by Joe Vaz
We have some awesome fiction for you this month, starting off on the 4th of August with "The Devil’s Advocate" by Ivor W. Hartmann. This is followed on the 11th of August with "Happiest Amongst Mortals" by Glen Damien Campbell. On the 18th we have "No Longer Alone" by Brian Kirk. And we close off the issue on the 25th of August with a novelette by M. Scott Carter about "The Bayside Incident". |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
Pierre Smit
just imagine a guy drawing it, loving it, doubting it, frustrated, finishing it, liking it, but eyeing it suspiciously for unseen errors and hindsights and for trees instead of forests..
Read more »by Ivor W. Hartmann
John James Rote was a forgettable, quiet man. Later, when people had occasion to talk about him, at the very least they could all agree on that. He was the kind of man that was never, affectionately or otherwise, nicknamed. As a schoolchild, he was the one they always put in the outfield, or on the far boundary. There he would idle away the game by staring at passing clouds, or watching the progress of a nearby ants’ nest. His grades were never bad but never great either.. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
interview by Joe Vaz
I had the initial story concept bouncing around for awhile and I wanted to experiment with a story written in a severely limited format. So the concept was married to a single short letter and accompanying incomplete court transcriptions. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
by Mark Sykes
Jim: Hi folks, this is Jim Dandy and Chris Mascake welcoming you to the End-of-the-World Supreme Devil Face-Off, here at the Arena of Doom, just a few minutes drive out of Bloemfontein. It’s the End Times, and the day has come to decide which actor best portrayed the Devil in cinema and TV in the last hundred years. These are the final few, who have all come through the initials heats to battle it out in their respective teams today. We’ve a great assortment of Lucifers and Satans, and a handful of portrayals that are somewhat open to interpretation. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
by Glen Damien Campbell
Thomas Delaney was a hack writer. He knew it and was admirably unashamed of it. The movies he penned and directed were B-grade schlock horror, the type of movies that had desensitised him as a child, the type of movies he loved; cliché ridden, lascivious and cheap. Tom’s own credits in the field included the titles Die Die Dracula, I Was a Teenage Mummy and The Blood of the Virgin, creature features abounding with lusty vampiric femme fatales, their heaving bosoms bound up in gauze nightgowns, with London’s Beckenham Place Park moonlighting as the Carpathian forests. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
interview by Joe Vaz
the greatest reading experience I could imagine having would be to read a collaboration story written by Woody Allen and HP Lovecraft. A fractious working relationship that undoubtedly would have been, but I can't help but imagine that it would have produced something amazing. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
by Joe Vaz
The fact of the matter is, nothing is more terrifying to us than experiencing a nightmare from which we cannot wake. Total, all encompassing fear where some part of your brain is flashing red warning claxons telling you “it’s just a dream, stupid” but we’re paralysed. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
review by Vianne Venter
Published by Angry Robot/Jacana PB 384pages RRP £7.99 (Kindle £3.59) buy from Kalahari.com In Zoo City, it’s impolite to ask. Morning light the sulphur colour of the mine dumps seeps across Johannesburg’s skyline and sears through my window. My own personal bat signal. Or a reminder that I really need to get curtains. Shielding my eyes – morning has broken and there’s no picking up the pieces – I yank back the sheet and peel out of bed. Benoît doesn’t so much as stir, with only his calloused feet sticking out from under the duvet like knots of driftwood. Feet like that, they tell a story. They say he walked all the way from Kinshasa with his Mongoose strapped to his chest. | From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
interview by Joe Vaz
I think what the international thing does is it breaks it open to the mainstream and suddenly you get the people who weren't paying attention. It kind of breaks through... I guess they have cultural barricades up, and I think a lot of that, unfortunately, is against South African stuff, you know. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
by Brian Kirk
From a distance came the woeful howling of a neighbor’s neglected dog, disrupting the unusually soundless night. The evenings were normally so alive with the incessant buzzing and chirping of restless insects. He stopped, and simply listened, to nothing. Not a rustle of wind. Not a scuttle of bug. Just the dog in the distance, desperately pleading for attention. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
interview by Joe Vaz
To be honest, this was a story that simply unfolded while writing. I had a vague idea of the setting, a rural town in the southeastern United States, the image of a lost and lonely man, and the intention to explore something strange. I challenged my subconscious to bring the weird and this is what came out. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
by M. Scott Carter
Old man Withers was the first to die. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |
interview by Joe Vaz
The story took a little while to plot. I knew the direction I wanted to go and I had a pretty good idea who some of the main characters would be, but it wasn't until I started writing that all the characters were formed. |
From Issue 12 (August 2011) |