Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction

By Craig Laurance Gidney

Magic is more than skin-deep. It hides in the folds of a haunted quilt and illuminates the secret histories of Negro memorabilia. Magic reveals the destiny of a great storyteller and emanates from a sculpture by an obscure Harlem Renaissance artist. Magic lurks in the basement of an inner-city apartment building and flourishes in a city park. Magic is more than skin-deep; it shimmers in the ten stories in this collection.

"Craig Laurance Gidney love words... sensually, sexually, omnivorously. He streams out floods of them in his stories so that you, too, can taste their deliciousness. He wields them with abandon and precision to create little worlds that rise off the page and engulf you in snow globes of sparkling beauty and perceptiveness." --The Fix

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rebel Satori Press
• Release date: Dec 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781608641123

Craig Laurance Gidney

Craig Laurance Gidney writes both contemporary, young adult and genre fiction. Gidney’s first collection, Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories was a finalist for the 2009 Lambda Literary Award in the Science Fiction/Fantasy and Horror category. His new collection Skin Deep Magic is also a finalist in the 2015 Lambda Literary Award in the same category.

Book preview

Reviews for Skin Deep Magic

[michaeladams1979 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful collection of supernatural short stories. Craig Laurence Gidney covers a refreshingly wide range of eras and locations with his fiction, and integrates a wide variety of real-world and supernatural elements into his stories, from traditional African folklore, Greek mythology, and old-fashioned ghost-stories of the American southern tradition. The language Gidney uses in his tales is exotic, sensual, and evocative, creating an illusory, dream-like atmosphere for his tales of struggle, corruption, redemption, and transformation. I would compare his work in some ways to Anne Rice and Tanith Lee; not precisely horror, fantasy, erotica, or historical drama, but a well constructed blend of them all. Magic Realism may be a fitting label for it, if it helps readers and fans of the genre to find this unique voice.