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Edition 14: The Darkness in Clara by Alan Baxter
When Michelle loses the love of her life, she struggles to understand what could have brought her to that dark place. As she starts to dig back into Clara’s past, Michelle discovers that there were secrets of her tormented adolescence that Clara kept from her. SY
Michelle saw Clara’s feet first, absurdly suspended a metre above the ground, toes pointing to the carpet, ghostly pale and twisting in a lazy spiral. The rest of the scene burst into her mind in one electric shock a fraction of a second later; Clara’s wiry nakedness, limp arms, head tilted chaotically to one side. Her tattoos seemed faded against ashen skin. Her so familiar face grotesque and wrong, tongue swelling from her mouth like an escaping slug. And her bulging eyes, staring glassy and cold as Michelle began to scream. Light from the bedside lamp cast Clara’s shadow across the wall like a puppet play, glinted off the metal legs of the upturned chair beneath.
I bought her that belt, Michelle thought, as she stared at the worn black leather biting deep into the blue-tinged flesh of Clara’s neck, and she drew breath to scream again.
~~~
Edition 14: Tread Upon the Brittle Shell by Rhoads Brazos
Charlie sought out adventure and the glory of discovering a new cave. What she didn’t account for was what she would find. Portents suggest the site shouldn’t be disturbed, and Charlie knows it might be sacred, but will the lure of fame and adventure be too much to ignore? SY
The vehicle pressed through a cloud that thickened into terracotta, and for a moment the desert track disappeared. In the passenger’s seat, Charlie squeezed her knees with both hands, but Yileen didn’t seem too concerned. He turned his dark, weathered face to her, grinned, and refocused on the track with a languidness that jabbed at her gut.
“Have you ever—” Charlie stole a glance at the speedometer. “Gotten stranded out here?”
Yileen snorted. “Many times. Once a month?”
The Australian outback wasn’t as flat as the Nullarbor—as if anything could be—but seemed somehow even less forgiving. Charlie picked up her canteen and felt its weight.
Yileen laughed, ending with a dry cough. “Don’t be concerned. I drive this road so many times. See—boulder coming up on the right.”
There it was, melting out of the veil.
“Patch of corkwood over the ridge.”
Edition 14: Article: State of Play of Australian Speculative Fiction
SQ Mag is pleased to have sourced two prominent figures in the fields of speculative fiction in Australia, and asked them for their opinions. Their views are not necessarily SQ Mag’s, nor can the articles, by way of the size, be considered a complete survey. We encourage readers who are interested in Australian speculative fiction to search the Aurealis Awards, Ditmar Awards, and Australian Shadows Awards for references to many other quality publishers and authors.
The State of Science Fiction and Fantasy in Australia
by Tehani Wessely
In April 2014, a self-published novel won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel for the first time in the 19-year history of the Awards. Also for the first time, the shortlist for that category did not contain a book published by the Harper Voyager line. A debut novelist won the Best Horror Novel and Best Young Adult Novel categories (for the same book), small press publishers dominated the Anthologies and Collections fields, and several works on the 12 shortlists were ebook-only releases. The publishing world is changing quickly, and Australian science fiction and fantasy is riding the wave.
Comparative to population, Australia has a relatively robust speculative publishing arena. HarperCollins, Hachette/Orbit, Allen & Unwin, Random House Australia/Penguin, Pan Macmillan, Walker Books and their subsidiaries and imprints each year produce good numbers of home grown books, along with the smaller figures of Fremantle Press, Ford Street, UQ Press and the like. International publishers such as Angry Robot, Solaris, Prime and Tartarus Press pick up Australian work, and small Australian publishing houses – including Twelfth Planet Press, Ticonderoga Publications, Satalyte Publishing, FableCroft Publishing and Clan Destine Press – rise and produce innovative and niche publications the larger publishers can’t. And of course, with technology providing more access to a broader market than ever before, self-published work is flooding the field. But what trends are we seeing, and why?
Edition 2: Masks by Stephanie Barr
Stephanie Barr’s Mask was deservedly a finalist in the Story Quest Short Story Contest for 2011. The judges were impressed with the evocative imagery she used in her narrative, as well the tightly written plot and theme. We are sure you will also enjoy this fantasy piece. GH
Two enticed him, two among thirty displayed before him.
One was exquisitely beautiful. The cheekbones high but not too sharp, the lips full, but perfectly so. There was a flash of ivory teeth between the full lips and a gleam of amethyst in the glistening eyes. The face seemed formed of the finest dark wood and polished to a velvety perfection, unblemished and rare in its uniformity. Around the slanting eyes was the unmistakable glow of gold, which rimmed the face as well to where the edges disappeared under the cascade of thick black hair. He had never seen a more beautiful mask. Or one more costly. A chieftain’s daughter was among the prospective brides, and there could be little doubt which one she was.
Oddly, though, it was not that mask that had first caught his attention but another. It was not as costly a mask or as finely crafted. It was, in fact, different from every other mask he saw. It was not of the finest wood; the wood used was riddled with knots and blemishes, with uneven color ranging from honeyed lightness to mahogany red. The eyes were round as if with wonder and dark with the smokey dullness of black topaz. Some surfaces were polished to ravishing softness, but others were rudely hewn and left raw, sharp. There was a lack of symmetry: a different shape to each eye, a twist to the lips, that robbed otherwise attractive features of much of their beauty. No gilt, no craftsmanship, and yet…
Edition 2: The Narrow Gate by Daniel Pearlman
Abu Melek enjoys all the priviledges of being a merchant of the Middle East, and why should he not? But he should beware his indolent attitudes, because the desert is all about survival of the fittest and compromising the caravan is not an option. SY
Abu Melek had much desert still to cross before reaching Baghdad with his caravan-load of silks, spices, gems and women from the East. Was there anything better than the life of a merchant? Every night he took pleasure in his goods—occasionally damaging a roll of silk or breaking an excessively delicate spine in his ardor (affordable losses all). He could eat his kaleb halwa and have it too!
Abu traveled longer in the heat of day than custom prescribed. Time being money, the days thus gained more than offset the losses incurred: inferior camels and women of weak constitution, tidbits tossed to the ever-present jackals. Pushing his troupe to the limits raised not a hackle among his sword-wielding guards, for they too had their nightly pick of the seventy black-haired beauties that had lasted thus far.
Edition 2: Confinement by Kenneth Schneyer
Kenneth Schneyer’s Confinement was a shortlisting in the Story Quest Short Story Contest, and deservedly so. The judges were impressed with the supernatural undercurrents of his piece, and yet the stark realism of the contemporary setting and characters is a firm foundation. I find it hard to accurately classify, and recommended to the editor that it be considered a dark fantasy. Read it and test my assessment. GH
She first saw him while she was taking the long way to work to avoid the deformed children. For anybody else, the walk between South Station and the looming tower that enclosed the law firm would be a nearly-straight line, due north, fifteen minutes at most. But Tamara stopped treading that narrow path after the first time she attempted it, because she discovered that it required her to come face-to-face with Saint Drogo’s Infirmary for Waifs.
It wasn’t the building that hurt; it was the children. She had encountered Saint Drogo’s at the same moment as a mother with a cleft-palate toddler emerged, and through the open front door she had also caught a glimpse of the twisted back on a five-year-old. In her imagination, the dark building was bursting with lame, drooling, incontinent, gaping idiots, all children, all demanding attention and understanding, all needing her. Nausea had almost overcome her, and she hurried north to the protection of her own sterile cell at Rheingold, Granada & Pearce.
When she found herself unable to get its name out of her head, Tamara looked up St. Drogo’s. The resolute brownstone clinic had had its genesis a hundred years ago, to care for children no one wanted, who were so awful to look at that adults condemned them. Nowadays it also treated crack babies and infants born with AIDS, and even had a licensed adoption agency to place the many children who were abandoned on the doorstep. That was all Tamara needed to know; she promised herself she’d never see the place again.
Edition 3: The Raptor and the Lion by Larry Ivkovich
A centuries old battle exists between the Raptors and Lions. But these are the last of their kinds, tired of killing and the stench of death. Can such a powerful spell be broken and their peoples be freed? SY
Drunken Sacrifice
The Raptor Marceeka emerged from the shadows like a giant, demonic bird-of-prey. A long, pointed beak extended beneath glittering eyes; a thin, rangy body stood wrapped in voluminous, leathery wings.
She laughed to herself as she anticipated what the lone umana in the square was thinking. The wings—a cloak, of course; the beak—a long-nosed mask once worn by physicians during the Black Plague and thought to protect against the hideous outbreak. A very early morning Carnevale reveler, no doubt! Yes, even though the yearly festival was six weeks past, it was obvious the umana was drunk and would conjure up anything in his drink-befuddled mind to explain what he thought he was seeing.
Marceeka drifted back into the nighttime shadows cast by the Campanile, the tall bell-tower backlit against the full moon. The Piazza de San Marco was devoid of life at four in the morning. Even the ubiquitous pigeons that haunted every inch of the city were asleep at this hour. The umana, his heavy frame wobbly with drink, moved on, stumbling across the enormous stone-tiled square.
Edition 4: Sunflower by M.K. Charles
The end of the world approaches, and one little girl is slowly losing control of her body. Searching for the remnants of her mother’s history, she leaves her family behind for a greater desting. SY
The tree was over two thousand years old, the oldest, Obasan had told her, on the island of Honshu, perhaps in all of Japan. Its smooth, ashen trunk was as wide as Obasan’s house, its crown so high Saki had to jerk her head far back in her wheelchair to see it through the leaf canopy of the surrounding Bodhis.
When Obasan had first shown Saki the old tree, they had approached it from the cliff side. Now alone, Saki reassured herself that the ascent up the slope had not been too steep. Obasan had followed behind her, her hands on the back handles of the chair only a precaution as Saki deftly maneuvered her power chair by means of the sip-and-puff mouthstick specially designed by her father’s colleague at the observatory. She could make the trip on her own and get back before Obasan noticed she had gone, in plenty of time to welcome her father home after his year away, in time to enjoy her birthday dinner, the last dinner, if the announcement were true, they or anyone else was ever to have.
As she sat facing the door that stood in the back of the kitchen, a droplet of sweat curled down Saki’s cheek, settling just to the right of the corner of her mouth. She stretched and twisted her tongue to lick it off. It was hot late this afternoon and would only get hotter as the evening pressed on. More sweat would pour down her face and into her eyes and mouth, and there would be nothing she could do about it. She would just have to push through.
Edition 5: A Debt Called In by Michael B Fletcher
An extortion attempt leads to more trouble than any of the parties had bargained for. When a gift horse appears, perhaps it should be looked in the mouth, before it’s too late. Revenge, murder and the supernatural all feature in this great story from an author, whose debut anthology will be published late in 2012. SY
I tightened my grey overcoat as I ran through the busy city streets on the chill morning, sirens already echoing behind me. A weight, hot and hard pulled at the inside pocket of my coat. I supported it with my hand.
The noise, I thought, that’s what did it.
The sound they’d made, a kind of muted popping was hardly discernible from the traffic noise of the city outside. But me? Well I had to defend myself and it was loud; my gun didn’t have a silencer.
~~~
Edition 5: Azurewrath by Esme Carpenter
Werewolves and vampires make unusual dinner companions, but in a time of truce, dinner at Azurewrath is for the purposes of peace. Thomas Cromley knows that somewhat is amiss, but cannot figure it out. A story of genteel society, where not even mythological creatures can resist intrigue. Esme Carpenter is one of the youngest authors in our catalogue, but her recent young teen novel, Against the Elements, is definitely a testament to her skill as a writer. SY
Watch your back.
That’s the only piece of advice I was ever given. It’s served me, for the most part. If you don’t watch your back, things can happen back there that you wouldn’t ever see. Dodgy dealings, snide comments. Stabbings. And suchlike. But it’s the piece of advice that I draw on when I’m invited to Azurewrath.
I couldn’t tell you why my Order sends me there. I hate the place, I hate the company, and worse besides they hate me too. Common courtesy, I guess. Keeping the peace. Whatever peace there is. I don’t trust the smiles they give me at Azurewrath. I don’t trust the cutlery.
But even vampires know not to stab a werewolf at a dinner party. I suppose, with the cutlery at least, I’m safe. If I watch my back.
SQ Mag 
