My latest book, All the Beautiful Sunsets, is out today. Collecting 52 flash stories I published on the blog this year, it covers a wide range of settings, from ancient history to the far future.
A fairy noble hunting for spies. A soldier digging for his life beneath a battlefield. A man learning the cost of renting out his brain. Meet all these characters and more in fifty-two short stories set in worlds beyond our own.
All the Beautiful Sunsets is available as an e-book from all good stores.
A magic-wielding card shark living by her wits. A diplomat frustrated by criminal aliens. A private investigator in a city built on rusting machines. Meet these characters and more in fifty short stories set in worlds beyond our own.
My new e-book, Old Odd Ends, is out now. It’s a collection of over fifty flash stories I wrote last year. At $2.99, that’s less than 6 cents per story to travel from ancient Rome to the far future via worlds full of magic and strange machines. Go on, treat yourself.
A magic-wielding card shark living by her wits. A diplomat frustrated by criminal aliens. A private investigator in a city built on rusting machines. Meet these characters and more in fifty short stories set in worlds beyond our own.
My latest collection of short stories, Old Odd Ends, is coming out on the 16th of March. Collecting all the flash fiction published on this blog in 2017, it features 50 stories, including my experiments with episodic serials. It’s available to pre-order now as an Amazon e-book. So if you’re looking for something new to read, or you’ve enjoyed these stories and would like to support my writing, you can go order a copy now.
They
say there’s a library at the end of the world. After the final war comes the Cold. Humanity struggles to survive in the frozen wasteland they’ve made of the world, squabbling for resources and jumping at shadows. So much has been lost – it’s only a matter of time before we lose the rest. But there’s a fragment of civilization left. Urban legends about The Collection, a sanctuary of knowledge which appears where it’s most needed. And the stories about those who guard it are even stranger…
The Collection is a series of interconnect short stories about a world that’s fallen into trouble and the people holding knowledge and hope together. Edited by my ridiculously creative friend A C Macklin and illustrated by the immensely talented Andrew Cradduck, it contains tales by a collection of writers as eclectic and fascinating as their stories. I don’t have a story in this one but I wrote the introduction, which was a new and exciting experience. If you like your stories thoughtful, wild, and fascinating, then check it out.
Having played in the amazing New Pathways in Lycanthropy, I decided to read the short story that inspired it. Called “Damage Control”, it’s in Zoe McAuley’s collection Opening Salvo. It’s an interesting read that shows someone facing traumatic circumstances and reflects on coping with a world of werewolves. Not as traumatic as living that world a few weeks back, but still good.
I then moved on to read the rest of the collection, and found some delightful things there. I particularly recommend “What if Everything Was Forgotten?” This is a story about someone trying to understand the remains of a fallen civilisation. It’s about eccentricity and following your heart. It’s about compassion for others. It’s about turning the past into something useful for the future. It’s a sweet and unusual story.
The whole collection is only a couple of quid on Amazon. At that price, I’d recommend it for “What if Everything Was Forgotten?” alone.
Some writers have a reputation that doesn’t quite fit their style. One aspect of the work gets exaggerated, especially in the eyes of those ill-acquainted with their writing. In my mind, one of those is Joe Abercrombie.
Don’t get me wrong, Abercrombie is no victim of misrepresentation here. Having embraced the title of Lord Grimdark, and the twitter handle to match it, he’s become the figurehead for a particularly dark style of fantasy. It’s a gritty, muscular, action-packed sort of darkness, rather than the angst of goths, vampire novels, and urban fantasy. But I imagine that the very label “grimdark” puts some people off.
Yet there’s a wonderful humour to Abercrombie’s work. Reading his short story collection Sharp Ends has reminded me of this. Little details, from thugs discussing architecture to one-liners in fights, round out the world and its characters. As a reader, I’m never left drowning beneath the sea of sorrow that “grim” and “dark” imply. This is all about the black humour.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. The phrase “grimdark” originally applied to Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 universe, whose catchphrase referred to the “grim darkness” of the future. Like Abercrombie, GW created a setting of darkness so exaggerated it can sometimes become cartoonish. Humour and hideousness are inseparably intertwined. Characters and places become over-the-top in an entertaining way. The pleasure of reading them comes from smiling at the absurd side even as you prepare for a serious moment to follow.
Like the spaghetti westerns he paid tribute to in Red Country, Abercrombie creates stories that are somehow both grounded and mythologising, humourous and serious. Their very existence undermines the false divides we try to set between these things, splitting our world into black and white. It’s damn fine stuff, to which I find myself returning over and again.
But then, what should we expect from such a self-mocking title as Lord Grimdark?
If you’re reading this blog, then there’s a good chance that you’ve already read the stories in Beasts Clothed in Beauty, my new collection. Either you read them here on the blog or you got the book and have been enjoying these little snippets of other lives and worlds.
If you’ve read and enjoyed these stories, could you please do me a favour and leave a review for the book on Amazon. Even if it’s just a quick sentence and a star rating, this could really help me in reaching more readers, and help those readers decide if this is something they want to read.
And if you haven’t read it yet, what are you waiting for? Go get a copy now!
Thanks!
Here it is – my second annual collection of flash fiction. Beasts Clothed in Beauty collects all the fiction I published on the blog in 2016. There are refugees on the spaceship to Io, smugglers on the Phoenix Shore, and some very cold legionaries stuck on Hadrian’s Wall, along with dozens of other characters and settings. There are even reappearances by characters from some of my previous stories, such as cynical British space diplomat Julian Atticus and the demon detective Shadowvalt.
Maybe you’ve enjoyed the stories here and would like to have them all on your e-reader. Maybe you missed some. Maybe it’s a gift for someone else. Maybe you’d just like to support my writing. Whatever motivates you, you can get on over to Amazon and buy the book now.
I’m excited to announce my second annual collection of flash fiction. Beasts Clothed in Beauty collects all the fiction I’ve published on the blog this year, including the stories still to appear in December. There are refugees on the spaceship to Io, smugglers on the Phoenix Shore, and some very cold legionaries stuck on Hadrian’s Wall, along with dozens of other characters and settings. There are even reappearances by characters from some of my previous stories, such as cynical British space diplomat Julian Atticus and the demon detective Shadowvalt.
Maybe you’ve enjoyed the stories here and would like to have them all on your e-reader. Maybe you missed some. Maybe it’s a gift for someone else. Maybe you’d just like to support my writing. Whatever motivates you, you can get on over to Amazon and pre-order the book now.
As an added incentive, I’m putting together some bonus material exclusively for people who pre-order the book. So once you’ve ordered, email me a copy of your pre-order receipt at andrew@andrewknighton.com and I’ll send you something special.
I love it when stories have strong narrator voices. The way the story is told gives you a sense of the narrator’s character without describing them directly. It can make for a really interesting read.
This year, I’ve encountered two Cthulhu mythos stories that do this well, and that make the mythos accessible to someone like me who doesn’t know it well.
First up is “My Friend Fishfinger by Daisy, Aged 7” by David Tallerman. It’s told from the point of view of a 7-year-old girl. She’s describing her friend, nicknamed Fishfinger, who is nice but unusual. Her parents worship a strange god and they’re going to take Daisy on holiday with them. From the child’s point of view, it’s incredibly sweet. As an adult reading the story, it’s obvious what’s amiss, and Cthulhu fans will doubtless know exactly what it refers to. The contrast between the strong character perspective and the reader’s understanding creates a wonderful strand of dark humour, as well as telling us a lot about the characters involved.
Then there’s “Donald” b
y Adrian Tchaikovsky. An academic, responding to some unnamed investigator, tells the story of his encounters with a man named Donald Toomey. Again, there are the ironies that creep in through the gaps between reader and narrator understanding. There’s also a great pleasure to be taken in the narrator’s voice. His opinions, biases, and assumptions flavour the text like tasty spices. There’s a certain amount of belligerence and bloody-mindedness. There’s also a tendency to assume that the world works a certain way, a set of academic assumptions that are carefully shown rather than crudely explained. It makes the storytelling subtle and the voice authentic.
I love this sort of storytelling and have set myself the challenge of trying it in the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can find “My Friend Fishfinger” in David’s collection The Sign in the Moonlight. “Donald” is in The Private Lives of Elder Things. And if you’re after more supernatural horror then check out the latest issue of 9Tales Told in the Dark, featuring my story “Cold Flesh”.
