Saturday 30 January 2010

Progress Report

Here we are again. Thanks to everyone who's sent their sympathies about my mother's stroke. She's still in hospital, doing okay, but needs physio and is waiting for a place in a special unit. I'm optimistic, but it's early days yet.

I'm working on ST17, using my little netbook, as my old laptop seems to be dead. I may be able to recover stuff from the C drive without paying a hundred quid to some 'expert', but we shall see. Point is I've not had to rebuild the ST files as I cunningly backed them up just before Christmas.

So, ST17 will contain the following stories:

The Tunnel - Peter Bell
Mr Nousel's Mirror - Michael Keyton R
The Dress - Elizabeth Brown
13 Nassau St - Martin Hayes
Cabin D - Ian Rogers
The Language of the Nameless Region - Richard Gavin
Lessons - Katherine Haynes
 
Quite a spread here. Most have contemporary settings, but some are 'historical' and 'The Dress' is anyone's guess, time wise. Likewise some are traditional ghost stories, but others - notably Richard Gavin's story - owe more to Lovecraft and perhaps Machen or Blackwood. All in all it's a pretty good spread, and I'm lining up reviews and a nice bit of non-fiction from Colin Westney.
 
So, readers be not afeard. The only thing I really regret about ST is not being able to make it a quarterly, there's so much good writing out there. But the work, ah the work...

2 comments:

Michael Kelly said...

David,

Firstly, all best wishes for your mother. Here's hoping she continues to steadily improve.

ST17 looks great. I'm looking forward to reading it.

And to harken to your previous posting, I really love Dark City, warts and all. I think, despite its flaws, that it is very well-intentioned and has a lot of heart.

-Mike

valdemar said...

Thanks Michael. She is indeed improving.

Dark City does indeed have it's heart in the right place. I much prefer it to The Matrix, which is just slick and silly. Midway between the two is The Thirteenth Floor, which has a similar retro-setting as Dark City but a very different sci-fi rationale.

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