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.

Book Review – The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

If ever a book left me feeling I could never make it as an author then Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Angel’s Game is it. Set in pre-civil war Barcelona Zafón’s tale of intrigue and murder twists and turns at relentless speed.

The Angel’s Game features writer David Martìn, son of a drunken father and a disinterested, absent mother. Martìn is thrown into the somewhat seedy realm of journalism after his father is murdered in the street and the young David is taken under the wing of Señor Vidal, one of the city’s wealthy sons. Taking pity on the lad Vidal finds David a job at the offices of a newspaper he has connections with, and quickly becomes David’s mentor, friend and benefactor.

As David Martìn moves up, down and sideways through the world of writing his own life becomes as strange as the penny dreadfuls he pens. Taking up residence in the mysterious, derelict Tower House the young author writes day and night until he can barely breathe. He rarely eats, he never sleeps. His volatile existence is fuelled by cigarettes, coffee and alcohol.

Even with the constants of Vidal’s support and friendship, the all-seeing eye of bookseller Señor Sempere and the unrequited love of the beautiful and unobtainable Cristina, a barrage of events dart at Martìn from every direction. Violence hangs around every corner. Ghosts from the past come unbidden into the here and now. The Tower House reveals itself. We are left in no doubt that all is not as it seems.

David Martìn’s Barcelona is a surreal place of twisting alleys and sprawling mansions, steamy docklands and towering mountains. Readers of Zafón’s first novel The Shadow of the Wind will be familiar with the Cemetery of Forgotten Books – recalling the library with both affection and fear. Here, in this most secret of places Martìn unleashes the key that will turn everything, strange as it already is, on its head. Who is the angel playing the game of the book’s title?

The pace of this novel is exhilarating. The atmosphere – noir and gothic yet coloured with Mediterranean spice. Death and love seem interchangeable in the Spanish psyche and Zafón spins these contrasts round and around, revisiting them from every angle.

Zafón is the master of description. His well-crafted prose is sprinkled with a menace laced with dark poetry. The Angel’s Game excels in edginess, a sensation that reminds me of another angel – Alan Parker’s 1987 film Angel Heart starring Mickey Rourke. The bizarre lifestyle of David Martìn is reminiscent of works by Burroughs.

Finishing this book I felt exhausted. Bereft - cheated even that something so powerful and addictive had been taken from me. I can honestly say that this is one of the most riveting and exciting novels I have ever read. Any fiction that can make me gasp out loud goes straight to the top of my list. Highly recommended.

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More about Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Angel’s Game | Buy The Angel's Game on Amazon

TORN IN TWO by Lily Childs

A 200 word, flash fiction challenge: TORN IN TWO by Lily Childs
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It’s a Monday when the needle nips. It slips across my spine. I relish the agony.

Marco’s fingers scroll and massage as he works my skin. I feel him wipe at me, smudging blood down over my ribs. Skinny ribs. They wrap around me like claws, straining to escape thin flesh.

I want to see Marco’s scarlet-sodden cloth again. It is tinged; stained with his colours. Vermillion fights with jaundiced yellow. Umber, burnt and orange spreads into azure.

Exquisite art coils around me, creeping in at the sides. I see tendrils at my waist, tickling as they rise and fall to stroke my limbs.

I moan. It stings.

He rests a hand upon my naked shoulder. I don’t hear his soothing words.

It is done.
__________________________

My soul was yours until my saviour found me. Marco’s inks and Marco’s spikes replaced my addiction, eased my obsession.

You led me, forced me, dictated my every move. You took all of me - then left me alone - desperate for you.

Now, my back covered in Marco’s own vision of my personal demon - caged and bound forever - I defy you. I need never see your face again.

Get thee behind me…

Paper Lace by Lily Childs (c)

This was my entry to March 2010's One Word Challenge - a 200-word max flash fiction comp over at Writers Talkback, the online forum from Writing Magazine.
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Paper Lace

Needles tottered from tubes, feeding into flesh that decayed by the second. Corey Beal sensed the panic rising in frantic conversations around him.

‘Can he hear us?’

‘We don’t know Mrs Beal, but it’s unlikely.’

‘I can. Mum, please – tell me what’s happening.’ Corey screamed in silence, his mouth still. His blind eyes stared at the ceiling. In and out of consciousness, tinny bells rang in Corey’s ears. Steel instruments jangled on the surgeon’s trolley, blade to blade. Sharp, stinging cuts brought oblivion.

‘Mrs Beal. The spider itself is rare. The bite, more so.’

‘This venom, you say it’s fighting his immune system for dominance?’

Without seeing, Corey knew the doctor was nodding, holding his mother’s hand.

‘What’s happening to him?’

Torture.

‘We are so sorry. Your son… will be dead within 12 hours. I’m afraid we can do no more.’

Corey’s mother cried, she shouted, she begged. She got the answer she didn’t want.

‘You see his skin, Mrs Beal? It's turning to paper. The venom is eating Corey from the inside out. Tomorrow, he will be an empty chrysalis.’

Missing the doctor’s last words, Corey passed into the agony of his own demise.
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Judge's comments:
 
Top story as usual from Lily, with a deft touch of the creeps for all arachnophobes out there.

Nice flashes of description as well, like ‘...instruments jangled on the surgeon’s trolley, blade to blade. Sharp, stinging cuts brought oblivion’ which made you feel Corey’s pain, and brought immediacy to the piece.
 

More from judge, A. J. Humpage on her blog http://allwritefictionadvice.blogspot.com// 

I'm Back

Things are...

Carpaccio by Lily Childs

My latest chiller is now up at Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers. Thanks, Matt.

It's Carpaccio, by Lily Childs (c). As always, not for the delicate of heart.

Excerpts:

"I prepared a new entry for tonight. A eulogy.
I didn’t usually record the times and dates of their deaths because that made it kind of final. I liked the idea that the agony would go on forever."
*****
"I went to my wardrobe; it had a brassy padlock hanging from the double handles. I unlocked it with the key I kept in my wallet. On the top shelf was a book. I’d been keeping it for years - since Jean-Paul. I recorded them all after they passed on.
My beautiful boys.
In the last few years I’d made some additional entries."
*****
"I had to dispose of my short-term girlfriend. I didn’t have much choice, she was too far gone."
*****
 
Hope you enjoy it. It's salty. Read Carpaccio...

My Body Is A Cage

If you're not disturbed and thrilled by this track by Arcade Fire, and the accompanying video excerpt from Ennio Morricone's 'Once Upon A Time In The West' then you have no soul.