Supernatural Tales

This is an unusual one from Rosalie Parker's new collection, Sparks from the Fire ( Swan River Press ). Here are no ghosts or ghouls, no menacing monsters, just a normal person - a writer, as it happens - living a seemingly idyllic existence in the country. However, the unnamed narrator has a problem that few of us have ever pondered. What does it feel like to be a bit-player in a major criminal case? Not good. The story begins as the protagonist (we are unsure of their gender) bids farewell to a couple of friends. They seem envious of the house, with its splendid view. Once they are gone the writer resumes work on a radio drama script, which they know is not particularly good. But it's what the public wants, apparently, or at least what the producer wants. It gradually emerges that the writer is involved in a drama far less neatly-rounded than the story they are trying to complete. The arrival of journalists who take pictures of the house and rummage through the bins mak...

The second story in Rosalie Parker's  Sparks from the Fire is a compact tale of strange events on the Yorkshire Moors. It begins with parents in a small village coping with the aftermath of a baffling accident. A couple of teenagers have been injured in the eponymous event, despite it begin a frequent and hitherto innocuous contest. The parents keep their offspring indoors, but speculation mounts via social media. It seems that a mysterious cloud descended upon the fell runners, and that they all suffered 'missing time'. UFOlogical speculation results, among other Fortean musings. But in the meantime some former competitors have started to feel the desire to re-run the event. Do they hope to dispel the mystery, or embrace it? This reminded me of Algernon Blackwood's tales such as 'A Victim of Higher Space'. There is a power lurking near the village, something real enough to swoop down upon humans and change them in some way. But whether that power is evil...

New from the Swan River Press comes this handsome volume of nineteen tales by Yorkshire-based writer Rosalie Parker. According to the blur  Sparks from the Fire offers 'a wide variety of familiar characters and settings, yet there is always something else — a shadow world that haunts, disturbs, and threatens'. Which sounds right up our street, gentle reader. The first story is 'The Bronze Statuette', which was published in ST #29. I need hardly say that I like it. As the lead tale I suspect that it's themes and general 'feel' will be encountered again in various mutations. Here we have a superficially normal, indeed rather comfortable woman who goes too far in pursuit of something apparently trivial. The statuette of the story is material enough, but could represent many things - a genuine achievement that she feels eludes her, a transcendent beauty that she can never quite grasp. From normality to destructive obsession is, the story shows, a much shor...

One of the all-time classics.

A typical reader concealing a copy of ST from her governess Click here to go to the online poll. It's developing along interesting lines...

If you go here  you can hear me reading the Prologue of my 'Lost Crown' novella Sentinels . Not a great reading but within the generous bounds of okay. I'm thinking of starting a ST blog with weekly bits about 10-15 mins long, at most. Nothing heavy. But if I do I will probably ramble on about all sorts of topics related to supernatural fiction.  We'll see how it goes.