Musings From Oblivion's Vault

Due soon from Brian Shower's excellent Swan River Press is an anthology of ten new stories edited by Mark Valentine, tales that respond in many differing ways to the themes of Oscar Wilde's  The Picture of Dorian Gray . The line up of authors is as follows: Reggie Oliver, Caitriona Lally, Lynda E. Rucker, John Howard, D.P. Watt, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Avalon Brantley, Timothy J. Jarvis, John Gale and Derek John. My contribution is entitled 'A Labyrinth of Graves', the title taken from a poem by John Warren, Lord de Tabley. I was working on the story when Mark asked me if I would be interested in writing for the anthology. Obviously, I said yes. Fortuitously the main themes of the tale in progress seemed to fit perfectly. The story has quite a long history, because I originally had the idea for the tale at the end of the 1990s. I only wrote around a hundred words at the time, and under a different title, 'The Ship Forever-Seeking', before I...

Just after last Christmas I completed a new story called In the Palace of the Lost Winter Stars, unfortunately I failed to finish it in time for the anthology it was intended for, so at the moment it's awaiting a home. However, I felt that the first few hundred words, with a little editing and a fresh ending, would make a decent little prose poem. So here it is. The ending here, by the way, is closer to my original intention for the story: the longer piece - over 5000 words -  has a completely different dénouement.   In Opal Twilight I walked out into the white and wondrous garden with my visitor; out into the transformed world that was now filled with the rose-opal luminescence of twilight, for a fine snow had fallen heavily for half the day. We strolled to the end of the pallor-mantled garden and through the black gate in the white yew hedge, then across the lane, now hidden beneath a crisp mask of ermine, and so into the wood beyond. My pal...

I began the following tribute to Tanith Lee a few days after I had heard of her sad passing in May 2015. It grew out of a re-reading of one of her most re-printed tales, 'Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur De Fur' [1984] and the beautiful stained glass imagery of the opening paragraph. Serenity: A Song in Stained Glass Through stained glass of leaf-green peridot of pallid blue jacinth through silk-fine glass of storm-dark amethyst of an ancient dusk of charcoal through stained glass of a woodland of green crystal of a soft descent of blue perfumed twilight through stained glass she looks serenely… the silver snows of sleep have fallen of velvet petals hued with fluid moon pearl of the salving argent of slumber of the caressing wings of white birds… the sharp, the sable shades of a sepulchre have been salved away have been cast down into oblivion have had the fragrant balm of lily-white birds of snows of silver of slumber of ...

Whilst Tanith Lee is rightly celebrated for her many fine novels, I personally think that when she was composing in the short form she excelled . Over the last few years many fine collections of Tanith Lee's short stories have been issued, but this new gathering is particularly poignant because it appears to possibly be the final one that she personally assembled. The theme here is the sea and it weaves through these tales in all its various guises, temperaments and hues.   The earliest story is Paper Boat (1978) based on the final days of Shelley. The opening lines are gloriously feverish: The summer heat had come. It burned the hills to blocks of standing smoke. It filled the bowl of the shore and the spoon of the bay with its opium, it painted the terracotta of the house in progressively darkening washes of red and umber. The sea, a throbbing indigo, pulled itself to the beach and tumbled there as if drugged. The latest work in Legenda Maris are tw...

Soliloquy For Pan   Through the amethystine shadows of approaching midsummer, hooves like beaten silver of moonlight whisper softly though the grasses of malachite and the grasses of dark jade; he approaches through the deep beechen shades and through the antique shades of oak ...   The splendour that is Soliloquy For Pan is now available for pre-order from the Egaeus Press website - please click  here  to enter a portal of endless wonders. Including worldwide postage and packing at £35  Soliloquy For Pan is certainly money well spent for such a sumptuous volume of 350 pages of fiction, essays, poetry and numerous olden illustrations.   The violet shadows quiver in ecstatic anticipation of  the great Pan's advent...       Update : The book is now Out of Print from the publisher but should be available from reputable book dealers. However, there may be the possi...

"...in flesh ...in smoke ...in dream..." A new story is due out soon in an anthology devoted to Pan and all his various incarnations: the collection is called  Soliloquy For Pan (edited by Mark Beech) and will be issued from that superb imprint  Egaeus Press. The new tale is named 'The House of Pan' and is the fourth story so far to be set in my Duchy of Greywall series, where the Realm of Faery is but the shadow of a leaf away and ancient magic is far from being an old and faded perfume...  For the interested the other stories in the Greywall sequence are: 'The Green Lady Pavilion' ( Haunted Pavilions, 1992; Allurements of Cabochon, 2011 ) , 'A Ghost At The Grange' ( Lichgate 1, 1995 ) and 'The Betrothed of Winter', ( Allurements of Cabochon, 2011) . Hopefully I shall write enough to fill a modest collection one day. I already have my contributor copies of Soliloquy For Pan to hand and as always with this quality small press th...

Tanith Lee 19th September 1947 - 24th May 2015 Portrait by Dallas C. Goffin (From a photograph by Jerry Bauer) Something momentous and devastating happened on Sunday 24th May - the Mistress of Delirium, Tanith Lee, passed away. I find it almost impossible to express how much her work has affected me over the 30 or so years I have been reading and absorbing it's richness. I won't attempt to do that at the moment, but I will share the following piece which was written in June 1987 and published in Aklo (edited by Mark Valentine & Roger Dobson) Autumn 1992 . At the time the dedication to Tanith didn't appear, so I'd like to correct that now.   Dreamer's Soliloquy   (Dedication: Tanith Lee 1947-2015)   I shall draw the night from out the west, And wrap it about like a cloak; I will coax dim shadows from haunted woods, And plume my hair with their smoke. I shall take the moon from the curving sky, And hammer it into searin...