The Talason #FaeVisions

Guest post by Vladimia Becić

Casa Encantada, based on original by Lolatower, CC-BY-SA

Belief in the talason is spread out throughout the Balkans, either under the same or similar name. In Macedonia it used to be called the talas'mim, and in Bosnia either the tilisum or the tilisun.

Talason is the spirit-protector of a building and it ties itself exclusively to it, not the ones that inhabit it. For this reason, the talason is considered to be a mythical creature that relates to places, not people. Its main purpose is to protect the building from people who approach it with bad intentions.

A talason can protect public buildings such as post offices, town halls or schools. However, a talason can protect family homes as well, but in that case it does not represent an ancestral spirit, like, for example, Roman Lares and Penates, and it is in no relation to the inhabitants of the house. Even though it is invisible to humans, according to legend, it can be seen by those born on a Tuesday or Saturday. A talason appears to them in a form of a dark shape or a shadow. There are also mentions of it being seen by dogs.

The relationship between talasons and shadows sprouts from the belief that a shadow is an equivalent of a man's soul, and that the soul/shadow and body can be separated. It was also believed that, through separation from the body, a man's soul would tie itself to a building. During construction, builders would wait for a passer-by's shadow to fall upon the foundations, measure its length and build the measurement into the foundations. For this they would strictly use silk thread. It is during the measuring that the soul/shadow separates from the body. The person whose shadow was measured and built into the foundations usually falls ill and dies within forty days. Their soul becomes inextricably bound to the building and becomes known as the spirit-protector of the building, i.e. its talason.

Since builders secretly measured the shadows of passers-by in order to ensure a building got its spirit-protector, people tended to avoid building sites, and mothers forbade their children to go near them.

According to tradition, the protection of buildings used to be ensured by walling up living people inside the foundations. That way the spirit of the victim would become the protector, i.e. the talason. Allegedly this method used to be applied in the Balkans. Later on, it was replaced by the more subtle version of measuring the shadow with silk thread.

Vladimira Becić’s “The Scythe and the Hourglass” can be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

Interview with Rhys Hughes #FaeVisions

Fae Visions of the Mediterranean is an anthology of horrors and wonders of the sea, edited by Valeria Vitale and released this month by Futurefire.net Publishing. The 24 stories and poems, in multiple genres and languages, include a reprint of Rhys Hughes’s “The Minotaur in Pamplona”—one of the most poignant of his many many absurdist stories. We asked Rhys a few questions about his work.

Rhys Hughes has been a published author for 25 years. His most recent book is a collection of stories called Mirrors in the Deluge and his next book will be another collection of stories, Brutal Pantomimes. He plans to write exactly 1000 short stories in his lifetime.

TFF: “The Minotaur in Pamplona” takes liberties with its source material, as is your wont, but somehow manages to stay truer to the tragic spirit of the Minotaur than many classical retellings. Where did the story come from?

Rhys Hughes: I wrote it in a hotel room one rainy day in Toledo, Spain. It was my first visit to that city and the weather had been good but suddenly the skies opened and the rain came down in a torrent. I retreated to my very small room in my very cheap hotel and lacking anything else to do I just starting writing a new story. I wrote it in one session, which is something I often do with these very short tales. I have no idea where the story came from. Stories appear in my mind all the time and I guess they come from many different sources. I had flirted with the idea of going to the Pamplona encierro later that month, but my ethical good sense overruled me. As for the figure of the Minotaur, I have always been intrigued by the ancient myths. It was the Borges story ‘The House of Asterion’ that first alerted me to the poignant potentials of the character and situation of the Minotaur. I hadn’t really been aware of the tragic elements before that, to be honest. I just thought of him as a monster in a maze. When the rain stopped I went back out and wandered through the labyrinthine streets. The following day I left Toledo and set off on the longest single day hike I have undertaken, into the mountains. Not that this has anything to do with your question!

What is your connection with the Mediterranean Sea and region?

The Mediterranean is the cradle of European civilisation. Or at least the nursery room of the mainstream culture we now have on this particular continent. I have spent a lot of time wandering the various shores of this almost fully enclosed ellipse of water. We now think of the sea as forming a clear divide between two radically different worlds, Europe and Africa, but it wasn’t always perceived that way. Once those two worlds were the same world culturally. These days the southern side is less familiar to most travellers than the northern, which is a shame. I especially like the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, which has a beauty and mystery and is still relatively undeveloped. I hiked from Melilla to El Hoceima and during the journey I did feel I might have been living in an earlier age. I saw few intrusions of the modern world on the way. Until recently this was a dangerous region and it still has that reputation, but it is safe enough. Ajdir was the capital of the Rif Republic under Abd el-Krim, whose guerrilla tactics hugely influenced Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. Later it became notorious as a lawless place where kif dealers robbed travellers on principle. I was warned against going there. The most dramatic thing that happened was that a stranger offered me apricots. There are the islands of the Mediterranean too, of course, suspended at a midpoint between the two shores. Sardinia is one of my favourite places in the world. I love the Greek islands. Too many places to mention really.

Your stories sometimes veer between slapstick comedy and blood-chilling horror (the best masterfully combine both). What is it about these apparently antithetical genres that go so well together?

I don’t really write horror, certainly not now, and even the few horror elements that might appear in a story aren’t true horror. I certainly have no desire to scare people. I am more interested in playing games with ideas. I don’t know if horror and comedy go well together. In many ways, I think that horror is comedy, even horror that doesn’t try to be comedy, that doesn’t want to be comedy. Horror is essentially comedy, even though it might not be funny comedy, on the contrary it can be a profoundly unfunny comedy, and yet comedy nonetheless. What I mean is that some horror, the supernatural variety at least, is deeply absurd by definition. The idea of a werewolf, for example. We choose to regard it as a serious horror standard, or else we have been conditioned to do so. Now let’s imagine a were-panda or a were-starfish. These are fundamentally no different in concept from the werewolf. The transformational formulae are the same. Yet we regard them as comic creations rather than horror creations. It can be argued that the wolf is more dangerous, but that isn’t necessarily so. Wolves rarely attack people, a lone wolf almost never. A panda, however, could crush a man if he fell on him. A starfish could poke a man in the eyes, causing him to crash his hovercraft. It’s all equally absurd, equally comical, but we make arbitrary distinctions between the werewolf and the others. The werewolf doesn’t feel absurd, even though it is; and in some ways that makes it more absurd than the panda and starfish. Science fiction is the same. A space giraffe that stands on one planet but has a neck so long that it stretches through outer space and bends down through the atmosphere of another planet so it can browse alien foliage is an absurd, comical creation. But the idea of human astronauts travelling faster than the speed of light between the solar systems of an intergalactic empire in hollow spaceships is just as absurd, no less an impossibility, and yet we tend to accept it as a plausible, even aspirational, scenario. Both are fairy tales really. Both are absurdities. It’s just that we have developed a prejudice against certain types of absurdity and we tolerate others. There is no logic behind it. So I am not sure that I ever consciously blend antithetical elements. I just write. My main urge and aim is to get the ideas that appear in my head down onto the page and to fix them in stories so they can’t come back to clutter up my mind.

Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?

I started writing from a very early age, but I didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t think of my efforts as being proper short stories, even though one or two were. I remember when I was about ten years old writing a story about a man who jumps off a cliff in order to kill himself, but he only knocks himself out when he hits the sea and is washed ashore. When he awakes he assumes he is dead and has become a ghost, so he goes off to haunt people and play tricks on them. He assumes that because he is a ghost he is invisible and immune to retaliation. But of course he isn’t. His tricks get more elaborate and disruptive. Eventually he annoys so many people that they all chase him and in order to escape he jumps off the same cliff he first jumped off, assuming he can fly or at least that the impact won’t hurt him. But this time the tide is out and he dies for real. I guess I can say this was my first proper story. I lost it, as I lost all my early work, but I kept the idea in my head and rewrote it years later. It’s called ‘Learning to Fall’ and can be found in my book Tallest Stories, published in 2013. That book is one of my favourites of all the books I have written. It features sixty stories that are linked in various ways and includes other stories that I originally wrote when I was very young but lost and rewrote years later.

If you wrote your 1000th story today, would you really stop?

I am often asked this question. People simply don’t believe that I will stop, but I do think that I will. When I have got all the fiction out of my system I intend to concentrate on non-fiction. I would like to become an essayist. I really can see myself just writing non-fiction. The transition has started slowly already. I have begun reading more non-fiction than fiction. But it will be a long time before I get to my 1000th story. I have been working on this sequence for the past 26 years and when I started writing it, I didn’t even know it was a linked sequence. That happened later, organically, when characters from previous stories started appearing in later stories. They were uninvited at first, but now I welcome them with open arms. I haven’t yet decided if my novels will form part of the big sequence or not. Maybe they won’t, which means that more room will open up in the sequence that has to be filled with new stories. And even if they do, the remaining stories that I write might be very long ones or made up of multiple parts, each of which is a separate story. So there’s a long way to go yet. And when I do finally finish my 1000th tale, if I ever get that far, I guess I will go back to the beginning and start rewriting the sequence from the beginning. I regard the entire cycle as just one big fictional ‘object’ and finishing it will really be only finishing the first draft. I will need to polish and refine it, tighten it, make it better. This is assuming that I live long enough to do all this, or that I still have the desire to do it. Anything can happen. But I know for sure that I don’t want to just keep writing fiction without limit into my old age. That seems too much like fading away, like being an echo that gets fainter and fainter. I want there to be a deliberate and definite final line.

If you had to spend one month on a small, desert island, what books would you want to have with you?

Books on survival, of course, but that’s too obvious an answer. Am I limited in how many books I am allowed? Robinson Crusoe seems the perfect choice. I could provide you with a list of my favourite novels, if you like. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis; Froth on the Daydream by Boris Vian; Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino; Life: A User's Manual by George Perec; The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth; All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani; At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien; Landscape Painted with Tea by Milorad Pavić. Some collections of short stories would be nice too. The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem; the various collections of Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Borges, Alasdair Gray, Brian Aldiss. But wouldn’t it be a little depressing just reading work I have already read? Maybe I should go for authors I am not very familiar with yet. I am constantly discovering writers who enthral me. This year, for example, I started reading R.K. Narayan for the first time, and now I plan to work my way through all his books. A couple of years ago I first started reading Ismail Kadare and he has become one of my favourite writers, so even though I discovered most of my favourite writers in my youth, I am still learning all the time what wondrous talent is out there.

What is your favourite place to write?

I can write almost anywhere and have done, but this doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the comforts of a soft armchair. I have a favourite chair that I use. When I wrote just using a pen I would sprawl on the floor. Then I progressed to using a typewriter while perched on a stool, then a word processor and a computer on a chair, my posture improving each time. So I guess I was like one of those old drawings showing the supposed ascent of man, from crouched monkey to fully erect homo sapiens, but not quite. Now I will often sprawl in my armchair with the keyboard on my lap. Real laptops don’t appeal to me because the action of the keys doesn’t feel right. I always plug in an old chunky keyboard. I want to bang the keys like a demented pianist banging a piano. Having said that, I am a four fingered typist. And I still occasionally write using pen and paper. I might have several stories in progress on the computer and several scribbled on paper as well. Ten years ago I wrote a novella while hiking through the Alpujarras mountains in Spain. I didn’t have a tent, just a sleeping bag, so I wrote using rocks as tables. I did try to write once during a storm at sea, but that didn’t work very well. I am toying with the idea of using voice recognition software so I can dictate my stories into the computer, but I know that the part of the brain that controls the writing of words is different to that which controls speaking, so this might take some retraining. Worth a try anyway, I think.

What are you writing next (as if it could be any one thing!)?

I am always working on more than one project at the same time. I don’t know how this situation came about. There must have been a point when I worked on one project at a time, but I don’t remember. At the moment I have lots of works in progress and some of them have been in progress for years, even decades. So I could say that these are the things I am writing ‘next’ although it’s not clear if they will be finished anytime soon. There is my novel The Clown of the New Eternities, which I started in 1994, and which will be my most substantial work if I manage to complete it. There are other novels too, Unevensong, which is a more traditional fantasy epic; Wuthering Depths, a comedy about submarines; Fists of Fleece, a western with a Welsh slant; Djinn Septic, about a crew of sailors who travel in a clot-shaped ship to the Heart of Darkness in order to induce a heart attack and kill darkness, allowing light to rule the world; Comfy Rascals, a showcase of experimental chapters all done in a different style governed by mathematics; Down Cerberus!, which constitutes the reminiscences of the triple-headed mythical hound that guards Hades. The short stories will hopefully keep coming too. I am in the process of putting together a collection of my ‘fantastika romantique’ tales called Salty Kiss Island. I am planning other collections called The Big Dwarf Shortage, Dribble as I Dawdle, Corybantic Fulgors; a collection of strange detective stories called The Mischief Maker; many others. As well as the fantasy stuff, I like to write the occasional ‘realistic’ story without any fantasy, and I have just begun a new linked series based on the lives of four bohemian types who live in the same house. My non-fantasy work has hardly ever been published, but I persist. I have no choice but to get the ideas in my head down on paper and there are lots of these ideas all the time. I just don’t think it’s very realistic of me to expect to be only working on a single project. Maybe my working life would be easier if I did, but that’s not my character. I work hard but I am disorganised too in many ways, and yet maybe from this disorganisation comes everything I do that is different from what others do. Everyone is different, of course, but the reasons for our differences maybe shouldn’t be delved into too deeply.

Thanks, Rhys!

Rhys Hughes’s “The Minotaur in Pamplona” can be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

Mythology and the Mediterranean #FaeVisions

Guest post by Lyndsay E. Gilbert

I’ll admit up front that, coming from the Emerald Isle, the Mediterranean for me once meant a place where it doesn’t rain all the time, and where there are hot beaches to lounge on for a few weeks in the summer holidays. As I grew older however, I fell in love with stories, history and folklore and before I knew it I was on a journey of the mind and imagination which would open up a treasure chest of cultures and inspiration.

I started with the folklore of Ireland and that was a springboard from which I launched into the roots of places and peoples unfamiliar to me.

I dabbled in Paganism as a teen and my passion for knowledge of gods and goddesses across the world continued to mount. When I found out that a school near me taught Classical Civilizations at Advanced Level I immediately enrolled there and my love of Greek and Roman history and mythology deepened. The scope just kept widening as I researched around school topics and learned of the connections between different Mediterranean countries. I tracked the births and movements of certain cults and the evolution of many gods and goddesses.

My Fae Vision for the anthology, ‘The Strangest Sort of Siren’ was born from my obsession with the Hades/Persephone myth. The whole idea of it terrified me, especially when we learned about wedding rights in ancient Rome and how they would stage a pretend kidnapping of the bride, who had to scream and struggle before being taken off by her new husband.

I couldn’t help but feel for Persephone, forced to live one half of her days in her kidnapper’s underworld domain, and the other half under the watchful eye of her Mother, like a maiden who would never be allowed to grow and become her own self. My story was a way of rescuing Persephone from the perpetual cycle of daughterhood and wifehood and giving her back something that is her own. A truth inside her that no one can control or take away.

The picture above is one I drew to represent the memories and dreams of both my main character and Persephone. I’m not a great artist, but I do enjoy depicting my characters.

Lyndsay E. Gilbert’s “The Strangest Sort of Siren” can be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

Interview with Dawn Vogel #FaeVisions

The Fae Visions of the Mediterranean anthology, now available in print and e-book from all online stores, brings you 24 stories and poems of horror and wonder of the sea. Among them is Dawn Vogel’s “Salt in Our Veins,” a short story of insecure childhood and Maltese pirates which highlights our ambiguous relationship with the sometimes nurturing, sometimes terrifying sea.

Dawn Vogel has been published as a short fiction author and a fiction and non-fiction editor. In her alleged spare time, she runs a craft business, helps edit Mad Scientist Journal, and tries to find time to write. She lives in Seattle with her husband and their herd of cats. We asked her a few questions about her work.

TFF: “Salt in Our Veins” is a thrilling pirate story with an understated supernatural twist. Where did the story come from?
I wrote this story after doing some research into historical pirates who operated in the Mediterranean. I found the bits about pirates capturing people to then demand ransoms for them or force them into service particularly interesting. But the crux of this story came down to: what would pirates do with someone who could not be ransomed, but whose claims of supernatural parentage made them far more interesting than your average captive? And what would the captive do to be free again?

What is your connection with the Mediterranean?
I've never actually seen it in person. I had vague plans to go to Greece about a dozen years ago, but those never materialized. In fact, I only made it to Europe for the first time earlier this year, and then only to Germany and France. So my only real connection is a historical interest in the area, particularly Greece.

In your story, nereids live half of their lives in the water and half on land. Is this kind of liminal creature a recurrent topic in your writing?
Yes and no. I write a lot of stories that involve supernatural beings from the sea—mermaids, sirens, nereids, nixies, and even vodyanoi have appeared in my stories. But for me, it's a much stronger tie to water, and the way that it can hide secrets within its depths. So many cultures have stories about things that live in the water that want to kill you, and it's interesting to explore the way those things are similar and different.

Other than writing, what is your favourite craft for creating things, people or worlds?
I'm an avid crafter, particularly working with crochet. I primarily make functional things, but I have incorporated storytelling and crochet together for some of my projects.

That sounds cool! Could you show us an example of something like that?
I made this combination of crochet and storytelling (left), for an exhibit at a small shop where all of the artists made something that fit in a 6 x 6 x 6 inch cube and wrote a story of less than 200 words to accompany it.

Do you remember the first time you saw the sea?
I grew up in the Midwest, so it wasn't until I was 11 or 12 years old. We drove to South Carolina to visit family, and they took us to the beach on a cloudy day. The main thing I remember is that the waves were, as my youngest sister put it, "pushy." When I was in my early 20s, we went to Virginia, and the water there was less "pushy," but cold. It wasn't until I went to Seattle for the first time, 11 years ago, that I realized that I really loved the ocean and couldn't imagine living somewhere without it. (I moved to Seattle about a year and a half after that trip.)

If you were a ghost, who would you haunt?
A lot of that would depend on how I became a ghost. I would absolutely be a vengeful spirit if there was someone responsible for my death. I'm not sure who I'd haunt if I didn't have vengeance to exact.

What other stories/exciting news do you have coming up?
I have a story, "Army of Me," coming out in Untethered: A Magic iPhone Anthology from Cantina Press this fall. I'm currently working on editing stories for Mad Scientist Journal's third anthology, Fitting In: Historical Accounts of Paranormal Subcultures, which will also be out this fall from DefCon One Publishing.

Thank you, Dawn!

Dawn Vogel’s “Salt in Our Veins” can be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean. 

Sicily: Culture and Conquest #FaeVisions

Guest post by Kelda Crich

Sicily: Culture and Conquest: Multiculturalism a Thousand Years Ago
An exhibition review.

I love looking at old stuff; if it's beautiful and priceless old stuff, so much the better. Manufactured objects; the mundane and the extraordinary are slivers of culture, of history. They contain stories: real and imagined. Museum objects often inspire my writing.¹ My poem in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean took inspiration from the Assyrian sculpture in the British Museum. So it seemed a happy coincidence when Fae's launch coincided with a new exhibition at the British Museum: Sicily: Culture and Conquest,^{2 3} examining Sicily, the Mediterranean's largest island.

With its fertile soil enriched by volcanic ash, and a strategic position in the heart of the Med, Sicily has been subject to centuries of colonisation, wave after wave of invaders. The exhibition ranges from prehistory to the medieval period, but focuses on two golden ages, the rule of the Greek Tyrants (7th Century onwards) and the rule of the Normans (12th Century onwards). Dirk Booms, the co-curator points out that both these ages occurred when the invading Kings lived on the island.⁴ Sicily fared less well ruled at a distance.

In the mid-11 century, at a time when the sons of Vikings were invading England, they were also turning an envious eye to Muslim ruled Sicily. A thirty years campaign finally ushered in a golden age of enlightenment where philosophers, artists and scientists from many races were invited to court. It's interesting to see the Normans portrayed as progressive rulers, rather than the vilified conquerors of popular British history. This exhibition invites the visitor to rethink Britain’s own history and heritage.

San Cataldo, Palermo, Exterior view from the side

The exhibition presents Norman Sicily as a society of multicultural harmony. It celebrates the blending of Muslim, Byzantine and Christian cultures and religious tolerance.


A remarkable Arab/Norman-style architecture emerged.

Christ Pantokrator in the apse of the Cathedral of Cefalù, Sicily.
Mosaic in Byzantine style.

Churches such as The Capella Palatina at Palermo were built with Norman Doors, Sarcenic arches. The Byzantine domes were decorated with Arabic script and Byzantine-style mosaics.

Roger II of Sicily depicted on the
muqarnas ceiling in an Arabic style.

The sons of Vikings presented themselves in the style of Muslim rulers.

The blending of cultures is quite remarkable and is testimony to the catholic Normans' embrace (or should I say appropriation?) of other cultures. One reviewer even suggests that as the Mediterranean is once again a crossing point of peoples, lessons could be learnt from the integration apparently shown in Norman Sicily.⁵

Yet, museum exhibitions are stories which invite a visitor to enter only one narrative dream of the past. While the very nature and limitation of space, an exhibit narrative demands simplicity, an appeal to aesthetic sensibilities rather than the presentation of the complex, myriad storied past. I can't help thinking that multicultural, harmonious Sicily is too good to be true. I would have liked the exhibit to present objects examining the culture clash that must have existed.

Still, it was thrilling to look at the beautiful stuff. The exhibition also presents well-chosen items examining the other cultures who have invaded Sicily over the centuries. There were over two hundred objects on display, many for the first time in the first time in the UK.

The exhibition is supplemented (as is common in British Museum temporary exhibits) by evocative photographic landscape and architectural vistas, and interesting written quotes displayed on the walls. I was less keen on the photographs of objects and the replicas on display. When I visit a museum, I like to see the real deal.

It's an interesting exhibition, with much finely chosen and exquisite stuff, but no one piece caught my attention particularly. There was, perhaps, an over-reliance on photographs of objects, which is not to my taste. Still, it made me reconsider the history of a conquest I had been taught as a girl. I left wanting to know more about the sons of Vikings and the people they crossed the Mediterranean to conquer nearly a thousand years ago.

---

¹ Confessions of a Museum Bunny. Deborah Walker. SFWA Blog. 2012
² Sicily: Culture and Conquest At the British Museum, London, 21 April to 14 August 2016.
³ Sicily: Culture and Conquest. Dirk Booms and Peter Higgs. The British Museum Press. 2016
⁴ Sicily the Superpower: British Museum Revisits Island's Golden Ages. The Guardian Blog 2016
⁵ Sicily: Culture and Conquest Review – Gods, Monsters and Multiculturalism The Guardian Blog 2016

---

Kelda Crich's poem “Regretful in the City of Promises” can be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

Light and Passion #FaeVisions

Guest post by Maria Grech Ganado

Għanja Bla Flus / A Free Song

Towards the Light, © Ġoxwa Borg, reproduced with permission

The migration issue was a distressful problem for the Mediterranean long before it became a world-wide one. Ġoxwa Borg, a Maltese artist living in Paris, captures in this painting, Towards The Light, a familiar scene which has provoked emotions in Malta beyond those of compassion for the suffering and the drowned. Controversies caused by the inability of such a small island to cope with the incessant boatloads arriving from Africa has provoked extreme xenophobia in many, and a sense of impotence in the sensitive caring. My poem seeks to address the latter with an imaginary picture of what could have been, in the long run, preferable to an escape from drowning—worse is the horror of finishing up in Malta’s Safi detention centre for immigrants. Here, overcrowded, unhygienic conditions are far from ideal, and violence can break out to further pollute these conditions’ not only between the guards and frustrated, exhausted, disillusioned, disorientated, unhappy, desperate survivors, but also among themselves. ‘Towards the Light’ indeed!

Il-Passjoni Ta’ San Ġorġ / The Passion of St George

Mattia Preti, St. George Victorious (1678)

What I call ‘the passion of St George’ is, of course, ironically meant to deride the chauvinistic attitude of the knight in the legend. His intention in saving the helpless damsel is to prove his courage and strength, and she is cast in an image of the chaste, modest, grateful woman Religion would have her be. In Catholic Malta, where every location celebrates its patron saint with boisterous pomp and gusto, St George presides over two big towns, one on the main island and another in Gozo. Mattia Preti’s commissioned paintings of the saint are more concerned with his valour vis-a-vis the dragon, and not at all with the poor damsel (another macho trait). It is the martyrdom of St. George the feasts are meant to commemorate. I have set things to rights in the poem by having the fiery woman preferring the advances of the passionate dragon.

Maria Grech Ganado’s poems “A Free Song” and “The Passion of St George” can both be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

Interview with Claude Lalumière #FaeVisions

This month sees the release of Fae Visions of the Mediterranean, the latest Futurefire.net Publishing anthology, featuring 24 stories and poems of horrors and wonders of the sea. Two of these stories are by Claude Lalumière, one a modern and playful mythography, the other dark, alien, inhuman love story. We asked Claude a few questions about his work.

Claude Lalumière (claudepages.info) is the author of Objects of Worship, The Door to Lost Pages, Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes, and (forthcoming in 2017) Venera Dreams. He has edited fifteen anthologies in various genres, including Super Stories of Heroes & Villains. Originally from Montreal, he's currently headquartered in British Columbia.

TFF: ”The Dance of the Hippacotora”/“El baile de la Hipacotora” is an irreverent and absurdist retelling of ancient myth in an Iberian setting. What does the story mean to you?
Claude Lalumière: For a time, I was writing an online serial of fake mythology called Lost Myths. A few of those texts wound up in my collection Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes, but the bulk of them, including "The Dance of the Hippacotora," is destined for what I hope will be my fifth book, whose current working title is Cryptomythologies.

The two main elements that fed into the creation of this particular Lost Myth are my lifelong passion for Greek legend and my love of Barcelona, whose vibrant La Rambla and its delightfully strange and playful living statues found their way into the story.

"The Dance of the Hippacotora" is not a retelling of myth but rather an exploration of a different type of narrative than contemporary fiction. It's an attempt at writing myth rather than fiction, which flexes different writing muscles entirely.

“Xandra's Brine” is a very different story, full of quiet menace and unsettling sensuality, tracking the shores of the Mediterranean before plunging triumphantly into the icy depths. Where did this story come from?

Venice (photograph © Claude Lalumière)

The details of the Nice sequences are culled from a brief stay there back in 2006. The setting of Venera is largely inspired by Venice (with hints of Rome and Barcelona)—I first conceived of Venera while on the vaporetto in Venice. Over the past decade, I gradually aggregated Venera stories until I had a full book of them: Venera Dreams, which is coming out in 2017.

Do you feel a connection with the Mediterranean Sea?
Ever since my first childhood encounter with the Atlantic Ocean—by far, my fondest childhood memory—I have been obsessed with the sights, sounds, and smells of saltwater. When I finally made it to Europe in 2006, there was no question that I would prioritize the Mediterranean. It never occurred to me not to. So my trip was mostly taken up by the Mediterranean Sea: Bari, crossing the Adriatic by boat (twice—from Italy to Greece and back again), Athens, Venice, Nice, and Barcelona. On that trip, I composed one story with my feet in seawater, on the shore at Bari ("The Sea, at Bari") and another at sunset staring at the sea from the Riviera in Nice ("She Watches Him Swim"). I return to the Mediterranean as often as I can, both in real life and in my imagination. It's the body of water that I am the most drawn to.

What sort of chimera would you choose to be, or to create?
I've created so many! The hippacotora is one of my favourites. Another favourite is the alien/werewolf hybrid in "Roman Predator's Chimeric Odyssey."

What would it take to make you leave everything and run, empty-handed, to the other end of the world?
The loss of my spouse, Alexandra Camille Renwick.

Would you rather be on a ship that is about to leave or that is bringing you home?
One that is about to leave. I'm always ready for a new adventure.

What attracted you to speculative fiction in the first place?
The potentiality of unlimited imagination. The fact that it is, at its best, the ideal genre for subversion and for challenging notions of consensus reality, dominant worldview, hegemonic culture, social conformity, identity… for not assuming or presuming that the norm is necessarily normal, good, or desirable.

Do you have any other stories immediately forthcoming?
New stories: "The Quantocorticoid Effect" in Albedo One #46 and "The Patchwork Procedure" at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Also, "What to Do with the Dead" (which is, like "The Dance of the Hippacotora," a Lost Myth) will soon be republished at Tabulit.

Thank you, Claude!

Claude Lalumière’s “Dance of the Hippacotora” and “Xandra’s Brine” can both be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

Interview with Vladimira Becić #FaeVisions

Fae Visions of the Mediterranean is a new anthology featuring twenty-four stories and poems of horror and wonder of the sea. Among these stories is Vladimira Becić’s “Kod Kose i Sata”—translated as “The Scythe and the Hourglass” and published in both Croatian and English versions—an oneiric, mythical allegory of writing challenges and haunted houses. We asked Vladimira a few questions about her work.

After a career as a military psychologist, Vladimira Becić started writing on a bet (which she lost). Her published works include a YA vampire novel Orsia and a number of short stories, mostly in the fantasy genre. This is her first English publication.

TFF: “Kod Kose i Sata” reads like a Borgesian take on a dark folktale—postmodern allegory meets atavistic beliefs. What did the story mean for you?
Vladimira Becić: I thought it would be interesting to put together a real place surrounded by stories of being haunted with a non-existing, actually haunted place as is the case with “The Scythe and the Hourglass”.

What sort of a connection do you feel with the Mediterranean Sea itself?
As someone who grew up on the seaside, I am firmly in the camp of those who say, sea is beautiful, land is reliable.

If you could meet the Talason of your house, what would you ask her/him?
I would ask what the moment of transition from a human soul to a house-protecting soul looks like.

Would you dare be a guest at "The Scythe and the Hourglass"?
On good days, when writing is easy, I wouldn't hesitate for a second. Otherwise, I'd have to think twice.

Are the vampires in your novel Orsia dusty castle-dwelling predators, super cool red-eyed assassins, or sparkly-skinned, sulky teens?
Orsian vampires live in a subterranean, not in the least dusty city under Zagreb, and they are more entrepreneurs and businessmen than assassins. Their teenagers are insufferable, though, like all teenagers are—especially when they come up with plans that turn the whole of Orsia upside-down.

What is your favourite (real or literary) sea creature and why?
Octopus. Because they are smart and they look totally cool and unreal, like fairy-tale characters.

What is under your bed?
Ghouls that are yet to get their place in the attic.

Where else can fans of your work find stories of yours to read? Anything in the pipeline?
Most of my previously published stories and articles can be found at vladimira-becic.com. I am currently working on several projects, most of which connect my current main interests: psychology, writing, languages and music.

Thank you, Vladimira!

Vladimira Becić’s “The Scythe and the Hourglass” can be found in Fae Visions of the Mediterranean.

Fae Visions release and blog carnivale

Tomorrow sees the launch of Fae Visions of the Mediterranean: An Anthology of Horrors and Wonders of the Sea, edited by Valeria Vitale and Djibril al-Ayad and released by Futurefire.net Publishing. This anthology of 24 pieces of fiction or poetry, translations and multilingual pieces, which Publishers Weekly calls an “unusual, lyrical collection,” features authors such as Rhys Hughes and Claude Lalumière, and poets including Maria Grech Ganado and Mari Ness (see full table of contents).

Over the next few weeks we will be posting interviews and other blog posts from the authors and editors of this volume, both here and elsewhere. If you'd like to take part in this blog carnival, please give me a shout and we'll be happy to set up an interview or guest blog post on the theme of Mediterranean culture, diverse or multilingual horror and dark folktale, seamonsters, or other topics relevant to the anthology. We'd also love for you to review the book, even if just a rating and short comment on Amazon or Goodreads; a limited number of review copies are available on request. And if not, please signal boost our interviews, blog posts, teaser images, and other posts that come out here during the month of May. Many thanks!

Teasers

New issue 2016.36

“But when I woke up this morning, could’ve sworn it was judgment day.”
—

Issue 2016.36

• ‘Embedded’, A.J. Fitzwater (illustrated by Miranda Jean)
• ‘Keeping the Stars’ (poem), Anna Sykora (illustrated by Carmen Moran)
• ‘The Orchids of Lethe’, M. Bennardo (illustrated by Christina Cartwright)
• ‘Holy Many-Minds Home’, Michael Díaz Feito (illustrated by Cécile Matthey)
• ‘Vengeance Sewn with Fey Cord’, Christine Lucas (illustrated by Pear Nuallak)

E-book versions coming soon

Review this issue on Goodreads

Fae Visions of the Mediterranean TOC

The Mediterranean horror and weird themed anthology edited by our own Valeria Vitale, Fae Visions of the Mediterranean will be on bookshelves from May this year. You can see the publisher’s details and thumbnail of Tostoini’s marvellous cover art over at the press page, but herebelow is the first preview of the full table of contents:

• Madonna Mermaid Christine Lucas
• Regretful in the City of Promises (poem) Kelda Crich
• The Miracle Town Mattia Ravasi
• The Dance of the Hippacotora Claude Lalumière (trans. Arrate Hidalgo)
• Salt in Our Veins Dawn Vogel
• On Encountering Unicorns (extract) Marco Polo
• The Wisps of Tabarka Hella Grichi
• Għanja Bla Flus / A Free Song (poem) Maria Grech Ganado
• The Minotaur in Pamplona Rhys Hughes
• The City of Brass (extract) Anonymous
• The Heart of the Flame (poem) Mari Ness
• Ya duerme el mutado Álvaro Mielgo Gallego
• Bilaadi S. Chakraborty
• Mimikrija / Mimicry Urša Vidic
• Michaelis and the Dew Shades Louise Herring-Jones
• Изгубеното злато / The Lost Gold Kalina Aïch
• Liquid Pleasure (poem) Jenny Blackford
• The Return of Melusine Angela Rega
• Kod Kose i Sata / The Scythe and the Hourglass Vladimira Becić (trans. Dunja Ševerdija)
• The Strangest Sort of Siren Lyndsay E. Gilbert
• Il-Passjoni Ta’ San Ġorġ / The Passion of St George (poem) Maria Grech Ganado
• Mare Nostrum Simon Kearns
• Buzzing Affy (Sappho’s Hymn to Aphrodite) Adam Lowe
• Xandra’s Brine Claude Lalumière

We can’t wait for you to have this beauty in your hands! Some great authors and wonderful atmosphere between the covers of this anthology. I think you’ll like it.