Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

Blimey, I seem to have lost the year 2009, or a substantial part of it. Never mind, my fiendish plans for 2010 are well under way. 


First up, the contents of ST17. This is list is highly provisional, but I thought you might like to have a peep.



'The Tunnel' - Peter Bell


'Mr Nousel's Mirror' - Michael Keyton


T'he Dress' - Elizabeth Brown 


'13 Nassau St' - Martin Hayes


'Cabin D' - Ian Rogers


'The Language of the Nameless Region' - Richard Gavin 


'Lessons' - Katherine M. Haynes


This list is interesting (to me at least) because it contains so many new names. Not that I think ST has become in any way tired, I just happen to have been getting a lot of submissions from new writers (new to me, that is). This is a good thing.

There's an inevitable 'churning' effect in publishing a tiny little magazine as an amateur editor. A really good writer will stop off along the way to greater things - like getting paid - and may hang around for a year or two. Some writers who are successful, in the sense that their work appears in books, will stick with ST in part because they like it, and perhaps also because it has a reasonable reputation. Indeed some writers who are already established have been known to drop by - Joel Lane, for instance.

Anyway, ST17 does contain two 'old stagers' - my sub-editor Katherine, who appeared in the first issue, and Peter Bell. Katherine's story owes something to Robert Aickman's 'The inner Room', in my humble opinion, and is about nasty girls. Or grrrrrrls. Peter's story is, as the title hints, tunnel-based. It's about a disused railway line, in fact. Always a good central premise for a ghost story, I think. It's also couched in fairly traditional form, as a series of diary extracts and other bits of research.

The other authors are a diverse bunch. Elizabeth Brown's 'The Dress' is a truly weird tale, combining fashion with amnesia to confuse me and possibly the reader - but, I think, to interesting ends. 'Mr Nousel's Mirror' is an elegant supernatural fantasy, as is '13 Nassau St', with its Dublin setting. 'Cabin D' by Canadian author Ian Rogers is slightly redolent of the young Stephen King and indeed Rod Serling. With Richard Gavin I've finally got someone doing an almost-Lovecraftian fantasy-horror, combining a modern setting with a timeless, strange feel.

I can't really write any more about these stories because I'm not a complete idiot and don't want to give all the good bits away. But I can reveal some of the title images, which are bit suggestive, oo-er.