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Black Static

New Horror Fiction BLACK STATIC 82/83 OUT NOW

BLACK STATIC #67 (JAN-FEB 2019)

17th Dec, 2018

Cover

Item image: Black Static 67

The cover art is 'Threshold' by Ben Baldwin

 

Fiction

Do Not Pet by Ralph Robert Moore
illustrated by Ben Baldwin 

Item image: Do Not Pet

Karl got the call in the middle of the day.

Which is not when you’re supposed to receive bad news.

 

Shore Leave by Mike O'Driscoll
illustrated by Joachim Luetke 

Item image: Shore Leave

Half a day out from Manila I stood alone on deck smoking a cigarette, searching for my wife’s face in the play of moonlight on the windless ocean. It was still yesterday in Chicago and I wondered how the same moon that looked down on me could find her there. I saw faces all the time, in the sea, the sky, in the shadows in the corners of my cabin, but I was never sure if any of them belonged to her. How could I be, after all this time? Does she still look the same as she does in my mind? Does she ever even think of me? I’m not usually given to tormenting myself with these dumb questions, but every time we get close to port they come crowding into my head like a tropical disease. I used to believe that if I never set foot ashore the memories would stay where they belonged, but I’d come to know that once docked, the Ticonderoga was no place to escape the past. On land, at least, I could still kid myself that one day I’d find a cure for memory.

 

The Silence of Prayer by Kristi DeMeester
illustrated by Dave Senecal 

Item image: The Silence of Prayer

have made unto you an altar. A place for degradation. A place for blessing. But you look down at the scattering of earth, the dried petals I have placed for you, and sneer. This is no place for a god. No place for anything except the teenaged, unwed mothers who leak their babies into the dirt and the fathers who would deny everything before them in that harsh, lilting accent you hate. You have told me time and time again of your revulsion, and I try to keep it from landing on me because I am still part of all of the things you despise.

 

In the Fog, There's Nothing But Grey by Michelle Ann King

Item image: In the Fog, There's Nothing But Grey

Nobody’s gone in or out of the pub for a long time, so it makes us all jump when the door opens. I hadn’t even realised it was unlocked.

 

All We Inherit by Eric Schaller 

Item image: All We Inherit

Sunlight glanced off snow, whiter than white, sharp as memory. David blinked back sun-addled tears and stepped onto the deck, clutched the railing. “Careful now,” he said to his son Brad. The wood, gray and bowed with age, was glazed with ice. Two steps down and he stood within the humped channel of snow he had shoveled the previous day. His rental car, a blue Ford glittering with frost, was parked in the driveway.

 

Columns

Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker

THAT UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

Horror fiction is the fiction of loss. Our first experience of the world is that of loss, the safety and satiety of the womb gone forever. Loss is perhaps the single universal human experience; not everyone has the opportunity to ever experience love in any incarnation, but loss is inevitable.

 

Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore

AS COMFORTABLE AS A PAIR OF PAJAMAS

High above the city, beautiful cobalt sky. Cheerful yellow sun warming the pointed tops of skyscrapers. Early spring in Dallas, fresh, nostril-filling scent of green flower buds spreading open in the April breezes.

 

Reviews

Case Notes: Book Reviews

Peter Tennant: Flight or Fright edited by Stephen King & Bev Vincent; The Green Face by Gustav Meyrink • Mike O'Driscoll: Sleeping With the Lights On by Darryl Jones; The Failing Heart by Eoghan Smith • Daniel Carpenter: Elevation by Stephen King • Lauro Mauro: Wolf's Hill by Simon Bestwick; The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste • Georgina Bruce: Halcyon by Rio Youers • Philip Fracassi: The Mouth of the Dark by Tim Waggoner • David Surface: One Good Story: Miserere by Robert Stone

 

Blood Spectrum: Film Reviews by Gary Couzens

William Castle at Columbia, Volume One • Quatermass and the Pit (BBC) • Mandy • The Nun • The Secret of Marrowbone • Lost Gully Road • Next of Kin • The Chain Reaction • Long Weekend • Escape From New York • Opera • The Case of the Bloody Iris • Cam • I Think We're Alone Now • Solis • Patgient Zero

 

Where To Buy Black Static

Black Static is available in good shops in the UK and many other countries, including the USA where it can be found in Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and elsewhere. If your local store (in any country) doesn't stock it they should easily be able to order it in for you so please don't hesitate to ask them. You can also buy the magazine from a variety of online retailers, or a version for e-readers from places like Weightless Books, Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble etc.

The best thing though is to click on Shop above or the link below and buy the new issue, or better still take out a subscription, direct with us. You'll receive issues much cheaper and much quicker, and the magazine will receive a much higher percentage of the revenue.

 

Please Spread the Word

If you enjoy Black Static please blog about it, review it, or simply recommend it to your friends.

 

Coming Soon

Black Static 68 is out in March. Magazines like this cannot survive without subscriptions, so thank you for your support.

 

The Teardrop Method by Simon Avery

Item image: The Teardrop Method

WORLD FANTASY AWARD FINALIST

Black Static readers will be interested to know that TTA Novella 4, The Teardrop Method by popular contributor Simon Avery, is out now as a B-Format paperback of 160 pages with wraparound cover art by Richard Wagner and a bonus connected short story. You can buy it now from the new TTA Shop or subscribe to four novellas for just £24 (10% off during September with the SEP10 code).

"The Teardrop Method is a story about stories; a beautiful novella about love and loss and the connections people make and then sometimes break. It's quiet, haunting, and ultimately moving" Gary McMahon

"Nightmare plotting infused with an aching mitteleuropäische sadness, Simon Avery’s tale of music and mortality could be the novelisation of a lost Argento movie" Nicholas Royle

"Without any prep or background, I started reading the novella The Teardrop Method by British author Simon Avery, and was immediately engaged by the moodiness, the bleakness, the desperation and creaky, world-weariness of the setting and characters. These appealing elements perfectly coalesced into a tragic and fervent eulogy to the creative process - to Art with a capital A - as a means of salvation and transcendence and doom, and to love itself in all its complex iterations, exploring the concept of loving, dying, and even killing, in order to achieve the proper reception code from the eternal Muse while the roaring Danube drowns out the rest of the world. This is a very European story, in all its faded baroque finery and cafe claustrophobia. The snow is heavier here, the dawn ever more surprising. The supernatural and the natural are not so far removed in places like this. The old and the new forever caught in a twirling waltz. I highly recommend this novella, and cannot wait to see what melody Mr Avery pens next. I'll be listening" T.E. Grau

"A monumentally haunting novella" Des Lewis

“Simon Avery’s descriptions of Krysztina’s music makes me want to hear it. It’s a subtle and beautifully told tale with echoes of European film-makers like Haneke and Kieslowski, as well as their predecessors like Franju and Polanski. It conjures a powerful sense of foreboding that reminds me of Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, and shares with that film a sense of being haunted. It has moments of profound sadness and yet still managed to surprise me with its uplifting ending. One of the novellas of the year” Mike O'Driscoll

“Majestic and compelling throughout, The Teardrop Method is an exemplary specimen of a standout novella. It’s beautifully written, excellently produced, and a sign of publisher TTA Press at the top of their game” Gareth Jones, Dread Central

"I can honestly say that Simon Avery's The Teardrop Method is one of the finest and most fascinating novellas I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I highly recommend this novella to speculative fiction readers, because it's a beautiful and subtly complex exploration of death, love, loss and how to recover from a tragedy. Its darkly beautiful atmosphere and delicate story will captivate everyone who appreciates quiet horror" Rising Shadow

"The Teardrop Method is a complex, intricately structured piece of dark fiction, or perhaps quite horror. It is a story about the weaving of stories, about the transmutation of the darkest personal grief into art, and about the coming to terms with the inevitability of death. As a key line puts it – Art leads you back to the person you were after the world took you away from yourself" Gary Dalkin, Amazing Stories

"Simon Avery’s prose is spare and masterly, and certainly the equal of any Booker Prize nominee I’ve ever read. As much goes on between the lines as on them. The interstitial dark spaces are filled with horrors and a creeping unease that drags the reader in and won’t let go. The characterisation and storytelling, too, are brilliant" John Dodds, Amazing Stories

"This highly original piece is written with the sad, chilly atmosphere of much central European fiction but it has a very British rejection of miserabilism for its own sake. The desire for even the most fantastical stories to make sense and to make progress keeps breaking through and the result is a charming, and charmingly odd, novella which stays in the mind like an overheard song" Mat Coward, Morning Star

"Avery's story is a dark and tense thriller, set against a cold Hungarian back drop. The reconnection between father and daughter gives The Teardrop Method melancholy in light of the father's declining health, and the handling of the supernatural element is done so latently it feels authentic and hence, genuinely spooky. The prose here is compulsively readable and even the stranger members of the cast pop off the page" Nick Cato, The Horror Fiction Review

 

Crimewave 13: Bad Light

Item image: Crimewave 13

Available from the TTA Shop for just £10 is the new edition of Crimewave. This 240-page American Royal paperback contains groundbreaking and often genre-bending new stories by Simon Bestwick, Gerri Brightwell, Georgina Bruce, Ray Cluley, Mat Coward, Catherine Donnelly, Stephen Hargadon, Andrew Hook, Linda Mannheim, Ralph Robert Moore, Mike O'Driscoll, Steve Rasnic Tem and others, with wraparound cover art by Ben Baldwin.

“One of the very best anthologies I have ever read, in any genre. An absolute gem” Tim Lees

“Crimewave 13 explores a broadly common theme — the utter blurring of the traditional boundaries between the criminal and the victim, with the trajectories and locations of each of the stories quite distinct from each other and the clever use of partial perspectives confounding the reader throughout” Morning Star

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