Black Static #57 (March-April 2017)

By TTA Press

The March–April issue contains new, long dark fiction by Ralph Robert Moore, Simon Avery, Mike O'Driscoll, and Aliya Whiteley. The cover art is by Ben Baldwin, with interior illustrations by Ben Baldwin, Richard Wagner, and Joachim Luetke. Features: Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore; Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker; Case Notes by Peter Tennant (book reviews, including an in-depth interview with Andrew Hook); Blood Spectrum by Gary Couzens (DVD/Blu-ray/Digital reviews).

Cover Art:

Lepidopterists by Ben Baldwin

Fiction:

Will You Accept These Flowers From Me? by Ralph Robert Moore
illustrated by Joachim Luetke

Sunflower Junction by Simon Avery
illustrated by Ben Baldwin

Shadows on Parade by Mike O'Driscoll
illustrated by Richard Wagner

The Chambermaid by Aliya Whiteley

Features:

Into the Woods by Ralph Robert Moore

Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker

Reviews:

Case Notes by Peter Tennant
Reviews of twelve books plus an in-depth interview with Andrew Hook

Blood Spectrum by Gary Couzens
Reviews of over twenty of the latest and forthcoming dark/horror films to download or buy on DVD/Blu-ray

• Language: English
• Publisher: TTA Press
• Release date: Mar 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370669585

TTA Press

TTA Press is the publisher of the magazines Interzone (science fiction/fantasy) and Black Static (horror/dark fantasy), the Crimewave anthology series, TTA Novellas, plus the occasional story collection and novel.

Book preview

BLACK STATIC

ISSUE 57

MARCH–APRIL 2017

flesh.tif

© 2017 Black Static and its contributors

PUBLISHER

TTA Press

5 Martins Lane

Witcham

Ely

Cambs CB6 2LB

UK

ttapress.com

EDITOR

Andy Cox

[e-mail]

BOOKS

Peter Tennant

[e-mail]

FILMS

Gary Couzens

[e-mail]

SUBMISSIONS

Unsolicited submissions of short stories are always very welcome, but please follow the guidelines:

tta.submittable.com/submit

logo bw-new.tif

SMASHWORDS REQUESTS THAT WE ADD THE FOLLOWING:

LICENSE NOTE: THIS EMAGAZINE IS LICENSED FOR YOUR PERSONAL USE/ENJOYMENT ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE RE-SOLD OR GIVEN AWAY TO OTHER PEOPLE. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE THIS MAGAZINE WITH OTHERS PLEASE PURCHASE AN ADDITIONAL COPY FOR EACH RECIPIENT. IF YOU POSSESS THIS MAGAZINE AND DID NOT PURCHASE IT, OR IT WAS NOT PURCHASED FOR YOUR USE ONLY, THEN PLEASE GO TO SMASHWORDS.COM AND OBTAIN YOUR OWN COPY. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE HARD WORK OF THE CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS.

BLACK STATIC 57 MARCH-APRIL 2017

TTA PRESS

COPYRIGHT TTA PRESS AND CONTRIBUTORS 2017

PUBLISHED BY TTA PRESS AT SMASHWORDS

CONTENTS

Lepidopterists-bw.tif

COVER ART

LEPIDOPTERISTS

BEN BALDWIN

lyndarucker3supercropped.tif

HORROR AND THE MADNESS OF ART

NOTES FROM THE BORDERLAND

LYNDA E. RUCKER

RalphRobertMoore-woods2.tif

MISUNDERSTANDING EARS

INTO THE WOODS

RALPH ROBERT MOORE

Moore_Accept_These_Flowers-lighter.tif

NOVELETTE ILLUSTRATED BY JOACHIM LUETKE

WILL YOU ACCEPT THESE FLOWERS FROM ME?

RALPH ROBERT MOORE

Sunflower Junction.tif

NOVELETTE ILLUSTRATED BY BEN BALDWIN

SUNFLOWER JUNCTION

SIMON AVERY

shadows on parade (rev).tif

NOVELETTE ILLUSTRATED BY RICHARD WAGNER

SHADOWS ON PARADE

MIKE O’DRISCOLL

chambermaid.tif

STORY

THE CHAMBERMAID

ALIYA WHITELEY

what_we_become-contents.tif

FILM REVIEWS

BLOOD SPECTRUM

GARY COUZENS

hook-contents.tif

BOOK REVIEWS + ANDREW HOOK INTERVIEW

CASE NOTES

PETER TENNANT

NOTES FROM THE BORDERLAND

LYNDA E. RUCKER

lyndarucker3supercropped.tif

HORROR AND THE MADNESS OF ART

There are writers who would argue that what they do is all craft, that to talk about art is pretentious, just as there are readers and writers who see genres largely in terms of limits and comfortable boundaries. Give me what I expect. This month’s column is probably not for those writers and readers.

This month I want to talk about breaking through those limits and boundaries – and the pitfalls along the way.

It can be so easy, once you’ve reached whatever you consider to be a certain level of desired success – whether that’s a small circle of readers or a top spot on national best seller lists – to keep doing the thing you did that got you there. After all, it’s what readers and editors and publishers want, isn’t it? Yet how many times have you heard things said of a writer like, She thinks she doesn’t need an editor any longer or He’s so big now no one dares to edit him? How many writers can you think of that seemed to write lean and powerful (or long and layered) books when they were young and hungry and now turn out fiction that seems turgid and bloated, or just sloppy?

We’ve all got our own lists of writers we believe have lost that spark somewhere along the way, although it’s by no means inevitable – I can think of plenty of writers with long careers who are still writing at the top of their game or even producing their best work yet. The problem is that when you’re the writer, you don’t really know how whatever you are writing compares to your other work. Or most of us don’t: we write, and we do our best, and we might have a feeling about this story or that story but that feeling can be wrong. It’s easier to assess, perhaps, from a distance, looking back at old work, but we’re always inside our stories looking out to some degree, forever fixed in a different relationship to our writing than that of our readers.

But it’s the rare writer who ever truly stops caring about the quality of their prose and their storytelling and decides they’re going to spend the rest of their life expending the minimal amount of effort that will still get their stories in anthologies, their books on the shelves and their loyal audience dutifully purchasing them. So instead, we’re left constantly questioning: What if I stop stretching myself creatively? What if I shy away from trying new things? What if I’ve already said everything I have to say? Or what if I think I’m doing something innovative and it’s just…bad?

It doesn’t help that when I think about some of my favourite books, I wonder if I would have had the courage to finish writing them. I’m not talking about wildly experimental fiction here but writers with commercial careers who have produced work that explodes out of the supposed confines of their genres. Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Red Tree was not just a departure from her earlier, modernist-influenced, distinctive style – and its relatively sparse prose put off some long-time fans – but it’s narratively challenging, a horror story that refuses to follow a conventional pattern featuring a main character with whom some readers lose patience. I think it is very nearly a perfect book, but I try to imagine pushing through the writing of it myself and I wonder if I would simply dissolve into a spiral of self-doubt. Her follow up, The Drowning Girl, is even more unconventional.

I don’t think M. John Harrison – who is forever reinventing himself creatively – has ever written anything in his life that wasn’t wildly original, but since The Course of the Heart is the one that speaks to me the most, it’s also the one that I try to imagine writing, and wonder if I would falter. What about Alan Garner’s Red Shift, or Thursbitch? Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum? These books break every rule of modern conventional storytelling, and of course there’s nothing wrong with that, but how do you know when you’re breaking the right rules? It would be comforting enough to say that once you’ve reached a certain level of expertise in your field, you just know, but we can all look at examples of artists who’ve faltered along the way (often to recover later) to demonstrate that just isn’t so. Moreover, I think it shouldn’t be the case; it’s that very act of taking the risk that’s necessary sometimes to achieve something greater.

What’s the point, after all, of making art if you aren’t genuine about it? But we’re trying to walk a line between innovation and mere self-indulgence, and it’s a line we can’t always see. As Henry James once wrote, We work in the dark.

In fact, I owe this entire column to my friend Rachel Knightley. We attended a screening of The Haunting back in January that included an interview with Claire Bloom, who plays Theo in the film. Rachel, a writer and director herself, asked Bloom what she wanted, as an actor, from a director. Bloom replied that she wanted a director who gave her the freedom to do whatever she wanted who was also an excellent censor – who knew when to tell her something wasn’t working.

I thought: that’s it – that’s what we all want as writers, too, in our editors, or our first readers, or whoever that person is that we listen to who helps us shape our work or tells us when we’ve gone off the rails. Yet I’ll confess here I don’t show my writing to people when it’s messy and unfinished, and usually only one person or no one at all reads it when it’s done but before it goes before an editor’s eyes. It’s not arrogance; it’s just how I’ve always worked.

I’m always happy to listen to an editor’s suggestions if they have them, and I’ve made changes based on editors’ suggestions that I believe improved the stories. But once, more than a dozen years ago, an editor told me my story was one of the best stories he’d ever been sent – except he didn’t like the ending. He only wanted to publish it if I changed the ending. The ending was one of my favourite parts. I wouldn’t change it. I never sold the story. I still think, to this day, that I made the right decision.

But what if the stakes were higher? What if I wrote a book and the editor said they couldn’t publish it unless I made substantial changes, made it more conventional, and I believed it was my Red Shift, my The Course of the Heart, my The Red Tree? What if I made the changes and it wasn’t that book any longer? What if I refused, and it wasn’t any good in the first place? How would I know?

If you had that trust, the relationship that Bloom envisioned with a director, you would know. But acting isn’t writing, and an editor is not a collaborator and is definitely not a director. The truth is there’s no way for a writer to know. And writers must not allow themselves to be ruled by fear and complacency although there are elements in the hobbyist’s mindset and the career-minded approach to writing that encourage both.

And horror, with its focus on the extremes of human emotion and experience, can least of all afford complacency. One of the most common misconceptions about horror is that it is the most formulaic of genres; in fact, the opposite is true, must be true. At its best, it is disorienting and deconstructing all the time. It is ripe for experimentation, but in order to get there, we must do the very things that so often brings on the horror in the stories we love so much: we must trust, we must dare to make mistakes, and we must work in the dark.

INTO THE WOODS

RALPH ROBERT MOORE

RalphRobertMoore-woods2.tif

MISUNDERSTANDING EARS

When I was a child I had a bedtime when I was expected to fall asleep.

Except, I wouldn’t.

Once my parents left the blue and white striped walls of my bedroom, I’d lift my flashlight out from my night table’s drawer. Small thumb sliding up the black button, clicking the flashlight on. Grab the book I was reading from its resting place. Squirrel with it under the white sheets pulled over my head, creating a white cloth cave, shining the yellow circle of the flashlight against the book’s opened pages, black print, as if the pages were a drive-in screen.

Never again did I swim in so intimate a reading space.

Early in Blue Velvet, Jeffrey, taking a short cut across a field, discovers a severed ear lying on the ground, dark ants exploring its curves within curves. He puts the ear in a paper bag, takes it to the police station. Meets with Detective John Williams, who opens the top of the bag, glances inside, looks up at Jeffrey and says, Yes, that is a human ear.

The last time I saw a movie in a theater was in the early Eighties.

Mary and I had just driven across country from California, relocating to Maine. We wanted to live in a state where we could photograph snow and kill lobsters. The movie was Scarface. Because the film had gotten a lot of publicity, blood from a lowering chain saw splashing red against the white-tiled walls of a shower stall, face lifting from a green desk blotter, nose sugared with cocaine, the theater was noisy as we made our way down a side aisle, found two seats together. I ended up sitting next to a guy who was unusually tall. Like a basketball player. I’m six feet one, and he towered over me.

Soon after the movie started, Pacino stabbing a former Cuban government official at the refugee camp in Miami, I realized this guy sitting next to me wasn’t just really tall; he was really drunk. Every ten minutes or so he’d snort, asleep in his seat, and tilt over sideways against me, tree falling, his upper arm banging against my shoulder. I’d give him a strong shove to upright him, his eyes would pop open, once again he’d apologize profusely, and then slowly, gradually over the next ten minutes again start falling asleep. Which kind of detracted from my enjoyment of Scarface. It was hard to keep track of what was going on in the movie, who was killing whom, while repeatedly shoving him upright, eating popcorn, and holding Mary, all at the same time.

Fortunately for us, this was when home video became popular. We were living in a motel room back then, rented on a monthly basis, but because it was a motel room, we weren’t allowed to hook up a VCR to the room’s TV.

Once we did get an apartment the following Spring, we immediately bought a TV, went to a nearby supermarket, rented a VCR.

So the first time we saw what turned out to be one of my favorite movies, Blue Velvet, it was on VHS.

In the late Seventies, I was living in Santa Barbara, and Mary and I had just started dating. One night we went to a midnight show at one of the local theaters, featuring four or five different movies. I don’t remember all the films we saw that night. I do remember one of the first movies that evening was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And of course, the theater’s late night lobby was filled with people dressed up under the harsh overhead lights in drag versions of Frank N Furter.

At one point we went out into the lobby to use the restrooms, and as the next movie started, music and dialogue booming through the dark double doors leading to the theater’s slanted floor, decided to sit on a purple-cushioned bench against the wall of the lobby to smoke a joint.

And instead of going back into the darkened theater, we stayed on that comfortable bench, talking to each other. About our lives up to that point. What we wanted going forward. And just joking around, eyes bloodshot and merry. And to me, that conversation is when we really, truly fell in love. We entered the lobby, headed for the bathrooms, as you and me; exited the lobby, looking for new seats in the theater, as us.

As we re-entered, Eraserhead was about to start. I read about it in Castle of Frankenstein, one of the better horror movie magazines back then, while I was still living on the east coast, in Connecticut. Sounded like something I wanted to see. And now, in Santa Barbara, years later, I finally got the chance. My first exposure to Lynch.

So seven years after that, here we are in Maine, and I’m pushing the VHS cassette of Blue Velvet into our rental VCR, where with clicks and whirrs the hard rectangular cassette was mechanically swallowed.

In the version of Blue Velvet we saw that night, on videotape, as Williams says, Yes, that is an ear, his profile moves closer to Jeffrey, and William’s own right ear comes into view in the frame. Which I thought was a nice directorial touch. Ear in the bag no longer attached, Detective William’s pink ear still attached, emphasizing in a subtle visual way the violence of having one’s own ear cut off the side of your head. An ear is one of your many sensory pals. It would be horrible to lose it.

But then years later, in Texas, when Mary and I bought the DVD version of Blue Velvet, for the first time ever we saw the letterboxed version of the movie, as it played in theaters.

And what I thought was an inspired visual moment by Lynch, having Detective Williams’ ear move into the frame as he looks in Jeffrey’s bag and declares, That is an ear, turned out to be a decision made not by Lynch, but by whomever was in charge of the pan and scan VHS version. Because in the original, letterboxed version, which we finally saw in Texas, it turns out Detective William’s ear is visible throughout the scene. There was no magical moment when William’s ear suddenly comes into the frame from the left. His ear is in the scene all along.

In the Rolling Stones song ‘She’s So Cold’, there’s a line that goes, I tried re-wiring her, tried re-firing her. For decades, I thought what Mick was singing was, I tried Beef Wellington, tried being fair. My misunderstanding ears. But I think my mishear is better. Offering her something material; offering her something emotional. Trying to woo her with an expensive meal in a restaurant; trying to woo her by treating her as an equal.

A reader sent me an email once, praising me for how my story ‘The Rape’ had so many subtle allusions to a song by Hole, the alternative rock band. Except, I had never heard a song by Hole, and had no idea what he was talking about.

As enjoyable as reading under my bedsheets as a cowlick child was, the truth was I didn’t know the meaning of many of those words, and so therefore often misinterpreted what the writer was saying. I was reading a different story than the one written. But still inspired by what I read.

When I first realized Detective Williams’ ear had been present in the frame the whole time, finally looked up the lyrics to ‘She’s So Cold’, opened that email from a fan, I felt disappointment. Art had been misunderstood. But then I realized that each misunderstanding is actually something wonderful. Each interpretative mistake puts us not in touch with the artist, but in touch with a part of ourselves we didn’t