Aimee and the Bear (Hic Dragones) is his first novel.
Also featuring readings from Hic Dragones anthology writers:
Simon Bestwick: acclaimed author of ‘modern masterpiece of horror’ The Faceless (Solaris)
Richard Freeman: writer and cryptozoologist
Jeanette Greaves: contributor to Wolf-Girls and Impossible Spaces
Nancy Schumann: author of Take a Bite, a history of female vampires in folklore and literature
Beth Daley: graduate of the Creative Writing PhD programme at the University of Manchester
Daisy Black: writer, medievalist and heavy metal morris dancer
Your host for the evening will be Hannah Kate, ringmaster at the strange little circus that is Hic Dragones.
Plus… prizes to be won, a bookstall and a stall from Rock and Goth Plus
powered by
Monday 27th May, 7.30pmPrestwich British Legion (near Heaton Park tram station)
225 Bury Old Road
Prestwich M25 1JE
Tickets £6 (+ booking fee) in advance from the festival’s Eventbrite shop
Come and listen to some of the finest and strangest authors writing in the UK today. What do they have in common? They’ve all been published – at one stage or another – by North Manchester’s strangest publishing house, Hic Dragones. And they’re together in Prestwich for one night only.
Manchester-based Rosie Garland has published five solo collections of poetry and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized. She is an eclectic writer and performer, ranging from singing in Goth band The March Violets to her well-loved stage persona Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen. The Palace of Curiosities (HarperCollins) is her debut novel.
.jpg)
Toby Stone is a Whitefield-based novelist who also teaches in North Manchester. Toby went to the same school as Batman (Christian Bale) and Benny Hill. As an adult, Toby has been a toy-seller, an Avon lady, double-glazing Salesman of the Week, a mortgage broker, a suspicious barman, a school governor and a bingo caller. Aimee and the Bear (Hic Dragones) is his first novel.
Also featuring readings from Hic Dragones anthology writers:
Simon Bestwick: acclaimed author of ‘modern masterpiece of horror’ The Faceless (Solaris)
Richard Freeman: writer and cryptozoologist
Jeanette Greaves: contributor to Wolf-Girls and Impossible Spaces
Nancy Schumann: author of Take a Bite, a history of female vampires in folklore and literature
Beth Daley: graduate of the Creative Writing PhD programme at the University of Manchester
Daisy Black: writer, medievalist and heavy metal morris dancer
Your host for the evening will be Hannah Kate, ringmaster at the strange little circus that is Hic Dragones.
Plus… prizes to be won, a bookstall and a stall from Rock and Goth Plus
powered by
Monday, 22 April 2013
Call for Submissions: Hauntings: An Anthology
A memory, a spectre, a feeling of regret, a sense of déjà vu, ghosts, machines, something you can’t quite put your finger on, a dark double, the long shadow of illness, your past, a nation’s past, your doppelgänger, a place, a song, a half-remembered rhyme, guilt, trauma, doubt, a shape at the corner of your eye, the future, the dead, the undead, the living, a grey cat, a black dog, a ticking clock, someone you used to know, someone you used to be.
We are all haunted.
Submissions wanted for a new anthology of short stories based around the theme of haunting.
What we want: Edgy, dark and weird fiction. Any interpretation of the theme is welcome – and we have no preconceptions about what ‘haunting’ might mean. Any genre considered: dark fantasy, urban fantasy, Gothic, horror, sci fi, steampunk, cyberpunk, biopunk, dystopian, slipstream. We’re looking for original and fresh voices that challenge and unsettle. (And, please remember, we do not publish misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia or racism.)
Editor: Hannah Kate
Publisher: Hic Dragones
Word Count: 3000-7000
Submission Guidelines: Electronic submissions as .doc, .docx or .rtf attachments only. 12pt font, 1.5 or double spaced. Please ensure name, story title and email address are included on the attachment. Email submissions to Hic Dragones. Submissions are welcome from anywhere, but must be in English.
Submission Deadline: Thursday 31st October 2013
Payment: Contributor copy: 1 copy of paperback, eBook in ePub and/or mobi format; permanent 25% discount on paperback (resale permitted); 1 free eBook from our catalogue
For more information, see the publishers' website or email Hic Dragones
Important Information:
This is a non-paying market. Hic Dragones is currently a micro-press with plans to become a small press, and we acknowledge that this is not the market for everyone. We feel that what we offer – professional and thorough developmental editing and copy-editing, support and exposure (from IRL and virtual platforms) – will benefit emerging writers; however, we welcome submissions from more established writers (see previous anthologies). We value transparency and communication, so if you would like to know more about our business model, our background or our plans for the future, please email Hic Dragones or chat to us on Twitter or Facebook.
CFP: Anchorites in their Communities
The 5th International Anchoritic Society conference, in association with the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University
April 22-24, 2014
Greygnog Hall, Newtown, Powys, Wales
Keynote Speakers:
Diane Watt (Surrey)
Tom Licence (UEA)
Eddie Jones (Exeter)
Postgraduate/Postdoctoral Manuscript workshop:
Eddie Jones (Exeter)
Bella Millett (Southampton)
Much of the work undertaken in the field of medieval anchoritism, particularly within an English context, has concentrated on the vocation’s role within the history of Christian spirituality, its function as a locus of (gendered) sacred space and its extensive ideological cultural work. Indeed, in the hundred years since Rotha Mary Clay’s foundational 1914 study of English anchoritism, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (1914), only sporadic attention has been given to the English anchorite as part of a community – whether social, intellectual, spiritual or religious – and as part of a widespread ‘virtual’ community of other anchorites and religious or ‘semi-religious’ figures spread across England and beyond.
In its focus on anchorites within their multifarious communities, this conference seeks papers attempting to unpick the paradox of the ‘communal anchorite’ and the central role often played by her/him within local and (inter)national political contexts, and within the arenas of church ideology, critique and reform. It also seeks contributions for a Roundtable discussion on any aspect of Mary Rotha Clay’s work, its lasting legacies and the debt to her scholarship owed by new generations of scholars in the twenty-first century.
Offers of 20-minute papers are sought on any aspect of medieval anchorites in their communities including (but not restricted to):
Spiritual circles
Communities of discourse
Anchoritic/lay interaction
Anchorites and church reform
Networks of patronage
Networks of anchorites
Anchorite case studies
Anchoritic friendship groups
Book ownership/ borrowing/ lending/ circulation
Communities of texts: ‘anchoritic’ miscellanies/ textual travelling companions
Textual translation, circulation and mouvance
Non-insular influence
Gendered communities
Abstracts of up to 500 words should be sent to Dr Liz Herbert McAvoy by Friday, August 30th 2013
April 22-24, 2014
Greygnog Hall, Newtown, Powys, Wales
Keynote Speakers:
Diane Watt (Surrey)
Tom Licence (UEA)
Eddie Jones (Exeter)
Postgraduate/Postdoctoral Manuscript workshop:
Eddie Jones (Exeter)
Bella Millett (Southampton)
Much of the work undertaken in the field of medieval anchoritism, particularly within an English context, has concentrated on the vocation’s role within the history of Christian spirituality, its function as a locus of (gendered) sacred space and its extensive ideological cultural work. Indeed, in the hundred years since Rotha Mary Clay’s foundational 1914 study of English anchoritism, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (1914), only sporadic attention has been given to the English anchorite as part of a community – whether social, intellectual, spiritual or religious – and as part of a widespread ‘virtual’ community of other anchorites and religious or ‘semi-religious’ figures spread across England and beyond.
In its focus on anchorites within their multifarious communities, this conference seeks papers attempting to unpick the paradox of the ‘communal anchorite’ and the central role often played by her/him within local and (inter)national political contexts, and within the arenas of church ideology, critique and reform. It also seeks contributions for a Roundtable discussion on any aspect of Mary Rotha Clay’s work, its lasting legacies and the debt to her scholarship owed by new generations of scholars in the twenty-first century.
Offers of 20-minute papers are sought on any aspect of medieval anchorites in their communities including (but not restricted to):
Spiritual circles
Communities of discourse
Anchoritic/lay interaction
Anchorites and church reform
Networks of patronage
Networks of anchorites
Anchorite case studies
Anchoritic friendship groups
Book ownership/ borrowing/ lending/ circulation
Communities of texts: ‘anchoritic’ miscellanies/ textual travelling companions
Textual translation, circulation and mouvance
Non-insular influence
Gendered communities
Abstracts of up to 500 words should be sent to Dr Liz Herbert McAvoy by Friday, August 30th 2013
Wednesday, 10 April 2013
Guest Bloggers Wanted (but only if you exist)
.jpg)
So... this is a blog post about blogging. How very postmodern.
I started this blog in 2010, and it was originally intended to be a website for a conference I was organizing (She-Wolf: Female Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Other Horrors). I soon decided that I could use it for more than just promoting the conference, and started to include various bits and bobs about female werewolves, then some book reviews, then some other CFPs. After the conference finished, it made sense to keep the blog going, and it slowly became my own personal site. The focus is still (kinda) on female werewolves, but it's now more just a repository for stuff in my brain or my inbox that I think other people might be vaguely interested in.
After about a year, I got my first 'guest blog' request. If you run a blog, you might be familiar with these. A 'journalist' or 'freelance writer' sends you an unsolicited email offering to write a blog piece for you. They give you links to previous work they've done and tell you that there will be no fee for their services. They might give you an outline of the sort of thing they'd like to write for you. Sometimes they'll say something kind about your site, or about how interesting they find your posts.
In my experience, these requests range from the almost-genuine to the sublimely ridiculous. I had one from a 'writer' who wanted to write something on education - that sorta fits with some of my posts. But the most recent wanted to write about a driving school in Manchester, because he thought it would be of 'interest to my readers'. Of course, this post (like all the others) would just have to contain one small link to another site.
In case you don't know - and as you'll see in a minute, a lot of bloggers really don't know this - these requests aren't really from freelance writers and journalists. Well, they might be in a way, but they're always a little bit economical with the truth. They are from SEO or advertising companies. The purpose of the guest post is to get that all-important 'organic backlink' without invoking the wrath of Google's mighty penguin.
 |
| © Thethirdman | Dreamstime Stock Photos Stock Free Images |
Here's how it works:
If you run a business and want your website to move up search engine rankings, you can pay for a 'Guest Blogging Service'. These are companies that will target bloggers on your behalf (usually using one or another form of analytics to target blogs with high rankings, appropriate content, etc.) The Blogging Service will then contact the blogger and offer to write a guest post containing a link to your site. I'm (obviously) not going to link to any of these sites, but do a search for buy guest blog posts and you can see how it works in practice. It is solely for the purpose of moving the client's website up Google's page rankings, and is not intended to be active engagement with either the blog's content or its readers.
Is it deceptive?
Not always. In some cases, the Guest Blogging Service is up-front about what it is doing. Some do employ genuine freelance writers to write content tailored to a specific blog. These people won't necessarily be specialists in a particular field, but they will go to some effort to research and present a decent piece of writing. Decent SEO companies say that best practice is to avoid creating fake personas, and to research a blog thoroughly before contacting. They also advise being honest with bloggers about the SEO/advertising purpose of the guest post.
However, only a couple of companies operate like this. Most just churn out and regurgitate content that vaguely fits with the theme of the blog. It may be copied and pasted from other websites (I've seen one that just took chunks of Wikipedia and repackaged them as a post). The same post (or very similar) may be offered to multiple blogs. At best, this content is vapid and insubstantial. At worst, it is plagiarized and could lead to copyright issues. The 'writer' of the piece will be a fake persona created by the company.
Introducing Nancy - one of the most prolific writers who doesn't exist
I recently got an email from 'Nancy Parker', a 'freelance writer and journalist' who wanted to write a guest post for my site. I'd had a few emails along these lines that week, so I was a bit annoyed. I decided to see what I could find out about 'Nancy'.
Just Google Nancy Parker Guest Post, and you can see what I did. Wow. That 'writer' sure gets around! I found posts on numerous sites about better blogging, how to promote your business and SEO, but also posts on chronic back pain, talking therapy for surviving 'difficult times', childcare, finding a good nanny, cooking cheap meals for the family... I have just found one of 'her' posts entitled 'Gather Evidence to Prosecute Cyber-Criminals with Tech Forensics'. What got me more irritated was the number of posts I found on book and writer blogs - from this so-called 'writer' - about how to write good secondary character, how to self-publish, how music can inspire writing. While the SEO blogs must (surely) have known what 'Nancy Parker' really is, the indie writers who invited 'her' to their site didn't. Some seemed flattered to have been asked.
None of 'Nancy's' posts contain any links (how clever!), but each one comes with an identical biography for her:
Nancy Parker was a professional nanny and she loves to write about a write about a wide range of subjects like health, parenting, childcare, babysitting, nannying. You can reach her at [webmail address].Somewhere in that bio, either as a hyperlink or just written out in full, will be a link to a company called eNannySource. (This is the company that paid for the creation of 'Nancy Parker'.)
A lot of Nancy's posts come with a very fetching profile picture of the writer.
 |
| © Richard Cleveland apparently (though 'Nancy Parker' doesn't acknowledge this) |
Nancy Parker is not a real writer - she's not even a real person
How do I know this? Well, for starters Nancy Parker has no presence on the internet outside of her guest blog posts. That's pretty rubbish for a freelance journalist and writer! She has no personal blog, and no social media accounts. Secondly, that profile picture does not look like a typical writer's headshot. It looks a little bit more posed and professional to me. One quick reverse image search reveals that it is, in fact, ripped off from this MySpace page for a freelance photographer.
Are bought guest blog posts a problem?
In my humble opinion, yes and no. They're a form of internet advertising, which is no bad thing in itself. Some bloggers are happy to include them, as they offer fresh content on the site and (if they're done well) talking-points for readers to engage with. Occasionally, guest blog posts are researched and well-written, though they are more likely to be generic. You can also take it as a compliment and a sign of your page ranking that the Guest Blogging Service viewed your blog as a good place to advertise.
However, they can also be deceptive. Bloggers are not always informed that the guest post they are publishing is, in fact, just a piece of advertising. And bloggers are not paid for offering this advertising space either. This leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable. The Nancy Parker childcare and nannying posts get under my skin a little too, as parenting advice from a non-existent person seems rather dubious. I'd also advise any bloggers to thoroughly check the content of a guest blog post before publishing to ensure that it doesn't include any plagiarized or copy-and-pasted material.
To be honest, I like to think of Guest Blogging Services as the bill posters of the internet. They aren't doing any harm, per se; they're just provided a service to companies who want to boost their search engine ratings. But the tactics they use to advertise their clients are irritating to those of us who own the metaphorical walls they want to slap their posters over.
 |
| © Arrow | Dreamstime Stock Photos Stock Free Images |
CFP: Literary Dolls: The Female Textual Body from the 19th Century to Now
8 March 2014
University of Durham
This one-day conference held on International Women’s Day 2014 assesses the ways in which women’s physical form has been depicted in artworks from the nineteenth century to the present day.
Keynote speakers at the conference will include Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jane Smiley; Professor Jo Phoenix (University of Durham); Dr Kate MacDonald (University of Ghent).
We welcome abstracts of three hundred words for twenty minute papers discussing any textual presentation of women’s bodies. This includes literary depictions, but also those in film, television, digital media, the visual arts and the applied social sciences. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:
The romanticised female form
Femininity vs. Femaleness vs. Womanliness
The historicized figure
The broken form
Fetishized body parts
Females made inanimate, e.g. as dolls or statues
Media representations of femaleness
The social impact of textual bodily representation
The sexual figure
The body in motion
Woman as goddess or muse
The maternal female
Females ensnared in the text
Violence on the body
Queering the body
Females made inanimate, e.g. as dolls or statues
Media representations of femaleness
The social impact of textual bodily representation
The conference will run at Durham University on 8th March 2014, International Women’s Day. It is organised in association with the University of Durham’s Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities.
Please send abstracts to the conference convenors by 1st June 2013.
For more information, please see the conference website.
University of Durham
This one-day conference held on International Women’s Day 2014 assesses the ways in which women’s physical form has been depicted in artworks from the nineteenth century to the present day.
“Lucky I have nice hands if nothing else,” says Ella at last, very dry. He comes to her, picks up her hands, kisses them, wearily, rake-like: “Beautiful doll, beautiful.” Doris Lessing, The Golden NotebookThrough history women’s bodies have been the subject of artistic presentation, ostensibly to celebrate the beauty of the female form, but also to fetishize, to dismember and to control women both within the arts and in the wider world. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to appraise the depiction of women’s physical form in artworks, as well as how artistic presentation has informed other disciplines, from the Nineteenth Century to Now, in order to assess how far the arts have changed in line with apparent developments in the treatment of women, over the comparable historical gulf. We are also keen to consider the social impact the arts have had, and continue to have, on the treatment of women.
Keynote speakers at the conference will include Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jane Smiley; Professor Jo Phoenix (University of Durham); Dr Kate MacDonald (University of Ghent).
We welcome abstracts of three hundred words for twenty minute papers discussing any textual presentation of women’s bodies. This includes literary depictions, but also those in film, television, digital media, the visual arts and the applied social sciences. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:
The romanticised female form
Femininity vs. Femaleness vs. Womanliness
The historicized figure
The broken form
Fetishized body parts
Females made inanimate, e.g. as dolls or statues
Media representations of femaleness
The social impact of textual bodily representation
The sexual figure
The body in motion
Woman as goddess or muse
The maternal female
Females ensnared in the text
Violence on the body
Queering the body
Females made inanimate, e.g. as dolls or statues
Media representations of femaleness
The social impact of textual bodily representation
The conference will run at Durham University on 8th March 2014, International Women’s Day. It is organised in association with the University of Durham’s Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities.
Please send abstracts to the conference convenors by 1st June 2013.
For more information, please see the conference website.
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Win a SIGNED copy of Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny
Another book giveaway courtesy of Hic Dragones. This time the prize is a FREE copy of Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny, signed by a selection of the authors.
Feral, vicious, fierce and lost… the she-wolf is a strange creature of the night. Attractive to some; repulsive to others, she stalks the fringes of our world as though it were her prey. She is the baddest of girls, the fatalest of femmes – but she is also the excluded, the abject, the monster.
The Wolf-Girls within these pages are mad, bad and dangerous to know. But they are also rejected and tortured, loving and loyal, avenging and triumphant. Some of them are even human…
Seventeen new tales of dark, snarling lycogyny by Nu Yang, Mary Borsellino, Lyn Lockwood, Mihaela Nicolescu, L. Lark, Jeanette Greaves, Kim Bannerman, Lynsey May, Hannah Kate, J. K. Coi, Rosie Garland, R. A. Martens, Beth Daley, Marie Cruz, Helen Cross, Andrew Quinton and Sarah Peacock.
To enter:
All you have to do to enter the competition is GUESS THE NAME OF THE WEREWOLF!
Give our little lycanthrope a name!
Enter your name suggestion in the Rafflecopter box below, and one lucky person will win a signed copy of the book and a little lycanthropic bonus. International entry permitted, and the prize will be shipped direct to wherever you live. The competition ends on April 29th, and we'll announce the winning entry shortly after that.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Feral, vicious, fierce and lost… the she-wolf is a strange creature of the night. Attractive to some; repulsive to others, she stalks the fringes of our world as though it were her prey. She is the baddest of girls, the fatalest of femmes – but she is also the excluded, the abject, the monster.
The Wolf-Girls within these pages are mad, bad and dangerous to know. But they are also rejected and tortured, loving and loyal, avenging and triumphant. Some of them are even human…
Seventeen new tales of dark, snarling lycogyny by Nu Yang, Mary Borsellino, Lyn Lockwood, Mihaela Nicolescu, L. Lark, Jeanette Greaves, Kim Bannerman, Lynsey May, Hannah Kate, J. K. Coi, Rosie Garland, R. A. Martens, Beth Daley, Marie Cruz, Helen Cross, Andrew Quinton and Sarah Peacock.
To enter:
All you have to do to enter the competition is GUESS THE NAME OF THE WEREWOLF!
Give our little lycanthrope a name!
Enter your name suggestion in the Rafflecopter box below, and one lucky person will win a signed copy of the book and a little lycanthropic bonus. International entry permitted, and the prize will be shipped direct to wherever you live. The competition ends on April 29th, and we'll announce the winning entry shortly after that.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Friday, 29 March 2013
Hic Dragones presents... Twisted Tales of Cannibalism
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
3 Cambridge Street
Manchester M1 5BY
United Kingdom
Wednesday 24th April 2013, 6.30-8.30pm
Free event, booking required
A night of dark horror fiction with Conrad Williams (Blonde on a Stick, One, The Unblemished), Stephen McGeagh (Habit) and Harry Whitehead (The Cannibal Spirit), presented by Hic Dragones and Twisted Tales.
Cannibalism disrupts our relatively stable position at the top of the food chain. From Jeffrey Dahmer to Hannibal Lecter, cannibals are the subject of popular fascination in both fiction and crime reports. However, they have a much longer heritage and their monstrous appetites can make them seem something both greater and lesser than human. Join Twisted Tales and Hic Dragones for an evening of readings by authors known for their cannibal fiction, before engaging in discussion about this primal taboo.
Hic Dragones is a small press publisher and events organizer based in North Manchester. This event is a tie-in with the Cannibals: Cannibalism, Consumption and Culture conference running on 25-26th April 2013. For more information about this conference, please visit the website.
Twisted Tales is an award-nominated series of horror readings based in the North West, with the aim of promoting the best of 21st century horror through engaging the public in a series of dynamic literary events. Now entering into its third year, Twisted Tales has worked with a range of top authors, including China Miéville, Sarah Pinborough, Ramsey Campbell, Jeremy Dyson, Adam Nevill, Stuart MacBride, Graham Joyce, Alison Littlewood and many more. For further information, please visit the Twisted Tales website.
3 Cambridge Street
Manchester M1 5BY
United Kingdom
Wednesday 24th April 2013, 6.30-8.30pm
Free event, booking required
A night of dark horror fiction with Conrad Williams (Blonde on a Stick, One, The Unblemished), Stephen McGeagh (Habit) and Harry Whitehead (The Cannibal Spirit), presented by Hic Dragones and Twisted Tales.
Cannibalism disrupts our relatively stable position at the top of the food chain. From Jeffrey Dahmer to Hannibal Lecter, cannibals are the subject of popular fascination in both fiction and crime reports. However, they have a much longer heritage and their monstrous appetites can make them seem something both greater and lesser than human. Join Twisted Tales and Hic Dragones for an evening of readings by authors known for their cannibal fiction, before engaging in discussion about this primal taboo.
Hic Dragones is a small press publisher and events organizer based in North Manchester. This event is a tie-in with the Cannibals: Cannibalism, Consumption and Culture conference running on 25-26th April 2013. For more information about this conference, please visit the website.
Twisted Tales is an award-nominated series of horror readings based in the North West, with the aim of promoting the best of 21st century horror through engaging the public in a series of dynamic literary events. Now entering into its third year, Twisted Tales has worked with a range of top authors, including China Miéville, Sarah Pinborough, Ramsey Campbell, Jeremy Dyson, Adam Nevill, Stuart MacBride, Graham Joyce, Alison Littlewood and many more. For further information, please visit the Twisted Tales website.
Birkbeck Medieval Seminar: Landscape and Belief
Saturday 27 April, 2013
10am–5pm
Rooms G15 and G16, Main Building, Birkbeck
Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX
Birkbeck Medieval Seminar 2013
featuring
John Blair (Queen’s College, University of Oxford)
Catherine Clarke (University of Southampton)
Stefan Brink (University of Aberdeen)
Alfred Hiatt (Queen Mary, University of London)
This event is free, and all are welcome to attend.
To reserve a place, email the organizers.
To learn more, visit the website.
10am–5pm
Rooms G15 and G16, Main Building, Birkbeck
Malet Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1E 7HX
Birkbeck Medieval Seminar 2013
featuring
John Blair (Queen’s College, University of Oxford)
Catherine Clarke (University of Southampton)
Stefan Brink (University of Aberdeen)
Alfred Hiatt (Queen Mary, University of London)
This event is free, and all are welcome to attend.
To reserve a place, email the organizers.
To learn more, visit the website.
CFP: Romance in Medieval Britain
14th Biennial Conference
12-14th April 2014
Clifton Hill House, Bristol
Papers are invited on all aspects of medieval romance. The conference marks the conclusion of an AHRC-sponsored research project on the Verse Forms of Middle English Romance, and papers that address questions of verse form are particularly welcome.
To propose a paper, please send a brief abstract to one of the two conference organizers, before 31 September 2013:
Dr Judith Jefferson, English Department
Prof. Ad Putter, English Department
Further information about the conference will be made available on the website.
12-14th April 2014
Clifton Hill House, Bristol
Papers are invited on all aspects of medieval romance. The conference marks the conclusion of an AHRC-sponsored research project on the Verse Forms of Middle English Romance, and papers that address questions of verse form are particularly welcome.
To propose a paper, please send a brief abstract to one of the two conference organizers, before 31 September 2013:
Dr Judith Jefferson, English Department
Prof. Ad Putter, English Department
Further information about the conference will be made available on the website.
Saturday, 23 March 2013
WIN A FREE BOOK! Aimee and the Bear Giveaway
Your chance to win a copy of Aimee and the Bear, the stunning debut novel by Toby Stone. I'm giving away TWO free copies on the 6th April. And the good news? You can enter from anywhere in the world!
When her mother’s cruelty is too much, Amy holds her teddy bear’s paw and travels to the Other Place—a world where teddies become real bears, where children attend the Night School to escape whatever it is they face at home, where Amy becomes Aimee, and there’s magic in the air. But the Other Place is in danger—the Witch has awoken, and Amy must find the courage to save her baby brother before it’s too late.
A dazzling, heart-wrenching and brutal descent into the world of the imagination. This is not a children’s book. This is not a fairy tale. This is not your average heroine.
Aimee and the Bear is published by Hic Dragones.
Praise for Aimee and the Bear:
What a fascinating read!! This is, hands down, one of the best books I’ve found in years. Like I said, Wow. No matter what I render as a review, there is nothing left more important than WOW. This author just blew me away with the perfect clarity, perfect flow, perfectly satisfying writing style that made me smile or frown out loud at times. I may have said this before, but this time I mean it when I say that I was captivated from the first 4 paragraphs.
- angelsintheunderworld.com
This is a very unusual book, a contemporary modern day novel with a twist. Amy has a cruel mother and she escapes to another world with her bear to escape her cruel mother, a world with a Night School, strange Teachers and creatures. It is not a children's book (it is quite dark in parts)or a fairy tale. It is enchanting and pulls you along. This is Toby Stone's first book according to the blurb, and for a debut novel it is stunning, he has massive potential.
- Goodreads
Absolutely brilliant! I’m not usually a fan of ‘magic realism’, but this really works. I think that’s because the realism is very real (this is not a book for kids, despite the cuddly toy element) and the magic is serious, funny and dark. Stone is a superb writer – intelligent, stylish and quirky – who creates very rounded characters. As an evocation of the childhood mind, it’s the most convincing thing I’ve read since Alice in Wonderland.
- Amazon
Need to know more? You can read Toby's exclusive short story, 'A Vampire's Guide to Dummies', right here on the She-Wolf blog.
Enter the Competition!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
When her mother’s cruelty is too much, Amy holds her teddy bear’s paw and travels to the Other Place—a world where teddies become real bears, where children attend the Night School to escape whatever it is they face at home, where Amy becomes Aimee, and there’s magic in the air. But the Other Place is in danger—the Witch has awoken, and Amy must find the courage to save her baby brother before it’s too late.
A dazzling, heart-wrenching and brutal descent into the world of the imagination. This is not a children’s book. This is not a fairy tale. This is not your average heroine.
Aimee and the Bear is published by Hic Dragones.
Praise for Aimee and the Bear:
What a fascinating read!! This is, hands down, one of the best books I’ve found in years. Like I said, Wow. No matter what I render as a review, there is nothing left more important than WOW. This author just blew me away with the perfect clarity, perfect flow, perfectly satisfying writing style that made me smile or frown out loud at times. I may have said this before, but this time I mean it when I say that I was captivated from the first 4 paragraphs.
- angelsintheunderworld.com
This is a very unusual book, a contemporary modern day novel with a twist. Amy has a cruel mother and she escapes to another world with her bear to escape her cruel mother, a world with a Night School, strange Teachers and creatures. It is not a children's book (it is quite dark in parts)or a fairy tale. It is enchanting and pulls you along. This is Toby Stone's first book according to the blurb, and for a debut novel it is stunning, he has massive potential.
- Goodreads
Absolutely brilliant! I’m not usually a fan of ‘magic realism’, but this really works. I think that’s because the realism is very real (this is not a book for kids, despite the cuddly toy element) and the magic is serious, funny and dark. Stone is a superb writer – intelligent, stylish and quirky – who creates very rounded characters. As an evocation of the childhood mind, it’s the most convincing thing I’ve read since Alice in Wonderland.
- Amazon
Need to know more? You can read Toby's exclusive short story, 'A Vampire's Guide to Dummies', right here on the She-Wolf blog.
Enter the Competition!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Wednesday, 20 March 2013
GUEST POST: A Vampire's Guide to Dummies
Toby Stone is a novelist from Whitefield, near Manchester. His debut novel, Aimee and the Bear is out now from Hic Dragones. You can find Toby on Twitter (@tobystone1) or on his blog.
'A Vampire's Guide to Dummies' is an exclusive, unpublished short story.
A Vampire's Guide to Dummies
You may have already read A Zombie’s Guide to Attaining Zen and A Skeleton’s Guide to Overcoming Anorexia. A Vampire’s Guide to Dummies is the third in this series of aspirational texts for the dead. Yes, you too can be a better creature of the night. But A Vampire’s Guide to Dummies is as much help-yourself as self-help. It’s about our food, about where to eat and what to eat – by which of course I mean, who to eat.
I’d like to thank you for taking an interest in where your next meal comes from. There is a wide range of flavours available to vampires, but dummies are the most representative of mortal dishes. Like Big Macs for human children, we all know how a dummy tastes. That sweat of desperation, the slight lard of overeating ice-cream on the sofa, the rich lethargy of their blood. Personally, I prefer to snack on the thick. Intelligence has always made the human bitter. Look at Nietzsche.
Dummies are formed by stupid parents, an insipid childhood and, most often, reality TV. They think vampires foppish, refined, with cheek-bones as high as Robert Pattinson’s side-burns. As a newly turned vampire, you will still be stumbling against this cliché. Female teenagers won’t give you the time of day, let alone night. With regard to film stars, people tell me I most resemble Darth Vader, after he takes off the mask. Words don’t really fit me. The word ‘corpulent’ could have been coined for my gut, but doesn’t have enough syllables and wouldn’t encompass it. Very little does and I shop by catalogue.
The human form, though, is the focus of this guide, and I want to help you to be the most effective vampire you can be. We are, after all, the mortal’s foremost predator. And where better to hunt than in the city, on a summer’s evening, as dusk rots the sky? The girls in their slight dresses, passing like sirens freed from their calling. The jiggle of their hems, of their bosoms. The strong, young men, their nape and shoulder muscles unfurled like wings. The city, in the summer, makes a simile of everything, and the motion of human limbs in the dying light is as pleasant as poetry. Always eat the beautiful. And you can tell, just by looking and listening around, that the most beautiful are also the most stupid.
There are three ways of defining the dummy food-group.
1. What a Dummy is Not
New vampires are drawn to a certain type of food. You will want to eat the vibrant, the strong. To drink blood barely held in check by its veins. I like late night cafés with large windows, and my voyeur’s pleasure is the chav. They are the big cats of the human race – its big game.
The chav, though, is an occasional snack. While they represent good calorific value (their bloodstream contains four-fifths of the RDBI – Recommended Daily Blood Intake), they are exceptionally tenacious livestock. According to research, the calorie-cost of subduing a chav is often more than the benefit of supping on one.
Still, an americano warming your frigid palms, you will find yourself gazing at them, drinking them in as they pass in gangs, having discarded black Nike hoodies for shaven heads and chequered, short-sleeved shirts. You will rise, as I so often have, and follow one into an alley, as he looks to leave his last drink on the cobbles via his bladder.
When you do, there exists a combination of techniques (recommended by most vampire masters) used to prepare this plate. Any good Nocturnal Arts class can train you in these, until they become muscle memory. Practise the moves with a dummy (not a real one, of course). Diagrams can be found in the appendices.
● First, he will unzip. You will clutch at him, grasping his wide, pink, sun-spanked throat.
● Pull him close until you can feel the muscles of his back writhing against your gut.
● The chav will curse and butt back his head.
● You say: ‘Hold still, please.’ And: ‘Stop fighting it, sir.’
● You wrap your legs around his hips, topple him to the side, and roll on the ground, behind cardboard boxes, green skips and black bags.
● The chav will fight like he has always known how, since he was six. But he has always been beaten and, at the end, will go limp, apart from the motion of his tears.
● Then feed. As noted, a chav is not a dummy but a treat, and, though it is important to indulge oneself once in a while, be sure to pop a Rennie afterwards. Chavs give me indigestion. It’s not that I don’t like them, but that they don’t like me.
2. The Male Dummy
Interesting FactsIf chavs are rare steaks, the strip joint is the easiest place to pick up the more everyday meat. Near the centre of the city, lap-dancing clubs throb with flesh, with neon lights, and with lines of magnetism that draw the dummies in. This is the place to buffet.
The top investment banks (of which number JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Barclays Capital) take pride in firing 20% of their employees every year. The crème may become wildly rich, but the bottom is regularly tapped out and left to rot on the floor. Financiers are among the five professions rated most likely to commit suicide. Due to this, and to 90-hour working weeks, which mean personal relationships are few and distant, bankers are easy pickings. Like thread worms from the bottom of society, nobody misses their passing.
I eat peanuts by the bar and try to ignore the women. From time to time, I may prospect one for a private dance, so as to blend in, but I tell them I’m an arse man. I recommend the bottom dance. It does the appetite no good when you are enveloped in the down of their breasts, in the scratch of their areola, in the probing of their nipples. All your skin will feel is the throb above each, the clanging of blood like church bells in her jugular.
If you can, take a friend. The choice of companion is important. If possible, sit with somebody you cannot stand and have little inclination to talk to. You do not want to be distracted from the hunt. If you have not already turned your spouse, may I suggest doing so now? If you are unmarried, as I was, take a parent. I sit with Frank, who sired me.
Frank was not how one would wish to be turned. A straight man’s bad dream: moustached, leather clad, he maintains a relationship with B.O. that has several unhealthy issues, many of which come from his crotch. I often eat roasted peanuts when he speaks, to disguise my wincing and his mouth odour. Ignoring him, I usually pretend to look at the dancers and all they have to offer.
In reality, I am looking at the door. I suggest living in financial centres: New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt, Shanghai. Keep up with the business sections of newspapers and note the trading times. When the markets close, your buffet will open for business, and a tide of drink will flood in. A Red Sea closing: of investment bankers, hedge funders, open armed investment managers, shorters, speculators, portfolio re-engineers. Dummies out on the city that suckles them.
A Helpful TableAs you prowl the strip club, do not browse for the alpha males, the men slapping rump and pressing the queen’s crinkled face into places her majesty would rather not see. Instead, cast your greed to the group’s tattered hem. The newbies. The greens. Young men straight out of Oxbridge who have not yet fitted in. Awkward grins long and loose and rubbery, holding their drinks with two hands to stop the shaking. They drink quicker than the rest. Soon, they will be drunk, and not in the way they expected to be at the inception of the evening. Afterwards, you’ll feel elated and tipsy. That’s the advantage of dining on the inebriated; you get a free drink with every meal.
Here’s a selection of which professions you should aim for. (More comprehensive tables to be found in Appendix C.)
Profession: Banker
Risk: Very low - as above.
Profession: Children in Care
Risk: Low. There is only one subset of society humans ignore more than children, and that is children in care.
Profession: Call Centre Operative
Risk: Average. Due to a lack of daylight, may well be as grey as your flesh but, when not plugged into a computer at the right times, they cause a series of statistics to flash red. Other humans may not miss them, but the machines and their maths will, and in today’s work-place they are all that really matter. On the other hand, these employees really don’t.
Profession: Prostitute
Risk: High. Very little makes the media foam more than the marriage of sex and violence, and the drained body of a hooker is enough to send newspapers into spittle-invected overdrive. The scantily dressed corpse makes the biggest splash, I can tell you. It’s something to do with skin on water. Can I recommend cellophane?
Profession: Soap Opera Character
Risk: Very high. It has long been noted that the human mind is capable of storing only a set number of faces (ranging from 150 to 450). If column inches measure the importance humanity ascribes to one of its own, these alone will be missed.
I recommend making your move in the toilet. Open a conversation with a comment on one of the dancers, a line that encompasses her curves.
Say:
● ‘That Ruby’s a bit of alright’;
● or: ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of slap and tickle with that Sapphire’;
● or: ‘When Diamond bent over, I think my brain came into my nose’; etc.
A male in a toilet has to follow up on these amuse bouche or be thought homosexual, which is not the impression to give in the Gents. Even better, say it in a northern accent. From there, convince them that a dancer wants a private audience, because they are so young and pretty and different.
Say: ‘That Emerald, I caught her looking at you. I’m a bit of regular here. Reckon I could get you a private room.’ (Add ‘lad’ or ‘son’ if you think you can get away with it.)
A man falls for this, a highly educated human, before he realises that ‘special’ was a word concocted for children who don’t understand ‘retarded’. If he does fall, you will walk into the private booth you have booked and because you, like me, are as ugly as a vampire can be, his callow, whiskey soaked eyes will flinch across you. And if you are like me, which is to say obese, you will subdue him with a lap-dance more forceful and heftier, than he had been imagining. And the breasts in his face will be moobs, and unexpected, and it won’t be long before his Bambi body is broken, and your belly thickens.
3. The Female Dummy
Never, and can I make this clear, never attempt to eat a woman you do not know. They start at the presumption, no matter how ugly the lady, that all men are predators. This is not conducive to hunting.
For hunting ladies, I use Facebook.
Did you know?Social media is a wonderful way to convince them that they do, in fact, know you.
97% of callers to the Rape Crisis Line report being assaulted by men they know or, I would suppose, thought they knew. Preying on the familiar is what humanity does best, and, if we are to blend in, it is thus the way to go.
I have several profiles: some male, some female, some heterosexual, some homosexual, some a little of all four. The pictures are cropped from Google Images. Once one is nestled in a friendship group, it’s amazing how everybody thinks you are someone else’s acquaintance. I spread myself around, using all the tricks they warn children (but not adults) about.
In the main, I turn the subject of threads to my love of the Twilight series.
‘I real respect Edward, he’s so cool, it must be real hard for him.’ I will post, having Wikipediaed the books. I was unable to read them.
‘Yeah, I no how u feel. Sometimes the hardest thing 2 do is the best thing. Sometimes, u cant have what u want, and it makes u thirstier for it, but somehow its better,’ she will reply.
‘I no right what you mean.’
‘You’re the only man I no who gets it.’
‘8-) I think we can actually learn something from vampires. No I sound crazy. But I do.’
‘Yeah, same here.’
After several months, I will arrange to meet my quarry. Yes, a long incubation period for the maggot to turn into a fly, but you have to imagine several of these ‘relationships’ gaining wings at the same time. Twilites, I call them. Light meals, not too stodgy, you can do things afterwards and enjoy the rest of your evening. Nothing worse than a full roast on a summer’s night.
A Case StudyAfter every meal, I floss.
As with humanity, the most powerful teaching tool for vampires is often the anecdote. This is not, though, a heart-warming parable of a frog tricking a scorpion, or of a bear that learns to talk about his feelings. But if you practise what this study preaches, it will at least warm your guts.
I met one particular ‘Twilite’ for the first time in Starbucks. (Please note: women find coffee less intimidating than alcohol on a first date.) I asked her to wear something red, around her throat, so that I would know her.
The meal-to-be tends to writhe on the hook of this meeting for at least an hour. I sat regarding this one for two hours , as she waited for somebody who looked entirely unlike my ugliness. She wept a little, and in public, and a group of young women pointed at her and whispered. One laughed, and my victim-to-be left in a tirade of clothing and a line of cravat. She looked like someone whose faith in humanity had been shattered. A bit quick to jump to conclusions, humans. She wasn’t paying attention as she reached her flat, and she didn’t lock the door.
It would be insensitive to describe what happened within.
I followed her down an unlit hall, past a white-framed, single paned window. I am light-footed, for an obese man, and can creep. (I am not weighted by a soul.) She slumped on a chair beside a small wooden table and fell forward into her own arms, crying. Her sobs were loud, and I feared the neighbours might be roused, before seeing the regular red gashes, like the marking of prison time, up her arms. I realised that this kitchen had heard it all before. The cupboards were worn, the shelves listless. Her arms, as I was watching them, continued around to clutch at her back, not so much hugging as trying to stab. I could hear tight cotton tearing.
‘You’re right,’ I said.
Her nails stopped, her hands became claws: furtive, stunned animals trapped by her own elbow joints.
‘You could learn from vampires.’
She attempted to turn, but I leant the weight of my chest upon her nape. She tried to scream but the weight, as I knew it would, crushed her lungs into withered leaves. I slammed her head, once, against the small, wooden table. A book toppled onto the floor, face up. New Moon, it said, and it looked eared and resigned, like an old dog. I could hear panting, but it was just her.
She was bleeding from her nose. This distressed me. Impatient, I bit and sucked, and she jolted in her Ikea chair, wetting the tea-stained white cushion and soiling her summer skirt. All I could smell was the red stuff. I could hear her squelching as she writhed, until she stopped.
You’re hungry now, aren’t you?
Before I left I walked through the lounge to the bathroom, picking my feet between discarded books. The lounge had the look of a struggle. Above the sink, the electric light came on but seemed reluctant. Since I’ve been gone, it’s been a relief not to stare at my face. In my day-life, I was an estate agent and the crap of it all had begun to rub off. I looked like shit alive. No doubt I look worse now, but not to me.
I smiled at my lack of reflection, curled back my lips, revealing the extent of my teeth, and reached inside the top-right pocket of my black jacket. From it, I removed a thin, white box, with a single canine drawn on it, in blue.
Some Pointers on Dining Decorum:
• Always carry floss. We may be descended from medieval Eastern European savages, but we are not barbarians. It is anti-social to spend the evening with larynx hanging from your teeth.
• Wear a dark suit and a shirt a shade lighter. Dark cloth is not an aesthetic choice, as you can imagine. First, it hides the sweat patches of a fight. Second, it hides stains. Blood can be absurdly difficult to remove.
• If you do dribble, I suggest lemon juice and cold water. Do not use hot water, do not. It sets the stain. Then, as Buffy herself might have said, hang the article on a line that will receive direct sunlight; it will finish the job for you.
• And, of course, don’t forget your Rennies.
• And don’t forget to look behind you. No, don’t look up, not yet. Keep reading, please do. Dummies read self-help guides, didn’t you know? Why do you think I wrote this? It’s not exactly life-enhancing. Did you know 94.5% of self-help readers are so gullible they’ll believe any old statistics?
I watch you dummies browsing in bookstores from my blacked-out 2CV, with your dirty little self-help purchases. Watch you pay, watch you leave. Follow you home. There’s no bigger dummy than someone who thinks they can change. What is it with humans and vampires? You want to be like us, do you? If there even was an Appendix C, you’d find Aspiring Vampires at the top of the Helpful Table. You keep odd hours. You’re avoided around the water cooler. If you don’t live alone, you’re heading that way. You’re bloody perfect.
Some Final Tips:
● Stay still. The skin of your throat is soft as I run my nails across it. The finest of hairs lift up onto my fingertips. Does that tickle? My nails are short. They don’t grow anymore.
● Try not to soil yourself. This will feel uncomfortable, like having a tooth removed through your throat. No need to add the smell of faeces to your discomfort. Can you smell my chest, instead, as it presses against your back? I’m wearing Old Spice. Nice.
● If you experience sexual excitement, even as you die, if you harden or quicken, do not go red. The body acts in unusual ways to unusual stimulus. You would not be the first to orgasm as you pass out. Go with the flow, it won’t be the only part of you that does.
As advertised in the title, this guide has led me to you. As with any good dummy, it’s time I popped you in my mouth, sucked, and shut up.
.jpg)
About Toby: Toby Stone went to the same school as Batman (Christian Bale) and Benny Hill. Though they were not all there at the same time. As an adult, Toby has been a toy-seller, an Avon Lady, Double-Glazing Salesman of the Week, a mortgage broker, a suspicious barman, a school governor and a bingo caller. Aimee and the Bear is his first published novel. Follow Toby on Twitter (@tobystone1) or on his own blog.
Watch the trailer:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)