Dream Fox and Other Strange Stories

Rosalie Parker
Tartarus Press

The humans who inhabit Dream Fox and Other Strange Stories seem destined to test the limitations of rational existence. Some have accidentally strayed into no-man’s land, such as the narrator of ‘Bipolarity’ who must decide how to learn to live (or not) with her mental illness; or the protagonist of ‘Beguiled’ who may be forced by family attitudes into social obscurity; or, in ‘School Trip’, unpromising June’s unexpected discovery of her own ‘special powers’. Other stories, such as ‘Home Comforts’, are more playful, although the uncanny is never far away.

Over the last few years of Wyrd Britain I've had the pleasure of reading a couple of books by Tartarus Press co-publisher Rosalie Parker and have found them to be a wonder of the strange and the sublime and this most recent collection - the first of hers from the publishing house she so expertly oversees - is no different.

In previous reviews I've made mention of how the essences of Rosalie's literary influences are occasionally apparent in her stories which gave them roots in stories past and which showed the vigour that remains in the work of those authors to inspire new and unique creations of such quality but, with the exception of the two stories originally written for a Zagava homage to L.A. Lewis, her stories here, while still springing from the same soil, feel like they come from a more distinctly individual place.

In stories that are as likely to speak of love as they are of loss and of hope as much as of despair and where the strange or the supernatural is often only suggested we find ourselves beguiled by the tantalising glimpses Rosalie allows us into her worlds.  There is an empathetic delicacy to her writing that infuses these stories of place, of love lost and found and of family in it's many and varied forms with a feminine focus that imparts a sinuous and thoughtful subtlety to the underlying frisson of the strange.  

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Literary Hauntings

Available now from Tartarus Press is this fantastic new guide book  to the uncanny or perhaps I should say to uncanny influences.

The literary equivalent of Janet and Colin Bord's essential 'Mysterious Britain' and 'The Secret Country' it provides an exploration of the real world locations that have "inspired the best fictional ghost stories of Britain and Ireland". Contributors include Tartarus Press head honchos R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker along with Mark Valentine, John Howard, Mike Ashley, Swan River Press' Brian J Showers and others and it makes for fascinating reading

If you've ever been fabulous enough to want to float down the canals of Elizabeth Jane Howard's 'Three Miles Up', visit Thomas Carnacki at Cheyne Walk or to climb Arthur Machen's Hill of Dreams then in this fantastic book you'll find your guide to the destinations of all your best nightmares.

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Dear John

Here we have a reading of a story by Rosalie Parker (co-publisher of Tartarus Press) of one of the stories from her terrific 2021 collection 'Through the Storm'.

From the video info...
"As executor of his old schoolfriend's estate, Justin is intrigued when he finds a series of letters among the dead man's belongings. Reading them, he uncovers a secret episode from his late friend's past."

The story here is read by Jasper L'Estrange for his EnCrypted Classic Horror channel where you'll find a host of stories both new and old by a cornucopia of Wyrd Britain faves such as M.R. James, Robert Hichens, A.E Coppard, A.M. Burrage, John Howard, Lord Dunsany, May Sinclair and more.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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Infra Noir 2020

Various authors
Zagava

Since some friends of Zagava missed single titles of our chapbook series, Zagava now offers all 11 Infra-Noir chapbooks published in 2020 as an inexpensive paperback! If you want all of the brilliant stories in one affordable place, this is the book for you.
D.P. Watt: Craft; Mark Valentine The Clerks of the Invisible; Jonathan Wood: The Idyll Is Over; Karim Ghahwagi: Codex of Light; Mark Samuels: Posterity; Rebecca Lloyd: Ancestor Water; Mark Valentine: Stained Medium; Timothy J. Jarvis: The Purblind Bards; Reggie Oliver: The Wet Woman; R.B. Russell: A House of Treasures; Rosalie Parker: Home Comforts 

Through 2020 Zagava released a series of small chapbooks by a coterie of authors associated with the publisher and enjoyed by us here at Wyrd Britain including Mark Valentine, Rosalie Parker, R.B. Russell and more.  These stories have now been collected together in this delightful volume.

D.P Watt has the honour of opening the proceedings with an entrancing tale of a beautifully made book whereas for Mark Valentine - in the first of two contributions - it's the mystery of a rare book and the joy of the hunt whilst Jonathan Wood explores the inner life of the book and the characters that the writer hopes to populate it with.

Karim Ghahwagi's 'Codex of Light' takes a different tack with a fantastical fable of fire and the restrictions of tradition.  Mark Samuels' 'Posterity' tells a wonderfully creepy talke of scholarlty hubris and a dead author (a thinly veiled Robert Aickman).  Rebecca Lloyd's 'Ancestor Water' like Ghahwagi's earlier story deals with the pull of heritage although it's contemporary setting free of gothic trappings gives it a more urgent and less folky aspect.

Happily we are given another Mark Valentine story (regular readers will be well aware of our love of Mark's writing) this time dealing with forgotten philosophies chance meetings and lost literary treasure whilst Timothy J. Jarvis spins a fascinating post apocalyptic tale in 'The Purblind Bards'.

Reggie Oliver is one of several authors on my ever growing 'must read more' list as what I have read has been a treat.  Here his story 'The Wet Woman' continues a trend I've noticed in his writing for a sort of dark whimsy which here takes the form of a group of thesps and musos engaging in petty revenge that unleashes more profound events.

The book ends with two stories from Tartarus Press publishers R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker.  Ray's story 'A House of Treasures' is a beautifully poised tale of a search realised whilst Rosalie tells of desire and perhaps lust for a cuddly but avaricious toy waiter named Nigel.  It's very wrong and very funny.

Unfortunately this collection, as with all the Zagava paperbacks, was only available for a very short while due to to issues with print quality but if you can track a copy down it'll definitely reward the hunt.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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Supernatural Tales 45

David Longhorn (ed)
Supernatural Tales

Now this is a rarity, I'm actually up to date with issues of Supernatural Tales thanks mostly to wanting to catch up on all my unread zines, chapbooks and the like over this second lockdown.  Happily this one was the best issue in a while helped in no small part by stories by three authors I really like.

Carrie Vacaro Nelkin gets things off to a strong start with 'Stricken' a fun little story about the monster under the bed before the very excellent Charles Wilkinson gives a characteristically strange story about starlings and music in 'The Harmony of the Stares'.  This is followed by Rosalie Parker's 'The Decision' which is written with her customary eye for the odd and the unsettling but I must admit to being a tad confused by the ending.

Mark Valentine is on fine form here taking a turn as a football pundit and if only all match reports were like this then maybe I'd read the back pages of the newspaper.  I wasn't particularly taken with Malcolm Laughton's story which melded 'Kidnapped' with a rose tinted slavery subplot and a vengeful spirit.

I liked William Curnow's 'The Round-About' which came across like a sentimental Aickman and Iain Rowan's 'The Wildness' was a brief but interesting tale of madness before the book ends with Tim Foley's rather obvious ghost story.

Like all compilations Supernatural tales can often be a little patchy but it's always worth a read as there's usually a good story or two or three or, like here, six.

Buy it at the link above.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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Through the Storm

Rosalie Parker
P.S. Publishing

Ghosts, shamans, aliens, angels and the weirdness of life all make their appearance in this new collection of Rosalie Parker’s strange tales. Her stories depict subtly shifting realities, and celebrate the fluidity of the barrier between the uncanny and the everyday. These twenty-five stories vary from contes to longer pieces, and explore the traditions of the weird tale in fresh and original ways.

This is my second trip into the imagination of Rosalie Parker, co-publisher of the fabulous Tartarus Press and editor of their Strange Tales series although the two collections of hers that I've read have been released by fellow Yorkshire publishing house PS Publishing.  Like the previous volume (Damage), 'Through the Storm', consists of a large number of fairly short tales (often between 5 and 10 pages in length) that explore matters strange and again like the previous there is a distinctly bucolic air to the stories with Parker taking a delight in the elemental settings such as the moors and the sea and finding little to recommend in domesticity or security.

For me she is always at her best when she's letting her imagination fly off in the most unexpected directions at which point her work resonates most loudly and shimmers with uncanny life such as in 'The Cinema' or when she goes for the heart like in 'Fever' where we find the venerable master of the weird still exploring the byways of his beloved London and finding solace in the now ancient soil of his own Caerleon and still sharing those adventures with those who need them.

'Through the Storm' is one of those curious books that seems like it should whizz past.  Each story takes no more than a few minutes to read but I quickly found myself eking it out over the course of several weeks and dipping in each day eager to see where she was taking me today.

Buy it here - UK / US.

Read Rosalie's '3 Wyrd Things' here.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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3 Wyrd Things: Rosalie Parker

For '3 Wyrd Things' I ask various creative people whose work I admire to tell us about three oddly, wonderfully, weirdly British things that have been an influence on them and their work - a book or author, a film or TV show and a song, album or musician.

This month: Rosalie Parker

Rosalie Parker co-runs Tartarus Press with R.B. Russell. She has written four collections of weird short stories, The Old Knowledge (2010), Damage (2016), Sparks from the Fire (2018) and Through the Storm (2020), out now from PS Publishing. Her stories have appeared in various anthologies, including Supernatural Tales, Uncertainties II, Shadows and Tall Trees, Best New Horror 21 and 30, and Best British Horror. 

It is our pleasure to present her selections for this month's 3 Wyrd Things.

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Film
Frank (2014)
Buy it here - UK / US

Frank is an extraordinary black comedy Directed by Lenny Abrahamson. It’s a British/Irish production inspired by papier-mache head wearing Timperley comic and pop star Frank Sidebottom, about an experimental band called soronprfbs, led by Frank (Michael Fassbender). Frank is not seen out of his aforementioned outsized head until the end of the film. The band go to Ireland to record their debut album in a remote cabin, which ends up taking more than a year. They are invited to play in Texas, where they continue to experience personal and creative differences and gradually implode. The final scene may or may not be a surprise. The themes of mental illness and creativity are handled with insight, integrity and delicacy. It’s moving, weird and very funny.

Music
David Bowie
Space Oddity (1969)
Buy It Here - UK / US

I first heard this single at my friend Nina’s house in the small Buckinghamshire village where I grew up. We played it over and over again until I knew every note and nuance. It has an indefinable longing and infiniteness about it which I found myself able to slip into, aged nine. I can still recapture that feeling whenever I hear the song. I’ve always been fascinated by exploration, and although I have done some adventuring into the unknown, I’m a slightly nervous traveller. I’ve never wanted to be an astronaut.

Book
Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights
Buy It Here - UK / US

Bronte’s tale of mixed-race Heathcliff after he is brought to live, an abandoned orphan, on an isolated Yorkshire farm had a certain resonance for me. I read it first aged about 13 in my cold bedroom in the old, haunted farmhouse in which I grew up. It’s a tale of adolescent love and hate, class, rejection and vengeance, and the supernatural and horror elements are fundamental to the story. Heathcliff is the archetypal outsider (cf Frankenstein) and although Bronte’s portrayal of him as he seeks revenge for ill treatment is utterly unsentimental, her skill in the telling means that he retains some of our sympathy. His drawn out death as he seeks to be haunted by and reunited with his dead love Cathy is a Gothic tour de force. Aged 13, the book was like nothing else I’d read. For the last 20 years I’ve lived in North Yorkshire, not too many miles from the Bronte’s Haworth, so the book has gained a new resonance for me. When I re read it last I was struck by how well it stands the test of time.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

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Damage

Rosalie Parker
PS Publishing

Each of the stories that make up Damage represent a new take on the theme of difference and strangeness in human life. There are elements of traditional horror, fantasy and the supernatural, but also of beauty, humour, compassion and love.
Damage explores the fragility of life and love and how they can sometimes survive against the odds, despite the damage that is done to them. 

Rosalie Parker is the co-publisher of Tartarus Press (along with her partner Ray Russell), the editor of their regular anthology series 'Strange Tales' and the author of three collections of short stories, two from Swan River Press and this one from PS.  I've only ever read one of her stories before and have long been intrigued to read more.

The overall impression I got from the book is that Rosalie is definitely the co-publisher of Tartarus Press as throughout I kept flashing on various writers that they have championed over the years such as Robert Aickman, A.E. Coppard, Arthur Machen (of course) and others.  Now I say that to show that her writing shares a kinship with those not to imply any sort of unoriginality.  Like Aickman the strangeness in Parker's stories is normalised within the events or makes a sudden and decisive apprearance. Like Coppard there is a love of the rural and the bucolic, a hankering for the wild spaces and like Machen there often seems a bleed through from elsewhere, of thin places where the natural and the un-natural coexist.

The stories are fleeting and focussed never taking any longer than they need to tell their tale although I was left occasionally wishing they would linger slightly longer and tell a wider story.  Her writing is neat and sparse and the specificity of her prose allows her tales to unfold at an easy unhurried pace that made the book a joy to read

Damage is available at the link above and also from their much cheaper clearance site here which is where I bought mine from.  Be aware though I've read that some people have reported that the copies they received were damaged in some way but the three books I bought were pristine.

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Robert Aickman: Author of Strange Tales

Created by R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker of Tartarus Press who have been responsible for championing and republishing Aickman's work this is a fascinating documentary of the life and work of a particularly enigmatic author.  With contributions from friends and fans - such as The League of Gentlemen's Jeremy Dyson and author and playwright Reggie Oliver - it tells of his writing, his wider involvement in the arts and his work preserving the canalways of Britain and gives many fascinating insights into the life of this most compelling of writers.




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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain