ABOUT THE AUTHORS
A.F.E SMITH is an academic editor who lives in the south
east of England
with her husband, her young son, and thousands of books. When she’s not writing
speculative fiction of various kinds, she enjoys the usual things: watching
films, eating snacks, solving complex mathematical equations. She has never
owned a cat, mainly because she knows she’d end up a pawn in its bid for world
domination.
C.N LESLEY lives in Alberta
with her husband and cats. Her three daughters live close by. When she isn’t
writing, Elizabeth
likes to read and to paint watercolors. She is also a keen gardener, despite
the very short summers and now has a mature shade garden. Once a worker in the
communications sector, mostly concentrating on local news and events, she now
writes full time.
RACHAEL BROWN is a fourteen-year-old student from Norfolk. Her interests
include art, animation, gaming, history, reading, seventies rock music, drama,
and of course writing. She is intensely passionate about English and writing,
and thinks it is a real pleasure to be included in this anthology, especially
since her stories (whether short or long) tend to be rather bizarre and odd
with a zany feel.
PAIGE CLOSSER attends school in small town in the American
Midwest. She loves to read Percy Jackson novels and make loom band charms. When
she’s not busy with those pursuits, or practicing violin, she likes to think of
stories. The story in this book may or may not be based on her two cats.
CHRISTIE RAMPERSAD is a medical student who began her
writing in poetry, with selected works appearing in Danse Macabre and Pens on
Fire. Now, as she transitions to fiction, she is thrilled that Nine Lives Later
has placed joint- third in the Kristell Ink Feline Flash Fiction Competition
and found a home in this anthology.
DAVE CROSBY is an affable gentleman, as much as any American
can be “affable” (or “gentle”, for that matter), living in a Heaven-forsaken
area of California known as Fresno. He has a humanities heart and mind,
living in an ex-banker’s body, so he has made a living with bankerly
number-crunching all his life, but has lived with reading, writing and music.
He published a short story in 2013, Rain Over Ghaidhealtachd, set in Ancient
Scotland, in the anthology Magic Creatures from Celtic Mists, has written
another tale set within a moonlit night in Jamaica, Last Touch, and hopes to
publish his first novel next year, an exciting thriller set in San Francisco,
called Bringing Home the Good War. He thinks kindly of his two sons, Glen and
Ted, who have given him much inspiration in his work, especially the novel.
JESSICA FROST is a medical student with a love for
literature. For her, writing is a much-needed break away from science and
studying! She can be found on Twitter: @ MissInkweaver
CLAIRE NEILSON was always very good at stories in school,
but her spelling was awful. She thanks the gods and goddesses of word
processors for the little red lines of spelling correction. Now age 30 she
lives in Manchester
and spends her days baking for a living and reading for leisure.
BRIAN TALGO was born in the Deep South of the US in 1954, and later spent his formative years
in Westchester County,
a northern suburb of New York City.
As a young man he wandered restlessly about the US
for several years, working mainly as a carpenter and stonemason, until he
eventually got in touch with his inner Viking and relocated to Norway in 1981.
After many years abroad he has grown comfortable with his expat status.
Currently working with international admissions at the University of Oslo, Brian writes and indulges in other
creative endeavors in his spare time. He presently lives on the outskirts of Oslo, together with his
wife, son, two insubordinate cats, and a miniature forest of plants. A daughter
has wisely flown the coop.
Website: sonsrevenge.blogspot.no
IAN RICHARDSON lives by the sea, on the East Coast of
Scotland, with his cat, Purry Murray.
The first story Ian ever wrote was published, but he hasn’t
been able to keep up that 100% record. However, several short stories, articles
and micro fictions have escaped the red pen recently and his steampunk serial
was e-published in 2013.
ROB BAYLISS lives with his wife, two children and dog in Somerset. A keen scholar
of history and lover of fantasy, only recently has he discovered the joyful
escapism of sitting down to write a story.
LANCE CROSS writes short stories when he gets stuck writing
his novel, so he writes more short stories than he should.
When he’s not writing, he spends too much time telling his
cat he’s “sooooo cute”, and trying to keep him away from the computer keyboard,
as he knows what buttons to push to delete stuff. Lance really shouldn’t let
him jump on the desk in the first place, but as mentioned, he’s sooooo cute.
JOSHUA CORNAH is a 22 year old café assistant at a local
coffee shop who loves to draw, for himself and others. In his free time, he’s
an illustrator and cartoonist, and the influences for his drawings come from
Japanese anime, manga, and Nintendo video games. He is also very polite.
STEVEN J GUSCOTT or Steven, Steve, Steve-o, Stevie, Stevie
Gee, Moral Steve, Uncle Steven...the list goes on . . . but the name he has
chosen for writing is Steven J. Guscott. Like some of the other names, there’s
a random story behind it, and obviously his middle name starts with a J, but
he’s not going to bore you with that story just now. What he will bore you with
is telling you how much he loves creating fantasy/sci fi stories. He’s twenty
six and lives in Scotland,
and nearly three years ago he discovered an unhealthy obsession with writing.
He’s written a few stories in this time, and has quite a number still to write.
If you want to learn more about Steven and his writing journey, he’s kept a
record in the form of a blog that can be found at:
www.stevenjguscott.co.uk
VICTORIA ROBINSON lives a safe and comfortable existence in
home county suburbia, where shadows lurk not in dark, smoking alleys but behind
neatly trimmed hedges and carefully erected fences.
DAVID COHEN lives in the university town of Dunedin,
a gateway to New Zealand’s
Lord-of-the-Rings-set Southern landscapes. His background is in the
high-technology electronic industries, but considers writing the most fun you can
have sitting down with a pen and paper, so is pursuing that – as well as other
interests such as photography, object- making and volunteer work for Habitat
for Humanity. He cites Annie Proulx, Spike Milligan, Arthur C. Clarke, Patrick
Süskind, and Terry Pratchett as current influences, but that will almost
certainly change.
HONOR THOMPSON spends most of her time with her head in a
book and a pen in her hand. She looks to her friends and family for
inspiration, and as such all her writing characters hold a special place in her
heart. Without her grandparents, she wouldn’t be where she is today, for they
taught her that nothing is impossible; you just have to believe.
SOPHIE TALLIS is a Bristol
born gal who grew up in a sleepy village dreaming of dragons and wild
adventures. She hasn’t grown up much, and sincerely hopes she never does. She
lives in the Cotswolds with her family, two enormous white wolves, and a load
of wild ducks that basically run the place; she has just added two Alaskan
Malamutes into the mix! Sophie is a full-time teacher and has been dulling
young minds . . . ahem . . . inspiring young minds for the past fifteen years.
She is a painter, artist and illustrator, and has a BA (Hons) Degree in Fine
Art, photography and sculpture. But her first passion has always been writing
stories and poetry. Her first novel, an epic fantasy for children and adults,
was published in September 2012 to great reviews and high sales, and she’s
currently working on the sequels, due out later in 2014 and 2015, as well as a
host of other projects.
WILL MACMILLAN-JONES is a fifty-something lover of blues,
rock and jazz. He presently lives in Wales, a beautiful verdant land of
myth with a rich cultural heritage. He does his best to support this heritage
by drinking local beers and shouting loud encouragement at the TV whenever Wales is
playing international rugby.
He has just fulfilled a lifetime ambition by filling an
entire wall of his study with bookcases, and then (over)filling the bookcases.
When not drinking beer and watching rugby, he remembers to write the occasional
horror book or to add to his comic fantasy series, The Banned Underground.
Links to all his work can be found on his website:
www.willmacmillanjones.com
JANE DOUGHTERY is a product of the Irish diaspora. She was
brought up in Yorkshire, educated at Manchester
and London, then moved to Paris to work in the wine trade. She now
lives in Bordeaux
with her family, a Spanish greyhound, and a posse of cats. Her first published
work is a YA fantasy series, The Green Woman. She also writes poetry and has
been published in Poetry Nook Magazine and The Bamboo Hut.
As a Role Player, MIKE HARGREAVES’ main outlet for creative
writing is in the plotting out of tabletop gaming scenarios for the RPG players
in his social circle. The rest of the time he’s fighting to keep a healthy
ratio between idea and completed projects. It’s a fight he keeps losing.
When she isn’t busy with her nine-to-five job as an
electrical engineer, TINA CLOSSER helps her husband with a small hobby farm,
complete with a mini horse, donkey, cows, and sheep. In between farm duties and
running the kids to gymnastics, she likes to write.
KIERAN MATHERS is a freelance writer based in Sheffield, UK,
and is very much inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, The Farseer Trilogy and
other great works of fantasy. While not hunched over a keyboard creating worlds
in his head, he goes cycling in the Yorkshire Dales and writes poetry.
EVELINN ENOKSEN lives in Norway with her husband and children.
She finds inspiration in everything, and has always been interested in art and
writing. She says there are few things more fun in life than being able to
create.
SELINA CARR is a writer, collector and lover of folk and
fairy tales. She is inspired by, and drawn to, the deceptive simplicity of
these sometimes poignant—and often gruesome—stories. Much of her writing is
heavily influenced by her life-long relationship with the tales penned by the
Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault and Oscar Wilde.
JOEL CORNAH hailing from a small isolated village in Lancashire, is the author responsible for The Sea-Stone
Sword. He was awarded a degree in Creative Writing from Liverpool John
Moors University
and spent seven years writing a comical newspaper for The Barrow Downs Tolkien
discussion forum. Accompanying this paper was a comic strip series called The
Phantom and Alien, a bizarre story of bus drivers, dead people, and a slime
child bent on inconveniencing everyone around him.
Sample Story. Previously published on the KI website and
opening story of the collection. Winner of the Flash Fiction competition
Nein Lives
A.F.E. Smith
My name is Nein. I have had other names, but Nein will do
for now.
I sit with my attendan
t whilst he
wrestles with the nature of reality. He thinks he owns me. I let him keep
thinking that.
“Nein, Nein,” he mutters, taking his glasses off and
polishing them with vigour. “I am convinced they are looking at this in the
wrong way. How can this superposition represent what truly happens in the
world?”
He is talking to me. I get up and stretch, then step
delicately onto the desk. To start with his touch is absent-minded, but my
claws kneading his sleeve recall him to a full sense of his obligations.
I knew a man like you once before, I tell him as he runs his
fingers down my spine in the way I like. He longed to know how birds and trees
and tortoises came to be. How they could change to fit their surroundings. I
showed him a mouse, and then he understood. The mouse was uniquely adapted to
run away, and I was uniquely adapted to catch it.
He frowns at me. He often frowns when I speak. All my
attendants have been the same: so focused on the weighty questions in their
minds that they fail to understand what is before their eyes. Perhaps that is
what it means to be human.
Did I ever tell you about the man with the apple tree? I
ask, butting my head into the palm of his hand. He used to sit in its dappled
shade every day, thinking about the laws that keep all of us moving along our
preordained paths. I would stretch out on the branch above him and enjoy the
heat of summer. But when he started forgetting to provide me with fish scraps,
I decided enough was enough. I knocked an apple down onto his head, and
understanding with it.
He is looking blank. I will try once more.
A long time ago, in China, an alchemist was seeking
immortality. He mixed this ingredient and that, to no avail. Just as he was
about to give up, I knocked a candle into his mixing dish. The explosion took
off his eyebrows, but he was ecstatic. He had sought to live forever, but
instead he had found a way to bring others death.
I wait for any sign of comprehension, but my attendant’s
mind is still off in its narrow little orbit. Disgruntled, I turn to groom
myself. Of course, that is one discovery I would not choose to make again. My
fur was singed just here, above the tail, and it has never been the same since.
“Down, now,” he says, with fine disregard for the sorrow of
that memory, and I allow him to lower me to the floor. “I must make sense of
this tonight.”
Ah, poor Schrödinger. Just like the others, he needs my
help. One day, soon, I will walk into a box and really make him think.
It’s hard to know what to expect from a book titled ‘Poets
in Hell’, at least I hadn’t a clue until I turned the first page. What I got
was something quite mad, that’s mad in an absolutely wild, clever, surreal and
brilliant way.
