What a wild ride this story was. I’ve read a few things by Ashford and the guy just keeps getting better and better (I also had the pleasure and honour of reading his upcoming novella – which is mind-blowing – check that out when it drops). But we’re here to talk about ‘Autotomy Cocktail’ –
‘Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them’ (Thom Jones) I live with a dog-mad woman. She absolutely adores them, having surrounded herself with the beasts from an early age. First up were Brownie and Tiger, both sadly dispatched to the great canine beyond via the neighbour’s shotgun one evening, her father
He was crossing the road onto Trafalgar Square just like everyone else around him. They were tourists, for the most part, people who had come here deliberately. It was going to be an evening for it. The clouds, if they could even be called that, had floated off again, leaving no doubt about the weather.
I. The summer we found the skull was also the summer that Smith got stuck in the sluice gate and nearly drowned, and somehow those two events have been inextricably linked in my mind ever since. Looking back now, it is as if together they formed a threshold, a kind of boundary between the first
When we were younger, my best friend, Dan, and I went snowboarding in the North Carolina mountains. It was so bright everywhere—the sky was this electric, herniating blue, and the sun was blinding off the snow. While we were riding up the Sugar Mountain lift, Dan became concerned that his face was getting sunburned, and
An Invitation to Darkness was a beautifully written gothic romp of a book and I bloody loved it. The setting itself is truly magical and in Piper’s hand she turns that magic into black magic – the darkness swells in this story and it pretty much comes out of nowhere. Was I ready for the
In some cases it seemed to me that feeling literally in pieces could be traced back to that sort of original fragmentation that is bringing into the world-coming into the world. I mean feeling oneself mother at the price of getting rid of a living fragment of one’s own body; I mean feeling oneself a
Dying was the easy part. When my children moved to Amsterdam, and later, when my husband departed this world, I endured difficult times. But hardest of all was the day I accepted the only way to escape my agony was to leave my body behind. With each passing year, I lost friends and family to
‘Pearl’ by Josh Malerman is a masterpiece, that’s right, I said it. Formally known as ‘On This, The Day of The Pig’ and given a limited edition release, ‘Pearl’ is a rebranding of sorts, it is now publishing through Del Rey Books and I for one am thrilled by this news, as it means a
Now and then, when the moon flaunts a particularly peculiar hue, one is overcome with an insatiable yearning to fall backwards. The first port of call is more often than not the scrapbook. But, typically, upon looking at the postcards within, memories fade into milky incandescence. Some girls will then turn to systematic meditation, sitting
