Greetings from Ravenstone. I’m reading The Black Company by Glen Cook at the moment. I recall DNFing it back in the eighties. It wasn’t epic enough for me back then. My tastes have evidently changed. I will finish it this time. I still can’t visualise the place and find myself dissatisfied with his idea of a wizard, yet I appreciate it more now that I know Cook was himself a Vietnam War veteran. The camaraderie and brutality of Croker and the rest also strongly remind me of the Sven Hassel books about German soldiers fighting in the squalor of World War 2. Squalor is good, folks. Were-leopards, hmm, not sure.

Chelle Honiker writes a wake-up call for the Anti-AI zealots this week, which I found quite instructive. In “You Already Said Yes to the Index,” she argues that the permission question has been settled and that we have moved on to retrieval. I think she is correct. I still don’t think AI can produce a worthwhile finished work without massive assistance and isn’t worth the effort, and I don’t want it to. Yelling ‘Fuck AI. Fuck the data centres’ isn’t advancing the debate, though.

Edge-Lit is bringing the 12th horror, fantasy, and science fiction day to Derby QUAD, which is a half-hour drive from me, taking place on September 19th. This year, the event will feature five Guests of Honour, with acclaimed folk-horror author Thomas Olde Heuvelt, multi-award-winning fantasy and science-fiction novelist Adrian Tchaikovsky, bestselling ghost-story author Laura Purcell, and Clarke Award-winning science-fiction writer and popular fantasy novelist Frances White all joining for headline interview slots. I’m in.

Five children, a counting rhyme, and a mine shaft on Bodmin Moor.

Counting Out

I’m still ploughing Northall, and this one turned out really well, I think. I’m very pleased with it. Five children form a circle on the moor above Minions, the highest village in Cornwall, and recite an old Cornish counting rhyme. What begins as a game becomes something they will spend twenty years trying to forget. This is folk horror set in Victorian Cornwall, and it is arguably one of the darkest stories I have published.

A new story publishes most weeks at edvanestories.com where you can access and read, or listen to, the entire archive.

A witch. A cottage. A relic.

Curses and Crystals anthology

One of my stories has been selected for Curses and Crystals, a witch stories anthology from Dragon Soul Press, publishing November 23. I am keeping the title to myself for now. A witch. A cottage. A relic. That is all you are getting.

Red Sonja, Arwen, Lady Macbeth, and four Marchlands women who refuse to cooperate.

Writing Women in Dark Fantasy

Yes, I’ve gone there. Fantasy has a small vocabulary for women. The warrior in impractical armour. The ethereal beloved. The scheming queen. The sacrificial maiden. I wrote this post about four of my own characters who refuse those defaults and what it costs them to exist outside the templates. Liora, Zaria, Winn and Cylaen, and the case for writing women the reader cannot simplify so readily.

VSS365 is a daily micro-fiction challenge on X. One prompt word, one complete story, 280 characters. Each week I will share my favourite of the seven. My favourite prompt this week was #wax.

Aberysh the Healer poured hot wax across the poor woman's chest, chanting as she screamed. "Hold still. I'm drawing the sickness out." Her cries ceased. She was dead. Then the wax dripping from the bed began crawling together. Aberysh backed away. He had certainly drawn something out.

Discover my VSS365 flash fiction posts on X and Bluesky.

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Thank you for your support and remember, Stay Dark.