Magenta Sweeney, aka Magenta Shaman reminisces on the day - twelve years before - when life finally threw her into the gutter.

***

Magenta's mother Rosa has a hard time dealing with her daughter's fits and trances, her visions and healing hands. A shaman from birth like her errant father, Magenta has always unwittingly terrified Rosa, even though the girl is desperate for her mother's love. No longer able to cope Rosa gives Magenta an ultimatum - find an elixir to cure her baby half-sister's worsening skin disease, or get the hell out and leave them alone.

***

Although the books are solid fiction, Magenta's memory spills out as poetry here. I haven't asked her why.

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Find out more about Magenta's terrifying shamanic journeys by downloading the very first episode in the Magenta Shaman series to your Kindle from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

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She’s Leaving Home

Just sixteen,

she’s bouncing off strobe lights

at Slippy’s.

No drink.

No drugs.

Livid pulses flood

her eyes.

Throbbing beat

loving her feet,

she dances -

all ballet and wedgie sandals.

Arms flail.

Fingertips pitch and point

to the flickering

in the dull ceiling.

With clubbers clubbing

all around

Magenta takes the spinning world

by the Minotaur’s horns.

She jumps on his back,

transcends the borders.

Falls fast, eyes wide open

rising and falling in trance.

Touches, pale snatches

at slivers of skin,

the shaman reaps the harvest.

It is morning.

Baby sister cries and squeals.

Magenta grafts

ancient epidermis

as their mother looks on.

For once... for once

all fails.

Her sister is gone

and her mother wants none

of her strangest of skills,

and her father –

missing -

for ever and ever...

it’s too much.

“You’re just like him.

“Get out.”

She walks down Brighton’s streets

alone.

Veils of power

shield Magenta from

the dark and the desperate.

Mourning and lonely

she slips into a damp corner

to sleep.

“My darling.”

Daddy’s voice, always in dreams.

“It’s time.”

The shaman awakes,

money in her pocket,

a typed address on a note,

a key of gold in her hand.

More about Magenta Shaman...
Download the first episode in the series from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

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Mind Games

Update to this post from 16th July - 6S Mind Games is now available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

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My entry in the Six Sentences Network's 'Mind Games' anthology comp has been accepted - and published!

There were over 300 entries and my piece (below) appears alongside those of fellow Writers' News Talkbackers A.J. Humpage and Pixie J. King.

A.J.'s is one of of my personal favourites in the collection, as well as Sandra Davies', Thomas Mundt's, Grey Johnson's and the winning 'six' by Kip Hanson.

Mind Games by Lily Childs

I thought them ferns; tall penile stems, their tops weighty with verdant coils just waiting to unfurl and release their fertile spores into the density of the hot forest.

Tickling their tendrils with soft affection my fingers instantly freeze in pain, agonising pulses of electric colour seethe through my brain as the tightly-bound spirals whip open, unleashing a thousand needles into my skin.

Voices call my name as if from a distance yet faces swim before my eyes; some familiar - my husband, group members, our priests; others are screaming beasts, terrifying in aspect, violently teasing my senses as they rush at me, possessing and vacating my body at speed.

Then white - I travel through clouds; burnt umber and red ochre crumble at my sides as I linger in moist earthen caverns until the blackness of gushing blood carries me back to the safety of my throbbing heart.

Missionaries attend to me over the ensuing days but I see them for the demons they are as they slap me with leeches, desperate to wipe the smile of bliss from my mouth, frantically forcing the creatures to suck out the poisons that play so prettily with my mind - but they are unable to stop me returning again and again to the beautiful wildwood deities that have forever lent me their power; and to think I thought them ferns.

I am at peace - I am shaman.
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Magenta Shaman

Magenta visited a lair today. The journey was not so much hard, as difficult to see through the ether.

When she got to her destination, courtesy of a very cross white stallion and a persistent eagle, she had to travel down a dragon's spine to find what she was seeking.  And by the Goddess, was she disturbed at who she found there.

Trouble is, the man was quite content to slumber, but after 20,000 odd years, Magenta's woken him up. He ain't happy.

Magenta's Latest Rejection

Well, I'm rather proud that Magenta Shaman has just been rejected by the late Marion Zimmer Bradley's legacy magazine 'Sword & Sorceress'.

The editor, Elisabeth Waters gave very encouraging comments which I will certainly take on board.

Magenta's currently fighting a cult near Borough Market. She also has plans to dispossess (yes dispossess, not depossess or unpossess) a very nasty child, if the child will let her.

Gruesome is as gruesome does. All in a day's work.

A word from Madge

There are planes out there, the like of which you've never seen, could never imagine in your wildest dreams.

There are places you couldn't even begin to conceive of.

Next time you meditate, drift away, lose yourself in reverie - do your damndest to remember it afterwards. Write it down. Don't say 'it ain't so'. It is - I saw you there.

Magenta Shaman

March 4th 2010

Fairy Things

There are fairies in my house. I've seen them. They keep peeking at me. They're a lot taller than I expected - maybe that's the domestic fairy. The ones in the wild are definitely diddy.

I wondered today - if I could shape-shift, what would I become? And if I was a good enough shaman to become one creature, then why not another?

*>*>*>*>*>*>>*<<*<*<*<*<*<

Slightly related to the above; although I am 23,000 words into the main novel - oh dear - I now have another on the go. It was meant to be a 5000 word short story but I couldn't get it down to less than 6200. And it ended with a beginning - so it's crying out to be a series.

If you like fantasy horror, bitter revenge and terrifying beasts with deadly, suppurating wounds - then this might appeal. It's called Magenta Shaman.