Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

Mark Stay

Peckish

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Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

Editor. From the Latin for “torturer of authors”

While the Alumières get chunks torn out of their manuscript, and their noses rubbed in the plot holes, I’m writing a short story with the working title “Laura’s Suitcase”.

It’s about a woman called Laura. And she has a…?

Correct!

For me, a working title is just the simplest possible reminder of the story I’m thinking about. I generally come up with the real titles last, because I don’t know for certain what a story’s tone will be until it’s finished. Where possible, I like to use a line or phrase from the story as the title.

The Alumière stories are the exception. I generally come up with the titles while I’m sketching out the story.

Weird.

This week’s Main Feature is “Peckish”, a flash fantasy about a hungry cat, and I round off this week’s newsletter with a bumper crop of recommendations, including where you can get some torture for yourself. Don’t miss it!

Peckish
This week’s flash fiction about a cat who finds a magical tree full of delicious birds is currently only available to newsletter subscribers.

Sorry.

Have you considered signing up for my free, no spam, no obligation newsletter? Do that here!

Oh, and…
Read!

Tim Waggoner is now offering a FREE ebook to subscribers to his newsletter, and it’s a doozy. Tim has been writing for years, and his newsletter is always crammed full of goodies. I’m subscribed and think you should be too. Sign up here for a free ebook!

Read!

I have read three good books in a row. That’s a new record. It’s not that there aren’t a lot of good books out there, it’s that I’m so fussy. So, if you’re searching for a book recommendation, check these out.

First, I read Performing Flea, which is P. G. Wodehouse’s collected letters. Loved it! Here’s my goodreads review.

Then I read Mark Stay’s The Ghost Of Ivy Barn. This is the third in his Witches of Woodville series, which keeps getting better. Loved it! Here’s my goodreads review.

And I just finished Nicole Cushing’s A Sick Gray Laugh, and feel like people have been hiding her from me. How come I’m only reading her now for the first time? This is a darker read, but still great, great fun. Loved it! Here’s my goodreads review.

Listen!

In a world which finds it ever harder to agree on anything, it’s a comfort to know there is one fact which remains indisputable:

Clutch rock!

To celebrate the release of their brand new album, there’s a 90 minute livestreamed video on YouTube right now. Make sure you stick around for the last song for an orgy of cow bell solos! (Because this is Clutch, that’s why!)

Check out the video here!

If you like what you hear, buy the album direct from the band here. (Only $5 for the digital album!)

Look!

Here’s a 3D Tour of a Torture Museum. It’s interesting enough, I suppose. What intrigues me is the lack of any real information on where it is, how they make their money, and why. Apart from a randomly uploaded Discovery channel logo, there’s very little information about this at all. Almost like they don’t want anyone to visit… Now, that’s scary.

Chat soon!

Robots Can’t Replace Us Quickly Enough (from September 10th 2022)

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Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

Puri is Georgian for “bread”, and this is our closest puri shop.

You can’t go in, you shout, “Gamarjoba, erti (or ori) puri” through the window. That means “Hello, one (or two) bread.” Easy.

I’m also sporting a brand new haircut from our local beauty place. courtesy of a Belarussian lady called Ana.

It’s not what I asked for.

It doesn’t look like the photo I showed her.

So this week I’ll be learning how to say, “A haircut like the one in this picture, please.”

I’m working my way through the third and final big round of edits for The Squared Circle, after which I’ll give it a polish, leave it for a month and then send it off to the first editor. Then more edits and editors.

Then I’ll be sending it off to advance readers… hint, hint.

This week’s story is not fantastic, but definitely dark, even nasty, so be warned.

My list of recommendations rounds off this week’s email, but I’d love to hear from you. What was the best thing you watched, listened to or read recently?

Hit reply and let me know!

Robots Can’t Replace Us Quickly Enough

We needed someone for the marketing, because neither of us wanted to do it.

We held interviews and picked Lisa. She looked like she’d do what she was told: small, hunched shoulders, and a bruised eye that her makeup didn’t quite cover. Pretty, but in an annoying way.

Not as pretty as some others, so we expected her to work extra hard to make up for that.

It was a small team: I was the programmer, and Jamie brought the contacts and worked the spreadsheets. And Lisa, if she turned out to be useful. We told her she’d never work again if she wasn’t. Just to motivate her, but she hid her face behind her long hair.

We made apps. Like computer programs, but cooler?

Our latest one used AI to calculate when your shoes would wear out. Nike loved it, because their premium customers don’t want to be seen wearing busted footwear, so they added the app as a perk for their members.

And it sucked up all sorts of personal data, which we could sell to other people.

Lisa was there when we signed the deal, but I had already talked to Nike, so it didn’t count. She was on very thin ice, if she wanted to keep her job.

The next app sold better. It put injected real-time targeted ads into emails, so if you read an email near a Starbucks, it’d say, “Hey, how about a dark roast grande Americano with cinnamon sprinkles right now?” Lisa talked to Starbucks, but one win didn’t mean she could be part of the team.

She needed to do something about that long hair and her air of being a doormat. Nobody likes a goddamn doormat.

She cried when I called her a doormat, which made me feel bad, which made me angry. Things got awkward.

Tears trigger me, you know?

I told her she had one more chance, then she was out.

She came up with a winner.

An app to help victims of violence. It was genius, if I say so myself. There was a support forum, emergency call numbers, and location tracking, so people didn’t have to worry about taking taxis, or whatever. Basically, the users and emergency services did all the work, but we made it An Experience.

And everyone was talking about toxic masculinity, so this was marketing gold. We were the good guys, and the money poured in to develop it.

And with all that data pouring in, we knew exactly where to find all those victims.

That data would be worth a fortune to the right people.

Oh, and…
Watch!

If you enjoyed (my spiritual comedy animal) Stewart Lee’s Snowflake last Sunday, make sure you catch his Tornado this Sunday at 22:25 on BBC iPlayer!

Read!

If you still haven’t jumped on the Witches of Woodville bandwagon, and you live in the UK, then now is the time. Get the first book in the series, The Crow Folk, for 99p. Hurry, Google has already switched back to full price, but Apple, Kobo and Amazon, still have it on offer. Get it here!

Look!

While checking what my favourite weirdo-metallers, Old Man Gloom, are up to. I discovered that “duck face” is still a thing. This is what it looks like when #MetalDoesDuckFace.

Research!

Annabella “Bell” Plumptre was a British writer and translator born in 1769.

That’s right. Although her family name was “Plumptre”, “Bell” obviously seemed to think it was her first name that people were having trouble with.

Chat soon!

Lumber

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An eldritch tree looms over a winter cottage
Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

For this week’s fantasy flash fiction we’re going into the woods. Content warning: there will be no teddy bears and no teddy bear picnics there today!

Enjoy!

I could hear her thoughts, so she could hear mine. Thoughts of what we’d bake each other to sweeten the long forest winter swirled around us to fill our cottage.

Darker thoughts which hinted at Him were quickly covered with the thin pastry of apple tarts and covered with cream, weighed down with the ballast of porter cake sodden with beer, or stuffed with turkeys full of sage and pepper breadcrumbs.

Seven of us sisters had lived here before the curse dropped at our door.

He would come once more. Taking one of us, leaving the last alone.

When I thought about it, it seemed to me—as it did to my sister—that being taken was the kinder death. It would be quick, whereas being left alone would mean death would take an entire lifetime.

We tended the common grave of the five sisters who had already succumbed, but we tended it separately. It gave us time to think unguarded.

My thoughts were always the same: “Let Him take her.”

Now that idea had been let loose in the cottage, but whether it came from her or from me, was impossible to say. With practice, it is possible to dull thoughts so they have no personality or flavour.

He knocked on the door that night. Rain clouds covered the moon, so neither of us could see him. Nor could he see us to choose.

He chose by our thoughts and in the morning there were no more sisters, just a woman living alone.

Without her to distract me, I heard His thoughts: the wild, bellowing calm of the forest.

If you’re around this evening, make sure you check out the launch party for Mark Stay’s third Witches of Woodville book, The Ghost of Ivy Barn, which is being live-streamed right here!

Perfect for fans of the Alumière Sisters! Here’s a cool trailer video to get you in the mood!

If you’re more a People Skins person and in the mood for something a little darker and stranger, check out the new trailer for Danger Slater’s Moonfellows here!

10 Ways To Die At Work.

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A blood spattered desk with note book, coffee cup and laptop
Made with Photo by Oli Dale on Unsplash and Photo by Alexandre Boucey on Unsplash

Here are ten things they won’t tell you about on your first day…

1. Getting trapped for a week in the supply room with Andrew from Marketing. He’s a tool, but he’s also bigger than you, and you don’t like the way he stares at your legs and belly even before the paper and ink supplies run out.

2. The stress of an upcoming deadline makes you drink more and more of the awful cheap coffee from the office’s machine, which makes you more stressed, which in turn sends you more frequently back to the coffee machine, until your heart hurts so much that you are sure you are suffering a massive coronary and die from psychosomatic heart failure.

3. You stay late after work to meet a client, not realising your boss has also stayed back to keep an eye on you. When you close thea deal with the client, your boss congratulates you as you wait for the lift. Not knowing he was there, you get a fright, stumble and fall, catching your skull on the corner of a hideous flower pot with a fake plant. Your boss is forced to make an emergency late night call to Andrew to “swallow the evidence.”

4. You take the office elevator to a meeting on the top floor: you aren’t wearing your sports tracker, so it would be a “waste” to take the stairs. The lift gets stuck between floors. After 24 hours of being assured that help is on its way, you climb through the lift’s emergency hatch in the ceiling. From there you can easily reach the floor above you. The doors aren’t even fully closed! As you move towards them, you hear movement behind you: Andrew’s face, his lips still blue from the pen ink he drank, grins at you.

5. You buy a cake to share with your colleagues as it’s your birthday. The cake looks nice, and really big, covered in a thick layer of creamy gunk. A bee fell into the gunk while the baker was making it, and has been struggling to swim out of the hideously sweet “creme” for hours. She makes it to the surface just as you bite into a slice and you die of anaphylactic shock.

6. As a practical joke, Andrew (he’s a tool, remember?) has piled up all the photocopy machines into an “office Jenga” tower. When Marie from Health and Safety bends over to check they are unplugged, she bumps into you, knockig you into the tower. The tower falls on you, crushing your skull.

7. Poor customer service sends a man who was already desperate for some attention to go on a shooting spree at your office.

8. The barman where you are celebrating the office Christmas party has been eating nuts. When you order a beer, he pours it, without having washed his hands, holding the glass by the rim. Your body goes into anaphylactic shock because of your nut allergy.

9. A brief, violent gust of wind sends paper flying everywhere as you pass the stationery cupboard. You die of blood loss caused by a ridiculous number of paper cuts.

10. Andrew always reads your diary when you go on lunch break. Having read this list, he decides that – like him – you never recovered from being rescued from the supply room. He calls aournd after work with a bottle of wine, an axe, and a large appetite.

This week I finished the second book in the Withes of Woodville series by Mark Stay, Babes in the Wood. If you’re jonesing for some feel-good fantasy (while I finish off the next Alumière Sisters adventure, for example…), then check it out here!