Apex Magazine: Issue 50

By Lynne M. Thomas

Apex Magazine is a monthly science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazine featuring original, mind-bending short fiction from many of the top pros of the field. New issues are released on the first Tuesday of every month.

We are a 2013 Hugo Award nominee for Best Semiprozine!

FICTION
"To Die for Moonlight" by Sarah Monette
"Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings" by Rachel Swirsky
"The Constable of Abal" by Kelly Link

POETRY
"A Great Clerk of Necromancy" by Catherynne M. Valente

NONFICTION
"Editorial: Blood on Vellum" by Lynne M. Thomas
"Role for Damage" by Sarah Kuhn
"Interview with Kelly Link" by Maggie Slater
"Interview with Sarah Monette" by Maggie Slater
"Editorial: Words from the Publisher" by Jason Sizemore

Cover art by Aunia Kahn.

Edited by multi-Hugo Award-winning editor Lynne M. Thomas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apex Book Company
• Release date: Jun 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301170074

Book preview

APEX MAGAZINE

ISSUE 50, July 2013

Smashwords Edition

EDITED BY LYNNE M. THOMAS

Copyrights and Acknowledgments

Blood on Vellum: Notes from the Editor–in–Chief Copyright © 2013 by Lynne M. Thomas

To Die for Moonlight Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Monette

The Constable of Abal Copyright © 2007 by Kelly Link (Originally published in The Coyote Road, eds. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, 2007)

Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings Copyright © 2013 by Rachel Swirsky

A Great Clerk of Necromancy Copyright © 2013 by Catherynne M. Valente.

Role for Damage Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Kuhn

Interview with Sarah Monette Copyright © 2013 by Maggie Slater

Interview with Kelly Link Copyright © 2013 by Maggie Slater

Words from the Publisher Copyright © 2013 by Jason Sizemore

Publisher/Editor—Jason Sizemore

Editor–in–Chief—Lynne M. Thomas

Senior Editor—Gill Ainsworth

Managing Editor—Michael Damian Thomas

Slush Editors—Sigrid Ellis, Deanna Knippling, Kelly Lagor,

Eileen Maksym, Michael Matheson, Maggie Slater, Fran Wilde, Jei D. Marcade

Graphic Designer—Justin Stewart

Digital Formatting—Stephanie Jacob

ISSN: 2157–1406

Apex Publications

PO Box 24323

Lexington, KY 40524

Please visit our website at http://www.apex–magazine.com.

Each new issue of Apex Magazine is released the first Tuesday of the month. Single issues are available for $2.99. Subscriptions are available for twelve months and cost $19.95.

About Our Cover Artist

Aunia Kahn is a self–taught figurative artist, photographer, author, and curator. She combines many disciplines and invariably designs, builds, and executes characters, non–existent places, dreams, illusions, fears and fables into creation, which meld elements of classical and contemporary art. Aunia’s work has constantly evolved; earlier works dealt more with her past, while her more recent creations delve into present emotional conflicts and inspirations.

Her work has garnered several awards, while her national and international exhibitions and residencies range from Santa Fe, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Ireland, Canada, UK, New York, Los Angeles and scores in between. Aunia has curated numerous exhibitions across the country, as well as lectures at colleges and universities.

She is also the creator of the Silver Era Tarot deck, Inspirations for Survivors deck, Lowbrow Tarot Project, the forthcoming Tarot Under Oath project the author of Obvious Remote Chaos, and Minding the Sea: Inviting the Muses Over for Tea. She currently resides in Illinois with her four German Shepherds and black cat in her secret closet.

Transient Relic

Table of Contents

Editorial

Blood on Vellum: Notes from the Editor–in–Chief

Lynne M. Thomas

Fiction

To Die for Moonlight

Sarah Monette

The Constable of Abal

Kelly Link

Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings

Rachel Swirsky

Nonfiction

Role for Damage

Sarah Kuhn

Interview with Sarah Monette

Maggie Slater

Interview with Kelly Link

Maggie Slater

Words from the Publisher

Jason Sizemore

Poetry

A Great Clerk of Necromancy

Cat Valente

Blood on Vellum: Notes from the Editor–in–Chief

Welcome to Issue 50 of Apex Magazine.

We’re really pleased to be here. Fifty issues is a milestone, so we’re celebrating with some fantastic new content by many of my favorite creators, both in the magazine and now in audio format!

We’re launching a monthly fiction podcast with issue 50! Each month, we will feature an Apex Magazine story in audio format for your listening pleasure. The first story is Rachel Swirsky’s gorgeous If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love, originally published in issue 46 of Apex Magazine, and read by yours truly. You can find our podcast at http://apexmagazinepodcast.libsyn.com/rss, and, of course, on iTunes (here).

Speaking of Rachel Swirsky, we are pleased to present another deeply disturbing, yet beautiful story from her in this issue, Abomination Rises on Filthy Wings. This story came out of a conversation about a type of horror story that often hits our slush, which we refer to as a kill the bitch story, where writers intimately dismember a former romantic partner. I was arguing that it was not possible to write a version of this kind of story that I would ever find acceptable for Apex Magazine. Rachel’s response: Challenge accepted! What you will experience are the results. (NB: This story carries a trigger warning for some readers).

I’m a huge fan of Sarah Monette’s Kyle Murchison Booth short stories, many of which are collected in The Bone Key. So much so, that I wrote the introduction to the second edition of that collection. Booth stories are like M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft updated for the 21st century, with a deeply introverted museum curator hero who keeps getting confronted with fantastical experiences that are beyond him. I am absolutely thrilled to present a brand new Booth novelette, To Die for Moonlight, for your enjoyment.

Former Apex Magazine Editor-in-Chief Catherynne M. Valente has joined in our celebration in this issue by providing a new poem.

Our reprint this month is The Constable of Abal by the inimitable Kelly Link, about mothers and daughters who can see ghosts, but don’t always use those powers for good. This story originally appeared in the collection The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Viking, 2007), and again in Kelly’s collection Pretty Monsters (Viking, 2008).

In nonfiction, Sarah Kuhn takes on our tendency to critique female characters based on whether they are good role models, and defends Twilight’s Bella Swan in her essay Role for Damage. Maggie Slater interviews Sarah Monette about her short fiction and her upcoming work.

Our gorgeous cover art is by Aunia Kahn, winner of 2012 Apex Magazine Cover Art of the Year Readers’ Poll. We are so happy to feature her work once again.

On behalf of our publisher, Jason Sizemore, myself, and my managing editor, Michael Damian Thomas, I want to thank all of our readers, our subscribers, and everyone who is and has been part of Team Apex Magazine, specifically our submissions editors, contributors, behind-the-scenes staff, and former editors Jason Sizemore and Catherynne M. Valente. Getting to issue 50 wouldn’t have been possible without all of you.

I hope that you enjoy issue 50 of Apex Magazine.

*raises glass* Here’s to the next 50!

Warmly,

Lynne M. Thomas

Editor-in-Chief

To Die for Moonlight

Sarah Monette

I cut off her head before I buried her.

I had no tools suitable to the task — only my pocketknife and the shovel — and it was a long, grisly, abhorrent job, but I had to do it, and I did.

I could not leave the chance that she might return.

I had been weeping when I started; by the time it was done, the last tattered string of flesh severed, I had no tears left in me, and my mouth and eyes and sinuses were raw with bile and salt.

I stuffed her mouth with wolfsbane, wrapped a silver chain around her poor hands, placed silver dollars over her staring eyes.

Then, at that most truly God–forsaken crossroads, under a full and leering moon, I began to dig Annette Robillard’s grave.



How, exactly, the Robillards were connected to Blanche Parrington Crowe, I never discovered. Cousins in some degree of her long–dead husband, but whether it was a Crowe daughter who married into the Robillards, or a Robillard daughter who married into the Crowes, the link was many generations in the past — surely not enough to count as kinship except in the genealogical sense. Nevertheless, I was informed, Mrs. Crowe considered the Robillards to fall under the umbrella of her family obligations; thus, when Marcus Justus Robillard asked for a cataloguer to come make sense of his family’s long–neglected library, Mrs. Crowe felt it incumbent upon her to send one.

By which, I was further informed, she meant me.

I tried to argue that one of the junior archivists — all of whom certainly needed the practice more than I did — would be both eminently suited to the task and far less disruptive to the Parrington in his absence, but Dr. Starkweather glared me into silence, and then said, Mrs. Crowe was very specific, Mr. Booth. It appears that she trusts you.

The grim incredulity in his tone told me that if Mrs. Crowe could have been talked out of the idea of sending me to Belle Lune, the Robillard estate, he would have done it. He had been heard on more than one occasion to say, publicly and loudly, that I could not be trusted to come in out of the rain.

Then I suppose I, er, have no choice, I said. "Does Mrs. Crowe anticipate… er, that is, is it supposed to be a long job?"

No, Dr. Starkweather said, even more grimly. I have been instructed to release you from your duties for a week. That will be sufficient, Mr. Booth. I trust I make myself clear?

Yes, sir, I said, and was occupied for the rest of the day in the unsatisfying tedium of preparing my office for a week’s absence.



It would be unwise to specify the location of Belle Lune. I will say only that it was in the mid–Atlantic states, close enough to the coast that the wind, when in the right quarter, would bring the smell of salt. Robillards had lived there since sometime in the seventeenth century, and the house had been expanded and remodeled so many times that nothing of its original character remained. It was more brick than wood, with the columns beloved of the Neoclassical Revival added to the front as a dowager pins a diamond brooch to her bosom, and it stood on the edge of a tarn. I call it a tarn, although there are no mountains in the vicinity of Belle Lune, because I do not know of a word that better conveys the secretive aspect — dark and uninviting — of its waters. The Robillards called it the Mirror, although I never saw it to reflect anything at all.

I was met at the train station

Reviews for Apex Magazine

[capiam1234 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another excellent issue. Standouts include the outstanding contributions from Greg Mellor and Nancy Kress.