{"id":1573,"date":"2015-01-16T17:25:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-16T17:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stoneskin.wpengine.com\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2015-01-16T17:32:18","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T17:32:18","slug":"teasers-to-lovecraft-gemma-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/teasers-to-lovecraft-gemma-files\/","title":{"rendered":"Teasers to Lovecraft: Gemma Files"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letters to Lovecraft<\/em><\/a> is our newest genre-blending anthology of original fiction, and to ring in the new year for our readers we\u2019ll be posting excerpts from each of the stories. To usher you off into the weekend we’ve got something by Gemma Files, a midwinter excursion to “That Place.” With a master’s touch Files invokes that nigh-universal childhood ritual of inventing odd games to play, exclusive games that only a privileged few ever even learn of, and combines the richly esoteric workings of young imaginations with a chilling proposal. It’s just the thing for these long winter nights when you’re trapped inside the house with nothing to do…<\/p>\n

\n

So say two sisters finally come back home, after their parents die \u2014 twins. Their names are Holly and Heather. They have a younger brother, Edwin, whom they haven\u2019t seen for some time. Estrangement\u2019s grown up between them all, for no apparently good reason. It\u2019s sad, but these things happen.<\/i><\/p>\n

Holly and Heather attend university in Toronto. They also room together, because why not? They\u2019ve always been like that. They can\u2019t ever remember being apart.<\/i><\/p>\n

Edwin never went to university. He finished high school, then trained as an auto mechanic, so he works all year round. He does most of his calls along the rural routes of northern Ontario, circling the area where they used to live, in Lake of the North District; his specialty is extending the life of trucks and four-wheelers, fighting planned obsolescence on behalf of people who can\u2019t afford to trade up. Distance is an issue, up there. If you can\u2019t drive, you can\u2019t do much of anything.<\/i><\/p>\n

One night Holly gets a call \u2014 it\u2019s Edwin. <\/i>Mom and Dad are gone, he says. <\/i>Accident, out near Overdeere. Black ice pile-up. You need to come into town to hear the will read, then muck out the house with me.<\/p>\n

The girls know this isn\u2019t going to be easy, either way; it\u2019s not like their parents were hoarders, as such, but they did tend not to ever get rid of anything. There\u2019s a lot of stuff to appraise, most of it probably worthless, except on an emotional level. But it\u2019s got to be done.<\/i><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll live there while we do it, Heather decides. <\/i>Go up just after midterms, spend a few weeks. It won\u2019t take longer than that. Not if we don\u2019t let it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTown\u201d is Chaste, up past Your Lips, almost to God\u2019s Ear. Five traffic lights, a church, a school, a gas station strip mall, and a clinic that does double duty for Quarry Argent. Around it, there\u2019s a network of small farms, plus acres of uncut woodlots. Cabin-style houses here and there, like the one they grew up in. It took thirty minutes to drive to the town limits, then twenty more to walk in, so days started early, up before dawn. Insects singing in summer, dark and cold and silent all winter.<\/i><\/p>\n

Hope the fireplace still works, Heather says…<\/i><\/p>\n

For the rest, get Letters to Lovecraft<\/em> from Stone Skin Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Former film critic\"\" and teacher turned award-winning horror author Gemma Files <\/b>is best known for her Hexslinger series (A Book of Tongues<\/i>, A Rope of Thorns <\/i>and A Tree of Bones<\/i>, all from ChiZine Publications). She has also published two collections of short fiction (Kissing Carrion <\/i>and The Worm in Every Heart<\/i>, both from Wildside Press) and two chapbooks of poetry. Her most recent book is We Will All Go Down Together: A Novel in Stories About the Five-Family Coven <\/i>(2014, CZP).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letters to Lovecraft is our newest genre-blending anthology of original fiction, and to ring in the new year for our readers we\u2019ll be posting excerpts from each of the stories. To usher you off into the weekend we’ve got something…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-letters-to-lovecraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}