Reopening to UK Sales
Tags: VATAfter much hesitation and fretting, Michael has finally allowed himself to be convinced, by the tireless efforts of many solicitous indie ebook fans in the UK over the past few years (thank you!), that it’s safe to reopen Weightless to UK sales. Apparently ebooks have been designated zero rate for VAT since early in 2020.
Welcome back! And very sorry for the delay.
Important note: This doesn’t apply to the EU. We still can’t sell to the EU. :(
Interzone #294 and #295 only 99c til January 14!
Tags: Interzone, saleInterzone Press has announced a huge sale on its two most recent back issues! From now til January 14th, Interzone 294 and 295 are each just 99 cents!
Interzone is a beautiful magazine chock full of art, reviews, and weird and wonderful fiction. This is a wonderful opportunity to check it out if you haven’t:
What We’re Supposed to Do Now
Have you heard? In September, our “competitors” in the ebook retail game, Am*zon, closed their e-subscription service, Newsstand, and have replaced it with a blanket subscription that is trying to be a Netflix for ebooks. This has been disastrous for indie publishers. Galaxy’s Edge shut down before Newsstand was even officially over. Fantasy Magazine has closed. Apex has had to fundraise or contract. Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and now The Dark have reported massive losses and imminent belt-tightening. Some new venues like Sunday Morning Transport and The Deadlands have sprung up, experimenting with different publishing models, and that’s promising! But overall it feels like a bloodbath, especially since on top of this we’ve got the collapse of social media to contend with.
Weightless isn’t going anywhere. In fact we’ve seen a significant boost, for which I thank you all, on my own behalf and that of all these indie publishers above working their asses off to survive. But I feel pretty slimy about it. I didn’t ask for this. But I can’t say I didn’t see the writing on the wall.
As in so many other fields, the evil corporation rendered previous marketplaces and forms of distribution obsolete through brutally exploitative business practices on all kinds of fronts where we couldn’t see them in the name of putting unprecedented convenience at everyone’s fingertips. Now that we’re hooked, it is withdrawing the conveniences that weren’t profitable enough to justify the massive overexpenditure of resources necessary to achieve them. Ebooks are what they are because of Am*zon. Weightless is what it is because of them. We scrape out an existence in the beast’s shadow. We opened in 2010 during the ebook boom, exactly and only to provide an alternative to those bastards. But we could never do what they do. Now that they’ve pulled out of an area of the field we happen, with luck, spit and axle grease, to be almost as good at on nothing like the same scale—providing recurring serial content by independent creators—Weightless is seeing an unexpected windfall. But that windfall corresponds to an embarrassingly tiny fraction of the lost revenue Am*zon considered not worth competing for. Early in our existence, we kept wondering when the beast would be alerted to our presence, like Sauron noticing the Shire for the first time, and send its hordes to wipe us out. But we never had the Ring, to overextend that metaphor.
In order to replace this service and the revenue Newsstand meant to markets like Apex, Uncanny, The Dark, Clarkesworld and many others, we would need to provide a replacement massive, global marketplace everybody is looking at on a daily basis for their every basic need. Weightless is one person, me, a bunch of code I wrote, some chained together open source software and hosting packages.
Expansion seems the obvious answer. What if we added an additional shoestring or two? Obviously, there is an enormous pie with one tiny sliver taken out of it just sitting there. It’s going to spoil if somebody doesn’t build a pie server big enough to take advantage. By which I mean a lot of people faced with the choice between going to a little extra effort to care about and support the venues that were providing their great speculative short fiction and poetry and just not bothering to read that stuff anymore will absolutely do the easier thing.
The thing is, I have not got the time or resources to add any more shoestrings. You can’t make shoestrings out of nothing. And there’s the question of whether the model Am*zon created is actually viable without the massive hidden expenditure of resources and exploitation of labor that was behind Newsstand all the time and is still behind Am*zon. I’m not building another beast. Absolutely not.
But is there something smaller and kinder that could work? Unfortunately, I fear I am not qualified to guess. If I were to, say, take out a loan for enough money to pay two full time salaried programmers what they have been led to expect by a predatory, exploitative industry, with benefits, in order to expand Weightless, to build that bigass pie server, would that debt pay for itself? Or would I, in a year or two years or whenever the loan sharks caught up with me, come to the same conclusion the beast has already reached, that the artificially inflated marketplace they created doesn’t actually have any capacity to sustain?
Neither I nor anyone I’ve consulted have thus far been willing to take that risk.
But maybe you’re better informed about this than I. Maybe you’re magic! If you are, please leave a comment below?
If, like me, you are not magic: would you please consider subscribing to some or all of these wonderful and struggling magazines?
Thank you!
—Michael
The Impending Obsolescence of MOBI
Tags: Send to KindleNews has come in from Am*zon that as of November 1st, they’ll no longer accept the MOBI ebook format (or its descendants PRC and AZW) in their Send to Kindle feature–though it’s important to note that Kindles will still be able to display the legacy format. Still, we’re going to start encouraging folks to switch their subscriptions over to EPUB. After a transition period, we may stop including MOBI in our own “Send to Device” feature, but for now, Weightless will keep selling and sending MOBI for anyone with a legacy device.
Who knows what future use people may find for this no-longer-supported format? But I hope all the effort that’s been invested in it by countless readers and ebook designers and developers over the years won’t go entirely to waste. (As someone still committed to the last piece of user-friendly portable *pple hardware ever manufactured, the Late 2011 Macbook Pro, I am deeply in favor of following the long tail of obsolescence to its bitter end.)
Questions and comments are always welcome!
An interview with VERUSHKA author, Jan Stinchcomb
Stinchcomb’s debut novel is a magical, thrilling exploration of mothers and monsters, woven with the stark, secret language of the old tales and the gorgeous sensibilities of the contemporary. An exquisite story that will stay with me long after I put it down, like a dream, or a nightmare, staring through the window in the darkest hour of the night. ~A.A. Balaskovits, author of Magic for Unlucky Girls and Strange Folk You’ll Never MeetAuthor Jan Stinchcomb has crafted something truly special with her novel, Verushka. This is a devastating tale of the bonds between mother and child as well as the all-too-real terrors of growing up. An astounding book and one that you’ll want to read immediately. ~Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens and Reluctant Immortals
Jan, you’ve previously published short stories, including a chapbook and flash, but this is your first novel. What about this particular tale compelled you to write in this form?
I consider this a family novel, a family story, and I knew it was going to spill out in every direction and require thousands of words. I love multi-POV novels. The weight of certain stories can and should be carried by different characters across different time periods. And what is the story of a family if not an extended argument?
What came to you first, the plot or the characters?
The situation. I started with Caroline, Jack and Devon, all of them recently traumatized and living at a distance from the rest of the metropolis. The story of any small family alone in the world is already a potentially big plot. I wanted to focus on the child as much as the parents. I’ve always felt both charmed and frightened by children and what they can conjure with their imaginations. This children’s world is often inaccessible to adults: parents can teach their baby a language, but that child’s consciousness remains a mystery. We project certain narratives onto our children. It’s amazing to me that I can recall so vividly my own kids’ early childhood while they remember only certain moments. In this wonderland of lost time, all kinds of monsters could be lurking. In Devon’s case, however, she isn’t just imagining the wonders she sees. She is living it, and she can’t simply grow out of it. In fact, it gets worse as she gets older.
Verushka is the story of a curse that follows three generations of a family. The being who stalks them, the titular Verushka, starts out as human. She seems like an innocent girl at first. Were the seeds of evil within her from the beginning, or was she seduced to the dark side?
I think she’s innocent. I think we all start out innocent. But because Verushka has some psychic ability, she is more at risk than other children. Dangerous beings can communicate with her easily. And then, like all of us, she makes certain choices and does things that apparently can’t be undone. Most people would agree that Verushka is a victim of kidnapping and that she is only a child when she first encounters evil. Like a lot of unfortunate children, she has no one to save her, and it isn’t long before she is fully entrenched in the dark side.
Verushka’s first home is in Eastern Europe. Why this location when most of the story is set in the western U.S.?
Verushka’s chapter starts outside of the U.S., in the distant past, and it crosses over into an otherworldly realm. With her section of the novel, we get the villain’s origin story. I never specify her exact country of origin; it’s more important that she evolves into someone outside of the human race. She has no real citizenship by the time the Woodwards encounter her. That is part of her power and her danger.
Real talk: I had a Russian-Polish grandmother (that’s how she described herself), and I spent many years studying Russian as part of my work in comparative literature. It felt natural to create a darkly folkloric past for Verushka and to place her where nymphs and sprites are as real as people. Needless to say, my family isn’t in this book, and nothing bad has ever happened to me in the woods.
The first to be cursed is Elaine. Her story takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. More than anything Elaine wants to be free to explore herself and her place in the world. Verushka enters her life as a seductress and a mentor. I find this deliciously disturbing. Why so much seduction in Verushka?
Predators seduce. It’s their MO. They make you feel both that you are irresistible and that you are a willing participant, or maybe even that you initiated the whole thing. There is nothing wrong with Elaine’s various desires, but Verushka finds her way in through the cracks in Elaine’s self-confidence. She tries something similar with Devon, who manages, despite her youth, to stay a few steps ahead.
The book begins with the central family—Caroline, Jack, and their daughter Devon—having lost their home and nearly all of their belongings in a fire. When they retreat to a small chalet at the edge of a wood, Caroline seems more connected to those lost objects than to her own family. Devon instinctively knows that parents lie to children. The lost things that Caroline mourns are another kind of lie—the lie of permanence. How important are truth and lies in Verushka?
Truth and lies are the vocabulary of the family narrative. There’s the story we present to the outside world, a form of family PR, and the story that goes on behind closed doors. Verushka herself becomes one walking lie as the book goes on. And Devon is guilty of lying to her mother, or holding back on certain truths, as a necessary part of establishing independence. Mother and daughter lie to each other, but neither of them truly gets away with it. It’s a messy kind of victory.
Caroline, as you mentioned, has her own special problem. She’s in an emotional free-fall, planning her next move. She mourns the lie of permanence even as she engages in taking apart all that she has built.
A stuffed bear called Bear and a stuffed rabbit called Henry are important and vivid characters. I wish I had them in my life. Who are they? Where do they come from?
Henry actually lives in my house, in stuffed animal form, although I’m the only one who calls him by that name. (You can see him on my Instagram, 1/1/2023). There is no equivalent of Bear in my life, but you can find those vintage teddy bears on any website. Again, the power of these toys originates in the imagination of childhood, specifically in Devon’s mind. At some point they truly come alive and get to work. Animals are often fully realized characters in the fairy tales so I had no problem incorporating them into my novel.
Henry is all id and impulse, whereas Bear possesses knowledge and has a plan. He and Devon form a team. Bear goes on to play a very important role, which I won’t go into for those who haven’t read the book.
Gowns, hair, blood—the alchemy of black, white and red is ubiquitous in fairy tales. Did you consciously call upon this spell as you wrote Verushka?
These are natural choices for me as a writer. I didn’t even notice the color palette of the novel so it must be completely unconscious for me by now. Red of course is the color of blood, and blood means more than death in my work. It means life. In Verushka black and white get jumbled. Hair color changes. White is Verushka’s color, but we usually see her in dark settings or at night. Gowns are something we wear to bed or as part of a costume. They’re often required for special occasions, and Devon’s whole life feels like it is headed toward one big night.
Verushka is an original story that weaves fairy tale and mythic elements within its modern framework. You created a witch and an evil stepmother. Why does female power so often come in the form of magic and/or evil in these ancient stories, and in their descendants as well?
I think there is a tendency in the general culture to demonize powerful women. Witches don’t need to be evil or use their power for evil, either in life or literature. And yes, I hope there are many witches thriving out there in these dangerous times. That said, it is a lot of fun to explore and develop characters who are unapologetically evil. The horror genre allows evil characters to exist without being redeemed.
The evil stepmother of this novel is someone who doesn’t want to be a mother at all. She is also a liar, and liars can do incredible damage to powerless children.
What resource recommendations would you make for a writer who would like more fairy tale elements in their own work?
Start collecting. I have a whole shelf of fairy tale collections and rewrites. Pay attention to the stories you return to time and time again because there’s a reason for that attraction. I was always drawn to “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Vasilisa the Wise & Baba Yaga.” Your favorites will doubtless be different. Likewise, pay attention to the language and structure of the fairy tales. Repetition is important as a way to establish a mood and perhaps cast a spell. You can read the experts if you are so inclined: Kate Bernheimer, Marina Warner, Jack Zipes, and Bruno Bettelheim come to mind. Remember, finally, that this is very much a genre of the people––all the people, rich and poor––and you have every right to add your voice to the mix.
Pre-order Verushka here
Jan Stinchcomb is the author of Verushka (JournalStone), The Kelping (Unnerving), The Blood Trail (Red Bird Chapbooks) and Find the Girl (Main Street Rag). Her stories have appeared in Bourbon Penn, SmokeLong Quarterly and Menacing Hedge, among other places. A Pushcart nominee, she is featured in Best Microfiction 2020 and The Best SmallFictions 2018 & 2021. She lives in Southern California with her family and is an associate fiction editor for Atticus Review. Find her at janstinchcomb.com or on Twitter @janstinchcomb or Instagram @jan_stinchcomb
Issue 054 is now live!
Issue 054 is not your usual issue of LSQ. As our Creative Director Tara Lindsey so succinctly described it, this is beach reading for strange people. I hope that description intrigued you as much as it amused me, because that’s a perfect description as possible for this issue.
We are once again lucky enough to have a beautiful piece of art gracing the cover of the issue. This time it’s the work of Indicreates, who shares a bit below about the piece on our cover as well as some insights into her process.
Please tell us about the cover image, “A Kind Face”. Is there a story behind this image? What was your thought process while creating this image?
I drew this illustration while going trough hard times, it was a symbol to myself to be kinder with myself. I printed it out so I’d remember it every time I look at it.
I’ve chosen green colors and flowers as both are calming to me.
Take us briefly through your artistic process. How do you create such captivating images?
I like to start with rough sketches, do research, listen to music that fits the art I’m going for and build my paintings from there.
At times I daydream and come up with ideas that way.
When did you realize you wanted to focus on fantasy in your art? Did you start out as a fantasy artist, or have you noticed changes over time? Please tell us a bit about your art journey!
I decided to focus on fantasy art in university, I realized I had most fun painting elves and fantasy worlds and that I have a deep love for worlds that feel different.
My love for fantasy started early, I already dreamed of other worlds as a kid and after many years of trying different things and building my skills I went back to my core in a way.
In my art I try to recreate the feeling of discovering new worlds.
Do you have a personal favorite of the projects you’ve worked on? Or one that was memorable due to its challenges? If so, can you tell us a bit about it?
My personal art that is based on my childhood fantasies mean a lot to me, sadly I don’t have too much time for these pieces but I try my best to paint a bit from that world whenever I can.
Interzone sale through April 9th!
Tags: Interzone, saleThe new publishers of Interzone, MYY Press, have announced a big 50% off sale on the subscription and the new issue #294, now through (update!) April 9th.
Full disclosure, I helped format the ebook version of this latest issue, so I feel particularly informed in saying that new editor Gareth Jelley has a talent for eye-catching visual design with meticulous attention to detail, and I think he’s doing an incredible job keeping with the edgy, sophisticated spirit of this storied publication.
Take advantage of this great deal and find out what I mean.
#TransRightsReadathon
Tags: #TransRightsReadathon, Coupon, saleSim Kern’s #TransRightsReadathon, taking place from March 20th through 27th, is a distributed fundraising event meant to increase awareness of trans authors and their work and contribute to the work of defending trans rights.
Here at Weightless we think the appalling series of legislative reprisals against trans folks’ right to exist taking place right now in the US is something that really desperately needs stood up against. So here’s what we’re going to do:
Buy ebooks by or including trans authors from Weightless any time during the readathon, enter the coupon code “#TRANSRIGHTSREADATHON” at checkout, and we’ll give you 10% off your order AND donate our entire cut of the proceeds (meaning we’ll still be paying our indie publishers what they deserve) to the Trans Health Legal Fund, run by the Transgender Law Center.
Read more about the #TransRightsReadathon and sign up to participate here.
This is in no way exhaustive, but here are a few ideas to get you started:
Issue 053 Release!!! Meet cover artist Olivia Hintz!
Hello dear readers and welcome to the fourteenth year of Luna Station Quarterly! Issue 053 is going to kick this year off right with 16 stories by 16 awesome authors. Some are familiar faces to you regular readers out there, along with a bunch of new voices for you all to enjoy.
We are once again lucky enough to have a beautiful piece of art gracing the cover of the issue. This time it’s the work of Olivia Hintz, who shares a bit below about the piece on our cover as well as some insights into her process.
Please tell us about the cover image, “The Prophet”. Is there a story behind this image? What was your thought process while creating this image?
The character depicted in The Prophet is a generic depiction of a prophet level priestess from a story I am writing. In my story the Temple studies travel between planes. The spatial distortion emanating from her head and the coins she wears are unique to these priestesses. Coins have historically been used as both a symbol of travel and in some mythologies as payment to cross certain mythological rivers etc. Since the Temple’s main theme is “travel”, the priestesses use coins as symbols of status rather than bartering. In short, the priestesses run a temple where certain gifted beings can travel between planes. The adornment of these coins represent levels of superiority/status. A lower level initiate would have only a few coins worn in their hair or as earrings. Prophets are recognized as high-mid level in the Temple’s system. Can you imagine how many coins the leaders have? It’s an ostentatious, ridiculous amount.
Most, if not all, of my work, derives from storytelling. When I visualize an illustration as part of a larger story, I can better decide what attributes, items, etc., the character should have and the emotional reaction I want to evoke.
I am also a sucker for world-building. While I love painting faces most, some of my favorite illustrations are of plants, stone and other natural elements that bring a world to life. With The Prophet, I decided her surroundings should depict one of the planes I have built in my (hopefully) one-day-fully-realized graphic novel.
Take us briefly through your artistic process. How do you create such captivating images?
I am still learning what I enjoy and what works for me. With The Prophet, I didn’t start with a sketch as I most definitely should have. Instead, I gathered some inspirational images and went straight to painting. Luckily, the structure did not change much. Sometimes this process works and sometimes the painting ends up in the “Hazard: Work In Progress” folder for eternity.
The one thing I always do is gather references. It was such a taboo in art school. I’m glad artists are starting to push the notion that it’s necessary and welcomed. Using references is smart and efficient—no one should feel guilty looking up a 13th-century arbalest.
When did you realize you wanted to focus on fantasy in your art? Did you start out as a fantasy artist, or have you noticed changes over time? Please tell us a bit about your art journey!
I have always been a fantasy nerd. Lord of the Rings, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, etc.
Growing up, I never thought of fantasy art as a career. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to attend art school and supportive parents, who had no idea what an art career entails besides hustling paintings and eating from cans. They were great, though, and I’m super appreciative of my folks. I know a lot of artist friends whose parents refuse to support their creative path, so I count myself extremely lucky.
My main goal was to be a graphic novelist, taking inspiration from the Japanese comic market and Rumiko Takahashi’s works like Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha. Though, going to a school for fine art was probably not the best choice for a comic artist. I spent a few years after art school working various jobs to support myself, barely touching art again until I found Critical Role, a Dungeons and Dragons twitch stream. It was a gateway into the fantasy community, inspiring fan art and forcing me to learn digital painting. After investing in Smarterartschool and Swatches digital art courses, I’m at the point of freshly breaking into the industry.
Do you have a personal favorite of the projects you’ve worked on? Or one that was memorable due to its challenges? If so, can you tell us a bit about it?
Every piece in my portfolio had its ups and downs. I don’t have a favorite, but several pieces changed how I draw and think about art.
The first piece is called An Earthly Encounter: Harrowing Sentinel. It was a challenge issued by MTG artist Clint Cearley on his YouTube channel “Swatches.” Getting feedback from a professional at the time was incredible. My artwork jumped from a wavering understanding of digital painting to another level. I’ll forever be appreciative of the help I got from him.
The piece Lava River, with guidance from Donato Giancola, furthered my art into a deeper understanding of composition and reference gathering. I started taking more time to develop how a piece works and what I want it to look like when finished.
The last piece I feel similarly about is a current work. Unfortunately, I cannot show it. But it will be out in a few months! It’s a multi-figure piece with horses and a castle depicting King Arthur and his knights on the way out of Camelot. It’s the most challenging illustration I’ve worked on yet. Greg Manchess and Scott Fischer gave me some invaluable advice with this piece, and I’m very excited to share it in the Arthurian Zine it’s a part of!
Issue 052 Author Interview: Sarah McPherson and “Shadow and Ash”
We hope today’s Issue 052 author interview can be a spot of respite in your busy week. Come sit with us a moment as Sarah McPherson tells us about the inspiration behind the soothing trees in her story “Shadow and Ash“.
LSQ: The sense of foreboding you’ve crafted here is incredibly palpable. How did you do it??
Sarah: The kind of scary stories I enjoy are the ones where it’s all about the atmosphere; ghost stories, stories that are a bit uncanny, a bit unsettling. So when I try to write scary (or even just a little bit ominous), that’s what I aim to recreate. The monster you know is there but can’t see – the longer you go without actually coming face to face with whatever it is you’re afraid of, the more the tension builds. I was also aiming for a slightly dreamlike quality to this story, like in those nightmares where you’re trying to get away from something undefined that’s chasing you but you can’t, so you’re just constantly fleeing until you wake up.
LSQ: Alternatively, I could also feel the peace given by the ash trees wash over me. Have you ever been to a place like this? What was your inspiration?
Sarah: Being in the woods and surrounded by trees is something I have always found incredibly calming and peaceful. There are some urban woodland spaces near where I live that have this almost magical ability to make you forget that you’re in the middle of a city and that there are actually only a handful of trees between you and houses and roads. So I suppose that’s what I’m drawing on when I write about trees in that way. The contrast was also important to balance the story – so the peace of the trees had to be powerful enough to stand against the darker elements that threaten the character.
LSQ: Please tell us a bit more about your choice of imagery for this story.
Sarah: I’ve been writing a lot about trees and folklore recently as part of a larger project, so all of this stuff is very much at the forefront of my mind. For this story in particular I started with the choice of tree – ash – and then looked at folklore, traditions, and associations that could work as a jumping off point. Ash trees are very long-lived, and have a place in some mythologies as a tree of life (such as the Norse world tree Yggdrasil). Ash wood was also traditionally burned to ward off evil spirits, as it is in this story. They have winged seeds called keys, which I played on to give the character a moment where she realizes she can make a change, by turning a key. And then once I had established that what she has on her side is fire and light and life, it makes sense for what she faces to be the opposite of that: darkness, shadows, and the threat of death.
LSQ: What is your favorite kind of tree and why?
Sarah: That’s a really hard question! I like all sorts of trees for all sorts of reasons. I love rowans for how delicate they look and for the fact that the red berries stay on the tree after the leaves have fallen, which makes them particularly striking in winter. I love twisty, ancient hawthorns that look like they’ve been lifted straight out of a fairy tale. Both rowans and hawthorns have lots of folklore surrounding them too! And there’s a white poplar near my house that I love because the silvery undersides of the leaves are beautiful in the sunlight when a breeze shakes them.
Issue 052 Author Interview: Chana Kohl and “The Warrior Tree”
Welcome, dear readers, to our Issue 052 author interviews! This issue is all about trees, and we can’t wait to see how each of our authors brought this theme to life. We’re starting off with Chana Kohl and her enthralling story “The Warrior Tree“.
LSQ: By the time I reached the sci-fi ending, I forgot I was reading a speculative fiction magazine because I was so engrossed in this story! Why did you decide to save the sci-fi for the end?
Chana: Thank you! In the original draft, the sci-fi portion was the opening scene and Faiza was the backstory. After some feedback, I realized my message needed to focus, and the spotlight had to be completely on her, so I switched things around. Also, I wanted the reader to be as unaware as Faiza was in the moment how her raw determination would manifest in the future.
LSQ: I will admit, trees aren’t the first things I think of in association with Morocco. Why did you choose to set your tree-themed story there?
Chana: Yes, I can definitely see that. Especially if you live in a place where trees and water are so abundant you might never consider what would happen if they were no longer there. If you live at the edge of the Sahara, they feel more precious. Desertification is a far more vast and visible problem in the stretch of Middle East where I live and Africa all-around. I’m just flabbergasted how argan trees are able to thrive, literally, as the last line of defense between these habitable and inhabitable areas.
LSQ: What drew you to this issue’s theme?
Chana: I’d been working on the idea since spring, drawing a parallel between one of these *warrior* trees and a young woman stuck in an impossible situation due to her culture, her economic status, her difference from the norm. I thought about all the traditional ways we define a champion, and neither of them fit the mold. What they did have in common was the ability to endure whatever conditions they found themselves and somehow draw strength from that. Some battles won’t be won in a single generation, but if you can plant the seeds, time will do the rest.
When I read the submission call, it was a happy coincidence that my title and theme seemed to match.
LSQ: Who and what inspires your writing?
Chana: As far as reading, there are so many classic authors I loved growing up, A. C. Clarke would be at the top of that list. Later I discovered Le Guin. I read so many amazing, new and established authors from all over the spectrum…but I have to say I’m in awe of Ted Chiang at the moment.
As far as story ideas…I try to write a 20-minute sprint each day from a story prompt. This usually results in a hodgepodge of foolishness, but sometimes there are one or two sentences I can use down the line. The majority of my story ideas come from interesting science articles I keep in a database or images in my media feeds from historical, archeological and architectural websites.
Issue 052 Release!!! Meet Cover Artist Samantha Lee
Welcome, dear readers, to the release of our annual themed issue! 052‘s theme is Trees, and we’re so pleased by how our eighteen authors shaped their stories around it. Imbue a little nature into your reading life right here on our site, or you can grab a copy of your very own in either print or digital!
Of course, this wouldn’t be a new issue of LSQ without some breathtaking cover art. This issue’s cover has been graced by Samantha Lee, tree-lover and landscape extraordinaire. Samantha was kind enough to share some thoughts about her art with us, as well as her thoughts on the importance of trees!
LSQ: Please tell us about the cover image for this issue. Is there a story behind this image? What was your thought process while creating this image?
Samantha: For the “Lost Swords” illustration I wanted to tell a story without featuring any people. I feel sometimes the story behind props and environments hit harder than one without them. The overall feeling of the painting was meant to be something warm and melancholy. With the swords in the background, I like to leave it up to the viewer to decide if it was a sweet or sad memory.
LSQ: Trees are the theme for this issue, and they seem to appear often in your art. Why do you choose trees as subjects? What stories do you try to tell with them?
Samantha: I absolutely love painting trees. They come in so many different shapes, sizes, colors, and variations. The possibilities with them are endless. I typically either use them as the main focus of a painting or to frame my compositions. In this case, the tree symbolizes something that is constant. From the time when the owners of the swords were there, the tree was present, and hopefully when they are long gone, the tree will remain.
LSQ: Your landscape work is truly stunning. How did you hone your skills when it comes to portraying nature in your art?
Samantha: I’ve always loved depicting nature in my artwork. Landscapes and nature are both things I think people will always have a soft spot in their heart for. Witnessing a beautiful sunset, strolling through a lush forest, climbing the heights of a mountain, or admiring the silent snow of a fresh storm. These are some of my favorite scenes that I try to reimagine. I’ve stuck with landscapes because they truly make me happy and practicing them brings me immense joy.
LSQ: Do you have a personal favorite of the projects you’ve worked on? Or one that was
memorable due to its challenges? If so, can you tell us a bit about it?
Samantha: One of my favorite pieces was this magical willow tree. I was messing around with the idea of giving the dog a birthday hat and I didn’t have the heart to erase it, so I kept it in. I always giggle to myself whenever I see this painting, I can’t help it.
Issue 051 Author Interview: Fiona Moore and “Misrule”
Fiona: I think the key realization for Mary was when she stopped thinking of Misrule as something that needed to be ended, and instead as something which had value to people, but that value had been subverted by Stebbins playing the system. Once she worked out a way of doing an end run around Stebbins, people came on board and supported her efforts, and Misrule could become something that helped the village rather than an excuse for bullying and revenge. So she “wins” by taking control of Misrule on behalf of the community, then giving it back to the community.
LSQ: Everyone in the village agrees that Misrule is important, even an outsider like the vicar. Why would they feel it important even after the misery it causes?
LSQ: Misrule seems to draw on folkloric traditions like the Wild Hunt and MidWinter celebrations. Are there some specific traditions that you drew from for this story?
Fiona: Specifically, the Twelve Days of Christmas and the traditions of Misrule and Saturnalia. But I also took a lot of inspiration from the British folk-horror film genre. Misrule owes quite a bit to The Blood on Satan’s Claw, in which a demonic influence causes a group of young people in a 17th-century village to run amok (and I’ll freely admit that The Vicar is in part based on Anthony Ainley’s character in that movie). Folk-horror movies often explore ideas like identity, community and justice through British folk traditions, and I wanted to do some of that too.
LSQ: I loved the ending, where you predicted Stebbins would turn into a joke. Also, that Mary found romance at the end. What are your favorite kinds of stories to write?
Issue 051 Author Interview: Dixon March and “Redbean”
Looking for the perfect New Weird horror story? You’ve come to the right place! Today we’re highlighting Issue 051‘s “Redbean” and talking to author Dixon March, who shares the unsettling inspiration behind this story.
LSQ: What a delectable horror story! I was especially impressed with the creative worldbuilding. How did you get tortured souls from beans?
My genre of choice is New Weird, which I liken to speculative lit on the edge of fantasy and horror or a spooky, pessimistic magic realism. To me it’s a fiction rooted in anxiety, liminality, and estrangement. I’m also a fan of cosmic/sci fi horror, ghost stories, and anything gothic for similar reasons. My favorite stories speak to the disillusioned and disenfranchised.
Issue 051 Author Interview: Jordan Hirsch and “2122, Barrel-Aged and Biding”
Jordan: I often find myself inspired by other creative pieces: stories, poems, movies, songs. My brain tends to get fixated on one minute detail, such as a word, a tiny element of the setting, or one specific character trait, and then go hog wild fleshing out an entirely different story based on that one thing. If I’m lucky, this new story works independently of its initial inspiration. However, this can lead to funny reoccurrences in my work. I don’t know how many drafts of poems and short stories I have from the past year that feature the tartness of lemon (one will be out in March, in fact)!
Issue 051 Author Interview: Kathryn Keane and “The Last Wake”
With the holidays quickly approaching, your family traditions may be on your mind. Today, Issue 051 author Kathryn Keane talks with us about traditions and how she used them as fuel for her story “The Last Wake.”
LSQ: Old traditions and family are at the heart of this story. That these traditions die with the wake of the mother is poignant. Why did you choose to connect the two things in this way?
Kathryn: Traditions matter because of the people who practice them. Having traditions, customs, rituals matters. Without them, we become unmoored from ourselves and each other. At the same time, though, if traditions hurt and restrict us, or if traditions have no connection to our values, our loved ones or communities we care about, we shouldn’t be bound by them.
I had been thinking about a family bereavement at the time of writing this story. I’d observed and participated in a lot of funeral traditions after this family member’s death, and seen firsthand how the loss of someone with a long enough memory is essentially the loss of a culture. I connected the death of old traditions and the death of a person because they were connected in my personal life. I also connected them because traditions and people are one and the same. We are what we do repeatedly.
LSQ: Even though Paul had long since moved away, the ghosts appeared only to him. Though he felt guilty about not visiting and was out of place, why was he the better choice over Margaret?
Kathryn: I wrote about the ghosts interacting with Paul because his relationship to home and family is more complex and interesting, and it’s more emblematic of what I wanted to write about. Margaret has a straightforward relationship with her hometown, her social class, and rural Irish culture because she’s never wanted to leave it. Although she’s more narrow-minded, she’s able to be more nuanced and mature about home because she’s developed an adult relationship with it. Paul still has an adolescent, black-and-white viewpoint of home as somewhere purely to escape from. Being confronted with the ghosts and the value of their stories is him being confronted with the limitations of that viewpoint.
Paul has also achieved social mobility, and to do that he’s had to leave – and he’s had to Westernize. The writer Edward Said, in his book Culture and Imperialism, discusses how colonized cultures like Ireland react to their colonization. He describes three distinct stages: stage one, where cultures wholly identify with their colonizer, stage two, where cultures aggressively promote an independent, nationalist movement, and stage three, where cultures settle on an understanding of themselves as a hybrid between what came before the colonizer and what the colonizer imposed.
It struck me, reading these ideas, that they’re very like how an individual human being grows up. First you have total identification with the parent, then an aggressive denial and separation, then an understanding of the self as both what was given to you and what you’ve made of yourself. Paul starts the story in that adolescent mindset personally. But it’s also very present in terms of how he conceives of Ireland vs the wider world. He wants to be anything, anyone other than the person who came from the material and cultural limitations colonization forced on him and the world around him.
At the time of writing this story, I was also thinking through how best to write about Irish culture in a speculative context. I love fantasy, science fiction and horror because of their ability to depict ambiguity, strangeness and possibility. For a long time, that literary project seemed to me to be the complete opposite of the Irish literary tradition, which focuses heavily on the restrictiveness and narrowness of traditional Irish culture. With this story, I wanted to find a way to integrate both these things – to create Said’s hybridity in my own style.
In this story, Paul learns how to integrate his origins into his conception of himself, both individually, and culturally. He’s the better choice for the ghosts because he’s the one who’d be most changed by them, and because he’s more representative of postcolonial hybridity.
LSQ: The ghosts seemed like the nicest people at the wake and they told the best stories! Did you base these women on anyone you know?
Kathryn: Every character I write has their basis in real people. But it’s never a one-to-one relationship – I find similarities between people that are relevant to the story I want to tell, and then blend multiple people together. The ghosts are people in my family. They’re also family friends, and acquaintances, and strangers I’ve met out in the world.
LSQ: Everything was going to be different, and yet still Paul connects the internet cable. Is there a parallel here to modernity and changing country life?
Kathryn: Writers can’t make definitive statements about what happens ‘after the end’ of a text, or beyond a text. That’s up to a reader’s interpretation. So I don’t want to definitively say yes, everything was going to be different, or no either. But if you’re asking about my intention while writing, Paul saying this, and it being refuted by the ghosts, was actually intended as a final denial of the reality of his mother’s death. Keeping the ghosts around, and keeping the house the same as it always was, was my way of representing his wish to put off the grieving, the acceptance and the corresponding maturation he needed to go through.
The internet cable entering the rural household, though, is absolutely intended as a commentary on modernity. Ireland in 2022 is the wealthy European headquarters of many of the world’s largest technology companies. Ireland as recently as 1982 was a place of widespread poverty, with governmentally sanctioned censorship, an ethnically monolithic population and religiously motivated institutional murder. Our modernization process happened fast, and Ireland and its people are still haunted by its past. The cable to the outside world is well and truly connected now, but we’ve still got our ghosts to contend with.