© Aphelion
2023 was not a great year for me personally or professionally. And for the sake of my sanity, I’d prefer not to think of what went on in the wider world during the past year. Mind you, with Lord Sauron’s orange twin looking likely to retake the White House in November and all that could ensue from that – the USA plunging into authoritarianism, civil disorder and even civil war, the emboldening of other fascists around the world, Ukraine being handed over to Trump’s buddy and idol Vladimir Putin, the end of humanity’s chances to do anything to alleviate the unfolding climate catastrophe – I have a feeling 2023 might retrospectively seem a nice year compared to the one that’s coming.
But on the other hand, 2023 was a successful one in terms of my writing. In fact, it was my best-ever year and I managed to have 15 short stories published. Usually, in a year, about a dozen of my pieces of fiction make it into print.
Here’s a round-up of my stories that were published in 2023, with details of who published them, which pseudonym they were published under, and where you can find them.
As Jim Mountfield:
- Jim Mountfield, the penname under which I write macabre fiction, made his first 2023 appearance at the start of January. Temple Street, a cosmic-horror story involving strangely-animate shadows in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna, was published in Schlock! Webzine Volume 17, Issue 6. The issue can be purchased here.
- March saw the publication of my story Wool – the first of three I had published in 2023 that were set on a farm in southern Scotland and informed by my experiences of living on one in my youth – in Issue 61 of The Sirens Call. This one had a futuristic setting and explored what livestock-farming might be like a few years from now. Possibly better for ‘real’ animals. Not good for the genetically-engineered, supposedly-mindless ones that take their place in the production of meat, wool and other animal products. And fatal for human beings if those genetically-engineered surrogates decide to rebel one day. Issue 61 can be downloaded here.
- I wasn’t sure if my story The Lost Stones would ever see the light of day, as its ingredients could best be described as ‘eclectic’. At worst, they could be described as ‘barmy’. It featured a Rolling Stones cover band, the Lost Stones of the title. It also incorporated some folklore from the Rif Mountains of Morocco. And it was set in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo during its snowbound wintertime. However, in May, The Lost Stones was accepted for the Long Fiction section of Aphelion. Furthermore, the story was one of the Long Fiction editor’s best-of-the-year picks of 2023 and is featured again in the current December 2023 / January 2024 issue of Aphelion. For the next month, it can be read here.
© The Sirens Call
- Issue 63 of The Sirens Call, published in June, had a special theme – cryptids, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “an animal (such as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster) that has been claimed to exist but never proven to exist.” I penned a short story about cryptids entitled The Watchers in the Forest, which made the cut. Issue 63 can be downloaded here.
- October 2023 was a bumper month for Jim Mountfield, as his name appeared on three short stories published in the run-up to Halloween. Actually, Halloween figured heavily in the first of these, The Turnip Thieves, about a Scottish hill farmer who takes umbrage at what he believes are kids from the local town stealing his ‘neeps’ (turnips) to make Halloween lanterns. This being a scary story, the thieves aren’t really kids. The Turnip Thieves was among the contents of Volume 17, Issue 15 of Schlock! Webzine, which can be purchased here.
- Later that month, my story One for the Books was included in the anthology Nightmare Fuel: Mind Terrors 2023 from the publisher Cloaked Press. One for the Books was a tale of madness set in a second-hand bookshop, the inspiration for which came from the real-life Armchair Books at 72-74 West Port in Edinburgh, which I remember as a place of wonderful clutter, chaos, nooks and crannies, and vertiginously-high shelves. Nightmare Fuel: Mind Terrors 2023 can be obtained here.
© Cloaked Press
- And another ‘farm-horror’ story, The Shelterbelt, made it to publication just before Halloween. As the title suggests, the story was about a belt of trees, adjacent to a farmstead, designed to protect it against the elements… and containing a dark secret. The Shelterbelt was included in Issue 3 of Witch House, which can be downloaded here.
- Finally on the Jim Mountfield front in 2023, November was when my story A Man about a Dog appeared in Issue 8 of The Stygian Lepus. Superficially about a person with some inexplicable healing powers, it was really about how people mistreat dogs and, indeed, about how people mistreat other people. Issue 8 can be accessed in the magazine’s back-catalogue section, here.
As Rab Foster:
- In 2023, Rab Foster, the pseudonym I use when I write fantasy – and usually the sweaty, rowdy sub-genre of fantasy known as sword and sorcery – first surfaced in March. This was when The Pyre of Larros, a tale inspired in part by the death of Queen Elizabeth II the previous year (and by how Britain reacted to her death), appeared in Issue 133 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine. The story can now be read in the magazine’s archive, here.
- And it was in Issue 138 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, in July, that the next Rab Foster story was published. The Gibbeting of Azmyre not only appeared in the same magazine as The Pyre of Larros but it featured the same main character – the mercenary swordsman Drayak Shathsprey, who this time gets involved in a plot to steal the corpse of an executed criminal from its gibbet in a snowy city-square. The setting was inspired by the old-town area of Edinburgh, which at one time was a hub for the nefarious practice of bodysnatching. Again, The Gibbeting of Azmyre is now in Sword and Sorcery Magazine’s archive. You can read it here.
- A different Rab Foster character, Cranna the Crimson, was featured in the story Vision of the Reaper. This was among the items selected for the Cloaked Press anthology Fall into Fantasy 2023, which appeared in September. It pitted Cranna against some supernatural and sorcerous skulduggery happening in a giant wheatfield. A copy of Fall into Fantasy 2023 can be obtained here.
© Cloaked Press
- The first instalment of my two-part opus The Boots of the Cat appeared in Volume 18, Issue 2 of Schlock! Webzine at the beginning of December. Describing the events set in motion by a vain mercenary, nicknamed the Cat, trying to retrieve his lost boots, this story was inspired by a famous fairy tale – but not, as you might expect, Puss in Boots. To read this issue of Schlock! Webzine, buy it here.
- And mid-December saw the arrival of Issue 8 of the magazine Whetstone, which contained my story The Ghost Village – described by the editor as straddling ‘the line between folk horror and sword and sorcery’, and owing a little of its premise to the Thai tradition of spirit houses. The issue can be downloaded here.
As Steve Cashel:
- Steve Cashel, a pseudonym I’d last used in 2011, was resurrected in 2023. His name appeared at the top of The Folkie, a violent story about some young, would-be gangsters and a mysterious old folk-musician whom they encounter in a dingy, central-Edinburgh pub. The Folkie was published in November in Close 2 the Bone, an ezine devoted largely to crime fiction, and can be accessed here.
As Paul McAllister:
- Meanwhile, Paul McAllister was a penname I really hadn’t used for a long time. He’d last appeared in the mid-1990s and I’d never expected to exhume him. However, when my story The Magician’s Assistant, based on some experiences I’d had as a kid in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, was included in the collection Winter Wonderland 2023: Bindweed Anthology in December, it seemed right to attribute it to Paul McAllister. This was the sort of fiction I’d written under his name in the past. To buy your copy of Winter Wonderland 2023: Bindweed Anthology, go to Amazon UK here or Amazon US here.
So, to recap. 2023 was a vintage year for my writing, even though the year sucked in all other respects. Indeed, it seems the more successful my writing career gets, the more the world turns to shit. Could these two things be causally related?
If that’s the case… Well, sorry folks. I’m going to keep on writing. You’ll have to keep on suffering.
© Schlock! Webzine