WEIRD TALES: The Original Gothic Fantasy Magazine

WEIRD TALES readers: Update your blog feeds!

2007-11-20T21:04:00.000-08:00

Ahoy, readers -- we've outgrown the technical confines of the old WEIRD TALES website, and are renovating the place with a spiffy new WordPress engine! What's more, we've built the new version of WeirdTalesMagazine.com on a new server -- which means that if you currently read this by the RSS feed, you should waste no time in subscribing to the new one, which is located here: the NEW RSS FEED for WeirdTalesMagazine.com via weirdtales.net.

And if you've got WeirdTalesMagazine.com bookmarked, you might want to empty your browser cache before the next time you visit, to make sure you're reading the site on our new server (weirdtales.net), not our old one (darkfantasy.org).

If you're so inclined, tell us what you think of the new digs! Comment on the "Web site update" post over there, or email to letters(at)weirdtales(dot)net.

"Cask of Amontillado" party at World Fantasy

2007-11-06T11:34:00.000-08:00

We had a great time at the World Fantasy Convention, celebrating the release of the new issue of WEIRD TALES (#346) as well as our new trade paperback collection, Weird Tales: The 21st Century, Vol. 1. The brilliantly creative crew at ASFA, the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists, hosted our party in their hotel suite, and it was a blast. Since WEIRD TALES was inspired in the first place by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, we held a "Cask of Amontillado" party, where our guests could partake of the delicious sherry while being chained and bricked up for all eternity. Or something. Here are the pictures (shot by Nivair H. Gabriel and Sean Wallace).

Halloween radio broadcast

2007-10-31T12:52:00.001-07:00

The long-running New York City radio show Hour of the Wolf featured WEIRD TALES on its "Samhain Spectacular" Halloween show last Saturday. Listen at the WBAI archives to the two-hour show in its entirety, which includes a half-hour of ghostly-themed music as well as host Jim Freund's conversation with WT editorial director Stephen Segal about the magazine's past, present and future.

New in paperback!

2007-10-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

Hitting bookstores nationwide just in time for holiday shopping, it's our new trade paperback collection: Weird Tales: The Twenty-First Century, Vol. 1. Featuring ten favorite stories from the past year's worth of WEIRD TALES, by great authors like Richard Parks, Carrie Vaughn, and Holly Phillips — plus two brand new originals from Paul E. Martens and Peadar O Guilin!

Full contents:

Introduction by Stephen H. Segal; "The Man Who Carved Skulls" by Richard Parks; "Six Scents" by Lisa Mantchev; "Working Out Our Salvation" by Trent Hergenrader; "Bob Bodey's Body Parts" by William Markly O'Neal; "Ravenous" by Phil Brucato; "Spider Comes Home" by Gerard Houarner; "The Past Never Dies" by Holly Phillips; "For Fear of Dragons" by Carrie Vaughn; "What Happened When Tammy Brookmeyer Sold Her House" by Paul E. Martens; "The Drain" by Peadar O Guilin; "The Furious Host" by Barth Anderson; "The Release" by Kurt Newton

Issue no. 346!

2007-10-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

Does the new issue of WEIRD TALES feature a remarkable story of Norse myth running drunken and amok through modern-day Wisconsin, courtesy of novelist Barth Anderson? It does.

Does it feature Tanith Lee conjuring up a vignette about a lonely woman who calls to the netherworld, with pictures by maverick illustrator Molly Crabapple? It does.

Does it follow new contributor Paul M. Berger to Japan for the 100-percent true story of his nightmarish experience sharing an apartment with giant hairy spiders that watched him while he slept? Oh, it does.

Does it offer up Weird Tales columnist Elizabeth Genco's chat with comics scribe-turned-urban fantasist Mike Carey? It most certainly does.

And does it kick things off with the indescribable "Bob Bodey's Body Parts," the very first published story by writer-to-keep-an-eye-on William Markly O'Neal? You'd better believe it does.

Oh, and by the way -- is all that only a taste of the well-spiced delicacies within? Are there twice again that many original tales of the bizarre and unusual to be savored as well, not to mention more interviews, book reviews, and all-around oddness?

That is correct. Enjoy.

Weirdism: "The Year of Ninja Spiders"

2007-10-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

Original nonfiction by Paul M. Berger
Copyright (c) 2007 / May not be reproduced without permission

For a period of eight months, I held off an invasion of giant spiders with a vacuum cleaner.

This story is true. At the time, I was working as a bureaucrat in a small, out-of-the-way city in Japan, in the heart of an area known mainly for its earthy, volatile people, mercilessly humid summers, and proximity to an assortment of live volcanoes. It all began the day I arrived.

My new co-workers greeted me at the airport at the end of a 50-hour journey from New York, and drove me to the apartment they had prepared for me. It was a nice enough place for a bachelor, mixing traditional Japanese and western rooms, and overlooking a small wood. Poking around, I slid open a closet door to see what sort of linens they had provided. Abruptly, out shot a brown blur roughly the size and shape of one of those hand-things in Alien that stuff themselves down your throat and then burst out of your thorax. Faster than my eye could follow, it flashed up past my face, across the wall, and out the window, which I knew was locked closed.

In retrospect, I marvel that this did not make more of an impression on me at the time. But I was jetlagged beyond rational thought, and my new co-workers did not appear to have noticed it at all. When they said, “Let’s go introduce you to the neighbors,” my brain decided that whatever I had just seen was not worth worrying about, and dropped the whole issue.

The incident snapped back to me with perfect clarity about a week later, when I noticed some sort of mutant tarantula picking its way across my ceiling. Its brown body was nearly the size of my thumb, and its legs could almost have been slender and delicate fingers. “Aha,” I thought. “That must be the nightmare that lives in my closet.”

It moved as if it wanted something from the kitchen and was hoping I wouldn’t notice it, but it wasn’t the type of thing you could ever not notice walking across your ceiling. I followed it, and it picked up the pace. I pursued, God help me, waving the newspaper I had been reading. It fled, and became a gravity-defying tumbleweed that shot across the room faster than I could run. It moved so fast that it couldn’t keep track of all its legs, and it collided with the wall. It made a little “bonk” noise.

I was living with a spider possessing sufficient mass to go “bonk” when it ran into things.

It backed away from the wall, shook itself off, did a lap around the perimeter of the room, and disappeared.

It came back a day or two later. I made a show of being large and aggressive, and it retreated into the corner behind the TV. When I finally worked up the nerve to go look, it was gone.

Now, I’ve shared living space with wild creatures before. I once brought home a praying mantis as a kid, and I was entirely too sympathetic to the mouse that moved into my fifth-floor walk-up. Squirrels think I’m a gas, and in grad school one handed me a mouthful of leaves in exchange for a granola bar. This spider, however, had bristly hair and visible fangs, and a chronic surreptitious attitude that telegraphed with every step it took that it was up to no good.

On top of that, it was disturbingly, fluidly mobile, which meant I would never know where it would turn up next. It had to go.

It was clearly too big to squash — that would be like squashing a chipmunk. I decided to exploit the benefits of our industrialized society, and the next time the spider appeared on my wall, I blasted it with half a can of spray pesticide. It ran to its space behind the TV and used the tips of its front legs to fastidiously wipe the chemicals from its body.

Then it glared at me for the rest of the day.

The spider showed up again on a weekend, while I was cleaning the apartment. Here’s where the vacuum cleaner came in. It was a canister-type vacuum, and I swung the tube at the spider until it fled into a corner and brandished its front legs and mandibles at me. Then, just to see what would happen, I pointed the nozzle at it. The spider was sucked right off the wall, and I heard it rattling down the length of the hose into the canister.

My first thought was: I’ve done it.

My second thought was: I can never turn this vacuum cleaner off ever again, or that spider is going to climb back out and come after me.

I ran into the kitchen and stuck the nozzle into the garbage and sucked up everything heavy and sharp I could find. After about ten minutes I tried shutting the vacuum cleaner off, though I sat and watched it for much longer. Nothing emerged. I had won.

The next day when I got home from work, there was a giant spider waiting for me, and it occurred to me for the first time there was more than one of them.

* * *

The incursions happened every day, more and more often. As typhoon season set in, they left the nearby forest and came inside, where it was dry and calm (until I saw them and started screaming). They never built webs — they didn’t have to. They hunted insects by speed and stealth, pouncing on their victims with a long-legged running start. Sometimes I would hear a crunching from the next room, and find a spider in the middle of the floor, eating a cockroach like a sandwich.

I suppose I should have been grateful for the pest control, but all I could think was: They’re faster than cockroaches, and they don’t like me. I started leaving the vacuum cleaner in the middle of my apartment for easy access, and found myself reflexively scanning the walls whenever I entered a room.

Then the dreams began.

I would wake up in the middle of the night, startled by a dream of a spider crouching on the wall, watching me as I slept. When I shined a flashlight on that part of the wall, the spider would in fact be there, always in exactly the same place as in the dream, watching me — its eyes so big that they glittered in the flashlight beam like a cat’s. This, I concluded in terror, could only mean that my spiders had psychic powers. The alternative — that they were actually on all the walls — was too horrible to even consider until years later.

Once I awoke from a dream that a spider was on the window, and when I shined the light, there it was, though safely on the outside. I left the beam on it to scare it away, but the spider decided it liked the light. The window was two sliding panes with a watertight rubber seal between them, and as I watched, that little demon inserted one leg at a time through the rubber seal, phased through it, and came out on my side of the glass, centered in the circle of light.

* * *

Spiders were not always objects of the same level of revulsion that they are today. In the myths of many cultures around the world, they aid humans with gifts of skills and crafts, particularly weaving. It may be that our perspective changed as civilization distanced itself from nature and began building homes that were supposed to keep wildlife safely on the outside — obviously something no one consulted my spiders about.

One of the most unsettling things about finding a spider in the home is that they are impossible to relate to — more so than most creatures. It takes some level of intelligence to stalk prey the way these did, but when I watched one of them watching me, I couldn’t begin to fathom what was going on in its mind. What is the world like to an animal with clusters of eyes of different sizes and the ability to run straight up? It was more alien to me than a bird or lizard or even a fish would be.

When I read China Miéville’s novel Perdido Street Station, I got the sense he knew exactly what I’m talking about. His character the Weaver is a gargantuan spider that steps in and out of time, speaks in streams of barely comprehensible images, and interacts with the world as if it were an immense work of art that only it can perceive. It is powerful, terrifying, and a complete enigma to everyone else — which is exactly how I imagine a spider would want it to be.

* * *

As a Westerner living in rural Japan I often felt isolated, but I had to speak to someone about my problem. At work, I approached the head of my department and asked, “So, what do the people around here do about all the giant spiders?”

“What giant spiders?” he asked.

I described them.”Oh, no,” he told me. “We don’t have spiders like that in Japan.”

In other words, I was clearly mistaken, and that was the end of that. I suspect he thought I would be relieved.

In Japan, it’s not uncommon to deny or disregard certain uncomfortable facts in the interest of maintaining harmony or a group’s self-image. For instance: Doctors don’t always tell patients they’ve got cancer. There’s a whole oppressed underclass caste you’ve probably heard nothing about. And good luck finding a history textbook with a recognizable account of that whole messy World War II business.

My spiders, it seemed, fell into that category. No matter who I described them to, I met a wall of denial. These creatures were simply too wrong, too far from the world we were supposed to be living in, to be acknowledged.

Let’s put this into perspective: We’re talking about the country where kids keep large beetles as pets, where Godzilla fought Mothra, and where people pay a premium to eat a slice of octopus tentacle so fresh that the rest of the octopus is still sulking in the tank. And what I had strolling across my ceiling was considered too creepy to talk about. Either everyone knew and refused to admit it, or the few that did know understood they could never burden others with their terrible knowledge.

I became relentless in my quest for validation. Any time I met someone new, I immediately described my giant spider situation and demanded they tell me what they knew about them. (In retrospect, this period coincides with a particularly dry stretch in my romantic life.) I learned nothing, but developed a far-flung reputation. Years later, I happened upon a travel memoir called Hokkaido Highway Blues, written by a Canadian who hitchhiked the length of Japan. On page 63, the author is picked up by two young women, who, upon discovering that he’s North American, ask if he knows me, by name. “He did talk a lot about spiders,” one of them explains. “He was very afraid.”

I’m just surprised that the writer could cross the entire country and only run into two people who knew that.

Finally, I brought home a video camera, and recorded a particularly confident spider emerging from behind the TV and perambulating the room. The next morning I went into work and popped the tape straight into the VCR without a word. I worked in a bustling, crowded bureaucratic office where people were constantly calling out, lighting cigarettes, and answering phones. The moment the tape came on and the spider stretched its bristly legs, there was silence. Phones rang but went unanswered, and stacks of papers toppled over onto neighboring desks. “What do you say to that?” I asked the room in general, a note of triumph sneaking into my voice.

There was a pause, until finally the department head mumbled, “... I thought you meant something else.” It was a short-lived victory, however. You can’t just go around disproving things that everyone has agreed to believe in, and my boss resented me for as long as I was there.

Meanwhile, my home was still under siege, and the invaders were willing to accept staggering losses and keep coming.

* * *

When the next wave began the following spring, I finally admitted defeat. I moved across town to a place where the top of the food chain was occupied by mere cockroaches, who at least had the decency to scatter when I turned on a light.

Shortly after that, I ran into a fellow American, a strapping cowboy type originally from Montana, with a bandage wrapped around his forearm. I asked what happened to his arm.

“No one believes me,” he said, “but I’ve got these giant spiders in my house...”

Finally, I thought. Finally.

It turned out a spider had climbed into bed with him, and when he swatted it, it bit him, and the wound became infected. “But I got him, though,” he said. “I chased him down and killed him. And then I boiled it and mailed it home to my brother for proof.”

My videotape has since disappeared under suspicious circumstances, but if you ever need evidence that this story is true, I imagine that somewhere in a ranch in Montana there is a trophy room filled with elk and moose and bear — and, in a place of honor, the head of a giant spider mounted on a plaque.

Paul M. Berger is an associate editor at Sybil's Garage. Those brave souls who may actually be nutty enough to want to SEE the kind of beast he writes about above can try Googling "Japanese huntsman spider," or just wander over and look here.

Party with famous monsters!

2007-10-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

WEIRD TALES is proud to sponsor "Things that Go Bump," a new exhibition of monster-themed art at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City. It's a piercing gaze into the ways in which the human experience has been reflected in the malformed shapes of traditional monster archetypes. There will be artwork featuring zombies, demons, vampires, ghosts, and witches on display, from such legendary artists as Charles Addams, Jack Kirby, Rick Geary, Mike Mignola, Gahan Wilson -- and many more. The show runs through March 17, 2008 -- but if you're in New York Halloween weekend, join us at the opening gala this Sat., Oct. 27! The reception starts at 6:30, and the masquerade party at 8 pm. Directions and more details are at www.moccany.org.

Looking ahead: Michael Moorcock in 2008

2007-10-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

With the 85th anniversary of WEIRD TALES on the horizon in 2008, we've got some exciting plans in the works. The first official announcement, courtesy of new fiction editor Ann VanderMeer: Michael Moorcock has sold us a brand new Elric novella, which will appear in issue #349 next spring!

Issue no. 346

2007-10-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update: Weird Tales #346 will be available next week. Details to follow!

Cthulhu's cousins

2007-10-09T08:59:00.001-07:00

It seems only appropriate for WEIRD TALES to note that yesterday was International Cephalopod Awareness Day. Learn more about the aliens of the deep who are the closest biological relatives of H.P. Lovecraft's apocalyptic cosmic superstar of destruction!

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day: "The Drunken Mermaids"

2007-09-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

Original fiction by Mary Catelli
Copyright (c) 2007 / May not be reproduced without permission

Morning came, despite the storm, but Colin knew it only from the light slowly increasing. He ached from clinging to the rock, his sodden clothing was growing stiff from salt, and he was so weary that the stone felt like a pillow. The squall had subsided, but the rock was still slippery, from rain and seaweed. He tried not to think of the men who had gone down with the ship.

Despite his weariness, his parched mouth kept him awake. He tried to swallow, and the pain of that stirred him. He pushed off the rock. Without the waves battering at him, he could stand.

The islet was made of the nondescript gray stone. A ring of dreary seaweed lay about the high tide mark, and more scattered where the squall had tossed it. All about, the sunrise painted the waters delicate shades of pink, yellow, and orange; only the faintest of breezes made it ripple. The skies above were filled with puffy clouds, like brilliantly colored angel feathers. Colin swallowed again and turned his head. The wreckage of the Golden Gull was still visible: wood piled up on the shore, and bodies among them. The cargo was visibly leaking. Wine, rum, and brandy all spilling, the wine coloring the sea red — the fishes were no doubt as drunk as lords — but he could drink some of that wine.

The wine-dark sea, thought Colin, as his limbs slowly came back to life. It was a pity that Uncle Archibald would never hear how his nephew had indeed listened.

He staggered to his feet. A moan sounded, barely audible over the faint breeze. Colin blinked and looked about. He had survived, after all; someone else might have.

Another rock shifted and proved to be a sailor in rags, his face weather-beaten and his hair salt-and-pepper. The man leaned on the nearest outcropping. It took Colin a minute to place him: Ned Edwards.

“Ned?”

The sailor looked up. He shielded his eyes with his hands. “Young Colin Fairington,” he announced. Colin glanced at the rocks and took a step toward him, but Ned managed to walk without his aid. “A midshipman, on his first sea voyage.”

Colin wondered if the sailor had been hit on the head during the wreck.

“Listen to an old salt, young Master Fairington: stick to me like glue, ’cause we’re each other’s proof that we aren’t pirates.”

Ned babbled on, about how the pirates so often marooned unpopular captains or sailors who violated their articles, that they were called marooners, but Colin took in little more than every third word. He scanned the horizon. The colors were still vivid and delicate, and uninterrupted by any sign of ships. He scowled.

“We should see if we can fetch some wine from the wreck,” he said. “Or maybe even water, which would be better.” Ned peered at him. “And then we could set some of the wreckage ablaze, as a signal.”

Ned cackled with laughter. “You don’t ’magine that any ship’s sailing near enough to see it — or you wouldn’t ’magine if you weren’t a young pup with no sense. They ain’t sailing near these rocks.” He gestured about.

“Well, then,” said Colin, “we aren’t going to be taken for pirates, are we?”

Ned gave him a sour look.

As if anyone would take us for pirates with a shipwreck beside us, though Colin, but quarreling would not wet his throat. He headed down to the wreck. The sea had tossed up a wine barrel. It lay in a sandy nook and leaked about the spigot. Colin held out his hands to catch the wine and drank it down. It seemed to not reach his stomach, but be drawn into his parched mouth. It also seemed to restore his wits: he turned on the spigot and drank from it, splashing the sand with red.

* * *

The wood lay piled up, higgledy-piggledy. Colin stood in the shade of it and looked at the barrels behind the beams. The waves had carried away the food and the water, but not all of the ship’s cargo.

Four hands might shift those beams, thought Colin, but he had more wine — the weakest vintage he could find — than he could readily move as it was. He should get the barrels higher on the islet before the tide came in.

Picking his way out through the stone, he came upon a smaller barrel: brandy. He looked at it a moment, remembering Christmas dinners with lighted brandy, and took up the barrel under his arm.

He emerged. The sea gulls leapt up, screaming wildly, from the bodies they had been pecking at. Colin shuddered and turned to the barrels. He had little else to distract him. He picked one up and headed up. As he passed the sand, he saw footprints not his, next to the barrel he had drunk from, coming to it and leading away from it.

“Conscientious little fellow, aren’t you?” said Ned, as Colin lugged the first barrel onto the higher rock. “Doing your best for your masters.”

Colin shrugged. “Won’t make much difference to them.” He grinned. “Unless the insurance finds out and declares that being drunk by a ship-wrecked sailor is not covered.”

“They ain’t gonna find out, pup,” said Ned.

Colin shrugged again and went down to heave up more. He did not want to lose his evidence that he was not a pirate, he thought with a grin. The sea gulls screamed again, and the grin faded. Not to mention that he would go mad, alone with the corpses and the gulls, if Ned died of thirst.

At the last barrel of the six he would take — his arms ached as never before — he hefted it up and stopped, though it weighed in his arms. He thought he heard singing, and strange singing it was. After a moment, the wind shifted, the sound vanished, and not certain he had not imagined it, Colin plugged on, out of the wreck.

“Gotten all you’re getting?” said Ned.

“For now,” said Colin. “I even got cups.”

Ned snorted. “Not going to do any good, pup. You go around drinking wine, you’re going to end up thirsty.”

“Worse than going without? I got the weakest vintage I could.”

“Won’t last you long.”

“Well,” said Colin, “you don’t have to drink any. It will leave me more.” He sat. “It was strange. I heard singing —”

Ned snorted. Potent wine you have there, pup. You haven’t even drunk any of it yet." He reached for the nearest spigot. Colin sat back against the stone. After a moment, Ned looked up from the wine cup. His expression was strange; baffled, Colin thought. “Very potent stuff — indeed. ’Cause I can hear ’em now.”

Colin held his breath, and the sound came clearly enough. He made out one phrase’s words: “Give me some time, to blow a man down.” He scowled. The old sea shanty, but the voices almost sounded feminine, and the sea still bore no ships.

The voices came again, more clearly.

“Come all ye young fellows that follows the sea,
“To me, way hey, blow the man down.
“Now please pay attention and listen to me.
“Give me some time to blow the man down."

Slowly, Colin rose to his feet. Moments later, Ned got up. He shambled after as Colin headed down to the tiny beach.

* * *

Not only the fishes were drunk.

Colin stood, his hands on his hips. Not even Ned’s most cynical remarks about the potency of the wine could reach him, not when the wine-dark sea held mermaids frolicking, feminine forms and fish tails like an old salt’s yarn. He swallowed. Like a yarn told by an ancient salt in his cups. No one else would venture such a tale because no one would believe him, that he had actually seen the treacherous, seductive mermaids.

The mermaids sang a sea shanty in voices that belied the stories about their sweet singing. The false notes and coarseness might be the wine, he conceded. On the other hand, as a curious handful swam over, he noted that the old salts left out other things from their stories. The mermaids were not, in fact, all slim young maidens, or even buxom women, but all the way up to crones. One wrinkled old mermaid grinned toothlessly at him. He glanced away, and his gaze fell on one of the maiden ones. She smiled, tossing her blonde hair back from her naked body. Colin turned scarlet and looked away, out over the sea. Seductive — the old salts were not lying about that.

Seductive and treacherous, Colin reminded himself, for all that he could not steady his breathing. Fond of drowning men. For all that he could do nothing there but sit in the shade and drink wine, he ought to go back up the islet, to the rocks.

Ned hooted with mirth. “Should never have been a sailor, pup. The whores in any port will sport with you till you’re that color for life!” He faced the mermaids. “Lad’s on his maiden voyage!” he announced, and drew a roar of laughter.

“What’s the matter, pup?” repeated a mermaid. “Though I must say you are a fine figure of a young pup.” She swam out into his vision and smiled at him, flaunting her body. “All’s well that ends well, that’s what I always said,” she said, falling back and flourishing her greenish tail.

“You don’t always say that,” said one, snidely, drawing Colin’s attention back to the rest. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ned watching them avidly. Even the old sailor, used to the whores in the ports, was allured by these creatures with fish tails.

“Yesh she does,” said another. She waved one pale hand in air. “Ash least — fig-ur-a-tive-ly.” She beamed for pride at remembering the word. The complaining mermaid snarled, and the air rang with drunken and angry complaints rather than song.

“You’re a fine one, pup,” said Ned. “Can’t be two men on the Earth who’d turn such fine ladies to quarreling, not when they could be paying heed to him.” He punched Colin lightly in the shoulder. “Live big!”

“Don’t you mean, die big?” said Colin. He wondered if the other sailors had drowned in the wreck, if mermaids had — assisted some of the others along. “Didn’t you get close enough to drowning last night?”

Ned, for a moment, looked serious. He took another swig from the barrel and glanced at how the sunlight glittered on the sea. “We should get some shade,” he muttered, and the two sailors went up the rocks again.

Their quarrel dying down, the mermaids’ voices came after them: “What shall we do with a drunken sailor? What shall we do with a drunken sailor?”

And the worst of it, thought Colin, was that they were not mocking him and Ned; they were just amusing themselves. He closed his eyes from a moment. He suspected that he knew why the sailors claimed that men would throw themselves into the waves after a singing mermaid.

Ned took a deep swig of wine as soon as they reached the barrels. “I suppose you’ll be talking about a raft next.”

Colin gave the wreck a wary glance. It might be possible at that, to get enough wood and fix it together.

Ned cackled with laughter. “No currents, pup, not that would drag you somewhere. And you’re not going to rig some sails — the cloth is gone.”

Oars, thought Colin, but Ned went on. “And that’s without reckoning on them. They don’t want you to leave, and a raft’s going to be easy for them.” He took another cup full of wine. “Nah, nothing for us but this island or them.” He scowled as he lifted his cup.

Colin fetched himself a cup without meeting Ned’s gaze.

* * *

The rocks offered little shade, and Ned drank steadily as the tide rose and fell again. Colin sat a rock over, drinking less, but his mouth would not permit him to abstain. He wished he could have found water. The mermaids sang on and on, with none of the charm that the old salts’ tale spoke of. More wine seeped out of the wreck as the waves bore the first of it away.

The sunset turned the ocean and sky into a fiery tapestry. Colin sighed. After all the work, he was bone-weary, and the rock felt comfortable, once again. He closed his eyes.

Ned slammed down the cup. Colin opened his eyes with a start, but the old salt did not glance at him. His gaze was on the waters of the wreck, where the mermaids were singing.

“My clothes are all in pawn,
“Go down you blood red roses, go down."

“I’ve had it, pup,” Ned announced. “I’m going to die big.”

Colin tried to blink his sleep away, but his befuddled mind had barely managed to take in Ned’s declaration before the sailor was heading down to the sands.

“Go down you blood red roses, go down
“Oh you pinks and posies
“Go down you blood red roses, go down."

Colin sat up, to see Ned silhouetted against the sunset, and calling to the mermaids. “All you fine ladies, I have — resist-ed your charms too long.” He spread his arms. “I ha’ come to — uncondish-onally surrender.”

Giggles spread from the waters. He’s drunk, thought Colin. He ran as Ned waded into the water, but when Colin reached the shore, two smiling mermaids had Ned, one by each arm. One pressed her naked body against him, eliciting a broad grin from the sailor, while the other eased off his shirt and reached for his belt. The other mermaids swarmed around, smiling. Several glanced at Colin, with beguiling sweetness in their faces; and as Ned, naked, was steered to deeper water, the youngest and most innocent looking — the one who had thrown back her hair for him that morning — extended her arms.

Drowning would be quicker than hunger, came his first thought, and the second thought said, Ned looks pleased with his reception. Colin bolted up the islet. A mermaid’s voice came melodiously after him, “Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies,” and Colin shuddered. The mermaids, and Ned, laughed, and the songs continued to chase him: “From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!”

Colin closed his eyes, but the writhing bodies formed just as clearly in his memory as before his eyes. He groaned.

* * *

After a long night on a rocky bed, with dreams to make him blush, Colin sat on the shore. A new body floated, deep in the waters.

“So much for proof that I am not a pirate,” he said, but even that piece of wit did not manage to raise his gloom.

The mermaids again sang of what to do with a drunken sailor and cast sidelong, admiring glances at him. Colin looked at the wood from the Golden Gull, up on the rocks, and wondered if it were possible to make a raft of it, whatever Ned said. He might be able to paddle to where a ship might find him. He walked off the beach. If the mermaids drowned him then, at least it would be while trying to escape and not in a drunken surrender.

Another quarrel broke out behind him, of who had driven him off, and who had let him escape the evening before. In spite of everything, Colin smiled.

* * *

The raft progressed steadily enough that, by noon, Colin wondered whether the currents would lead him anywhere useful, or if he could just die of thirst on the raft as well as on the islet. The mermaids had abandoned their quarrels and sang once again of blowing a man down.

The waters began to heave, as if the ocean itself were boiling. Drunk though they were, the mermaids stopped singing. Some even looked frightened and pulled back toward the shore.

Slowly, a head rose above the water: a regal woman, her black hair streaming down like a wave. Though she was as naked as the other mermaids otherwise, a crown of gold and pearls rested on her head. She rose up to contemplate her subjects. One mermaid dipped her head and murmured, “Your Most Oceanic Majesty,” and the others hurried to imitate her.

“Do you think you can thus set aside the report I have had of you?” She lunged forward, and the wave that followed was much larger than it should have been for a motion like that. Colin stepped back, quickly. The water lapped where he had stood; with this many mermaids about, he did not want to get in the ocean at all.

The Queen of the Mermaids did not seem to notice. Her gaze was only on her subjects. “Quarrels! Should I expect civil war to break out in my realm next? The entire ocean has rung with your squabbles! And as for your singing . . .” She sniffed. “I could declaim your allegiance, for no true mermaid sings so dreadfully, and you are making us the laughingstock of all beneath the waves.”

The Queen of the Mermaids, thought Colin, must control much of the sea. Even if only the mermaids obey her, she would be powerful.

“Shorry,” said one mermaid. The others looked away from the queen.

“As for your manners — I have seen every one of you in court. You have no excuse for your ignorance!”

“They’re drunk,” said Colin.

The queen looked at him, her eyes narrowing. Colin explained about the cargo. She looked at the wreck, drawing slightly farther away from it. “It is of limited size,” she murmured, scarcely louder than the lapping waves. “It will stop spilling in time.”

“I have more,” said Colin. “I can make it go on spilling wine for a long, long time.”

The queen’s face contorted. “What have we done to you?”

Murdered my proof I was not a pirate, Colin thought, with dark humor — but Ned’s being a fool did not make the mermaids less murderous. “You murdered the man with me; saving my life strikes me as only just return.”

The queen glanced at the other mermaids. One said, “There was another sailor on the rock. He joined us last night.”

Cascades of giggles came all around. “He was amusing,” said another mermaid.

“You’re amusing when you’re drunk,” said Colin.

The queen looked on the verge of rage. Colin met her gaze. This was no time to display any weakness. “On the other hand, I have a raft. If this evening your mermaids can draw me, on it, to Queensport, I would refrain from amusing myself.”

The Queen of the Mermaids smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. Colin managed to twitch his lips in response. Whatever her plans were, the risk could not be greater than staying here.

* * *

Colin warily floated the raft from the beach. He had brought down the barrels, and the setting sun was just beginning to tint the sky with yellow, but the mermaids could declare it evening at any time. He hurried to load the barrels aboard. Two of wine, to drink, and then four of brandy, and five of whisky. The raft bore them without riding too low in the water, and Colin added another one of wine.

The sun was turning all the west to the flame, and the moon hung in the east, in the rich blue of the sky.

“We shall tow this raft to Queensport!” said one mermaid, rising up about of the waves. Colin scrambled aboard, before they disclaimed any need to bring him, and the mermaids burst into cascades of giggles even as they surrounded the raft to tug it to sea. All young, lissome maidens, if you could ignore the tails; perhaps the older ones would not be strong enough.

One thing about the barrels, Colin thought. They shielded him enough from the mermaids’ seductive forms that he could remember their habits of drowning their lovers. He wriggled to the midst of the barrels.

He could almost hear the shrug in one mermaid’s voice. “To Queensport.”

* * *

Moonlight gleamed over the gentle swells, making a pattern of black and silver. Colin braced himself on the raft. He had labored all day to build that raft, but he could not sleep, not yet, not when the Queen of the Mermaids had smiled as she had, when he had offered his bargain. He had to sit up; if he lay down, he would sleep at once.

Then the ocean calmed about him, all the swells sinking to stillness. Colin was not surprised, even when all the mermaids let go. Their giggles were softer than whispers, but the sea was calm enough for him to hear. He reached out to take a barrel of brandy and put his hand about the spigot.

The Queen of the Mermaids smiled at him, not an arm’s reach from the raft. “I think this will suffice. You should be wary of making offers to queens, young pup.”

“Do you know what this is?” said Colin. He held out the barrel, and her smile faded away. “This is brandy. It is to wine as wine is to water. If I spill it now, you will be more drunk than any of your subjects. You will be the laughingstock of the ocean.”

Her eyebrows drew together. All about the mermaids swam closer, looking avidly at the barrel. The queen glanced at them. Her mouth thinned as she realized they would not just swim away if he spilled it.

She looked furious. Then, her subjects had sounded furious when they quarreled in the waters about the wreck. It did not mean that they persisted in their quarrels long. He inched the barrel farther out and moderated his voice. “Come along. Ensure that your subjects do not disgrace you.”

After a moment, she shrugged, as if the game was up, and gestured for her subjects to continue drawing the raft. Colin sat back. Fickle as water, you shall not excel, thought Colin, wryly.

* * *

The sky showed the faintest traces of gray in the black. The air took on the scents of flotsam and jetsam decaying on the beach, and plants. Colin felt, vaguely, the raft grinding ashore and heard, even less distinctly, the retreating whispers of the mermaids, but he did nothing more than lay his head down. Barrel of brandy’s an odd pillow, he thought but could manage nothing more before he slept.

* * *

Seagulls screamed. Colin woke with a jolt, to limbs stiffer than the day after the squall, sunlight beating down on a white sand beach, a bone-dry mouth, and shouts: “You! What are you doing there?”

Colin looked over. The uniforms had him put his hands in the air even before the soldiers pointed their guns at him. Behind the soldiers, a crowd gawked, from babies in their mother’s arms and little children peering beneath people’s arms, to old men hobbling from their shaded seats, from ragged beggars with signs advertising their ailments to merchants in brocade, too surprised by the sight to realize the company they were in.

Not as deserted as the islet, Colin thought.

* * *

Colin knew how little likely it was for a midshipman to stand in the governor’s residence; but then, the story he had to tell was strange; and the governor had received him in an office by the entrance, and not the grander rooms within. And the governor, like the rest of the island, had hoped that the shipment would arrive soon.

“Mermaids,” said the governor. “It couldn’t have been mermaids.” He gave Colin a baneful look that did not auger well for him if he insisted on his story.

They had not only given him all the water — sweet, sweet water — that he could drink, they had given him a bath to wash him clean of the salt, and Colin did not much care whether the governor believed him. “I suppose I was not the best of witnesses, Your Honor. There was only wine to drink, and I suppose I was tipsy most or all of the time.”

The governor looked relieved — and then he scowled.

“I would not, however, advise any man wrecked on that rock to put to sea on a raft and hope that the currents will bear him to Queensport.”

The governor’s scowl deepened.

No, there are not many explanations for how I escaped that islet, and none of them are plausible, thought Colin, amused. He looked innocently back at the governor. “I believe the owners’ recovery ship retrieved much of the brandy and wine from the wreck. I know that many of the barrels were intact when I — left. I told the owners so.”

The governor looked as if wondering whether, after all Colin had said, he should believe such a statement.

Colin thought of the barrels on his raft, which the governor had to have heard of. He said, “The ship sailed in to harbor this morning. The captain looked pleased.”

At that comment, the governor looked relieved. Colin tried to keep his face steady. The mermaids were not the only ones to lose their judgment over wine.

Mary Catelli's story "The Drunken Mermaids" appears in the forthcoming Weird Tales #346, with original illustrations by Molly Crabapple.

H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror no. 4

2007-09-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

Got an itch for some good old-fashioned horror stories? Check out WEIRD TALES's sister publication, H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror. Issue no. 4 is out now, featuring Esther Friesner's Mythos-noir yarn "The Really Big Sleep," Morgan Llywelyn's end-of-the-world tale "The View From Here," Ron Goulart's lycanthropic mystery "The Problem of the Missing Werewolf," and lots more dark fiction and poetry. Plus: an interview with bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton!

Jacqueline Carey on art, travel and creating new worlds

2007-08-04T04:45:00.000-07:00

Dark fantasy author Jacqueline Carey chats with WEIRD TALES correspondent Elizabeth Genco. Find out what exactly the woman behind the bestselling Kushiel’s Dart series has to say about “smutty military cadences sung by Julius Caesar’s men.”

Jacqueline Carey’s much-ballyhooed debut novel, Kushiel’s Dart, took the fantasy world by storm with its gutsy portrayal of Phèdre, a young courtesan with masochistic tendencies bestowed on her by a demigod of pain. Unapologetic about her sexuality and her true nature, Phèdre turned the classic genre cliché of “heroine-as-victim” on its head. The Kushiel books are a great example of why it’s so vital for writers to push limits, and what can happen when they do.

Carey’s big risk paid off, winning her the 2002 Locus Award for Best First Novel and a legion of earnest, passionate fans who ink the book’s message into their own lives like — well, a tattoo (quite literally, as the galleries on Carey’s website can
attest). She treats her readers to a feast of intricately drawn worlds and some of the tightest plotting on the fantasy market today. She is hard at work finishing up the second Kushiel trilogy; its second volume, Kushiel’s Justice, is out now.

WEIRD TALES: Your world-building skills are, frankly, out of this world. How do you do it?

JACQUELINE CAREY: Research, research, research! Because I’m predominately writing alternate historical fantasy, there’s a wealth of material out there on which to draw. I always have a good idea of what my “itinerary” for a book is going to be, so I’m able to do a lot of research before I start. Once I start, I scramble along the way to fill in any gaps. I like to use the earliest source material I can find to describe a culture or a place, as it often feels more immediate and fantastic than more contemporary resources. And I have a certain amount of latitude, since I’m held to a standard of plausibility rather than accuracy.

WT: Do people ever write to complain that you got this or that detail "wrong?”

JC: Not often — maybe because I play so fast and loose with history that there wouldn’t be much point in it. I did have a reader write me to complain that Phèdre’s Boys’ marching chants was so anachronistic that it threw him out of the book. I politely informed him that there are records of smutty military cadences sung by Julius Caesar’s men.

WT: Do you have a system to keep it all together? Notebooks, flowcharts, whatever?

JC: Nope. Just a very crowded brain. . . . For me, one of the keys to good worldbuilding is finding just the right details to bring a setting to life. Too much detail can overwhelm the reader and drag down the narrative, but a few descriptive touches here and there engage the imagination. When readers’ imaginations are engaged, they tend to paint a more vivid portrait in their minds than when the writer is doing all the work for them.

WT: You worked in an art center while writing the first Kushiel book. Are you ever inspired by the visual arts?

JC: Definitely. Sometimes it’s in a very direct and specific way. I recall listening to a candidate for an art history professorship give a lecture on a Greek temple I wasn’t familiar with and feeling this “click” as the solution to a creative problem lurking in the back of my mind fell into place. The climactic scene in the Temple of Asherat in Kushiel’s Chosen was the result. Sometimes it’s in a more general sense. I recently saw an exhibition of Treasures of the Sacred Maya Kings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and stored that one away for future reference.

I think about my writing in very visual terms, and the visual arts feeds that creativity. It has a visceral impact it’s hard to capture in language. But just contemplating a piece like Goya’s “Third of May” can be a great object lesson in how to articulate a single moment of drama, horror and transcendence.

WT: I was very moved by the tattoo, art and picture galleries on your website — you seem to have some of the coolest fans around. Why do you think your work resonates with them the way it does?

JC: Yeah, my fans are awesome! I think the books resonate for all kinds of reasons – they’re hefty tomes and there’s a lot in them — but I’m guessing the primary reason, at least for the Kushiel series, is the theme of love as a redemptive force capable of effecting change in the world that runs through them. It’s a simple but powerful notion, and one I think most of us would like to believe.

Also, Phèdre, the heroine of the original trilogy, is a fairly unique character in the annals of epic fantasy. Her refusal to be victimized by her own nature and her ability to turn vulnerability into strength seems to strike a chord with a lot of readers.

WT: How many unpublished novels do you have sitting in a drawer somewhere?

JC: Like a lot of authors, I think it’s good for people, especially aspiring writers, to know what it can take to succeed in this business. I’ve got three languishing-in-a-drawer novels that will never see the light of day. I never thought I’d be grateful for the rejections, but with each one, I pushed myself to become a better writer.

WT: You're a big traveler. What are some of your favorite haunts?

JC: Well, I have to cite the south of France, since a trip there inspired the setting of Terre d’Ange! And I love the island of Crete, where I once spent a summer. I can find something to love almost anywhere.

WT: Any suggestions for travel on the cheap?

JC: My best suggestion is to do it while you’re young. In my early twenties, I traveled across Europe on a rail pass, crashing with friends or relatives whenever possible, staying at youth hostels otherwise, poring over my guidebook for the best cheap food available. The last time I went to Amsterdam, the sight of all the grungy young wanderers in the train station made me (a) glad I did it when I had the chance, and (b) glad I wasn’t doing it now! After a while, the prospect of sleeping three to a double bed just for the sake of free lodging isn’t as palatable as it used to be.

WT: Name a guilty pleasure. Or maybe two.

JC: People magazine and Breyer’s strawberry ice cream.

Weird Tales correspondent Elizabeth Genco is a frequent contributor to the Endicott Studio’s online Journal of Mythic Arts. Over the past year she’s interviewed a host of speculative-fiction authors and comic-book creators for the website Chemistry Set, which also hosts her own original comic series Scheherezade. Her interest in the mythic and fantastic extends as well to study of the tarot, and she was a featured writer in the 2007 Tarot Reader. With her husband, artist Leland Purvis, she also produces original illustrated storytelling at www.streetfables.com.

"In the Company of Women"

2007-08-04T04:27:00.000-07:00

Original fiction by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff & Mikal Trimm
Copyright (c) 2007 / May not be reproduced without permission

The first blister popped, bled.

The soil lay rock-like beneath the heavy frost, and his shovel worked scarcely better than a child’s toy. Still he kept digging, pausing only when his hands grew too cold to grip the handle, or when a fit of coughing took him, doubling him over to spit thickly on the ground.

His foot brushed against the gunnysack lying next to him, producing a muffled thud. Take a breath, man — don’t kill yourself in the doing.

He sat down on the small pile of fresh-dug dirt, pulling the sack closer to him. Gentle, now, his trembling hands doing their best to forget the cold, forget the strain of digging.

Who should I call? Mother or Grandmam?

The question still haunted him. Mother, her love a guidepost for her son, or the elder, the Grand — the sum of wisdom, the fount of arcane knowledge?

He stroked the outlines of their skulls through the sack. They huddled against each other in the darkness, chattering their secrets where he could not hear them.

He could not allow them their gossipy silence. He needed answers. He needed help.
He slipped a hand inside the bag’s cloth mouth, feeling cold bone and warm memories pressing up against his fingers.

Mother? He paused, listening to her soft murmur for a moment. Her voice was loving still, but tinged with sadness. Bitterness.

No. Love was the catalyst that sparked all this, but it had failed him before. And Maggie, more than anyone, would know how little love mattered in the final accounting.

He smoothed one fingertip down the length of a delicate cheekbone, then moved to stroke the other skull more harshly.

Grandmam, then. Wisdom, bleak though it might sometimes be, would have to serve.

He pulled Grandmam’s skull from the shadow of the cloth, careful to keep his fingers away from her mouth. She tended to bite when disturbed, and her old yellowed teeth could still take a finger from the unwary. Her fleshless head shone brighter than the snow at his feet. It bathed in the moonlight, sucking in the feeble rays so that everything around it fell more deeply into shadow.

The jawbone creaked in its sockets, yawning and closing with a series of arid sighs and dust-dry clicks. It spoke, finally, in a voice woven from wind and grave mold: “Ya’d have another poor soul at yar call then, Seamus? Have yar mither and I not taught ya enough?”

“Why do you blather at me so, old witch? You taught me the Arts, or have you forgotten?” Seamus held the skull at eye-level, his fingers clutching the hollows of her cheekbones.

Grandmam’s voice spat forth in gusts. “Dead-talkin’. A tool, boy, and all you seem to remember, aye!”

“Dead-talking! And no! Not all I remember.” He calmed himself, picturing Grandmam as she once was — patient and oh so wise. These days the patience was gone, and her tongue was as sharp as her teeth. “I remember you told me to always keep myself in the company of women. You said it would save me from the evil that men-folk fall into. I’ve kept to that, haven’t I? One way or another?”

The skull wheezed out a laugh, or maybe Grandmam cried — hard to tell. “Laddy mine, ya mastered so much, yet learnt so little.”

Seamus scowled. “Just be ready to call her. You know your business. Leave me to mine.”

It was even harder digging with Grandmam’s casual insults and constant nagging, but he kept at it until Maggie’s bones were exposed, still clothed in their bright, tattered wrappings. He paused a moment, looking down at the remains of the woman he’d loved.

The woman he’d lost, despite the strength of that love. First to another man, or so the rumors went, and then to the consumption.

He needed — like he needed air, water, love itself — to know if she’d loved him at the end. And, whether she had or not, he still ached for the sound of her voice, the feel of her breath against his cheek. . . .

“A pretty slave she’ll make, ya useless boy.” Grandmam’s voice cut through his thoughts, rising from where he’d placed her skull on an old stump. “And will that make ya happy, luggin’ her round like th’ other women ya say ya care for?”

Seamus stared down into the grave, shaking from more than just the frost-tinged air. She’d been pretty once, true, but not now, surely not now. A year in the selfish grip of the earth had done its work. Whatever had once been Maggie fed
the soil, leaving only the clever bones behind.

And was she his to take? Not if any truth hid in the whispered gossip of others. What would her voice sound like, years from now? Bitter? As bitingly taunting as Grandmam’s?

He shook his head, seeing Maggie’s beautiful face overlaid against her naked skull, hearing her gentle, carefree laughter in his memory. His guts twisting with a fierce cramp, he staggered back to the sack, taking his mother’s skull and placing it, with a soft kiss, beside that of his wife.

“Just call her, Grandmam. Wake her.” Then, as the old woman’s scorn grew louder and more strident, “Tell her I’m sorry.” He clenched his fists painfully hard on the shovel’s handle. Permanence. This called for permanence, or he’d likely be back someday, when the longing grew too great. “Tell her . . . she’s free.”

Seamus waited a moment for the message to be passed on, then brought the flat of the shovel down hard on the two skulls. His mother’s fractured swiftly, joyously, but Maggie’s took a bit more work.

Behind him, Grandmam cackled, her heckling tone almost completely unchanged. “So th’ fool boy’s learned! Took long enough. Thought ya’d never listen t’ me. We women know, we teach, we — ”

He turned, a smile forming on his cold, weary face as he raised the shovel high. Maybe wisdom, like virtue, could be its own reward.

Grandmam’s laughter echoed through the night, even after the blade came down.

Marcie Lynn Tentchoff is an Aurora Award winning poet and writer from the west coast of Canada, Her work has appeared in such magazines as On Spec, Dreams and Nightmares, and Illumen, as well as in various anthologies and online publications. Mikal Trimm has sold a plethora of stories and poems to various markets in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. He has recent or upcoming work in Polyphony 6, Postscripts, Black Gate, Electric Velocipede, and Interfictions, to name a few.

Issue no. 345!

2007-07-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

The new issue of WEIRD TALES is now available (and en route to subscribers and retailers)! Issue #345 features Ian Creasey's magical novella "Strawberry Thief," the tale of two mortals trying to escape from the faerie realm before it's too late. Plus: a new story of Kitty the werewolf, by Carrie Vaughn; a colossally cosmic steampunk adventure starring young Tom Edison, by Jay Lake; a necromancer's dilemma, by Marcie Lynn Tentchoff and Mikal Trimm; interviews with Jacqueline Carey and Lisa Tuttle; and much more!

Lisa Tuttle on ghosts, religion, and the realm of the fantastic

2007-06-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

Senior contributing editor Darrell Schweitzer chats with author and World Fantasy Convention guest of honor Lisa Tuttle about writing the supernatural. Where does the suspension of disbelief end and actual belief begin?

Lisa Tuttle was born in Texas in 1952 but has lived in Great Britain since 1980. She has been selling stories since 1971 and won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1974. Her first book, Windhaven ― written in collaboration with George R.R. Martin, and published in part in the pages of Analog ― was science fiction. Her later novels have have been mostly fantasy and horror, including Familiar Spirit, Gabriel, The Pillow Friend, The Mysteries, and, most recently, The Silver Bough. Among her collections are A Nest of Nightmares, A Spaceship Built of Stone, and Ghosts and Other Lovers; she has written for children (Catwitch), edited The Encyclopedia of Feminism, and compiled a celebrated horror anthology, Skin of the Soul.

Tuttle will be a guest of honor at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention in November.

WT: You're a Texan, but have been transplanted to Britain for some time now. Your last two novels have been set in Scotland. Do you have any sense of being a "regional" writer? Has being a nonnative but longtime resident given you a special angle or insight?

LT: I've never thought of myself as a "regional" writer, but I do prefer to write about places I've actually been, and the better I know them, the more comfortable I feel about setting a whole novel there. Which is why I may set short stories in China or Seville (both places I've visited), but my novels tend to be set in places where I've lived, with Texas, London, and Scotland predominating. This is the problem I always had with writing science fiction making up a whole new world has always seemed far, far more difficult than inventing characters or plot.

Another reason for using familiar (to me) settings is the autobiographical impulse. It's not always obvious, but I'm as autobiographical a writer as a lot of more "realist" writers. I may be telling stories about the dead returning to life, weird relationships with ghosts, impossible pregnancies, and other intrusions from beyond reality, but I've always drawn heavily on my own life.

And ever since I first visited this country in 1976, I've found the landscape and history of Britain incredibly evocative and inspiring. Sometimes I get ideas from the scenery around me. That didn't happen to me with Texas; but because Houston and the gulf plains and eastern woodlands of Texas were the earliest landscapes I knew, they're a deep part of me and naturally affect my writing. I love Austin and the hill country, but I was an adult before I got to know that part of Texas, and only lived in Austin for about five years . . . so I'm really more an outsider there than I am on the west coast of Scotland where I've lived for the past 17 years.

I don't know if it gives me any special insight, but I think the position of being an outsider, never entirely part of the place I call home, has been fertile for me as a writer.

WT: So, do you find yourself deliberately collecting bits of interesting lore about places you've visited?

LT: Actually, yes. I can never resist a locally published pamphlet about ghosts or folklore or mysteries of the area. I also own a lot of books on those subjects, from all over.

WT: I note that The Mysteries touches on disappearances everywhere, but of course it centers on Scotland. Do they still have an ongoing abduction mythos in Scotland?

LT: Not that I'm aware of, if you mean specifically abductions by the Gentry . . . if you're talking the modern version of alien abductions, that mythos is alive and well, although possibly not as widespread as in America.

WT: And how do you adapt autobiography into fiction? Is this a matter of fantasizing about how your life might have gone differently, or using things that did happen?

LT: Both, I guess, although there's more to it than that. My life goes into my work ― I don't really see how it could not. It's hard to explain exactly how it works; I don't just write about something that really happened to me and then give it a little supernatural twist; the autobiographical element is something I play about with and change quite dramatically, but the beginning of a story is often something that's really happened to me . . . or that I've been afraid might happen . . . or that I've fantasized about happening.

Some examples: I wrote a short story called "In Jealousy" which I deliberately wanted to make sound like a true ghost story ― even though it absolutely isn't. I began with something factual ― I did go on a tour of China in 1985, when my first marriage was breaking up, and I did spend a certain amount of time (far too much!!) brooding over my unhappy marital situation while I was there. But it was a special women's tour (organized by the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding) ― which it isn't in the story; in the fiction, the narrator begins an affair with a man who's in much the same situation as herself: lonely and unhapppily separated. I based the relationship on a very brief one I'd had with a man several years later ― and although I changed every physical fact about him, the psychological details of what drew us together and quickly split us apart were true.

Familiar Spirit, my first horror novel, is full of the real, physical details of my life at the time that I was writing it. I think I included the lamp shaped like a cowboy boot that I found in the first apartment I rented or maybe I put that in a later book. It's set in Austin in the 1970s, and Sarah, the heroine, probably has some of my characteristics and personality traits (I'm not sure it's been a long time since I read it) ― and, like me at the time I was writing, she'd just split up with her boyfriend. Although unlike me, and for reasons to do with the plot, she wasn't at all happy to be on her own and wanted her boyfriend back. But probably the major autobiographical element there was the setting: at the beginning of the book, she moves into a rather decrepit old house on West 35th Street, the very real place where I'd lived for several years. Obviously that house was important to me, because I also used it (even though I had to move it out of Austin and deep into the piney woods of East Texas) as the setting for a section of The Pillow Friend. The real house is long gone, knocked down and replaced by a condo, so I'm glad to feel I preserved it in fiction.

Quite a bit of my real life fed into The Pillow Friend ― incidents, such as my having my appendix out when I was seven; the emotional turmoil of adolescence and unrequited love; my marriage to an English writer; my feelings about Texas, London and Scotland ― and the whole geographical arc of the book reflects the course of my life ― Houston, Austin, Harrow, Scotland. All the rest especially all the weird stuff ― is just totally and completely made up.

WT: There are a lot of unhappy people in your stories. There are a lot of unhappy people in most stories, because that's the obvious way to generate conflict. Would it be possible to write a story about a completely happy and contented character, or is the whole point of fiction, particularly ghostly fiction, to probe the things that make us unhappy and uncomfortable?

LT: For a moment there I thought you were going to ask if this was autobiographical! (I am quite a cheerful person, in general, I think.)

Actually, this is something I've thought about ― I think it is possible to write about someone who is happy and contented, but if they remain that way from the beginning to the end of the story, well, I doubt it would be much of a story. So, they might be happy at the beginning ― and then something terrible happens! and/or they can win through to happiness or contentment at the end, but in the middle, that is to say for most of the story, there has to be something that at the very least tests them or unsettles them. Fiction, not just supernatural fiction, does usually involve change and conflict to some degree, which kind of rules out "completely happy".

Having said that, I must admit that quite often in my fiction I write about people who are troubled and maybe even psychologically disturbed or borderline if not outright mad. There's lots of genre fiction about people who are put into stressful situations, but the reader never thinks they're going to crack up; the suspense is how this strong or normal person is going to manage to win through ― this is the traditional hero, whose sanity one does not doubt. Then there are the characters you might find in stories by Poe, or Ramsay Campbell or me, where ― possibly from the very beginning ― the reader is thinking, this person's hold on reality is precarious. Is she really being haunted, or does she just think she is?

WT: Do you believe in ghosts?

LT: Basically, no, I don't. Or at least, I don't believe ghosts are the spirits of the dead, and I'm very very skeptical about the existence of any psychic or paranormal powers that a lot of people believe in. Yet although I think of myself as basically a rationalist, I'm not a hardliner, or a total materialist. If I were, I'd probably have no interest in ghosts, whereas in fact I am fascinated by the whole subject: by ghosts and hauntings and people who believe . . . and by inexplicable experiences. I do not doubt that people do see ghosts and have other strange experiences which can't be satisfactorily explained away in scientific terms. (Although I think also that many of them could be explained, but sometimes people will resist that explanation, refuse to accept it because they know it was supernatural ― and that's interesting, too.) My own fascination probably suggests a chink in my rational armour. Maybe I really, deep down, long to be convinced.

WT: How do you think this affects your ability write about ghosts, then? Lovecraft suggested that the non-believer had a certain advantage, since a true believer would take the supernatural for granted and not give it sufficient buildup.

LT: The fact that I'm not a believer maybe suggests why, to write a supernatural story that convinces me, it has to be ambiguous; on some level there's usually at least a hint that maybe none of this is "really" happening or at least nowhere outside the brain of the main character. (For example, in short stories like "The Nest," "Riding the Nightmare," and "Bits and Pieces"; and the protagonists of both Lost Futures and The Pillow Friend are quite likely clinically insane . . . but then again maybe not.)

As for how belief or nonbelief in the supernatural affects a person's ability to write about it . . . well, I can only speak from my own experience, which suggests to me that no one uninterested in the supernatural would bother to write about it ― and if forced into it would probably do a poor job. But obviously I don't think that being interested in the socalled supernatural necessarily implies belief.

I think this question could be asked about religion without any stretch ― people's beliefs obviously must influence how they write . . . but it also affects how they read. Do devout Catholics take a different message from Graham Greene's The End of the Affair than totally nonreligious me does? Presumably their understanding of/appreciation for that book would be closer to what the author actually intended. I recall having this feeling about Gene Wolfe's writing ― particularly after talking to someone (a Catholic) who obviously had a much more powerful response to one of his books than I did; perceived it in a different way.

So ― I don't know how to answer this question. It must have an impact, I suppose, but I don't know exactly what it is, or how you'd begin to disentangle it from everything else that affects a written text.

WT: Okay, if you were convinced, if evidence of ghosts were presented to you in a compelling manner, would you find this frightening or reassuring? On one hand, it tells us that we don't cease to exist at death. On the other, it suggests that some people could suffer an eternity of torment because of some tragedy.

LT: I would love to see some compelling evidence ― but it kind of depends on what ghosts were proved to be. A nonmaterial yet conscious survival of dead human beings? Or (what's always seemed more likely) "recordings" of events that took place in the past; or some perhaps telepathically-triggered perception which exists in the mind of the person(s) experiencing the ghost rather than 'out there.' Maybe it's some other form of "being" that has nothing to do with death. (After all, there have been apparitions of the living . . . and what about bilocation?) Whether I found it frightening or reassuring (or, more likely, a bit of both) would depend on what this evidence convinced me of.

WT: I notice that real, true religious believers (maybe more in the U.S. than in Britain ― you tell me) actually avoid ghostly and supernatural fiction, because they are afraid of it. On the crudest level, this is because they believe that if you talk about the Devil you may summon him. So I wonder if our fascination with the supernatural stems out of some delicate combination of skepticism and desire for the magical. We don't believe the supernatural is true, but we find artistic reasons for pretending it is. Any thoughts?

LT: Is this actually the case? I don't know enough about most writers' religious beliefs to be sure. Of course you don't have to "believe" in ghosts and spirits and evil curses and all that to write convincing stories about them. Also, it seems to me that it's possible to be a devout Christian, with a belief in the afterlife, without believing that the dead return as ghosts on this earth. (What kind of a way is that to spend your eternal life?) However, as for writing about supernatural matters ― I think a strong belief in the reality and power of evil (as something which exists in and of itself, possibly as personified by the devil) could have two possible results: either you avoid writing about it because you don't want to somehow encourage it by leading your readers to dwell on it and maybe even having them attracted to witchcraft, spell-casting, vampirism, etc (readers being the perverse creatures we all are, you can't be sure they'll decide to emulate the hero rather than the villain!) Or you might want to depict how awful it is and how necessary it is for good to triumph by writing about the supernatural out of a deep belief that it not only exists, but permeates the world. And maybe that is more British than American, because the two examples that I can think of are both English: G.P. Taylor (I haven't actually read his books, but I've read an interview with him which set it out pretty clearly what he believes ― I think he is or was a vicar, and he writes supernatural fantasies about the battle between good and evil) and James Herbert (a practicising Catholic).

Your idea about a fascination with the supernatural among unbelievers being a balancing act of those two very different attitudes reminds me of Todorov's definition of the fantastic, which he said required three conditions: first, the text must be sufficiently, convincingly realistic to make readers “hesitate” between a natural and a supernatural explanation of the events described; second, this same hesitation may be experienced by a character in the story; third, the reader must adopt a particular attitude towards the text, so that he rejects a purely allegorical interpretation. Critics who follow Todorov emphasize this “hesitation” or ambiguity as a basic part of the fantastic, and I think it defines the appeal supernatural fantasy holds for me. Of course, and especially these days, there is a lot of genre fantasy to which that definition emphatically does not apply: there’s no ambiguity about it; it’s pure fantasy, whether set in an imaginary realm, or in “our world” but with the existence of ghosts, vampires, werewolves, magical powers, etc. added on.

But for me, what’s most appealing about fantasy is exactly when it's on that borderline between real and unreal; when the rational gives way; when I as reader (and even as writer) sense the presence of something "other" which can't be explained . . . a mystery. That's what I love about it. And as soon as a ghost is explained it becomes less interesting ― to me, anyway ― even if the "explanation" is a bit of fantasy itself (e.g. spirits of the dead are forced to walk the earth until they get revenge or are exorcised by some ritual). This is also why I don't care for most genre fantasy; I'm not a big fan of "other world" fantasies (no, not even Tolkien), or the type of supernatural/paranormal fictions that establish loads of "rules" about how vampires came to be and how they exist and coexist with ordinary mortals, not to mention werewolves and witches ― I know a lot of people enjoy them, but it strikes me as being similar to roleplaying games, and that doesn't interest me, either.

WT: Who are some of your favorite writers of ghostly fiction, particularly ones you think have influenced you?

LT: Writers I think have influenced me ― and longterm favorites in the field ― include M.R. James, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Henry James, Theodore Sturgeon, Kate Wilhelm (although she always comes immediately to mind when I'm asked about influences, I guess she's mostly SF and thrillers . . . not sure if she's written any ghost stories, but a lot of her work, and in particular her novel Margaret and I had a huge influence on me), Edith Wharton, E. Nesbit, Robert Aickman, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (just one story ― "The Yellow Wallpaper" ― but, wow, did that have an impact!), and more recently (that is, I didn't read them until after my own career was established) Peter Straub, Angela Carter, W.G. Sebald, Jonathan Carroll.

WT: You don't write much science fiction these days. You started out in science fiction. Why the shift?

LT: I think the shift was more in the market (or genre definition) than in me. In other words, I think I'm writing in the same genre or general area I've always written in.

If you look back at the very first stories I sold, they were mostly horror stories or ghost stories. But there wasn't much of a market for that in the '70s (mainly it was The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) and because I wanted to sell, and because I was a fan of science fiction as well as supernatural fiction, I did keep trying to write SF. My SF usually tended to be on the "soft" side ― I'm interested in people involved in strange situations, and also in speculating about "if this goes on . . ." or "what if?" but I have no hard science background, am not especially interested in technology (except as it impacts on people ― for whom it might as well be magic), don't really go for space opera, and just generally tend to feel more comfortable writing about locations and backgrounds I've actually experienced rather than trying to create an entire new world or farfuture scenario from my rather limited imagination (this goes back to our earlier discussion about the role of autobiography in my writing).

When it came to publishing my first short story collections, the first one, A Nest of Nightmares in 1986, was all horror stories (and includes the first two stories I ever sold: "Stranger in the House" and "Dollburger"); the second one followed the next year, A Spaceship Built of Stone in 1987, was supposedly my SF collection, and yet at least three of the stories in that ("No Regrets", "Birds of the Moon", "The Hollow Man") are the sort of crossover, borderline genre stories I like best and are hard to really define: are they psychological horror? Contemporary fantasy? They have elements that appear in science fiction (alternate realities; astronauts; medical technology to revive the dead) but they are really about ordinary people trying to live in the face of some extraordinary circumstance.

My first novel was a collaboration with George R.R. Martin ― it began with the novella "The Storms of Windhaven" and grew into the novel Windhaven (first published in 1981). We thought of it as science fiction; I guess it still is, although when I look at it in the light of so many fantasy novels which have been published since I think that if the publishing scene had been then as it is now it would probably have been labelled as fantasy ― possibly George and I wouldn't have felt it necessary to provide the SF rationale as the "deep background" to the story (i.e. having it set on a distant planet with a "lost colony" cut off from other worlds and cannibalizing the wrecked spaceship and remnants of their former technology). "The Storms of Windhaven" was originally published in Analog, and one of the reasons for the collaboration, on my part, was the desire to sell to a "hard SF" market that I was sure I'd never break into on my own.

My second novel ― the first one I wrote solo ― was Familiar Spirit, and that was a horror novel. Before writing it I was working on an SF novel, but finding it really hard going: I got bogged down in the hard work of building a futuristic setting and providing a rationale for it and imagining new technology. I think in general I would rather read SF than write it. Although I do have a halfbaked idea for an SF novel which I hope to be able to develop and write one of these days . . . I haven't given up on that genre. I find it very difficult, but also rewarding. There are some ideas which can only be explored through SF.

Lost Futures, my fourth novel, was science fiction, but it was very "domestic" and contemporary and lowkey; most of the book doesn't read like what most people would consider SF. Which probably explains why it was not very successful! A lot of what I write seems to fall into the cracks between genres. It's certainly been a problem for me in the past . . . but I just write what I write and hope for the best when it comes to finding my audience. Over here in the U.K., Lost Futures was published as SF ― but with a very "girly" cover that wouldn't appeal to many fans although it may have reflected the contents well enough but in America it came out packaged as horror, with a kind of horrific, mummifiedlooking head on a dark cover, and raised red lettering dripping blood. I think it was one of the last books published in Dell's "Abyss" line (as the horror market was just about to collapse), and I can only imagine that a lot of hardcore horror fans would have found it hugely disappointing, as there are no mummies or dripping blood and gore within at all.

The novel I'm writing now has both magic and time travel in it. I suppose I would have to classify it as fantasy, like my last two novels, The Mysteries and The Silver Bough.

Darrell Schweitzer is senior contributing editor to both Weird Tales and H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror.